#fucking love sara ahmed

[piizunn]

sara ahmed is doing a ‘travelling with feminist killjoys’ talk for my school today and i am literally so excited i’ve had to read so many readings from queer phenomenology over the years. i really respect sara ahmed, she’s incredibly intelligent and i think more people need to read her work

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

every single book I read in 2022. all 129 of them.

jesus christ

let's start with the best of the best; everything else will get listed beneath the read more because I'm not an animal. even just picking out my favorites is honestly probably going to get pretty lengthy, even though I'm trying to keep the synopses short.

batmanisagatewaydrug's noteworthy books of 2022

Complaint! (Sara Ahmed, 2021) - necessary for anyone doing diversity work in higher education, tbh

America is Not the Heart (Elaine Castillo, 2018) - achingly gorgeous novel of heartbreak and healing.

The School for Good Mothers (Jessamine Chan, 2022) - honestly? I feel very good calling this my favorite book of the entire year. sensitive, smart, chilling.

Black Feminist Thought (Patricia Hill Collins, 1990) - truly ashamed to say I didn't read this sooner. Collins' clear-eyed analysis remains crazily spot-on 30+ years later.

Hurts So Good: The Science and Pleasure of Pain on Purpose (Leigh Cowart, 2021) - I read this book so early in 2022 and literally have not stopped thinking about it since.

Batman: King Tut's Tomb (Nunzio DeFillippis, Christina Weir, José Luis García-López, and Kevin Nowlan, 2009) - dare I say the most fun I had with a comic all year.

You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty (Akwaeke Emezi, 2022) - a romance unlike any other. queer, fun, sexy, bold as hell, and joyfully life-affirming.

The Dangers of Smoking in Bed (Mariana Enríquez, trans. Megan McDowell, 2021) - DELICIOUSLY creepy short stories that will lurk in your brain forever.

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (Kim Fu, 2022) - if a more perfect short story collection exists I am yet to find it.

The World We Make (N.K. Jemisin, 2022) - I normally hesitate to include sequels on a list like this, but god DAMN Jemisin is the queen of modern spec fic for a reason.

We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Mariame Kaba, edited by Tamara K. Nopper, 2021) - excellent collection of Kaba's abolitionist writings, drawing on years of organizing experience and wisdom.

Jade City (Fonda Lee, 2017) - look out! new favorite doorstopper fantasy series alert!

Priestdaddy (Patricia Lockwood, 2017) - about the best damn memoir I've ever read. heartbreaking and hysterical in turns, poetry the whole way through.

Batman: The Long Halloween and Batman: Dark Victory (Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, 1996 and 1999) - it's always so exciting when something much-hyped lives up to the hype in every way. Batman at his grim and moody Batmaniest with a Gotham that’s deliciously bleak.

Station Eleven (Emily St. John Mandel, 2014) - I didn't think I'd like this book much at all, then ended up proposing on the second date. oops!

I'm Glad My Mom Died (Jennette McCurdy, 2022) - you will also be glad McCurdy's mom died, and also experience every other known human emotion along the way.

Kaikeyi (Vaishnavi Patel, 2022) - SPLENDID mythology retelling + political fantasy.

My Body (Emily Ratajkowski, 2022) - haunting haunting haunting personal essays about Ratajkowski's life as a model and subsequent alienation from her own body.

Batman: Bruce Wayne, Murderer? (Greg Rucka et al, 2002) - genuinely what can I say I'm a messy bitch and I love when the Bats are having a terrible time.

The Batman Adventures Vol. 2 #1-17 (created by Dan Slott, Ty Templeton, Rick Burchett, Terry Beatty, and Bruce Timm, 2003) - a continuation of the Batman: The Animated Series universe that frankly just fucking rules.

Little Rabbit (Alyssa Songsiridej, 2022) - a potent and erotic adult coming of age story.

The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century (Amia Srinivasan, 2021) - thorny, difficult, vital essays.

Fearing the Black Body: The Racial Origins of Fat Phobia (Sabrina Strings, 2019) - jaw-droppingly thorough research into the role of fatpobia played and plays in the project of race-making.

On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous (Ocean Vuong, 2019) - yeah so it turns out no one was REMOTELY exaggerating. Vuong really is That Good.

Hench (Natalie Zina Walschots, 2020) - wild fun with a ruthless protagonist and her sex villainous beetle man boss; what more could you ask for?

Love Your Asian Body: AIDS Activism in Los Angeles (Eric C. Wat, 2021) - learning about queer history makes me feel like I’m holding something so vibrant and fragile and precious right in my little queer hand. this book is an emotional journey in such a shining way.

Never Have I Ever (Isabel Yap, 2021) - EXCITING short story collection centered on girls having Just The Weirdest Time.

and everybody else:

fiction:

Light From Uncommon Stars (Ryka Aoki, 2021)

Our Wives Under the Sea (Julia Armfield, 2022)

A Tiny Upward Shove (Melissa Chadburn, 2022)

A Prayer for the Crown-Shy (Becky Chambers, 2022)

Disorientation (Elaine Hsieh Chou, 2022)

The Laws of the Skies (Grégoire Courtois, trans. Rhonda Mullins, 2019)

The Monster Baru Cormorant (Seth Dickinson, 2018)

The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (Seth Dickinson, 2020)

Greenland (David Santos Donaldson, 2022)

Dead Collections (Isaac Fellman, 2022)

The Halloween Moon (Joseph Fink, 2021)

A Dowry of Blood (S.T. Gibson)

Nightmare Alley (William Lindsay Gresham, 1946)

The Vegetarian (Han Kang, trans. Deborah Smith, 2015)

The Metamorphosis (Franz Kafka, trans. William Aaltonen, 1915)

Before the Coffee Gets Cold (Toshikazu Kawaguchi, trans. Geoffrey Trousselot, 2019)

Woman, Eating (Claire Kohda, 2022)

Long Division (Kiese Laymon, 2014)

Jade War (Fonda Lee, 2019)

No One is Talking About This (Patricia Lockwood, 2021)

Portrait of a Thief (Grace D. Li, 2022)

Elatsoe (Darcie Little Badger, 2020)

A Snake Falls to Earth (Darcie Little Badger, 2021)

Glitterati (Oliver K. Longmead)

Gideon the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir, 2019)

Harrow the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir, 2020)

Nona the Ninth (Tamsyn Muir, 2022)

The Memory Police (Yoko Ogawa, trans. Stephen Snyder, 2019)

Even Though I Knew the End (C.L. Polk, 2022)

100 Boyfriends (Brontez Purnell, 2021)

Flowers for the Sea (Zin E. Rocklyn, 2021)

Any Way the Wind Blows (Rainbow Rowell, 2021)

Interview with the Vampire (Anne Rice, 1976)

Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe (Benjamin Alire Sáenz, 2012)

Aristotle and Dante Dive Into the Waters of the World (Benjamin Alire Sáenz, 2022)

Into the Riverlands (Nghi Vo, 2022)

Siren Queen (Nghi Vo, 2022)

Strange Beasts of China (Yan Ge, trans. Jeremy Tiang, 2020)

short story collections:

The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer (Janelle Monáe, Yohanco Delgado, Eva L. Ewing, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Danny Lore, and Sheree Renée Thomas, 2022)

Walking on Cowrie Shells (Nana Nkweti, 2021)

Terminal Boredom (Izumi Suzuki, trans. Polly Barton, Sam Bett, David Boyd, Daniel Joseph, Aiko Masubuchi, and Helen O’Horan, 2021)

nonfiction:

Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (Judith Butler, 1990)

How to Read Now (Elaine Castillo, 2022)

Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (Melissa Gira Grant, 2014)

What We Don't Talk About When We Talk About Fat (Aubrey Gordon, 2020)

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color (Ruby Hamad, 2020)

Belly of the Beast: The Politics of Anti-Fatness as Anti-Blackness (Da'Shaun L. Harrison, 2021)

Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service (Tajja Isen, 2022)

One Day We'll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter (Scaachi Koul, 2017)

How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America (Revised Edition) (Kiese Laymon, 2020)

Sister Outsider (Audre Lorde, 1984)

Conversations with People Who Hate Me: 12 Lessons I Learned from Talking to Internet Strangers (Dylan Marron, 2022)

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism (Amanda Montell, 2021)

World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (Aimee Nezhukumatathil)

Histories of the Transgender Child (Jules Gill-Peterson, published as Julian Gill-Peterson, 2018)

Yoke: My Yoga of Self-Acceptance (Jessamyn Stanley, 2021)

A Queer History of Fashion: From the Closet to the Catwalk (edited by Valerie Steele, 2013)

Transgender History: The Roots of Today's Revolution (Revised Edition) (Susan Stryker, 2008)

The End of Policing (Alex S. Vitale, 2017)

The Trouble With Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life (Michael Warner, 1999)

Read My Lips: Sexual Subversions and the End of Gender (Riki Wilchins, published as Riki Anne Wilchins, 1997)

poetry:

Short Talks (Anne Carson, 1992)

Content Warning: Everything (Akwaeke Emezi, 2022)

Prelude to Bruise (Saeed Jones, 2014)

Alive at the End of the World (Saeed Jones, 2022)

Bright Dead Things (Ada Limón, 2015)

Motherland Fatherland Homelandsexuals (Patricia Lockwood, 2014)

Nature Poem (Tommy Pico, 2017)

Night Sky with Exit Wounds (Ocean Vuong, 2016)

Time Is a Mother (Ocean Vuong, 2022)

comics:

Batman: One Bad Day - Mr. Freeze (Gerry Duggan, Matteo Scalera, and Dave Stewart, 2022)

Spandex - Fast and Hard (Martin Eden, 2012)

Harley Quinn: The Animated Series: The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour (Tee Franklin, Max Sarin, and Marissa Louise, 2022)

Batman: Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? (Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert, 2009)

The Sandman: Preludes & Nocturnes (Neil Gaiman, Sam Keith, Mike Dringenberg, and Malcom Jones III, 1988)

The Sandman: In the Doll's House (Neil Gaiman, Michael Zulli, Mike Dringenberg, Chris Bachalo, Malcolm Jones III, and Steve Parkhouse, 1989)

The Sandman: Dream Country (Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones, Malcolm Jones III, Colleen Doran, and Charles Vess, 1991)

The Sandman: Season of Mists (Neil Gaiman, Kelley Jones, Malcom Jones III, Mike Dringenberg, Matt Wagner, P. Craig Russell, George Pratt, and Dick Giordano, 1992)

The Sandman: A Game of You (Neil Gaiman, Shawn McManus, Colleen Doran, Bryan Talbot, Stan Woch, and George Pratt, 1993)

Run, Riddler, Run (Gerard Jones and Mark Badger, 1992)

Catwoman: When in Rome (Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale, 2005)

Batman: Year One (Frank Miller and David Mazzicchello, 1986)

Batman: One Bad Day - Penguin (John Ridley, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Cam Smith, and Arif Prianto, 2022)

Batman: Bruce Wayne - Fugitive (Greg Rucka et al, 2002)

Batman: One Bad Day - Two-Face (Mariko Tamaki, Jaiver Fernandez, and Jordie Bellaire, 2022)

Batman & Robin Eternal Vol 1 & Vol 2 (James Tynion IV and Scott Snyder, 2015 and 2016)

Batman: Their Dark Designs (James Tynion IV, Guillem March, and Tomeu Morey, 2020)

The Joker War Saga (James Tynion IV and Jorge Jiménez, 2021)

Papergirls Vol. 1-6 (Brian K. Vaughan and Cliff Chiang, 2016-2019)

Real Hero Shit (Kendra Wells, 2022)

Poison Ivy #1-6 (G. Willow Wilson and Marcio Takara, 2022)

and some gaming guides!

