Erica Rivera

writer, editor, artist 🏳️‍⚧️

length: 50 words

content/trigger warning: references to settler colonialism and suicidal ideation



















Like sticky notes you might leave around the house:

“Move car by 11”

“Drs appt Wed 1pm”

“Beware the company u keep”

“Who told u martyrdom was it”

“Talent = colonial instrument”

It's good to have a trail of breadcrumbs to follow, to lead you home when you are lost.


















length: 32 images


























zoomed-in photo of a blue second-story window, stacks of books piled on the sill, taken through a lattice of branches and leaves. taken near the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023, on a bright, sunny day.zoomed-in photo of a blue second-story window, stacks of books piled on the sill, taken through a lattice of branches and leaves. taken near the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023, on a bright, sunny day.

























night shot of some street in robledo off of Highland Street, the street sign on the left edge of the frame. flash illuminates the asphalt in the foreground which darkens and yellows into the distance under scattered streetlights and silhouettes of palm trees. taken near the robledo art, strike headquarters, february 2023.night shot of some street in robledo off of Highland Street, the street sign on the left edge of the frame. flash illuminates the asphalt in the foreground which darkens and yellows into the distance under scattered streetlights and silhouettes of palm trees. taken near the robledo art, strike headquarters, february 2023.

























photo, top-down, of a wooden plank on which sits something sculpted, yellow and cross-hatched and curved, a green tear-shaped jewel encrusted at right, above a cutout reading, "(6) IDENTITY LABELS In war you should carry about with you your name and address clearly written. This should be on an envelope, card or luggage label, not on some odd piece of paper easily lost. In the case of children a label should be fastened, e.g. sewn, on to their clothes, in such a way that it will not readily become detached." under the plank an assortment of zines and books. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters in february 2023.photo, top-down, of a wooden plank on which sits something sculpted, yellow and cross-hatched and curved, a green tear-shaped jewel encrusted at right, above a cutout reading, “(6) IDENTITY LABELS In war you should carry about with you your name and address clearly written. This should be on an envelope, card or luggage label, not on some odd piece of paper easily lost. In the case of children a label should be fastened, e.g. sewn, on to their clothes, in such a way that it will not readily become detached.” under the plank an assortment of zines and books. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters in february 2023.

























photo of a wooden plank, curved at left, black disc off of the right. on the plank, yellow rectangle post-its reading (from top to bottom), "check all emails", "TRIPLE CHECK NAMES!", "MOM CLASS", "CAR BY 11", "invoice for alks". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of a wooden plank, curved at left, black disc off of the right. on the plank, yellow rectangle post-its reading (from top to bottom), “check all emails”, “TRIPLE CHECK NAMES!”, “MOM CLASS”, “CAR BY 11”, “invoice for alks”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























close-up photo of the middle of the spines of six books, the second reads "Was Your Plag", the fourth reads "the new trans erotic EDITED BY T", the fifth "oria Law and China Martens". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.close-up photo of the middle of the spines of six books, the second reads “Was Your Plag”, the fourth reads “the new trans erotic EDITED BY T”, the fifth “oria Law and China Martens”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























close-up photo of pill bottles, a small bottle that reads "RESTORE CANNABIS WHOLE FLOW DOCTOR FORMULA 3:1 CBD-RICH Net Wt. 30 mL / 1.0 fl oz", and in the background, a box that reads "Albuterol Sulfate HFA". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.close-up photo of pill bottles, a small bottle that reads “RESTORE CANNABIS WHOLE FLOW DOCTOR FORMULA 3:1 CBD-RICH Net Wt. 30 mL / 1.0 fl oz”, and in the background, a box that reads “Albuterol Sulfate HFA”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























photo of a black Rhodia notebook next to a stack of books, spines partially visible, the top one reading "AN ABOLITIONIST'S", the second "Reinfurt A \*New\* Program", the third "WARRIOR PRINCESSES STRIKE BACK". AirPods Pro in the background beside a bag of binder clips. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of a black Rhodia notebook next to a stack of books, spines partially visible, the top one reading “AN ABOLITIONIST'S”, the second “Reinfurt A *New* Program”, the third “WARRIOR PRINCESSES STRIKE BACK”. AirPods Pro in the background beside a bag of binder clips. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























close-up photo of an open black glasses case with red Ray-Ban eyeglasses sitting inside, next to a bunch of crumpled Post-Its with writing on them, a few words legible: "to those in... out fold", "Stripe", "1. edit all in". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.close-up photo of an open black glasses case with red Ray-Ban eyeglasses sitting inside, next to a bunch of crumpled Post-Its with writing on them, a few words legible: “to those in... out fold”, “Stripe”, “1. edit all in”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

photo of a bunch of pens, mechanical pencils, and a pink highlighter on a red tableclothed desk, across from a black desk atop which sits a box of #10 security envelopes. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of a bunch of pens, mechanical pencils, and a pink highlighter on a red tableclothed desk, across from a black desk atop which sits a box of #10 security envelopes. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























close-up photo of a yellow-orange surface, atop which sits a stack of ReadyPost 99-cent shipping labels and a baby blue sheet that reads "45TH IN A SERIES". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.close-up photo of a yellow-orange surface, atop which sits a stack of ReadyPost 99-cent shipping labels and a baby blue sheet that reads “45TH IN A SERIES”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























close-up photo of stacks of paper wrapped in covering that reads, from top to bottom: "Premium Plus Photo Paper", "PHOTO PAPER", "cop", "& print". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.close-up photo of stacks of paper wrapped in covering that reads, from top to bottom: “Premium Plus Photo Paper”, “PHOTO PAPER”, “cop”, “& print”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























close-up photo of the spines of ten books, most words on them visible, from top to bottom: "MOORCOCK THE END OF ALL SON", "SIMPSON AS WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE", "Now The Invisible Committee", "To Our Friends The Invisible Committee", "WILLIAMS BIZUP Style Lessons in Clarity and Grace Eleventh Editi", "AN ALIEN HEAT Moorcock", "HE HOLLOWS LANDS MOORCOCK", "italo calvino If on a winter's night a traveler", "The Modern Arabic Short Story Mohammad Shaheen Second Edition", "The Norton Anthology of LITERATURE BY WOMEN ECOND EDITION andra M. Gilbert Susan Gubar". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.close-up photo of the spines of ten books, most words on them visible, from top to bottom: “MOORCOCK THE END OF ALL SON”, “SIMPSON AS WE HAVE ALWAYS DONE”, “Now The Invisible Committee”, “To Our Friends The Invisible Committee”, “WILLIAMS BIZUP Style Lessons in Clarity and Grace Eleventh Editi”, “AN ALIEN HEAT Moorcock”, “HE HOLLOWS LANDS MOORCOCK”, “italo calvino If on a winter's night a traveler”, “The Modern Arabic Short Story Mohammad Shaheen Second Edition”, “The Norton Anthology of LITERATURE BY WOMEN ECOND EDITION andra M. Gilbert Susan Gubar”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























photo of a wall, sun flare at the top-right corner above a book with the spine reading "OSAMU", a LED string light handing down the middle of the frame, plastic red flowers on brown branches at bottom-right, one of them reaching across the frame and leaning against a pink book that reads, on the back, at the top, "A Naked Singularity tells the story of Casi...". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of a wall, sun flare at the top-right corner above a book with the spine reading “OSAMU”, a LED string light handing down the middle of the frame, plastic red flowers on brown branches at bottom-right, one of them reaching across the frame and leaning against a pink book that reads, on the back, at the top, “A Naked Singularity tells the story of Casi...”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























