apparitionhood

[apparitionhood]

Roy DeCarava, Dancers, 1956

[apparitionhood]

The first thing the colonial subject learns is to remain in place and not overstep limits. Hence, the dreams of the colonial subject are muscular dreams, dreams of action, dreams of aggressive vitality. I dream I am jumping, swimming, running and climbing. I dream I burst out laughing. I am leaping across a river and chased by a pack of cars that never catches up with me. During colonization the colonized subject frees himself night after night between nine in the evening and six in the morning. - from On Violence by Frantz Fanon

[apparitionhood]

at some point the work of pretending we weren't going to die, that our children weren't going to die, that our deaths and lives weren't going to be forgotten, became unsustainable. it was hard enough to just breathe and metabolize. to find something to metabolize. to find people to metabolize near. now some people call it the true end of whiteness, when the world could finally operate based on something other than fear of blackness, of being, of death. but at the time all we knew was the story had run out. all the stories. of staying young to cheat death. of thinking young people wouldn't die. of immortality via "making a difference." of genetic imprint as stability. of stacking money and etching names on buildings. people used to do those things before. not to mention that they would not mention death and would hide the dying away and strive to protect the eyes of the children who already knew everything. at some point. all the dead being here anyway and all of us here being obviously doomed, we let go of that particular game. and we started breathing. and saw our hands. we let go. i felt like i could fly. - from M Archive: After The End of The World by Alexis Pauline Gumbs