Mind lights

New sarracenia brooches! (sold out)

A tiny larva is tucked inside the pitcher– saying “hello”… or “help!”?

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> opens my email

> disables a new AI feature that was turned on by default

> launches a software

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

not that you have ever been a good or proper dragon. when you hatched out of your egg, your eggtooth was too smooth. the other dragons were rough with you, put little holes in your wings.

you were not bold. you were odd. you liked rippling water and the shine of chitin when bugs scuttle and of course the movement of the stars. those were all acceptable interests albeit maybe not traditional. perhaps you had inherited these through some great-great-uncle or something. certainly a dragon may be wise, or clever, if they are not bold.

yes, you have been a great deal of a puzzle to the other dragons. your body is smaller and rather more soft than it ought to be. so speed should have been yours, perhaps - your mother said it would be like fighting a shadow. if a dragon is not aggressive, it may instead be cruel, sly; a backstab. but alas your scales - so iridescent that they almost shine like the moon at night, a glow from within - you are not a shadow, you are a beacon like the flash of a knight's blade. your father has said at least you would make a fine egglayer, a nice mate to a good male. a dragon like you may still be a good mother perhaps; and that is a fine thing to be; although of course it would have been better if you'd been a trove-hoarder instead.

what a dragon must not be is kind.

you have watched her now for six moons. what a good and proper dragon would do is to go inside and to snatch her. a very proper dragon would have kidnapped her many times over, but you will be the delight of your brood to princess-snatch even at all. when you catch her in your jaws and bring her home, they will love you, then. they don't think you're capable of it, but you are, because you're a proper dragon. you can show them that. if you go in, now, right now.

you are rather too glossy to hide in the shadows, so instead you have learned how to appear flat and round, a puddle of light. (how your siblings would mock you! a dragon should be matte, to blend with the night). you dapple your flank with mud. you perch in odd angles atop of trees, scuttle like the bugs you love - hither, tither, frantic.

what you must not do is fly with your wings full-out. alight, you will be limned by the moon's corona. you will be a beacon. you must remember this when (not if) you snatch her.

____

you found her because of the lake. this lake in particular was your favorite - nestled deep in the woods, between two mountains. it is very quiet; there is nothing to horde there so no other dragon bothers you. a gentle waterfall spills over into a deep cove, and there are many mossy caves you've spent your afternoons napping in. while it is not proper for a dragon to prefer such things, you like to lay in rolling tenure just under the water. you have become excellent at holding your breath, can do it for hours. it is the easiest way to appear as a patch of sunlight.

she was not sunlight. she was the night's joy. the dark press of water. her face at first concealed by many diaphanous layers. her breathing quick and quiet.

she had pulled them back to drink from her water flask. and there she had been: a princess. your first very-real princess. right there, only the reach of a single talon from you. if you had simply lunged then, you would have been able to take her easily, in one single movement.

but you did not take her.

the lines on the bottom say do not microwave but i have been microwaving it for 7 years now. i put it away wet and it must have slid off the counter. it broke into 6 pieces. my girlfriend says this is proof a ghost that lives in my house; particularly because it is a black mug with a ouija board design. i think it is proof that i should dry things before i put them away.

i had superglue from an abandoned art project. it took me four days. inspired by kintsugi, i painted the seams golden. it is my first time doing anything like this, and it was more error than trial. i do not have any fancy materials. there is a thick band of gold across the no, so it reads like a diphthong now, N\O. a part of it broke in an almost-perfect peace sign, oddly round.

it will not be watertight anymore, it cannot be a mug. i'll reuse it as a flower pot. it will go on my back porch. it is kind of ugly, really. i didn't do an excellent job.

i spent every minute of this repair thinking about how often i had used it. how many little rituals it has been a part of. it is a big mug, but not a soup mug, which i loathe. it is perfect for two hands to hold. i have used it almost daily, so often that many of the details have worn off. my own skin did that - almost a decade of shared warmth.

none of the times i have told this story has a single person said what do you mean you have a favorite mug. not a single person who has seen the resulting half-maimed piece has said why would you put that back together? not a single person has said this is a waste of time. not a single person has told me what's the point of this? if you want to find a new mug, just use AI.

somewhere someone is probably using AI to draw an image or write a poem, i know that is true. but i think it is also probably true that most of us are going to write and read and draw and dance just because. that the process of doing so is not for a goal or a specific benefit, but because for thousands of years now - when a piece of pottery breaks, we try to fix it. for thousands of years - long before capitalism had any say in it - humans have been doing things just for the experience of it. for the fuck of it. for the love of the game.

ai is not going to win because i cut my thumb while i did it. ai is not going to win because i kept thinking about my all friends who do ceramics, how they're always asking me if i want to join them for a lesson. i was thinking about every person i've ever shared a coffee with. i was thinking about who i was when i bought this mug (graduate student. could barely afford the off-season thing on clearance). i was thinking about how many hands have held this, how many people i've been since.

ai is not going to win because i didn't do a perfect job of it.

my sister-in-law and i recently had a conversation about how one of her coworkers uses Chat instead of reading self-help books. and we both looked at each other about that, the stunned silence of rabbits. "can you imagine?" we said. what's even the point to it.

Burgonet, France, circa 1590-1600