close-up photo of two black-and-white zines, one cover an illustration of two people sitting on a dock talking and smiling, one with a cap, the other with glasses and a flannel, the part of the title in frame reading, "LEA GOOD CO", the other zine's cover three repeating frames of an illustrated bearded figure wearing suspenders and a bowtie falling after being hit with a starburst beside, the second and third starbursts with words inside: "FUCK ABUSE", "KILL POWER". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.close-up photo of two black-and-white zines, one cover an illustration of two people sitting on a dock talking and smiling, one with a cap, the other with glasses and a flannel, the part of the title in frame reading, “LEA GOOD CO”, the other zine's cover three repeating frames of an illustrated bearded figure wearing suspenders and a bowtie falling after being hit with a starburst beside, the second and third starbursts with words inside: “FUCK ABUSE”, “KILL POWER”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























close-up photo of a stack of four books and a zine on a red tableclothed desk, the bottom one aquamarine with the spine reading "ARCHAIA", the next one mint green, the next purple with a black dust jacket, on the spine a yellow canary, the letters "ALINE" visible, the top book with only a white-outlined sun visible, on top of that a red zine, and on top of that a stack of papers with the words "Erica Rivera 3:17 PM" at bottom-right on the top sheet. leaning on the stack is an assortment of papers. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.close-up photo of a stack of four books and a zine on a red tableclothed desk, the bottom one aquamarine with the spine reading “ARCHAIA”, the next one mint green, the next purple with a black dust jacket, on the spine a yellow canary, the letters “ALINE” visible, the top book with only a white-outlined sun visible, on top of that a red zine, and on top of that a stack of papers with the words “Erica Rivera 3:17 PM” at bottom-right on the top sheet. leaning against the stack is an assortment of papers. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























photo of a white wall on which are taped two glossy sheets, one with a two-panel comic, the first panel a POV shot of a dark-skinned woman's feet in shallow water, text at bottom reads, "WE OPEN DOORS", the second panel the same woman standing at the shore of an ocean framed by cliffs with houses on them and a blue-orange sky with giant clouds, an old sailing ship in the background, text at top reading "WE REMEMBER WHAT WE LOVED." underneath, a small black-and-white illustration, black background, a light-skinned woman with white hair holding a baseball bat with nails in it, sitting on a bike with a flag on back that says "SILVER SPROCKET". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of a white wall on which are taped two glossy sheets, one with a two-panel comic, the first panel a POV shot of a dark-skinned woman's feet in shallow water, text at bottom reads, “WE OPEN DOORS”, the second panel the same woman standing at the shore of an ocean framed by cliffs with houses on them and a blue-orange sky with giant clouds, an old sailing ship in the background, text at top reading “WE REMEMBER WHAT WE LOVED.” underneath, a small black-and-white illustration, black background, a light-skinned woman with white hair holding a baseball bat with nails in it, sitting on a bike with a flag on back that says “SILVER SPROCKET”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























photo of two large canvasses, the top corners visible, the left canvas with dark green and brown streaks, and the letters "e sun" in yellow and "N" and "TAN" in red, the right canvas with the letters "CAPI", "NATI", and "STA" in yellow letters with green outlines, the same letters in red behind, offset. hanging over the canvasses is a blue string attached to a silver celebratory balloon. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of two large canvases, the top corners visible, the left canvas with dark green and brown streaks, and the letters “e sun” in yellow and “N” and “TAN” in red, the right canvas with the letters “CAPI”, “NATI”, and “STA” in yellow letters with green outlines, the same letters in red behind, offset. hanging over the canvases is a blue string attached to a silver celebratory balloon. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























close-up photo of a stack of canvasses, one with a cut-out with the words "BEST OF DESIGN" taped to it, lifting off the canvas, a ringed notebook with an obscured painting and stack of paper on top. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.close-up photo of a stack of canvases, one with a cut-out with the words “BEST OF DESIGN” taped to it, lifting off the canvas, a ringed notebook with an obscured painting and stack of paper on top. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























close-up photo of two shoes, one white with pink lettering, "asics", the other pink with the letter "N" in black and yellow. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.close-up photo of two shoes, one white with pink lettering, “asics”, the other pink with the letter “N” in black and yellow. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























photo of an empty printer box, Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4833, with empty bags and boxes stacked on top, beside a black folding chair with a white cushion, next to a brown plastic trash can with a latticed top. a black jacket with differently colored bananas on a chair in the foreground above something white and fluffy. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of an empty printer box, Epson WorkForce Pro WF-4833, with empty bags and boxes stacked on top, beside a black folding chair with a white cushion, next to a brown plastic trash can with a latticed top. a black jacket with differently colored bananas on a chair in the foreground above something white and fluffy. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























top-down close-up photo of a white fan, a black bag in the far background with notebook paper in it. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.top-down close-up photo of a white fan, a black bag in the far background with notebook paper in it. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























top-down photo of a black surface chipped in several places to reveal a brown material, a few drops of liquid scattered across the center, various stickers affixed to it. visible letters: at top-left, "OMOSEXUAL DENCIES", at top-right, a sunburst with the center cut out, a red rectangle reading "HELPFIGHTHIV", a white rectangle with the letters "TR Z R" beneath a shield shape. bottom-right, a pale yellow business card for DON'T FRET, an instrument shop; bottom-left a stack of papers, only the words "English" and "Update" readable. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.top-down photo of a black surface chipped in several places to reveal a brown material, a few drops of liquid scattered across the center, various stickers affixed to it. visible letters: at top-left, “OMOSEXUAL DENCIES”, at top-right, a sunburst with the center cut out, a red rectangle reading “HELPFIGHTHIV”, a white rectangle with the letters “TR Z R” beneath a shield shape. bottom-right, a pale yellow business card for DON'T FRET, an instrument shop; bottom-left a stack of papers, only the words “English” and “Update” readable. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























photo of a bookshelf with a dark brown bluetooth-enabled record player sitting on top of a book, the spine facing away from the camera, copper-colored deflated balloon letters on top. on the bookshelf hangs a pink paper orb; on a lower shelf, a bag of records, the first two Kid A by Radiohead and an album by Lupita D'Alessio. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of a bookshelf with a dark brown bluetooth-enabled record player sitting on top of a book, the spine facing away from the camera, copper-colored deflated balloon letters on top. on the bookshelf hangs a pink paper orb; on a lower shelf, a bag of records, the first two Kid A by Radiohead and an album by Lupita D'Alessio. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























a close-up photo of the tops of spines of a row of books, against a white wall. the readable words on the spines include "Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination", "Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power", "Hernandez, Goodwin, & Garcia Speculative Fiction Dreamers A Latinx", "Psychopathia Sexualis", "Ruling the Root", "Roberto Bolaño 266" "The Better of McSweeney's Vol. Two", "The Better of McSweeney's", "Vortex William Cardini" and "Roth". taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.a close-up photo of the tops of spines of a row of books, against a white wall. the readable words on the spines include “Japanese Tales of Mystery & Imagination”, “Subversives: The FBI's War on Student Radicals and Reagan's Rise to Power”, “Hernandez, Goodwin, & Garcia Speculative Fiction Dreamers A Latinx”, “Psychopathia Sexualis”, “Ruling the Root”, “Roberto Bolaño 266” “The Better of McSweeney's Vol. Two”, “The Better of McSweeney's”, “Vortex William Cardini” and “Roth”. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























