#corina dross

[antiquatedfuture]

Back in stock: the patches of Corina Dross.

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

Some things we learn quite suddenly, like the need for better-behaved dogs or at what temperature a book of Maoist poems will burn. Other understandings dawn on us more gradually, like the falsity of the dichotomy between hippies and punks (though not between hippie music and punk music), and the persistent need to be asking better questions.

Corina Dross

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

The best use of this energy is to pay attention and take notes. Get curious, get thorough, get methodical even, about how you let the fiery energy of passion – rage, lust, vitality, self-defense, and shenanigans move through you. What fires are worth starting? What fires need stamping out? How do you handle the discomfort of feeling restless and ineffective? How do you handle not getting what you want? What can we all discover when we work with this energy instead of against it? Will we react less impulsively and more strategically? Will our stamina increase? Will our blockades last longer? Will we finally build the barricade to end all barricades? Will we slow down and halt deportations? The only way to know is to experiment.

Corina Dross

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

The Atlas Mountains in the Maghreb hug the coast of Northwest Africa, shielding the interior like an arm draped around a beloved’s shoulders. But the ancestors of these mountains, their substrata and almost forgotten forebears, were a range of mountains that also gave rise to the Appalachians of North America, when those two continents butted up against each other and raised this wrinkle in the earth, then separated. We must wonder if the Atlas Mountains miss their Appalachian counterparts. Perhaps they feel such a deep subterranean affinity that the ocean between them barely registers as an obstacle. Perhaps it is enough that they share a common history, that they shaped each other... the piece of you that has traveled far away will insist on being acknowledged. Whether you do so with joy or grief, or both, is up to you.

Corina Dross

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

The moth that came to me in the dream I had about you was translucent as the slick membrane that surrounds a newborn creature. Its veins were pale green, and its wings were still wet with memory of another form. It spread them tentatively, as if to remind us both that transformation is painful and uncertain. And yet we spoke as if this didn’t affect us, as if neither of us was aware of what’s changing rapidly in your life right now. You held in your hand several industrious ladybugs, whose shiny opacity you found reassuring. I realized it was fine for you to focus on these strong shells, these compact and efficient forms. The moth that has landed, for now, on the lampshade behind your head is still stretching its wings, still deciding about the risk of flight. You can take a breather, too, before completing your metamorphosis.

Corina Dross

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

The salmon is an oddity among fish for its capacity to live in both saltwater and freshwater. Fish must constantly regulate their internal salt levels according to the salinity of their environments, and few have bothered to adapt to both environments. The mechanism that keeps salt in the fish, when the water might leach it out, is entirely different than the mechanism that pumps salt out of the fish when the environment is too saline. When the salmon migrate between saltwater and freshwater, they take a few days to adjust to the new climate. I imagine they feel in those days much how you do when you realize you’ve been using an outdated coping tool for a new situation – isolating to the point of loneliness, empathizing to the point of overwhelm, or merely imagining what could be when you had the tools to make it real... let your fancy internal mechanisms switch gears as often as they need to for your shifting environments. You are adapted to many worlds, if you give yourself time enough to notice what they offer you.

Corina Dross

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

The marvelous will surround you, true. The miraculous may erupt around you as you walk down the street – toxic municipal water becoming sparkling spring water, empty condos crumbling into earth and then into dark, healthy soil – but you cannot get sidetracked by any one story that purports to explain how and why and how to make this all happen again, infinitely, until all the evil is erased and all the good is instated forever after, amen. Honor how much stranger the universe is than what we can fully describe. Let yourself be moved by an impulse toward the inexplicable, the unintelligible, the paradox.

Corina Dross

[notsoterriblymisanthropic]

What good is science, you may wonder, if it has not yet equipped us with the power to see the full spectrum of light, beyond even infrared and ultraviolet – reaching to the longest and shortest waves imaginable, almost meeting at that point where what we call light begins to shift into sound or something else? Only then will we be able to speak with the whales, or read the sigils they tattoo all over their vast bodies, currently invisible but enticing us with the promise of reading whales like books with no human intermediary to tell us what they ought to mean. Remember, in the midst of your frustration, that intermediaries are everywhere, that mediation itself is inescapable. This is why it’s necessary to imagine what we cannot prove, and to defend the imaginary as its own realm, subject to a different logic. In other words: when you feel trapped..., draw a door on a blank wall.

Corina Dross