Missing Moments
what renders missing moments worth it? why
do we let them go, fleeting scintillations set off…
what goes with them? what do they fleet away?
work. and Don’t Play. and more importantly:
Don’t Fuck (not any time except what is allotted
after dark; mechanically upon exhaustion).
still stricter dictum reads: Do Not Enjoy
not joy, desire—yes! salivate, buy
be entertained (just not in joy).
yet more importantly: never love more
than yourself, you job, autonomy, your
privilege is yours alone because
You Earned it! work and work and gain,
accumulate, accrue, get rich—entrepreneur!
Compete, deceive, whatever works
whatever brings your individual its own success
will sanction this morality. Whoever dares
to disobey these dictums will be cast:
a Marxist, Feminist, a Queer—cast out
on the ship of fools—raped, robbed
confined and silenced—Blackened,
burned and what’s at stake
but life, self-preservation, moral law
insidious and cunning signs on all
the doors of offices including those
we elevate as substitutes for all
of which we’re robbed: the moments,
missing moments.
what renders missing moments worth it? why
do we let them go, fleeting scintillations set off…
what goes with them? what do they fleet away?
work. and Don’t Play. and more importantly:
Don’t Fuck (not any time except what is allotted
after dark; mechanically upon exhaustion).
still stricter dictum reads: Do Not Enjoy
not joy, desire—yes! salivate, buy
be entertained (just not in joy).
yet more importantly: never love more
than yourself, you job, autonomy, your
privilege is yours alone because
You Earned it! work and work and gain,
accumulate, accrue, get rich—entrepreneur!
Compete, deceive, whatever works
whatever brings your individual its own success
will sanction this morality. Whoever dares
to disobey these dictums will be cast:
a Marxist, Feminist, a Queer—cast out
on the ship of fools—raped, robbed
confined and silenced—Blackened,
burned and what’s at stake
but life, self-preservation, moral law
insidious and cunning signs on all
the doors of offices including those
we elevate as substitutes for all
of which we’re robbed: the moments,
missing moments.
posted by irreme seshat at 9:13 AM
3 Comments:
I know I'm drawing her into this note because she's on my mind after seeing a documentary about her, but I can't help enjoying a moment’s connection between you and me and Emma Goldman at this moment. The commitment, emotion, passion of the Russian Jew, as Andrei Cordrescu says of Goldman and as Anzia Yezierska writes about in her novel Salome of the Tenements -- this goes through my mind when I read your queer, marxist, feminist, “cast out” words. Wish more than description perhaps, and you have some of Yezierska and Goldman’s burning immigrant in you while my fire has been tempered by several assimilated generations. But it gives me pleasure to draw strength from these women and to share my thoughts with another strong woman: you.
Wow, Elyse, thank you. All i've read so far is "Emma" but I'm dying to actually read some of her work. I've been looking in each fissure for something....with which....i'm afraid of the word freedom. i think most people are afraid of freedom, but not the word. i'm actually afraid of both. i says this because i try to infuse thought and witness and challange into every act i do, but i know that i fail most times.
ps: does anyone know how to make comments show up on the main page? Click on Wonder Prof to read Elyse's words.
also, dear j, where does the line lie? Surely not in obscurity for its own sake? Yes, perhaps it is better for its own sake, but surely there are exceptions? what line?
one version: "the line runs down the middle of you" it splits you open in the place you least wanted it, to allow it, its incision
with love
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