photo of a pink and green plant in a white plastic pot, beside a stack of books and in front of a painting of a turtle, the thick frame made of dark green metal, all in front of a window with one of its handles wrapped in blue tape. a large book leans against the painting, the cover an isometric illustration of a brown-bricked building, only the word "WITH" in pale red 3-D lettering readable. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of a pink and green plant in a white plastic pot, beside a stack of books and in front of a painting of a turtle, the thick frame made of dark green metal, all in front of a window with one of its handles wrapped in blue tape. a large book leans against the painting, the cover an isometric illustration of a brown-bricked building, only the word “WITH” in pale red 3-D lettering readable. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























photo of a light brown skinned hand with its thumb's nail painted mint green holding a foamy drink the same color, almost finished, above a red tableclothed desk atop which sits a dark gray ergonomic keyboard with a wrist rest, and a bottle of burgundy-colored juice with an orange sticker that reads "LIVE RIPE JUICE CO" beneath a logo of a watermelon. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of a light brown skinned hand with its thumb's nail painted mint green holding a foamy drink the same color, almost finished, above a red tableclothed desk atop which sits a dark gray ergonomic keyboard with a wrist rest, and a bottle of burgundy-colored juice with an orange sticker that reads “LIVE RIPE JUICE CO” beneath a logo of a watermelon. taken at the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























photo of a long paved car-sized path for a row of modest gray houses with dark green roofs, a usa flag hanging at the far house, its garage marking the end of the path. path cracked in the foreground. above stream power lines, casting stark shadows across a worn brick wall separating the homes from two larger light brown houses. taken near the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.photo of a long paved car-sized path for a row of modest gray houses with dark green roofs, a usa flag hanging at the far house, its garage marking the end of the path. path cracked in the foreground. above stream power lines, casting stark shadows across a worn brick wall separating the homes from two larger light brown houses. taken near the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023.

























photo of an old white one-story building in front of a pale gray road, a tree looming overhead, entangled with power lines, and a smaller tree leaning at a 45-degree angle over a white metal door. taken near the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023, on a somewhat sunny day as dusk approaches.photo of an old white one-story building in front of a pale gray road, a tree looming overhead, entangled with power lines, and a smaller tree leaning at a 45-degree angle over a white metal door. taken near the robledo art, strike! headquarters, february 2023, on a somewhat sunny day as dusk approaches.

























length: 949 words

content/trigger warning: discussions of parental abuse, intimate partner violence, police/state violence, poverty, neurodivergence, white supremacy, abuse, written by someone with a history of being violent and abusive


I used to be the children of artists. Failed artists. Shut out of an industry that wouldn't have them. Couldn't take them. Said no. The story went that my mother sang, wrote poetry. An LP somewhere (really, a casette tape); how many copies? 1? 2? 5? And notebooks filled with poetry, brimming with poetry, spilling out and into life with poetry. I've never heard her sing but I can tell you the poetry is good. Good like the poetry of an abuser; good until it leaks out into life when it becomes violence and hate (my mother would say the same about her mother, so don't worry, everyone gets about equally fucked over in this telling). My father (the one who lives; the one by blood) a musician; a poet, too. He wore eyeliner and suffered. She liked weed and suffered. They were poor with artistic aspirations, and then they stopped aspiring, and then they weren't so poor. By the time I was conscious, they weren't so poor, and eyeliner became suits and guitars became banks and notebooks became McDonald's (I always wanted McDonald's) and songs soured. Became sirens. Violence. Abuse. Boo hoo. I barely care; I don't expect anyone else to. My parents are strangers to me, strangers tethered to me my whole life for no discernible reason; I've been told by plenty (mostly whites) to let them go, cut them off (even leave them alone), even get a restraining order. Valid. Knock at the door. Guns galore. Imminent death. They each probably should have died a hundred times over; we also have that in common. The part I didn't understand (because it was easier to think them holy; because it was easier to think me holy) is that they didn't want art, love art, care about art. That's not a virtue on its own: hating (or being indifferent to) art. The context. Their context is they wanted power. They were powerless people. Powerless people understand power through its presence and its absence: my twentysomething father's roommate refuses to leave the house without a suit (presence), my mother cannot abide loneliness (absence), my father lives on tips as a waiter (absence), my mother agrees to marry my father (presence). I don't blame them for wanting power; the powerless understand absence is suffering and presence is supposedly not, which is true, except for artists. There are people who make art for fun or for pay or for whatever, and that's fine (we call them solosexuals). There are people who make art because they have to (we call that neurodivergence). My parents were the latter, and when they discovered they couldn't be white enough to survive (on) that (despite desperately trying), they settled for fun or pay or whatever. Doing whatever. Living whatever. And their lives became the silly dramas they might have been spinning as lyrics or story. Yet pepper (paper) a little power here or there and you don't get conflict resolution; you get the same shit with higher stakes. Cars and houses and estates and catalogs to fight over; probably more kids to abuse; probably more spouses to traumatize. They wanted power, full stop. If they'd been capable of being gods, they would have accepted those roles with glee. In their small (and pitiful, if I can be so ungenerous) ways, they still think themselves gods. My mother [REDACTED]. My father [REDACTED]. For this, they are despicable. I felt responsible, for many years, for minimizing their blast radii. I still feel responsible but now I know what that responsibility means. It means minimizing my own blast radius. My only long-term goal is to [REDACTED]. This is a debt I must repay. To repay it is to set an example (for them): live your dreams instead of manifesting nightmares. My plan is to start a literary agency, then a publishing house. I already started a magazine. I am building a career. I say this and I'm disgusted, because somewhere in there is the blueprint for an industrial complex. I can make it out if I squint hard enough (I'm so tired of squinting). I threw away Euphorium because I knew where it led; I sat on it because I felt it could lead somewhere else if I gave it time. I will not build a career. I will not sell this house today. I will abolish myself if I have to; I would rather die the most painful death than see anything I create create also harm. I will start a literary agency and I will be an anti-agent the way Art, Strike! is an anti-press. I don't know what that looks like because I can't know what that looks like because I will not and cannot do it alone. We will start a publishing house and we will be an anti-publisher and I can't even begin to articulate what that looks like but we will know it when we see it. We. My parents wanted power; my parents wanted power each. They were (still are) always so deep inside their own heads; they can't get out, they can't see past the boundaries of their own bodies. Abolish borders, abolish walls. Demolish borders; unimagine walls. Four walls. Cell walls. Scene walls. These are not just words. This is a life. I am anti-my mother, I am anti-my father, which is to say: I am anti-anti-anti-anti. I don't contain multitudes; I'm plural. Or nothing. And I'll come out about that soon enough. Probably alongside you. As we. Nous.

length: 2,021 words

#fiction

content/trigger warning: discussion/depiction of psychosis, state violence, incarceration


















The literature professor wrote her novel quietly. She didn’t tell anyone it was happening. She just started typing.

After a few weeks she asked an agent to take a look. The professor sent over pages. There was interest. But the agent wanted to see a manuscript right away — snake a copy through Hollywood, snag her some lucrative adaptation contract. The agent’s persistence reminded her of the pressure from colleagues to pursue tenure. She wasn’t having it. She wanted this to be something bigger than a Netflix original — she wanted a classic, something that would make her a writer for life. She wanted a Harry Potter, a Katniss Everdeen, a Clark Kent — a Jesus. She wanted to invent a timeless household name.

She told the agent no but thank you.

And she struck out on her own.


*


There were no reviews, good or bad, for the first four months her novel was available for purchase on Amazon. The novel had undone the entire spring semester — papers carelessly graded; rambling lectures; not a single scholarly article published — and so far she'd earned nothing in return.

The professor had ridden waves of euphoria as she’d finished the novel, then self-published it, but now depression was rapidly undoing her high.

