#18: Deixis Downlink
A monthly correspondence: October 2023
Deixis Journal Archive
Featured work by Mika Aubin.
In Deep Thought: “Two Lies, One's Truth(s)”
Contemporary truth comes in pairs and bunches. “Truth(s)”, they are called, lived in varying realit(ies), and alternative situation(s), where the experience of one people can simultaneously be true and in contradiction to that of an opposing group.
It is the realit(ies) that someone can wholeheartedly believe and state that a human being, based on who they are and where they come from, deserves not the right to live, and a person from elsewhere believes wholeheartedly otherwise.
But who is correct, just, or humane if they are both living their truth(s)? Is the definition of “Humane” relative in nature?
People with a similar skin tone to mine were at a time considered to be “sub-human," a generous three-fifths of a man (women non-included). Certain constitutions stated it so, and particular scriptures deemed it safe for me to be maimed without consequence, so long as I lived after two days or one. So it must be that the calculation of “a lack of humanity” varies based on certain factors. This must be the case — for others. Their truth(s).
A friend passionately decides and states that, “NO. Everyone, no matter their skin color, background, orientation, or religion is equal,” so I must commend him, because his skin is unconsidered in calculations by default. His religion is unconsidered. His land, his family, his ideas, his alignments — untested and unchecked. His truth(s) are a general bunch. They are the top priority on TV. Adopted beliefs from his side(s) of the world(s) are privileged to be common knowledge. He has no reason to alter his truth(s), for they serve him well, yet he does in favor of my well-being. So shouldn’t he be raised in rank in our realit(ies), for he has abandoned his own?
Should we not commend the “humane” — those who count me in, and not exile me to the ground? Shouldn’t I thank those who don’t subtract me or subtract from me? I should be grateful to the people I think, those responsible for accepting little discomfort so as to decrease my own. What nobility.
Flowers and thanks should be delivered at once. Isn’t it true?
Notes for the ‘Truther’
The news is breaking. Truth is at a hands grasp and widespread. Falsity has lost the foundation it built, for it was established on a fault line that the Earth has now shaken…
Jo Kami, a favorite filmmaker, and Deixis collaborator made this film that speaks volumes. Simply watch, for there is not much else to be said. Thank you Jo for allowing us to share this.
Deixis Book Club
Not a real book club (yet), just a bit about what we’re currently reading.
Halima recently read the book, Sula by Toni Morrison
Sula describes the binding friendship of two girls, Sula and Nel. They are each other’s hips, and witness a single death. Sula left home and Nel didn’t. Sula is fiercely independent, and unaccountable, and Nel is responsible. But Toni inspects this idea of opposites, of black and white, and of course, good and bad to an exponential level, and she does it through the scenes and dialogue that occurs in the novel, with their history, their friendship, their attachments, and the town that they inhabit.
I love Toni Morrison because everything she says is truthful. This book captures the depth my friendships with women have granted me. Powerful, fulfilling, challenging, painful. Read this book, and all of Toni Morrison’s other ones too.
An Excerpt from Sula by Toni Morrison
“They relaxed slowly until during the walk back home their fingers were laced in as gentle a clasp as that of any two young girlfriends trotting up the road on a summer day wondering what happened to butterflies in the winter.”
Open Invite - Author The Deixis Newsletter
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