Should I say, “I’m fine thank you, how are you?” like a cog in the greased wheel of social graces that grinds on and on, tamping down the dust that gathers upon the ruins of human connection?

Or should I say, “Actually I’ve been dreaming of my bones turning to liquid every night and I miss my mother so much that sometimes I cry when the rice cooker goes off because it reminds me of her, so on a 1-10 scale adjusted for pandemics and fundamental threats to the fabric of our society, like… a 6? What about you?” like a person who doesn’t have an aversion to prolonged awkward silences.

Honestly, at this point, neither of these options is doing it for me. The first one makes me feel like a ghost in a shell, the second is exhausting, and neither is adequately absurd or surprising enough to rise to the occasion of another Wednesday Zoom meeting. As a community service, I have devised a few fail-proof alternatives to “How are you?” to make your weird and stressful interactions in a weird and stressful world, weirder than they already were— but, like, in a fun way.

For the guy who says workweek platitudes like “Hump Day!” aloud in a way that he thinks is ironic, but actually he’s reaching that age and level of personality ossification where it’s not really ironic anymore:

To the co-worker who talks about the genuinely truly terrifying news as if it were E! News because she is either materially or psychologically insulated from catastrophe but you’re not and you wish she would just stop:

For the cool person you see on your daily dog walk that you want to be friends with, but you’re not quite sure how to break the ice:

For the manager who knows better than to tell you to smile but you can tell he really really wants to:

For the child of your friend who you must occasionally interact with and who is probably going to turn out okay but right now is just kind of “meh”

Graphic by Lorenza Centi.

The post Never say “How Are You?” Again! 5 Alternatives To Shake Up Your Small Talk Repertoire appeared first on Repeller.

In 2019, when I was 35, I had a weird, super-late period. I happened to be going to see my OB that month and said, “Is this something I should be concerned about? My wife and I want to have kids but we’re probably still a year or two away from that.” She said, “You shouldn’t be worried about one weird period, but if you’re one or two years away from starting a family, I would recommend you just start the process and educate yourself and make an appointment with a reproductive endocrinologist.” So, last May, we did that.

She said, “Yeah, I think you’re probably starting early-onset menopause.” My mom started at 37, so last year she’d said, “I don’t want you to wait.” And I said, “Well, we just went to Mexico, we’re supposed to wait at least six months because of Zika.” And she was like, “I don’t want you to wait six months, I want you to get tested and start now.”

So we basically started trying to get pregnant shortly after that. We found an egg donor online and started trying to do an IUI [Intrauterine Insemination]. Every month I would do blood work to determine whether I could even try that month based on my egg level. So, we tried three times and did not get pregnant three times. Then we had more months when we weren’t able to try at all. 

I learned so much about my period while going through fertility. I literally realized at age 36 that my body’s been doing this for 28 years and I had no idea what the hell was going on. I didn’t understand the intricacies of which hormone your body produces during the first half of your period and which hormone your body produces in the second half, in order to thicken the lining to prepare for a baby to implant itself in your uterus. I just had no idea what any of this was doing. 

There are gross things I’ve learned now that I’m supposed to be aware of when I ovulate. They recommend paying attention to your discharge during the second half of your period. There’s this woman who recommends putting your fingers in it so you’re familiar with the texture, and as the texture changes, you’ll know when you’re closer to ovulation. It’s the craziest stuff that I’ve learned about myself during all this. I think nobody knows anything about how their own fertility and reproduction works until there’s a problem.

Anyway, my hormone levels were too near to menopause that month and my doctor at the time would say, “I don’t recommend that you spend the money to try with your hormone levels looking the way they do.” Then we started with a new doctor right before COVID. She agrees with the diagnosis that I’m starting menopause very soon and she feels like I don’t have many months left. But she wants to continue on and keep trying a couple more times. We’ve basically said we want to try one more time. It fits how much sperm we have left from our sperm donor. But we wouldn’t try this May because the clinic was closed.

Then, on top of that, just coincidentally, super-fun, on my period that month, I started getting hot flashes. So I was having hot flashes, I don’t know, throughout the day and night, probably 25 to 30 times. It felt like this constant reminder that my window was closing rapidly and all I could do was sit in my apartment and think about it. There was just nothing I could do.

Hot flashes come along with some of those fertility drugs but this is definitely the first time I’ve had hot flashes without the assisted drugs. The first few times I didn’t even notice it and then by the end of the day I realized, “Okay, this is not like ‘Oh, I was walking around and I got hot.’ This is a hot flash and this is continuing to happen, it’s not a one-off and I’m not taking any drugs. This is just my body doing this.”

My hot flashes start from my back. So, all of a sudden it’s just, like, heat radiating off of my back all the way up my neck, under-boob sweat. I mean, it’s awful. The only good thing is that quarantine is a good time to have them because I can take my shirt off in the middle of a conference call and no one will know. 

But, another thing that’s frustrating is that I follow all of these people—I don’t know what to even call them, people in the infertility world, women who are experiencing this—and I listen to a couple podcasts about it. Everyone was saying, “You know what, while we’re all taking time off of our fertility rounds, we’re home, maybe we’ll just get pregnant.” It was all of these heterosexual couples talking about how that’s an opportunity. And I was just sitting there with my wife going, “There’s no sperm in this apartment.”

Basically every time you start your period, you start the opportunity for a new cycle. So I called my clinic when my period started at the beginning of May and they said, “We aren’t able to open for that service.” They basically only opened for one very specific type of surgery or procedure, which is frozen embryo transfer. Not coincidentally, it’s the most expensive one that you can do. They weren’t open for the one that I need, which is the least invasive, least expensive. But they did say to check back in two weeks. So, I was ovulating that week in May, but there was nothing we could do because we didn’t go and get my baseline blood work done on the first week of my period.

I’m married and my wife has been incredible through all of this. She’s never had the desire to carry a child, so there are some aspects of this she can’t totally empathize with, but she’s been incredibly sympathetic. After I knew I wouldn’t get able to get an appointment, I’d been doing really well and feeling positive, like, “You know what? This is meant to work out the way it’s supposed to work out.” I’ve been on these crazy fertility diets and I’ve been completely restricted. I haven’t had caffeine or alcohol for, like, six months. In some ways it was a relief to be able to say during quarantine, “You know what? I’m going to have a glass of wine tonight and it’s fine.”

I thought, I’ve got at least two weeks where I can work out the way I want to work out. Eat whatever I want to eat. I can drink. I can stop eating so much goddamn kale every day. Kale is supposed to make you fertile. I think I drank an entire bottle of wine by myself. And I had a coffee on Saturday morning for breakfast. It was amazing. I’ve definitely had wine since then, but very healthy moderate amounts, not super-fun amounts of wine. 

It was nice to have that stress removed. But Mother’s Day triggered me and everything felt impossible again. My wife had this moment where she looked at me and said, “I feel like you’re manic right now.” I’d said, “Hey, maybe [our guy friends] will be open to donating sperm. They can just come drop some off at our front door!” That’s so counter to the plan we’d created for ourselves. Going with a known donor was something we talked about in the beginning of our process, but for a lot of reasons we chose not to do that.

At that point, she felt this level of stress about it that I couldn’t understand. We talked about it and decided it was a little quick. We’d need to give our best friends some time to digest the information. It’s absolutely something we’d consider. The reality is that it would be so much cheaper for us to go that route.

I’m a birth mom. When I was 18, I got pregnant and I had a baby and placed him for adoption. We’ve spent $12,000 so far, which in the scope of IVF and infertility is really low, but given what we initially thought—that we’d just have to try this one or two times and we’d be pregnant and it would be done—we thought we were going to spend $5,000. The idea of not having to spend tens of thousands more is really attractive, especially right now. My wife is a photographer and she has no income right now, so we’re living off of my income. We’re super grateful that I have a job. But the idea of spending tens of thousands of dollars for more of this doesn’t feel safe right now.

