Dec. 4, 2020, 11:21 p.m.

jinba ittai

wonder systems

Just finished God's Bits of Wood, a novel about the '47-48 Senegalese railworker's strike – it's incredible, joyous, teeming, and I heartily recommend it to all of you. But one part in particular of it wove my thoughts together: the analogy between the collective identity of the strikers and the collective identity formed on a running train amongst it and its operators.

Somewhere in that analogy I'm finding a way to explain the throughline of my work – but the piece this started as is still too long and drafty, so: smash cut to a  "meditative streetwear" hoodie I was sent recently proclaiming

THE CYBORG IN ME
         RECOGNIZES
      THE CYBORG IN YOU

This slogan rankled in that way perspectives do when they're oh so close to your own but missing something you consider crucial. What I've come to realize fairly earnestly, both from the hoodie and the novel, is this: that what carried me into engineering and might carry me back out, is only that:

THE CYBORG IN ME
         RECOGNIZES
      THE CYBORG IN US

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