Tag Archives: Caregiving

MONSTERS SUMMER SCHOOL II (Pt)

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17 a 21 de maio de 2020, Centre for Social Studies | University of Coimbra (Portugal) >> Deadline for applications: 20 january 2020 – Extended Deadline

“The Monsters Summer School II embraces monstrosity in what it offers regarding the undoing of binaries and the celebration of embodied differences in times when the advancement of extreme-right and populism threatens our existence. We aim to explore who are the contemporary monsters, what are the dichotomies they challenge and how narratives on monsters contribute to definitions of human. We want to explore monsters as a possible theoretical figuration to escape mainstream celebrations of humanity and to embrace the vivid possibilities offered by interdisciplinary, boundary-crossing contributions from different fields of knowledge. We aim at creating spaces to discuss contributions and experiences that often fall out of the map even within critical studies. Also, we interrogate the possibilities of creating knowledge from places of estrangement regarding mainstream sources of knowledge production in the academic fields of LGBTQI+ and critical studies.

Drawing on timely, interdisciplinary theoretical contributions and intersectional empirical work on queers, crips and other misfits, the Monsters’ Summer School will consolidate academic knowledge in the fields of sexual and gender dissidence, disability and other forms of embodied misfit.

La Poignée de main : Manuel de massage !

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D’abord rédigé en anglais en 2015 (THE HANDSHAKE), puis traduit en portugais (MAÕZADA) et en espagnol (EL APRÉTON DE MANOS), notre manuel de massage des mains pour toutes et tous est aujourd’hui disponible en français :

LA POIGNÉE DE MAIN – Manuel de massage des mains pour tout le monde

Vous le trouverez sur le wiki au format fanzine en pdf prêt à télécharger, imprimer, plier et partager !

Pensez à consulter er respecter les précautions et contre-indications d’usage en massage bien-être, ainsi que une conduite éthique (voir dans le manuel)

BONS MASSAGES !

Amitiés à nos ami.e.s et aux inconnu.e.s qui ne le sont pas encore mais le deviendront peut-être après une belle poignée de main !

Nos mains

Nos mains sont des outils ; elles transforment nos pensées en actions, elles modèlent notre réalité, et nous connectent au monde et aux êtres qui le compose.

Extension de nos cœurs, elles nous rapprochent des personnes que nous aimons, et gardent à distance celles dont nous nous méfions.

Leur anatomie sophistiquée permet à la fois la force brute et les gestes les plus délicats.

Elles nous nourrissent, nous défendent, mais elles se chargent aussi de stress.

Comme l’écorce de l’arbre, la peau de nos mains garde les traces des histoires nombreuses qui font nos vies.

Toutes les parties de notre corps sont le reflet d’un ensemble plus grand : un massage de la main pourra avoir un effet positif sur l’état général de la personne.

Vous trouverez ici des suggestions et des conseils pour faire de bons massages des mains… Le massage le plus facile à faire « sur le pouce » !

 

Gendersec Curricula public release

The Gendersec Curricula is a resource that introduces a holistic, feminist perspective to privacy and digital security trainings. Informed by years of working with women and trans activists around the world, this free resource covers over 20 topics such as Hacking Hate Speech, Strategies of Resistance, Creative Uses of Social Media,Technological Sovereignty, Handling Anxiety, Releasing Physical Stress, Information Mapping and Identifying Risks. Trainers can access the workshops and adapt them to their communities to help Women, activists and Human Rights Defenders to protect themselves from online and offline threats.

Handholding analgesia

“Our findings indicate that hand-holding during pain administration increases brain-to-brain coupling in a network that mainly involves the central regions of the pain target and the right hemisphere of the pain observer. Moreover, brain-to-brain coupling in this network was found to correlate with analgesia magnitude and observer’s empathic accuracy. These findings indicate that brain-to-brain coupling may be involved in touch-related analgesia.”

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” Nos résultats indiquent que tenir la main pendant la douleur augmente le couplage cerveau-cerveau qui est lui-même corrélé à l’amplitude de l’analgésie et à l’empathie du partenaire, assurent les auteurs. Ces résultats apportent une contribution unique à notre compréhension des mécanismes physiologiques de l’analgésie liée au toucher.”

