And some I gave their own posts to ’cos they were utter bangers, and some I might even give their own posts, ’cos also bangers. So many books. I can only take one fiction and one non-fiction with me? Robyn Maynard and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s Rehearsals for Living, and Tamsyn Muir’s Nona the Ninth. And one book of poetry? Fatimah Asghar’s If They Come For Us.
I love Omar Sakr, and Son of Sin is a beautiful novel but this was not an easy read. It was also an expensive read because getting ‘niche’ books from Straya or Kiwiland up to Europe is an exercise random fees and expenses. Fuck this book made me sad sometimes, like sad for the whole world, for all of us who survived through violence and emotional distance, abandonment and loneliness, and conditional, manipulative love. Yeah Omar habibi you are a gift to the world.
’Cos I’m not a selfish coward. ’Cos it is possible in this country, thanks to science and vaccine apartheid, to get vaccinated at all.
Heaps big thank you to everyone at Corona-Impfzentrum Flughafen Tegel who made the whole process of having some mRNA stuck in my deltoid for the third time simple and routine and slightly less bureaucratic than the previous times. And again, especially to all the Brown and Black staff, young and old, who are still stepping up to do this job and were cheerful and helpful all the way through — even when you were bored and tired in the grotty cold outside. I see you. I wish Berlin was you all the time.
I wish also I could get a no questions asked jab at my local supermarket, and get free take-home rapid tests, and that all the information was easy to find in multiple languages on a single, specific website, and the drug companies said fuck it to ‘intellectual property’ and ‘patents’ and to making almost 100 million each and every day off this pandemic — but we all saw how they did the same with HIV/AIDS meds for the last decades, which is part why we’re in this shit, and politics means no government is going to force them to say fuck it, and I wish we had much much much better government ’cos pigeons making random decisions would do a better job, and I wish vaccination was mandatory like for polio and all the other stuff, and I wish very hard all the cunts ‘protesting’ about their ‘loss of freedom’ would choke to death on each other’s flaccid white dicks, and I wish I remembered everything else I want to wish for, but I’m fucking sick and fucking tired and my sick and tired is fucking sick and fucking tired.
Swear to God if you’re someone I know and I find out you ‘chose’ to not get vaccinated when you could, I will knife you.
Heaps big thank you to everyone* at Corona-Impfzentrum Flughafen Tegel who made the whole process of having some mRNA stuck in my deltoid for the second time simple and fun. And again, especially to all the Brown and Black staff, young and old, who stepped up to do this job and were cheerful and helpful all the way through — even when you were bored and tired in the heat outside. I see you. I wish Berlin was you all the time.
Heaps big thank you again to Dasniya who messaged me mid–April and said, “Because reasons, I can have two people close to me vaccinated. Want some?” And like the druggie I am, I said “Duh! Yes!”
*unlike last time
Heaps big thank you to everyone* at Corona-Impfzentrum Flughafen Tegel who made the whole process of having some mRNA stuck in my deltoid simple and kinda fun. Especially to all the Brown and Black staff, young and old, who stepped up to do this job and were cheerful and helpful all the way through — even when you were bored and tired outside. I see you.
Heaps big thank you also to Dasniya who messaged me mid–April and said, “Because reasons, I can have two people close to me vaccinated. Want some?” And like the druggie I am, I said “Duh! Yes!”
*Everyone except the gammon Alman who misgendered me twice, I called him out and he did it again. I was wearing a dress, I know exactly what you were doing. Swear to God bro, you will shit through haemorrhoids the rest of your life and your dick will shrivel when you try to beat off to my trans sisters.
“But habibti, there is only enough here for one month. And why you buy rice in one kilo bag? Wallah! Such disappointment.”
For real, tho, this is what I’m always like. Definitely inherited the ‘casually well-stocked cupboards’ habit. A bit light on the beans though, ’cos people who never normally cook beans fucking panic-skived off with them all. Except chickpeas. Jokes on them, I’m making hummus.
Omar Sakr in Berlin! Total score! In my long-standing fave (as in only) bookshop in Berlz, Saint George’s. And shoutout to Paul (the owner) who fed me a mini-donut when I rolled up in the midst of a sugar crash. Friends don’t let friends skip post-training feeds (unless it’s Ramadan, and then we’re all super-powered anyway).
And yeah, I’m reading poetry. Sci-fi has been a bit of a disappointment for a while, so I’m branching out along my infirmly followed guideline of, “Be the audience for people you care about,” wherever that takes me. If the people I care about are writing poetry, I am dead serious here for reading poetry. Omar’s Twit is heaps full of bangers, I’ve got half a dozen on order directly from his repping other writers, legit sorted for post-facial peel (cheers to Onyx for that delightful literal appellation of my near future) recovery reading.
The second book of S.A. Chakraborty’s Daevabad Trilogy. I did not re-read the fat slab of pages of the first, The City of Brass, before reading this, but there was enough exposition to remind me of who’s who and what’s where. I loved the first novel; this one I thought could have used a trim, kinda like how the Harry Potter novels expanded as they went on. It also hit me on a peeve of cliffhanger endings. I don’t read novels to be left unfinished and waiting for the next, that’s what sci-fi TV shows are for — even if it’s a trilogy or series, it’s possible to make each one self-contained without compromising the main narrative. Around the time I was reading this, I also felt a nagging pull to read more than just sci-fi and fantasy (in the fiction realm, I mean). It’s been a ride, the last many years, but with Omar Sakr and a heaving mass of poets and writers who touch me, who feel real and immediate and necessary …
A while ago (like early this decade at the latest), I tried to formulate in words how I ‘audience’. Go where they are. It’s not enough to say, oh I support underrepresented and marginalised ‘x’ demographic. This all too easily becomes oh I want to support ‘x’ but they’re not doing ‘thing I like’. The number of trans women or feminine people, Middle Eastern, Brown, Black, Indigenous, queer, combinations of, and writing sci-fi is approximately fuck all. So if I stick to what I like (in this instance, I like sci-fi), I’m gonna be supporting approximately fuck all. Go where they are. Go where we are. If we’re writing poetry, that’s where we go. If we’re making loud, scary music of ‘currently vilified genre’, that’s where we go. If we’re doing some weird sport, and “I’m not into sport”, child, you are now. I was sitting in my favourite café on Sonnenallee yesterday, having a mad good yarn with someone I’d just met, who said for them, their ability to be engaged in other people’s deep interests is (paraphrasing, ’cos brain like tofu), “I admire their focus.” Go where the people are you want to elevate, whether they’re ‘your’ people or not, admire what they do, even if you don’t (at first) ‘like’ it. Being an audience is not always about oneself. Marginalisation is never going to let many of us in; the terms and conditions for admittance make us palatable and legible to them without them having to make any effort to learn about any of us. So we gotta go where we are. Make being audience a privilege to be before people creating.
Keeping things orderly here. Last week of my Naarm / Melbourne trip, Monday 26th March, I got myself along to NGV National Gallery of Victoria for the 2018 Triennial and weird European art.