Monster of the Week (Michael Sands, 2012) - great game. so cool. cannot wait to actually play it someday.

Thirsty Sword Lesbians (April Kit Walsh, 2021)

special shame zone because I want you to know how bad this sucked, do not read this:

Rethinking Sex: A Provocation (Christine Emba, 2022). patronizing, puritanical, reductive, painfully cisheteronormative. weirdly afraid of group sex. not actually that provocative, just aggressively Catholic.

and last but most certainly least, a comic that I want to remind you all fucking sucked just one more time before the year is done.

Batman: One Bad Day - The Riddler (Tom King and Mitch Gerads, 2022)

Tom King, go fuck yourself. Mitch is cool though, the art slapped.

[gryficowa]

Boycott!

All in all, I'm starting to miss the times when my biggest worry was that Thomas Astruc couldn't write a script for his cartoon

But okay, there's nothing we can do about the fact that society has turned itself on its face :/

Now that I have your attention:

--------------------------------------------------------------

By the way, the sims 4 and inZoi are being developed in cooperation with a company that supports Israel, this is key information (No matter how much I love playing the sims, this fact disappointed me…)

Rowling (TREF who hates women, even cis ones) liked a Zionist tweet, so yes, to HP fans, boycott her too

And by the way: Fuck Harris and the Democrats, they stink just as much as MAGA and Trump

[ramonaflow]

Hiiiii, love! 💘💘💘💘💘

Coming to you with some sleepover questions!

Okay, here goes!

First you get to rate hot or not, six men I, personally, find hot.

Hot or Not:

Rahul Kohli

Aldis Hodge

Riz Ahmed

Tom Hardy

Harry Shum Jr

Daniel Kaluuya

Then six latest People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive winners.

Hot or Not:

Patrick Dempsey

Chris Evans

Paul Rudd

Michael B Jordan

John Legend

Idris Elba

Very random FMK:

Sarah Snook

Mary Elizabeth Winstead

Rhian Teasdale

If you won the lottery, would you spend the money on a trip around the world or on a luxury house, cars, clothes, jewelry etc.? You can't have both. You need to choose either or. So if you choose the trip, you'd come back from it to the same exact existence you're living now.

Top three songs released in 2023?

OR

Top three albums released in 2023?

Hiya beautiful ❤️

These hot or nots are hard because I think they're all good looking but I don't know if they're hot, you know?

Let's see

Rahul Kohli - Hot

Aldis Hodge - Hot

Riz Ahmed - Obviously Hot but specially with bleached hair 🔥

Tom Hardy - Sometimes Hot

Harry Shum jr - Sometimes Hot

Daniel Kaluuya - Not

Patrick Dempsey - Not

Chris Evans - Hot when he has a beard

Paul Rudd - Not. He is cute though

Michael B Jordan - Hot

John Legend - Not

Idris Elba - Hot

For FMK. This is pretty mean of you to be honest 🤣😭

Kill Rhian because she's so hot, obviously, but she's a bit young for me lol.

Fuck Mary.

I would marry Sarah because she's gorgeous, and hot and seems super nice. And I would take her surname because then I'd be called Sara Snook and I think it's funny 🤣

If I won the lottery, as much as I would love a trip around the world, I would have to pick the house and stuff. I would love to be able to move away from where I live now.

The last questions are both difficult because I'm very set in my ways with music and I don't listen to a lot of new stuff.

I've just gone through a list of every album released and Hozier is the only one I've listened to enough to describe as a top album.

Unreal unearth - Hozier

Thank you for asking ❤️🥰

[aahsokaatano]

yeah sure it's been like 5 years since I actually did a tag game lol. Thanks @violence-as-a-love-language

last song I listened to: "Working for a Living" cover by Home Free

currently watching: M*A*S*H 😎 partly bc research project and partly bc it's a good fucking show damnit

currently reading: Queer Phenomenology by Sara Ahmed for my Queer Theory class. It's interesting, if very dense.

currently obsessed with: that DC/M*A*S*H au that absolutely no one but me cares about and which only exists in my mind lmao

favorite color: 💜!

five things that make me happy: my dogs, knowing that I'm graduating in December, putting new stickers on my laptop, creating the weirdest possible scenarios for my friends in RPGs, and a good chai latte

if anyone else wants to do this, feel free to say I tagged you!

[bookclub4m]

Episode 170 - Gender Theory & Gender Studies

This episode we’re talking about Gender Theory & Gender Studies! We discuss theory vs studies, memes, feminism, books that should exist but don’t, and more!

You can download the podcast directly, find it on Libsyn, or get it through Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, or your favourite podcast delivery system.

In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | Jam Edwards

Things We Read (or tried to…)

A Burst of Light by Audre Lorde

Histories of the Transgender Child by Jules Gill-Peterson

Before We Were Trans: A New History of Gender by Kit Heyam

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano

Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker and Jules Scheele

Beyond the Gender Binary by Alok Vaid-Menon

A Quick & Easy Guide to Queer & Trans Identities by Mady G. and J.R. Zuckerberg

Other Media We Mentioned

BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine edited by Lisa Jervis & Andi Zeisler

Body Outlaws: Rewriting the Rules of Beauty and Body Image edited by Ophira Edut

A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf

Female Masculinity by Jack Halberstam

Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity by Julia Serano

Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and the Rest of Us by Kate Bornstein

The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love by bell hooks

All the Rage: Mothers, Fathers, and the Myth of Equal Partnership by Darcy Lockman

For Her Own Good: Two Centuries of the Experts' Advice to Women by Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English

The Argonauts by Maggie Nelson

X-Gender, vol. 1 by Asuka Miyazaki

A Quick & Easy Guide to They/Them Pronouns by Archie Bongiovanni and Tristan Jimerson

Feminism is For Everybody by bell hooks

Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne

A Girl's Guide to Taking Over the World: Writings From The Girl Zine Revolution edited by Karen Green & Tristan Taormino

Links, Articles, and Things

A small sample of Bibliocommons user-curated lists:

Early Feminism Through 1847

Feminist Classics: Third Wave Feminism, the 1990s

Trans Classics: important books about the many trans experiences

Very Short Introductions (Wikipedia)

TERF / FART / “Gender Critical”

Transgender Childhood Is Not a ‘Trend’ by Jules Gill-Peterson

Gill-Peterson is one of 1,000+ contributors to the New York Times who signed an open letter condemning the anti-trans bigotry in their coverage. Read it here.

Hark! Episode 330: Fucking Pie

20 Gender Theory/Studies books by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) Authors

Every month Book Club for Masochists: A Readers’ Advisory Podcasts chooses a genre at random and we read and discuss books from that genre. We also put together book lists for each episode/genre that feature works by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, & People of Colour) authors. All of the lists can be found here.

Living a Feminist Life by Sara Ahmed

The Sacred Hoop: Recovering the Feminine in American Indian Traditions by Paula Gunn Allen

Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldúa

Decolonizing Trans/Gender 101 by b. binaohan

The Crunk Feminist Collection edited by Brittney Cooper, Susana M. Morris, & Robin M. Boylorn

Beyond Trans: Does Gender Matter? by Heath Fogg Davis

Women, Race & Class by Angela Y. Davis

Asegi Stories: Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit Memory by Qwo-Li Driskill

Radicalizing Her: Why Women Choose Violence by Nimmi Gowrinathan

White Tears/Brown Scars: How White Feminism Betrays Women of Color by Ruby Hamad

Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center by bell hooks

But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies by Akasha Gloria Hull

Indigenous Men and Masculinities: Legacies, Identities, Regeneration edited by Robert Alexander Innes and Kim Anderson

Patriarchy Blues: Reflections on Manhood by Frederick Joseph

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women That a Movement Forgot by Mikki Kendall

Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches by Audre Lorde

This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color edited by Cherríe Moraga & Gloria Anzaldúa

Colonize This!: Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism edited by Bushra Rehman

I'm Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya

Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity by C. Riley Snorton

Give us feedback!

Fill out the form to ask for a recommendation or suggest a genre or title for us to read!

Check out our Tumblr, follow us on Twitter or Instagram, join our Facebook Group, or send us an email!

Join us again on Tuesday, March 21st when we’ll be talking about the Moving and Management of Books!

Then, on Tuesday, April 4th we’ll be discussing the genre of Domestic Thrillers!

[theteej]

Step by Step

In December of 2021, at the advice of a friend, I started walking as an off-gym day exercise, as promptly lost my goddamn mind.

Those first few walks weren’t very remarkable, just two to three mile jaunts down Adams Avenue, the street I live on.  I walked from Normal Heights to Kensington, past grocery stores, hipster cafes, aging apartments, and the like.  Nothing auspicious.

I seriously didn’t plan to walk so damn much, but it quickly became intoxicating.

There was suddenly for me, a project I could undertake with relative ease and lack of practice, and see relatively rapid results. Two miles could become three, which could become five.  And there was something particularly amazing about feeling your body just moving through space.  

As I walked, I felt keenly about what theorist Sara Ahmed first described about taking up space:

Each time I move, I stretch myself out, trying this door, looking here, looking there…It is a process of becoming intimate with where one is: an intimacy that feels like inhabiting a secret room that is concealed from the view of others.

Walking suddenly did this for me.  I could feel each step on the pavement, as I wandered down residential streets, and later across broad avenues and narrow lanes.  I could just exist for two, three, four hours. I just heard the music in my ears and the feel the sun on my face, and feel my body moving.  And yes, it was exercise, but ultimately it was this body taking up space, moving through places, figuring things out, that felt so right.  

As someone who is frequently anxious, I find that my mind gets tied up on a repeating track.  It’s like a computer virus scanning program that’s gone horribly awry; it will keep scanning for dangers, threats, analyzing, endlessly repeating. Everything is to be checked or underlined, or double-scanned.  My brain seeks so frequently to keep me safe, ever since I was a little kid dealing with a violent father and an uncertain day to day.  My anxiety has kept me safe, but more often than not, it keeps me tired.  I am always on the horizon, searching, checking, double checking.  Is this pimple actually monkeypox?  Is this a sniffle or covid? Do I have cancer? Are people mad at me? Have I fucked it up so badly that everyone thinks I’m a piece of shit?

