change the pear vol. 25 2 Oct 2024

hello! welcome to october, a time of year where i usually become extra deranged due to the onset of seasonal depression. down in australia spring is arriving which means i am actually feeling pretty hopeful, optimistic, believing in joy again, etc—but not to worry, still deranged as ever.

on repeat

due to my agonies (see below), i have been meticulously creating a fanmix. i LOVE making fanmixes, even though i seem to end up recycling the same songs over and over again. is it because i’m simply not good at curation, or because the dynamics and characters i get obsessed with have the same flavour of romance (or, in other words, the same problems and issues)? who can say. anyway here’s some of the Songs Of All Time. to me.

• summertime by my chemical romance. you can run away with me / any time you want

• don’t swallow the cap by the national. i have only two emotions / careful fear and dead devotion

• goal of the century by gang of youths. you want to live in the open? say the truth

• something i need by onerepublic. you’re like the net under the ledge / if i go flying off the edge / you go flying off as well

• shatter by maggie rogers. i don’t really care if it nearly kills me / i’d give you the world if you asked me to / break a glass just to watch it shatter / i’d do anything just to feel with you

currently watching

i’ve got just over a week until hana moves in and my bachelor pad era ends, so i’ve decided that i must finish the sopranos. i should have made this decision earlier because i’m now attempting to watch 1.5 seasons in 15 days, which means i’m mainlining it at a rate that is unprecedented and, quite frankly, concerning.

i’m currently at the end of season 5, which has been intense. my favourite episode had to be tony’s incredible dream sequence episode, which truly captures how it feels to be a prisoner to your own lunatic subconscious. when he started spitting out bloody teeth into his hand…. i’ve been there babe! what i like so much about these dreams is that they reveal so much to us while also being totally nonsensical and confusing. bring back subtlety in tv shows! it’s something the sopranos is so good at: leaving the viewer to form our own conclusions, drawing out these careful nuances in the way the characters think or act. we see carmela wrestling with her separation from tony, weeping on the phone when meadow announces her engagement, trying to divorce him once and for all but every time she tries to leave something makes her think twice.

in general the theme of season 5 seems to be lack of escape routes. we see tony b trying to make it as an honest man, training to be a massage therapist and opening a massage parlour, but drawn back into the mob after a shocking scene where he realises how much an honest life costs, and beats his new partner bloody. he gets involved with the new york mafia’s power struggle following the death of their boss, and from then on we know the course this takes. there’s carmela, trying to divorce tony but coming up against the power and fear he instils in every divorce lawyer in new jersey—in the end she has no choice but to let him back in. even though it might seem like her own decision, it’s not, really. and of course, adriana. her death felt inevitable from the moment she started working with the fbi, but i still found the moment itself shocking: betrayed by christopher, crawling through the woods begging for mercy as silvio coldly shoots her dead. woof. adriana’s downfall was believing that christopher would choose her over tony; underestimating the complex ties of love and hate that bind the mafia men together. christopher has been doomed to this since becoming a made man. no matter how cruel tony is to him, he can’t extricate himself. it’s greed, yes, a desire for power, but it’s something more than that, something that supersedes all else: duty. a sense of beholdenness to these men who have raised him in their image. and yet we know all too well that anyone can be disposed of, that nobody is safe from a gunshot in the night and a dumping of your body where nobody can find you; or a big funeral where the men who murdered you stand in their black suits shoulder-to-shoulder with the other mourners. hypocritical, sure, but this is the fiction that sustains the life that’s all they know. there is no way out except one, and if it happens to you, you had it coming. and everyone else will believe whatever lie they’re told.

last seen

on marisa’s recommendation i watched fargo season 5! and wow, what a tv show. i especially loved going on the reddit episode-by-episode forums—it’s so nice to see people enthusiastically dissecting and commenting on every episode. from the very first episode i could tell that fargo is a show that concerns itself with detail, simply because of the redditors going through every line of dialogue, every event, every prop with a fine-toothed comb, looking for significance. you only get fans doing that if you’ve proven time and time again that details matter and that thought goes into every aspect of the show.

