life is but a dream

And they were like "What?"

And I was like, "Agility isn't the ultimate form of preparedness. Contingency is. Agility still requires you to flounder and figure out a solution in the moment, but if you have a contingency plan, all you have to do is implement it."

And they were like "But you can't make contingency plans for every situation!"

And I was like, "Yeah, you basically can if you just identify all of your basic dependencies and contingency plan around the loss of any dependency," and then I gave a few examples.

And they all stared at me like I'm an alien.

As he described to the interviewer a moment of panic and how he he overcame, the interviewer said, in one of those, summarise-last-answer-given-with-appropriate-levels-of-respect-in-order-to-proceed-to-next-question phrasing’s, “Wow, so you rose to the occasion -“

The poem frames "him" as subordinate in several ways, not just to the narrator ("i fuck him on the floor": not that getting fucked is inherently subordinating, but the narrator has all the agency in the phrase, "he" doesn't decide what happens or where) but also to "his wife". She has filled the house with chintz, meaning it wasn't his decision or his actions. "Filled" is also a choice of words that suggests that there is no space for him in the home: the only place left for him, not already filled, is the floor. To me this framing invokes the trope of the henpecked husband, whose wife has taken dominion over the home and who has ceded its control to her because it, as the domestic space, is "supposed" to be hers.

This trope, of course, is misogynist in its normative rendition: it reinforces gender essentialism, it erases the significant material benefits such "henpecked" men derive from the domestic labor of their spouses, and it dismisses women's expressions of suffering and attempts at negotiating terms for their relationships as "nagging." In the narrator's dismissal of the wife's possessions as "chintz" (frivolous, feminine, contrasted with what is "real") we can see this same misogyny at play.

The narrator's misogyny, and the central fact of the poem which is that the husband is getting fucked by someone other than the wife, quite possibly flip the power dynamics of the poem on their heads. The wife is now subordinated: both by her social marginalization based on gender (a marginalization which drives her into the home and confines her there, like OP so cogently points out! As "he" has run out of room in the home and can only get fucked on the floor, so has she run out of room socially; the only place she can control and make decisions like filling it with chintz is the home), and by the narrator who is fucking her husband in her home.

There's an additional dynamic in reading the narrator as male, which most readers seem to have done: it invokes the particular, bitter misogyny that men-loving-men sometimes direct at women expressing femininity. There's an envy to it, of course--straight and straight-passing women get to (are forced to) express desire for men, have sex with men, marry men, love and be loved by men. His wife gets to be his wife: the narrator gets to fuck him, in their home. Straight and straight-passing women also get to (are forced to) perform femininity: they can buy chintz and decorate with it, without being devastatingly punished for it like people presumed to be men are from the time they're babies. The envy mixes with misogyny to produce disdain, disgust, dismissal. We can read the narrator fucking him on the floor of their home as an expression of power and dominance (again, not that the fucking has to mean the narrator is topping, or that topping is inherently dominant, but the phrasing is stark: "i fuck him", the narrator acts upon him as an object/recipient), not just over him but over the wife in absentia as well.

I think one of the things that makes the poem so compelling for being so short is the struggle at the heart of it, this complicated jostling for power between three people and their actions over time (the wife "has filled" the house, in the past: the narrator fucks him in the present, perhaps in the habitual). Who controls the house? Who controls "him"?

And of course, not only does the fact that Darcy, who owes their family nothing, has kept and continues to keep this secret for them even after Elizabeth’s refusal deepen the gratitude she begins to feel for him after the letter of explanation, but it also liberates Elizabeth to fall in love with him. Because Elizabeth-who-wants-to-marry-for-love would never be happy marrying someone who didn’t know the family secret in advance. She had resigned herself to spinsterhood because she couldn’t be satisfied with having to hoodwink someone to have their hand, but also couldn’t put her family at risk by trusting someone who wasn’t bound to them by more than an engagement. (Maybe she was even tempted to confide in Wickham at one point, and hasn’t Darcy’s letter proven she was absolutely right not to yield to that passing thought.) But Darcy figured it out himself, and he’s kept her trust, and she could fall in love with him without guilt—if she hadn’t already turned him down.