> Main dans la main, nos cerveaux se synchronisent, Elena Sender, Sciences et Avenir, 12/03/2018

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Picture from Hacking with Care hands massage manual , The HANDSHAKE

Think twice : UN’s biometric identity management system

Biometric identity management systems raise many very important questions and some very scary ones as well.

Even more so when they are big multinational programs, like the UN Refugee Agency biometric identity management system, and collect and store biometric data of millions of the most vulnerable people on the Planet…  The sick, injured, persecuted people, refugees, asylum seekers, ethnic, religious or other minorities who ended up in a humanitarian camp because another group with more power somewhere simply wants them wiped out…  Question: Should the biometric data of individuals who are the target of a genocide even be collected in the first place ?? How is this data protected, how are these people protected, short and long term ? Not to mention the great asymmetry of power between the “helper” and the “helped”, and the questionable validity of informed consent (if it is brought up at all) in situations where it’s primarily about survival.

The following article gives an overview of these questions through the example of the Rohingya.

Tagged, tracked and in danger : How the Rohingya got caught in the UN’s risky biometric database. / Elise Thomas, Wired

Gimme skin

SKIN is our greatest superficial organ and it needs consensual touch and comfort a little bit like the leaves on the tree need SUNSHINE.  A heartfelt hug, a massage, a good back rub, a dance or a long embrace, some tickles, strokes on the forehead, to hold hands, to sit back to back, a “skin bath” in bed with a loved one… An intimacy, which doesn’t have to be sexual – in fact the “hunger for skin”, is not primarily sexual, although sex is a frequently chosen way to satiate a need for contact.

And so SKIN is a place where we meet, it holds the sense of TOGETHERNESS, it is solid ground for relationships. It is an interface between the inner and outer worlds, SKIN contains us, mediates us, supports our PSYCHE. So we don’t crumble !

It is not just about healing this or that condition through touch (although touch does help heal, notably depression): To touch and be touched is to be HUMAN.  No-touch is torture (and solitary confinement is to be abolished, do read Chelsea’s statement).

The article shared below proposes to reflect about the vital sense of touch and the detrimental effects of a lack of thereof on our bodies and minds,  a “condition” psychologists call “skin hunger”.

>> > The life of the skin-hungry : Can you go crazy from lack of touch ?

GLU Handshake workshop

Earlier in September, Emily joined the Girls Like Us team in Brussels for the launch of issue #10 of their magazine, FUTURE, which features a photographic version of Hacking with Care’s hands massage manual, the Handshake. Emily facilitated a workshop for the occasion, where she shared tips, talked about ethical conduct in care, and showed a selection of simple and effective hands massage moves.  A formidable ice-breaker, a powerful portable massage, a connection you can’t really cheat, the Handshake proved again a great tool for making friends, fortifying ourselves, and building solidarities.

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Below, Emily is showing the move  counting money on the phalanges , in which you want to contact the bone structure of the hand. There is something odd in the phalanges count… If you apply yourself patiently to it, you will find out what 🙂

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A warm thank you to all the participants, and to Girls Like Us for the beautiful photographic version of the handshake and for creating good conditions for sharing and caring in a workshop. Wishing you all nice massages !

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The issue #10 of Girls Like Us magazine is available online or in some stores . The T-shirt is for sale also on the online shop of GLU

THE HANDSHAKE

Photos Katja Mater cc-by-nc-sa

The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture

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Following up on so many discussions about justice and healing is this painful and violent world, in relation with two workshops on consent in hacker culture (THF 2016, Montreal), this article is a deep proposition to care for emotions , nurture ourself and each other and develop emotional  intelligence in order to heal from rape culture. Lacking skills about consent is something that touch all of us, but even more those who were educated in a culture where emotions are not welcome, not valued or not understood. Emotional intelligence can be developed, along with communication skills and we all need it, so much. Nora Samaran wrote this text about a year ago, and I keep looking at it, as a way forward, as a healing path.