our main character is dot, a seemingly ordinary minnesotan woman living with her devoted husband wayne and daughter scotty, but who has a terrible past she’s escaped from that nobody in her new life knows about. she was once married to sheriff roy tilman (we later find out that roy coerced dot into this when she was very young), which was a physically and emotionally abusive situation. in episode 1, sheriff roy finds out dot’s whereabouts and sends hitmen to get her and bring her back—as his wife, she is his property. dot fights back tooth and nail, defeating one of the hitmen in a genuinely heart-racing scene in a gas station in the middle of nowhere, but the other one escapes. dot returns home to pretend that nothing has happened, even though her concerned husband has called the police after dot going missing and signs of a violent, bloody struggle in their home. dot refuses to co-operate: she knows all too well how justice is dispensed in these areas of the country, where roy is essentially able to act with impunity. other characters of note are gator, roy’s son from his first marriage (before dot), a nasty piece of work but one who has been deeply traumatised by his father’s violence; indira, the police officer tasked with investigating dot and being stonewalled at every turn, living in debt with a useless manbaby husband; witt farr, the state trooper attacked by the hitmen during their attempted kidnapping of dot, who develops a fierce care for dot; and lorraine, dot’s mother-in-law, a gun-toting republican billionaire reminiscent of lucille bluth (“snickers for breakfast? are we on welfare?”) the character work is masterful. although there is undoubtedly an irredeemable villain at the heart of the show (roy), the show favours nuance. lorraine starts out suspicious and snooty towards dot, as the nothing girl who entrapped her son, but grows to respect and care for her as the season plays out. indira is a pushover, but we see her stand up for herself and finally quit the policing job that brings her no joy or satisfaction. gator is horrific, but scenes between him and dot show that he’s suffered at his father’s hands too, and dot’s compassion towards him reminds us that once he was a small boy.

and the soundtrack is fantastic, the acting is superb, and it has moments of real humour and levity. i’m ready for the other seasons!

reading

imagine me rolling my sleeves up. okay. so over the last couple of weeks i have fallen into an obsessive hole that can only be explained by “a lack of romance in my life” (thanks to my therapist for that one)—i’ve been inhaling romance novels at an alarming speed. gay ones, not straight ones, needless to say: i’m not that desperate. the series that has really burrowed its way into my mind is the will darling adventures by kj charles: a post-wwi romance between an ex-soldier from the trenches / bookstore owner / proletarian loverboy and a “bag of nerves and attitudes” / upperclass nervous greyhound / secret agent. look, i know. what makes it even worse is that the non-romance plot of the first book and some of the second is extremely anti-bolshevik for some ludicrous reason. which, if you know me at all, means this is possibly the highest endorsement that i can make: i don’t give a fuck about the politics, because the romance plotline of these books is so insanely good.

i actually don’t know where to start this or what to say beyond READ THEM and “i feel so crazy it is making me want to bite my thumbs off”. the story kicks off with will darling, recently demobbed from wwi and therefore at a loose end (to put it mildly), being left in charge of his recently-deceased uncle’s used bookshop, when he’s abruptly threatened by two very different people in search of something secret buried within the bookshop. and then in walks kim secretan, seemingly offering help, but in fact about to double cross, lie and steal from will. their meeting ignites an insane physical chemistry that develops into a profound obsession with one another. and despite will soon realising that kim has been lying to his face, he can’t seem to stay away. the war has opened up this wild streak in him that yearns for adventure, for a good solid fight, for a devious queer who brings violence to his door. kim, on the other hand, is three hundred self-esteem issues stacked up inside a trench coat, and he desperately hates himself for tricking will. he doesn’t believe he’s good enough for the care and generous tenderness will is offering. and yet… he also can’t bring himself to stay away.

