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by Rivers Solomon

How cruel that our parents, unexorcisable, go on inside of us. How cruel that we cannot disimbricate their ghosts from our being. “Mama?

That individual abstinence from animal products does everything to ease one’s own sense of moral responsibility but does nothing to challenge the system. It eases guilt, not animal suffering.

Jarring, the different versions of events we all have.

In her mind, this was because she wanted a good life for her children, but it was also because parents atone for their personal lacks by punishing their offspring.

I’d like to tell her that no family is innocent, not really, that behind every family is a story of harm, that the family itself is a capitalist institution whose definitions and frameworks are imbricated with patriarchy, childism, abuse—but I know it’s not what she means and I hold back, the way Mama never could.

How might the story of “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” be different had there been internet? Of course, Le Guin’s work is an allegory about the way grand riches depend on the exploitation of the downtrodden.

Social media has turned most language into empty woo.

Anything anyone describes as a family matter, a private matter, rarely is. It is a phrase used to protect abuse.

Though I am functionally an atheist, it still baffles, the way the world has plans for us so out of line with what we could have ever predicted.

There is no way to describe a person that is not a reduction.