How could one steal if the government itself was the worst thief?

—The Almanac of the Dead by Leslie Marmon Silko

In this ugly beginning of 2026, I’ve been rereading The Almanac of the Dead. Published in 1991, the year I graduated from high school, I came across it sometime in the late 1990s. I think. I’m hoping I come across an annotation somewhere in my journals to determine when exactly I read this.

I’ve only remembered bits and pieces in all the years since I read it. What I remember most about reading it is that I felt like finishing the book had brought me to a threshold moment in my own political consciousness.

So I’m retracing my steps, in a sense, to understand how I perceived this book then, and how it reads to me now, in our current circumstances.

My attention is severely fractured. As I continue transcribing and thinking through what may or may not be “the arc” of the current book project, I’m: exhausted, concerned, enraged, numb, and occasionally amused.

Transiting Mars in strong trine with natal Mercury

When we see the little robots on the sidewalk, and I hear someone say it’s cute, or otherwise extend it sympathy or any emotion, I interrupt to express how it feels absolutely weirdly existential to me right now to not extend any sympathies toward them. The robots are given cute names and neutral-to-cute characteristics but all I see is the slide toward imagining AI has sentience. No. I took this photo of this robot because I was humored by the fact that the tree splitting the sidewalk created an obstacle.

So what will your art look like for it to offend and deeply concern fascists?

The tree splitting the sidewalk is a kind of resistance. How to embody this tree?

My love to everyone resisting fascism in any and every way they can.

my books are waiting to be read by you