{ "version": "https://jsonfeed.org/version/1", "title": "poetry on ross, spaciously, in cyberspace", "icon": "https://avatars.micro.blog/avatars/2026/14/62453.jpg", "home_page_url": "https://internetross.space/", "feed_url": "https://internetross.space/feed.json", "items": [ { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2024/05/25/damn-sarah-hurwitz.html", "content_html": "

Sarah Hurwitz has a Zen “don’t know” before-thinking enlightenment moment on a hitbodedut retreat.\nI love this.

\n
\n

That’s all I could say: “I don’t know. I don’t know.” I was saying that over and over again until I said, “I don’t know, but I can’t do this alone.”

\n
\n
\n

It was a moment of openness, of some surrender. I was so astounded that I started to cry and I thought, “I don’t know what that was about.”

\n
\n

Warmth in my chest as I hear her vocal audio bits through my WH-1000MX4s.

\n", "date_published": "2024-09-01T20:37:00-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2024/05/25/damn-sarah-hurwitz.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2024/06/02/tu-bshvat.html", "title": "Tu B'shvat", "content_html": "

Having made the journey from the front yard to the back, beneath the weight of the second story where morning light was filling rooms, I was comfortable with the progress of our adolescent wildflowers. Then, between the backdoor and backfence, light filled me up. The poppies are stubbornly refusing to bloom. Mild flakes of disappointment crawled up my temples. For a moment I considered the preposterous notion of watering the Redwood Tree. There, erect and looming, concentric symmetrics, wheels of blades spiraling over our rental house. Me, corrected, sighing; sharing the embarrassment with the pointed bamboo that have lived partially in the Redwood’s shadow. I decided to step into this shadow. I gazed up into the vortex of leaves. You don’t need tepid municipal sink juice. (But I’ll get some for you, over there beyond the glass. You potted co-dependents that dot the interior landscape, scrubbing and smoothing the nervy corners of brutal Puritan design. You little fuckers, in comparison.) I remember where Dottie scratched your delicate conifer skin, loomer. When she was given a chance to roam wild. Too few moments with that champion, I miss you.

\n

I push on that spot with my imagination from a mile away through this keyboard, where Dottie, me, Redwood, and microbes have a chance encounter on earth in space. I’m reminded of one time I tried striking the Redwood. The way that you do as a martial artist who’s curious about surfaces and transfer. There had been a sharp, uneven slap from the sketched conifer texture, unwilling to participate. Or unnoticeably. More impenetrable than cement, completely full of form. Not the satisfying feedback of leather wrapped compressed textile. There are few living things that are so dense to human body sacks, I suspect.

\n", "date_published": "2024-06-02T13:39:18-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2024/06/02/tu-bshvat.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2024/05/27/the-guy-in.html", "title": "Guy outside Ritual Coffee on 5/27/24, I had a hot chocolate inside", "content_html": "

The guy in combat boots with adorned with a skull. He’s reading Love In the Time of Cholera, headphones crowning his head into a phone call. He’s got coffee.

\n", "date_published": "2024-05-27T12:45:18-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2024/05/27/the-guy-in.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2024/05/20/seung-sahns-dropping.html", "title": "Seung Sahn's Dropping Ashes on the Buddha, and chat with Seraph and Marshall", "content_html": "\"Dottie\n

Good morning

\n

A man came into the Zen center and dropped ashes on the Buddha.

\n

One hundred and fifty years ago men put metal penises in the earth and started burning fuel in earnest, beginning to fill the atmosphere with ash.

\n

There are other men, same same men, who claim “Buddha is everything.” They are very strong and will hit you if you say otherwise. How do you fix their minds?

\n

In a stroke of brilliance, I piped the morning meditation’s Zoom call audio through the Sonos. It’s quite silly that I’ve taken so long to figure this out. The Morning Bell Chant is now screeching across Clifford’s vocal chords.

\n

Felicitous: pausing the onslaught on my geriatric iPhone’s speakers eliminated the rheumatic gargles and burps.

\n

Good evening

\n

There was a moment yesterday, around the routine crepuscular slide, when Seraph mentions how the diaspora broke us. (Sambal moves around the gums.) We broke, to assimilate. We discontinued mentions of the moon cycle’s importance in our rituals. We cleared the forest from the imagination. My chest balled up. I could cry. It had been a tough Sunday already in one of those classic disorientations of a fleeting weekend. Just as a week or two of life pressures edged to the pinnacle for a breath and place to lookout with a panoramic view. (I’m thinking of the top of Bernal hill.)