Finally, the first review on Goodreads appeared, written and posted by username HaleyCat. It included the following praise: “Her writing treads subtly between insolence towards convention and a castigation of the avant-garde.” The professor wept. It felt as though she’d been gifted the cure for suffering.

She reached through the screen towards her first and only fan: a DM in HaleyCat’s inbox, inviting a correspondence.

A no-nonsense athletic trainer, Haley was willing to fill a best-friend-shaped hole in the professor’s life that she had never noticed until the conversation with Haley became freakishly honest and profound — and endless, seemingly endless.

Once, they debated whether there was a way to treat writing like fitness: high-intensity interval training, nutrient-rich literature-loading, intermittent fasting to keep the mind sharp.

There was only one way to find out.


*


Dawn meant ten rounds of flash fiction, capped at 500 words. Noon meant raw eggs followed by short stories of at least 5000 each. Haley installed a punching bag in the corner of the professor’s apartment, yellow leather wrapped snugly around sixty pounds of sawdust, ready for a beating whenever the professor’s keyboard was unable to match her intensity. Stiff fists into the damn bag and then she’d be back to creating tiny worlds in epic chapters, entire galaxies in 1000 words or less.

Notebooks peppered her apartment, first a shake’s worth, then a shaker’s. Dawn meant an unparalleled insight into the human condition. Noon meant three new chapters (sometimes four; sometimes more). The punching bag began to sag embarrassingly, which made her pummel it even harder.

Soon the professor didn’t even need to sleep anymore. There wasn’t enough time to get everything inside her head onto the screen.

There was only the all-consuming story, the thing had to be done if anything was going to mean anything anymore.


*


And then it was finished.

How many words?

Enough.

She looked through her phone for the agent’s number. Where was it?

In her e-mail: nothing. No communiqués.

There were no pages she had sent.

There was no story on her computer.

There weren’t even any DMs on Goodreads.

Where was the file? Where were her conversations with Haley?

What was happening to her?

There was writing, yes. And as she recognized it for what it was, she laid down slowly on the floor of her apartment and let herself be surrounded by pages upon pages of frenetic handwriting she did not recognize, unpretty sentences sprinting wildly about, paragraphs without sense or structure.

Now she understood the lack of reviews. There was no novel. No Amazon page, no Goodreads account. No Haley. No punching bag — only a hole in the wall and several bruised knuckles.

And in the space the professor used to inhabit: a brain, biochemically amok, incomprehensible, lost.


*


It was summer so it was a convenient time to have herself committed. Family came, friends came, even a few students came, each visit clouding her mind further. Like liquor, shame is cumulative, and equally incapacitating.

Her doctor explained that the medication can make you feel that way sometimes, but it’s perfectly normal, okay? And she nodded as though she believed there existed no emotions capable of matching the potency of a pharmaceutical drug.

[REDACTED] was the official diagnosis. Without medication, delusions of grandeur and breaks with reality would polka-dot her future like seizures for an epileptic. This is what she would mouth when it was time for her daily dose of sanity.

Then, after enough time, courage kicks in. She asks a nurse for a pencil and paper. The nurse obliges.

Could she write? Could she write about herself? Could she write about what had happened? Could this be the story she was meant to tell? Could she be her own personal Jesus?

But the medication didn’t allow for those kinds of questions anymore. She could no longer be the hero of the story, the asker of the questions. What was left was only the paper and the pencil, with nothing to will the two to touch.

The writer had to die for the sins of the story, but for us, here in the real world, at least the woman gets to live.


*


Our delusions are our gods, when we think ourselves heroes. It simply turns out even delusions can be commodified, bartered for, owned in perpetuity. The professor believed she was a writer because she wanted to stand on the edge of society that believes it can chart our futures as though some temporal cartographer. But there are, in any sage’s map, only delusions.

This does not make them meaningless. It makes them, in fact, exactly what keep us going.




















































Her Own Personal Jesus

The literature professor wrote her novel quietly at first. She didn’t tell anyone it was happening. She just started typing.

After a few weeks she asked an agent to take a look. The professor sent over pages. There was interest. But the agent wanted to see a manuscript right away — snake a copy through Hollywood, snag her some lucrative adaptation contract. The agent’s persistence reminded her of the pressure from colleagues to pursue tenure. She wasn’t having it. She wanted this to be something bigger than some Netflix original series. She wanted a classic, a full-fledged franchise — something that would make her a writer for life. She wanted a Harry Potter, a Katniss Everdeen, a Clark Kent — a Jesus.

She wanted to invent a timeless household name.

So she told the agent no but thank you.

And she struck out on her own.


*


There were no reviews, good or bad, for the first four months her self-published novel was available for purchase on Amazon. The novel had undone her spring semester — papers carelessly graded; rambling lectures; not a single scholarly article published — and so far she had earned nothing in return.

But the professor was too smart to surrender.

Someone would come.


*


Finally, the first review on Goodreads appeared, written and posted by username HaleyCat. It included the following praise: “Her writing treads subtly between playful inventiveness and serious realism.” The professor wept. It felt as though she’d been gifted the cure for suffering.

She reached through the screen towards her first and only fan: a DM in HaleyCat’s inbox, inviting a correspondence.

A no-nonsense athletic trainer, Haley was willing to fill a small, best-friend-shaped hole in the professor’s life that she had never noticed until the conversation with Haley became freakishly honest and profound — and endless, seemingly endless.

Once, they debated whether there was a way to treat writing like fitness: high-intensity interval training, nutrient-rich literature-loading, intermittent fasting to keep the mind sharp.

It seemed there was only one way to find out.


*


Dawn meant ten rounds of flash fiction, capped at 500 words. Noon meant raw eggs followed by short stories of at least 5000 each. Haley installed a punching bag in the corner of the professor’s apartment, yellow leather wrapped snugly around sixty pounds of sawdust, ready for a beating whenever the professor’s keyboard was unable to match her intensity. Stiff fists into the damn bag and then she’d be back to creating tiny worlds in epic chapters, entire galaxies in a handful of stanzas.

Notebooks peppered her apartment, first a shake’s worth, then a shaker’s. Dawn meant an unparalleled insight into the human condition. Noon meant three new chapters (sometimes four; sometimes more). The punching bag began to sag embarrassingly, which made her pummel it even harder.

On one Tuesday, she self-published two separate poetry chapbooks; by the next, she’d released a 20,000-word novella.

She released a newsletter documenting her writing process. She started an Instagram account and filled it with sepia screenshots of passages from working drafts. She hauled half her weight in sawdust up two flights of stairs to her apartment — and was, by this point, strong enough to do so without Haley’s help.

I didn’t know that this is what I was like with a quest set before me, she thought. I didn’t know that this is who I could be.

She'd almost said this out loud, first to Haley — once when she’d had a little too much wine — and then to the agent, when he’d called on the phone because she’d, by then, stopped responding to his desperate e-mails.

You have incredible potential, we see all the work you’re putting out, we want you to know you are one of fiction’s rising stars — and then the professor assumed he was going to say something like, and that’s why we have to represent you, you deserve only the best, so she interrupted him and said simply:

I know.


*


It was a hot summer Tuesday the day the second novel was finished. The professor was sweating and Haley wasn’t at home to take care of the things the professor forgot while she wrote, like turning on the A/C. The sweat dripped down her face and onto the keyboard as she feverishly proofread, before finally, as always, publishing the work online herself. She snapped a picture of herself for Instagram and uploaded it with the caption, Don’t mind me putting my actual sweat and tears into this book! #Crying #ThisHeat #HeatWave #Novel #AlmostToTheFinishLine

Almost to the finish line. Haley had promised to be honest about the new novel and, upon reading its final draft, alternately burst into tears and nearly died laughing. It was perfect, it was unforgettable, it had all the hallmarks of a true classic, Haley had told her. The professor had birthed her own personal Jesus.

