hearing my psych pharm lecturer refer to schizophrenia as a chronic disease was revelatory

hi rebecca

who is my only friend still on tumblr I think. I was having a vacuuming thought earlier that I might return to the scrapbook of tumblr. bc someone on elon musk’s twitter made a joke about a remigration. and bc the tsunami of schoolwork tends to make my non-nurse creative brain go whirrr. once tony and i made a joke about making a great return to livejournal but it never happened and still i get an email every year from livejournal reminding me it’s tony’s birthday a whole day before his actual birthday. 

I don’t know if it is the horrible cold spring we are having. or pisces stellium, or eclipse szn, or retrograde shadow...(etc etc ad nauseum) but I am finding myself mired in intense grief. I just ordered alaa’s book and was paging through it grieving a lot about what that revolution meant and what it means now. thinking of alaa and gramsci and people in prisons and wondering if we will have or fail to have revolution here soon. then regrieved because instead of going to a book tour event for it I have to study for an exam I am not ready for. I wondered again how to balance school-me with non-school-me. I am so resentful of how it demands all my very limited time, even though I am promised a 36 hour work week in a future that is closer than it seems. 

more marginal griefs too, for example for the first time in a long time I will not have the summer off! I am sorry to be a big baby but this is unacceptable and I can’t believe I have to live this way. I try so hard to live counter to american expectations of work and leisure but sometimes things, important-for-the-future things, take that away from me.

anyway, hi tumblr. click post. :)

Turns out Givenchy SS19 has a cool-as-hell inspo

Selam Fessahaye

Rodarte is back, blessed be

ENJOY YOUR SYMPTOM: 26 WEEKS, 4 DAYS

*this originally appeared on my Tinyletter but it’s going here too in case Tinyletter goes away*

First: a poem by Simone White, from Dear Angel of Death

Nicole Eisenman, I need you to make a picture

You can read more of Simone White’s work here. Beautiful thoughtful work about Black mothering under late capitalism. Her book is really good, so good that I a speed-reader am reading it slowly to savor it. After I read this poem I looked at Eisenman's paintings online and felt distressed. They’re grotesque, kind of. Or: I don’t know, the beady eyes and big noses have a tragic effect. There was a fitting one for me to see, a woman with a blank-faced baby. The baby can’t walk and the woman (mother?) melts into the background. The woman’s nose is red (very Eisenman here), why? Crying or drinking? Crying and drinking? I reckon that I don't like Eisenman's paintings all that much though I respect what she's trying to do here, the way a baby makes you melt into the background. It is almost too obvious, isn't it?

Nicole Eisenman, Untitled, 2010-2014, Oil on canvas

In Like A Mother Angela Garbes has a wonderful chapter on the pelvic floor where she shares her experience with persistent hip pain following the birth of her daughter. My mom had a hip replacement surgery a few years ago and I went to help out the week following. At the time I was rereading the Neapolitan novels (I reread them a lot, I am sure you know this) and gleaning a lot of new information about the mother-daughter dyad. Every time I felt a hip pain I thought about Lenu beginning to embody her mother’s hip pain, her chronic limp, a pain that emerges mysteriously (“mysteriously”) after her own daughters are born. I am in less pain during this second trimester than in the last one. Maybe relaxin has loosened my pelvic bowl--certainly my butt is wider and flatter now, alas, not thrilling for me as my butt was never my favorite feature to begin with (too small, not feminine, have you seen my sister’s amazing butt??, &c. &c.) but White's words--"the brutal indent of a formerly powerful ass"--ring so true. Maybe I am more thoughtful now because I have less time to marinate.

I was thinking in yoga class about Simone White's "gappy hips". Yesterday we did chair poses along the wall and though I am a woman with a toddler and a birth worker and therefore a seasoned squatter these left me breathless, though I felt very powerful as I walked home. Not to be that bitch but yoga generally has left me feeling pretty powerful and when we end with our namastes I feel profoundly thankful for my body and what it can do. I told Shereen this but I can't believe that a decadent hedonist like yours truly is finding so much pleasure in this mind-body workout. It is very hard, universally so from what I can tell from conversations with others (thank GOD for other pregnant friends with toddlers, I swear...), to connect with a burgeoning fetus when you are worn thin by a two year old's galaxy brain but in the midst of cat-cows and Thai goddess poses feeling fetal movement lets me remember that there are many bodies I am caring for right now and each one deserves care, including my own. Texts of the week:

​Francis flooded the bathroom today. Perhaps I can credit the yoga with my ability to laugh, open-mouthed, as he led me into the bathroom saying "HELP MAMA WASH HAND" (My hygienic angel, thought I....) instead of throwing myself into bed sobbing. Or maybe it's the zoloft. Either way....

Love,

Annie

shockingly little on the Cecilia Vicuña tag here on tumblr.com! I am surprised by this

From Mounira al Solh, I strongly believe in our right to be frivolous, which unfortunately closes on Sunday! Go see if you have time!!! (at The Art Institute of Chicago)

Ursula K Le Guin died just the week before Cat did, and though I don't fathom an afterlife for humans (18 years of getting evangelical heaven rammed down my throat and keeping me up at night so I'm good, thanks) it is a great comfort to me to envision Cat slowly, cautiously entering the Bardo (she can still see our shadows, crying over her body and kissing her ears in the exam room at Uptown Animal Hospital) and Ursula's sitting beneath an ancient Pacific coast tree and says, "Cat! I've been waiting for you," then she gets up and they make their way through the Bardo together.