\n

I don’t love the language of broken and fixed because it’s hard, phallic. It makes me think of split wood. (I have too many planks, not enough logs to build Atul’s workshop!) My own notional machine of my mind body conjures gushier platelets. Like a pre-cum immured into being across a white plane with a left-to-right, slightly downward stroke of a palette knife squishing a wave of paint across a plain surface. I love the way paint breaks. How air bubbles create a torn moon surface. Within this mode perhaps I’m become dabs and waves. Uneven, partial, preparation for art, art substance, also a soothing transitioning item from globular mound to wave. So that’s why it’s hard to feel broke, or whatever the reverse, some architectural rebar. Nonetheless, the near-tears I felt at the invocation of brokenness are a clear indication that the door has been shut on joy before.

\n", "date_published": "2024-05-20T07:34:17-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2024/05/20/seung-sahns-dropping.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/12/03/the-kind-of.html", "title": "The kind of extro, outside RItual coffee on Valencia", "content_html": "

Being around people\nBenching just outside the coffee shop\nHeads pointing down\nTalking\nTap clink\nPassersby entering and exiting\nEntering and exiting is the point

\n", "date_published": "2024-04-16T14:45:28-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/12/03/the-kind-of.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2024/03/24/171815.html", "title": "Machinery: Eva Hesse, her machinery", "content_html": "\"\"\n\"\"\n", "date_published": "2024-03-24T18:18:15-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2024/03/24/171815.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2024/03/04/from-amy-kurzweil.html", "title": "From Amy Kurzweil at The Ruby in San Francisco on February 29th, 2024", "content_html": "

The room was cold. The light a little caustic. Acoustics wan. From the back row I had to squirm to the side to see Kurzweil’s full face. Like 17 people there, maybe? Intimate, secret, and in on it. Rugged cool!

\n

“Paper is pleasurable.”

\n

“My life for a while was in pages.”

\n

“My visual secret is that all my characters look like me.”

\n", "date_published": "2024-03-04T17:33:31-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2024/03/04/from-amy-kurzweil.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2024/02/20/two-drinks-max.html", "title": "Two drinks max or else", "content_html": "

The bartender at Berreta is asking if I like bitterness and I answer yes.\nAt this point I’m open to interpretation and open to interpretations.\nI get Cynar, a hefty portmanteau that smoothes out my technologies of resistance across the bar plane.\nAn incubation space for monsters.\nTo the right of my glass, an open challah bag is a gaping hole.

\n", "date_published": "2024-02-20T14:32:52-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2024/02/20/two-drinks-max.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2024/02/04/sunday-prayer-before.html", "title": "Sunday Prayer before heading to altitude", "content_html": "

Saying no to Lucy Ives everywhere and hitchhiking Leather Blvd. sipping cool aid

\n

Kita anak-anak keren

\n", "date_published": "2024-02-04T17:54:03-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2024/02/04/sunday-prayer-before.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2024/01/24/hangry.html", "title": "Hangry", "content_html": "

Can you eat here
\nCan you get food here
\nI can get food here
\nI will get food here
\nThis place is too expensive for you
\nI will eat at this place
\nThere is another food for you over there

\n", "date_published": "2024-01-24T08:47:35-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2024/01/24/hangry.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2024/01/24/excuses.html", "title": "Relationships in this economy", "content_html": "

“I didn’t realize what we had.”

\n

He couldn’t see from the view, from within his stomach. His nerves are too high.

\n

Well, brother, you work full-time; overtime, frequently, because it’s only a five-day work week. Your hands are full cutting a path through what the racists made today.

\n

And brother, your Yeezies are barely scuffing the stacked monomers. Where did you come from? There are dicks the size of city blocks clouding your view. Same-day tsukumogami are drilled into the soil and rock and you trip on them.

\n

You weren’t taught to realize her/they from the muscles between your shoulder blades, reaching behind you to turn it around, reaching in all four directions like a somaticist. Need I remind you that we only had one chance to spin the title track. (Ascenseur pour l’échafaud). You barely perceived the record pops, blocked from view. And the time that remained didn’t leave us one breath to talk about the sound before the rich were on the ballot again.

\n

Written at the kitchen counter. My overcooked omelette lays on the cutting board. The sangha relaxing down into the sunrise and into memory.