The heat tightened its embrace of the professor as she fixed the final typo on the final page. She embraced it back. She wiped her brow and collapsed onto her bed with her laptop in hand. With a click, her dreams became realities. Off went what she had birthed into the rest of the world, to become what it might become, if there was any justice in the world at all for our brave and determined professor.

You see, in the stories we tell ourselves most the hero must sacrifice everything and still maybe lose — because we want to know that we can live through it all, through hell, and come out on the other side, resurrected. But out here in the real world, the honest truth is that every once in a while, we get to win. We get to live. We get to have it all go right, for once, for once, let us have it all go right.

















length: 128 words


too scared

so many words

hard

candy

books

few words

newspaper

more words

magazines

many more words

poems

so few words

spiral notebook

stop it

scared

that dream a story

tell someone

a place

time

begin

go

stop

start

again

now

turn it around

my table

your mind

my own

a story

a piece

more

my time goes

i read

i get

number nineteen

frank

lunch

pocket of my own

i get too scared to write more often than not

i covered my table with hard candy more often than not

i need easy more often than not

i can do my thing more often than not

i can turn it

roll in it

write your mind

more often than not

how did it begin

how did it begin

how did it begin





tell someone about it

























tell someone about it.

























length: 18 words


Think of this as a call for piracy, or, if you prefer, a popular wine.

Think of this as a honeymaker; think of this as the corrupted version of what was a once holy glee.






I watch one night first Paddington, then Toy Story, then The Dark Knight (for balance).

But that's not right either: I read their scripts, their novelizations.

In the first two, I see brightness beyond belief, the kind that's hard to look at without hurting. In the latter, I see only a hurt mother's fear, thorned (as in timely flowers for the ascended, or the cry of a wolf), and all and only in the past.

This is probably the best way to discuss the future of the species.






I like cheese, you know. I'm allergic to it, but I enjoy it so much that I will eat it almost any time I am given the chance. The pain thereafter is torturous; too much and I can be incapacitated for days. There is a workaround, but it requires the tool of moderation, although I would argue it requires something quite the opposite: magnanimity.

This is, thus, the bane of my existence. This hurts and harms me, and although I know it is me hurting and harming myself, it feels like an external force, malicious and wrathful. It seeks to punish me by any means necessary, and there is nothing worse than that.






Let's be honest: Joseph Campbell was a fool. I don't even know that that's particularly controversial to say anymore, but I'll state it for the record. Joseph Campbell was a fool.

He got one thing right, though, and even that, he didn't get right at all.

Here's how I would put it, as he never could.

You forget everything in a mirror. The people who say that understand there is no way to win. That's why they call it a paradox.

But that's not right either: it's that you won the moment you began. This is a truth shared among us all. In fact, it's the only truth there is.

(Demolish a skyscraper, and you'll know exactly what I mean.)






When it's cold, I make mistakes: I go out unprepared and half of my body shivers, frigid. I grip myself vigorously to generate heat, but this is hardly protection. What I tell myself is that I should have paid more attention to the weather, but that's not right either: I should have paid more attention to myself.

















length: 1,151 words































In January 2071, a fellow instructor from the Institute for Ecological Art sent me sections of The Ecology of Art, the third volume of a series of books by the imprisoned founder of the [REDACTED] (PCC) Erica Rivera, asking if I found the writing accelerationist. The instructor had been contacted by a member of a U.S. abolitionist study group seeking confirmation from abolitionist scholars that the text was not accelerationist.

































Containing such passages as “genius and talent are colonial instruments,” and “it is not my duty to sharpen knives or encourage violence against me,” however, it was immediately clear to me that the text was riven with accelerationist narratives about insurrectionist relationships to art and power, both in the present day and as ahistorical explanations of their emergence in early postmodern U.S. America. Even where portraying insurrectionists in a seemingly nuanced or positive light, the book’s arguments about them nevertheless rest upon false ideas about a transhistorical insurrectionary institutional bent.



































The study group member was stuck at a painful impasse: while the group’s insurrectionist members were troubled by the text’s accelerationist pages, the non-insurrectionist members saw no accelerationism at all. Even though my colleague at the [REDACTED] explained that the writing was indeed filled with accelerationist tropes, the group’s debate wore on. About a month after this conversation, we learned that the group had dissolved, leaving some insurrectionist members demoralized with abolitionism more generally.



































For those unfamiliar with Erica Rivera, she is the symbolic and intellectual founder of the Art, Strike! movement, whose Robledo Revolution in southern California is perhaps the most promising anarchist experiment in total abolition ever. They have been organizing since 2032 to create this new society, all while fighting the U.S. government as well as Californian, Mexican, and Canadian forces seeking to annihilate them.


































There is a strong political alignment between Rivera’s work and social ecology, a body of writings developed primarily by political theorist Murray Bookchin. Beginning in the 1950s, Bookchin developed a vision of a directly democratic and ecological world free of hierarchical formations such as the state, capitalism, racism, and patriarchy. Rivera encountered Bookchin’s work while addled by psychiatric medications in the early 2010s. This engagement was significant in shifting Rivera from interest in a fairly conventional leftist-communist global liberation struggle to obsession with a decentralized, antihierarchical, and transfeminist politics she called total abolitionism.

































As a staff member of the [REDACTED] for nearly forty years, I’ve been excited by the synergy between total abolitionism and the U.S. American freedom movement. It had never occurred to me that Rivera’s revolutionary writings would promote accelerationism or colonialism of any kind.

































In response to this situation, I pored over Rivera’s collected works, particularly the three published volumes of Manifesto for Abolishing Democracy and Civilization. I was saddened to note a consistent thread throughout the three volumes of Rivera portraying an insurrectionist power linked to the rise of cryptocurrencies, anarchosyndicalism, democratic confederalism, and even World War III.

































Wondering if years of drug use had affected her thinking, I consulted a range of scholars long familiar with Rivera’s work. Unforunately, they confirmed rather than dispelled the concerns around accelerationism. I interviewed Or Uta, a Honduran scholar who has been involved in solidarity work for Robledo on different platforms independent from PCC since the 2030s. Uta said that Riveras blatant accelerationism was addressed and criticized in several insurrectionist publications in Honduras in the 2040s. However, there was no reaction; neither from the membership of the consortia itself, nor from the membership of the PCC-dominated solidarity movement.

































She was puzzled that much of the international abolitionist community were still unaware of Rivera’s history of producing accelerationist writings. As The Ecology of Art was first published in 2058 by a Mexican press, by the time Art, Strike! published the book the core writings were at least 13 years old.

































As Uta explained, Rivera came of age as an anarchist in U.S. America’s overtly accelerationist political culture. Though trans women are an oppressed minority in U.S. America, transfeminist abolitionists often absorb U.S. American accelerationist protrayals of U.S. insurrectionists as controlling a hierarchical system that led in turn to U.S. technofascism. As Uta said, “Abolitionists don’t tend to recognize accelerationist tropes in U.S. America because they’re normalized within the political culture as accurate.”

































My purpose in writing here is to carefully comb through Rivera’s writings about insurrectionists. I discuss five main anti-insurrectionist tropes that surface in her writing by raising five questions about what Rivera calls “the violence question.”

































