Wilson

Improviser & manual therapist in Pasadena, CA.

Experimental music, poetry, film, photography. A romantic with avant-garde tendencies, or vice-versa. Anarchy and other ethical concerns.

Photo: selfie with iridescent green beetle on plumeria flower. Below, my face, fair skin, reddish brown beard, black t-shirt and cap. I have resting perplexed-and-annoyed face.

Banner: a photo of the Oakland Children's Fairyland sign transformed into Children's OhloneLand. See: https://sogoreate-landtrust.org/2024/10/10/on-ohlone-land/

Artistic:: https://otherghosts.net
Professional:: https://wilsonshook.com
Newsletter:: https://wilsonshook.com/newsletter
Bandcamp:: https://otherghosts.bandcamp.com

Public Key

npub13cgevv79eay2jmmaume0zth484jdjt2ws47rh55aqh3ulymjtddq3z6xu6

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsguyvkx0zu7j9fda77duh39m6n6exe948g2lpm62wstc70jde9kksprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmnthejrhz

Publishing to

relay.momostr.pink

Author Public Key

npub13cgevv79eay2jmmaume0zth484jdjt2ws47rh55aqh3ulymjtddq3z6xu6

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Last Notes

2026-01-25 21:17:33 GMT

The fact that the water machine at my office only dispenses scalding hot and ice cold water, and I have to mix them half and half to get just normal room temp water feels very late stage capitalism

2025-11-18 00:45:06 GMT

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Every single one of these tactics started in Los Angeles before ICE hit Chicago. I don't understand why AP is hyping this "uniquely Chicago" angle.

2025-11-07 22:38:01 GMT

There's probably not much point in posting here, but if anyone in the #LosAngeles area is in the market for a #saxophone, I am selling a very nice Yanagisawa soprano (https://losangeles.craigslist.org/sgv/msg/d/pasadena-yanagisawa-martin-800-soprano/7893738476.html) and a somewhat beat up but still wonderful Buescher baritone (https://losangeles.craigslist.org/sgv/msg/d/pasadena-buescher-400-baritone/7894234458.html).
Hit me up, and share freely.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/510/796/199/379/284/original/eaee03f7ebe09fc9.jpg
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/510/796/318/336/357/original/f36e8813547eebec.jpg

2025-10-20 19:36:09 GMT

“The olive trees have become firewood now,” he said bitterly. “I feel pain with every cut—not just for the loss, but because these trees are life itself. For Palestinians, they are a symbol of steadfastness. When they die, it feels like another disaster.”
:::
“We Estimate That Nearly One Million of Gaza’s 1.1 Million Olive Trees Have Been Destroyed”
https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/gaza-olive-groves-oil-farmers-israel-war
#ecocide #genocide #palestine

2025-07-14 21:35:22 GMT

I'm here for the takedown of Mormonism, but I really don't know how you can spill this much ink on the foreclosure of the American commons without even a token mention of the fact that "public lands" in the US would not exist without the foreclosure of the indigenous commons, and without the concomitant and ongoing genocide of indigenous peoples.
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From Joseph Smith to Mike Lee: Two Centuries of Mormon Land Grabbers - Truthdig
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/from-joseph-smith-to-mike-lee-two-centuries-of-mormon-land-grabbers/

2025-06-30 22:13:05 GMT

What's all this about #gravy?

2025-06-24 20:10:50 GMT

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I mean, some of this makes hypothetical sense, but I think it's outweighed by the increased danger police presence inevitably brings, especially when the ONLY thing that has worked as far as I know to stop an abduction in progress is people mobbing up and preventing them from taking someone.
I know city officials are trying to save face by passing laws that agents need to identify themselves and so forth. Maybe this will have some effect. But even if these were enforceable, and I don't think they are, the only people that could enforce them are cops who we already know are at best only interested in their own self-preservation, and at worst ideologically aligned and actively collaborating with ICE.

