she felt especially out of place those days. it was most pronounced when the tax collectors, thieves, and spirit-murderers sought to restrain and contain her, to make her palatable, knowable, legible, controllable, exploitable, ownable, killable. captured. pinned down. for dissection. there was an arching sharpness in her bones that felt uncontainable; dangerous. like the wolverine frog who tenses its muscles to thrust broken bones through skin to maim its enemies, trusting that its tissues would heal. how it sacrifices some comfort to fight for its safety. or the bone collector caterpillar, picking through the remains of the dead, the aftermath of a carnage, to curate armor for itself as it hides itself from the view of its spider landlord, biding its time to become a moth. there was dangerous knowledge in her bones meant to protect her.
but just like ice, formed when it needs to be in response to certain conditions--slick, sharp, slippery--her body also knew when it was time to be a cloud, storm, ocean, river. or rather, her body was all of it, all the time: like how clouds are full of fecundity, potential, multiplicity, whimsy, life, unpredictability. how storms are full of danger, force, energy, unpredictability. how oceans are vast and mysterious--worship or be subsumed. how rivers are not singular units; they are movements and stillness, singing and giggling. how fog is everywhere, gathering on your skin and seeping into your lungs. the water in her knew how to be a part of. a part of collective, story, community, relations. unpredictable unpredictable unpredictable! do not perceive me, her body screamed. do not pin me down! do not constrain me!
she was visited by a jumping spider. two, in fact; the first one she shook off, startled. the second one, she leaned in, curious to see the red dots on his back as if to ask, who are you? he giggled and jumped away; nope! no naming me. he told her to trust her intuition and jump! for he is one who needs no web; all knowledge stored in the hydraulic pressure in his legs. store the knowledge, that energy, trust yourself, jump.
prompt: top-down hierarchical education, ethnography as extraction and betrayal and violence, bottom-up education, anti-celebrity culture in academia