Ever since then, I’ve been so excited to get pregnant and carry my own child when I was going to keep this child, and it was meant for me. The only year Mother’s Day was ever hard was the very first year after my birth-son was born. Since then, I’ve thought of Mother’s Day as a weekend to reflect on how incredible this boy is and to reflect on this incredible life he has that I’m tangentially part of and was completely unable to give him when I was 18 years old.

This is the first year where [not being a mother again] felt like it was absolutely not my choice and I may never have this opportunity. It was a really awful weekend. I just cried all day. I mean, like, crazy amounts of crying. We live right next door to a flower shop. I was doing a workout in my apartment on Saturday afternoon and watching people in line to buy Mother’s Day flowers, just in tears.

Trying to get pregnant through IVF is a huge rollercoaster. You go through all of this hope and excitement and you’re working toward something and you think it’s going to work. Then you find out that it didn’t work and it’s an incredible low and sadness. But then, literally two weeks later, you’re back on the hope part again. I would say there haven’t been very many lows other than the times when we’ve tried and it didn’t work.

Now, clinics have reopened, and we’ve been able to try again, but we had a chemical pregnancy, meaning I got a positive pregnancy test and then started my period about four days later. We’re now taking a month off and hoping to try again in November. During the initial quarantine lockdown, we had no idea when the clinics would reopen, and now having the option to try again in the future makes me feel much less trapped and hopeless.

The post Praying for Pregnancy During a Pandemic: ‘My Wife Said ‘I Feel Like You’re Manic Right Now’’ appeared first on Repeller.

See you there & love you so much already,

– Sarah Panlibuton Barnes, Senior Editor, Book Club Host, and The Friend Your Mom Would Totally Love, at Repeller.

Chapter 1

Mother

Journey to the West (I)

Or: A Story of Warning for My Only Daughter 

Moral: Don’t Bury Anything.

Ba doesn’t know where he buried the gold. Ma chases him around and beats him with her soup ladle. You’ve never been to a funeral, but this is what it looks like: four of us in the backyard, digging where our shadows have died. A shovel for Ba, a soup ladle for Ma, a spoon for me and Jie to share. We dig with what we don’t want—piss buckets, a stolen plunger, the hands we pray with. We even use the spatulas gifted to us by the church ladies, after their days-long debate about whether Orientals even used spatulas. It was decided that we didn’t but that we should. Hence our collection of spatulas, different sizes and metals and colors. Ma mistook them for flyswatters. She used them to spank us, selecting a spatula based on the severity of our crime. Be glad I use only my two hands on you.

I see the way you wear your hands without worry, but someday they’ll bury something. Someday this story will open like a switchblade. Your hands will plot their own holes, and when they do, I won’t come and rescue you.

You’ve never been to this year, so let me live it for you: 1980 lasts as long as it rains. It rains the Arkansas way, riddling the ground like gunfire. Years after this story, you’re born in an opposite city, a place where the only reliable rain is your piss. You ask why your grandfather once buried his gold and forgot about it, and I say his skull is full of snakes instead of brains. He’s all sold out of memories. One time, he pees all over the yard and we follow his piss-streams through the soil. Pray they convene at the gold’s gravesite. The gold in his bladder will guide us toward its buried kin. But his piss-river runs straight into the house and floods it with fermented sunlight.

When the church wives come to give us dishes of sugar cubes and a jar of piss-dark honey, my ma tells them that Orientals don’t sweeten tea. Don’t sweeten anything. We prefer salt and sour and bitter, the active ingredients in blood and semen and bile. Flavors from the body.

Ba says he’ll find the gold soon. Ma beats him again, this time with a pair of high heels (also a gift from the church wives). Ba says the birds will tell him where he buried it all. Ma throws a flowerpot at his head (seeds via the church wives). Ba dances the shovel too deep and hits water. Except it isn’t water, it’s a sewage line, and the landlord tells us to pay for the damage. The rest of the month, we wade the river of everyone’s shit, still convinced Ba can remember, still convinced memory is contagious. If we stand close enough to him, we’ll catch what he lost.

The gold was what Ba brought from the mainland to the island. That’s how soldiers bribed the sea that wanted to steal their bodies. He paid his passage with one gold bar the width of his pinky and swallowed the rest, the gold bleached silver by the acidity of his belly.

In wartime, land is measured by the bones it can bury. A house is worth only the bomb that banishes it. Gold can be spent in any country, any year, any afterlife. The sun shits it out every morning. Even Ma misreads the slogans on the back of American coins: in gold we trust. That’s why she thinks we’re compatible with this country. She still believes we can buy its trust.

After twenty years of gambling on the island, Ba lost all the gold and tried to win it back and back and back again. When they met, Ma already had three children and one dead husband who returned weekly in the form of milk-bright rain. The local men said she was ruined from the waist down but still eligible from the waist up. She wore a heavy skirt that tarped her like a nun. Ma donated her three daughters to her parents and birthed two new ones with Ba.

I’m the second of the new ones. We’re the two she kept, brought here, and beat.

When Ma married him, he was twenty years older. Take the number of years you’ve lived outside of my body and plant them like seeds, growing twice as many: that’s the thicket of years between your grandmother and grandfather. Except Ma doesn’t measure her life in years but in languages: Tayal and Yilan Creole in the indigo fields where she was born blue-assed and fish-eyed, Japanese during the war, Mandarin in the Nationalist-eaten city. Each language was worn outside her body, clasped around her throat like a collar. Once, Ba asked her to teach him to write the Tayal alphabet she learned from the missionaries. But she said his hands were not meant to write: They were welded for war, good only for gripping guns and his own dick. Jie thought this was funny, but I didn’t laugh. I have those hands. When you were born, I saw too much of your grandfather in you: rhyming hairlines and fishhook fingers, the kind that snag on my hair, my shadow, the sky. You made a moon-sized fist at every man, even your own brother, who tried to bury you in a pot of soil and grow you back as a tree. You think burial is about finalizing what’s died. But burial is beginning: To grow anything, you must first dig a grave for its seed. Be ready to name what’s born.

Decades ago in Yilan, Ba shat out his last bar of gold, along with a sash of seawater and silt. He buried it here, in this yard we never owned and that you were born far from. Ma liked Arkansas because it sounded like Ark, as in Noah’s. All of Ma’s words are from the Bible. Most are single-syllable: Job, Ark, Lot, Wife, Smite.

The only way we’ll find the gold is if we shoot Ba’s skull open, extract the memory of where he buried it. Ma tried it once. She pointed the shotgun at Ba’s head and stomped the floorboards while saying Bang, believing the memory would evacuate from his head. Instead, Ba wet himself and Jie had to mop the floor with a dress. Apparently Ba needs a war to motivate him. Ba won’t unbury anything unless there’s a boat to be bought and married. We have a week to hire a war to come to our house. Or else, Ma says, the gold will stay buried and we’ll have fed all we own to the trees that grow moss like pubic hair.

Jie suggests we hang Ba by his feet, upside down, so that all his memories flee upstream and pool in his skull. We’d have to unscrew his head somehow. I tell her it doesn’t work that way, but Jie’s been taking anatomy lessons at the high school ten miles away, meaning she knows how to diagram a body, meaning she’s drawn me a penis with veins and everything, shown me a hole or two it could go in. She pulls down her pants so I can see. I ask her to show me where all my holes lead to, and she says if I dig into the dark between my legs, I’ll find a baby waiting to be plucked like a turnip. (Don’t worry, I didn’t scavenge for you. You were conceived the carnivore way.)

