emily’s Reviews > Autobiography of Cotton > Status Update
emily
is on page 188 of 288
‘—the need to know & the fear of knowing are opposing forces. One eradicates the other. One depends on the other. You don’t just wake up one morning & say: I’m going to cross Altiplano. Or maybe you do—maybe that’s the only way something like that can come about. The story goes on—numbers pile up—All I know is that he survived. Those spirits that don’t go, stay to care for the whole—They know who to let in & who to—’
— 14 hours, 58 min ago
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emily’s Previous Updates
emily
is on page 168 of 288
‘—eucalyptuses—prickly pears—the way a moment of fearlessness could change a person’s destiny—Maybe what she liked most was how the accent of that other tongue bounced like an echo on the walls of his words—deforming—remaking everything he said. You aren’t from here, she said—lifting her eyes. But I could be, he replied. The light, strange light—falling softly but directly on the leaves—flowers of the bougainvillea—’
— May 18, 2026 06:06PM
emily
is on page 138 of 288
‘Those of us who live at a prudent distance from our emotions often need this type of confirmation. If he looks at me calmly—laughter in his eyes—facial muscles relaxed, I know he has no fears for me / for himself—Placidity looks a lot like security. Rage blinds—So does pain—So many years apart—yet such similarity—the causes & forms of conflict. Didn’t you see the poplars—scandalising the sky—A subtraction from time’
— May 17, 2026 07:12PM
emily
is on page 126 of 288
‘There's no black box in José’s thought or praxis. There is no invisible hand, no—abstraction—he sees the burning verb belong as part of or synonymous with another red-hot verb: produce. From the hand to the brain, & vice versa—calloused fingertips, ‘I know a place on earth—like in Tolstoy’s story, there is no greater dignity than calloused hands.’ But belonging is always a going back again. There is no tabula rasa.’
— May 16, 2026 07:20PM
emily
is on page 108 of 288
‘—it is vital to recognise our condition as guests. The cruel, simple truth—which come all other truths: We are lodging in someone else’s house—a radically shared world, implies—being in the loop, living in a continual state of alert in relation to the threads running between human being and human being, between human beings and animal beings, plant beings, stone beings. Inhabiting is—becoming—the memory of the sea.’
— May 15, 2026 05:12PM
emily
is on page 99 of 288
‘A collision of viewpoints: from here to there, and back again. The infinite on all sides—The decentralisation of human presence on the earth: hardly even a dot in a universe that is definitively more extensive, more marvellous, more tremendous. A link in the chain, I mean to say. Something that connects in a Deleuzian way—we haven’t yet managed to discern—in a universe riddled with stars. Belonging is inhabiting.’
— May 13, 2026 06:23PM
emily
is on page 78 of 288
‘The way wild plants break through concrete & install themselves powerfully in the cracks. Pestilence is another marker of time in the registers of the body. The way nobody remembers—the electronic space in the mood for unearthing ghosts, finding their boundaries—We live in between them. They live in between us. Beyond recognition—So the body bears witness: there was a cotton field here—somniferous rain continues—’
— May 11, 2026 05:39PM
emily
is on page 63 of 288
‘—theatre of cruelty. A stain on the floor of the world. It is Friday. Conscience sometimes explodes like a ripe, shadowy, pained watermelon. No history of agriculture could be spelled out without water. The precise language of hammers. The heavy sensuality of cement—the musicality of metal, sand, wood, gravel. Everything was on the verge of being. On the verge of flowering. Revueltas—hammering—hundreds of telegrams’
— May 07, 2026 05:27PM
emily
is on page 27 of 288
‘Not a single cloud in an outrageously blue sky—something definitive about the rural sky—stars had history—weight of shared emotions. A strike is what one finds on the edge of silence, but it is also silent itself. There are calls one can only respond to by changing location—queer, nomadic, iconoclastic. These bonds aren’t carried in the blood—but in—stickier substance: affinities—on the other side of time’s tunnel—’
— May 06, 2026 05:15PM
emily
is on page 8 of 288
‘—acacias—barrel cacti—anachuita—unpredictable cycles—desire is a cruel master. People—in languages he half hears & half understands. If you looked into the distance, you could see the order that cotton had imposed on the plains—you could feel the eyes of the cotton on your back—Gossypium hirsutum—the Mexican cotton plant. Here—on the very frontier of all things, were those who had nothing, except faith—persistence—’
— May 05, 2026 10:42AM
