Both Are True

A country is like a family is like a butthole - everybody’s got one and they all stink and we’d be shit out of luck without em. And much like our own family butthole, we know much too much about our own. Its ins and outs and darks and farts. We love to complain when they’re not working right, which is always, except, of course, most of the time, in most of the ways. “You have no idea how good it is here,” my parents tell me. They’re right.

there is a monster on the loose he is my son and he’s a goose

rare is this feeling when tears come like water from the stream and i feel them so much that even my judgement of them means nothing “so much” i say in my daughter’s voice “ i love them so much” she says, about everything her purple pants her babies her bear her kitty cat we moved two days ago a new house a fresh start though the tightness started earlier months? years?

i have a fear of i know not what not a fear of not knowing, though i have that too, obviously, but of starting to write, of finishing, publishing, doing the thing because of what may come. it’s weird to admit this, given how much time i have spent acting oppositely, sometimes even believing it.

making labels with a label maker inside the forever now Vintage 1940s Soviet Child Portrait Photo from etsy that’s how it goes with toddlers. you do one thing and...that’s it. that’s it, forever. you will never do anything else because don’t you see, dada, this is what we’re doing now. this is all there is. like right now, we’ve got the labelmaker out. Emma June calls it a phone. Hello dada? Yes Hi? Bye dada. Oh bye.

On Feb 23, 2023 - almost three years ago to the day, I wrote ‘can everyone kindly shut the fuck up about ai.’ My, how the turns have tabled. It is the year of our lady 2026 and have not, kindly nor otherwise, shut the fuck up about AI. Far from it. As Usher once said, this is my confession Pt 2. I’ve been afraid to admit this to you. You being my both are true readers. The BATheads. What’s the opposite of a parasocial relationship? Sarapocial? Yes. Sarapocial.

Self-Portrait with Masks, James Ensor (1899) What if you secretly love all the hard things in your life? That’s the core idea of Carolyn Elliott’s Existential Kink, a book Paul Millerd recommended after a 3AM WhatsApp chat in which I complained about stuff in a way that proves the entire thesis of the book: Love all the terrible stuff? That makes no sense! But neither do the holy trinity of beliefs that currently make up my personal religion: I hate myself regardless of what happens.

Huge thank you to the Sum Flux fam for making this graphic excellence This essay is part of the Sum Flux v.2 zine - check out the whole thing here. I was driving when I noticed it, this feeling, exploding through my body like the shards of ice we'd yesterday broken across the frozen lake. The crackle sparkle of each tiny piece gliding across the surface, tshhhhhhh in all directions.

Vija Celmins, Heater (1964) We’ve got this detached office in the backyard. It’s like a shed that feels like a sauna because of the wood paneling. Is it called paneling? There are so many words that all basically just mean ‘wall’. Recently I learned the outside of a house is called ‘siding’ when Lauren kept talking about what color we’d paint the siding in our new home (soft launch btw: we finally closed on a home). “What is siding?” I finally asked.

if you are spiraling right now, please remember this simple truth: the only thing the spiral wants is to keep spiraling. the contents of your spiraling - the job thing, the text, the family squabble, whatever - it’s all simply fuel for the spiral. the other day i was gifted the rare treat of spiraling about essentially nothing.