The Opposite of Rape Culture is Nurturance Culture

 

Hacking with Care @THF!2016, Montréal 18-22/08

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Don’t forget this week in Montreal is the TransHackFeminist meet-up !

Decolonizing Technologies, Autonomous Infrastructures, Queer and Feminist Pedagogies and Hacking with Care !

Check out the program !

Among the other empowering careful activities organically proposed at THF!2016, it will be the occasion to take part to one of the cherished Hacking with Care body-mind-machine awareness workshop with Goldjian Attent!ion Som(t)a(c)tic, and for the first time to the get into the excitement and ex-plo-rations of the Cryptodance !!!!

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SENG: Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted

“SENG’s mission is to empower families and communities to guide gifted and talented individuals to reach their goals: intellectually, physically, emotionally, socially, and spiritually.

SENG envisions a world where gifted, talented and creative individuals are supported to build gratifying, meaningful lives and contribute to the well-being of others. To this end, SENG reaches out to diverse communities that share our mission across the nation and the globe. ”

Check the Resource Library !!

 

On Compassion fatigue

Here is a nice (and somewhat soothing) article on a subject that is maybe not discussed enough among caregivers, or not discussed with the right approach ? The author calls it “Compassion fatigue”. Exhaustion from caring. It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional or not. Caring. Sometimes a very special kind of fatigue sets in, hard to describe. Sleep doesn’t even seem to heal it sometimes. The author notes that, contrary to what most people think and ask all the time, “protecting” oneself from the emotions of the person we’re helping, or setting boundaries between them and you not only doesn’t make sense, it is impossible, and absurd to even want to try, like a dead end. So how then, to recuperate ? What self-care for caregivers ?

>> Compassion and Compassion fatigue: balancing your emotions in the treatment room, Tracy Walton, Massage today

Towards Holistic Security – Tactical Tech

Find out about great Tactical Tech project for Holistic Security

>> Towards holistic security for rights advocates

“Human rights defenders, journalists, and activists continue to operate in a terrain fraught by ever-evolving risks to their physical and psychological integrity, along with those of their family, friends and associates.

The great proliferation of digital devices and information and communication technologies such as the internet, email, social networking tools, mobile and smartphone devices, has had a profound impact on the dimensions of these threats, both in broadening the kinds of surveillance and harassment to which HRDs can be subjected, and providing new and innovative ways for them to communicate, organise, take action and stay safe, both psychologically and physically.”

On touch isolation in homophobic culture

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“Homophobic social stigmas, the long-standing challenges of rampant sexual abuse, and a society steeped in a generations old puritanical mistrust of physical pleasure have created an isolating trap in which American men can go for days or weeks at a time without touching another human being. The implications of touch isolation for men’s health and happiness are huge.”

>> Touch isolation: How homophobia has robbed all men of touch (Mark Greene)

 

Live and help live

Thoughts on suicide and the importance of taking care of each other, here in REMEMBERING AARON BY TAKING CARE OF EACH OTHER, by Clay Shirky –

Extract:

“The warning signs are well known. Persistent withdrawal. Mood swings. Previous attempts or family history. Talking about it. Self-erasure. The American Association of Suicidology has a good overview. There’s no perfect checklist, but we are better at knowing the signs in general than we are at acting on them in specific cases. Ask yourself “Whose suicide would sadden but not surprise me?”

The useful responses are well-known too. Reach out. Ask. Listen. Take casual mentions of suicide seriously. Be persistent about checking on someone. Don’t try to cure or fix anyone; that’s out of your league. Just tell them you care, and point them to professional resources. Wikipedia has a list of English-language suicide prevention hotlines. Help Guide has a good overview of what we know about prevention generally, and how to help the potentially suicidal.

We need to remember Aaron by supporting free culture, and by limiting prosecutorial abuse. But we also need to remember Aaron by taking care of each other. Our community is unusually welcoming of people disproportionately at risk, but we are also unusually capable of working together without always building close social ties. Github is great for distributing participation, but it is lousy for seeing how everyone is doing.

