What a garbage month May has been. Tragedy everywhere, at home and abroad, painfully distant and painfully close.
(((:):))(:)::::
We lost Nine this month. Ashlé will be missed both on the timeline and the various servers she hung out in, particularly my own server, which she so generously helped me set up. I wrote a few words about her here:
— Nine
I was especially struck by a post Lily wrote about Nine, which is an incredibly beautiful tribute and piece of writing in its own right.
Free Palestine
Grief at home was compounded by grief for Palestine. A lot of energy went into thinking about the horrific actions of Israel these past few weeks. I spent quite a few evening writing about and processing the latest Israeli aggressions, and the state’s attempts to smother dissent against apartheid, below:
— A Deleuzian View of Palestine (Contra Israel)
— Zionist Realism: What If We Had a Strike and Everyone Came?
— Zionist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Blood Moon
Things didn’t really get any better by the end of the month. A man collapsed outside our house. I’m not entirely sure why I felt the need to blog about it. Maybe a way to make it real. I’m determined that, if anything like that ever happens again, the next time I don’t feel so useless. After chatting to the guy who showed up after we called 999, I was left really wanting to get proper first aid training and starting as a volunteer Community First Responder.
Narcissus in Bloom
A few notes siphoned off the current book project. I read Madame Bovary for the first time and was quite blown away by it. Simon Reynolds, in the comments, summed up the initial feeling perfectly:
“I read Madame Bovary for the first time last year and was stunned by how modern it felt. You still get a sense of breakthrough from it, even today, long after all its innovations have been assimilated and become the everyday stuff of fiction.”
— Long Live The New Flesh: Notes on Madame Bovary
Photography
Podcasts, Etc.
— Postcapitalist Desire: XG on Hermitix
— Buddies Without Organs — Episode #06
— XG Reading Group 2.7: Bad Actors