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It’s been … months since I wrote here. We decided to move our family’s various domains and data to one account, which meant a lot of backend stuff and waiting on DNS to propagate and so on, and then (you know how it is) I waited so long that I had no idea what to say so I said shit-all.
Well, that’s not entirely true. I have been saying plenty of shit, mostly shitposting, but also a lot of screaming with my whole queer self about genocide because a lot of people are screaming and I want to tell my children one day that I also screamed, for the same people, for the same reasons, because the world is wrong and it needs us to make it right.
I’ve been on Mastodon and Instagram being queer and weird and revolutionary. I’ve been reading books. I’m READING BOOKS. I haven’t been able to fully pay attention to books in any format for at least a decade, maybe two. I’ve been watching Asian dramas — I started out with a Chinese historical drama (a C-drama, if you will) and that was the gateway drug I needed and now I’ve got 170 things on my watchlists and 11 things in rotation right now and I am truly, deeply enjoying it so much.
I’m learning that the things I thought I already knew about love and joy and community were the very beginnings of a child’s thoughts, and that all the stuff I was wondering about were the fragments of dreams others have written down. I started reading bell hooks and I’m reading poetry and I am noticing such a heavy through-line between grief and love and joy and happiness and relationship, although it’s more of a web that I can only see a little of at a time.
I have been keeping track of the books, shows, movies, and music I’m engaging with this year and called it the Chronology of Finishment and yes I made up a word and I’m very happy with it.
That’s what I’ve been doing this year in between all the things needed to help a household run, and projects we’re working on. I don’t like to watch things that are dubbed, but I have AuDHD, so I have a lot of trouble just doing ONE thing at a time without distracting myself by getting lost in the middle distance. So I have been playing really simple games on one monitor while I have the show up in the other monitor, and unless I really forget to pay attention I don’t need to scrub back and watch again.
spoon-lationship
I met someone that I already knew, who coincidentally is the person that recommended the first C-drama I watched, and several months later we awkwardly queer-ed ourselves into a relationship. As you do! We have been calling it a ‘spoon-lationship,’ another word I made up that was not my best work since it’s really not easy to say aloud. It’s an acknowledgment that we burn out and sometimes we can’t send many messages or record Marco Polo videos very often because it’s just Too Much, but it’s okay because neither of us thinks the other person is avoiding them.
it’s looking like a fucking mess in here
This country, I mean. The United States is, as I’ve overheard and agree with, a failed experiment. We started out fucked up and have fucked it up worse as the consequences have repeatedly harmed everyone not on the top of the pile.
Palestinians are still being genocided. Sudan, Congo, Haiti, and all the places I’m not remembering, full of people who want their land back, their freedom back, their communities to be safe, their children to grow up well.
A better world is possible.
learning that love is integral to revolution is a mindfuck
Because it doesn’t seem like, the way that love is usually portrayed in our society, that love would do it. We get a lot of messaging about love that pretends away harm, accepts abuse, abuses others, lies, and has no truth in it. Love like that is possessive, keeping a record of wrongs. It is violent. It categorizes people as the Other. Love like that speaks without thinking further ahead than one’s feelings in the moment. Love like that hurts our own selves the same as we are hurting others.
However — real love, I am discovering as I learn from those wiser than I, is about accepting that we all harm one another. It is an acceptance that I will do harm without believing that this changes my inherent beautiful worth as a person. It is an invitation to think of my relationships as worthy of repair, rather than a burden too heavy to do the work of restoration. There are always situations in which repair can’t realistically happen, but the situations that can be repaired far outweigh those.
Living in community with others, with love as a guiding principle, is helping me remember to assume the best about my family members. It helps me see my own failures with compassion. It helps me extend compassion and understanding that uses the breadth of my soul to show up in contexts that are hard and scary.
How can I love another person if I am unable to see and love who and what I am, as I am?
I wanted to wait for an epiphany before I wrote something else, I think. I wanted to be the person having the big important pattern-seeing thoughts, but better even than that is to be learning about what’s on the other side of the epiphany — the part where you integrate the new knowledge and then practice it. I can engage in praxis meaningfully whether or not I was the first person I know who realized a thing.
epilogue:
all our time is borrowed
all our love is a gift
when truth comes down like a hammer
all there is, is this
I have returned from thy kingdom come and all beyond that burned
I’ve come from an age immersed in a mighty force of mortal rage
silence
drowning out the thunderous waves of emotion
violence
running out of devices of faith and devotion
if you could just move this lever you would not be immune to love
if you could just move this lever you could stop becoming what you’re afraid of
are you ready now
when the truth comes down
I have returned from thy kingdom come and all beyond that burned
I’ve come from an age immersed in a mighty force of mortal rage
I cannot run
I hear your call
we’re only chasing shadows now that castles cannot fall
I cannot hide
the walls don’t lie
we can’t keep what can’t be kept
to justify how long we’ve slept
I must try to flood this fire
to stop the pain and start to heal
to be the one you most admire
I can’t give up
I have no choice
when all your words fall on deaf ears I will be your voice
now we have returned to thy kingdom come and all that’s ours is learned
now we come to an age where truth and love are drowning out the rage
are you ready now
when the truth comes down
I will be your voice
— lyrics from Your Voice by Les Friction
YouTube link: Your Voice, Les Friction
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xox,
Nix
featured image is a photo by Dylan Shaw on Unsplash