2025-06-24 19:25:52 GMT

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Get the detainee's name, birth date, and country of origin, record as many details as possible (license plates, location, time, number of "ICE agents" & any identifying info...). Call an immigration defense hotline ASAP and tell them everything. Exchange contact info with any other witnesses.
Assume the police will not help and/or ICE will be gone by the time they arrive and/or they will show up and essentially run security for the raid. So far there are literally no instances of police intervening to stop an "ICE" abduction that I'm aware of (please correct me if wrong).
In Los Angeles:
ImmDef Immigrant Defenders Law Center : (213) 833-8283
Los Angeles Rapid Response Network: (888) 624-4752
@npub1aq0…mq9f

2025-06-07 17:58:21 GMT

LAPD coming out en masse to protect ICE from the people of LA—instead of the other way around—says a lot about the morality of the LAPD and of city government. It says a lot about what non-cooperation with federal law enforcement actually means in practice.
Mayor Bass Has a strongly worded statement condemning the ICE raid, as if the city could not possibly have done anything to prevent it from happening. There is no such thing as non-cooperation with ICE as long as local police can be called out to fight the federal government's battles for them.
The bare minimum of non-cooperation would be just letting it happen, hands off, which clearly is not what went down yesterday. This was active facilitation. What would it look like for local governments to actively interfere with ICE raids? It's hard to imagine.
#ICE #LAPD

2025-05-24 19:38:23 GMT

Edit: the date on the flyer is incorrect. Show is tonight! Delayed originally due to rain.
Tomorrow evening, LAWWSS ascends the Angeles Crest Highway to conjure strange multiphonics in the derelict ambiance of an old train tunnel. Should be a fun, feral time. I have not explored this tunnel, and have been unable to get clear info as far as accessibility, but the parking is immediately adjacent on level ground. Carpooling very strongly suggested. Also warm layers.
5/25 Sunday 7:00
Photon Oasis presents:
Oort Smog
LAWWSS
Labmeat
CK Diesel Choir
DJ QQQQ
Tunnel 1930, Angeles National Forest, Pasadena, CA
https://maps.app.goo.gl/Qo3heGiVogvDpZM29
@npub198z…vts4 #LosAngeles
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/564/453/871/874/471/original/4124b44662fce173.jpg

2025-04-06 18:23:12 GMT

Folks, I could use a little boost if you don't mind. I recently relocated back to #Pasadena after a couple years in the Bay Area, and am working on getting my #ManualTherapy and #Bodywork practice back into a sustainable rhythm. Learn more, ask questions, and please share! Thank you!
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I am a manual therapist specializing in Visceral Manipulation, Craniosacral Therapy, and integrative therapeutic massage. I use gentle, targeted, osteopathic techniques to relieve restriction within and around the internal organs, brain, nervous system, and vasculature, restoring healthy movement and function. By assisting the body in working through its internalized responses to physical and emotional trauma, I prioritize the often neglected root causes of chronic injury, illness, structural imbalance, and dysfunction. Sessions incorporate a balance of visceral, cranial, and musculoskeletal work, with the goal of restoring your body’s ability to adapt and heal on its own.
Winter Garden Healing Arts
https://wilsonshook.com/

2025-03-24 17:43:02 GMT

'Quraiqi’s social media posts [@dorgham_quraiqi on IG] reveal that after Israel finally allowed people to return to their homes in the north of the enclave as part of the ceasefire agreement, he was confronted with what remained of his home and studio.
'Posting pictures of his damaged artworks on Facebook at the end of February, he wrote, “They were part of my soul, of dreams I had long wished to share with an audience,” adding that the destruction was an attempt to erase memory, culture and humanity. “But as the saying goes, ‘Hope only dies with the death of the soul,’ and art is my soul."'
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‘The missiles will not erase his mark on our hearts’: Palestinian artist killed in Israeli strikes - The Art Newspaper - International art news and events
https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2025/03/20/the-missiles-will-not-erase-his-mark-on-our-hearts-palestinian-artist-killed-in-israeli-strikes
@npub1zxn…0kqm

