Lightning McQueer

Went to a reading at the Poetry Project & ended the night by exploring St. Mark’s Church cemetery; a former Vice President, a Dutch family vault, the oldest grave I could find, & the Barclays. Flat Puritan headstones, but they’re inlaid, so the crypts are probs in the church basement catacombs

I’m at the folk art fair, I’m at the cemetery, I’m at the combination folk art fair cemetery (weeping)

I’ve seen it. The best grave in the world. The number one; the one they don’t want you to see, because its beauty will ruin you forever. Guard yourself from perfection:

Local guide told me that Fes is the only city in Morocco where the graves aren’t all facing Mecca. Most Muslim cemeteries here aren’t open to non-believers but I saw the graves, facing every which way. No one knows why. Everyone forgot. It’s a truth we lost; Fes is full of secrets like that.

Visited ONE (1) cemetery in England & it wasn’t Highgate but a churchyard in Hackney, crumbling & overgrown. Struck by: the new church & the old one, how looking at someone else’s end always portends ur own, the way cemeteries are a technology that lets you see the future & the past simultaneously.

Also at PL is my fave painting in the world, cast in bronze on the artist’s tomb. Raft of the Medusa, Théodore Géricault spent 18 months researching the Medusa’s wreck, studying corpses, interviewing survivors & having them model for him on a life-size replica of the raft he built in his studio (!!)

Loved Abelard & Heloise’s tomb at Pere Lachaise, the Medieval Gothic arch, how much light was let into the top of the structure, the gargoyles at each corner to drain runoff, a perfect structure, the first tomb in the first planned rural cemetery in the world, a romance buried centuries ago

Smth so sinister abt a cropped grave I’m used to teaching getting restored & pulled out bc it was sinking in the wet earth & now having it be 3x its “regular” size rip to the guy but also rip to a short king

My research at the cemetery goes like: terrible man terrible man rich lesbian terrible man terrible man terrible man another lesbian terrible man x3 gay musician terrible man obsessed with 16th century roleplay terrible man gay? terrible man pioneering writer who got into 3-way knife fight in 1801—

Learning mah-jong & there’s a rule that is a courtesy that supposes the existence of fate instead of chance—you can’t interrupt another person’s fate, you have to draw a tile from the end of the line for 4x so you don’t mess up their algorithm. So polite & quite heartwarming? I cried for 3 days

Just found out the cemetery I work at has an annual softball competition with every other major museum/cultural institution in NYC & everyone’s team name is good EXCEPT ours 🥲

“We’re the Headstones….we’ll BURY YOU.” 🪦💀😒

One thing you should keep in mind is that the people most worried about this moment and directly affected by it are likely not broadcasting their feelings or concerns on social media.

Me to a client: “The Kubler-Ross model of grief for bereaved folks who aren’t terminally ill is hotline bling drake shaking his head in consternation and disapproval while the dual-process model for the bereaved is hotline bling drake smiling wide and pointing in enthusiastic participa—“

I thought I knew how to explain death to a child I thought I knew how to say a thing is dead but I log on & every five minutes is another dead child & I have to go back to work & keep teaching what it is when I can barely wrap my head around the numbers I’m seeing

This Sunday and next Wednesday, a two part DEATH WRITING workshop by @sadqueer4life.bsky.social and me. Email me at eileen.waggoner@gmail.com to join!

WRITERS AGAINST THE WAR ON GAZA

“We cannot write a free Palestine into existence, but together we must do all we possibly can to reject narratives that soothe Western complicity in ethnic cleansing.” https://www.writersagainstthewarongaza.com/

I was 19 when my university’s Hillel chapter doxxed me after they found out I was a part of Palestinian Solidarity Committee. Zionists are hateful agents of the state who will use ur queerness, gender, & ethnicity against you. They do not operate with decency & neither should we.

From one of my high school interns