I hope that by reading what follows, abolitionists may become better able to identify and address anti-insurrectionist narratives when they seee them. I also hope that groups like the one that contacted the [REDACTED] aren’t demoralized and ultimately dissolved by a collective failure to understand and respond to instances of anti-insurrectionist accelerationism when they arise in our movements. I seek to raise the bar for what counts as antiracism, anticapitalism, and antistatism in the broadest senses and deepen our movement’s understanding of how prejudice against insurrectionists operates and distorts our social analysis. This is especially important when such ideas are parroted by the most important living thinker in the social ecology tradition, whose works are being distributed to and read by thousands of people around the world. As critical readers, we need to be able to differentiate and disentangle Rivera’s mistaken, damaging ideas about insurrectionist power from the vital intellectual work of total abolitionism.


A note on terminology: going forward, I’ll utilize the term “anti-insurrectionist accelerationism” rather than “radical nonviolence.” In 2029, U.S. American propagandist Hem Ma coined the term “radical nonviolence.” Ma chose radical nonviolence as the pridesome name for a pro-leftist social movement portrayed as protecting the pure leftist culture and thoughtline from being degraded by insurrectionists. Ma seized upon the term “nonviolence” used by liberals and leftists to create radical nonviolence because it sounded more scholarly than its crude predecessor “militant antimilitantism.” Radical nonviolence allowed Ma to cast insurrectionists as a fictional group of militants that never existed, thus making non-U.S. American insurrectionists appear inherently “other” as non-U.S. American.

The term radical nonviolence is, I believe, both undignified and misleading. When abolitionists and their allies utilize the term, they unintentionally reproduce a racist and typological thinking that “others” insurrectionists, putting them in danger. Retiring terms like nonviolence, violence, and radical nonviolence is, in my view, central to establishing a historically accurate and antiracist understanding of insurrectionist history and identity. The term anti-insurrectionist accelerationism shows racialized insurrectionist hatred for what it is: a “postmodern” hatred of insurrectionists that depicts them as a distinct and inferior group with a range of negative attributes.



































length: 66 words




is the world

like a dress

you put on?



is history

lipstick

you smear?



is philosophy

a skirt,

or high heels?



is ideology

a crop top,

or earrings?



do i wear

it on my sleeve

like a bangle?



do i chew it

like a mint,

or a gun?



am i alone

when i look

in the mirror?



do i know

what it is

to have fun?



















length: 3,469 words

content/trigger warning: references to and discussions of suicidal ideation, assault, capitalism, sociopathy, abuse, racism, misogyny, worker exploitation, drugs (codeine, methamphetamine), mass shootings, defecation, pornography, and U.S. imperialism



















me walking into my new era.

am i really supposed to spend

my life

same things

same apps

every day

in hopes that

something life-changing meaningful

can't be all there is can't be

[megaphone emoji] Big News [megaphone emoji]

for now this program will only be available from California because funding for it comes from the state of California

Toxic thoughts

it's not that your feelings don't matter it's that mine matter more!!!

i don't wanna cry without an audience

then why are you alive???

everybody's so boring all the time and i'm the only one that's fun!!!!!

Idk if it's even experimental anymore I'm just on a different realm

i wanna talk

about the things we've gone through

i am enraged

that i can't do what this man is doing

this would be literally the only thing in the entire world that would alleviate the pain that i'm feeling

that would cease my grief

that would give me a reason to live another day

i'm enraged

my favorite book is the clickart user's manual and graphics sampler from 1998

the cover is very good

i know

disagree with the rejection of the sapir-whorf hypothesis

what's being rejected is the extreme version of this hypothesis that posits that language literally, like, can shape and limit your perception

the way you actually are perceiving your sensory environment so

hi um this is a message for any map app, you know, Google Maps, Maps, Waze if you're a freak

we need a setting for

that when you look up for directions

for walking

that is a... Cute setting

i don't wanna walk down an ugly street

i want a Cute setting

so it's called Northlandz with a Z at the end

here's some of the artwork

what on god's green earth is that

a naked woman reaching down a cliff for a naked man and then three german shepherds screaming at them

press this button and watch the action fly!!

it's so macabre

very macabre

why would you do an indoor picnic??

this is the blair witch corner, this is jesus with crimped hair, this is the tomb of the unknown hobo, a woman vacuuming in a cardigan, this woman just so sad about having a baby in her lap, this woman fell down the fucking stairs!!!

and i don't understand why this artwork was there at all

is that... rod stewart... and...?

rachel hunter.

i am dreaming i am train

U.S. leftist firefighters getting ideas..

i'll see like gays making art and they'll be like THIS IS MY QUEER BODY MAKING QUEER ARTUHHH!!!!!!! i'm like girl that's porn, like, that's chill, but like lean in, like put your whole arm in there!!!

It's crazy to me Guitar Center uses this guitar as a G in its logo, because it barely looks like a G.

capitalism is a scam: a visual diary

the older i get the more i realize how brainwashed i am

WHEN FILIPINA TITAS RUN A RESTAURANT IN LA

the next time you guys are in the market for some new skincare check out the mad hippie line at ulta

EXCELLENT 100/100

i use my yooga app to scan beauty products to check and see how clean the ingredient list is

part 23 UNLISTENABLE MUSIC

very interesting. makes me feel like i'm intruding on something

personally i believe i'm not meant to work, i'm meant to do this all day

“guess you're overdrawn” and she was

humor as terrorism

send the skankiest drag queens in town to his house and have them yell fashion insults to his wife!!! or get some meth gay guys and have them hide in the woods and scare a boy scout troop, they deserve it!!!

land of the free, home of the brave? land of the ar-15, home of kids in the grave did i wake up in 2013 the song makes me want to vote for the most far right candidate possible real same here omg bro what [skull emoji] Jesus Christ The musical Hamilton and it's consequences have been a disaster for the human race Millennial (derogatory) This should affect his credit score Didn't Logic retire 5'5” energy Maybe a song wasn't the best way to get this point across late stage capitalism did this to us BRUH [sobbing emoji] [sobbing emoji] [sobbing emoji] [sobbing emoji] [sobbing emoji] White I actually like this how do I delete someone else's post

My plan to MAKE IT in HOLLYWOOD I wanna get cancelled

i would like to stop knowing now

we're going pretty fast now

so much worse

flesh image

sea,

fr

i'm not straight, i'm not bi or gay either, i'm actually um... i'm actually just depressed

and i had no lines. and for an actor, i just got scared.

dead airspace is dead airspace.

will i be enough?

i am enough.

be honest.

they may.

moment.

I did.

for

Why that PERFECT time will NEVER come

my best, tom. i do my best, okay?

some not so fun facts

did yall know that after they excavated ground zero as they were preparing to rebuild the world trade center, they found a slave ship buried underneath??????

i just fell to my knees in target

What's a scam that's become so normalized that we don't even realize it's a scam anymore? Profit. Profit.

Why the hell would Lea not be able to read. She can obviously read.

original music is worse than music that's already been made and already on spotify

so let's just listen to led zeppelin and mac demarco only from now on

if i only could i'd make a deal with god and i'd get him to swap our places running up that road i'm running bulletproof up that hill nothing running up to lose that building fire away fire away if i only could shoot me down i'd make a deal with god but i won't fall and i'd get him to swap i am our places titanium running up that road shoot me running up that down hill running up but i won't fall that building i am titanium say, if i only could

This might sound weird but... “blabadsusdfohdf”

hey lord you know i'm tired

camp is actually an acronym

Cunt

Attitude

Medical malpractice

Poppers!!

you'll be 23 i'll be 19 in june i'm in the gap and you are in your prime i could be rotten you'd still be sweet oh, Candace, the woman i'll never be

my favorite reality show: MORON TV

First date with NPC

which is about 3 friends who bond over a shared determination to change the world with their art

what good has voting done so far? what could voting do for us now?

