An Apology to Saramago
by Andreea Breazu ︎︎︎It was a year of apologies. I don’t care what they called it on the news, in parliament or at the UN. It was a year of incessant apologizing, small apologies, collective apologies, serial apologies1, conditional apologies2, political apologies, mandated apologies, commissioned apologies, ghostwritten apologies, sincere apologies, apologies to dead Indigenous children, apologies to future generations, racists and rapists apologized alike, some apologized for knowing but not saying, others for saying but not doing, while many apologized for not apologizing earlier.
There were declarations, yes, press releases too, official and unofficial statements, lengthy captions, email signatures, protests, lawsuits, screenshots from the Notes app. But that was just the beginning, as we each tried our voice at atonement open mic night, remorse karaoke, or a podcast of regrets recorded under a heavy blanket.
At first, they were exceptional moments. It felt like we held our breath every time someone issued a new apology. One should imagine it like that scene from an early ‘00s Hollywood film about some sort of impending apocalypse, in which unnamed characters come to a standstill as they near the window display of an electronics store, alight with dozens of tv screens, concomitantly broadcasting the same catastrophic news in deep blacks, bright whites, and scintillating colour. An eerie silence would emerge, as we listened carefully to see if we understood their reasons, if we believed their resolutions, if their regret reflected introspection.
It became a new normal. We were sorry for what we had done and what we hadn’t, what we had and what we hadn’t, what we were and what we weren’t. Soon enough we were sorry to be, we were sorry for others, we were sorry in solidarity. Bigots were quick to point out, “Sorry but3 you can’t expect me to be sorry about everything.” So you see, it wasn’t so much a reckoning, or an awakening, it was merely a new social norm. Police said ‘sorry’ on live tv, the military coughed up an ‘excuse me’ and withdrew troops from countries they’d lost interest in, the government apologized and took an early lunch, the church begged for our pardon and a donation, Wall Street brokers spelled out ‘forgive me’ on the stock market data monitor and took a group photo.
We knew then this had become another ruse of capitalism. If you’re always sorry, you’re always buying cards and chocolate and flowers to redeem yourself, expensive jewellery, a romantic getaway, or even a month-long luxury, silent rehab retreat in Bali. The price is in direct correlation to the size of your apology, it’s HUGE.
No one knows when the resistance movement started, there is no record of it beginning because it started like a private embarrassing secret. People started faking their apologies without confiding in anyone. Everyone was lying but no one knew, because they were lying to their friends, their family, their illicit partners. It started small, with an “i’m fine” or an “i love you too” in bed. It grew to fabricating elaborate storylines that you were working, when in reality, you would have quit your job and refused to search for a new one while putting on the 24/7 live art performance of convincing all your peers that you too are working from home in a pandemic. We only realized it had happened when the internet stopped. Because those working to upkeep the digital infrastructure of our world, they too had quit and were pretending to be working from home in a pandemic.
It was a boring and awkward revolution.
1. The phenomenon of apologizing for your apology in the format of a more formal yet stripped back apology, usually written by a publicist.
2. “I’m sorry if you’re offended”, “I’m sorry if you’re hurt”, “I’m sorry if you’re sorry”, etc.
3. Sorry but fuck you.
Afternoon Prayer
by Arabella Paner and Czar Kristoff ︎︎︎The first time I remember praying my mother taught me the words to this Clapping.
Then this
Rain, I hear rain. Heavy rain.
Rain, both gentle, and frightening. How something so small can terrify you.
Cleansed, I feel cleansed, water from the seashell attached to the wall.
Walls pass for homes once, I long to find myself home, here all at once. Perhaps the womb was once home too.
Swings
A woman knocks on the door during a storm, a baby in hand.
Bright light, crash. Boom, bang.
Lightning strikes fast. Luck twice as much. So in this land, we light fires at the arrival of dusk.
Purity, ready
To purify perhaps is to shed our skin. Leaving.
Venomous memories, a funeral awaits
Timber, a body falls to the ground. How do we honor old rivers?
A procession is not enough, they say.
In this city are we allowed to sing songs for the dead?
Squeal, the pigs I hear. Hum, the birds disappear.
Weaving in and out of life. The soul travels to places they were in once.
Vessel cracks
A woman utters a feeling at the moment the glass shatters.
Stops at the shoreline
I meet you at the shoreline and a current of memory washes me away. The sea plays a song.
It plays along.
In moonlight we all look blue.
In moonlight we become true
Life's a dance with what you think is missing. A revolution.
