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Basic human emotion
The Future Is Like Pie #52
Lisa Maria Marquis
March 28, 2025
The forest charred, the air stilled, deranged, and
the truth beneath it all is fear, was always
fear, the open grave, the charcoal line, the dead
growing out of the living like lichen, the pine
a blood-eyed child, the pyres loose stones
and living rooms. Dress it up in the white hands
of the wind. Call it need. Call it necessity.
It’s hard to get the tone right these days. Above, I’ve shared lines from a beautiful but very dark poem; below, an illustration of an urgent political message. In between, I thought I’d write about eye makeup.
Not just eye makeup, though that is my unexpected latest enthusiasm. There’s also the oatmeal cookies I made last night with white chocolate and pistachios. And the fairy egg one of our chickens laid this week. And the raw green fringe of hyacinths and alliums starting to break through the still-dead lawn.
Or a different view: there’s the washing machine needing a replacement part. And spending 25 minutes on hold just to cancel a credit card. And migraines. Tax paperwork. Waking up this morning to the telltale piston sound of a dog vomiting on the rug. Twice.
Enormous, terrifying things are happening in the world, things I don’t want to or can’t talk about, and still I knit and buy toothpaste and make pasta.
That’s not a causal relationship, just parallel facts. The existential dread doesn’t make the mundanity more exciting, and the mundanity doesn’t mitigate the dread. Work is going really well. This is a great cup of coffee. My hair’s falling out. ICE just kidnapped a college student a few blocks away from my house.
I wish I could write about eye makeup. It’s stupid and simple and makes me happy, and, as my husband pointed out, “Sometimes things can just be good.” Of course there’s value in small joys. And in small irritants too. There has to be, against this backdrop. It all has to count.
But it’s hard to get the tone right.
On a related note, I may be sending these missives ever-so-slightly less frequently. Keeping to a monthly schedule has been good discipline the last few years, but there’s simply less energy available right now. I hope you’ll flex with me if I need to stretch delivery to every five or six weeks, in the future.
“The hairshirt doldrums”
Every time I share a Kate Wagner piece, I feel compelled to begin with “I love her writing so much”—a repetitive habit, but it’s the truth! This is a moving, thoughtful, and harrowing personal essay about brain injuries, rest and healing, identity and corporeality, society’s disdain for disability, and the (continuous) failures of the American healthcare system:
Yes, my brain is me, but it’s also a part of my body, a bunch of electrified goo in my skull, a dumb muscle that was overextended just like my whiplashed neck. My brain constantly made sure I remained aware of this, of its non-extraordinary, non-literary attributes, by sending me pain signals whenever I pushed it too hard, like a shock collar on a dog. It’s a strange sensation, being reminded of the physicality of thinking. Whatever nascent belief I retained in dualism has been thoroughly undermined and is unlikely to return. No, we are meat sacks all the way down.
“The Digital Packrat Manifesto”
If you’re interested in breaking free of streaming services and corporate control of media, this is a good philosophical first stop on the (admittedly complex) journey. My household has been pivoting back to physical media over the last few years for plenty of reasons, many neatly explained in this piece:
Over the past decade, keeping your own DRM-free digital media archive has become something of a lost art. It requires time and patience that many people no longer have, and it certainly can’t compete with the convenience of streaming. As large corporations and algorithms tighten their grip to a clenched fist, I think we’re long past due for a second DIY Media Renaissance. But in order for that to happen, we first need to change our habits and expectations around media consumption—starting with deprogramming this idea that media is something that should be unlimited and available at all times through a digital faucet.
Lightning round
"To Survive on This Shore: Photographs and Interviews with Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Older Adults" [Jess Dugan]
A guide to protesting safely [Fight for the Future]
Copy, adapt, pass these around town [Canva]
Some behind-the-scenes photos of early Sesame Street [tumblr]
“The thin-obsessed world is growing more vicious by the minute” [Rebecca Shaw in The Guardian]
An overview of weaving techniques with DIY supplies [tumblr]
March’s cause
My husband is running a charity stream this Saturday, March 29, starting at 10 am ET. Tune in on Twitch to watch him play way too much Mega Man for way too many hours. He’s donating $10 to Trans Lifeline every time Mega Man dies, increasing by $1 for every $100 y’all donate—so even if streaming isn’t your thing, it’s worth throwing a few bucks at the cause.
Buy this book
Ethan Marcotte’s wonderful and necessary You Deserve a Tech Union has a new look! His beautifully redesigned, fully self-published volume is available for purchase at Bookshop.org (and others). Truly, there’s never been a better time to read this one. Make sure you and all your coworkers have a copy.