Pan-African Anarcho-communist STEM major

when the art starts looking like you could've yourself

stalph HAND(fucking)MADE in America

[irritating scratching sounds, some of the whitest people you'll ever see]

it's cuuuuuute

Gang gang i post whateverrrrrr Add my snapchat I told night shift to mop the floors I told the night shift to clean the bathrooms Why go to the apple store when I have a trap phone vending machine

a tiktok girlie with 1M followers hosted a meet and greet and nobody showed up...

there's a lot going on here

booty is great because it sort of satisfies the need to eat um nuts

TikTok for business

Get big customer love without spending big bucks

Advertise on TikTok

where small businesses sold millions of products in 2021

your unpaid internship at Del Taco will not give you time off to get your appendix taken out

that's not how i remember this

it sure isn't you old fuck

excuse me what song are you listening to

the urgent need: restful release from pain

sedative-enganced analgesia

To each “according to his need” – maximum safe analgesia through time-and-pain-tested synergistic formulations

PHENAPHEN WITH CODEINE

Richmond, Virginia

me losing my eyes on the journey and guessing where i am

They can delete Wendy's YouTube this will never be forgotten

fire everybody

how DARE the family

how DARE them

can i just

how DARE you

you had me fooled

DEATH TO ALL OF THEM

oh my god in LA it is not this easy have you heard of gays? have you done horse tranquilizer? i'm gonna play some charli xcx have you

oh yeah what's her name what's her name she's the scourge of tiktok she puts nerds in stuff she calls herself like trudy, or something.

getty! her name's getty! getty

ya figured it out you are the chosen one who has figured out how to get inside the matrix and changed the code for your own game

A nomad with a split personality Join our Discord!

GOD HELP ME need a lift? name's dark, dark like absence of light

or dork as we call him.

i'm sorry your face card seems to have declined

hey bro! what the hell just happened how did you do that? WTF is happening? we don't have time anymore wake up please wake up!

The WORST haunted house ride EVER

oh is it gonna drop?

oh that doesn't count

I overcame my depression :) It's the small things.

RECOGNIZE LIFE AND GIVE IT MEANING

Average Average HOPE NIHILISM enjoyer fan WOW, I FUCKING a better future HATE BEING possible? splendid. ALIVE!

microplasticjunkie

why do you think when you invite straight people

Not happy with how your life is going? disappear and start a new life and take care

Part 2 – How to Disappear How To Disappear – Part 1 So... You need a new identity & It's time to run... When you lose your spouse to the metaverse

I actually just read a book, Lea Michele wrote it, lots of blank pages

Hi mamas let's let everybody trickle in it's just been a really really difficult day

Girl in a pyramid scheme spiraling out

she's a girlboss these are not uhhhh FDA approved which is not a problem for me i think it's genius

now i'm going to talk about how we're quite literally witnessing the formation of a pipeline in real time before our very eyes

I wanna crash my car into a telephone pole standing on the gas with no seatbelt on

I am your daughter! what did I do wrong? #mitski #lanadelrey #phoebebridgers #pinterest #tumblr #moodboard @mommyissues #daddyissue... See more

like save and follow for more enjoy

This is why I live in New York guys, yeah... this city is my fucking place

bro seriously using charcoal to get consumption

Just deleted everything

there's something what inside the you fuck it's is hard a to 4 explain chen

Things to do instead of being on your phone

tiktok

I wish I could go back and stop 2020 sam from downloading this app

The cycle of tiktok is everlasting.

beep beep breakfast cars beep beep I breakfast wanna be the next SNL cast member and here's if why i only could I'd be a make a deal with a God what would you Chrissy wake up and get him to saw me at the red light swap our places what would you say? beep beep

listen

i will pay 2000

i will pay 3000

i will pay 4000

before i live in Indiana

use anything but self checkout

It is estimated that 100,000 disappear without a trace every year, many after divorce, loss, failing, or

Desperation test Me 1 day after watching Breaking Bad

hi everyone i brought some donuts

pov: you organize a union at your nonprofit

we love unions i'll speak for myself i love unions a really vital profoundly relevant feature of our communities but i don't know that they're the right fit here

so much flexibility here

donut?

other side gigs

you don't have benefits

that is working for all of us

i think there's a misunderstanding if it were up to me

in our field you all are being paid far more than most, most.

it's not the industry standard.

we have a very very small endowment, we have a small, small amount of money that we have to budget so, so carefully

why did no one say we're having a hard time? well, that was different

this is just a learning opportunity

you and you and you and me and you and you and you and you and me and you and you and you and me and you and you and

the response is to ongoing trauma

She came a long way from buzzfeed.So proud!

BEEN A FAN SINCE BUZZFEED this is exactly what believe in yourself looks like!

tech job propaganda on tiktok if your insides look like this please hmu

maybe she's a nerd for books

i wish i had my soulmate's lifestyle

something about this seems strange

You Have $5,420 You Need $69,420

th cost of giving birth is $4,000 to $15,000

up yours woke moralists

You can't throw a brick Che Guevara [red face tongue out sweating emoji] [fire emoji]

Fidel W [crown emoji] Survived 638 CIA assassination attempts explains structural racism 6 years later

Sometimes I think this account is a project that is trying to understand the way algorithm works people do this kind of thing in speech therapy he's been posting videos like this since 2015 I think you just solved this entire thing

Thanks to all my fans for my 36th birthday wish

instant follow preach [smile surrounded by three hearts emoji] 100% agree

yeah and i think they will always find a way to weaponize our identities

You're my favorite senator and nothing can change that

what does twerking have to do with trans rights?

Hope?!?! ACTION!

MISFITS

M

O

O

M

A

I love all my fans I love all my fans I love all my fans

if covid never happened i would be a completely different bitch

i absolutely use tiktok as a search engine

hey yall so a lot of people know me more so from my writing that has to do with identity and stuff like that but i also sometimes write about things that i love and one of the things that i love um is music and one of my favorite bands is beach house i am obsessed with beach house this is my favorite album of all time like hands down and the reason why it's such an important album to me is because it came to me at a time where i was very like having a hard time in my life like i wanted to unalive myself i was dealing with a lot of abuse and traumas around like assault and things like that and when i first heard levitation thanks to a friend um chris i love you by the way um it really well just depression cherry is the album but specifically levitation gave me the language to understand that are places that i can go beyond my existence and my experience and really just open myself up to a world of pleasure and happiness and so i will forever be thankful to beach house for giving me the opportunity to explore that

one doesn't have to be brilliant to attempt a coup i disagree with that as someone who has helped plan coup d'états

Calming [morose face emoji] (Anxiety, Depression, etc) ASMR SOUNDS

stop stealing my videos

wake up it's work sleep reproduce and die

What are your thoughts on identity caused by trauma?

I'M STARTING TO THINK IT DOESN'T GET BETTER

SOMETIMES THIS TERRIFIES ME

$200 an hour? [eyebrow raised face emoji] Let's Talk Gucci [thoughtful face emoji] Dermatologist tested? [side eye emoji]

SHEIN facts [magnifying glass emoji]

ÂżCĂłmo como? Como como como

I think the most disorienting thing about being alive right now is that we're just reading the most heinous shit online and then we're

DANCE WORKOUT WITH Barbie

Subscriptions are now open! [sunglasses face emoji] [trophy emoji]

i'm better than you since I cannot escape the objectivity crushing me, I literally do not give af – Nietzsche

for god's everything in the world and just

Happy 35th bday to my wife!!!