Becomes a revolution when one shed tears
Hold on tight. See this revolution through. Dreams, a recurrence.
With each passing day.
Rain is our consolation. It is the cost we, the living, pay.
Zaar
by Zhaleh Farahani ︎︎︎"Winds are like people, they can be kind or cruel, you know?” Mama‐zaar said. Her suntanned face looked crimson in the sunlit desert and her deep contralto voice sounded like I was hearing her words from the bottom of the sea.
I said nothing. She was rubbing some kind of aromatic oil on my arms, I was naked.
It was our daily journey for a week now, 5-hour walk without food or water until getting here where there was no sign of any manmade thing, pure nature, as she named it.
She pushed away her shiny green scarf and continued her story:
"They travel on the oceans; sometimes come to the beach, come to us and dive into our hearts, they find themselves angels or sometimes monsters, but they always make us sick in their journey, like a turbulence, you know?”
The heat didn’t hurt anymore, nor did her hot palms and fingers on my sunburned body, I wasn’t thirsty or tired or even sick. I was light and free of emotions.
“They take something they like from us and nurture it, like we nurture sheep, you know? In return, they leave some of their air in our souls, so they never really leave us. They call us air-ish folks, you know?”
That night was the night. The other air‐ish folks of the village would come to build the semicircle, and Mama‐zaar would talk to my Zaar.
She was done with my front, so I rolled over, my mouth was half open and soon I felt the dry sourness of sand on my tongue, yet I didn’t close my mouth.
I had a fairy‐Zaar. They recognized it on the first day. My Zaar was a pagan and cruel but fortunately he hadn’t tasted blood yet, and Mama‐zaar promised him a magnificent ceremony, he accepted quickly, then Mama‐zaar and I went to that remote ruin of a house so that no one could see me except Mama‐zaar.
“We will feed him, we will sing to him, amuse and satisfy him, so he would leave your body, we know his keen and we do the ceremony for centuries you know. So don’t worry. We are no doctors of course but then you are no patient either, my flower‐girl.”
She was right. I had heard enough bullshit already; "It is just mental Bibi, there is no sign of anything physiological”, like I was faking all that pain. "Perhaps your ego is telling you something Ms. Bibi, you were a good girl for a long time”, like I was some kind of psycho.
***
The fire was filled with aromatic seeds again, which sparkled and made funny noises. Soon enough, the air smelled weird and I saw everyone in the semicircle breathe more slowly, including myself. The moon was bright in the sky and we were sitting in pure nature. Mama‐zaar was playing the drum magnificently, but after a while, someone else took her place and she came towards me and started hitting me with a weird long stick. I screamed, but she hit me harder.
My feet were tied so I couldn’t move. They asked my Zaar to come out, but nothing happened. She kept hitting, until my eyes went dark and then, the desert wasn’t the same desert anymore…
I was naked and alone. The sun was shining and the ocean was roaring in the distance. I felt a familiar and pleasant presence. “Why do you want me to leave? I won’t hurt you more than they do.” I felt my Zaar whirling, whipping, caressing and playing around my body. "I searched your soul but I found your body more interesting.” He didn’t need blood to talk, not with me. There was nothing between us. "You can dance before kings and gods, giants and fairies, you can dance to stop or start wars, ageless and inimitable. You can feel the beauty of motions and show it to them”. I was turned on. My arms started to move like waves lying on each other in the ocean, my feet were strong yet elegantly posed like lotus leaves, two twisting snakes started to move up my belly,
"Wake up flower‐girl, it’s over now…”, the deep contralto voice said.
Handshake
by Djatá Bart-Plange ︎︎︎Handshake technical discussion
Bugs in the hands [ ] subscribe
78 views
Lipbalm_enjoyer 27-3-25
ive had handshake v05.2 installed since the beginning of the year - so far so smooth but all shared files missing after phone restart. still have all received files stored elsewhere. can anyone help me?
smellofsasuke 13-4-25
app is sometimes nice, often doesn't see anyone though im connected?? peace
these-giraffes-and-me 20-4-25
I've been a user for many years (almost from the beginning I think).