Ma shaves soft wood from our birch tree and skunk-sprays the strips with perfume to make incense, burning it in bunches. The smoke keeps mosquitos from marrying all our blood.

We pray to god and Guanyin, in that order. Pray for Ba’s gold to fall as rain or grow a hundred limbs and shudder out of the soil like metallic shrubbery.

We consider other strategies: If we borrow a bulldozer, we can flip the whole yard like a penny. But we need our money for that, and our money is buried like a body.

Excerpted from Bestiary by K-Ming Chang. Copyright © 2020 by K-Ming Chang. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

Graphic by Lorenza Centi.

The post Here’s an Excerpt From Repeller Book Club’s Pick ‘Bestiary appeared first on Repeller.

In August, three Black trans women were attacked by two men as they waited for an Uber in Hollywood, Los Angeles. Bystanders heckled them, rather than helping. Between the initial arrest, release, and the final charges brought against their attackers, murdered and missing trans women have continued to trend on Twitter. 

I spoke to Aurora Lloyd, a D.C. singer and songwriter who works with True Colors United and A Way Home America; Khai St. Lawrence, a wardrobe stylist in West Hollywood; and Kameron Davis, from New Orleans—three Black trans women who reacted to the violent story with their own accounts of safety and passing, allyship and acknowledgement. 

Thanks so much for doing this, everyone. We know about terms like “intersectionality.” What is it like to be at the intersection of your race, gender, and trans identity? 

Kameron: I’m a proud transgender woman, but the first thing you will see from down the street is the color of my skin. For Black trans women in particular, we have to protect ourselves from bigots on the street and bigotry in our own community. Many Black families are deeply rooted in Christianity, with strict taboos on homosexuality, which makes the concept of transitioning from one “gender” to the next so hard to accept and understand.

Part of transitioning that I believe isn’t spoken about enough is the change to our place in the social hierarchy of the world. Being assigned male at birth, we were born into privileges that our cisgender counterparts do not have in society: more power, more respect, a higher “value,” a higher glass ceiling. Transitioning to female flips that on its head. Now we have to deal with the objectification, the constant critique of every move we make, condescending men who find us inferior and less intelligent because we’re women. 

Aurora: “Intersectionality” is such an interesting word because it plays on the concept of dealing with multiple levels of impact. But I always wonder, whenever someone feels they are experiencing some level of intersectionality, which area of their identity is impacted first, or most?  When I was a young boy, before understanding anything about the world, race was most prevalent to me. As I grew into my trans womanhood, my gender became the most prevalent. 

Khai: Personally, I identify as gender nonbinary, so I express my gender identity in different ways, at different times, in a much more fluid sense. While that term is very misunderstood by those outside of it, I feel very much a part of the trans community, as I present and express myself as female very often. However, I acknowledge that there are still instances when I present male, in ways that many of my trans sisters do not, and often cannot. So, for me, the intersectionality that you mention is key, and I recognize that there is a privilege in my being able to present, or perform, masculinity when I choose.

How do each of you feel about the Hollywood attack on those three trans women? 

Kameron: I’m actually Instagram-friendly with one of the girls who was attacked in West Hollywood. The footage was brutal, but hearing the story was horrifying. Three trans women were attacked, tormented, and chased, and one was knocked physically unconscious. A group of men laughed and recorded [the incident]. “Innocent” bystanders stood by and watched. Among all of the bystanders, no one responded to their screams for help. 

The attacker being released is hardly a surprise. If people on the street don’t care for trans lives and safety, how can we expect the police force or state attorneys to care?

Khai: It was particularly jarring for me because I often frequent that area for work. In Los Angeles, there’s a false sense of safety because it’s a pretty open-minded place—but being on the wrong street at the wrong time can leave you in great danger. West Hollywood, which is often referred to as a “gay mecca,” is only 10 minutes away. Ten minutes can cost a person their life.

Have you experienced violence as a result of being a trans woman of color? Have you been afraid in situations because of your identity?

Khai: I have, thankfully, not been the target of physical violence, but the threat is very real. Just last month, I helped a friend move from Hollywood to West L.A. When I Ubered back to my car in Hollywood, my driver dropped me at the wrong spot. It was about 4 a.m., and I decided to walk to where my car was parked. In the 15 minutes I walked alone through Hollywood, I was approached by several men in cars cat-calling me or asking me to “join them.” When I refused, I could feel one of the cars following me down the street. My mind was racing before I heard him speed away: What can I defend myself with? Could he overpower or kill me? 

Kameron: I’ve also luckily never been a victim of violence, but I agree, the threat is there. Living in the Deep South as both Black and trans is terrifying, point blank. I carry a knife and pepper spray and have tasers within reach at all times. It’s a near constant stream of anxiety.

Aurora: I have actually experienced violence. When I first moved to D.C., I was raped and robbed. I was new to the area and thought I could take the bus home because it ran until 3 a.m. This was before Ubers, and my attacker was a college student, like me, who [said he would] direct me to the nearest taxi home. Instead he led me to a park, where he began to come onto me. When I disclosed who I was and told him he had the wrong idea about me, he said it was “going to happen anyway.” Then he hit me and forced me down on the grass. After it was over, he ran off with my things and left me there. It was one of the worst nights of my life. 

I walked the streets of D.C. alone, crying for help. Cars drove past me. When I made it to a main road, a taxi driver saw me and offered to take me home but, as I was directing him, I felt his hand on my leg. I told myself as soon as I saw an area I was familiar with, I would get out and run, and that’s what I did. 

I am afraid every day of my life. I am afraid every time I have to step into a room where I don’t know anyone. My bedroom is the only place I feel 100% safe. I pretend to be confident, and sometimes even aggressive, because I’m like a creature in the wild doing everything in my power to avoid and scare off a predator.

Thank you for being so open with your experience, Aurora, and for trusting us with it. I am so, so sorry that happened to you. 

Thank you for listening and being open to hearing it. 

How much do you think Black Lives Matter has shed light on these issues? 

Khai: Black Lives Matter, in my opinion, shed a light on issues of violence against cisgendered Black people, but it never felt like it was big enough to encompass issues that face trans people.  I remember seeing the video of Iyanna Dior, not long after George Floyd’s death. Seeing that happen in the same place, less than two months after, sent a very clear message that “Black lives matter” doesn’t apply to trans people. 

Aurora: I agree. Black Lives Matter is such a problematic group because though it was founded by queer-identifying Black women, as the movement grew, its core foundations got lost.

Kameron: Yes. Black Lives Matter is an amazing movement for Black people, but for Black trans people, our existence is largely invalidated. It’s not a competition, but for every Breonna Taylor or George Floyd, we have a Brayla Stone, a Merci Mack, a Shakie Peters, a Draya McCarty, a Tatiana Hall, a Bree Black. Trans women have been lynched in public. They have been pulled by cars down dirt roads with nooses around their throats. There are stories that need to be told that just don’t get the same attention. 

Plus, if you don’t fit the mold of what cisgendered people find to be “passable”—”masculine,” or “feminine”—you may not have the same value to outsiders looking at you. But a human doesn’t have to look a certain way to deserve to live.

How can people show up as allies for trans women of color?

Kameron: Do more than tweet support. Donate to our GoFundMes. Volunteer at shelters. If you know a Black trans woman, something as simple as a compliment and a smile goes a lot farther than you could imagine.

I also have to implore everyone to vote. If you’ve seen the way our country is going and you’re scared, please vote. There are numerous problems with both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, but not voting at all, because it makes you “feel better,” endangers people who aren’t as privileged as you. 

