The auspicous week is upon us and

welp... if Mercury wasn't already going Retrograde it sure as fuck is now.

0.0

"why should I forgive?
under what guise
was I brought to this life?

to scour away
the empty pain
of no-commitment."

question of the week:

is it possible for women to work, in good conscience and self-care, with or "under" men who refuse to acknowledge their privilege or the inherent power dynamics of living in a patriarchy (or, for that matter, who refuse to even acknowledge the reality of the patriarchy and systematic oppression of women)?

and, furthermore, is it possible to have ANY meaningful relationship with a man who refuses to acknowledge AND actively work against these power dynamics on an ongoing basis?

fucking hell. i just want a pizza.

On Trying to Talk With a Man

"Out in this desert we are testing bombs,

that's why we came here.

Sometimes I feel an underground river
forcing its way between deformed cliffs
an acute angle of understanding
moving itself like a locus of the sun
into this condemned scenery.

What we’ve had to give up to get here –
whole LP collections, films we starred in
playing in the neighborhoods, bakery windows
full of dry, chocolate-filled Jewish cookies,
the language of love-letters, of suicide notes,
afternoons on the riverbank
pretending to be children

Coming out to this desert
we meant to change the face of
driving among dull green succulents
walking at noon in the ghost town
surrounded by a silence

that sounds like the silence of the place
except that it came with us
and is familiar
and everything we were saying until now
was an effort to blot it out –
coming out here we are up against it

Out here I feel more helpless
with you than without you
You mention the danger
and list the equipment
we talk of people caring for each other
in emergencies - laceration, thirst -
but you look at me like an emergency

Your dry heat feels like power
your eyes are stars of a different magnitude
they reflect lights that spell out: EXIT
when you get up and pace the floor

talking of the danger
as if it were not ourselves
as if we were testing anything else."

--Adrienne Rich--