\n", "date_published": "2024-01-24T08:46:31-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2024/01/24/excuses.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/12/13/modern-cities-are.html", "title": "Modern cities are inhuman: Vol 1", "content_html": "
\"\"

A post shared by Samantha Sophia (@raisingself)

\n", "date_published": "2023-12-13T10:57:48-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/12/13/modern-cities-are.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/12/04/le-guin-on.html", "title": "Le Guin on write what you know", "content_html": "\"\"\n", "date_published": "2023-12-04T10:18:24-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/12/04/le-guin-on.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/12/04/i-slept-pretty.html", "title": "I slept pretty well last night", "content_html": "\"\"\n\"\"\n

\"\"

\n", "date_published": "2023-12-04T10:11:41-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/12/04/i-slept-pretty.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/11/14/book-review-event.html", "title": "Book review: Event Factory", "content_html": "\"Event\n

I’m not sure how far Gladman’s fantastic Ravickian worlding has spread beyond cottage literary, artistic, and critical conclaves. She reached me by way of Lucy Ives' article on the “weak novel” (after listening to Ives on a BISR’s podcast paneling the same topic). (I’ve since bought almost every book Ives mentions in this article; I’m on a rapid tour of postmodern anti-novels.)

\n

I’m curious who would fancy this book. I loved it. But I love a good ontological drift through space-time. Are we meant to be reading the artifactual record of the protagonist’s survey? Nope. Maybe? This isn’t the same kind of world-inhabiting, context-laden ethnography that frequents the beginnings of book parts and chapters in sci-fi and fantasy volumes. Well, perhaps it is a long opener as the first of many books.

\n

What feels most real is that Gladman’s text is constantly in question.

\n

Dorothy (the publisher) leaves far too much margin.

\n

The story can hardly get going since getting past “Hello” is nearly impossible. It’s some kind of language issue. But also architectural, since the built world is in some kind of crisis or revolution. Something really bad is happening on Ravicka, and we don’t get enough for a complete analysis. What’s maddening is that the locals seem to brush it off. But it’s not a total wash in the yellow. There are wonderfully concrete and vivid moments of the Ravickian world. It’s not simply abstract for abstract’s fancy. There are stakes here for Gladman. That’s what makes this anti-novel of sorts hard to dismiss. We oscillate between a strong foothold and floatation. Personally I find it seductive-enough.

\n

Is Ravicka even a faraway planet at all? Could other worlds be close, not worlds away?

\n

There are also gestures that feel fresh and exciting, partly because they are given so much room. Is this record incomplete? Were parts intentionally left out? Were they lost? Did they never happen? Sex with strangers. Music is important. Underground civilizations. Dancing is important to speak. Writhing to speak. Unlikely inter-species/cultural collaborations. Going to and waking from sleep. Sleep is important. Obvious love lost, longing. A book that de-centers the written and spoken word, somehow, while concerned with it and the slippage of translation; including awkward encounters with native speakers and their disinterest. Gladman’s person is put through tenderness and saddening separation with every encounter.

\n

This is a small book that you cannot breeze through. But it is pleasure book bound.

\n

Reproduced from Bookwyrm

\n", "date_published": "2023-11-14T14:24:27-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/11/14/book-review-event.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/11/14/book-review-the.html", "title": "Book review: The Hospital Ship", "content_html": "\"The\n

Bax evades a typically satisfying narrative arc for recondite reprints of medical texts and war-time dispatches/memoir peppered among a minor smatter of pro forma obligations to a novel about people surviving large-scale tragedy. But readers should consider this as a book at play with the conventional. Albeit a spirited one. All aboard.

\n

I suspect this is will be either a quick read for you, or you’ll drop it quickly into the gift bin. When the story pokes through the fog of secondary material, you enjoin the nerved doings of hospital staff aboard a large vessel skirting the edge of some broad-spectrum of disaster. The healing process for the ship’s patients, the interpersonal affairs of the staff, an encounter with counter-cultural politicos that attempt to take the ship as a commune.

\n

Aspects of this world on the verge will feel familiar to the overwhelm of our the early 21st century. This makes the Hospital Ship more timeless than not. It’s impossible to determine if the catastrophe(s) are manmade or other, viral, psychological, climate, war, …. A world in crises, multiple, unknowable crises converging – autism in children, mass crucifixions, general depopulation.

\n

Scenes of sex and sexuality are numbered in this book. The fleshiness, cigarette smoking, feels well-situated to the 70s. Some second wave feminism woven through; although I felt it was oddly (perhaps lazily) retrofitted in the form of Sheila’s brief, monochromatic biography. Kinda shoved in there. I’m not convinced Bax was pushing the subject of women’s lib radically, at least any more radically than mainstream Leftism of the time. But maybe that’s part of the play – what is the correct rousing politics in the face of amorphous, multi-faced threat.