Vote for the LGBTQ+ community, the BIPOC community, people both rightfully and wrongfully incarcerated who have lost their right to vote. Vote for people whose voting process is sabotaged or altered by the postal services not delivering ballots. Times are scary, but never give up hope. You cannot get to the rainbows without flying through the clouds.

The post 3 Black Trans and Non-Binary People on Violence, BLM, and the Future appeared first on Repeller.

If you’re convinced, step one is to get the book! This month we’re reading Bestiary by K-Ming Chang. 

K-Ming Chang

Bestiary

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In Chang’s debut novel, three generations of women, Grandmother, Mother, and Daughter, live at the center of a multigenerational, transnational story of family, memory, and desire. The novel itself is mostly narrated by Daughter, and is, in the most reductive sense, about her family, which immigrated to the U.S. from Taiwan and now carves a life out of the margins in California. The novel weaves myths from Taiwan into the narrative of her family’s past, and into her lived experience in the present. We learn early on that in this novel, no single life is an island, and all bodies are permeable. Daughter lives in her own body as one presence among the many competing forces, including Hu Gu Po, a tiger spirit that wants to live inside a woman’s body. Daughter’s evolving sense of self is tied to the hopeful, gorgeous queer love story that begins when a girl named Ben spits a plum pit at Daughter’s feet, and a new thirst, for intimacy, for revelation, emerges in her body. 

These are the bones of the novel. However, the story’s breath and blood is made of Chang’s totally unique language. Chang offers us language at its most ecstatic, its most lyric, the whole world of the novel populated by impossible images and sensations that feel like the kind of truth I need right now, a truth that exceeds the literal without sacrificing its integrity. Right now, I crave the kind of truth that is not concerned with rendering the things of this world as they are right now, but instead is concerned with shaping beasts and heroes and heroic beasts out of the shadows that form in the silences of our lives—the silences of traumatic history, of queer desire, of diaspora and immigration and the particular form of violence and intimacy that passes from one generation of women who survived the unspeakable to the next generation of women who must live with the gravity of their history. 

Bestiary has been described as magical realism, a style in which the fantastical lives within a world recognizable to those of us stranded in the drab, predictable landscape of reality. I’ve always thought that this description misses the mark when it attempts to describe novels like Bestiary, in which the supernatural elements do not feel like they’re pulled from the thin air of artistic license or a fable-weighted imagination. Magical realism as it appears in this novel, and in the great examples of the style, is not a simple injection of fantasy into real life, but instead is the transformation of erased, abject, forgotten things into characters and phenomena that refuse to be buried, that insist on their place in the world.

I chose this novel for us because, right now, I crave stories that do not try to confine the wilderness of our lived experience to tight linear arcs. I crave stories that are expansive, ferocious, elegantly feral. I want to read stories that do not attempt to tame the world, but instead lead us further out into whatever lies beyond this. 

You can order the book from Bookshop.org and get started on this month’s Book Club expedition right now. If you can’t afford a book right now, keep an eye on our Instagram—we’ve got something special coming for you. 

If you’ve been here before (the virtual Repeller Book Club secret tree-fort clubhouse), then you know that this is not just any book club. I don’t care if you finish the book on time you’re not expected to show up to the meetup with a concise analysis of the major themes in the book and questions about the protagonists motivations. We’re here to connect, to reflect, to shift our perspective, and to expand our lives creatively. This mission (obviously) requires grand whimsy, mysteries, activities, and experiments. So here is this month’s experiment to get you out of the daily drudge and into a sweet moment of wonder.

Experiment #1: Cloud Watching

Do you remember laying in the grass or on a blacktop or on a park bench as a kid and watching the clouds form themselves into animals and monsters and faces as they moved across the sky? When is the last time you went cloud watching? Can you even remember?

Well, the next time someone asks you that, you will have an answer. Go outside—the beginnings of autumn are ideal for cloud watching. Find somewhere to recline where you can see the sky.

Next, set a timer for ten minutes. For these ten minutes (longer if you are an advanced daydreamer) do nothing but watch the clouds move and the creatures emerge. This is the start of your own bestiary. Let your mind wander and freely associate the billows and streaks into creatures or scenes. You don’t have to be able to explain why that nimbus cloud definitely looks like a shrimp or that cirrus is the Nile. 

When the timer goes off, or when you see a cloud creature that is too good to miss, take a picture. Post that picture on social media with a description of what you see and tag Repeller and use our #RepellerBookClub hashtag. At which point, you will receive instructions for the next experiment.

Graphic by Lorenza Centi.

The post Buckle Your Mary Janes! Book Club’s Back and We’re A-Going Cloud Watching appeared first on Repeller.

Each of these moments means something new against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic. I can’t imagine dashing into my lobby without shoes. The shutting door of a half-empty elevator is now good etiquette. We are invited into one another’s homes via Zoom. And stimulus payments have peeled open all of our wallets—and here we are, out in the open, barely decent.

Stuck between financial and moral obligations and self preservation, a teacher in Florida wrote his obituary. Many neighborhood businesses have been permanently shuttered, while large corporations have been bailed out, once again. The staggered stimulus payments that Americans were given to keep us afloat, during a pandemic that promises to barrel through the winter and into 2021, reveal a particular sourness in our national ethos. When contextualized by the amount of stimulus relief citizens of countries like New Zealand received and the very little so many of us are surviving on in the first place, $1200 is particularly ingracious. 

Here, three stories about stimulus checks that were not enough to numb the pain of the pandemic.

A nurse and mother of 3 on stretching a stimulus check while 37 weeks pregnant 

Moriah Gaddis Thompson, General Surgery Clinic Nurse in Camp Lejeune, Jacksonville, NC. 

I was pregnant with my third child when I began working as a general surgery clinic nurse. I’d planned to work until I went into labor because I didn’t have much leave time saved, but I was sent home by my midwife to quarantine at 37 weeks to try to limit my risk of being exposed to COVID-19. 

In my position, I was not on the frontline for care of sick patients, so my risk of being exposed to the virus was much smaller than that of a nurse working in the E.R. or family medicine, for example, where symptomatic patients visit. I was very anxious, nonetheless. I felt like my hospital was slow to respond to the pandemic in a preventative manner. We did not begin taking temperatures, social distancing, or requiring face masks until April. There was such limited information about how the virus affects pregnant women. It consumed me a bit. What if my husband was positive and could not be with me during the birth of our child? What if I was positive and separated from my newborn for two weeks? What if our bonding was compromised? What if I couldn’t breastfeed?” 

I asked myself these questions every day that I was still at work. I was torn, though. I felt somewhat obligated to work since my department was lower risk, and there were so many people unable to work. I felt grateful to have the job that I have, but I also struggled with fear and anxiety. 

When I returned after my son was born, it was so hard. Money was definitely a motivating factor. I have private student loans that are not on hold right now. I have three kids at home—three college funds I am trying to grow. I have car notes and bills. So, I “pulled up my big girl panties” and headed back in, which was also complicated.

According to everything I’ve heard, my area was not hit as hard as other places, but our army base is not reporting numbers to the local health department for “national security” purposes, so I never really felt like I knew how many cases there actually were. Because of that, in part, I knew I did not want my two school-aged children to return to school, and I’ve signed them up for virtual learning at home.  

The stimulus check was a surprise to me. I’d heard about it but I was mostly consumed with baby prep and COVID fears. My company is excluded from the CARES Act and did not compensate me for the three weeks that I was at home prior to my maternity leave, so when I saw the amount pending I was immediately grateful. Because I’m in charge of keeping up with our finances, I also knew exactly what I wanted to do with it. I was around 34 or 35 weeks pregnant, and we had been working on cutting down our debt as we got closer to my maternity leave. We took the better portion and paid down my debt, and with the rest bought a crib and mattress, and sushi for dinner! 

