And yet! Each novel also complicates and challenges these maintenance solutions, in very different ways. Is endless Sisyphean labor of repetitive repairs the only way to survive a climate apocalypse? This article explores that question.
(let me know if you don't have access and would like a PDF!)
![The novel Beings, opened to its first page. It reads:
Queer Writers Archive [QWA]: Box 83, Folder 1, Unpublished Papers
This is how I like to imagine them:
Sitting in the sky-blue Chevy Bel Air, he behind the wheel with both his hands on it, a man who took driving seriously, who understood that the weight and speed and thrust of a car are as full of latent danger as a bullet nestled in the chamber of a gun, and she his trusting passenger, not only willing but also eager to shed responsibility in favor of frivolity, which in this moment meant keeping the little dog, Dee, curled on her lap while her eyes freely roamed the landscapes flying by, endless woven tapestries hanging on either side of the black asphalt corridor. It was a cold autumn night in 1961.
They knew how to be quiet together, these two.
But not always, nor even frequently, for each was brimful with thoughts and opinions, and it was in their particular natures to take pleasure in vocalizing these. Both, moreover, had learned long ago when and where to stay silent in order to preserve their own sense of dignity, not to mention their physical safety, and had spent quite enough time keeping their mouths shut and faces impassive even as they yearned to contradict, correct, or at the very least challenge the record in rooms full of white men. Together, then, there was no need for self-imposed muzzles.
Among their earliest joys, these mutual funnels of sometimes suppressed speech, tornadoes of words twining round one another as they sat up late at night in those early days, when he was still married to his first wife and she was trying very hard not to appear to wish it were otherwise.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:niw3bzgvm4f77e2l5ufakjta/bafkreibufrst2ja7ffl2uv735mdsbvvmvtgllp5guchlruv5gyiiktkxeq)