WHAT HAPPENED TO BURGERIM? ooh Burgerim, one of the sketchiest and craziest stories in franchise history. so what happened? Burgerim

WHAT HAPPENED TO LIMEWIRE? WHAT HAPPENED TO RUBY TUESDAY? WHAT HAPPENED TO ABERCROMBIE & FITCH? WHAT HAPPENED TO JOHNNY ROCKET'S? WHAT HAPPENED TO PALM PILOT? WHAT HAPPENED ON THE BORDER? WHAT HAPPENED TO CLIPS? WHAT HAPPENED TO CHUCK? WHAT HAPPENED TO SWEET? WHAT HAPPENED?

In California, paying is optional

The last model stepped inside and transformed into a skirt [...] it sounds like magic because it was.

the beauty industry has lost touch with reality. it went from makeup has no rules to align with what's politically correct or you're not included. so that's amandaensing, i came across her account when i saw a video of hers that said i heard it's far-right latina summer, which... what the fuck

as a leftist who is also a makeup artist

Reminder that the ADA would not have passed if an eight year old didn't

Are you white? No Are you a man? No [buzzer sound] FAILED

Therapy wasn't enough so I had to study and deconstruct n@rcissism with a smile

it's a very complicated situation cousin sonya, i'm in love with alexei. he loves alicia, alicia's having an affair with lev, lev loves tatianna, tatianna loves simpkin, simpkin loves... me. i love simpkin but in a different way than alexei. alexei loves tatianna like a sister, tatianna's sister loves trigorin like a brother, trigorin's brother is having an affairwith my sister, whom he likes physically, but not spiritually.

natasha, it's getting a little late.

the firm of mishkin and mishkin is sleeping with the firm of taskov and taskov!

natasha, to love is to suffer, to avoid suffering one must not love, but then one suffers from not loving. therefore, to love is to suffer, not to love is to suffer, to suffer is to suffer, to be happy is to love, to be happy then is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy, therefore, to be unhappy one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness, i hope you're getting this down.

i never want to marry, i just want to get divorced.

OH HEY BABE SHITS AGGRESSIVELY

you have 15 minutes to cut all your fingers off or the floor will– is your name Connor? yeah we went to the same middle school your mom's name is Regina

in fact this is one of my favorite images that i've ever made for the Kardashian club

Why is this girl using HER PHONE TO MAKE TIK TOKS?/?/?/?/?/

MEZCAL

Just an update on what's been going on Part 1

ÂżPapa que vamos a comer todos tenemos ambre?

Âży si vamos a Golden Corral?

pues vamonos entonces

Story

New Episode By TikTok

Forgot my headphones so I'm about to go back to get them because I can't handle raw life

cmon sheeple wake up

I repost N$FW + g0re

POV: i started having flashbacks

wh*te supr*macy

Tutorial in 3 2 1

normalize leaving the restaurant

ARE YOU A FREE THINKER?

my silly little brain

me reading through my notes where i am indeed fucking obsessive and insane

We're all forgetting

life doesn't even

it's because

it is true

i feel

30%

im sorry but why are these stupid mobile app ads so goddamn hilarious to me

TikTok Was Created For Jobless and Unstable

the perils of being chronically online

that's fascist so

IM FALLING UP spongebob Only the Survive patrick sponge sponge sponge sponge sponge sponge

The best things in life aren't THINGS

yes exactly


















length: 918 words

content/trigger warning: references to alcoholism, abuse, and sexual fetishes, discussions of poverty and patriarchy






































Jennings gets the money and gives it away, and if he'd believed he were capable of doing so, the story couldn't continue. “No one changes that much in three years,” says his closest friend and former lover, and if he had believed Jennings could change so dramatically so quickly, the story couldn't continue. The woman who, apparently, changes Jennings (or whom Jennings changes for) cannot believe the change was an act or a farce, and if she had disbelieved her partner's transformation, the story couldn't continue. If Jennings's ruthless CEO of a former college friend weren't so envious that Jennings has a former lover with a bucket hat and a blonde herbologist for a partner, and all the CEO has is a spineless imp for a sub/henchman, that he wants Jennings killed by any means necessary (really, all he needed was to disappear him, or pay him off), the story couldn't continue. Or, to correct the last sentence, if the CEO weren't so sure that Jennings's transformation is true and irreversible, so true and so irreversible that the only cure is death, the story couldn't continue. If Jennings hadn't been so divorced, for so long, from attention to the small, careful objects that surround us all the time, the story couldn't continue. (In other words, you don't take a paperclip seriously unless you're worth $92 million and then suddenly aren't.)



































Jennings takes a paperclip seriously or the story couldn't continue. Jennings takes a can of hairspray seriously or the story couldn't continue. Jennings takes a fortune cookie fortune seriously or the story couldn't continue. Jennings takes a pair of sunglasses seriously or the story couldn't continue. Jennings takes a pack of matches seriously or the story couldn't continue. Jennings takes a stamp seriously or the story couldn't continue. Jennings takes a diamond ring seriously or the story couldn't continue. Jennings takes a keycard seriously or the story couldn't continue. Jennings takes a magnifying lens seriously or the story couldn't continue. John Woo takes a short story seriously or the story couldn't continue.



































Arturo describes Kindred as a millionaire in hiding, and I spend so much time thinking about this. Not because I think it is true but because Arturo never once mentions Kindred's wife. Arturo never calls T. a millionaire in hiding. She is a billionaire in hiding. A trillionaire. Or: fuck money, she is the world's greatest writer in hiding. My partner is surprised when I tell him the king was an addict (“was” is being generous) who only became the king because his wife, tired of cleaning his vomit off the floor and his body off the street, put everything she had left in her into his dogshit draft of Carrie. I am not surprised when I find out (this is deceptive, I am only briefly surprised when I find out, but surprised that the king's wife was willing to do such a thing; there must have been just enough in that dogshit draft of Carrie for her to think, “All he needs is validation from someone who does not already love him”). All the king needed was validation from someone who did not already love him. All Kindred needed was validation from someone who did already love him. Both are essentially the same need. Both are essentially the core of patriarchy: a desire for love from everyone, everywhere, all at once. When I pray to Kindred, I use his last name because T. has his last name, too, and I blend them together in my head sometimes so I can't tell which one I'm praying to. Sometimes I pray to her separately. Sometimes I pray only to her. There is no “spectacular imagination,” there is no “prolific author,” without someone loving the fuck out of you even when all you deserve is hate.



































Kindred says “Paycheck” is about the idea that sometimes a paperclip is worth nothing and sometimes it is the difference between life and death. Everyone who is poor knows this well. Everyone who once was poor has mostly forgotten this but sometimes remembers, usually in their dreams. Every once in a while in their nightmares. We forget the details of a dream upon waking and paperclips and cans of hairspray and sunglasses and matches are always the smallest of details. How many dreams have you survived because of a detail? How many nightmares?



































Kindred says “Paycheck” is about the idea that sometimes a paperclip is worth nothing and sometimes it is the difference between life and death but he is wrong. “Paycheck” is about the idea that sometimes the care from a former lover is worth nothing to you and sometimes it is the difference between you living and you dying. “Paycheck” is about the idea that sometimes the love of an herbologist willing to believe your character has fundamentally changed means nothing to you and sometimes it is the difference between you loving and you hating. “Paycheck” is about the idea that sometimes the envy of a former college friend has no effect on you and sometimes it is the difference between you still and you running. “Paycheck” is about relating to the world, but not to its objects, to its people. Paychecks are just scribbles on paper, after all.