A small business owner on closing shop and navigating new expenses

Eric Perez, Barber in Oneonta, NY 

When the pandemic started, my barbershop was shut down because we were deemed non-essential. It was tough because my income is directly combined with my effort and time at work. If I don’t work, I don’t get paid. Within a week, I’d gotten myself a job working overnights at Walmart because, at that point, I didn’t qualify for unemployment because I was self-employed. Then the CARES Act was passed, and I would’ve qualified for unemployment had I stayed at home—but since I went out and found a job, I didn’t. I took solace in the fact that I was still providing for my family, even though it felt like I would’ve been rewarded had I stayed home. 

My homelife with my children changed. We were being really careful because my youngest is high risk. He has asthma and I was scared I would bring the virus home to him. My wife was working from home, but it seemed like more was expected from her being home than being in the office. The stress was evident even in small conversations. 

I’ve talked to a lot of people at the barbershop and I’ve found that so many people rely on social media for their news. The area I live in has a high population of people who still wave Confederate flags and voted for Trump. For the most part, they are people I can try to have conversations with but I always have the feeling that we are at odds or there is tension there. It’s evident that the information they’re giving me is from social media and our president is guiding their thought processes.

At the height of the pandemic, I still was concerned about going back to the barbershop, but I did it for the money. I blew through my savings because as gracious as Walmart was in employing local people, even though they didn’t need us, there were unforeseen bills that came up. We had to pay more for food and electricity, because we were home more. We paid for technology to appropriately teach my children, who were learning virtually. But we also paid our rent every month on time, and it’s something we can look back on and say we did. 

We spent our stimulus check on getting ahead on our bills a bit. It gave us some breathing room. It allowed me to quit my job at Walmart with enough time to prepare to go back to the barbershop and minimize my exposure for my family, but I would’ve just had to work two more weeks to earn what I received from the government.

A New York native on moving home and saving for a rainy day

Ghislaine Leon, Digital Media Manager in Harlem, NY

By the time the pandemic hit, I was looking for a new job. I was exhausted from paying New York City rent prices and not getting the bare minimum from landlords, like hot water in my kitchen. I had the option of waiting out the pandemic alone in my Bronx apartment or saving half of my monthly costs by going back home to Harlem. If the world was going to end, I figured I might as well be with my family.

I returned to a neighborhood that has two strong communities. There are families who’ve been on the block for more than 30 years, who think of our area as “the hood,” and there are neighbors who gentrified Broadway and think of our area as a “Henry Hudson dream.” The pandemic pushed true New Yorkers to be more of ourselves and pushed some of our visitors out. For the first time in my life, Broadway became like what my uncle described in the ’80s: a street pharmacy. 

One night I stepped out at 10:30 p.m., and I had not even walked a full block before someone walked by me saying, “I got that gas, that gas.” 

For most of my life, I’ve been offered weed on the street, but this is different. The fact that people need money brought back drugs that community board members have worked to remove. I had the Citizen app and I had to delete it. The number of notifications I got about local crime reinforced the feelings I had that night. 

Another night, I was waiting for pizza when a fire broke out in a building nearby. A young Dominican man intentionally lit his apartment on fire, causing the entire building to evacuate. I was heartbroken at the sight of young children leaving the scene through their fire escapes in their pajamas. Guys on the block beat the young man up before the cops arrived to arrest him. 

As an Afro-Latina, this affects me personally. Black and brown communities have been hit hardest, so disparities have been in my face at all times. There’s no escaping it. At one point when NYC COVID-19 cases were high, I saw an ambulance every other night in my neighborhood. It was usually an elderly person. 

I haven’t spent my stimulus check yet. It’s sitting in my savings account until I invest it. I want to double it. The stimulus check was enough to cover half of one month’s cost of living. It was definitely not enough to live on through September and it’s shaken me up. I have to remember to fend for myself and make money work for me.

Graphic by Lorenza Centi.

The post What is $1200 Dollars Worth Right Now? 3 Americans On Getting Their Stimulus Checks appeared first on Repeller.

Five months into the pandemic I was asked to do a comedy show over Zoom. Despite having worked as a stand-up comedian pre-pandemic, up until this point I had politely declined any live streaming shows. It didn’t feel right to tell jokes into my empty apartment for an audience on mute.

Missing the high of the stage, I agreed to do a particular show: a comedy dance show.  I am never short of dance moves, even when audience members are in short supply. The walls of my apartment had been known to request blindfolds.

I immediately started planning my dance numbers. One of my favorite drag queens, Lady Red Couture, had recently passed away, so I planned a dance number to her song “Extra Value Meal” and choreographed a performance with many fast food-related gags—including, but not limited to, eating two Big Macs while hula hooping.

A couple of days before the show, I was tagged in a promotional post on Instagram. I looked at the line-up to size up my competition. And that’s when I saw the judges included one I was unfortunately too familiar with: Greg. Crap.

Greg, my former crush, the one who consumed my world and lived rent-free in my mind for years, would be one of the judges. Our relationship was pivotal, and was the reason for several big changes in my life. The first time I was ever on a plane was to visit this man. It felt like a movie and it felt very adult. 

We hooked up once, resulting in an apology for “giving me the wrong impression.” This conversation took place on a bridge. At the time, I had been watching a lot of Sex and the City, so naturally I thought it was true love.

I spent the better part of a year chasing him in-between states and exchanging near-daily text messages and inside jokes. The last time I had talked to Greg, he had accused me of having “some unhealthy delusions about our relationship.”

 I would have preferred “you’re crazy”—it’s more to the point. 

Greg strung me along for a year before giving me the kindness of breaking my heart. But more importantly, he made something snap inside me. A big component of my unrequited love was that he didn’t think I was funny, and, therefore, not qualified to be a real girlfriend.

In my post-heartbreak rage, I submitted a writing packet, which led not only to my first job in comedy but many jobs that I have strung into a career. I had spent the last four years working my ass off to prove to him that I was just as good a comedian as he was.

After months of COVID, when I didn’t even get to see my best friends in the world, this man was going to be (virtually) in my living room. And he was going to have to tell everyone his opinions on me pulling Whoppers out of my bra to disco music.

Should I drop out? No. Maybe he would drop out? I crossed my fingers. He didn’t. Crap.

This wouldn’t be your average embarrassing run-in at the DMV or a random party. He would be in my living room. He would see everything. My crappy David Bowie poster and that, despite two job promotions, I hadn’t redecorated or switched apartments since I was 24.

I cringed at the thought of the “me” who had loved him. The girl who drank an entire bottle of 7-11 strawberry Boons Farm and texted him from a friend’s phone that he should love me because “Elizabeth is perfect she is a big fan of Lady Gaga.” 

It seemed like a super-compelling argument at the time.

After two days of fretting, Taylor Swift songs on repeat, wardrobe changes, and exhausting all my friends, the show came.

We saw each other in those tiny Brady Bunch-esque Zoom boxes before the show streamed on Twitch. It turned out it wasn’t that different than seeing each other at a party. We didn’t speak directly to one another, but engaged with those around us.

As I sat in my apartment, while also in a virtual room he was in, I felt okay. I was grateful to have the moment between us, as scary as it had seemed. It felt nice. And after months of being away from other people, it was amazing to be experiencing regular human emotions again. Even if it was about someone I hoped to never see again.

I danced. He scored me. A perfect ten. And made a very awkward comment about my silhouette looking lovely in sequins, which made me feel like I won the break-up.

He gave me the kindness of treating me like a contestant he was rooting for, of scoring me more than fairly, which frankly I deserved after the airplane credit card debt and my broken heart.

