I know the sunshine isn't promised, so I put it in my pocket

[sovay]

I have seen the news of the order to release Rümeysa Öztürk. I am glad of it and it should happen while she can still breathe. [edit: It did.] I had an asthma attack myself this morning and while I often have the feeling that I am being tortured to death by the medical establishment, she has a much better case against the state.

This week went past in such a combination of highlight and blur that I did not manage to share the tactile dialogue of the trans bog body poem which I read at the start of it, Izzy Wasserstein's "Come Back Wrong" (2025). Obviously I am biased in this department, but I would be fascinated to see someone who isn't me trace the motif of the bog body in queer/trans art, since Wasserstein's poem was instantly joined off the top of my head by Corvyn Appleby's Pull Me from the Earth (2021), Riwhi Kenny's bog body, watching (2024), and Tristwch y Fenywod's "Gelain Gors" (2024) with an asterisk for the community embrace of Hozier's "Like Real People Do" (2014). Even when I can read het variations, I strongly suspect there are more of the other kind which I have just not encountered yet. It was not an impetus for the taproot of Seamus Heaney, but that's what happens under the earth and the acids: things change.

I had no hesitations about this meme: instant travel and the ability to read any written language. Linear A or bust.

P.S. I have just been alerted by rushthatspeaks that my poem "Amitruq Nekyia" (2024) was one-third featured by Ruthanna Emrys and Anne M. Pillsworth in this week's Reading the Weird! What an honor. I love its company of the ecological niches of hauntings.

Comments

[thisbluespirit]

instant travel and the ability to read any written language. Linear A or bust.

Yeah, I think I'd pick the same out of those options, although I'm a bit torn between written and speak, and - given the instantaneous travel - I might come down on that, because otherwise magically popping up anywhere in the world might well get me into trouble. (I was looking for a "feel well" one but apparently, even in fantasy that's not happening. I'll have to just instantaneously travel places and then instantly travel back.)

I'm glad there was at least also some good news, and bog bodies going this week. <3

[sovay]

Yeah, I think I'd pick the same out of those options, although I'm a bit torn between written and speak, and - given the instantaneous travel - I might come down on that, because otherwise magically popping up anywhere in the world might well get me into trouble.

Understood. I chose on the basis of wanting to be able to read languages which are no longer spoken and figuring that whichever contemporary ones I can read, I can pick up speaking in the ordinary fashion as much as possible and write in the meantime.

(I was looking for a "feel well" one but apparently, even in fantasy that's not happening. I'll have to just instantaneously travel places and then instantly travel back.)

Right? Keep your unlimited plastic surgery, I just want normal parameters of health!

I'm glad there was at least also some good news, and bog bodies going this week.

*hugs*

Thank you.

[thisbluespirit]

Right? Keep your unlimited plastic surgery, I just want normal parameters of health!

It's very hard to imagine wanting unlimited plastic surgery anyway. Am I in some dystopia? (I mean, aside from this current dystopia; the endless plastic surgery one is defnitely a different sub-genre.)

[sovay]

Am I in some dystopia? (I mean, aside from this current dystopia; the endless plastic surgery one is defnitely a different sub-genre.)

It might be the same one as "Have the largest social media following."

[kenjari]

I think there's some potential for the "be any age permanently" one to include "feel well", if the choice of an age younger than you are now also returns you to your state of health at that age.

[thisbluespirit]

That is true, but I don't think I'd want to return to being 11! XD