“It’s in making note of the variety of seemingly timeless strategies used by rising authoritarian regimes to create fissures in the foundations of democratic governments that cause them eventually to crumble.”

The phenomenon that is “Trump” is a manifestation of patriarchal whiteness—the ghost still animating imperial and post-colonial machines—and its present incarnation carries the force of State violence to compel its attendant vision.

If someone as intelligent as Alexander Chee could believe in the occult, why couldn’t I? Perhaps the supernatural was not the opposite of natural, just the part of it that was yet to be explained.

“This is the peace of upper atmospheres. This is the idea of flying. The dream of it, of being that eagle, the sound of wind steadily pushing past our feathers.”

I’ve never had an office, apart from the sad, windowless closet I occupied as a grad student. I don’t own a desk. Some days I work at my kitchen table, but more often I sit on my couch or in bed with my computer on my lap. Music, rather than location, is what grounds me as I write.

There will always be political and social unrest, but a pandemic filters everything—we are all characters in its story.