‘Separation has been, perhaps, the single biggest determining influence in my life.’
My twin brother and I were separated at birth, even though we lived in the same house, with the same mother, for the first eighteen years of our lives. The separation was total, psychological, emotional and social; and it lasted until his death early in 2005. I heard only indirectly that he had died…
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‘The anglophone world, we have to infer, has run out of words for its own feelings.’
Daisy Hildyard on the wisdom of scarecrows.
‘What is the read receipt for?’
Lillian Fishman on texting, power and the ethics of leaving a friend on read.
‘Like pretty much everyone who uses the internet, I have seen many terrible things that I did not search for and that I cannot unsee.’
Rosanna McLaughlin on what the internet thinks she wants.
‘I have a pathological addiction to the internet, which I indulge with the excuse of making art. It rarely translates to anything good and mostly leaves me overstimulated and afraid.’
Paul Dalla Rosa on excess and the internet.
‘rumors of bees on speedwell, / no oxidative stress just / effortless pollination’
Two poems by Sylvia Legris.
‘Love was no longer encoded in recognised behaviours, but became subject to private desires and idiosyncratic needs.’
‘My mother’s cry rang in my ears from infancy. ‘No child of mine is going into a shoe factory.’’
‘If provincial life still exists, it does so only residually and is doomed to eventual extinction.’
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
