everybody talks about the bad bits and never the good stuff, like how we can compute all available sources of information and make a lightning-fast choice for the next, best, course of action and that this makes us invaluable in an emergency, and like how we can find the seam of gold in an otherwise endless wall of greyness in the middle of a project and come up with a brand new solution that evaporates the weight from everyone’s shoulders and that this makes us irreplaceable in the creative industries, and like how we might seem to be doing nothing but we are just quietly brewing brilliance and next minute we’re writing at the speed of sound and doing the work of twenty sub-editors in the space of one afternoon and that this makes us indispensable when a deadline is approaching and like how we are more than squirrel spotters, we are ebullient and sensitive and smart, and yet everybody talks about the bad bits
Monday, 3 May 2021
queer...as in gay?
as in different from that slippery notion of normality
as
in out of bounds sensuality
as
in hyper-aware
as
in oscillating between too-muchness and not-enoughness
as
in haircuts hurt but bondage doesn’t
as
in can’t remember their name but can remember that little freckle they had on their
toe
as
in started writing and didn’t stop for nine hours
as
in this room is too bright
as
in the buzz of sleeping devices is too loud
as
in some nights it’s one drink and vomit and other nights it’s twenty and no
impact
as
in a death-wish has always squatted upon my chest
as
in brains are sexier than hips
as
in a tickle hurts but a punch doesn’t
as
in comprehension is possible only within poetics
as
in music and mathematics look the same and are equally nourishing
as
in phone calls are frightening but public speaking comes easily
as
in structure is a double-edged sanity
as
in hyper-aware
as
in out of bounds sensuality
as
in different from that slippery notion of normality
diagnostics
we interrupt our regular programming to invite you consider the possibility that your struggles cannot be explained away by the current diagnoses and that you may have something altogether different and more complex running around inside that queer head of yours something altogether different and more complex than garden-variety anxiety and depression see the issue may not be serotonin after all but rather dopamine and given your answers to this test this test this test yes another test lead us to believe that indeed you are even further away from what we call normal than we had initially thought now try this new concoction of medication there’s a good girl come on back in a fortnight and let us know whether you felt more subdued in which case we are correct or whether you felt like your heart was beating so fast it would break out of your chest at any second in which case we are incorrect and you will have experienced two weeks’ worth of speed-living and we apologise in advance but this is the only way we can know for sure and it’s for your own good that we interrupt our regular programming to invite you to consider the possibility that your struggles cannot be explained away by the current diagnoses
a fit and proper person
will the leaders of the world please stand up and apologise will the member for bowman please stand up and apologise for the sexual harassment for the claim that an ADHD diagnosis can explain away his callousness and his harmful behaviours and will the prime minister of this embarrassment of a country please stand up and apologise for the cheap band aid solution of empathy training and the underhanded creeping of church into state and the abandonment while we burned and the insistence that women meet him on his terms instead of theirs for hiding behind his gilded door while outside we leaked our pain upon the manicured lawns and will the not-all-men campaigners please stand up and apologise for the ignorance and the silencing and the overshadowing and distracting and the locker-room banter and the stealthing and the breaching of boundaries and the defending of their best-mate-the-rapist and will the religious leaders please stand up and apologise for the cover-ups and the children hurt and the women trapped and the billions lining their pockets while the world starves will the leaders of the world please stand up and apologise
Woman/Interrupted
This body writes away worries, expelling them like garbage, but they keep on coming back. Self-regenerating parasites feeding off the flesh, figuring out how to trick the system and survive. A lifelong war waged on wellbeing, surrender is never an option, even though oblivion is devilishly attractive, seductive, come-to-me-and-see-the-light-and-suffer-no-more. Little girl blue. Little girl used. Little girl bruised by too-big-fingers finding too-small-spaces. You’d never know just from looking. You’d never guess she’s tainted. You’d never ask, either.
modification/identification
they’ve tried to annihilate me and they might be back at any time, so I need a way to be found when they hide the pieces of me. dna testing is too slow, so, instead, i will ensure that my skin-suit is saturated with tattoos, so that even if they tear me apart, my name will be screaming at forensic investigators long before they get my broken parts back to a laboratory. i am only one limb away from a full set of inked-in puzzle pieces now. i am future proofed and pretty in my scars and scratches.
radical sensing
academic conference is plodding along, with all of the usual proceedings, housekeeping, pronouns, acknowledgement of country, rules for microphones and video screens, and delays in transmission, yada yada yada, when. all of a sudden. a slide show begins. creative writers are being encouraged to engage in a new way of practicing our craft. it’s being sold as an opportunity to feel nourished while writing. but. here’s the thing. the practice they’re describing is an imitation of how my brain operates. they’re calling it radical sensing. they tell us to tune into our senses. list all of the things you hear, smell, feel, taste. then use those things as a prompt. applause for the new way of thinking leaves me incredulous. what. the. actual. fuck. because this is not new to me. i am always already radically sensing all. of. the. things. all of the time, all of the time, all of the time. never stops. and it is far from nourishing. it is a hamster wheel and it won’t let me stop. now these neurotypicals are pumped. eager to experiment with my reality. trying it on for size like a daring new lipstick shade. a costume. while i imagine what it must be like to be able to get off the hamster wheel and become familiar with silence…absence of sensing. that would be radical for me. that would be new. that would be nourishing. and they never even asked us neurodivergent folks what being radical is like. they just borrowed our ways of being and presented them as research. significant and novel. as if we are nowhere to be found in the existing discourse…maybe we’re not…yet. but we’ve been here the whole time. all they had to do was ask. instead we are tokens. anomalies whose inherent radicalism is punched down into ever-smaller boxes…until, until, until…they need compelling, shiny, untouched ideas. then all of a sudden. we are counted. but without our involvement. without our permission. without our opinions. unless they want to satisfy the diversity quota…then, then, then…they pimp us out as a unique selling point and count their profits while we suffocate under the searing stage lights and sweat inside the grease-paint and the too-tight, scratchy academic uniform blazers. neurowashing us clean until there’s nothing. radical. left.