Towards the middle of 2024 my ability to capture the sensorial moves of my own life disappeared. It became evident as the gestures and emotions of my children that used to imprint themselves on me like ears on my skin after they had fallen asleep tucked into my body were no longer being documented.
To taunt me, my ability didn’t disappear completely. The possibility and necessity of articulating these moments existed—especially when I couldn’t sleep—but not enough to have the words come. I wanted to create shapes of enthusiasm like the many writers I had read in 2024 did, like I had been able to do earlier that year. I wanted to remember without a phone’s camera roll. The words that arrived weren’t mine. These ones were incongruous with possibility.
Was it wading through nine inches of sewage water in my home without any PPE hoping to save my memories a flood was desperate to wash away?
Was it the proliferating group chats?
Was it the war on trans kids?
Or, was it the endless protesting and calling and writing and blockading that was barely able to alleviate the sadistic necro-politics of imperial powers?
The year 2024—two thousand and twenty four—spelled out loud sounds like a future my school teachers would talk about in reference to time travel. Even in the 1990s, it didn’t seem like a year in which humanity or the ozone layer would still exist. The latter is recovering, so will we?
Some of the most articulate humans that exist in English were collected to reflect on the brutality of 2024 for Sasha-Frere Jones’s newsletter. He’s been doing this for a few years now and I’m hopeful it can become a physical object one day.
On the first day of 2025, the day after we went to a New Year’s party at our neighbour’s house and I wore a keffiyeh wrapped around a black catsuit and pretended J was my version of Luigi, the sun woke up, O— announced.
O—’s entire Aquarian existence is an announcement:
The rhythmic and determined patter of her running feet saturate the hallway. She opens my door, and immediately pulls open the white drawer of her wardrobe. I’m facing away towards the wall, groggy. A brief pause before she grabs something to wear, nudges the wardrobe door closed with her shoulder and hip, before running back into the other room. A routine action, like so many things she does without realizing I’m paying attention.
I love hearing her moves without seeing them. It feels different than observing her, somehow. Perhaps because if I’m observing her, I am there, alongside her. But if I can’t see her, she can’t see me either. She’s doing something on her own, she’s her own person and body in the world. At nearly three, and still fresh from being inside my body. My awe of her independence hasn’t subsided.
She exists.
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