Walking helps short circuit that.  I feel the soft impact of my feet on the ground as I push past each house or tree or concrete marker.  I hear music and feel air in my lungs and rejoice in my body’s responses.  I move and breathe and triumph. My lizard brain relaxes.  The scanning recedes into the background. I feel grounded.  When I was at my most overwhelmed and struggling in rural Virginia, my therapist would encourage me to go outside and feel my feet on the ground. “Feel how rooted you are,” she said softly. “Your body is connected. You’re not floating away, you’re not being sept along the current. You are here.”  Each step takes me a bit closer to that, and I love it.  

Of course, I couldn’t help but make it a competition. By late January and early February I was trying to walk as much as possible.  The long winter break combined with the omicron surge meant I had limited interactions, and my body yearned for more. I began walking six miles, eight miles, ten miles.  I planned my grocery or pharmacy or bank errands around them and left the car at home. I walked to restaurants five miles away---City Heights, Old Town, Little Italy. I walked at one point forty-seven miles in one week.  I began to feel badly if I didn’t reach my target distances, like I’d failed.  I’d taken the joys of walking, and turned it into something to surveil or challenge or threaten.  

I sighed, picked myself back up, and remembered that wasn’t the point.  The point was the exploration, to see the city in new refractions.  I began challenging myself to take ten photos on every walk, just to make the experience palpable.  I shared them on Instagram.  My friend LaKedra jokingly started calling them #talliethemiles, and so an absurd hashtag was born.  Then when I went for walks in Fiji and Aotearoa this summer, the requisite #talliethekilometers also had to join the fun.

To my surprise, people really reacted to these walking posts.  Friends around the world started taking their own walks, and sending me photos.  I became increasingly delighted at the idea of allowing my eyes to look for new creative outlets.  How might a simple leaf or an errant sign or a slant of light be a cause for attention and recording?  It allowed me to feel part of something bigger and more fun, and allowed me to decrease my weird obsession with competing.  Occasionally I’d run into people here in San Diego while walking. They’d look at me and then conspiratorially whisper, “wait, are you on one of your walks now?  I’ve been watching them,” they’d say, as if I were some brand name influencer instead of a beefy professor wanting to find moments of peace and beauty while also enjoying his body and the space around him.  Honestly, these walks, and the weird community formed around them, has sustained me more than anything else this year.  And it’s beautiful to feel like it’s something simple, free, and healing.

I think my favourite song this year for my walks was Heart of My Own by Basia Bulat. It’s a guitar driven folk song, and I like her aching voice as I walk, step by step out of my constantly humming mind and into the future.  If I can hold the thinking at bay for a bit, my heart and lungs can keep pace, and who knows? I might find something else new and beautiful.  Maybe I’ll run into you.

If I go, what do I hold? It is work to be dancing out here If tomorrow I'm mending the empty bones There are roses that come without seeking

[goldlionaz]

Our Medicine is a Queer Medicine

Russell attempts a timely post for Gay Pride

Acupuncture will never be mainstream medicine in America, because "mainstream in America" means it must simultaneously appeal to the health concerns of cis straight white men and be grotesquely profitable for them. Hence the only true mainstream medicine in America is Lipitor, Cialis, Prilosec and OxyContin. I have no interest in this form of health.

We are never going to be enough–scientific enough, evidence-basedenough, profitable enough, legitimate enough–to make daddy love us.  

Daddy will never love us.

So keep it, Daddy. Let it go. Be repellent. Fuck Blue Shield. Fuck the Sacklers. Run from America. Embrace and embody your wild monstrosity. 

“The moment of queer pride is a refusal to be shamed by witnessing the other as being ashamed of you.”  –Sara Ahmed

Happy Pride from Diet Poke!

[badrowboats]

The experience of a situation as something to be complained about is an experience of coming apart from a group. I want to think of the violence of this situation. The violence of such utterances is what you are required not to notice in order to participate in the group. You have to laugh – and laugh convincingly – in order not to stand out. You can stand out by just experiencing violence as violence. And then the violence you fail not to experience as violence is redirected towards you; the violence that was already in the room is channeled in your direction. This is probably why some laugh; to avoid the channeling. Laughing could thus be considered a form of institutional passing; a way of avoiding standing out, of trying to slide by undetected. The problem of passing is that if someone fails to pass, those who have passed are still participating in what has left someone stranded.

Sara Ahmed, “Cutting Yourself Off”

[lucyjay]

Silver (b.bh)

||You and Baekhyun have been friends for the past couple years. What happens when you both develop feelings for each other but no one has the courage to admit it?

Genre: smut (a bit of fluff)

Warnings: explicit language, alcohol consumption, teasing, unprotected sex ( balloon your baboons fellahs), dirty talk, oral sex, fingering, cum play, throat fucking, hair pulling, multiple orgasms

Words: 6.5k  

 You throw a final look at your reflection in the mirror and sigh. I look like shit, you think to yourself and make your way to the bathroom to finish straightening your hair. The last thing you are in the mood for is clubbing but guess who won’t take no for an answer?your friend Nat who borderline blackmailed you into either joining her and your friends tonight or finding all your embarrassing high school photos displayed on your insta tomorrow morning. 

 After managing to make your hair not look like you got out of a cat fight, you put on some make up which for you consists of 3 simple steps. Step 1, hiding the black shopping bags that jewel your under eyes, Step 2, some blush so that you don’t resemble a ghost and Step 3, mascara. The final result looks better than you anticipated when you started getting ready over an hour ago. 

A simple black baggie-t’shirt style dress, a pair of black boots, your straight hair naturally hugging your shoulders, falling all the way down to your waist and last your make up which thank god hides the fact that you’ve worked a total of 60 hours this week. It’s a nice, fresh spring night and you reckon you’d be okay without a jacket on. You throw your keys, phone and credit card in a small bag and make your way out of your apartment. Your find your uber already waiting for you outside the main entrance of the building, you jump in and decide to give your friend a call to check if they are already at the club. 

 “Hola”, her high pitched voice makes you chuckle, she still sounds like a 5 year old girl just like when you first met her. 

 “Hola. Sooo, I’m on my way, I should be there in like 20′ max. Who else is coming? Please tell me Sehun and Taeyong will be there? Taeyong promised he would make time if i joined you”, you protest already used to one of your best friends, Taeyong canceling on you lastminute.com because of work. 

 “They are already with me babe and we should reach the club in 10′ or so. Sara and Jaebum are coming as well, Bam is DJ’ing, oh and ahm”, she pauses and your heart starts racing subconsciously knowing what she is about to say. “..Baekhyun is coming”. You swear at her for not letting you know earlier and she mumbles apologies which leave you completely untouched. 

 “Nat, you did it on purpose”, you try to keep your tone calm only because your uber driver is already giving you some “lady keep your voice down” looks through the rear mirror. 

 “I didn’t but even if I did so what? We are all friends and it’s completely childish of both of you to put us in a position where we have to go out with each of you separately. Bam is worried and Sehun is having abandonment issues”, she whines dramatically and you hear Sehun in the background screaming, “I just want my friends back, oh god, please”, a fake cry following his oscar-worthy performance as you hear Taeyong burst into laughter a bit further in the background. 

 “Ok ok! I don’t care. I’m done playing his little games anyway. I wanna drink and have fun. See you in a bit”, you reply and hang up. The uber has reached the city centre and your gaze in boring outside the window looking at the people and the buildings but not really paying attention to anything. All you can think about is him. How things have completely gone to shit when they were so promising. You and Baekhyun met a a couple years ago when he started hanging out with Sehun who he met at work. The latest then brought him into your group and he clicked with all of you straight away. 

Fast forward to a a few months ago, you were at one of BamBam’s house parties chilling and chatting away when he confessed that he likes you and he has been into you since the day he met you catching you completely off guard. You, having been crushing on the boy since the moment you laid your eyes on him, did what no 26 year old, sane woman would do and just bailed. Literally left him there, drink in hand, mouth hanging open in shock and you just left the house, got inside a taxi and went home. You were so embarrassed over your reaction and disappointed in yourself for ruining the perfect chance to be with the biggest crush you’ve had since middle school, that you couldn’t even bring yourself to message an apology to him. A few days later you all met at a cafe and that’s when it started. He was so cold and sulky towards you and who could blame him? But he was overdoing it to the point that it started pissing you off. You couldn’t get him to talk to you alone and eventually managed to get you to not stand being with him in the same room. Every time you met since then, it was just a verbal war between the two of you, full of sneaky insults and hurtful jokes with a drizzle of swear words and some whipped sarcasm on top.

 “It’s just one night out. How bad can it get?”, you whisper only for your own ears to hear you. The uber slows down outside the club, you thank your driver and step out of the vehicle, gently closing the door behind you. The queue for the club isn’t too long and you can spot Nat,Tae and Sehun waiting on the left side where the VIP queue is forming. Sehun waves at you eagerly and you make your way to their direction. 

 “At least she is wearing a dress and not pyjamas”, Sehun teases and lifts you up in a hug that made you almost gasp for air. 

 “I am overworked, not lame. I now how to dress for a night out”, you spit back faking annoyance and the younger boy raises his hands in defence. 

 “Tough week at work?”, Taeyong asks as all four of you walk towards the entrance of the club. 

 “Everybody decided to get married at the end of summer apparently, so considering that I have to organise 9 weddings within the next 4 months, I would say tough year.”, you pause and your eyes follow the direction Taeyong is looking at and...there he is. Locking his car dressed like a bloody model straight out of a Vogue photoshoot. Black jeans, loose blue shirt, a silk navy blue scarf around his neck and a pair of black boots. “...and it’s not about to get better”, you finish your sentence. 

 Him being ridiculously attractive should have been something you were used to by now, but you haven’t seen him in almost a month and in all honesty you almost forgot how easily he makes your entire body go numb just by standing there not even looking at you. Too lost in your own thoughts you haven’t noticed him standing next to you greeting the others, ‘till he turns his attention to you. His hair is silver. Fuck him and his ability to look good in everything. Fuck him and his gorgeous face, you think to yourself. 

 “Your hair is longer”, he says in the most indifferent tone. Is this his idea of a greeting? Asshole, you think.

 “Your hair is bloody silver”, you reply, your eyes not leaving his. He serves you a slight side smile and you can feel the insides of your palms getting sweaty.

 “Looks good doesn’t it?”, he throws a rhetorical question not really waiting for an answer. You tsk and roll your eyes at him while quickly turning to get inside the club. BamBam was near the entrance to greet you and show you which table he reserved for you and your friends. You follow him and he leaves you shortly after to go and prepare his station for his set next to the man currently DJ’ing. 

 “I’m gonna go get drinks, what do you want?”, Baekhyun asks the rest of you.

 “Let’s just get a bottle”, Nat proposes and you nod. “tequila or Vodka?”, she asks. 

 “Tequila”, you and Baekhyun shout in unison and you turn to look at each other. Are the lights in here making him look even more attractive or is it just you being horny for him? You give yourself a mental slap. 

 “Tequila is good”, Sehun adds. Baekhyun makes his way to the bar and Nat moves to your side, leaning next to your ear so that she doesn’t need to scream on top of the music. 

 “Make a move”, she says and you almost choke on your own spit. 