2025-01-18 05:05:55 GMT

The Apartment Association of Greater Los Angeles would like you to know that identifying and publicly calling out real estate price gouging will not help to lower prices, and also that you should definitely not do it. Here's an article about how to get involved.
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The spreadsheet brigade that's keeping LA's rental market from exploding | Alissa Walker
https://www.torched.la/the-spreadsheet-brigade-thats-keeping-las-rental-market-from-exploding/

2025-01-10 04:28:25 GMT

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I'd be curious to see that if you have the link. Though it doesn't sound like a very widely adoptable solution.

2025-01-04 00:23:56 GMT

Dance like no one is watching. Shop like no one is standing patiently behind you while you block the whole damn aisle with your cart to look at your phone.

2025-01-02 17:29:18 GMT

I contributed a piece to this benefit compilation, Noise>Drones, raising funds for Palestine Action. It's a fantastic cacophony with some really strong tracks, and I'm glad to be a part of it. Palestine Action is doing incomparable work to confront Israeli war profiteering, and they deserve our support.
My piece, "Burrow - Levitate - Repose," is a guerrilla recording taken during a recent bit of urban exploration in a derelict school auditorium in Oakland, California. Solo soprano saxophone to make the walls ring.
#noise #saxophone #PalestineAction #gaza #urbex @npub198z…vts4
https://porchcollapse0000.bandcamp.com/album/noise-drones-palestine-action-fundraiser

2024-12-25 00:58:34 GMT

A #flosstodon #mosstodon potpourri.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/113/710/740/394/055/171/original/ddd7ab3a58709b2e.jpg

2024-12-15 01:51:12 GMT

I know the etiquette is evolving around this so here's my quick guide to sharing the road with self-driving cars:
If you find yourself in a city whose political leaders are corrupt and vain enough to have allowed this scourge onto their streets, you absolutely do not owe them the basic courtesy you would extend to any driver.
Bearing in mind safety and basic physics, it's perfectly fine to, for instance, not let them proceed at a stop sign; not let them merge in traffic; take the lane and bike super slow in front of them; take your sweet time in a crosswalk; accidentally leave your personal traffic cone on its hood; etc, etc. Just remember that they are recording you, should you choose to escalate your discourtesy beyond the the obnoxious-but-basically-legal.
Self-driving cars do not deserve the right of way, because rights are for sentient beings, not roving death cameras.
If you are worried whether someone is riding in back, just imagine it's Jeff Bezos and he's on his way to a very important meeting. The more inconvenient these things are to hire, the more ordinary people will choose better options, the more swiftly these businesses will fail and disappear.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/113/654/314/510/136/886/original/b060f55b1904e164.jpg

2024-12-05 21:33:02 GMT

Intentionally hiring exactly the wrong person for the job is not unique to Trump world. It's actually a feature of neoliberalism.
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Skid Row Nonprofit ‘Fighting to End Homelessness’ Hires Former City Attorney Mike Feuer, the ‘Architect’ of Anti-Homeless Law ~ L.A. TACO
https://lataco.com/inner-city-law-center-hires-mike-feuer

2024-12-05 19:18:59 GMT

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In the east Bay:
"Most of Alameda and Oakland International Airport."
According to this article (but the map feature is down).
https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2021/07/08/tsunami-hazard-map-the-bay-area-neighborhoods-you-should-flee-on-foot/

2024-10-31 15:25:07 GMT

'British banking giant Barclays has sold all of its investment shareholdings in Israel’s largest weapons company Elbit Systems Ltd.
'According to Palestine Action, a British activist group that has been protesting against the bank's investments in Israel, Barclays has until recently owned over 16,000 shares in Elbit Systems.
'In the latest US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filings, Barclays owned zero shares in Elbit Systems Ltd (ELST), down 16,345 since the previous filing, dated 15 May 2024, worth over $3.4m.'
#BDS #PalestineAction @npub1zxn…0kqm
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Barclays sells all shares in Israeli weapons firm Elbit amid pro-Palestinian pressure | Middle East Eye
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/barclays-israel-elbit-systems-sells-shares-weapons

2024-09-26 18:04:37 GMT

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Spooky!

