Hello from, um, binge-watching xo, kitty

This is not a post about how we can't let the fuckers get us down.

As the sign says, “shit is fucked up and stuff.” I am not sure which of the thousand and twelve million things that have happened in the last month sent me over the fucking edge this time, but it definitely has a lot to do with elon musk, who, let it be said, I did previously flip out over, in December 2022, and let me tell you, it is almost no consolation to have been right about that:

I will always bet against cruelty, not because I think I’ll win that bet, but because I don’t choose every day to go on living so that I can throw in with powerful men who behave badly. Yes, I’m talking about Elon Musk.

Also in regard to Elon Musk, as I tweeted yesterday: My problem with him is not that he's a narcissistic baby, although he is that. It's that he is a powerful fascist with a powerful platform who is using that platform to advance fascist interests & at the same time (and relatedly) is shifting the Overton window on how bosses can treat workers.

Here’s a Woe I wrote about how current developments driven by Musk made me actually lose my whole mind for a minute, and how I got it back. Here’s a poem I wrote about it too.

Okay, it’s actually some tiny, tiny consolation. Because it sucks to keep thinking “maybe I’m overreacting, everyone thinks I’m overreacting, it would be better if I’m overreacting, but I kinda don’t think I am?” One of the things that can get a person down is when things that sound alarming are treated like other people like they are not so alarming. No big deal.

Trump declared himself a king today, and the New York Times described this as a “fondness for regal themes” so yeah, shit is fucked up and stuff.

Anyways, I just spent 5 hours watching season 1 of xo, kitty, a tv show on netflix that doesn’t have just love triangles, but love dodecahedrons. plus there’s a lot of queerness, and plus it takes place in Seoul, a place that seems newly appealing since the gov’t of south korea seems up to the task of preventing an autocratic takeover, and ours, well, jury still out.

Anyways the fuckers have got me down, and I’m in my feels about it, and everything feels very, very, very hard. It’s hard to get up, and it’s hard to go anywhere, and it’s hard to concentrate. It’s hard to drag myself to the bathroom to go pee. It was hard to drag myself to the studio to do basically nothing all day, just to be out of the house, It’s just hard. I am a person who has more than the average share of despair and internal screaming in the best of times, and these are not the best of times. These are probably the worst times I’ve yet seen in my life.

So yes, the fuckers have got me down.

Even when I’m down though, I still know what the truth is. I still know what and who I love, and what I value. I can cling to reality. Reality is not pretty right now, but it has a solidity to it that is reassuring. (It does! Not everything that is solid just melts into air!)

What’s real? Love, that’s real. G.K. Chesterton built his whole theology on top of love. Found in my notebook, from his notebooks: ““the fact unshakeable by doubts or theories that I love a human being.”

Hell yeah! I love a lot of human beings. (So many!) I am not always good at loving them, because loving people is very hard, but it’s also so easy, because people can be very lovable.

Love is real, folks, it really is. And courage is real. Sometimes we do courageous things, and then we lie down on a futon and binge a soap opera about queer high school students. Because isn’t it kind of beautiful, a teenager calling her dad from across the world to say “I think I’m bi, or pan, or … fluid” in utter confusion, and her dad saying “well I don’t know what pan or fluid are, but I’m so glad you’re safe”.

I’m bi or pan or … fluid, too, and yes the fuckers have got me down, but they didn’t make me straight. They took any mention of trans people down from the Stonewall Inn Monument, but we still know the truth. Trump can call himself a king, he can say he is above the law, he can try to steamroll us all into believing it's true, but it isn’t. That man is a liar who doesn’t even love himself, he does not know what love is.

I know what love is. That’s the truth, and I still have the truth.

So yeah, right now I’m down. But even down I am not out, I am just resting in the truth: the awful reality, the terrible things that have been done, are being done, the Nazism, the fascism, the sledgehammers of destruction, the endless lies.

The sun still rises in the east. Trump is not a king. Musk is not an altruistic business genius. He’s a fucking Nazi. Yes, the Nazi salute was a Nazi Salute. No, Ukraine did not start that war. Yes, many people are resisting, in lots of different ways, and lots of us, when we’re not lying on a futon watching tv, are also building.

Resisting and building in the name of love and in the name of truth and in the name of all that’s holy (moss, especially, and slugs and mushrooms, and sunsets).

In the name of all that’s holy, yes, the fuckers have got me down, they sure have, but also, they can’t take the truth or the love from me.

LIKE I SAID:

I will always bet against cruelty, not because I think I’ll win that bet, but because I don’t choose every day to go on living so that I can throw in with powerful men who behave badly.

I’m for the love, and for the truth, even when it’s complicated. I’m for the love and the truth even when I’m slumped on a futon on a floor. I’m for the love and the truth even when I’m so stuck that I think “move, go get your clean laundry” for a full four hours before actually managing to move and get my laundry.

Those motherfuckers trying to spread as much cruelty and misery as possible — I do not think they know what love or truth are.

They have probably never admired a patch of moss in their entire lives. Meanwhile, look at all that moss!

Down but not out, y’all. I’ll be back up, any second now, or, um, just as soon as I get through season two.

xo, Amy