 “Are you insane? Haven’t you been around lately? I guess not. Let me fill you in. In the last episode of Season 2, he hates me. End of story”, you reply and she chuckles. 

 “He doesn’t hate you. He is just still hurt by your reaction back then. And you are clearly into him. Like, it’s clear like the sun. Like, I can see you undressing him with your eyes. I could legit-...” 

 “That’s enough! I got your point”, you cut her off and really wish Baek could get his ass there already cause you swear you would love to down that entire bottle of tequila right now. 

 “Babe, talk to him. It’s a shame. You have had feelings for each other for so long. You can’t just..leave it.”, she says and her tone is soothing and understanding. You turn to look at her and nod causing her to smile widely and clap her hands like a little kid who just got her birthday gift. A minute later Baek shows up with two bottles of tequila inside a bucket and a waitress follows right behind him with a tray full of glasses and ice which she lays on your table. 

A few drinks down and you find yourself relaxed enough to be dancing with Taeyong like there’s no tomorrow, rocking some crazy moves  perfectly nsync with BamBam’s wild beats.  Taeyong’s hands are on your waist and you rest your head on his shoulder, your back against his chest as you sing every single lyric of the song currently blasting.

 “I need another drink”, he screams over the music. You nod and make your way to the table where you find Nat and Sehun talking to Jaebum and Sara, a couple Nat met whilst on holidays in Japan, who happened to be from the same city as the rest of you. You chat with them for a few minutes, sipping on your drink when you realise you haven’t seen Baekhyun since returning to the table. After scanning the area around you, your gaze falls on Nat’s who mouths a silent “outside” to you, as if she has read your thoughts. You excuse yourself and make your way through the intoxicated crowd, eventually reaching the exit of the club. You step on the pavement and look up and down both directions to see if you can spot Baek. On the left side of the doors, a few meters away you can distinguish a frame that looks like him. You slowly make your way towards the man and after a few steps you can see his face clearer under the dull lighting the lamppost covers the corner of the street with. He was staring at the ground, cigarette in between his index and middle finger. You clear your throat and he turns to look at you. 

 “Oh sorry, I didn’t see you”, he says calmly, taking a puff of his cigarette, quickly letting a line of smoke out of his nostrils.

“You smoke”, you say and it’s more like a realisation and less like a question. Your stare drifts off of his face and down to his feet as if his shoes are the most interesting thing to you. 

 “Yes, got a problem with that?’, he turns to look at you and you raise your head to meet his eyes. You can’t read him. You never could. He looks unbothered yet sounds annoyed. It’s so frustrating and you swear at yourself for even thinking of approaching him. You scoff and turn to leave, sure that you’re clearly not wanted there. 

 “That’s the second time”, he says and his voice is low but you can sense a weak scent of irony lingering at the end of his word. You stop in your trucks and turn to face him. 

 “What was that?”, you ask. 

 “It’s the second time you walk away from me. There won’t be a third”, his statement catches you off guard but you’re not planning on letting him see the affect his words have on you. 

 “I suppose you came out here to get some air, I wanted to check if you’re alright but you’re clearly not up for a chat. Am I wrong for thinking that the best thing to do was to excuse myself?”, you regret the slight sarcasm in your words which was completely unintended. His attention lands on your face. There’s at least 2 meters distance between yourself and him but for some reason you feel like you’re suffocating. His presence is so strong that you can’t even think straight. Without taking his eyes off of yours, he throws his cigarette somewhere to the side and with two steps he is standing right in front of you. You can smell the smoke on him but it doesn’t bother you; his cologne in combination with his addictive natural scent are enough to make your head hazy. He shouldn’t be able to affect you like this. 

 “Excuses”, his voice comes out like a loud whisper and you feel embarrassed at how it makes your entire lower body go numb and the sensitive area between your legs pulsate. His stare is so heavy that it almost makes you feel small. He moves a bit closer to you and you can almost feel his body touching yours.

 “Baekhyun, I’m...”, your voice fades out unable to complete the sentence. Your eyes still on his like magnets. You can’t see anything around you but him.

“Finish your sentence Y/N”, he says calmly. You gather all the courage you could before you allow the confessions that you have been battling all these months, come out. It’s so hard but you know you have to. You have to give it a shot.

 “I’m sorry. For that day.”, you say and his features rest in a slight shock which only encourages you to continue. 

“I’m sorry i left you like that and that I didn’t explain myself. I’m sorry that I never called you after what happened. But what I’m not sorry about is what happened afterwards. You were so mean to me and you refused to talk to me. Your behaviour was horrible and I don’t take back anything I’ve said to you every time we fought”. You swear your knees are about to give out and your breathing is so heavy that you can feel your chest rising and falling as if you were running. You heart beating in your head is making you dizzy and you pray that you won’t just faint right there and then. 

 “You don’t regret anything you’ve said to me all the times we fought?”, he asks and you feel a pinch of annoyance that this was the only part of your paragraph long monologue he chose to focus on. 

 “Nothing. You started every single fight”, your statement came out strong and your voice way too stable given your current state. You congratulate yourself in your head. As if that was even possible, Baekhyun steps even closer to you, now trapping you between his body and the wall. You can feel his torso pushing yours backwards only for the back of your waist to land on his right hand, his left one resting on the wall slightly brushing your cheek. 

 “I swear I would take you against this fucking wall just to shut this annoying mouth of yours”, his lips almost touching yours. You can feel his breath on your face and his words wake the butterflies in your stomach. You’re mad at yourself for feeling so weak under his stare. It takes you a few seconds to realise that you have been holding in a breath. You just stand there, frozen, eyes glued on his honey brown ones when the words roll out of your tongue without second thought. 

 “Why don’t you then?”, you speak in a low voice that even gives you goosebumps. Your boldness surprises him and he shakes his head.

 “I shouldn’t. I-..” 

 “Excuses”, you cut him off and you catch him so off guard that if it wasn’t for you being an absolute mess right now, his shocked stare would have had you chuckling. He raises his hand to caress your cheek and the way his knuckles softly touch your skin makes your entire body shiver. He doesn’t allow you to let the sudden skinship action sink in when he tilts his head only to rest his forehead against yours. 

 “I don’t know what to do with you anymore. Please tell me Y/N. Just tell me what you want”, he pleads and the entirety of your body heat is now resting on your face. You have never seen Baekhyun like this, basically asking you to take the upper hand. You rest your arms on his and connect your hands behind his neck. 

 “I want you Baekhyun. I don’t even remember how it was not to want you.”, you inhale and the air entering your nostrils feels too hot “...let’s go back to yours.Or mine, I don’t care”. The moment you finished your sentence Baekhyun’s hand was on yours, already guiding you towards the direction of his car. He open the door for you to get in and a second later he jumps in the driver’s seat. 

 Baekhyun’s eyes are glued on the road and his grip on the wheal is strong. You take a minute to examine his side profile and your eyes linger on each of his beautiful features. His beautiful honey-brown eyes, his straight nose and his soft, pink lips that are currently pressed into a thin line as if he is trying hold back a river of words threatening to fall out. Your hands are resting on your thighs which you’re pressing together in a desperate attempt to ease the buzzing in your lower area. You are already so embarrassingly wet, even though Baek hasn’t even touched you, which makes you realise how wrong all your past partners must have been treating you. Not able to stand the distance between the two of you, you place your hand on top of his right thigh, slowly dancing your fingers up and down the area. He shakes his head, momentarily closing his eyes only to open them a second later. His stare is intense but you can’t read it properly. 

 “Babe...”, he says and your hand movement stops at the sound of the nickname. Feeling more aroused by the second, you bend slightly over so that your lips are brushing against his ear. 

 “What...babe?”, you tease and he grips the wheel with such strength that it looks like he is trying to break it in half. 

“Finish your sentence Baek”, you continue and at this point you know you’re playing with fire. He turns to give you a look for a split second, his eyes filled with something unknown to you and a slight smirk is gracing his beautiful lips.

 “Sit back properly, take off your underwear and open your legs.”, you’re looking at him, eyes wide open in shock. His habit of bossing you around would normally have you ignoring his ass, maximum serving him an eyeroll as a response, but now it’s different. Your brain hasn’t even had the time to comprehend the possible consequences of his request, when you find your hands slowly sliding the sides of your underwear down your legs. Before you manage to even speak a word, his slender fingers are caressing the inside of your thighs and you throw your head back, eyes shut in an attempt to keep yourself under control. His middle finger and index travel all the way to your sensitive area and you let out a low gasp when you feel them on your heat. 

 “Holy fuck...”, he says and inserts one finger inside your throbbing pussy. You moan out his name as his digit is hitting you exactly on the right spot and you can’t see it but there’s a victory smile resting on his lips. 

 “Baek wait...”, you try to complain but it’s in vain. He adds a second finger and while keeping his eyes on the road, one hand on the wheel, driving almost at 150 km/h, he is steadily bringing you closer and closer to your orgasm. You turn your head to the side, your eyes linger on his frame when you start feeling a knot forming on the lower part of your abdomen. You gather all the strength left in your body to lift your arm and tangle your fingers with his silver locks, slightly pulling his head backwards. He hisses and fastens the tempo of his fingers, his palm now coming in contact with your clit. You know you aren’t going to last long. Your walls start pulsating around his skilful digits and the car stops at a red light which finally allows him to focus his attention on you for at least a few seconds. 

 “I can’t wait to feel you clenching around my dick baby”, he says and you can feel yourself getting closer to your orgasm. 

“Does my baby like dirty talk?”, he teases you and you pull his hair a tad stronger than before. 

“I want you to come before the light turns green, you have approximately..”, he pauses to calculate the other traffic lights at the crossing, “...10-15 seconds?”, he adds driving his fingers in and out your pussy at a frenzy rhythm. You can’t handle the tension anymore. 

 “Baek, I can’t-...”, you swear you could cry with all this tension gathered on your lower body. You’re so close you can sense your orgasm. 

 “9..”, he says, his eyes piercing yours. 

 “Fuck, no I can’t”,  you close your eyes, trying to control your body. It’ll be too much, you don’t want to come here in his car. 

 “Open your eyes and look at me. 6″, he counts and you do as you’re told. His palm hitting your sensitive clit is sending vibrations all the way to your head and you swear you wouldn’t be able to spell out your own name at this moment if you had to. 

 “I’m so close, I’m- Baek please...’, you whine and you can feel your walls clenching like crazy, swallowing his fingers. He places his other hand around your neck, squeezing gently and you’re a goner. Your orgasm crushes through you like fireworks and you can’t stop yourself from grinding down against his fingers, greedily trying to ride the explosive feeling out. 

 “That’s my girl”, he flashes you a satisfied smile and removes his fingers from your pussy at once. You grimace at the loss of contact but you’re too occupied trying to gather your thoughts and get yourself together, to pay further attention. The car is already on the move and before you can fathom what’s happening, he is parking in front of a building. Your eyes feel heavy but only at the thought of what’s coming, you feel the knot in your stomach tighten again. Baek steps out of the car and opens the door for you. You take a second to put your underwear back on, and you step outside the vehicle likewise. He locks it and starts walking towards the entrance of the block of flats before you, his hand in yours as your steps shadow his. You walk up the stairs and stop at the first floor. He stands outside a door and takes out his keys to unlock it when he turns to face you for the first time since he had you coming all over his fingers in his car. 

