MADE OF DUST

my psych book:

The entirety of (Western, at least) modern culture is built on the idea of having live-in full-time labor to keep up our houses and community expectations as to clothing, meals, and group activities. In the absence of slave labor (WHICH WE SHOULD NOT HAVE), child labor (WHICH WE SHOULD NOT HAVE), and obligatory spouse-forced labor (WHICH WE SHOULD NOT HAVE), either the culture of the household needs to change to accommodate the capitalist/industrial norms of 5+ days away from the home during daylight hours or, like, we need to stop having 5+ days away from the home during daylight hours.

Because-- it's a hell of a thing when I look back on lockdown and miss how much love and attention I was able to give to my shitty apartment, okay?

And today, at home because of snow but still somehow "at work" because we learned nothing, apparently-- I am realizing how much I exist as a ghost that haunts my own home. In the brief moments I appear, I move through rooms that once were loved and cared for, unchanged and dusty; I wander through a space that knows it once was someone's everything, and now lies dormant, waiting for brief flashes of life; I see my own dishes left out, like evidence of a long-gone person that lived and loved and left, here and not-here, and I am wholly disconnected from the moment I created them-- I just know that they are mine, and they are frozen in the moment that I left them, and that I feel a sad, unknown emptiness when I see them and must, again, just pass them by.

(I have always struggled to write ghost stories. I love haunted houses, but I don't know how to find my way into telling stories about them.)

THIS

ABSOLUTELY

But we look back everyday- rechecking emails, making sure a friend is still behind you, checking to see if you remebered to pick up your keys. It's second nature, a habit of care.

It's no wonder so many people are profoundly lonely and disconnected from their communities when maintaining a social life in what little free time we have is incredibly difficult. If you have kids, a second job, a very long commute, or other responsibilities, it's nearly impossible.

My 7yo was INCENSED. About a week into summer break he asked why I was still working and I said I didn't get summer break and he launched into a full-on RANT. Pacing the room. Gesticulating wildly. About how it wasn't FAIR, and EVERYONE should get a summer break.

rest stops on highways

trails by the highway just out of earshot of traffic

schools during breaks

those little beaches right next to ferry docks

your friends living room once everybody but you is asleep

the lighting section of home depot

A lot of these places are called liminal spaces - which means they are throughways from one space to the next. Places like rest stops, stairwells, trains, parking lots, waiting rooms, airports feel weird when you’re in them because their existence is not about themselves, but the things before and after them. They have no definitive place outside of their relationship to the spaces you are coming from and going to. Reality feels altered here because we’re not really supposed to be in them for a long time for think about them as their own entities, and when we do they seem odd and out of place.

The other spaces feel weird because our brains are hard-wired for context - we like things to belong to a certain place and time and when we experience those things outside of the context our brains have developed for them, our brains are like NOPE SHIT THIS ISN’T RIGHT GET OUT ABORT ABORT. Schools not in session, empty museums, being awake when other people are asleep - all these things and spaces feel weird because our brain is like “I already have a context for this space and this is not it so it must be dangerous.” Our rational understanding can sometimes override that immediate “danger” impulse but we’re still left with a feeling of wariness and unease. 

This is Money Snake. She only appears every 312 years.