REPOST: Notes from the verge
This post originally appeared in my newsletter on May 4, 2022
I appreciate the head's up about Roe v. Wade finally actually being overturned (...which the GOP has explicitly been campaigning on overturning for a very long time, and a large part of their political appointments and maneuvering has been about getting to a position nationally with the Supreme Court to roll back Roe and a number of other things liberals assume don't need to be fought like hell for, so I'm surprised at all the surprise), but we're on year 3 of a widespread event that our country has reacted to with a thorough disregard for the health and well-being of children and the people caring for them. I do not think the United States is capable of behaving any other way than providing care for corporations and the extremely wealthy, and treating everyone else as sub-human and disposable; it's just a matter of degree.
It's nice to want things but work is necessary, and throwing a bunch of money around or voting is what got us here, so clearly that's not working. (I may never get past the ACLU deciding that partnering with Y-Combinator was the best thing they could do in 2017 with *all that fucking money* people gave them. Yes, Peter Thiel's Y-Combinator. Money ruins people.) Anyway, what could I possibly know about the situation, I am a man after all, I only happen to have a uterus. Sending love and support to all the people getting erased amidst the loud white cis lady histrionics, and a gentle reminder that with all these decades of Roe being legal, we already do an egregiously bad job of providing care. I do not want to preserve our current system; I seek a better one.
(Lest I seem completely ungrounded, a grim offering from where we came from: I have been in a Wikipedia hole for a few days around the month of December, 1910 (why? I don't know at this point, it's enjoyable for its own sake) and I've been learning about the disappearance of socialite Dorothy Arnold (which remains unsolved). One theory of what happened to her? She died subsequent to a botched abortion in a clinic so notorious for it it was nicknamed “The House of Mystery” because so many women from the area disappeared after visiting. This was the standard of care available to a young woman who lived on East 79th and whose family was in The Social Register.)
Anyway anyway anyway. Loved this interview with Parul Sehgal, I love writers who can communicate about their work process effectively, I get so much out of it.
I continue to be unable to read very much about whole categories of thing for very long, my mind and body simply revolt. I can't get more than a paragraph into anything about NFTs, for example, anymore...I think fundamentally there is an assumption that it is inherently valuable to accumulate money, and I simply don't agree with it, and any event or article or process that runs along those lines is nearly impossible for me to engage with. I don't mean “it's necessary to have money to survive under capitalism”, I mean that some people seem to be artists and some people seem to be making art to fuel their capitalist practice, and it's...fucking weird.
I still think often about the houseless man I transported from the emergency shelter to the quarantine shelter when he exhibited Covid symptoms, back in the summer of 2020, who said as he was leaving, “well if this kills me, it was nice talking to you.”
We have so little time with each other as it is, I hope we can spend it decently and with some integrity.