Little Baby Man Comes To Interrupt My Spinning

thinking back to the time i realized i'd been practicing such scrupulous politeness abt [bodily feature i actively wasn't attracted to] that my bff had come away with the impression that i was, like, very actively into it, which was like. wow, wild to be so deeply misunderstood—

however it turns out that after putting an enormous amount of energy into Accepting that feature, well, now sometimes i am actively into it, so like. guess i'm the one who was wrong about me after all!

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!

White-crested Laughingthrush (Garrulax leucolophus), family Leiothrichidae, order Passeriformes, India

photograph by Latika Das

so i’m friends on strava with Baby Sister’s extremely sweet, extremely earnest nerd-jock boyfriend, right, because i’m trying to Behave Welcomingly towards the partners of important women in my life despite being, if we’re being honest, the world’s most defensively shriveled social prune, and today that normally-very-incidental fact rubbed my nose hard in how much sexism i still gotta unlearn—

so i went for my stupid dinky little run, right, and dutifully logged it, and found myself looking at my dash or activity feed or whatever they call it over there, and realized Baby Sister’s bf had also just been for a run, which had taken him about the same amount of time; but the thing was, i’d actually run, like, 15% longer than he had, it was just that my pace per mile had also been, like, a minute and a half faster than his. which was really startling to me, because i absolutely reflexively assumed that a tall mid-twenties cis guy, who i know for a fact cycles and rock-climbs on the reg, was going to be a faster runner than me, a medium-height estrogenized couch potato!

and like, obviously i have no idea what relationship this kid's pace today had to his actual capacity, and also quite frankly in my experience running is a sport where, sure, your fitness matters or whatever, but it’s also just radically easier the less you weigh?? so i’m not particularly priding myself on a (decidedly non-elite) pace that has a lot less to do with my current fitness level (rusty) and a lot more to do with currently being underweight bc i’m bad at feeding myself bc adhd. but it just feels like. pretty fuckin telling that i was so taken aback!!

ordered a cheap wearable timer¹ that has a 'buzz every [multiple of 5 you select] minutes and repeat by default until deactivated' function and have been experimenting with it as a source of gentle non-judgmental 'do i still want to be doing what i'm doing at this time' queries that i can choose whether to ignore or respond to

anyway it's only been like a day and a half but so far it seems like a helpful tool to have in my toolkit—like it hasn't magically turned me into a go-getter or anything but it has meant i did a bit of crafting² today and went for a tiny little run which is like. usually i'm pleased with myself if i scrape together enough executive function to initiate one enrichment thing superfluous to subsistence, so

we'll see how repeatable the results are but in any event: some little wins today :)

⸻ ¹ yes i could probably also have just used my phone but (1) while you can of course get the built-in timer to repeat it doesn't default to that, which was an important part of the concept (2) i was also working from a vague notion that, while i'm not as fussed about my phone dependence as i know some people have gotten, maybe it would be good not to actively reinforce it, lol ² and yes i do mean my tiny little mends from earlier but like. sewing's a craft (zie says defiantly)

(as a compulsive sourcer, i feel compelled to note that this is apparently the chapel choir of pembroke college, cambridge, conducted by anna lapwood, and that in 2020 they released an album called 'all things are quite silent' which includes this track and also a bunch of other really gorgeous pieces like elizabeth poston's setting of 'jesus christ the apple tree' my eternally beloved <3)

happy sunday. may I offer you this absurdly beautiful piece of music about it.

Tricycle Gang in Brooklyn, New York City (1930s)

saw a family tree template were you marked family members as male, female, or deceased. so glad we're finally recognizing a third gender (corpse)

Preoccupied by the way polyamory is treated with hate. I've gotten hate for even approaching the subject in the past. There's so much violent rhetoric and ideation surrounding it, so much genuine bigotry and prejudice towards people who practice it. But if you mention that, you get met with dismissal. It's not a big deal. You're taking it too seriously. Who gives a shit. Get over yourself. It is something that people respect so little that they refuse to even see it as a legitimate identity. Even left-wing progressive types will make jokes tantamount to thrashing blue-haired SJW snowflakes when it comes to polyamory. They're gross. They're weird. They're always cringe. It's never the people you want to be poly. I would rather kill myself. You'd think simply changing the structure of a relationship wouldn't be a problem, but even the most ardent defenders of equality can begin to say some pretty awful shit. Problem is, fundamentally, it is not seen as legitimate. It's not seen as deserving respect. There's all this handwringing about how these relationships are doomed to fail in order to justify this kind of thought and speech. It's bizarre to watch unfold. Frankly, it's the same sentiment and a lot of the same jokes as those cracked about nonbinary people. We're at a point where we've firmly accepted that everyone has a right to do what they want within the structure of social norms, you can take any side you want and do it with whoever you want. But as soon as you step outside of those norms, as soon as you go beyond the boundaries of social convention to find what suits you personally, everybody becomes a bitter reactionary.

Chameleon by Mansur Mughal, c.1612