selfportrait collage; presented on the 2018 individual exhebition O Meu Nome é um Eco (My Name is an Echo), set on the association Acrenarmo, Leiria, Portugal.
Making Mistakes & Enjoying Stress! #Characterisation
Have you ever noticed how some people experience emotion outwardly, and others inwardly?
I noticed this most recently as a parent, supporting my son and daughter through important exams. One of them took exams as cool as a cucumber, the other almost threw up with nerves, though I knew both of them felt the pressure equally.
It brought back memories of taking exams myself. I was an…
before you know about women, you hear that you do not need to love the man, just that you need to love him through his manhood. which is to say you have seen the future painted in lamb's blood over your eyes - how your mother shoots you a look about your father's inability to cook right. how your aunt holds her wineglass and says i'm gonna kill em. men, right! how your best friend bickers with her boyfriend, how she says i can't help it. i come back to him.
you learn: men are gonna cheat. men aren't going to listen when you're talking, because you're nagging. men think emotions are stupid. they think your life is vapid and your hobbies are embarrassing. men will slam things, but that's because men are allowed to be angry. if you get loud, you're hysterical. if a man gets loud - well, men are animals, men are dogs, men can't control their hands or their eyes or their bodies. they're going to make a snide comment about you in the locker room, about your body, about how you're so fucking annoying. you're going to give him kids, and he will give you the money for the kids, and you're going to be running the house 24/7 - but he gets to relax after a long day, because his job is stressful. the man is on stage, and is a comedian, and says "women!"
and you are supposed to love that. you are supposed to love men through how horrible they are to you - because that's what women do. that's what good women do. wife material. your father even told you once - it'll make sense when you're older. it was like staring down a very lonely tunnel.
it feels like something's caught in your throat, but it's all you know, so. it's okay that you see sex as a necessary tool, a sort of okay-enough ritual to keep him happy, even though he doesn't seem to care about happiness as-applied-to you. it is relationship upkeep. it is kissing him and smiling even though he didn't brush his teeth. it is getting on your knees and looking up and holding back a sigh because he barely holds you as you panic through the night. it's not like the sex is bad and you do like feeling wanted. and besides! he's a man! like... they're another species. you'll never be able to actually communicate, right. he isn't listening.
you just don't get it. you don't feel that sense of i'm gonna climb him like a tree. mostly it just feels fucking exhausting. you play the part perfectly. you smile and nod and are "effortlessly" charming. and it's fine! it's alright! you even love him, if you're looking. you could have good life, and a good family, and perfectly happy.
in the late night you google: am i broken. you google i'm not attracted to my husband. you google i get turned on by books but not by him. you google how to get better in bed.
the first time he yells at you, it almost feels like blankness. like - of course this is happening. this is always how it was going to end up. men get angry, and they yell, and you sit there in silence.
you mention it to your friend - just the once - while you're drunk. she shrugs and says it's like that with me too, i just try to forget and move on. men are always gonna hear what they want to. pick your battles and say sorry even though he's in the wrong. you play solitaire online for a month. you go to your therapist appointment and preach about how you're both so in love.
after all, you have a future to want. nobody lied about it - how many instagram posts say marriage is hard. say real love takes work. say we fight like cats and dogs but the best part is that we always make up. how many of your friends say happy anniversary to the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. if you really loved him - loved yourself too - you'd accept that men are just different from you.
the first time she kisses you, it's on a dare at a party. something large and terrifying whips through your body. you wake up sweating from dreams where her mouth is encrusted with pearls and you pick them off one by one with your teeth. fuck. you sit at the computer and your almost-finished game of sim city. you think about your potential perfect life and your potential future family. you google am i gay quiz with your little hands shaking.
you delete each letter slowly. you don't need to love him. you just need to keep going.
the stress of everyday life is overriding my sense of humanity again so i am once again playing "everyone's first day" to readjust my empathy levels. the rules are simple: for every stranger i interact with, i pretend it's their first day at their job. it makes me appreciate how much tacit knowledge everyone around me has learned and applies, and imagining how they fared in the beginning - how i would have fared - makes me see everyone as a singular person full of life experience again instead of an environment i fight my way through. the coffee shop employee making my order makes it quickly despite a huge menu, its impressive they memorised that on their first day. the bus driver gets us there safely and memorised all the routes and still nods at me in approval, and that's all on his first day! and the person who ran into me without apologizing is just in a hurry, wouldn't wanna be late on their first day. and after a while, you realize that all that is still true on a second day or the hundredth, and even if you give up the pretense the forgiveness stays. try it some time!
[IMAGE ID: A tweet by “minh tâm h. 🌾 on concrete” @HAEDRAULICS on Apr 20: “everything everywhere all at once had me writing down english class notes in the theatre” with two drawings of sets of two nested circles, one black with a white center, one white with a black center. They are respectively labeled, “the bagel (yin) // -life is mostly dull and bad // -joy is fleeting and ultimately meaningless” and, “the googly eye (yang) // -life is mostly good and worthwhile // suffering is transient and fixable” END ID]
like. okay i’m in bandom and like the only people that consistently talk about the women here are all. lesbians. or the feminists here for riot grrrl. but like. for every post about laura jane grace there are one thousand about gerard way. for every post about hayley williams there are one million about frank iero. and when a post goes around about women you can bet there are people in the tags talking about ls dunes and pete wentz and it’s like. fine cool. but Also.
The Restless Pravasi Liberal Must Gaze Inwards and Not at the Mother Country Alone
The Restless Pravasi Liberal Must Gaze Inwards and Not at the Mother Country Alone
The Restless Pravasi Liberal Must Gaze Inwards and Not at the Mother Country Alone
In a recent op-ed published in the Washington Post, Arvind Subramanian has berated India’s liberals for not upholding principle. He has chosen four incidents to make his case. These are the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the hijab controversy in Karnataka, the film The Kashmir Files, and the US-led sanctions on…