“a decent man debased” is how will describes kim, and as things progress, he sees more and more of that decency in kim, the honourable core at his heart. how fiercely he’ll fight for the people he cares about, while believing himself so wretched as to not deserve their respect or love. well, fuck that, is what will says, and refuses to let kim walk away from him. over and over again, he constantly demands of kim to treat him better, to be better, because that’s what they both deserve. and kim rises to the challenge every time. underlying this are several power disparities: kim is educated, wealthy, self-possessed, while will is none of those things, and frequently feels on the back foot, particularly as kim shuts him out with his lies and deception. meanwhile, will has his own baggage to lay at kim’s feet: namely that he spent four years living through hell in the trenches, he’d rather lie down and die than accept help from anyone, and he can’t bring himself to conceive of a future or a way to speak about his feelings and desires, unless they’re in bed and he can let the physical attraction do the talking. slowly, inexorably, they both change. will refuses to let kim punish himself; kim pulls will out of his dark places and gives him a safe place to be vulnerable. together, they find a pathway to the future. to be loved is to be changed!!! to be loved is to be seen, wholly and fully. to have your flaws laid out on the table and have someone say: you’re better than this and i know it, but i’ll take everything you have been as long as you promise to live up to the man i know you are. and through their deep understanding of one another, they come to a greater self-understanding too. in my opinion? there’s nothing more romantic than that.

here’s the playlist.

free palestine

Your Crisis of Faith is not My Concern (There’s a Genocide Going on) by Steven Salaita

Because we always knew that the Zionist entity didn’t finish the job in 1948.  We understand the Zionist mentality.  That’s one of our biggest problems.  Understanding that mentality means acknowledging a kind of logic beyond the emotional capacity of functional human beings, a logic that invariably leads to our own demise.  Knowing Zionism, as we’ve been made to do, is an incessant suicide mission.  They were always going to try to finish the job, with or without an October 7.  They were finishing the job all along.  Every Palestinian life, every Palestinian expression of being, was an unfinished mission.  Palestinians were being exterminated as a matter of course, like infrastructure updates or budget approvals.  There is no other option available to those who hold onto the idea of Israel.  We knew it.  Even if some of our comrades thought that we were too delusional, too zealous, too uncompromising—that deep in our hearts we were hateful and fanatical, as the Oriental is apt to be—we knew.  That’s all.  Some of us fought on behalf of softness, with voting rituals, NGO activism, critical theory, all the stuff that offers a civilized façade.  But now we have no choice:  the Zionists validated our knowledge.  Hardness is the only viable option.

While I can declare without much ambiguity that I support armed resistance to colonization, I recognize it as an abstract declaration.  Am I willing to take up a gun and get shot at?  It’s impossible to say without being forced into the decision.  That’s the thing about resistance:  people are forced into it.  In the end the choice I would make doesn’t matter, because if I ever find myself with a gun and getting shot at then it’s not necessarily something I would have chosen.  I would be reacting to material circumstances, not to distant and disembodied questions of moral propriety.  People need to remember that about Palestinian fighters:  resistance is a necessity forced onto them by settler colonization.  If a people’s survival depends upon militancy, then that people will become militant.  Both North and South are littered with examples.

Apologies to All the People in Lebanon by June Jordan

I didn’t know and nobody told me and what

could I do or say, anyway?

Yes, I did know it was the money I earned as a poet that

paid for the bombs and the planes and the tanks

that they used to massacre your family

Hasan Nasrallah died on the road to liberate Palestine by Ali Abunimah

This sobering moment is a turning point in the long regional war for liberation from racist, Western-backed settler-colonial Zionism. But after a century of Zionism’s depredations and horrors, neither the people of Lebanon nor Palestine have surrendered, and there’s no reason to believe they will now.

On the contrary, after the initial shock, the determination of the resistance will only increase, and its circle will expand, as it has in every phase of the liberation struggle.

miscellaneous

baby echidna drinking and waddling! the red-necked wallabies and their joeys in brindibilla national park. driving a 4wd for 8 hours through the mountains (mostly successfully!) lighting a fire with sophie and morgan and ash. morgan asking me if i could come visit again. sarah’s beautiful birthday dinner with roasted lamb shoulder and sangria. cathy cutting my hair on our first meeting. exchanging fanmixes and increasingly deranged commentary with ygraine. fish rug! the big eucalyptus tree right outside my office and how the leaves sound in the wind. this tweet. nailing a yellow route for the first time at climbing, and another v5 on the kilter board. sourdough baked in a loaf tin so it’s the perfect size for sandwiches. new socks. the pregnant cat that hana befriended in brazil giving birth on their final day. planning claire’s visit to australia! this poem by susan elizabeth howe. where there’s smoke by frank paino. this essay by hanif abdurraqib.

that’s all from me! see you soon.