 “Before we get in I need to tell you something”, he warns and his eyes are examining your face. You step closer to him, your arm brushing against his. 

 “What is it Baek?”, your voice sounds so sweet and the way you say his name has him melting. 

 “If we do this, there’s no disappearing in the morning. There’s no going back to how things were. If you don’t want to stay and if you don’t want to be with me, leave now. This can’t be a one-time thing for me. That’s not what I want.”, he takes a deep breath as if he just gave the most important speech of his life. Your mouth hangs open at his sudden confession and you feel a stink of guilt that you’ve made him so uneasy; scared that you would run away from him and disappear. You grab his keys and unlock the door which opens wide in front of you. You step inside his flat and turn your head to face him. 

 “Do you prefer eggs or pancakes for breakfast?”, you ask him while taking off your shoes. He steps in and shuts the door behind him. Walking backwards you start unbuttoning your dress, “...I prefer something sweet in the morning to be honest”, you’re teasing and you reach the last button. You take another step backwards and you can feel his eyes burning on you. He is following each step you take, mirroring your movements now taking off his shirt. You let the dark fabric of your dress fall down your body and pool around your ankles. Baekhyun stops in his tracks, half naked and the lust in his eyes could make you come right there and then. You are about to take another step backwards when he nods you negatively. 

 “Don’t move”, the words come out as a soft command and you listen, standing there only in your lace black underwear, looking at him basically begging him to do something. He hasn’t even kissed you. He is the only man that has given you an orgasm without touching you anywhere else, not even a peck on the lips. He takes his time roaming his gaze along your body, his eyes resting on your breasts a second longer. 

 “I want you to kiss me”, you let out before you realise the words leaving your mouth. He focuses his attention back on your face and your body is about to burst from the need to feel him closer in any way. He is slowly walking towards you while taking off his trousers, leaving his body now covered only by his black boxers. 

 “Your entire face is blushing, you’ve been squeezing your thighs together, your breathing is unsteady and you’re giving me blowjob eyes”, hie finishes his sentence when standing a breath away from you. “...you want me to do more than just kiss you baby”, you release a breath you didn’t know you were holding in  and he smiles. He is so infuriating standing there, laughing at the misery he has put you in. You can’t let him play you like this. 

 “If you think you can..-” 

 “Shut up”, he says and you can’t tell who initiated it  but his lips are on yours, kissing and biting as if your mouth is the last source of air and he needs it to survive. His right hand finds purchase on your ass, squeezing tightly pushing you closer to his body and his other hand grabs the back of your head, deepening the kiss. You can feel your underwear sticking on your dump heat and you squeeze your legs together trying to give yourself some comfort. Baekhyun breaks the kiss, bringing his lips next to your ear. 

“Is my baby wet?Again?”, he cooes and you wanna smack him across the face because he fucking knows you are. 

 “Yes I am, and if you don’t do something about it soon I’m gonna have to get myself off”, you lilt and turn to enter his room. It’s way cosier than you would have imagined, with a queen size bed in the middle. You seat at the edge of it and you open your legs as seductively as you can, covering the fact that they’re shivering in anticipation. He enters the room and his eyes are darker than before, his erection clearly visible through his boxers making your mouth water. You cock an eyebrow at him but he doesn’t move. That’s it, you can’t waste anymore time waiting for him to do something. You get up and get on your knees in front of him, removing his underwear with a single movement before you place your palm around his shaft. 

 “What the fuck Y/N”, he breathes out and his knees turn weak under your touch. 

 “I’m done waiting for you Byun. Took you 2 years to kiss me. I can’t imagine how long it’ll take you to fuck me”, he is about to protest when you lean forward, putting his dick in your mouth, your nose against his lower belly. His complain turns into a moan when he throws his head back, hands now landing in your hair, pulling slightly. Your lips move around his member, followed by your tongue, hand resting on his balls slightly massaging them. You lick a long stripe from the base of his dick, all the way to the end while pressing your lips around it and then release it with a slight ‘pop’.  A string of saliva connecting your mouth with his tip. You open your eyes only to find his intense stare already on your frame, cheeks on fire and mouth agape in an attempt to inhale as much air as he can. 

 “Do you have any idea how fucking sexy you look right now? I swear I would do anything, anything you want If I could only see you like this everyday”, his voice cracks at the last words and he is slightly releasing his grip on your hair. Your hand still working its way up and down his dick, you tilt your head onwards to give small kitty licks on his tip. You take his hand and while serving him a cheeky smile you place it so that his fingers are cupping the upper part of your neck, right under your jaw. It takes him a moment to understand what you’re thinking and when it hits him, he lets out a desperate breath. You move your chin in front of his dick, lips almost touching his slit currently dripping with pre-cum. 

 “Apologise for being an asshole these last few months”, you spit. 

 “Fuck you”. The moment the words slip his lips you open your mouth, taking him so deep that you can feel his tip touching the back of your throat. He moans out your name and you feel your pussy pulsating in the sound. It takes all the self control you can manifest in order to not sneak your fingers inside your knickers and relieve some of the tension. 

 “I can feel my dick down your throat baby, agh fuck”, he hisses and pulls your hair as you take him as deep as you can once again only that this time you keep him there, swallowing again and again with his dick buried as deep as your throat can take it. A tear rolls down your face and your gag reflex is threatening to kick in, but you refuse to let go before he begs. 

 “Fuck Y/N, please. please stop, I don’t wanna cum. Fuck please, don’t-”, you release him and you snap him your best victory smile. after whipping your mouth with the back of your palm. You get up and move towards the bed, this time laying on top of it. 

“I think I prefer you begging than apologising”, you tease and an unintentional giggle follows. 

 “You fucking bitch”, he spits jokingly and you burst into laughter but it doesn’t last long. The next moment he is hovering on top of you, lips on yours, hands cupping every curve of your body unable to hold back anymore. He is devouring your neck, jaw and moves lower to leave dark marks on your breasts. In a swing movement he unclips your bra, throwing it behind him next to his long forgotten underwear. Your underwear is next and before you know it, his face is resting between your legs, blowing tiny waves of air on your heat, driving you crazier if that was even possible at this point. He plants small kisses around the area, next to your folds while his hands are massaging the inside of your thighs. Your head falls back to meet his soft pillow and you moan out his name,  incapable of hiding the mess he has made of you. Without any warning his soft tongue crushes on your burning area, devouring you as if you were his last meal. Your head is now a foggy mess, hands tangled between his silver locks unconsciously pushing him against your pussy, desperate for more friction. He rests his tongue on your sensitive bud of nerves, dancing in slow circles when he enters two digits in you causing you to let out the most animalistic moan you’ve ever heard yourself producing. Your reaction was the confirmation he was seeking, as his tongue picks up its pace and so do his fingers, his name rolls off your tongue like a cursed poem, again and again until you can feel yourself falling off the edge. He lands a last kiss on your pubic bone as he slowly climbs up your body, now hovering above you. You open your eyes, realising you had them wide shut all this time, only to find his beautiful brown ones staring at you in the most loving way you’ve ever had anyone looking at you.

“So pretty”, he whispers and his fingers linger on your lips and make their way to your cheek where he leaves a shy kiss. You can feel his dick between your legs, yours thrown around his waist and you just stay there, in silence looking in each others eyes. You bring your hand to the side of his jaw only to pull him closer, planting a kiss on his lips. It’s not deep; it’s soft, and sweet, almost romantic. You break it after a few seconds and you rest your forehead on his. A word is about to escape your lips when he frantically drives his length inside you, hitting your g spot so hard that you almost choke at your own gasp.

“Baek, fuck”, you whine. He doesn’t say anything, he only pulls out a little bit and then thrusts back in, hitting that sweet spot that has you seeing stars. He does it again and again and again and you are a moaning mess, head thrown back, his diving in the crook of your neck, sucking, bitting, leaving purple spots in every area he can get his lips on.

“You want me to stop?”, he says out of breath without slowing down at the slightest. You attack his lips and the kiss is nothing like the one you just shared a few moments ago. It’s hungry and desperate and your tongues are fighting for dominance, both your mouths swallowing each others moans. You can feel your pussy throbbing around his dick and you know you wont last long. Baekhyun breaks the kiss but stays close so that his lips can still touch yours.

“Are you close baby? You want to cum? Want to come all over my dick?”, he breathes out and you moan out his name, paralysed under his touch.

“Baek I’m close-I’m gonna..”, a circular move of his hips almost brings you to the brink and you moan out cusses with no meaning. You clench around him once more and he lets out a loud groan.

“Y/N If you do that one more time I won’t be able to hold back. Please”, he pleads and you can see that he is trying to hold back so that you can finish first. His dick fucking into you at a relentless pace has your arms pulling his body closer to yours, nails digging in his back and you know these scratches will be visible for next few days.

“Baek I can’t hold it, please”, you moan out.

“Let go baby, let go. Cum for me”, he whispers next to your ear and there’s nothing in the world you want more than to feel him painting your insides with his orgasm.

“Cum inside Baek, Please, cum with me, ah-”, your orgasm hits you mid-sentence and you clench again and again as it keeps attacking your body in waves. After a couple thrusts you can feel him releasing into you as he lets his body collapse on top of yours, both of you battling to calm your breathing.

“I blame you for missing on the best sex I’ve ever had for the past two years”, you tease him softly and he chuckles. You raise your hand to place a stray hair behind his ear and you can’t help but notice the slight rosiness on his cheeks. ‘what?’, you ask flushing him your warmest smile.

“Be mine?”, his lets out as he rubs his nose against the tip of yours. Your heart skips a bit and a wave of warmth crushes through you, for you haven’t felt so happy in a long, long time.

“Hm, nope, thanks”, you giggle and you kiss him. He is taken aback by your reply, staring at you with eyes wide open like a frightened deer caught in the headlights.

“I’m joking baby”, you spit and burst into laughter.

“You bitch”, he laughs.

[romyjones]

Hey! This is kinda lame, but I’ve been trying to make the transition from traditional to digital art and someone told me “find artists you REALLY fucks with and learn from all of them.” Well I gotta say your art is the first I’ve seen and immediately went “this is it. This is the coolest style that I’ll never come close to but would love to study in hopes that one day some of your greatness may rub off on me.” Keep up the absolutely killer work man. You’re a huge inspiration.

Wow, this is so sweet! I’m so flattered I don’t know what to say lol

I’m still learning as well, so your message took me by surprise and it made my day, thank you! All the luck to you on your art journey! 

I feel like I should share some tips or something haha some art wisdom! 

If you’re transitioning from traditional to digital medium I recommend getting Clip Studio Paint, for me Photoshop is a bit too complicated to learn, and the monthly subscription is more money than just making a one time purchase like in CSP. There is Paint Tool Sai as well, which is even cheaper than CSP (about $50 I think), and there are many tutorials on how to use it available on YouTube. I have a Wacom Intuos Pro (Medium), It's my first and only tablet, I bought it about 6 years ago, it's pretty good. I’ve heard the brand Huion is cheaper, but I wouldn't be able to tell you if they’re a reliable brand, since I’ve never tried any of their products.

