Self

Imagine a world where our bodies belong to us, our choices belong to us, our relationships are chosen freely, not out of fear or obligation.

Imagine what becomes possible when we are no longer hiding, no longer ashamed, no longer too exhausted to expect more.

Jamila Bradley • The Collective Autonomy Wound

…now I get to be a kid in school again—wandering around the playground, picking up things off the ground and putting them in my mouth to see what they taste like because no one told me they’re not for me to eat. Like I used to be. Like I have always been. Let me never forget it again, it’s so much more fun than being grown up.

relatability—a logism so neo that it’s not even recognized by the 2008 iteration of Microsoft Word with which these words are being written—has become widely and unthinkingly accepted as a criterion of value, even by people who might be expected to have more sophisticated critical tools at their disposal.

The Scourge of "Relatability"

agree, when did relatability become required? why must we see ourselves in every story? But, is it possible not to, when we are all so similar?

ironically I’m annoyed by her choice of words. “a logism so neo”—is that necessary? Why go out of your way to be un-relatable, would you have lost any meaning if you had simply said “a word so new”?

if your words are so un-relatable that readers need a thesaurus to understand you, does that make you a better communicator? or is it just so you can feel special in your un-relatability? Is being unique “sophisticated” while being like other people “unsophisticated”? You claim readers are seeking relatability because they are selfish and self-centered. But in your own writing, you are so ungenerous

I am different people with many different people, the only thread holding my “self” together as a cohesive personality is the common genre of my identity, which imposes itself on each sub-genre of self.

Cognition is how we make sense of the world. As you may have noticed, we don’t all see the world the same way. As a child, were you as equally obsessed as I was with knowing if we all saw the same green? How can we know?

T. L. Uglow • A Curiosity of Doubts: Penguin Special

Yes! And it felt like there was no way to explain what I was asking. Do you see the same red as I see? By definition, red is red, but that wasn’t what I was asking. I was asking if our souls swapped places and escaped the contextless silos of our individual experiences, what I would see through your eyes?

I don’t even like reading but then I read something that was so delicious it made me realize I’ve been hungry for all this time.

I think I’ve just been reading the wrong books. I didn’t know words could pierce so close to… something. Truth? Life? The Everything?

I don’t think I read enough to justify writing. But I am tired of consuming. I think I have something to say.

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