round-up: 5/10
what i'm reading, watching, & listening to, and some quotations <3
Happy Saturday!
Here’s what I have for you today:
What I’m watching
What I’m listening to
What I’m reading
Quotations
What I’m watching:
Santa Clarita Diet
Spotlight
What I’m listening to:
What I’m reading:
Quotations:
Palestine is really the center of the world. And as someone who’s been active in the Palestine solidarity struggle for the vast majority of my life, I can say that even as we experience the unimaginable grief of witnessing an ongoing genocide, a genocide that is available in terms of being able to witness the consequences all over the world, in one sense, I want to say that this is the movement we’ve been struggling for for decades and decades.
Palestine has never given up. Palestine will never give up. And this is precisely why, even in the worst possible material predicament, with the Israeli bombs having destroyed virtually the entirety of Gaza, we see the Palestinian people who are refusing to give up, who will not give up on their people, who will not give up on their history, who will not give up on their culture, and who will not give up on their ability to express solidarity with other people who are struggling all over the world.
I do think that even as we cry, even as we express solidarity amidst the suffering, we should recognize that this is a moment we’ve been waiting for, where people all over the world are recognizing Palestine as a litmus test and are recognizing that the people in the Sudan will — in Sudan will not be successful, people in Congo will not be successful, people in IT will not be successful, if they do not follow the leadership of the Palestinian people, who absolutely refuse to capitulate and genuflect to Zionism and to global capitalism and to racism.
I think it is important to acknowledge that Trump was not elected by a majority of the people in this country. As a matter of fact, more people did not vote for Trump as voted — than voted for him. So, we’re not seeing a president who has the power of the people behind him, quite the contrary. And I think that as those of us who are standing for justice and for freedom and for a better future, it’s essential to recognize that we are actually in the majority, that we are on the right side of history, that we should follow the example of the Palestinian people and not give up, not succumb to the assumption that this person was elected, and therefore he and his people get to dictate the direction of history.
I haven’t really been fucking strangers lately. Most men are only as dangerous as you allow them be, but I’ve gotten tired of knowing what happens if you give them an inch; I wish I didn’t, but I do.
I had spent many hours listening to the buzz of the tattoo gun, smelling ink and blood and the black nitrile gloves that artists wear, and watching images bloom onto my body. I loved staring at the drawings tacked all over the walls, feeling the rise of yummy brain chemicals inside me, and the wasted feeling I had afterward, how deeply I slept, and the rituals of cleaning the wound for days afterward. It was a way of moving into my body, and also proving that I could control it—two things I craved in my early twenties. Withstanding pain was its own high back then, and I was proud of my stoicism, the way I could drift away and not really feel it after a while.
Look, I have a longtime meditation practice. I know about somatic methods. I tried to make friends with the pain. I turned toward it. I willed my body to relax, to soften. It was impossible. I tried to read my book. I tried to leave my body. No matter how I attempted to mitigate my physical experience through my own attention, it was just me and the pain, locked together.
As a culture, we always want this grand arc: rags to riches, gets the girl, gets the guy. I wondered if I could write a book that didn’t have improvement arcs, because it aligned with my observation of my communities. My brother has worked at Dick’s Sporting Goods his whole life. My stepdad works at this auto-parts company. For 25 years, he worked from 3 p.m. to 12 a.m. We want stories of change, yet American life is often static. You drive the same car, people live in the same apartment, but it doesn’t mean that their lives are worthless. This book — it’s not a spoiler to say that nobody gets a better job, no one gets a raise. So what happens? I’ve been interested in this idea of kindness without hope.
I didn’t become an author to have a photo in the back of a book. Writing became a medium for me to try to understand what goodness is.
I tried to explain this to my mother, the loneliness of class movement. It’s a lot of grief.
When I see cruelty, I look closer and I say, Where is this coming from? A lot of times it comes from fear and vulnerability. You’re too scared, and you have to strike first. In a way, I have great compassion for that, because the doorway through violence has always been suffering. I’ve never seen anyone commit violence and feel joy after.
Trapped somewhere in the summers of my boyhood—(Despy Boutris: which was just my girlhood before the awareness of danger)—when I was full of venom. Like when I bit the kid on my babysitter’s swingset, loved the muscle’s give under my molars—
(The river: where I could give my body back to its mud. Algal merge. Clam-shell jolt. Minnows and their cell-snacks, helping me out of my former skins. And the water: porous. Making space for all of us.)
River of my childhood, wrackline full of gone: empty shells, rotting fish. Osprey rush. Poking blue crab open, her tender spilling. And little me, learning: falling off the bike on the too-fast hill down. My opened knees. My father behind me, catching up, gently lifting me back to my feet—
That’s all for today—
-Despy Boutris
Instagram
Twitter
Website
Dyke Semiotics
Zines
Shirts