Maybe, just maybe, he understood who I was now. I was no longer the girl in love who jumped for him at a moment’s notice, I was his peer. There wasn’t a confession that he was still madly in love with me. There wasn’t the regret in his eyes I would have liked. But there was the professional confirmation I needed from him all along. Finally.

I was crowned the winner, and I got the confirmation I wanted all along:

I am very funny. And I’m a hell of a dancer. 

The post True Life: I Ran into My Ex… Over Zoom appeared first on Repeller.

For me, growing up in the tree-shrouded foothills of rural eastern Oklahoma, plants were never far from my periphery. My mother was a green-thumbed gardener, meticulous. My grandfather could scatter seeds to the wind with his eyes closed and produce something beautiful. My favorite smell is still wild honeysuckle. Plants are our oldest teachers, our connection to life outside of ourselves, and they should be honored accordingly. But how? How do we nurture this relationship now, when the anxiety is suffocating, when we’re locked away from each other, and the loneliness is almost palpable in the air? 

In my quest for answers, I interviewed five people who have let plants take over their homes, who now live in lush mini-conservatories filled to the brim with plants (and sometimes frogs, fungi, and cats.) From our conversations, I learned more about what it takes to stay and keep something alive, and the healing relationships I think we should all cultivate. 

Courtney (@_cspaige)

How did you become the green witch goddess that you are now? When did this journey begin for you? 

Honestly, childhood! I come from a long line of plant mamas. I grew up with plants with my mom and my grandmother. As far as myself, about six years ago, when I got the space and the lighting for them. That’s when I told myself, Okay, it’s time for my own plants. I felt like I was missing something. They complete the space as far as I’m concerned. 

That makes a lot of sense to me. Especially with the deep familial connection you have there. Not having plants would be like missing a piece of home. 

Definitely. Originally I’m from upstate New York, always around nature, and being in the city it can be a bit sterile sometimes. Plants are my way of reminding myself of home and bringing some of that to the urban area. 

Did your mom and grandmother keep indoor plants? Or were they outside gardeners? 

My grandmother was mainly an outside gardener—she had a really big backyard. I grew up helping her in the garden and watching that journey of planting the tomatoes and seeing them grow and then being able to pick them and then helping her cook. Those are really treasured memories for me. My mom was an inside plant owner, though we did have a lot of plants in our backyard that we ended up taking when we moved. I have a lot of connections with plants in my childhood. 

How do you care for all those plants? Is it meditative or routine for you? Do you sing to them?

I will say that we’re a ’90s hip-hop and R&B household! I keep the music on basically all the time. So I don’t sing specifically to them, but they also don’t have a choice in listening. As far as their care, I do have a calendar reminder because—well, life is so busy. I try to keep my personal life and my work as organized as possible. I usually break it up into two separate days, just because there are so many of them, and certain plants require less water than others. Just so I don’t kill them. As a plant parent, you go through trial and error with what works and what doesn’t work—and the types of plants you can maintain and take care of, and which ones you haven’t figured out. I try to stick with ones that I haven’t killed off. I try to keep it as organized as possible—if I don’t, I’ll forget.

So we’ve talked a little through why you’ve done it historically, but why do you do it right now? Especially in this frankly scary present moment. 

I’ll be perfectly honest. I’ve purchased around ten to 15 plants since the pandemic began. I moved into my apartment in February, and I definitely paid attention to making my space as comfortable as possible. I didn’t know how long I would be at home. I worked remotely for three months. I just felt like it was so important to do the things that really matter to me, the things that bring me joy during these scary and unknown times. 

Do they have names? 

Okay, I’m not really a namer, but I do have one called Courtney. I figured out if you pick one and call it by your name, you’re literally nurturing yourself.

I think that’s incredible. 

Agatha (@plant.ma, @plantingforprogress)

What is your plant goddess origin story? When did this journey begin for you? 

Plants have always been close to my heart, but the zero-to-100 transformation of having 160 plants in my apartment happened two or three years ago. I’m originally from Los Angeles, and my family is still there, but when I moved to the East Coast, having plants in my apartment, starting with succulents, was just to have something green close to me. Then it transformed into something therapeutic.

Did your parents have plants? 

I actually had a pretty unique childhood. I was born in the Philippines, and my parents were frequent travelers. I grew up with plants around me, both with the garden outside and house plants inside. I accidentally killed one of my mom’s Monstera deliciosas when I was a kid, and looking back at that from my adulthood, I’m like, Oh, no, what a beautiful plant—how could I have done that? Plants have been something that has connected me to my family, too, especially in the era of covid. There was a period of time where my grandma and I had a text thread that was just plant pictures!

It seems like a real matrilineal tradition for you. I think that’s really beautiful. 

For sure. It’s kind of a no-brainer when it comes to spreading the joy. My plants grow and propagate, so why not send them elsewhere to friends and loved ones? Even if I wasn’t in a one-bedroom apartment I think I would want to share. 

How do you actually care for all those plants? 

Before I had as many plants as I do now, I used to make a day of it, but now there are way too many for that. Now I tackle them by groups of similar care and so on. For example, a lot of Hoya plants that are indigenous to Southeast Asia are really hardy and by the window, but they don’t get as much water as others do. By grouping them, I learn more about them and make sure all of them are getting the care that they need. Also: I’m a great multitasker, so I could be repotting plants while on a call. Paying attention, obviously, but also doing something with my hands. 

Tell me more about why you’re doing it now. Especially within the frame of the Planting for Progress Project. 

At the beginning of quarantine, I was having a really hard time, like so many people were. After finding myself furloughed from work, I wasn’t able to donate to the social movements and causes that I really wanted to. It was at that time that I started propagating some of my rarer plants and auctioning them for donations. It got a good amount of traction, and in the last few months, we’ve been able to raise about $5000. We’ve donated to BLM, the ACLU, and have done a few things with the Audre Lorde Project, the Innocence Project, and the Foresight Project. So my love for plants became not just therapeutic for me, but a way to give back. 

I think that pretty well answers my next question of what your plants mean to you. They’re a lifeline. 

Oh, absolutely. I don’t know what I would do without them. They’ve not only helped me personally, but they’ve helped me create a larger community, something that felt impossible in the current climate. 

Eric (@botany_spears) 

How did you become the great plant whisperer you are now? When did the transformation begin? 

I grew up upstate, in a rural area, so I was used to being surrounded by plants and nature from a young age. We had a big garden and flower beds and the forest was basically my backyard, so when I moved to the city ten years ago I was surprised that no one had that. And if they did have space, it was rocks, poison soil, and maybe some garbage the last tenants left behind. I started by getting the kind of plant everyone has in their apartment that they treat as their baby, and then I got one more, and now I decade later I have something like 120. 

Wow. 

It grew slowly, but it was something that was always in my realm of interest. I also work as a photographer, which means I spend a lot of time at home, and the plants are a way for me not to feel like I’m stuck in a big white box. 

Did your parents garden at all? Or did you step into it on your own? 

My mom had her flower beds that were her prized possessions. My family is Armenian, and my grandmother grew grapevines that we then made into stuffed grape leaves, so that was always a big event and showcased that you could grow something and eat it, too. I learned the value of plants in general just by what my family found important. 

How do you care for your 120 plant children? Do you sing to them? 

I don’t sing to them, but I do talk to them a lot! If I get a particularly stressful email or something, I will leave my office and come vent to them, mostly in hopes that somebody in the ethos will hear me and something will change. It feels like having friends around, as corny as that sounds, and it’s reassuring to have that kind of company. As far as their physical care, everyone has this idea that having a lot of plants is harder than having one plant, and from my experience, everything likes bright and direct light, everything wants water once a week, and if you notice something is off, adjust one of those things accordingly, and that’s it. I’m not more or less talented than anyone else—certainly not a botanist. 