Here is a little list of YouTubers I like to watch, that I feel are pretty good at teaching digital art:

Ahmed Aldoori -  Mohammed Agbadi -  moderndayjames -  Sinix Design -  Ethan Becker -  Sara Tepes -  Nadiaxel - Proko

Also, here is a little list of artists that influenced me, I think it would be a great idea to study them as well 😉

 Takehiko Inoue -  Takeshi Obata - Boichi - Shinichi Sakamoto -  Sergio Toppi - Gigi Cavenago -  Sara Pichelli -  kim jung gi - Kim Il Kwang

If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask, I love helping new artists 😊 

[batmanisagatewaydrug]

reading update

buckle up gang, because I've been reading a HELL of a lot since the last time we did this. let's get right into it...

what have I been reading?

The Tyrant Baru Cormorat (Seth Dickinson, 2020) - Baru Cormorant is, without a doubt, one of the finest examples of a female meow meow ever put to page. and I adore that about her. I love that she keeps getting pieces cut off of her. I love that whenever something doesn't work she goes "but I'm??? a SAVANT???" I love that every other woman who meets her decides they need to fuck or kill her or both. and you know what? I'm very happy with the ending that she got. without giving out any spoilers, I didn't think that something so satisfying for our (nominal) hero was possible in a series this bleak, and I was *breathless* watching Baru pull this final scheme together - while still leaving some loose threads to remind us that the world still has a long way to go. oh and hey - Seth Dickinson? you're the only bitch in the world who knows how to write a genuinely shocking after credits scene anymore. m*rvel needs to take notes.

Sister Outsider (Audre Lorde, 1984) - I recently sat in on a virtual lecture by the brilliant lesbian feminist philosopher Sara Ahmed talking about her recent book Complaint!, during which she recommended everyone go back and read Audre Lorde in times of difficulty. I realized I've never actually read much Lorde to begin with - I've encountered her mostly quoted in other feminist's work, in confusing references to something called "the erotic," and particularly gay poems shared here on tumblr. I've encountered a lot of selected quotes - people like to repeat (or paraphrase) her thoughts on self-care as resistance, how no one lives "single issue lives," and how the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. for some reason (I know why) I've never seen much discussion of obvious discomfort Lorde caused among (some of) her white feminist contemporaries, and her refusal to let their dismissals of Black women go unchecked and unchallenged. her writing is glorious, clear-eyed and high-minded and filled with a very principled form of hope. it's made me want to be a be more conscientious about how I write in my journal, which I hope can be a lasting legacy.

Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Ocean Vuong, 2016) - this and several other entries on this list are actually just further tribute to Lorde, because the way she wrote about poetry in Sister Outside made me walk over to my silly little local library and scoop up three (THREE!!!) entire poetry collections. I was captivated by Vuong's debut novel On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous and found his poetry similarly... can I say gorgeous? because I want to. in my journal the words I used were "precise and precious" and "a delicate model of a life that I simply must handle with care."

No One Is Talking About This (Patricia Lockwood, 2021) - this is the second book I've read on the recommendation of booktube darling Jack Edwards, and oh BOY is it gutting. Lockwood, who you may know as the owner of beloved cat Miette, has created a DEVASTATING little piece of autofiction that plunges into the brain-addling depths of being Extremely Online before crashing hard on the rocks of all-consuming grief. Lockwood handles both with indescribable skill; I was left self-conscious about my own relationship with the internet and simultaneously sobbing. I must read everything else she's written at once.

Prelude to Bruise (Saeed Jones, 2014) - more poetry! and I really liked this one, which maybe shouldn't be surprising since I also REALLY liked Jones' memoir How We Fight For Our Lives. I've decided that jotting notes in my journal is the best way I know to explain my thoughts on poetry, so what I wrote for this one was "vibes all the way through, evocative of deep soil and emerald plants, choking growth and cold shade." Jones is well-versed in the intertwined evils of racism, homophobia, and toxic masculinity, and they haunt the collection as an endless ache from start to finish.

Bright Dead Things (Ana Limón, 2015) - I will be honest with you, friends: this was perhaps my least favorite of the three poetry collections I grabbed in my post-Lorde fugue state, which might make me a misogynist. but Limón, who grew up in California, talks with great affection about many of the things that were part of my own childhood in Montana: horse trailers and cows and dirt and weeds and the great big open sky. in "During the Impossible Age of Everyone" there's this line that goes "I’m like a fence, or a cow, or that word, yonder" that I found really stirring for reasons I can't quite place. there's also a poem called "Service" that's about pissing inside a garage because a cool dog did it first and I think more poetry should be about shit like that.

Strange Beasts of China (Yan Ge trans. by Jeremy Tiang, 2020) - this book is, as the title might suggest, strange; the beasts in question are in fact humanoid with small physical features that differentiate them from true humans while nonetheless relegating them to being treated as entirely different species who are studied like animals. there's a metaphor about tribalism or xenophobia or SOMETHING going on here, but there's also a failed student of cryptozoology having an absolutely AWFUL time that just keeps getting worse as she is hounded by memories of her mother, an abrasive former professor, her old professor's newest student, and a city filled with beasts and humans who all seem to want something from her. it's a mystery it's a psychological thriller it's a fable. you tell me.

Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century (Kim Fu, 2022) - absolutely fucking scrumptious. I DEVOURED this short story collection like a heart-shaped box full of chocolates, delighted even by the ones I wasn't too sure about. I ended up trying to make a list of my favorite stories and ended up jotting down almost all of them. "Pre-Simulation Consultation XF007867" is a TREMENDOUS example of how much story you can pack into nothing but dialogue between two characters. "Scissors" is an old pal of mine that was also featured in the anthology Kink, so erotic it could make you dizzy, and the story "Sandman" shows Fu flexing those same muscles in a much more fantastical manner. how did she make getting filled up with sand and put to sleep hot? idk, but I want in. "Time Cubes" is an absolute peak dystopian short, "Liddy, First to Fly" is a great instance of the monstrous female puberty trope that I simply adore, and "The Doll" is a perfect little spooky story. and the final piece, "Do You Remember Candy," was somehow the most haunting of them all, leaving me perplexed and sad in a way that I never would have expected from the premise. go read this, y'all.

We Do This 'Til We Free Us: Abolitionist Organizing and Transforming Justice (Mariame Kaba, edited by Tamara K. Nopper, 2021) - all I need to say about this, I think, is that ever since I read this I've been starting like half my sentences with "okay, so in We Do This 'Til We Free Us -" because it's just relevant to... everything? literally everything. Kaba gets it, she gets everything, and it's so inspirational to see her work collected in such a way that you can really appreciate the way she insists on organizing as a collective and communal process, always passing credit around to the younger generation and those who came before. her belief in hope as a practice moved me, her thoughts on the difference between activists and organizers were illuminating and resonant, the way she talks about restorative justice as something drawn out and demanding and hard are REAL and affirming that the work is both demanding and worth it. reading this is so revitalizing, I cannot recommend it enough.

The School for Good Mothers (Jessamine Chan, 2022) - I'll be real: I'm trying to keep up with a LOT of new releases right now, and at times it feels exhausting. but holy shit on a bike is it worth it keep up with novels like this. I don't know if School for Good Mothers will be widely classed as science fiction, but I think it is in the most affectionate sense. like an old school sci-fi story, School for Good Mothers probes existing technology for the horrific turns it could take without much pushing: after a horrific day in which stressed, depressed, and recently divorced mother Frida Liu leaves her toddler unattended for two hours, she's arrested and subjected to invasive surveillance in every corner of her home. when her behavior is deemed less than satisfactory she's sent away to the titular school, an isolating year-long program meant to "fix" mothers deemed unfit by the state. at the school, mothers who have lost custody of their human children are retrained using advanced robotic doll-children straight out of the uncanny valley - the dolls are programmed with realistic child behavior and feel real pain and fear, but are treated as objects by instructors who simultaneously scold the mothers for failing to connect with these facsimiles as they would with their actual children. but while the tech is (very slightly) exaggerated, Chan's conflict comes from very real issues. it's obvious within the narrative that the state's idea of "good" mothers excludes mothers who are poor, working class, or otherwise unable to stay home with their children all day; women who aren't straight; women who were raised in cultures that aren't American; women who are mentally ill; women who ever feel angry or lustful or tired or anything but perfectly quantifiable maternal adoration and servitude. it's noted in the narrative that most of the "bad" mothers are Black or Latina, that middle class "bad" white mothers cozy up to the guards, that Frida is the only Asian "bad" mother and is in a unique position because of it. it's a story about criminalization and self-surveillance and unwinnable systems, and it's utterly devastating. as you can probably tell by the sheer length of this segment, I loved it.

Playing the Whore: The Work of Sex Work (Melissa Gira Grant, 2014) - sometimes I like to play a little game where I imagine what I would put on a syllabus for a class on like, a college class for people who have sort of locked down feminism 101 and ready to start getting past that. some other entries, I think, would be Women, Race, and Class by Angela Davis, and Mikki Kendall's Hood Feminism, and as you've probably guessed by now, Playing the Whore is also joining the list. all the best writing on sex work comes from people who have actually done it (you should check out Revolting Prostitutes by Molly Smith and Juno Mac, btw), and Grant does a great job laying out exactly why. there are so many interesting points here about the ways in which sex workers are stripped of humanity and autonomy by anti-sex work feminists who claim to be fighting against exactly that; it's really a must-read for anyone who wants to consider themselves allied with sex workers because of how well it underlines the deeply hurtful stereotypes and projections that can infect so many conversations about sex work.

Woman, Eating (Claire Kohda, 2022) - a very millennial little vampire novel, following a biracial British woman who's trying to start an art career, gain independence from her mother, and stave off her constant cravings for human blood. you know, relatable! like any good vampire novel, there's a lot of metaphor - Lydia's "human" and "demon" sides cause her as much internal anguish as the mixed heritage of her Japanese human father half-white vampire mother - while also just very much being about a fucked up little creature of the night having a fucked up little time. it's about coming of age and finding yourself and repression and self-loathing but also wanting to bite someone's neck and drink their blood so SO bad.

I didn't do the bingo sheet this month because uuuuh I didn't want to so c'est la vie!!

[allybeardsleycamoshirt]

2019 year in review

thank you for tagging me @fineosaur <3 

Top 5 films (I barely watched films last year so these aren’t necessary cream of the crop so much as they are films I happened to watch)

Call Me By Your Name (I didn’t watch it for the first time last year but I did watch it again and it was even better the second time)

Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse

Mary Shelley (this movie sent me into a Mary Shelley phase - I checked out a bunch of books about her/by her from the library)

???

I literally have no memory of anything else I watched 2019 already feels like a thousand years ago woops

Top 5 TV-shows 

FLEABAG!!!!!

