A person notices something. They notice it again, in a different context, with a different surface but the same underlying structure. They notice it a third time.
[Read more]Engage
There is a particular move that precedes most of the privacy violations I have observed, and it is made before the violation occurs.
The move is this: I wouldn’t mind becomes you shouldn’t mind.
[Read more]A spool of rainbow thread begins as petroleum. Not as colour, not as the thing it will become, but as purified terephthalic acid and monoethylene glycol—chemicals derived from crude oil, colourless, without the properties that will eventually make the finished thread recognisable as what it is.
[Read more]Roy Porter, writing about the conversational preoccupations of a certain class of English society in the eighteenth century, noted that health was among their primary concerns. The state of one’s body occupied the drawing room with a persistence that suggested, to Porter at least, something worth remarking on.
Nothing has changed. The class has expanded.
[Read more]The phone rings in the middle of the afternoon. I answer on the third ring, holding the receiver between my shoulder and ear while shutting the window against the wind. Her voice arrives before the sound of the latch.
“You never answer the phone,” she says.
[Read more]I sent an email. The reply began: Thanks for reaching out.
I had not reached out. I had sent an email. Reaching out describes a physical or emotional gesture—the extension of oneself across a distance that makes the extension notable. It implies effort. It implies that contact was not guaranteed and was therefore meaningful when achieved.
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