Unfinished Essays from 2023

Assertions That I Will Not Say More About

Cars are anti-culture machines. No, I will not say more about this.

Every holiday season feels like an advent calendar of murder celebration, consumerism, or opulent excess and four years ago, I cried at the black garbage bag we filled with wrapping paper and I stared blankly at the dark clouds that sat heavy on the curb. When my mom sees me crying, she gets angry. When I tell her to call me by a different name, she tells me my name is a gift, why would I change it? My birthname means “god is gracious.” My lived name means that I am always changing, that I am made of seasons rotating through green, yellow, red, white. And that means I am gracious and the spirit of the earth has found a place in me and, then, isn’t god gracious through that? I am not speaking to my mom right now, but she doesn’t know that. It’s hard to talk to people when they don’t believe that there’s a genocide happening.

Golfers should be shot on sight and golf courses razed. This makes room for more foxes, wolves, deer, and prairies. I no longer have complicated feelings about who is on the dealing end and who is on the receiving end of violence: golfers should be on the receiving end, wolves should be on the dealing end. I do, however, have complicated feelings about violence as an efficient strategy.

Queer as in transgressive and cross-gender; cross as in intersection or pissed. Queer should not describe a relation to traditional gender roles, nor should it describe how you piss. It should however have a connection to where you piss, who you piss on, and who you piss off.

My friend told me how many times they cried this year and I realized that I only have cried 10 times this year and only twice in front of people. I like how often I cry, but I wish I could ugly cry in front of everybody. Yes, I am an ugly crier; my face twists like an old tree’s knots but with my well-moisturized and exfoliated skin, adding an extra layer of “ew.” No, I will not say more about this.

I think the most important things about reading are how one imagines, then how one constructs oneself through fiction. Turning falsity to truth.

The best thing a white person can do for society is kill the white part and leave the person part. First, we have to see that they’re not the same thing.