\n

The fleshiness ages ok, although a bit trite and verging on cringey because the character perspective is always cis-dude. Was the narration of a Vietnamese prostitute healing, with literal sex, a former Wall St. banker stuck in a psychological malaise a refreshing take? prosaic? satire? for the times? I’m not enough of a comp lit scholar to understand the context. How, Euan, the main character, erratically responds to the process of intimacy and sex working it’s magic is fun. Especially as the book explores his difficulty with achieving lasting, satisfying sex and love with Sheila.

\n

Overall enough intrigue as an example of early postmodern sci-fi, still-relevant themes, certainly a romp of prose. But not for everyone, I suppose.

\n

Reproduced from Bookwyrm

\n", "date_published": "2023-11-14T12:32:31-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/11/14/book-review-the.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/11/12/collected-turns-of.html", "title": "Collected turns of phrase, totally incomplete ", "content_html": "

“wish embroidering” - Eugene Lim, Dear Cyborgs

\n

“the air quicken before rain” - Robert Glück, Margery Kempe

\n

“His ears and tongue felt carbonated” - Samuel Delaney, Trouble on Triton

\n

“The sunset came intrepid I remember like a trousseau of butter rats running in the wheat” - Caren Beilin, Spain

\n

“the newt part of the twenties” - Caren Beilin, Spain

\n", "date_published": "2023-11-12T09:49:40-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/11/12/collected-turns-of.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/11/10/i-watched-easter.html", "content_html": "

I watched Eastern Promises last night and this morning
\nAnd Donnie Brasco
\nAnd The Departed
\nBefore

\n", "date_published": "2023-11-10T13:39:29-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/11/10/i-watched-easter.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/11/03/113800.html", "title": "City Pop (Vibes) Immaculate Delusions", "content_html": "\"Richard\n

It’s a bizarre aesthetic and rhetorical leap from Richard Mayhew’s Delusions to the similar strong chromas, hues, and deep values of Japanese City Pop album art. But how many colors are there in the world. Every visit to SFMOMA I drift to Mayhew. Into his drives, spirals, through landscape that “reclaims the wilderness for the dispossessed” for indigenous and Black planetary citizens, family. Paint deluge over the prospector. Disrupted manifest logic which makes way for the land to announce itself. It’s wild how this painting ushers your gaze forward and back.

\n

But onward to Just Enough™️ aesthetic relativity for my mental leap and a drift through space-time.

\n

\"Kimiko\"Masaki\"Taeko\"Taeko\"Taeko\"Taeko\"Taeko\"Taeko\"Kikuchi\"Kikuchi\"Takako\"Tomoko

\n", "date_published": "2023-11-03T11:38:00-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/11/03/113800.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/11/02/rentfree-jazz.html", "title": "Jazz Vol. 1", "content_html": "

\"Album\"Album\"Album\"Album\"Album

\n", "date_published": "2023-11-02T05:57:35-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/11/02/rentfree-jazz.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/10/26/what-other-optimisms.html", "content_html": "\n

What other optimisms lie in wait on the Enterprise NCC-1701-D?

\n", "date_published": "2023-10-26T13:14:02-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/10/26/what-other-optimisms.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/10/25/just-discovered-sun.html", "content_html": "

Just discovered Sun Ra’s recording at Haverford College, 1980. The story of this record is bonkers.

\n

Students running concert series book jazz after previous acts flop - the Talking Heads! (Elvis Costello was also booked but cancelled after said flop) 🤦.

\n

Ra appears suddenly after cancelling two weeks prior. The only available piano is an electric Fender Rhodes. Ra fiddles around on the spot backstage.

\n

Resulting performance is mesmerizing, chill, masterful.

\n

www.inquirer.com/entertain…

\n

#sunra

\n", "date_published": "2023-10-25T08:19:35-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/10/25/just-discovered-sun.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2023/07/13/alt-text-but.html", "title": "Abolish The Family by Sophie Lewis", "content_html": "

But uh oh those summer nights.\nRight on the heels of a transformative family weekend!\nWhen Theo laughs, the world is a single flower.\nWhat is your family’s pronoun?\nAre the flower and Theo the same or different?

\n", "date_published": "2023-07-13T20:21:59-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2023/07/13/alt-text-but.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2022/12/01/bringing-back-sweet.html", "content_html": "

Bringing back sweet memories. Atmospheric pressure. La lluvia frames colored paint.