Why do you do it, besides your familial connection, especially right now? 

I’m a Virgo. I love controlling the situation. I love having only myself to blame when something goes wrong. It’s really nice to have something to hold onto, in this time where every time you open your phone some new and fresh horror awaits. Plants offer me an escape. I take care of them, and they offer new growth. I wish that that was the norm: We take care of each other and offer each other new growth. 

We’ve touched on it a bit, but what do your plants mean to you? What do you think you mean to them? 

My plants are a stamp collection that have become a deep emotional connection. My friend gave me a cutting of a plant one year for my birthday, but that plant had been in her family for over 100 years. It’s this thing that has a heritage older than I am. It’s hard not to have reverence for. I hope I can take care of these things with the preciousness and the respect that they deserve. 

Which is your favorite? I promise I won’t tell. 

My most common, oldest plant I have. It’s called a Scindapsus exotica, and she’s not the one I brag about, but she’s the one who has seen the road with me, and that is something I deeply love her for. We have history. Like the friend who has embarrassing pictures of you that they can never show anyone.

Missleidy (@missleidytheplantlady) 

How and when did your plant journey/botanical glow up begin?

It started about a year and a half ago. Before that, I was living in an apartment with one dingy window and nothing else. When I moved and had the light, I went to the plant shop across the street and decided that if I was going to be working on myself mentally, and getting myself to a better place in general, I needed to make my environment reflect that. I thought back to what brought me so much joy as a kid, and that was being with my grandmother and grandfather in the garden. I was already doing drag by that point, so I knew that I wanted a plant that was a diva. I wanted people to look at her twice. A month after that, I had 40 plants in the window. It became an opportunity for my love of drag and my love of plants to intersect and bloom—that’s how MissLeidy the Plant Lady was born. 

Tell me more about when you were a kid with your grandmother and grandfather in the garden. 

They basically raised me. My grandmother was and still is my idol. They’re such an inspiration to me—they immigrated from Cuba in 1979 with absolutely no money and then helped the rest of my family come to the United States. Everyone had a place to stay and something to eat. Once I got into a conversation with my aunt and during it, she said, “We grew up really poor.” And I was like, “Are you serious? Did we grow up in the same house?” I was almost convinced I had grown up rich because my grandparents filled me up with so much love, community, and family that there was no room to miss anything else. My grandfather was a jack-of-all-trades. One of his hobbies was breeding rare tropical birds. In our backyard, we had everything from albino peacocks to turkeys to parrots. 

So you basically grew up in the Secret Garden? 

Yes! When I was a kid I had this idea if I planted enough trees I could make Vegas a rainforest. Every time we went to the store I would ask to buy a tree or plants for the garden beds in the front. Plants have always been in our lifestyle and our bloodline. 

Onto your plants specifically, how do you care for all of them? Is it a routine for you? 

It is a routine for me. It became a way to help strengthen my sobriety and deal with depression. Anytime I take a living thing into my home, I become responsible for it. So even if I feel terrible in the mornings I have something to work towards. I want to give the plants (and poison dart frogs) the optimal conditions to thrive since I’m taking them out of their environments and putting them into mine. I chose to bring this thing into my home, so I have to get out of bed. By incorporating this into my life, I get to see new growth in the plants, which in turn stimulates new growth in me. 

Why do you do it? Why do you do it right now in the terrifying times we find ourselves in? 

It all goes back to mental health for me. If I didn’t have the outlet of plants, I’m not sure I would have been able to handle everything that has happened. 

What do you think you mean to them (your plants)? 

I’m the drag queen Mother Nature up in this bitch. I do enjoy all of this so much. It is serious, but it’s also fun for me, and I think that is important. They’re showgirls at the end of the day. 

Cartreze (@blackboyplantjoy)

How and when did you bloom into the green-thumbed plant collector you are now?

I’ve been interested in plants since I was a child, but with my day-to-day theater job, there just wasn’t enough time to collect and care for the plants I wanted. With the pandemic, even in the chaos, I’ve had the time at home needed to start diving deep, and I mean really deep, into all things plants. I went from having ten plants to my current count of 80. 

That’s a lot of plants. Did the jump from ten to 80 happen in the last six months?

It is a lot of plants. And yes, 100%. If things were different, I’d be traveling right now, but instead I can help them grow and love them as they deserve.

Who helped your love of plants along as a kid? 

My great-grandmother Gladys. She used to have as many plants, if not more, as I do now. She had lots of prayer plants, pothos, and other run-of-the-mill house plants. The kind that I imagine every grandmother or abuela has in their house. She also used to do ceramics, and so she would paint individual pots for all of her plants. I’ve actually picked up on that ritual because I paint my terracotta pots. I have so many family members tell me that we are especially connected, and that’s so special to me. 

Miss Gladys sounds like quite the woman. How do you care for your 80 plant children? 

A lot of stress, anxiety, and chaotic energy! But there is a routine. I water them once a week, on Sunday, or on Thursday as needed. The first thing I do after waking up is check on them. I like to see what’s growing, what’s not growing, and what might need a little more love. So it’s check plants, make coffee, and watch Wendy Williams. 

Do you talk to them? 

Oh my God, I talk to them like they are my really close friends. I say things like, “OK, girl, you’re not gonna grow today? That’s fine. I see you. If you really want to act up I’ll get you more water.”

So along with Miss Gladys and the freeing up of your schedule, why do you do it? 

I did not expect that caring for these plants would bring me as much joy as it does, but it does. At the beginning I thought it would be a couple more house plants and that’s it. I do it because caring for my plants is actually a form of self-care. Tending to them, watering them, and helping them grow, as stressful as it is for me some days because there are so many, the act of caring for them is so helpful. It relieves some of the anxiety of the world as it is right now. Helping them helps me. And also: why not now? This is the best possible time for me to become a crazy plant parent, and rather appropriate, I think. 

What is the first plant that you purchased? Was it just one or did you get a pair? 

I got a few so they wouldn’t be lonely. A pink polka-dot plant, a prayer plant, a cactus I named Keisha, and four others. Out of the seven, only three are still here—rest in peace, Keisha. But they did their job and they served a purpose. 

Your connection to them is almost spiritual, isn’t it? 

It is. As corny as it sounds it’s very spiritual, very connective to me. There’s a deep love and respect there, and I cherish that. It’s so bizarre because I never thought I would be able to hold so much feeling inside of myself for them? But I do. They have personalities, and lives, and I never thought I would be that person, but here we are, honey.

Photography: Ryan Razon
Photography Assistant: Will Pippin

The post What it Takes to Keep Something Alive: 5 Plant Parents on Raising their Botanical Brood appeared first on Repeller.

My mixed feelings stemmed from a history of both lived and observed experiences. I have witnessed Black women being placed under glass ceilings and trying to live up to unattainable standards that are set up to make them fail. For instance, a close friend of mine was hired for her first management job, and she was the only Black manager at the retail store. No one told her that she would be expected to fix managerial problems that she wasn’t even trained to correct. She was blamed for things that weren’t her responsibilities, she has been set up. In my own life, there have been similar struggles. I have felt the frustration of being treated like a diversity hire, instead of a valuable employee. While working in education, there was a specific job that used me as a Black face to illustrate diversity, but when it came to receiving help, no one seemed to care about me. I would have people steal my teaching supplies and gossip about my natural hair texture. When I was an undergraduate, I had a white professor tell me that I should be content with a lower grade than I earned. They believed I would fine because our school had a repeat and replace system, and that I should strive for less when it came to academic achievement that semester. With each of these experiences, there was so much ambition and tenacity that was met with contestation and erasure. It’s been frustrating and exhausting at the same time. Like many other Black women, it feels like I have been expected to sink, instead of being encouraged to swim. 