2024-09-26 17:45:39 GMT

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I'm also learning in writing this post that it's apparently "Febreze," and not "Fabreze," as I've thought forever. Is this a new Mandela Effect??

2024-09-26 17:40:07 GMT

Is there a worse invention (that's not explicitly a weapon) than "odor-neutralizing wastebasket liners?" Clearly, there are worse things out there that one could hypothetically purchase, but the sheer ubiquity of these pre-stank trash bags means that we effectively have no choice but to endure their horrendous, supposedly neutral odor.
One could argue that Fabreze™ was the original sin here, but everyone learned within like five minutes of Fabreze entering the marketplace that it clearly did not do the thing it purports to do, instead just layering another malicious stench on top of whatever one is trying to hide. Nobody buys Fabreze.
But the plastics companies never met a superfluous toxic haze they couldn't sell, and now thirty years later, we are all wrapped in perfumed polyethylene. You have to go to specialty stores to even find unscented trash bags, and even the ones not labelled as such often have a fragrance applied.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/113/205/050/138/116/922/original/6cd9277861525656.jpg

2024-09-18 21:10:34 GMT

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How much of the internet is devoted to grieving a world we've lost, and a world we were promised but never saw? The technological utopia of the internet has largely not arrived. Instead we have a vast landscape of places to commiserate about how awful the internet is, and how awful our world is because of the internet and the networked hyper-exploitation that it enables.

2024-09-18 21:10:22 GMT

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When I lived in Seattle, there was a wildly popular Facebook account called Vanishing Seattle, that documented buildings and businesses lost to development and neglect. Seattle's predilection for melancholy predates the internet, but these sorts of things exist everywhere, and have become an intrinsic part of what we think about and how we interact when we are online.

2024-09-18 21:10:06 GMT

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This thread has me thinking now about the foundational sadness that underpins so much of the internet, and without which most of it is simply illegible. Meme culture, conspiracy theories, and online hostility get a lot of attention, but grief is everywhere, once you start looking for it.

2024-09-18 18:47:30 GMT

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This kind of vulnerability is also not just true of sentimental music, BTW. I remember reading a string of comments under a KARP video a while back, where some guy came in swinging with a comment about how all the bands that were supposedly influenced by the Melvins were way better than the Melvins themselves. And instead of getting into a brawl about it, some commenters patiently walked the dude through what they thought was unique or great about the Melvins, and were like, "Oh, but have you listened to..." and proceeded to recommend selections from the discography, to which the previously belligerent poster was open and appreciative.

2024-09-18 17:02:47 GMT

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For instance, I liked reading the thread under "Beat Bop" by Rammellzee and K-Rob, where K-Rob shows up and lays down some knowledge about the track, getting in little fights with other commenters along the way.
There is a vinyl reissue of this track available (which is mostly a cult object because of the Jean-Michel Basquiat artwork), where the label makes a big stink about the supposed mystery that surrounds it. Did anyone think to reach out to the guy who is still alive, and apparently happy to talk about his work? Is he making any money off of the repress?
https://youtu.be/9I56Kkxh_os?si=0rcc0HNGwpecAn6O

2024-09-18 16:54:42 GMT

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Another special thing that I see frequently is some equally anonymous commenter claiming that they played bass on the track or something, and then other commenters offer respect and praise, sometimes asking questions about the song or the artist, or getting into lengthy discussions about the lore or meaning around the piece. I think it's fair to say I see this most with Black musicians who didn't get anywhere near the respect and compensation due to them for the labor. Often these songs are just owned by a label, or some investment firm, and none of the artists are even making residuals off of their labor anymore, least of all the session musicians. Visiting the Youtube altar as just another supplicant is a way of claiming some little piece of dignity around their labor.