Killing Eve (PWB, again)

Wynonna Earp - binged this early in the year and it’s in production again! If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend. Gendrya stans would love. Girls and gays with guns fighting demons. 

The first half of GoT season 8, I guess

The OA (WHY did they cancel it??? WHY)

Top 5 songs (jfc ok so my 2019 spotify wrapped song of the year was the remix to jealous by nick jonas but i’m gonna ignore that)

Follow My Girl - The Japanese House (fell in love with this artist toward the end of the year, not sure what I was doing without her all my life)

Presumably Dead Arm (Studio 617 Sessions) - Sidney Gish (this song is fucking cathartic and also I got to see her in concert while I was living in England which was her and my first UK show and also the first time I went to a concert by myself)

Allison - Soccer Mommy (I listened to this a lot walking from my flat in England to the bus stop so I just have a lot of memories attached to it)

Bags - Clairo (it’s just fucking good)

Movement - Hozier (the ULTIMATE gendrya song for the year I fell in love with gendrya)

Top 5 books (I was in grad school for most of last year and then I picked Very Long Books to read for leisure so over all I didn’t get to read a bunch last year)

The Bean Trees - Barbara Kingsolver

A Game of Thrones - George RR Martin

Wicked - Gregory Maguire (this is basically the Ultimate fan fiction. I hope Gendrya fics get turned into a broadway musical lmao goals)

The Cultural Politics of Emotion - Sara Ahmed (probably the most important book I read in grad school)

Bad With Money - Gaby Dunn

5 positive or happy things that happened this year!

finished grad school! (was is useful or necessary in any way? only time will tell. but did i enjoy it? yes mostly)

I lived in England for the first half of 2019 and did some lovely traveling (Belgium, Norway, other spots in the UK) and also traveled to California in the fall

I got to move home and make my relationship no longer be long distance

I really re-cultivated my identity as a writer in 2019 through academic writing, freelance, and also fic writing (something I never expected from myself). I was also really good about journalling while I lived abroad. 

even though I really struggled with loneliness, I actually made a lot of friends and positive connections last year! 

lmao filling this out I realized that for at least a third of the year (the middle third) I barely consumed any media because I was almost exclusively reading all the gendrya fic I could get my hands on. 

im tagging @astheworldfades @sklirotiri @icontainmultitides @lightninginabottle0613 if it please you

[selfdeprecating-narcissist]

This is late, but i answered these questions at the end of 2018 so wanted to do it again for 2019

what did you learn about yourself this year? How i am destined for a life of depression and disappointment bcos my morals and mindset will never align with our capitalist, racist, sexist, homophobic society and don't see how i will ever feel fulfilled in a job but we have to make money to survive so... and how crucial it is to be a feminist fucking killjoy and spread the feminist queer agenda, but how I'm way too shy to actually speak up on the spot almost always lol best moment of the year? Idk.. like time spent in nature?? I feel like looking back all my happiest moment this year were when i was surrounded by plants. Also my birthday was really nice but i was too drunk to really remember a lot of the evening worst moment of the year? Moving to Mark's, finishing my masters, shit with ex what was the biggest change you experienced this year? moving out of my house i lived in for like 10 years (still not really processed that that isn't my home anymore?), spending some time living at my dad's again for the first time in 10 years (not exactly desirable) best song of the year? I really loved gone by charli xcx & Christine & the queens best album of the year? It didn't come out in 2019, but BY FAR my most listened to were camp cope's 2 albums, I'm OBSESSED what’s one thing that happened this year that you want to change? Not move, not have my ex be a suicidal low key alcoholic, not finish my masters bcos i miss it so much, not have stayed in my shitty retail job for so long bcos it was honestly so shit best book/book series of the year? Against Memoir by michelle tea was amaaziiinggg. I still haven't read a fiction book in THE LONGEST time, I've read some nice poetry? And read so so so much increbidle feminist theory, favs are probz an archive of feelings, and depression a public feeling both by ann cvetcovich, the cultural politics of emotion by sara ahmed, whipping girl and excluded both by julia serano, gut feminism by elizabeth wilson, sister outsider by audre lorde and any essay i read by ulrika dahl best television series? accidentally got hooked on love island in the summer oops. Tuca and bertie was good, last series of broad city wasn't as good as the others but great way to end it, THAT SERIES OF OITNB WAS AMAZE, idk i haven't had much time for tv or got really into anything how was your love life this year? um, so i was with jay all year until he moved back to america in the middle of September... it was um.. interesting? eventful, stressful, but had its nice parts too?? there wasn't much sex, and when there was he was mostly drunk and forceful which wasn't nice, but he also had a lot of dysphoria and a lot of reliance on and problems with alcohol, ummm he got on with all my friends and family, that always felt very easy and natural, but there were so many communication issues, he wouldn't be open with me about his mental health, i felt obliged to stay with him bcos he didn't really have anyone else in the whole bloody country, i felt a lot more like i was responsible for him and looking after him. Since he moved back i guess I've just spent time reflecting and healing? what made you cry the most this year? I probably cried maybe like 5 times? Idk i don't cry bcos i don't go to therapy anymore ha biggest regret of the year? Maybe not being confrontational enough with jay about issues but also i always knew he was gonna move back to america so i thought it was more hassle than it was worth bcos like it always had an expiry date? And i guess i regret not making better friends with other people on my course bcos out of people on my course, i only really saw jay outside of uni best movie of the year? It chapter 2 maybe? Or frozen 2 😂 favourite place you travelled this year? Idk that i went anywhere new...but best trip was Edinburgh did you make any new friends? Linden & Dean from the theatre i work(ed) at, i actually love them, they're fab did you learn anything about your sexuality this year? maybe i could be with a cis guy??? Idk. I don't think i want to be. And i felt and still feel really uncomfortable calling jay my (ex) boyfriend bcos it's read as a straight relationship and I'm often read as straight but i just want to be like I'M SUPER QUEER BTW but then is that invalidating his gender maybe idk???? Against memoir had a good but kind of problematic essay in it on dating trans men as a queer woman bcos like your relationship inherently is not straight and is inherently queer but you're read as straight and it's uncomfortable and confusing and not something you ever really have the space to talk about and not something people really understand. And a few of the people I've dated or had a thing for have since come out as trans men or non binary and like why am i never attracted to binary 'normal' people, and am i fetishising othered genders? It's complicated init. what are some hobbies that you developed? I sort of learnt how to crochet but I'm not very good what surprised you the most this year? how unhappy people can be who appear so fine from the outside, how well i can tolerate people having a breakdown and trying to hurt/maybe wanting to kill themselves... nice. do you look different from the beginning of the year? more prominent frown lines. Worse hair bcos the fucking shower broke so I've spent 3 months only washing it with a jug how did this year treat you in general? Ups and downs. Mostly happy to absorb myself in knowledge and learning. Now stuck in another boring arse job bcos how does one make any money out of non commerical art and feminist academia!? what message would you give yourself at the beginning of the year? watch out, look after yourself, love your support system has your fashion style changed this year? I bought the best 2 cat jumpers and i love them dearly and wear them a lot one of the best meals you’ve had this year? A trip to blacks burgers with massive flip pot milkshakes i went to with joe stands out who has made the biggest impact in your life this year? Jay what’s one thing that you hope will continue next year? I need to stay in academic feminist circles, I've been out of uni for nearly 5 months now (oh fuck) and feel so deflated again bcos it's just so irrelevant to the real world... but it's not bcos it's all this theory about how much the real world sucks, but what i mean is like it's impossible to change anything and it's really disheartening. Like someone wrote into work complaining about the lack of diversity in the collection, and someone else wrote about how the talk on fanny eaton wasn't marketed towards the afro carribean community at all, and part of my job is to respond to emails and i wanted to be like YAAASS LET ME GUSH ALL OVER HOW RIGHT U ARE AND HOW SHIT INSTITUTIONS ARE but like, I'm speaking on behalf of these institutions and have to make this basic formulaic bullshit response and it's HORRENDOUS

[spamzineglasgow]

(ESSAY) “One hasn’t caught a poem” – joining Alice Notley For the Ride, by Colin Herd

In this essay, Colin Herd writes from the side of dogs and car alarms and the everyday detritus of living in these ‘soupy’ times, where language draws us endlessly towards the possibility and withholding of more knowledge, more prediction, more answers and meaning. Exploring the rich, knotty and exhilarating poetics of Alice Notley’s recent book For the Ride (Penguin, 2020), Herd takes us on a jaunt through the ‘imaginative space of non-being’, zooming through windows and many portals of a rippling language, leading us into the shapeshifting realm of love, rebellion, tyranny, repeat and willowing new forms of (un)knowing.

“mebbe we’re just birds, orphic ones means, articuli of the blank” (92)

> This is an aside before I’ve even started but in my neighbourhood dogs are barking all the freaking time right now. Maybe it’s always like this and I just don’t notice because I’m usually at work during the day, or maybe it’s that they realise that stuff is screwed and weird right now… but wow… all these dogs wildly poeticise all day all night every day/night. Plus car alarms and house alarms which are of course dog-poets too as everyone knows, attuned to bewilderment as much as the next being.

> When things are trippy and scary, why not read something that’s even more so? And in the current Covid-19 crisis, I’ve been drawn to reading those poems that demonstrate an uncanny ability to know more always, to predict, to bring things into being, to foreshadow and foretell. I’ve been reading works that disrupt and destabilise, not to provide comfort in the disruption and instabilities of the present moment but to find ways of thinking disruptedly and divergently. One of those texts, a kind of prototext for that kind of thinking, is ‘On Notbeing’, one of those great lost works of presocratic philosophy that reminds us the best things in life are partial, basically unknowable & fragmented. In what we have available of ‘On Notbeing’, the poet-critic Gorgias zones out into the following elusive statements in a shadow-text, unpicking Parmenides’ ‘On Being’:

“Nothing exists; Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and even if something can be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others. Even if it can be communicated, it cannot be understood.”

As Barbara Cassin puts it, these statements “knot together” being and saying – existence and language – constructing politics and society in poeisis; but it isn’t just being and saying that are linked, it’s also being and non-being. Gorgias constructs the “city as an ongoing creation of language” by thinking logically through to a point where it’s impossible to imagine any stable “being”, that isn’t artificially constructed in the soupy language through which we experience it. Gorgias is on the side of the dogs and car alarms signalling their objection to any stable objective being, the “articuli of the blank”: sheer barking poetic insistence. It’s almost time for us to clap again.

> This imaginative space of non-being, this thinking-through of what it would be like not to exist, is exactly the space that Alice Notley’s new book For the Ride takes the reader, carefully lowering us down like a figure being dropped from a great height into a game, but the game is what feels like a live unfolding Zoom transcript of ghost-Gorgias-as-babysitter-to-zoom-bombing-baby-ghost-Derridas caught in self-isolation with endless versions of themselves. And Gorgias seems to be asking how many Zoom windows it is possible to open up at once to short-circuit the tech. And how exhilarating is this poem which takes poetry to breaking point! It’s a roughshod exploration of languages rippling and ripening around the questions: what might language be like if humans don’t exist? What worlds would language create if we weren’t around to limit, define them? Is posthuman talking / narrativizing / language possible?

