November Playlist
By Blakey Bessire
Graphic by Blakey Bessire
The cells in our bodies are tiny. They are so tiny and there are so many of them that maybe the “I” that we think of as “ourselves” is actually a misinterpretation and could be considered “we.” We practice life as symbionts, amidst private microscopic biota that are tiny and yet retain the ultimate use-value of biological subsistence. I like thinking about all of the things that will happen to my body after I die, these small mechanized and bodily programmable pieces will continue on.
Maybe it’s just November, right? There is something so raw about it. So sucky. So small. My mom was texting me about being sad. We are both sad right now. It’s Scorpio she says. She is a Scorpio herself but doesn’t identify with it. I’ve been reading a book of short stories. One was by Abe Akira and it was called Peaches. It’s about memory and being a baby and peaches. He tries to recall a memory but each piece of it is jumbled. He never figures it out. But an image of the moon and peaches that could be bruised easily keeps returning to me in the last week or two.
“Peaches. Fruit like pure, sweet nectar – nothing else. Easily bruised, quick to spoil. And each one heavy, almost unnervingly so. Filled with several dozen of these heavy peaches, the pram must have been more difficult to push than if it had held a live baby. And like the downy skin of a newborn, each could be scuffed and bruised in an instant if my mother did not push the pram slowly and carefully.”
We are made up of cells that make up a greater being. We are made up of skin that is easily bruised. Scuffed. I keep thinking about the pram and pushing it, or being inside of it. It is in the treatment of small peaches that I want to melt into. We have to push these prams slow and breathe in the air that let’s our cells expand and contract. This November let’s take care of our bodies, remain shielded against this month of genocidal holidays and grey skies, take big belly breaths. Hold our forms like symbionts with the sky and reject a cold month of stasis.
Have a listen and hopefully feel a bit brighter. A good bop can do wonders, you know.