We need to remember Aaron by thinking of those among us at risk of dying as he did. Most of them won’t be martyrs — most of them will be people like Ilya and Will — but their deaths will be just as awful. And, as with every cause Aaron stood for, we know how to take on this problem. What we need is the will to act.”

TransHackFeminist convergence report

With next edition soon in Puebla, Mexico, find out what went on last summer at THF! in the convergence report HERE, and from there access many resources. Feminist Servers, Gynecology Punk Bio-labs, Corporal Decolonization, Public Key Signing Ceremonies, Hacking the Baby / Family, (Let’s talk about) Death cafés, Crips Sexuality, Liberating technologies…

Manual of Psychedelic Support

“The time has come to stop blaming bad acid. Now the focus is on spreading knowledge (…)”

The Manual of Psychedelic Support

is “a comprehensive guide to setting up and running compassionate care services for people having difficult drug experiences at music festivals and similar events. The Manual grew out of the work of its original creators at KosmiCare, the psychedelic care service at the iconic Boom Festival in Portugal. Whilst psychedelic care services have been in operation for decades, and have grown in number and in scope in the past few years, a general guide on how to establish and run them did not exist in the public domain, nor indeed—beyond training manuals for specific organisations—at all. We envisaged a work that would address all aspects of such a project, containing material to guide the care service leader, team leads and carer givers, and those fulfilling vital supporting roles (such as psychiatrists and nurses) through the entire gamut of preparation, training, logistics, operations, and the wrap-up of a care service.”

DOWNLOAD the Manual

Screenshot from 2015-02-11 17:36:06

 

Keeping in Touch

Touch is a bonding agent, a means of pain relief and perhaps most importantly, a way to say, “I care.” The inherent human need for touch has always been a part of our story, and it continues to this day. “

“Touch takes place on the canvas of human experience. Healthy, positive touch is intended to help and to heal, and the application of healthy touch takes many forms. Massage, for example, is the structured form of applied touch, administered with purpose and by way of thoughtful techniques based on knowledge.”

In  “The power of Touch: A basic human need”, by Judi Calvert on Massage today

Hacking (with) Care @ 31C3

 

Soon is the 31st Chaos Communication Congress “annual four-day conference on technology, society and utopia.” Some might remember Hacking (with) Care was present last December at 30C3, cocooning, massaging, sharing and caring with La Quadrature du Net at their tea house.

This year, we invite you to drop by La Quadra’TeaHouse again, where you can learn and practice together a self-care body routine from our video tutorial, observe-hack-massage each other, enjoy heart-warming, mind-sharpening cups of tea, and share thoughts on what could “hacking with care” mean and be for you, me, us …

The four days promise to be intense, here is the program of talks. There are, indeed, many subjects of interests, and more than one can chew in four days. Below is a selection of suggested lectures, assemblies, projects… somewhat related to HWC topics and interests.

Lectures:

(27) Personal tracking device and online identity 

(27) Mobile self-defense 

(27) Crypto tales from the trenches 

(27) Citizenfour (film)

(28) The Invisible Committee Returns with “Fuck Off Google”

(28) Hacking ethics in education 

(28) Internet of Toilets: Trend in the sanitarian territory

(28) From Computation to Consciousness: How computation helps to explain mind, universe, and everything

(28) Reconstructing Narratives – Transparency in the service of Justice 

(28) Doing right by the sources, done right (whistleblowers and sources protection)

(29) Freedom in your computer and in the net

(29) Security Analysis of a full-body X ray Scanner

(29) The Machine To Be Another : Exploring identity and empathy through neuroscience, embodiment, VR and storytelling

(30) The Taste of Surveillance: Artistic responses to invasive observation

Assemblies, projects, self-organized sessions..