Marble statue of a kouros (youth). Greece, Attica (ca. 590–580 BCE) stance derived from Egyptian art

Marble statue of the Diadoumenos (youth tying a fillet around his head) Roman (ca. 69–96 CE) Copy of Greek statue (ca. 450 BCE)

Marble statue of a wounded warrior perhaps Protesilaos. Roman (ca. 138–181 CE) Copy of a Greek bronze statue (ca. 460–450 BCE)

sources: 32.11.1 ; 253370 / 25.78.56 ; 251838 / 25.116 ; 251929

CENTRE - SEQUENCE 1 (Indian, 10th-13th century)

Standing Parvati. Copper Alloy. India (Tamil Nadu) (ca. first quarter 10th century)

[find later]

Tree Dryad (Shalabhanjika). Ferruginous stone. India (Orissa) (12th–13th century)

Celestial Beauty (Surasundari). Marble. India (southern Rajasthan) (11th century)

sources: 57.51.3 ; 39325 / ? / 65.108 ; 38140 / 69.247 ; 38148

CENTRE - SEQUENCE 2 (Buddha. Asian, 10th-18th century)

Copper alloy. India (Tamil Nadu, Nagapattinam) (11th–12th century)

Ivory with polychrome. Sri Lanka, Kandy district (18th century)

Copper alloy with gilding. Sri Lanka, central plateau (10th century)

Gilt bronze. Thailand (15th century)

sources: 2004.63 ; 72392 / 2010.475.5 ; 75408 / 1993.387.8 ; 39197 / 1991.423.5 ; 39175

CENTRE - SEQUENCE 3 (Egyptian, 1900-1400 BCE, 400-200 BCE. Thai, 11th century. Aztec, 14th-16th century. Luba, 19th-20th century.)

An ancestral king. Wood, formerly clad with lead sheet. Egypt (390–246 BCE)

Lupona (royal seat). Wood, glass beads, cotton fiber(?). Luba artist. (Late 19th century–early 20th century)

Kneeling Female Figure. Bronze inlaid with silver, traces of gold. Thailand (second half of the 11th century)

Nurse Sitsnefru. Gabbro or diabase, paint. Found in Turkey, Anatolia, Adana. Egyptian (ca. 1900 BCE)

Fertility goddess with floral band. Stone. Mexica (Aztec) (1325–1521 CE)

Hatshepsut. Granite. Egypt (ca. 1479–1458 BCE)

Amenhotep II. Limestone. Egypt (ca. 1427–1400 BCE)

Hatshepsut. Granite. Egypt (ca. 1479–1458 BCE)

sources: 2003.154 ; 547689 / 1978.412.317 ; 310760 / 39096 / 18.2.2 ; 544176 / 1979.206.1386 ; 313579 / 30.3.1 ; 544448 / 13.182.6 ; 546745 / 30.3.2 ; 544447

CENTRE - SEQUENCE 4 (Christ. European, mostly French, 12th-14th century)

Copper, gilt; champlevé enamel. French (ca. 1185–95)

Copper alloy, gilt. French or British (ca. 1125–50)

Diptych. Elephant ivory. German (ca. 1375–1400) crucifixion pose follows 14th century Paris Gothic ivory workshop design (note almost identical French (ca. 1350–75): 50.195 ; 468339)

Tabernacle. Copper, gilt; champlevé enamel. French (ca. 1220–1230)

Copper alloy, gilt. German or South Netherlandish (ca. 1140–60)

Tabernacle. Copper, gilt; champlevé enamel. French (ca. 1200–1210)

Chasse. Copper, gilt; champlevé enamel; glass cabochons. French (ca. 1235–45)

Copper alloy, gilt. French (ca. 1150)

sources: 17.190.409a ; 464392 / 17.190.760 ; 464620 / 32.100.203 ; 467473 / 17.190.735 ; 464604 / 17.190.408a ; 464390 / 41.100.184 ; 467756 / 1974.228.1 ; 465977 / 17.190.763 ; 464623

“All Creative Work is Derivative” (2010) original animation on youtube creation process

Nina took all the photos and put it together with the music in a protest against copy right in as the name of it “All Creative Work is Derivative”. The sad part is that she is a big time TERF in the traditional sense. At one point even pulling, “I have Transgender friends… BUUUUUUT…”