cass

“I want to gain immortality because of my brain and not because of the potential of my womb. I cast about for much of my life oking for a way in, inside myself. The desire to be an artist is something that burns inside of me all of my life but I can't get it out, l just don't know how to make anything, my hands are not skilled, they are as useful as two clay lumps. I don't have the patience to sit in the quiet. I want whatever it is to reveal itself to me now. I try dancing, drawing, sculpture, performance art, poetry. I am overwrought and sentimental. lam a lovesick teenager in tone and this does not make great art. Wantingto be an artist and being one are different. Perhaps I am just like everyone else and my disappointment is desiring to be special but not being special at all. Perhaps my life's purpose is to square myself with this. Toyin Ojih Odutola talks of our generation having to accept a hard truth that we may be the stepping stone to something greater in the future because it's not us. On a familial level, there are stories of Jim Carrey and Hanif Kureishi's fathers wanting to be writers and performers but not making it and of the guilt their children have to carry of their parent's unfulfilled dreams in tandem with their success. Maybe this is me. I am the fathers caught in an unchosen generation. I will have to learn how to amplify who comes next. I am the stepping stone because it is not me. I am mediocre I have the will and desire but ultimately zero talent. I have to reconcile myself to being ordinary. I am like everybody else.”
― Sheena Patel, I'm a Fan

“Back before all this gender shit, her body was like a good dog. Maybe it wasn't fully her, but her dog did everything she wanted: she moved so fast, pulled himself up trees, sprinted through forests and across fields, giddy and waggy. She was lucky to have gotten a dog like that. She didn't deserve such a good dog. She'd thought she'd have that dog forever - when they were both old, he would lay at her feet like a canvas duffel, loyal and obliging and charming to the last...
When Amy transitioned, she lost her dog. There was just her. She and her body were one and the same. Every sensation simply belonged to her, unmediated. It was supposed to be good. Sometimes it was. She didn't have to guess what was going on from her dog's behavior. But without a dog to hurt for her, on her behalf, her life as a woman arrived with pain; pain that had to be endured, withstood, pain that was the same as being alive, and so was without end.
As Jon bats, Ames tries to listen to his body. He has not thought about his dog in a long time. Does he still have a dog? In his detransition, he supposed he'd get his dog back, but he didn't. He has simply lost the vibrancy of both pain and pleasure. The world has receded to a tolerable distance, the colors unsaturated, while the dog stayed dead.”
― Torrey Peters, Detransition, Baby

“I worship the flowing lava and whatever else a billion years ago that eventually formed the ground he walks on.”
― Dennis Cooper, I Wished