Kidspace

Food Hacking Base

Move that body martial arts  

QueerFeministGeeks 

Crying on the bathroom floor for no apparent reason

Dev-Human 

Practical Whistleblowing  

Tails 

SEX Seed EXchange

Hillhacks – Hackers without borders 

Found Hugs  

DONDE NO HAY DOCTOR and other health books free

Easy indispensable basic health guides for people and communities worldwide, accessible for free in many languages HERE on Hesperian Health website – including David Werner classic Donde No Hay Doctor. Covering many topics, for when there is no doctor, no dentist, for people with special needs, women and children, disabled, and because health is a right.

 

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Saúde, da dependencia à autonomia

O caderno central do ultimo Jornal Mapa foca-se na area da saúde, com titulo Saúde, da dependencia à autonomia.

“Qualquer pessoa que tenha acesso a informação correcta, partilhada de forma clara, pode providenciar cuidados de saúde básicos na sua comunidade”

“A ideia de partilhar conhecimento ajuda a dispersar o poder e pô-lo onde deve estar, na nossas mãos !”

Maria Freixo, no artigo Haja Saúde !

 

The handshake

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The following article beautifully describes a simple protocol for a hand massage for people with Alzheimer or other dementia, the elderly, or anyone really. It includes a nice description of that important preliminary moment in massage, for establishing connection before you actually do anything and that I like to call “The handshake”…

“Center yourself and take a cleansing breath to focus your attention and intention. Take a moment to establish trust with the elder and gain permission to provide the massage. Sit facing the person, to the side. Be sure that you can reach the shoulder area without strain. (…) Begin with focused touch; simply hold the person’s hand. Place your attention on their hand and think about all the ways their hands have served their life. Notice the lines, the elegance, the strength or the fragility, whatever is there. Linger here a moment, simply enjoying the connection.”

Connecting and expressing the language of the human heart, Ann Catlin, in massagetoday.com

See also by same author

Gentle and effective touch for frail elders 

Whistleblowing in healthcare @ Logan Symposium, 5-7 Dec

December 5-7 in London will be the Logan Symposium organized by the Center For Investigative Journalism, for journalists, hacktivists, and all who care about the defence of freedom and democracy. Among the speakers will be Eileen Chubb, a former care worker who blew the whistle on the bad treatment of the elderly in their care homes. She has since been active in the protection of whistleblowers and of the vulnerable elders, working closely with the media. She is the founder of the charity Compassion In Care and co-founder of The Whistler.

Check out the program up HERE.

 

Ateliers découverte des massages, Sept-Dec 2014 @Biopulse, Paris

>>> Programme des ateliers découvertes des massages proposés par l’école Biopulse à Paris pour les semaines à venir. Une variété de thèmes et de formateurs, pour apprendre ou revisiter des bases et se faire du bien dans un moment de partage. Tous niveaux et horizons bienvenus. Les jeudis soirs de 19h30 à 21h30. 15 euros. Inscription nécessaire au 01 44 82 51 29.

E agora ? What now ?

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Portuguese film sound engineer, producer and director Joaquim Pinto has been living with HIV and Hepatitis C for years and lost quite a few of his friends and collaborators to the virus along the way.

Beaten but not down, blurred yet bright and sharp, he offers a rare testimony with E agora ? Lembra-me a personal diary he filmed over a year as he was undergoing experimental drug testing in Madrid. His collections and recollections though, are mostly set in and outside the home he shares with his long love and husband Nuno (also infected) in a dry luminous countryside of Portugal.

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As the four seasons go round we are invited to feel along the repercussions of the clinical trials, but mostly the passing of time, with its very own pace, its redundancies big and small, challenging will, challenging life, the questions and, eventually, the answers only time can bring… The movie opens with a shot of a slug crossing the screen on a dead leaf: You could not accelerate certain processes even if you would, so bear with them. The trips to Madrid, transiting through frantic airports, seem all the more brutal in that perspective (Why do we do that to ourselves ? is among the questions that are raised).

While the announced intention of the film is to record and evaluate the effects of the drugs tested in Madrid (noting side effects you’ll never read about in a drug leaflet) it soon appears that the subject is not so much that but rather other forms and ingredients of care, which although not mentioned as such (and maybe they shouldn’t!) become evaluated in parallel, much more positively. Pretty honestly or “sem merda” as some friends around me have put it.