I also know that Black leaders, sometimes even those with good intentions, are not immune to oversights that contribute to anti-blackness. I’ve witnessed Black leaders overlook intersectionality and Black womanhood as well as Black leaders in police departments that make excuses for white officers that brutalize unarmed Black people that are disproportionately targeted by law enforcement. This includes Harris, as her approaches to leadership have not always been successful in advocating for the Black community. 

Clinical social worker Ayana A. Ali works with patients who are struggling with race-related trauma and believes that one of the reasons Black women are loyal to Harris is because they identify with the way she has been vilified by the media, in much the same way I have. Ali explained, “Because Black women are often stereotyped and maligned, especially in the media, many may feel that speaking publicly about criticism of Harris is a betrayal, only serving to further perpetuate those societal tendencies, even if they support her. However, if we truly want to have opportunities like everyone else, we have to be willing to allow our candidates’ records and platforms to be analyzed and critiqued like everyone else’s. We don’t need Black women to be treated with kid gloves, we need them to be treated fairly.”

Misogynoir is sexism that is directed specifically against Black women through racist, gendered aggression and rhetoric. In this campaign, it manifested in the way complaints about Harris have gone beyond political issues, and critiques that intersect with race. Harris has also been portrayed as an aggressor, rather than a passionate leader. It is gaslighting to suggest that Harris is ridiculously or inappropriately angry when she is tackling issues with as much zeal as white male candidates do. 

In the same way that Donald Trump and his supporters labeled Michelle Obama “angry,” they have begun to use the same language and imagery when referring to Harris. Obama was described by a West Virginia county employee as an “ape in heels,” and former Univision host Rodner Figueroa said, “Michelle Obama looks like she’s part of the cast of Planet of the Apes.” Both of these people fed into the vicious trend of racist, gendered attacks on Black women leaders. 

The Trump campaign has already claimed that Harris is an angry Black woman and accused the Oakland, California-born candidate of being illegal. The same claim was made about President Obama. 

Though I do connect to the racism that she’s experiencing, my opinion of her as a candidate is still complicated. She’s made big claims in the past about supporting Black Lives Matter and even advocating for police reform, but her actions have not always translated accordingly. She has a track record of being the “Top Cop”, as a prosecutor in a criminal justice system that has come down unjustly on Black people, specifically Black men.

Harris may have perpetuated out-of-line law enforcement tactics that have been deadly, possibly even contributing to instances of police brutality and prison overcrowding with a majority of Black men. She has also been accused of either doing nothing when it comes to cases of police violence or has even increased it in some cases: “While serving as attorney general in 2016, for example, [Harris] she opposed a bill to investigate deadly police shootings following the death of a stabbing suspect — shot 21 times by police — that sparked huge protests.”

I also know that, for years, Black people have been forced to make unfair trade-offs when working in an inherently anti-black system. There is a degree of self compromise that Harris, and so many others, have to reckon with. I don’t know how much Harris will lead the Democratic shift or merely be one of Biden’s passengers, but I do know that as a Black woman, it’s okay for me to feel a multiplicity of emotions when it comes to Harris.

Harris isn’t just a Black woman, she isn’t just an Indian woman, she’s not just a woman, or a candidate, or even a wife, she is an intersection of identities that all come together to make her a masterpiece of complexity and humanity. I love that she has flaws because those imperfections make her who she is. Black women voters don’t want to be reduced only to our Blackness or our womanhood when it comes to our political beliefs, and the same is true for Harris. 

When people see me, I don’t want to be a monolithic conceptualization of what a Black woman should be, I hate feeling erased in that way. There have been too many unbearably painful moments in my life in which people have labeled me worthless because of my Black womanhood, instead of trying to get to know me. 

As theorist and professor Kimberle Crenshaw has asserted in her studies on intersectionality, “I center Black women in analysis in order to contrast the multidimensionality of Black women’s experience with the single-axis analysis that distorts these experiences.”

I think it’s my right to both support and challenge her candidacy for vice president. It doesn’t make me part of the opposition or an unconditional supporter—simply an informed voter, which is something Black women rarely are allowed to be. We are often pigeonholed, forced to choose between loving a Black candidate and criticizing that candidate’s reputation or policies. It’s not a matter of who’s right or wrong when it comes to Harris, it’s about Black women deserving the autonomy to unapologetically feel what we want to feel about Kamala Harris, for better or for worse.

Feature Image via Getty Images.

The post How I’m Holding My Complex Feelings About Kamala Harris appeared first on Repeller.

So many of my days recently have bled together in a watercolor hellscape of dark news and numb alienation, and I’ve been looking for a way to feel electric. I’ve found myself trying to emulate Sandy and Nicky’s (we’re on a first name basis after this many re-watches) ability in the movie to turn the everyday things of the world into magical, improbable delights and fiascos. I wondered how much magic I would notice and feel in my day to day slog if I wasn’t so numb, cynical, or distracted. I’m not saying I thought I would find an old love potion in my pantry that I had somehow forgotten about. I’m saying that perhaps there are all kinds of mysterious whimsies and wonders that I’m missing out on because I’m not paying enough attention. 

For example, if someone asked me to describe how a microwave works without using Google, I could give a word salad answer about water molecules sped up by microwaves that generate heat because… umm energy equals velocity something, something, Einstein? But in reality, the fact that I put some frozen fish sticks in a humming box for two minutes, and they come out edible (in the loosest possible sense of the word) is a mysterious miracle. Sure, if I had paid more attention in a class I didn’t/would never take, wherein they cover microwave science, this phenomenon would perhaps lose its magical wonderment dimension. But I didn’t, and so here I am, left with an experience of everyday practical magic as I’m redefining it for our purposes this month: 

Practical magic is the process of transforming something totally mundane into something mysterious and magical by shifting our perspective and looking at our lives with curiosity about all the things we do not know or can not explain. 

I don’t mean this prompt to sound like I’m being all touchy-feely, baby’s-first-acid-trip, universal-oneness about our lives right now, I’m definitely not on that vibe (you can ask my therapist if you need to confirm that I am constantly mired in polling data and dread). But I do offer this prompt as an invitation to experience our everyday lives with an attitude of curiosity, reckless wonder, and the seriousness of a child at play. For this month’s writer’s club, we want to hear about the practical magic you encounter in your everyday life. 

You can respond to this prompt in so many different ways, such as: Is there a curse on your family that you want to get to the bottom of? Did you once see someone on a train who looked like a long-lost twin/doppelganger and do you ever think about them? Did you re-meet your childhood best friend on the subway and realize you had basically lived parallel lives? Were you born with memories from inside the womb, and if so, how do you make sense of them? Have you ever shared a dream with another person or dreamed something that became reality? 

I want to hear about the fat raven that sits on the telephone wire across the street from your house and how you have started to wonder if he recognizes you and is trying to communicate. I want to read about how you’ve manifested love or transformed grief or re-created your late nana’s recipe for black-eyed peas just from the scent-memory. 

I want to hear about these inexplicable magics and I want to hear how you make sense of them now. I want you to 

Play with form! Take big risks! Tell that secret truth you never believed you could muster the stones to tell! I’ll be here, waiting to welcome you into the salt circle.

Please send your submissions (of 600 words or fewer) to writersclub@manrepeller.com by Monday, October 12 at 9:30am EST. 

Graphic by Lorenza Centi.

The post Writers Club Prompt: Where’s the Magic Right Now? appeared first on Repeller.