\n

The real miracle is how long Chevron kept the oil burning. Rise Judea.

\n

Upcycled hellenism is my streetwear idolatry. Labneh and cacao soda; another probiotic day with a credit score!

\n\"It's\n", "date_published": "2022-12-01T09:23:09-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2022/12/01/bringing-back-sweet.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2022/05/01/summer-lewks-leaked.html", "content_html": "

Summer lewks leaked. Sunscreen is a conspiracy, cover up with a shirt or heavy layer of clay. I want to be a bird.

\n

Humans have become meh.

\n

Go lay down.

\n

I want to read space operas with shopping and hair braiding and tea.

\n

Life is maintenance. If you live with others make sure to balance the house contributions equitably. Make a plan! Index cards can help.

\n", "date_published": "2022-05-01T05:34:00-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2022/05/01/summer-lewks-leaked.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2022/04/20/with-each-new.html", "content_html": "

With each new day it doesn’t rain I lose hope about the future of our species.\nI have a good performance review this week.\nAdding some lemon juice and gojuchang to this breakfast soup was CORRECT.

\n

The slap heard round the world is LAPD riot cops descending on climate scientists in battle armor.\nFuck the police.\nWe must stop them.

\n

Coding adapters for payment gateways is also not so easy!\nI’m in love with programming books that have a smooth narrative arch.\nDescribe the problem in all its complexity, with many dash of subjectivity.\nThere’s not right way! Only what’s CORRECT.

\n", "date_published": "2022-04-20T05:33:00-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2022/04/20/with-each-new.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2020/11/08/reading-my-streaming.html", "title": "Reading my streaming fancies with Le Guin's Carrier Bag of Fiction", "content_html": "\"180124\nWhy do I have such a big attraction to teen fictions (like _Never Have I Ever_)? For a while I've been thinking it was the force of a stream, a soak, a wash of saudade made lighter by revisiting that time from a better place; a chance to relive with empathy for myself, to reclaim that time from the incapacitating fear of being vulnerable, navigating _coolness_ in the 80s/90s (a now more mainstreamed cultural topic since all storytellers are approaching their strength ~40). The journeys of these post-modern (mostly young women) protagonists through insecurity, heartbreak, the web of complex material and digital norms and hegemonies; the care they find for themselves and other people, with other people, emerging whole-enough with their collective--family/friend/mentor nexus; learning to survive the patriarchal-colonial system, becoming disloyal, anti-heroes. It's all a differing sort of story from the \"prick tale\", where the Man-hero takes up arms against foe, real or imagined, creates the world in his vision; fealty to a cause which is his own desire-machine; the desire of the First Man he has inherited through callused, painfully tight handshakes through time.\n

But the feel-good feel goes beyond. I think something bold happens in these stories.

\n

I’m a bit new to Le Guin’s project of composting our myths but you can’t help but feel new sanguine cultural flow from the advanced logo-ero she develops in The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction.

\n

If I am allowed a primitive literary-criticism gloss. What is picked up along the way: the misinformation and guidance from elders (both useful to (re)combining a new narrative of self), the wrought learnings from misfired expressions of need (for “boys”, peer acceptance, spiritual stability), the new kinds of love from parents and friends that evolve from changing circumstances. It seems especially apparent in the serials. Each episode there’s a satisfying build, a paced emergence that’s lovely because the wins are not blood-soaked triumphs. Transitions, evolutions, forks, back-tracks, shifting winds, climbs, descents; it’s a kind of Sunday hike through the woods with the Fellowship of the Ring in peacetime. Not the “linear, progressive, Time’s-(killing)-arrow mode of the Techno-Heroic” (Even the fantastical dragon time appropriations of Percy Jackson still fit the prick), but story that describes “what is in fact going on, what people actually do and feel, how people relate to everthing else in this vast sack, this belly of the universe, this womb of things to be and tomb of things that were, this unending story.” Unending…but not Neverending. (Though perhaps a re-reading of Bastian’s adventures is due now that I’m starting to finally put things into this sack (of a blog).)