I love Handshake and the community, i do wish some aspects were more developed like the chat functions. Recently, i've been hearing stories of catfishing pigs. Watch out! we need better tips and moderation to keep the community flourishing!
n1ghtmarebody 31-4-25
the light just turned red and im thinking about that video of that guy doing dancehall dancing in the warehouse with warehouse objects in between his hands in front of his dick. im guessing it was a vine or something. he goes so low and it all so sensual. even when he grabs that wholesale bucket of mayonnaise or paint there is a wetness, a heat. i swipe my bracelet and the projection opens in my hand. i tap the Handshaketm pictogram, the two hands-three arrows, not circulating, triangulating, and on the blurry, transparent background freshly used hashtags roll out, underscored by a search bar. yes, sensual and smooth, like the white letters sliding across my smudged hand. the old person next to me swipes their bracelet but it's screen is bigger cause of the old age im guessing. briefly i peep what's on... fish webshop. The old person sniffs the snot back up in the head and tosses their nose and lips in a circle. i tap my profile picture, top centre: a photo of an eagle catching a drone camera mid-air, and type 'do you know that video (vine?) of that guy with about 15 (?) store objects and grinds on them in the store when the reggaeton drops?? #video #reggaeton #dancehall #wholesale #store #grinding #vine' and throw it in the market sphere. Oh how far we've come... I'm taken back to when i was standing in town centres with a wizard hat, cloak, staff, and mithril shield asking passers-by to trade shields with me - shields that would later be stolen by my first Runescape girlfriend. No responses yet, as expected, though i see some hashtags about nightmarish, 0/10, toilets. very interesting. i too am mesmerised by scary toilets. Excited to share my collection, i head to the spot. OP's name was Tida. we are now engaged and live in a house overlooking the money farm. The app works just fine hehehehehehehe ;)
bigsloppy 05-05-25 https://pussylightlytoasted.tumblr.com/post/160762197811/ohhhhhhhhh-my-favorite-video
A Possible Story
by Erik Visser ︎︎︎Iran’s Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults distributed books through mobile libraries from the country’s capital Tehran to the most remote areas .The institute’s mobile library was an army of baby-blue Paykan pick-ups laden çok full with children’s books, where one day a 10-year old girl from a small village in the mountains picked up, out of the huge pile of books, a copy of Lady Chatterly’s Lover.
The novel was secretly smuggled out of the United Kingdom on one of the Shah’s trips to the west by his third wife. How did it end up in the hands of this well-read Heidi High-brow? It was simply that this agile mountain girl decided that day to choose a book only by its cover (and she read most of the books for her age anyway). Though originally published as a Penguin pocket, the cover artwork neither showed the iconic aquatic bird nor the title of the book, but instead a strange graphic image of a black figure with a giant sharp pointy red hat holding a round musical instrument like a tambourine and from its mouth swirling smoke rings emerged like chinese dragon’s claws. The cover image was loosely wrapped around the original kitap as a dust jacket, the third wife’s only concern at that moment was to keep the title of the novel hidden, and as she confessed to herself, she liked the strange ‘otherness’ of the image of the black figure in the red hat. (She made a mental note to ask Yves to make a replica of the exotic headpiece for her).
Why was there smoke coming out of its mouth? What decadent drug was it inhaling? Quickly she stuffed the book, with its impromptu wrapper, in her handbag. The Empress seemed bored. On the lawn of the hotel, a unicorn was standing beneath a canopy, its gorgeous eyes, painstakingly painted by a nonetheless panic stricken visagist, transfixed on a big muscular soldier. The horseshoe-moustached immortal was kept immobile on the grass by its terrifying gaze. The thick vertical extensions of the black hair growing on the corners of the immortal’s immortal lips began to widen as he gleamed upwards to the Empress’ window. Were his palms perhaps a bit clammy? There are moments - moments only too brief - when everything seems to fall naturally into its place. But for how long? The Shah’s third wife whispered something vaguely resembling a syntax, but no human being or academic to date has been able to explain its meaning.
Erik Visser (NL) is a visual artist and the bookshop assistant of Kunstinstituut Melly, Rotterdam, NL. He also works with the institutional archive. He published FRONTISPIECES, a collection of his drawings, together with Publication Studios Rotterdam in 2017.
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Djatá Bart-Plange aka NDNMK Solutions is a collage artist who uses sound, text, and images. He studied English at the university of Utrecht. A large part of his work is inspired by the frustrations of the academic world, making politics of knowledge, whiteness, and masculinity recurring subjects.
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Arabella Paner is a photographer and a poet based in Laguna, Philippines. She sees photography as a way to make amends with ephemeral objects and situations. As an act of looking. To look, while carrying the possibilities of both error and chance.
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Czar Kristoff is an artist, educator, and publisher, interested in (re)construction of space and memory, through concepts of nesting and temporary architecture, for (pedagogical) occupation, using cottage industry publishing—blueprints, xerox, and other low-fidelity printing methods—as his current media of interest. He is currently based in Laguna, Philippines.
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