You Dumb Kids Don’t Even Know You’re Dead Yet.

Catania and Mount Etna at dusk, as seen from the dome of the Abbey of Saint Agatha. / Feb 2024

'boundaries' as the dignity of a human being and their personhood, autonomy and inherent right to live being eroded and destroyed. lila thrown out of a window as a child for demanding to go to school. pasquale's father being thrown against a wall for demanding justice after mafiosi stole his shop. the neighbourhood itself as the thing that shaves down your dignity. poverty and capitalism and fascism and misogyny all fused together to create a different beast, and that beast eats away at your boundaries slowly slowly slowly. pasquale's mama in the bathroom after a lifetime of sorrow and horror. the children are outside singing. do you remember? she painted her nails red. 'dissolving boundaries' as the body's response to abuse in its every form, individual and societal. and so the person within the body becomes undone. loosens. nothing firm remains. like oil like water. lila cerullo.

Annie Ling, 81 Bowery, New York, 2011.

helaena the dreamer

“Here lies a toppled god—

His fall was not a small one.

We did but build his pedestal,

A narrow and a tall one.”

goodhood, dune messiah

In Weimar Germany, in 1930, before Hitler, you could get gender treatment as a trans woman. The laws against homosexuality were largely unenforced, and the earliest gender-affirming surgeries were being developed.

A few years later, those same people were all living inside Hitler's Germany. It was all gone.

In the US in 2024 you could get an M, F, or X gender marker on your passport. No questions asked, just circle the box you want.

It's gone now.

Each verse of history has the same refrain. Kill your generation's fascists and rebuild.

Blue glass beads from the Late Bronze Age, found in 1885 when a Danish farmer ploughed up a cremation urn at Kongehøj. Made in Mesopotamia approximately 3,100 years ago, they offer evidence of long-distance trade connections in the prehistoric world.

image from here