In the midst of the polemical environmental debate between the reactionaries of the right and the activists of the left, an under-examined knowledge system remains neglected. As the descendants of those who carved nations out of “New Worlds” fight over contamination of the planet, ancient epistemologies are being erased, along with the peoples who existed before systematic colonization.
I don’t know what I was expecting when I first tried glassmaking, but from the moment I gathered molten glass out of a furnace on a metal blowing iron, I fell in love with the pale fluorescent glow of glass’s heat and the sound of the furnace keeping it alive for the maker.
“It was you,” Shay says slowly, but forcefully, her face lighting up as if she were a cartoon with a bulb above her head, but she’s not. She’s a real, human person sitting in front of me and name dropping a lot. One of the names she’s dropped is Jesse’s and she’s saying it’s hard to work with him and I say I know, in a way that implies I really, really know.
I gaze long and hard at myself in the mirror, straining to reach the girl behind the face. I’m in there somewhere and it’s both liberating and terrifying to think that the person before my eyes is now the ‘real’, emotional, non-medicated version of my being.
I was first fucked for money at the age of 19. Someone tied me up and shoved a silicone cock in my ass. A digital camera captured the entire process. I was paid $300. It was fun, I guess. “He just liked the money and the thought of doing something ‘wrong.’ Passive anal sex is not his thing.” – the assistant narrator. I allowed flesh cocks to replace silicone cocks.
June 26. The US Supreme Court rules that state-level bans on same-sex marriage are unconstitutional. Worldwide celebrations ensue. July 8. I am about to leave my apartment to attend a party. My well-meaning flatmate asks, “Is that your outfit? Expect girls to hit on you if you wear that jacket.” July 28.
The man of whom she was speaking was short and dark and immensely strong. She mouthed the words slowly, with a care, gazing at her image of him all the while through a prism of love. But then, gradually, she began to speak of other things as well, almost as if she were trying to turn herself from him and those hideous passages of thought.
My mum’s parents’ lives have always been an open book, thanks no doubt to Nana’s razor-sharp memory. I know that they met when Grandpa volunteered to life-save Nana in their youth group swimming club.
Do you care? Do you care about caring? Do you care about being perceived to care? Do you go through spates of caring, then get distracted and forget what you cared about last year, last month, last week, ten seconds ago? And by care, I mean more than empathise, I mean the ache that makes you want to act – just maybe not IRL.