2024-09-18 15:45:01 GMT

If you've ever wondered where straight men go to share their feelings, may I humbly suggest the comments section to literally any Youtube video of music more than 15 years old. I am fascinated and honestly really touched by this weird phenomenon. Open the comments thread and you can't get more than a dozen or so entries in before some dude is spilling his guts about the profound personal loss that inspired him to revisit this particular jam. And others will chime in to offer supportive comments, correct the errant hater, and generally affirm the sacred space of the Youtube comment thread. It really feels like a sort of altar and safe space.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/113/157/518/731/985/746/original/be9a1217bbea3367.jpg

2024-09-09 18:59:28 GMT

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"Some of the country’s greatest are included in this milieu, including Doshi, whose Centre for Environment Planning and Technology established a school of architectural design focused on a syncretic, decidedly Indian practice and vision, and Nek Chand, a rebellious road engineer who rejected Le Corbusier’s sterile city grid by secretly building a series of courtyards festooned with sculptures made from recycled materials."

2024-09-09 18:58:09 GMT

Interesting V&A show this month, for anyone in London.
Tropical Modernist architecture in Ghana and India during and as an instrument of decolonization.
#architecture #modernism
https://hyperallergic.com/943221/how-tropical-modernism-became-a-tool-of-postcolonial-nation-building/
Also some nice images here:
https://www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/tropical-modernism-architecture-and-independence

2024-09-03 06:28:32 GMT

So I am preparing to move back to Los Angeles after a too-brief sojourn in the Bay Area. Looking at housing ads in an overpriced-and-getting-worse city is so devastating. If any of my LA fedi friends have a lead on a place (ideally two bedrooms in the near eastside or northeast parts of LA proper, but we're open to other areas), please please let me know. Two adults, no pets, good credit, stable work & rental history, flexible start date. Dealbreakers: abusive scumlord management, mold. Thank you!

2024-09-02 22:08:14 GMT

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It bothers me that so much of the debate over reparations in California hinges on the notion that California supposedly didn't do slavery. California, like every other "non-slave-state," built an economy around a racialized permanent underclass, and that racialized economy not only built the state that we know today, it also continues to this day. Anyone who is disadvantaged by it deserves to be made whole, whether or not they can trace ancestry to the "between 500 and 1500" enslaved people who are known to have lived in CA.

2024-08-17 23:59:18 GMT

I'm interested in meeting more people on fedi with an artistic practice that doesn't primarily depend upon computers, whether in its creation, appreciation, or participation. It feels a bit like climbing a tree looking for potatoes, but sometimes you do indeed find a potato up here, swaying in the breeze.
Hit me up. Boost if you like.
Edit, just to clarify: I very much intended this post to include musicians, dancers, performers of various stripes, writers whose work exists on paper (yes, I know you probably use a computer to write), photographers & filmmakers who work with actual film, curators, choreographers. The motivator for me is one part aesthetic, one part political, one part mental health.
All the (wonderful, much appreciated) suggestions so far have been craft and plastic arts people.

2024-08-14 22:56:41 GMT

It's almost as if they don't think of Palestinians as real people with real history and culture. It's almost as if the erasure of any trace of any such history and culture, and the eradication of any such people were an explicit policy.
Stay tuned for very sincere expressions of "concern" from US leadership, along with a carefully calibrated *increase* in funding to Israeli institutions. You know, to show them we mean business.
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"Aiming to connect Jerusalem with Gush Etzion, a cluster of Israeli settlements located southeast of the city, Israeli forces are looking to establish a new settlement called Nachal Heletz, said Smotrich’s statement, which notes that part of the objective is to prevent Palestinian statehood.”
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Israel Announces Settlement Near Palestinian World Heritage Site
https://hyperallergic.com/943264/israel-approves-settlement-near-palestinian-world-heritage-site/
@npub1zxn…0kqm #genocide #apartheid