So yes, honestly : At the end of the day what is really keeping Joaquim, Nuno, us, alive through hardships ?

Here are some suggestions from the film:

Love, definitely. Partnerships, setting the preservation of (a good) life and care of one another as priorities… Abundance of fresh air and sunlight, a connection with nature, mediated by animals, through farming, all of which help keep regular (and circadian) cycles of work, play, rest… Being responsible for someone else, caring for them, a lover, an old dog, a young tree threatened by drought and wildfires… A connection with past generations, some sort of historical inscription in the community of mankind and on the tree of life on earth (“we are not special, just recent”)… Peaceful renunciations to what is no longer suited, all the while reaffirming commitments to what matters most… Solidarity, sharing information, experiences, expression of the voices of the weak… A relative autonomy and self-sufficiency, carefully balancing the dependencies to absurd and adverse economical and healthcare systems… Critical thinking, intellectual curiosity… Creativity, art… Cinema..? As a critic notes “this hypnotic video essay eases the discomforts of the flesh with the comforts of moviemaking” and “the film repeatedly erases the neutral hues of sickness with the lush vibrancy of nature.” So it does.

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Black Cross Collective First Aid for Radicals and Activists

http://www.blackcrosscollective.org

>>>> Basic first aid and safety for protesters, advice about medication in jail, protection against pepper spray and tear gas, tips for emotional / injury/ chemical weapons aftercare… A zine, the Activist’s Guide to Basic First Aid, to read / print /share…

“Black Cross Health Collective is an affinity group of health care workers who live in Portland, Oregon. We formed after the WTO protests because we saw a need for medical care that is specific to the radical community. We think our needs as radicals are different, and that groups like the Red Cross don’t give us the skills we need to keep ourselves and each other safe in the streets. So we called upon our own medical experience (as nurse practioners, nurses, EMT’s, clinical herbalists, and more), as well as our experience in demos
and direct actions, and formed Black Cross. Since then, we’ve done first aid trainings in Portland and around the country, provided medical support at local and national demos, and are conducting trials looking for a way to neutralize pepper spray.

We believe that health care is political. The kind of care we do or don’t receive, where and how we receive that care, who provides that care, who has access to training to provide care, and what kinds of trainings are smiled or frowned upon, all involve inherently political issues. We believe the system needs to be changed… the health care system right along with all the others.

We’ve put this zine together mostly to go along with a first aid training. While doing the trainings we realized there was way more to say about first aid than we would have time to say it in. So we thought a little reading would maybe be helpful to y’all.

Remember the most important words you can ever learn to say are “I don’t know.”

Fight the power, do no harm.”

Black Cross Collective 

Music For Heart And Breath, Richard Reed Parry

In love with Music For Heart And Breath, Richard Reed Parry‘s first classical composition album that came out a couple of weeks ago.

What it is, in his words :

“Very soft, very quiet music, played utterly in synch with the heart rates and breathing rates of the musicians performing it. Every note you hear is either in synch with the heartbeat of the person playing it, the breathing of the person (or one of the surrounding persons) playing it. So what you hear when this music plays is played precisely in time with someone’s quiet, internal rhythms. Brought to musical life by a handful of different ensembles.”

I feel this album is a gift for bodyworkers and caregivers. I also work with a stethoscope in massage sometimes -to amplify and interact with body sounds in real time- and I have been working with a musician in massage-music composition. To me, Music for Heart and Breath is both a soulmate, an inspiration, and a great auxiliary for working and teaching. I play it in individual massage sessions and I sometimes play it in my workshops, where it works as a great (sensational) auxiliary for learning (feeling) how to carefully approach and massage a person, body and mind.

Like it is said in this Pitchfork review of the album:

“There is a palpable aliveness to the performance that makes the six pieces, written for different configurations, feel like a guided meditation. This is body music, unquestionably, and by the end of the album the music’s subtle internal rhythms have reconfigured your own.” 

and

There are no fixed points, just motion along a spectrum, and we never know exactly where we are. But the uncertainty, familiar as it is, is oddly soothing. “