Eveline Gordon

“During the drive to the forest with Hiro, memory gets personal. He points out the window, “That’s Roy’s matsutake hunting place; over there it’s Henry’s special spot.” Only later do I realize that both Roy and Henry are deceased. But they live on in Hiro’s map of the forest, recalled every time he passes their spots. Hiro teaches younger people how to hunt for mushrooms, and with the skill comes the memory.”
― Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

“There is a border between any two bodies, of skin and perspective and the distances we hold around ourselves. We think that intimacy and meaning with others happens when these borders open up in patches. The distances grow smaller or vanish altogether, for a time, when we let someone in on our real thoughts, our real feelings, when we show them something that scared us.
There is a state where all of this protocol is suspended: in emergencies, in moments of danger, in situations where the individual is no longer supreme because survival depends on the ability to bond with others. You may stop knowing that you are opening, because that is now normal. When we are in a prolonged state of crisis, nothing is just mine or just yours.
But this state shouldn't be mistaken for complete fusion with others, with a total exchange. It is quieter than this. It is not that you understand me, or I you, because we are the same. There is simply no need to explain, to express, or to share, because there is an extraordinary leveling of the past, of the future. Between us, there is only now.
What happens when the crisis is over? How do we talk?”
― Yasmin El-Rifae, Radius: A Story of Feminist Revolution

“Freedom is the negotiation of ghosts on a haunted landscape; it does not exorcise the haunting but works to survive and negotiate it with flair.”
― Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins

“Michelle could feel the pull of the other world upon her, and for a moment Reinaldo was gone and Michelle was alert to the reality of her lumpy futon, her smushed pillow that stank like scalp, the sun searing through the venetian blinds that couldn't ever be opened, not anymore, not with the dog and the man rotting in the heat right there. Michelle didn't want any of it, she wanted the summery New England warmth, the way the air was thick with water, and the dark harbor, the way it lay calm and flat against itself, not giving off clouds of poison, not scummed over with oil so clotted you could float on it, not bumpy with the trash of history.”
― Michelle Tea, Black Wave