Blog
The Gelflings are trans
And trans people are Gelflings. ‘Now, we leave you the Crystal of Truth,’ the Beings tell the Gelflings who are no longer Gelflings — because they are finally being left alone.
‘Red flags’ in queer dating aren’t the problem
What we compromise on lies beyond the red flag. A ‘red flag’ is a difference that alarms or confuses you. Though the flag itself isn’t a conflict, it may lead you to suspect your date isn’t a good match.
Empathy for cis people
Trans people have it because we don’t live in a trans bubble. My jaw hit the floor. I picked it up and put it back in. It fell out again. It rolled under the sofa and I have spent the last two weeks looking for it.
The feeling of knowing
Steven Connor’s 2019 book ‘The Madness of Knowledge’. ‘Epistemopathy’ means the feeling of knowing. We have pleasant and unpleasant feelings associated with knowing. That’s part of why knowledge matters to us.
Turtles all the way down
Finding truth in emptiness. When we acknowledge there is no final turtle, we open ourselves to discover and live more. The turtle on which we are standing is never the last one.
We can’t prepare for this moment
‘Opening to Darkness’ by Zenju Earthlyn Manuel. What to make of this political and ecological moment, this chaos that arrives with no instructions? We can “see, collectively, in the dark.”
‘Do I want it? Life, that is.’
‘On Not Knowing‘ by Emily Ogden. What is there to hope for? Should we hope? We can work in the field, making bales of hay, but the work of the soul “never will be cut and dried.”
‘Agnotology’: The study of ignorance
Our ways of knowing can be corrupted. “We’re going to have to rethink our metaphors,” Proctor said, on persuading people away from science-denial. “We’ve got to think much more creatively.”
We knew it before we were quizzed
That truth remains valuable. We existed. We went to school and forgot ourselves for a while. Then we remembered who we are. We had this knowledge with us the whole time.