IN LOVE WITH A STRICT MACHINE

A FOSSIL STINGRAY WITH SMALL FISH - GREEN RIVER, WYOMING

“I strongly oppose valorizing any form of suicide as a noble, principled, or legitimate form of political protest. People suffering mental illness deserve empathy and respect, but it is wildly irresponsible to praise them for using a political justification to take their own life.”

Conviction does not exist to the American. To be willing to die in a selfless act for what they believe in only exists for those outside America's sphere of influence. Many will recall reporting on those who self-immolated in protest in Iran and in Russia for instance where this sort of approach, unwilling to engage with the root of its cause, would not even be entertained, let alone written and published with sincerity. The Arab Spring began with a self-immolation. The self-immolation of Buddhist monks in protest of South Vietnam’s persecution became defining images of the war and its corruption. Within America’s walls however, there is a belief, unspoken and ingrained from birth, that democracy allows for everyone’s voices to be heard and that its representatives are inherently inclined to respond to the people and their widespread wishes.

Desperation at inaction or complicity in terror and atrocity need not apply. Everyone incensed by their government to such an extent must simply have something wrong with them. To be able to go about one’s day knowing that children are screaming from the hunger that is eating their insides and that pregnant women are eating bread made from animal feed, and that the United States is supporting Israel’s creation of this famine, is apparently the real sign of well-adjustment.

"Absolutely no one comes to save us but us."

· Moth, 2020 - oil on linen. · Queen Anne’s Lace, 2019 - oil on canvas. · Orchard in Winter, 2019 - oil on canvas. — Miles Cleveland Goodwin (American, b.1980)

Daphne turns into a laurel tree (detail): a motif from ancient Greek mythology poeticized in Ovid’s Metamorphoses (8 AD) by Pyke Koch (Dutch artist who painted in a magic realist manner, 1901-1991)