autonomy of learning
all that is to say
Mon, 01 Dec 2025 23:38:15
There is a pause. She ashes her cigarette. It falls on me. It seems like the birds have stopped too.
Thank you for telling me that I'm failing to see how I'm reproducing the dynamics I'm trying to critique by only describing my Korean colleague / fresh meat and the black girl in relation to others and myself.
There is a pretty persistent ambient hate in England, a lot of people say vile shit about Muslims or immigrants or whatever, but in my experience most people aren't actual white supremacists. They have a black friend who they get a beer with. One of the good ones. Etc.
Another Frenchman pushes through the crowd to join him. He's an events organiser who I'd met earlier, and he's holding a large box wrapped in a bin bag. They're the fireworks he'd smuggled in from France the night before. They're Industrial Grade, whatever that means for fireworks.
I wonder if she knew I was down there listening? I wonder if she would've said something more true, more personal, more raw, more heartfelt, more harsh, more seductive, more freeing, more exposing, more risky, more romantic, more rude, more honest, more anything, if there hadn't been an audience.
My inability to confront the old racist failed actor is distracting me. I decide not to tell her about it.
not so on: yvf(wthw)
He went in there with a camera to film it before he moved out of the building. He didn't think anyone would believe the story if he didn't have proof.
We look out over the river to a block of luxury flats built on the site of some old docks. It would be nice to live right there. Yes. The conversation drifts to the pleasantness of warm lighting and whether anyone needs a smart home. I interrupt her to make a joke about the French Raj as he runs up the causeway. We stand there laughing. The fireworks go off behind him.
my watchlater reached its limit years ago and now i have to create a playlist for each new topic im interested in but it is incredibly hard to create the taxonomy of knowledge because everything seems to be everything else because at the end it is what you get from it that matters not what is given
As I'm trying to tell my Korean colleague / fresh meat that this is abnormal, that most people in England aren't like this, the host of the party emerges from the bathroom to a roar of laughter and applause. He's a fat middle aged Frenchman and he's changed into traditional Indian dress and a turban. He looks fucking ridiculous. I try to back away, to avoid the inevitable photo of me in this moment that will one day appear to ruin my life, but everyone is crowding around, trapping me in the middle of it.
Thank you, Jack
It was about a crazy lady who lived above his flat in Pimlico. She would let pigeons into her flat so she could feed them. Apparently she didn't want her presence in the flat to interfere with the natural behaviour of the pigeons, so she would let them nest and shit in there and she wouldn't clean it up, because it wasn't natural to do so. The pigeons would die, but apart from the smell and the sludge and the gas, the corpses weren't really a problem. It was the rats that came to eat them. The rats would eat the rotting pigeon corpses mixed in with the rotting pigeon shit and they would get ill and die too. New rats that came through wouldn't mind though, and they'd start to eat the mass, only to get sick and die in it later on. The population grew steadily as more pigeons and rats came from in the cold, to live naturally. They fed the mass further.
A roll of 50s is one of the items he dumps onto my table during the search. Of course it is. He asks if I'm a delivery boy or a setter or this or that diamond related job. I keep saying no, I'm enjoying hearing all of these new words. Eventually I tell him that I work in film, which is kind of true. He asks where I'm filming. I'm not filming. He tells me that I can't be that good at it then. He then tells me that he made a film once, in the 80s. It was called Pimlico Rats.
The old failed actor genuinely believed this girl was of a lesser race. He believed she shouldn't be talking with me, shouldn't be here at this party, shouldn't be here in this country. He wanted a white England. I didn't really challenge him on it. Sometimes I justify it with thoughts like I was drunk, or baffled, or it isn't an argument I'll win, or he can't hear me anyway, or whatever. I didn't argue with him. I just cut off his rant and left with a pathetic "In a bit."
After I get away from the old racist failed actor, I go to see my Korean colleague. He's just arrived in London and I want to see how he's handling the party. We'd been invited as fresh meat for some of the older, gayer attendees. We aren't aware of that.
but it is in my head and am i compelled to realise it, so it is my silmarillion, my tempelos