—Laura Sarnelli, Ghostly Femininities: Christabel, Carmilla, and Mulholland Drive

—Georgie Henley

i simply cannot vibe with any media that comes out with the message “to hurt each other is mankind’s base nature” because it really literally is not. you just think that because your perception of reality has been poisoned by the cruelty and desperation forced upon us by an capitalist society run by people who REJECT their human nature, not those who embrace it. 

the idea that man itself is a cruel hateful animal is simply wrong and serves nobody except people who are so skeptical of everything they get a twisted sense of satisfaction at thinking that the human heart is evil and seeing things that “prove” them right. the same kind of people who think shit like the stanford prison experiment is a snapshot of how any human being would act in that situation when it factually is not. evil is created situationally, nobody is born evil like it doesn’t work like that. to look at examples of heinousness in people and say “this is what man truly is” is such a disgustingly bleak outlook on life.

when you tell my friends you love them, when you give money to someone struggling, when you go out of your way to help a stranger, when you give back to your community, THOSE are the things that make you human. kindness, love, compassion, goodwill towards others, that’s what humanity is for, not hatred and destruction. it helps nobody to think otherwise

“I suppose I could spend time theorizing how it is that people are not bad to each other, but that’s really not the point. The point is that in almost every instance of our lives, our social lives, we are, if we pay attention, in the midst of an almost constant, if subtle, caretaking. Holding open doors. Offering elbows at crosswalks. Letting someone else go first. Helping with the heavy bags. Reaching what’s too high, or what’s been dropped. Pulling someone back to their feet. Stopping at the car wreck, at the struck dog. The alternating merge, also known as the zipper. This caretaking is our default mode and it’s always a lie that convinces us to act or believe otherwise. Always.” –Ross Gay, The Sanctity of Trains

Y’all know how humans became the dominant species on the planet?

We took care of each other. We grouped up in little packs, called it a family, and said “Family takes care of each other.” Small families grouped together with other families and made tribes, clans, villages; then towns, then cities, the nations. 

When there came storms and tsunamis and fires and earthquakes; we banded together and took care of each other and survived. When brother broke his leg, we took care of him until he healed. In basically every other land species, a broken leg is a death sentence because you can’t go get food or water or run from threats. We survive death sentences, and we do it by caring for each other.

So ingrained is our desire to care that we care for other animals. We care for plants. We give names to dirt and stones and stars and we care for them too. 

So intense is our need to love and be loved that isolation wrecks havoc on our mental health. There is no pain worse than the simple thought that one is truly and utterly alone. 

Human Nature is Love. Human Nature has always been Love. It is the defining feature of our species. We evolved to Care and that made us strong.

we were too young.

here’s the link to donate to george floyd’s official memorial fund if you are able to contribute. if you can’t donate, please share. being black shouldn’t be a death sentence.

Susan Sontag, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh

Takuboku Ishikawa, tr. by Tamae K. Prindle, from The Selected Poems; “A Love Song to Myself,”

Takuboku Ishikawa, tr. by Tamae K. Prindle, from The Selected Poems; “A Love Song to Myself,”

— Zaina Alsous, from ““Arab Making”,” A Theory of Birds: Poems

How many times have you stopped short, breath jerked from the throat? To lose

yourself in the fall; to have lost it all to need, affliction. Crank the heart’s ugly lever, set this machine back

into motion.

— Mia Ayumi Malhotra, from “At the Cliff House,” Isako Isako

Natalie Wee, “When I Say I Want to Learn Your Mother’s Recipe, I Mean”

If I could do girlhood again, I’d ask

to be scarier. Less whimpering—more pyromaniac

urges, more flirting with kerosene.

— Sally Wen Mao, from “Drop-kick Aria,” Mad Honey Symposium

— Nelly Arcan, from Breakneck

​I rip up the notebooks scrawled in the midst of the first deep grief and retype and tell myself that I am now more dispassionate. Yet I want a record of the words. Looking over my notes written in class on a James Joyce essay we read last spring. “How can my mother be dead be dead be dead” I wrote and wrote and wrote.

—  Nicole Cooley, from “At the Florence Nightingale Museum,” published in Foundry

Oh nooo

when welcome to night vale said: “Sleep heavily and know that I am here with you. The past is gone, and cannot harm you anymore. And while the future is fast coming for you, it always flinches first, and settles in as the gentle present. This now, this us, we can cope with that. We can do this together you and I.”