2024-05-12 21:08:16 GMT

I'm curious what people think the protest dynamics with regard to @npub1zxn…0kqm would be like if we were looking at Trump in office instead of Biden over the past few years.
This is not a question about which one is more likely to rush to defend and enable Israel. We all know they are fairly indistinguishable on that point. I'm also not asking whether "Bibi wants Trump to win." Fine, whatever. Plenty of people have opinions about that. This is a different question.
I'm just wondering what folks think this would all look like today if people saw this as "Trump's genocide," i.e., would there be more people in the streets? Would the protests be more fierce?
Like, some of the dynamics around #BLM 2020 had to do with fighting a perceived alliance between Trump and the police state, that were different than in #Ferguson 2014, etc, when it was Obama's police state. Not to simplify things too much, just an example.
I'm not trying to gotcha anyone, or advocate for one candidate over the other. I'm interested in your thoughts.
#USPol

2024-01-02 09:43:00 GMT

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'After a political theory is solidified, a banner is waved, a flag is planted, and allegiance is due.
'We do not seek that our ways of knowing, being, and acting ever be wrapped up into a fixed belief and presented as a pitiful rag. We do not wish that Indigenous anarchism ever be a flag that is planted anywhere on Mother Earth. The calcification of an Indigenous anarchist theory would precipitate all the merchandizing that relegates other political theories to banal dramaturgy, and we fanatically reject these conditions.
'Indigenous autonomy needs no theoretical foundation to justify itself.'
#KleeBenally

2024-01-02 09:31:39 GMT

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'Ours is a continually emergent world, our existence and our future is continuous manifestation, and we are always in the process of becoming.
'To unmap Indigenous social relations from the colonial political geography means to become unknowable again. When we restore or heal ancestral living knowledge, we become a remembering against time. Indigenous memories are anti-history and anti-future. Indigenous physical and mnemonic resistance is the rejection of colonial temporal “awareness,” it is the negation of oblivion. Our mutuality with existence has always occurred outside of time.'
#KleeBenally

2024-01-02 09:16:20 GMT

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'When we ask the question “What does civilization want?” we are visited by the ghosts of our children. The specters of a dead future. Emaciated skeletons buried beneath vulgar stories of conquest upon conquest upon conquest. Civilization has no relatives, only captives. Breathing dead air and poisoned water, it owns the night and creeps towards distant constellations. Its survival is expansive unending hunger, a hunger that has been named colonialism; a vast consumption that feeds on spirit, and all life. It fashions its years and seconds into an anemic prison. It has shaped time into the most exquisite of weapons, obliterating memories, killing cycles. Its essence is time. The temporal and spacial imposition of awareness is the oblivion that is modernity and linear, or one-way time. When we name the genocidal fulfillment of a colonized future, civilization pronounces itself as The Existent. This is what is meant by “modernity.” It is authoritarian temporality. We name this consuming of existence, this assertion of “superiority,” as a war of wars against Mother Earth.'
#KleeBenally

2024-01-02 09:09:21 GMT

Saddened to wake this morning to news of the passing of Klee Benally (Diné). I'm spending some time with his brilliant and provocative essay, "Unknowable: Against an Indigenous Anarchist Theory," published in Black Seed: Not On Any Map (Little Black Cart) and online at the link below.
"We have become entangled in words that are not our own. They cut our tongues as we speak. They eat our dreams as we sleep. This is a reluctant offering.
"A thread that weaves a story, pulled gently at first. So focused on the line that we become disoriented in the delicate tension. When we remember to breathe. When we step away from these stars and into constellations, we see new symbols have emerged."
#KleeBenally
https://www.indigenousaction.org/unknowable-against-an-indigenous-anarchist-theory-zine/