a bramble rose;

“Well Marianne it’s come to this time when we are really so old and our bodies are falling apart and I think I will follow you very soon. Know that I am so close behind you that if you stretch out your hand, I think you can reach mine. And you know that I’ve always loved you for your beauty and your wisdom, but I don’t need to say anything more about that because you know all about that. But now, I just want to wish you a very good journey. Goodbye old friend. Endless love, see you down the road.”

(and sidenote, i don’t think it’s any coincidence that that sort of discourse works so well with neoliberal wellness bs because it’s so individualising + focused on actively cutting off forms of community and support? like…. there are people for whom ‘less screen time’ means cutting out whole social lifelines. but i digress.)

and with the Fall of Twitter i’ve realised how much i’ve kind of grown to hate a lot of the platforms i’m on and self-censor myself there. like i’m deleting tweets, imagining i’ll be perceived in a certain way, all the things i’m reading and writing about in other areas of academic work those are the things i’m feeling

without the social element, the active engagement and community and conversation, it sometimes just feels like inhaling information and forgetting to breathe

i’m wondering about making tiktoks of my cat, sharing her cuteness with other strangers. about going back to my sewing instagram and seeing if talking to people there helps me keep up my creative habits. if maybe coming back here will change that, to a softer place where i’ve always felt i can just ramble freely, my little internet diary that may or may not get read 

it’s the first “work trip” i’ve ever taken, in that i got funding from the hosting institute and my uni to be here, but i also feel weird about claiming academia as “work” because i hate the demands of professionalism and it feels like it goes against everything i study and love about theory and thinking and producing worlds through academic thought