Sometimes You Go Outside And See A Stranger Who Smiles At You And The World Feels Beautiful

Eurasian red squirrel/ekorre. Värmland, Sweden (May 9, 2024).

so i pretty clearly fully broke my poster's instinct, lmao

i've been turning over the problem and i think it comes down to two things: (1) i don't do enough, so i don't have enough to report on; (2) i stopped wanting to weigh in on Discourse, partially bc a lot of it feels petty in the face of rising fascism but mostly bc i started feeling abashed abt having such predictabl(y wearisom)e hobby-horses (this concern can be boiled down to 'i probably shouldn't be Too Myself in case it annoys people,' which objectively is no way to live but subjectively is a tricky little eel trap to wriggle out of!)

and if one isn't creating unprompted content, and also isn't responding to the commonest sort of prompt—well. a content shortage becomes somewhat inevitable.

(there remains of course the other subset of personal content i didn't address in point (1) above, namely mining not projects but the (non)workings of one's own psyche for material; and obviously i used to engage in a great deal of that and find it satisfying! but at this point i'm sufficiently ashamed of the fundamental structure of both my life and my self to find the prospect of public dissection aversive—which may well mean the abscess needs lancing, but. ow.)

and then on top of all that there's the conceptual-stylistic problem that too often these days i'm working with such a clogged brain that wrangling my thoughts into even half-understandable order becomes. very hard. like even on a good day i tend to think and write in nested clauses, such that you have to be able to suspend a series of unfinished parentheses in your own mind for a little while and then circle back and connect the closures; and when my thinking gets muddier my writing too gets muddier, and i find myself floundering in syntactic quicksand that even i'm struggling to parse, only moments after having extruded it…

i was just thinking earlier in vague terms about a specific but weirdly prevalent thing which consistently bugs me, namely: when cis men attempt to be self-deprecating about their unfamiliarity with feminine things, except that of course it's not actually self-deprecating to bring up how categorically distant you are and have always been from a stigmatized practice…

and then ran into this post, in which a presumably-white anon attempts to be self-deprecating about their unfamiliarity with the racialized genres of hip hop and rap (specifically by characterizing themself as a[n implicitly uncool] 'blorbo enjoyer,' which of course—as @‍batmanisagatewaydrug correctly points out—has the knock-on effect of framing fandom as Not For People of Color, which, not to put too fine a point on it, is racist), which illustrates exactly the same dynamic along a different axis…

anyway i guess my point here is just (1) to note that yeah, this really does seem to be a pattern! and given that, (2) to underscore in my own mind that this is probably something for nerds vel sim. in particular to look out for, because we often have insecurity modifiers that makes us feel like we're not ~really~ solidly part of the privileged group, which seems to make us feel like disclosing our ignorance can somehow constitute a self-deprecating self-own, rather than an offputting humblebrag about the privilege that made it possible…

nefret cat hopped up to sprawl very adorably and affectingly in my lap (just, of course, as i'd been contemplating getting up) and it's just precisely warm enough today that my feet were bare but also tucked up against my thighs to keep them cozy, which has resulted in the extremely luxurious sensation of 'fur against exposed ankles' 👍

tfw you're concerned that you might have been a little gauche, but unfortunately, seeking reassurance abt it would… also be gauche…

"A growing number of people are and have been questioning the more usual representations of gender. Some have had chemical and surgical enhancement, and many have not. Inhabiting a less static gender identification than that of typical transsexuals, they are exploring and experiencing a fluid range of gender embodiment. My own intimate partner, Kayt is one such individual. Ironically it has been through knowing and loving her that I have gained an even deeper understanding of the mutable soul. Her flexible consciousness has encouraged me to be generous in my thinking, and less rigid about the way others self-define, or in fact, when they choose not to" - Body Alchemy: Transsexual Portraits (1996) by Loren Cameron

new set of prints!! these will be available at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art's Dog Ear Festival this upcoming weekend (april 4-6) as part of the pop-up print market. i myself will not be at the festival but the slate of events looks soooo cool and i love BIMA, highly recommend checking it out!

found out about inupiaq baleen baskets today. i really like them! a lot of them remind me of animals popping their head out of the water

Nicholas Makalik, Barrow, Alaska, 1963

Coiled Baleen Basket by Abe Simmonds Barrow, Alaska, 1954

by Andrew Oenga, 1981.

Eurasian Red Squirrels/ekorrar photographed in Värmland, Sweden (April 18-20, 2025).

Owl Guitar Picks : acid-etched bronze.