all money has some blood on it, even if only a whiff. every day money made purely of blood is pumped into the big money machine (the capitalist machine). every day the big money machine distributes all the little moneys into our little pockets, and we take our little moneys and put them back into the machine through one of its little slots in exchange for the pretty things we want and need like food, shelter, clothing, etc. that it produces and everyday with every collection and redistribution every whirl in the machine our moneys are washed in blood and with every blood bath our moneys become worth less and less because blood is a big expense.
my mom came back to sydney today, high energy as always even after a twenty eight hour flight from nova scotia. she’s already tidied up the house, and has food cooking, and is now deliberating whether or not nunu would be woken up by the sounds of the vacuum because there’s hair everywhere given that we only did vacuum the apartment once since she left, and it was only a few days after she’d left and she’s been gone for three weeks, and when i say we i mean daddy because i genuinely struggle to vacuum or mop or clean the floor in any capacity. dishes are fine, laundry’s fine, dust is fine (unless it worships me), walls, bathrooms etc. gimme any chore and i got you just not the floors, please, or the trash. anything but those two. floors are by far the most ungrateful surfaces in a space, you clean them and within the hour they’re dirty again. at least the dishes have the decency to stay clean until someone uses them, and the laundry stays folded until someone wears it, the floor betrays you immediately it has no loyalty, it’s not like the dust that takes you with it on its journey of accumulation over a period of days, forms a relationship with you, tells you a story. the floor is chaos. it is literally taunting us with its entropy.
thinking in terms of partial objects, i am a partial object but my hands eyes hoodie toenails organs are all partial objects that connect to other partial objects (each other). in a capitalist machine we are each the invisible partial machines of capital’s body without organs keeping the capital aflow keep the blood apumping from my coffee to the barista to their landlord to the bank to the state to the weapons manufacturer to the military to the pocket of a soldier who comes home to see their family but is so disturbed by what they’ve experienced that they can’t adjust emotionally can’t return to the normalcy can’t relax in this peace and quiet so they buy a cup of coffee on their way to an appointment with someone who’ll give them a prescription to a drug from a pharmacy to a landlord to a state that trains its people to breed their children for slaughter so their blood and bones might feed the great machine that makes all the pretty things we want and need like food, shelter, coffee, etc.
the afternoon sun presses in on the glass through a cloudy sky outside, warm white and medical while my mom babbles in the background with nunu who broke out in song minutes ago summoning us to her chambers. i am munching on chips while i wait for the kebbe in the oven. it smells amazing. i should stop with the chips so i can properly enjoy the kebbe but they’re so good original sea salt kettle cooked the only chip or cracker flavor i’ll have except sour cream and onion if absolutely necessary but never never salt and vinegar. salt and vinegar is an affront to the taste buds, it is an abomination of a flavor. i don’t understand vinegar people and i’m so offended despite being totally unaffected by their personal taste that i don’t even want to understand them. all else aside, if you’re a salt and vinegar person, we are fundamentally in disagreement.
the descending sun peaks through some parting clouds for a moment and my mother interrupts me every few seconds with a question that i can’t answer from where i’m sitting and that she answers for herself before i’ve even had time to say all that because she isn’t really asking she’s thinking out loud while also performing that thinking and inviting me to participate. living with my mom is like being in an ongoing interactive theatre, it’s like if interactive theatre went method. the sun’s peaking bursts into a beaming in on the desk, apocalyptic eye wandering over my desk, my cheek, my precious dust nation which is now in crisis since news of my mother’s arrival reached the capital. dust nation’s days are numbered. i, great mother, bringer of the flood, was a merciful god, a benevolent force that allowed room for regeneration and rebuilding this time there will be no rebuilding because my mother doesn't just wipe, she wipes and then she wipes again with a wet cloth and then she dries and then she checks from three angles in different lighting conditions and then she does that again tomorrow and every day after that. my mother is an ice age, a terminator, a cause of extinction.
had a dream last night that i was at a conference and everyone had name tags but the name tags were blank at first and we had to fill them in ourselves and i didn’t know what to write. i knew my name but i also knew that that wasn’t my written name so i kept picking up the marker and putting it down trying to remember. every time i put it down i would remember then i would pick the pen up and forget until someone behind me said just write anything so i wrote etc. and at first i was anxious about it but when no one reacted i forgot and just introduced myself as elianne. etcetera, lit. and the rest, and the others, from ceterus, the other, that which remains. my written name is that which remains.
dust nation returns to shadow safe for one more night, citizens tucked into the wood’s grains as the sun recedes and my mother scrapes away at the stove, they whisper to one another about her, the woman with the wet cloth who has come from across the sea to end their civilization. did you hear what she did to the stove? the book shelf? the floor? the poor floor is done for. pray to the despotic signifier they whisper. pray to the shedder of skin and hair, she who produces us and destroys us, maybe she will intervene. she won't. she's eating kebbe.
see you tomorrow <3
Today, I made paper from the pile of shredded junk mail. Just add water - wet dust, a new life! I shall name my dust, in its new life, Etc. 🌹
Dedicated, I will write love letters to my creditors, who send me the paper in the mail which will in no way pay the bills, but will make this paper upon which I will write my notes.
And I am rich.
It will cost more in blood than money, specifically the blood of capitalism, sent by post, which in a word, is spent in oil.
By blood the bill arrives. By blood the letter leaves. No money, just water. And oil. Blood.
"my mother is an ice age, a terminator, a cause of extinction. " I LOVE this. All surfaces beware! I am glad your mom made it back safe to Sydney.
I really enjoyed reading this one. Though, I feel the weight of blood everyday in the great money exchange that seems to be life. I do not like my complicity and compliance in this wheel of misfortune. But there it is, just as you describe. Now I wish i too had some Kebbe in the oven. I don't even know what it is, but it sounds like the opposite of money, and sounds a little like love.