I moved to try to cure my cynicism, and prob the tension between participation and absorption. And attempt to answer: How to survive a precarious life? This might turn into a series, first one I will consider this question of selling (your soul).
Humans might be the only life forms, information processing composite that have a fault of questioning their motivation, why do we wonder about the reason to do or not to do something? It is only shameful to sell something when the same action is celebrated with intensity by others. Is the drive to mark difference stronger than finding unison? Somewhere in the middle is observed a detached instrumentalism: I just need to do this so I can get there. Instrumentalism can also be motivated by detachment or full absorption. scene one: a kid (most likely POC)growing up in a high-crime-rate neighborhood, without much trouble being groomed for gang-related activities, running errands, earning cash. Kid keeps a low profile, bite lips and small fire in the depth of those eyes. Kid was driving get-away cars, delivering packages without knowledge (but surely a sense) of the contents, punching a few kids here and there, nothing too hard on the conscience, until. One day, kid was asked to go with the crew to ruffle up some cheeky ones skimming off the top. They rushed into the house of this naughty one, between the shouting and the pushing, grandma of the one to be punished was caught in the violence. Kid couldn’t live with his conscience that night. Kid thought to himself “I had to do it, I’m all my mom got, I gonna get us out of here.”
scene two
kid growing up in a remote village, nested in rocky mountains. Farm life here is hard because fertile soil is scarce, flat surface even less, and to go to school, the kid had to walk several hours across rocky paths. One day, third uncle from grandmother’s siblings came back to visit. Was for another relative’s funeral. third uncle moved to a port city at the beginning of the modernization wave, now owns a small mass-producing clothing operation, employing 15 seasonal workers with long hours, barely vacation days and no protection. the kid’s mom asked the third uncle if he would take her to work for him. uncle was showing sign of hesitance, real or for the sake of presenting status, now different than the poor farmer he was once, able to employ and deploy others for work. “i can’t take every kid from the extended family, the plant doesn’t have that many jobs.” the kid watches on tiktok a girl working in a similar production house(overpopulating that port city), going out to karaoke, heckling for price at market, since she knows the worth of those pieces from the calluses on her fingers and wrist.
The other day I was asked “…but are they really poor or just precarious middle-class kid?” I’m not sure where or how to place the balance between “everybody suffers, suffering can not be compared” and “people are having it way worse, stop complaining”. The left are always accused of in-fight amongst people who perceiving are having it worse or better than one another. If you are/were a working girl, must you defend the rights of its existence? Or now you have earned a say: it should be called sexwork, not whoring. When does selling one’s soul become a shared reality and not a private psychic glitch? When you lie beneath someone, who is completely caught in His body thrusting into reality more of his becoming-nearing end. You realize you can dissociate so easily from the sensation of your body, you can’t stop your vagina from getting dry, there your mind does no good. You start fantasizing about the other life so vividly painted, fine china all nesting on their designated small plates, small almost inaudible crisp clicking following dainty fingers placing the spoons, lips departing from the rim, a different kind of kiss. I told a friend I think prostitution shouldn’t exist. it is different from saying sex is shameful. the kind of selling here is instrumentalized twice: “I” need to do this, to get there; “I” pay, so “I” deserve. Somehow immunized the transaction from fatal attack, neutral, existence, you have to accept, it is how it is. practical note on top, if it already exist, you just have to adapt. Otherwise?
we watched antiporno, second time for me was not less immersive than the first time. because we have not settled on any of the age-old questions. as long as people continue to exist as people, can it ever be settled? i’m glad at least I’ve moved a step further away from dictating the worth or un-worth of something. but I need to find, locate, carefully attentively the voice rings from my body, buried underneath opinions, ways of reading, wording reality that grant power positions, no matter how fleeting, words, gestures, that devalue. first a return to pricessless romanticism, then an attempt to re-eroticize the thinking-making-working-body. it is a cathartic process, to try to be honest, with oneself. I don’t want to sell. Next step is to find ways to utter those words without repression. perhaps can start with screaming and hoping to edging closer to the goal?
the back of head is always reserved for the space of given, world, opinion, value, norm, relation. am i ready for the possible consequences? not to sell, not to bother with the question “how to sell”, potentially an implicating messy sinkhole, am i ready for not-knowing what “evil” was implicated? am i ready to be “used” and potentially be “discarded”? when will the expression get closer to sharing and not attempting convincing, when does the process of becoming stone begin?
Permenant and Pertinent Resi(st)dance 