\n

Motherland: Fort Salem and Cobra Kai kinda fucks with all this too. Prick tales recast and modulated are problematic. They can be awesome and interesting because they don’t totally abandon tete-a-tete action (which, when crafted through martial arts is personally gripping (especially for an amateur artist of the martial myself)); and yet, these imaginative alternate worlds and thoughtful respun contemporaries can still carry out seditious ploys. Maybe we can think about Motherland and Cobra Kai straddling prick tale and carrier bags as tactics and technologies of xenofeminist adaptations, calibrations, speculations that transform through “seeping, directed subsumption”; since there is no pure refuge from patriarchy and eyeballs of grief-stricken viewers, anyway. Liminal bacteria waved through by situated materialist praxis. I couldn’t reject Cobra Kai whole cloth despite much of the character development of the teens is wrought through pugilisms (everyone literally joins a dojo); it’s softenings and care for men feels valuable when toxic masculinity runs rampant in the culture. Also, I wonder about the dojo. The split lips and bruises that result from Johnny’s tough, mangled love create openings; the kids can take more; take in more; become spacious (punching) bags. Face hits could be a technology of transformation when there are limited options for situated emergence in the hyperreal suburban desert of early 21st century SoCal. How big of a purse do we have here??

\n
\n

The immune system, rather than being imagined as a force of protective soldiers made by the host, can be thought of as a group of passport control agents and bouncers. They know who to let in and who to keep out–and they have learned this through millions of years of evolution.

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Delighting in teen fiction is not a trifle. “It matters what worlds world worlds,” reminds Haraway. And of course, a most important reminder from Le Guin, lest we believe the prick tales (which, if they are not careful, could cause major issues like exponential inequality, and/or loss of ecological balance): “People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons. From within.”

\n", "date_published": "2020-10-04T01:00:00-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2020/11/08/reading-my-streaming.html", "tags": ["poetry"] }, { "id": "http://internetross.micro.blog/2020/11/07/the-awkwardsness-of.html", "title": "The awkwardness of downloading concurrent, asynchronous academic threads around 2003/4", "content_html": "\"A\nHalfway through _Companions in Conversation_ and I'm having this memory of being in college -- clacking away code points on the cheap silicons of a Micron computer -- practicing new knowledges in my class essays just like Haraway admits while writing the _Cyborg Manifesto_: \"trying out some of the knowledges that hadn’t been mine that I was getting from my colleagues _[professors (in my case)]_ and the graduate students in the program.\" I remember deploying the token \"implosion.\" I probably got it from Haraway.\n

And yet – perhaps a small singe of regret in my tummy neuronics, and deja vu – this word play was happening while I was coming to grips with the nightmare material of Black and Brown people in America through black feminist and black feminist incarceration studies. Our class journaled, and so I produced heartbroken journaling about the new Jim Crow (before Michelle Alexander would be able to corrupt the nation), taking some liberties with text. I wonder, now, if the linguistic turns in those reflections foreclosed, too soon, real collaborative feeling; like community (or, because it’s hard to resist, kinship and worlding). All these students toiling away in separate rooms and library cublices, synthesizing separately. Autopoietic onanisms. Needed more sympoiesis. I still regret a final project that was a bit too stylistic and “discursive” – performing the film student, trying to dazzle a little with Final Cut Pro; but some good calories lost. The art folks I admired made it hard for me to distinguish between medium and message, or situate with them with grace. (Not that Haraway was successful for everyone. But she kept playing whilst under the microscope.) I’m remembering a kind of safe feeling in postructuralism. But perhaps that was just the safety of academia which easily postpones praxis and doing something while chatting in the corridors of monuments to robber barons. Because, like, I’m also remembering that the materiality was a welcome call to action. Perhaps I wielded it – some subconscious desire for participation in activist and join movement(s) for climate, economic, gender, racial justice – as an antidote to the fist two years of cultural studies and dorm-chair politics. It’s hard to remember exactly if I was that wise; maybe the blunt horrors of the Bush regime’s colonialism/imperialism was enough of a catalytic flow through the student bodies progressive consciousness.

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Still, interesting to wonder, now, about the concurrent postructural deluge of neologisms and deconstructing of gender, race, class oppressions, cyborg multiplicities back then; while faced with newly understood, centuries old urgencies of white supremacist capitalist patriarchy and Black holocaust. I’m at the same place now, returned, recurred. Which is somewhat shocking and all too expected in America.

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That said, the second time around, considering how Haraway’s work traveled and continues to travel in the last 15-20 years, I’m excited to be hailed again, thinking with her. While moving duckets to organizing, talking to white brothers about racism. Worlding assemblages seems really relevant still as the complexes of racial capitalism and white psychosis have become wider, deeper, and more micronic.

\n", "date_published": "2020-08-30T01:00:00-07:00", "url": "https://internetross.space/2020/11/07/the-awkwardsness-of.html", "tags": ["poetry"] } ] }