#ordinary notes

Regard is a habit of care. It is appreciation and esteem. It is the right of repair.

“every memorial and museum to atrocity already contains its failure.”

So much of Black life and work and resistance goes missing. Black people work to hold all of this information in our heads, oftentimes unbolstered by institutions, oftentimes against such institutions’ purposeful forgetting. We have to function as a living library: as an institution.

Spectacle is the right to capture, to capture what is deemed abjection, and the right to publish it. Spectacle is a relation of power. It has a long life and a big sound.

“the machinery of whiteness constantly deploys violence—and in a mirror-register, constantly manufactures wonder, surprise, and innocence in relation to that violence.”

“i used to think that if i started crying, i would never stop. that if i allowed myself to cry, the weeping would never end.”