> The actual agon / arena for these questions in For the Ride is “the glyph of chaos with willows”:

          Oh but One’s not in time, what’s One in? Chaos, beautiful chaos –           But, too, One’s in glyph and it’s hard; learning a new way to go,           that is, Talk? proceeding on through… oh this might be round,           rounded. (1)

Notley’s poem creates spaces for us to imagine coming-to language. It’s a plant-like willowy coming-to language: “There are transversals, blurry poles—no they are lines” (1). The speaking here is plant-like in the way that Cassin reminds us Aristotle categorieses poets, those who speak nonsense: “Strage plants really, since like animals they make sounds with their mouths. Homoios phutoi, you are like a plant if you speak without meaning” (68). Notley’s text grows, abundantly. And reproduces almost magically – little branches of language falling – even upside down – and generating new growth. Notley’s is a coming-to language that might open up alternative spaces for being that don’t require us to situate ourselves and our egos in the same ways we’re accustomed to. Or, as it’s exquisitely put elsewhere: ”No way to evolve without pre-existence, assholes!”

> Oh just absorb us all with poetry like that! What else is poetry for but to swallow us up and then expel us somewhere we could never have been. This is a disorienting book, spinning the reader into all these different rooms of language, orienting us around characters – One, Wideset, France, Shaker etc – characters that are also spatial. In Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, Sara Ahmed asks “How is it possible, with all that is possible, that the same form is repeated again and again? How does the openness of the future get closed down into so little in the present?” Notley’s poem lets us glimpse “the openness of the future”:

          By changing this here langue. Whut evir’s done’s now diffirint words to. (117)

          Yes it will come to you, is already maybe seeping into.           It’s like you do and more. No vocal cords? All’s a big vocal cord. (104)

And Notley’s poetry takes new shapes: calligrams of coyotes, arks, stars, bodies. This is such shaky & jittery poetry, more beautiful than I can swallow, such ground-shaking, tremulous, trembling, aquiver poetry. This is love poetry. Of course it’s fucking love poetry!... “loving it the langue” (48) … it’s love poetry because of the love that courses through every weird-ass overflowing sentence, “Step into this poem-scene, O one!” (105) It’s a love poem because it is so seeped in pleasure and because it rattles us in the s&m cords of its vocalities.

> Gorgias and Notley are scary and chilling and thrilling because they think past kill-joy-ing and administrations of bureaucratic humanity to glyphic hauntology, logocentricity, to language, to “someghost of langue” (102). Would language exist if humans weren’t around to think they made its rules up and got to police it? Maybe it would, maybe language branches would do their willow-thing. This is a poem that you want to bathe in – by cutting it out line by line and mulching them or something and wearing it around town like a mummy in a world you don’t exist in any more.

> This feeling isn’t that unfamiliar to those who are already in love with all the things a word can do when Alice Notley’s driving. And when I say driving I mean writing the most spooky, epic, eery poetry everwritten. The poet who takes us to places like this:

Where we except for those in charge are drained from giving ourselves to each other until there’s nothing left. (In the Pines)

You, dreaming about crazies, fearful of becoming one. What if your yellow enraged aspect gets activated again, screaming out your anger in a world that’s bizarre enough to have invented it. (Culture of One)

I thought of words breaking open in the mouth but also as jewels of old sexless poets, of the dead dessicated except for those emeralds or topazes I still get a thrill when I say, emeralds and topazes. (Mysteries of Small Houses)

No world is intact and no one cares about you.

I leaned down over don’t care about, I care about              you I leaned down over the

world in portrayal of carefulness, answering

something you couldn’t say. (Songs and Stories of the Ghouls)

Anything that comes into my mouth is what I say. From where? I scream for you what you don’t dare know. Saying I’ll know it for you even though you don’t want me to (Negativity’s kiss)

“shifted” “& changed” “to spell Poverty” “instead of Presence” “He didn’t need” “to ride the train” “He’d made us poor” “in an instant” “They walk by” “& make you poor” “They look at you & make you poor” “Surreptitiously I began” “to remove my” “bits of jewelry” “my earrings” (The Descent of Alette)

as warriors take position thousands of them as leaves and flowers appear in their season hearts burning to break them singers without memory (Alice ordered me to be made)

Why does poetry that makes you want to ball your eyes out make you want to ball your eyes out?

> Alice Notley’s poetics always feels like what she wrote about in ‘The Poetics of Disobedience’ as “an immense act of rebellion against dominant social forces”, because her books are always so attuned to what those dominant social forces do and how they operate to delimit and reproduce the same-old same-old with all its deep political inadequacies. For the Ride feels like as well as pointing to dominant social forces also posits ways to imagine ourselves outside of them, even within the language-worlds of poems. In an interview with Shoshana Olidort in 2016 in the LA Review of Books, Alice Notley said:

“In The Descent of Alette, the tyrant is us. The tyrant is what enslaves us to our forms. The tyrant is the form of our life, the form of our politics, the form of our universities, the form of our knowledge, our thinking we know something. All of that is the tyrant. The tyrant is a liberal. The tyrant isn’t Trump. He can be part of it, but this tyrant is an extremely accomplished man who can do anything. Alette’s about the liberation of women, but it’s also about the liberation of everyone. If you keep half of humankind down, then everybody is oppressed.”

Can poetry actually be the willowlike language that grows all around and over the tyrant? Tonight (after a day of running classes and conducting meetings and participating in discussions) I joined my street clapping NHS workers. And in doing so I did the same thing that Boris Johnson is doing in Chequers. And all these weird Military-Parade like things just suddenly got started around the ritual. Police etc joined in with their gruesome show of “we got this”. I got an email from a new friend recently: “why is Britain so in love with the second world war”. This act of clapping - I should have just made car alarm noises and barking noises and so on. Or beeping noises. Or whatever noises my grandmother is making in her carehome right now where she’s not at all well. I’ll just do barking noises. Reading those statements, “the form of our politics, the form of our universities, the form of our knowledge, our thinking we can know something” basically makes me want to cry, which I know is soppy. We need to change all of these things but not in the ways that are being posited in this new Zoom Hell we’re careering towards. This by the way is also what the sophists, including Gorgias, were up to: destabilising all the certainties when we think we know things so as to suggest alternative forms of knowing and unknowing.

> Famously, Frank O’Hara poem-berated Marino Marini for not picking the rider as carefully as the horse. In this book Alice Notley suggests maybe they both got it mixed up and it’s the ride we should all be hung up on: “O ride it! Whut’s writin? Usin tentacle wavelets to scrawl these”. Maybe it’s whatever that ride is that might enable us to find willow forms of our knowledge, willow universities, willow forms of our thinking we know something. It’s not a horse we’re being asked to ride though but a ton of floating signifiers, floating poems within the poem-scene. And a harness would be a hindrance.

~

Cassin, Barbara, Jacques the Sophist: Lacan, Logos and Psychoanalysis (Fordham University Press, 2012)

Cassin, Barbara, Sophistical Practice: Towards a Consistent Relativism (Fordham University Press, 2014)

Dillon, John, The Greek Sophists (Penguin, 2003)

Notley, Alice, For the Ride (Penguin Poets, 2019)

Notley, Alice, Songs and Stories of the Ghouls (Wesleyan, 2011)

Notley, Alice, Negativity’s Kiss (Purh, 2014)

Notley, Alice, Alice ordered me to be made (Yellow Press, 1975)

Notley Alice, Descent of Alette (Penguin Poets, 1992)

Notley, Alice, Mysteries of Small Houses (Penguin Poets, 1998)

Notley, Alice, Culture of One (Penguin Poets, 2011)

Notley, Alice, In the Pines (Penguin Poets, 2007)

Notley, Alice, ‘The Poetics Of Disobedience’ | Poetry Foundation: <https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/69479/the-poetics-of-disobedience> (2010)

Olidort, Shoshana, ‘Between The Living And The Dead: An Interview With Alice Notley’ - Los Angeles Review Of Books <https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/between-the-living-and-the-dead-an-interview-with-alice-notley/> (2016)

For the Ride is out now and available to purchase via Penguin Random House. 

~

Text: Colin Herd

Published: 24/4/20

[theteej]

Holding breath

So, I came to this NAISA really freaking nervous.

I hadn't been accepted in the last two conferences, and there'd been some particularly unsettling things told me about not seeing my work on African indigeneity as acceptable, and it made me freaked out when I got accepted and really excited.

But it also meant I came to Hamilton with my soul clenched, afraid of rejection, and particularly uncomfortable with the idea of my own complicated relations to indigeneity as a black American studying Zulu indigeneity and thinking of the historic alienations that I as a person in the diaspora experience whilst being mindful of respecting others spaces, especially one I've come to love as much as Aotearoa.

The welcome day saw me anxiously wandering onto the Waikato campus, wondering if I could/did belong, and every person I met, from Maori undergraduates to conference planners to American graduate students were kind and welcoming and I felt at peace.

While sitting in the kapa haka on Wednesday I turned and chatted with the man next to me, a Southern African man teaching in Victoria BC's indigenous governance program and we lapsed into isiZulu in the midst of the te reo Māori happening all around us. I met a fellow black woman professor who now works both in Aotearoa and New York and thinks about state relationships to belonging and constitutional documents. I've attended a series of amazing panels, each talking in some part about blackness explicitly--from blackness in Oceania, to black and native contestations in the US, to Ethiopian American student's understanding Sara Ahmed in the racist university spaces of Australia. I've felt seen, and understood, and part of something. People have been kind, have been sharing, have been part of a community with me.

Today, while leaving a panel with a friend, an older Māori woman made a direct beeline for me, never once breaking eye contact. She came up to me immediately, pressed her face and nose against mine, shared breath, and told me her name, her arrival to the conference, and then stopped, with a half smile.

"Are you Two Spirit?" she asked, using an umbrella term in some indigenous communities in North America for non-heterosexual or earlier gender-nonconforming or alternate gender formations.

"I....well, not quite," I stammered. "I'm black and queer and I think about my own indigene--"

"I'm takatapui," she interrupted, using the Māori term for a non-heteronormative person. "I saw you and knew you were one with us." She gestured to her daughter, nearby. "She is as well."

"Oh. wow," I said simply, overwhelmed. "We're glad you're here. We see you. You're here with us." She put her hands on both sides of my face. "I saw you over there, and said, 'there's one of us, here to visit.' Welcome here."

I blinked back tears forming in my eyes. "Thank you. Thank you so much."

"Thank you for being here. I have to go, but I wanted to say hello."

"Travel well," I said simply. "Hamba kahle," I said, repeating the farewell to her in isiZulu.

"Hamba kahle," she said back with a smile. "I like that."

The brisk winter wind whipped through my hair and I swallowed a lump in my throat. An unsolicited gift was given, one that was beautiful and complicated and loving. I felt grateful and unworthy and confused and thankful and overwhelmed at once.

There's a lot to think through here, but I'm so fucking grateful. I'm glad I get to be here and think and work and ponder and process and feel.