a secret third thing
this is neither a year in review post nor a resolutions post, but a secret third thing.
2022 has been a year of tectonic shifts in my life, and there’s no use recapping them here because i already have. i also don’t love year in review posts and am bad at resolutions. so let’s not dwell in the past; let’s dwell in the now and think about tomorrow.
if you’ve talked to me lately in any depth, you know that i have been centering myself in the real world. that’s right, your favorite extremely online anarchist archivist girlfriend is increasingly offline, not really an archivist, and not your girlfriend. (at least we still have anarchy.) the real world is replete with sensory excitement that centers me in the now of my local café as i write this. the grayness of the Seattle skies visible through the plateglass windows. the wood of the chair and table pressing against my body. the smell of cleaning products and roasted coffee beans wafting through my nostrils. the taste of my now-lukewarm latte that i’ve been nursing for the last hour. the sound of conversation competing with Godley & Creme’s “Cry” on my headphones, steaming milk, barking dogs, and whatever’s on the cafe’s speakers.
the real world’s physicality is satisfying, yet i also find myself basking in the light and warmth of imagination as it shines through the stained glass of my mind-palace. there are things i hold onto precisely in my head because i have a lack of a physical analog: experiences of beauty now far from me. not distant memories but things i try to live and relive, a ceaseless cycle of rebirth of experience even as i have amazing new experiences every single day. not everything gold can stay, despite it being a noble metal. neither the memories nor the desire for the new new corrode, really, but they end up getting turned into fulminating gold, which has the tendency to explode with the slightest touch.
fulgeo: i shine. fulgebimus: we will shine. fulgetote: we shall shine. all i want is for us to shine together. let us make a commitment to do that — to stand side by side at the barricades, arm in arm at the museum, hand in hand on the shore. through our successes and failures. let us inject, will, manifest, and demand the beauty into our lives not just for ourselves individually, but for each other. it is owed to us mutually. the world is a terrible place but it’s far less terrible with both of us in it. let us gas each other up when we are feeling ourselves as the beautiful creatures we know ourselves to be. let us manifest the art, music, and culture we want to see together and create it and consume it in each other’s presence, even if that only means pressing “play” at the same time if we are miles and miles apart. let us not expect much, but be graced by what we receive and grace others what we give both in the physical world and in our imaginations. let us defend each other and our communities.
there is no future but ours. i love you. i love us. let’s do this all together, bringing about the real state of exception. we owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to all of us.