Vanessa Veselka

I tried to map the cultural trends leading up to it but as I did they grew, interconnecting and weaving backwards and sideways out to everything. Next to the megalithic institutionalized shredding of people's humanity, marked by tombstone malls and scabby hills, the Styrofoam gullets and flag-waving god-chatterers casting their votes for eternal paternity on the lap rapists - next to all of that, the intimacy between a terrorist and his target was almost a beautiful thing but I still couldn't solve that moment when they did it anyway so I grabbed more paper and widened my field of vision.

I looked at the woman crying over the doll and felt something else. I was sick of people acting against their own interests. Mooing about how to refinance the slaughterhouse. Putting skylights in the killing pen and pretending the bolt in the brain was a pathway to a better field. I paid my bill. Save your fucking pennies for a gun and a history book, I thought.

...if anybody was going to blow up the Superland_ Wal-Mart, it was going to be me. Not some fucking crusty punk.

Siddhartha wants liberation, Dante wants Beatrice, Frodo wants to get to Mount Doom__e all want something. Quest is elemental to the human experience. All road narratives are to some extent built on quest. If you__e a woman, though, this fundamental possibility of quest is denied. You can__ go anywhere if you can__ step out onto a road_(T)here is no female counterpart in our culture to Ishmael or Huck Finn. There is no Dean Moriarty, Sal, or even a Fuckhead. It sounds like a doctoral crisis, but it__ not. As a fifteen-year-old hitchhiker, my survival depended upon other people__ ability to envision a possible future for me. Without a Melvillean or Kerouacian framework, or at least some kind of narrative to spell out a potential beyond death, none of my resourcefulness or curiosity was recognizable, and therefore I was unrecognizable.

You could always industrialize,_ she refilled Jimmy__ wine glass. __ou know, get a job stunning chickens in a factory to earn the trust of the working class._ Jimmy laughed again and accidentally spat Chablis on my legs. __t__ a pretty silly idea, isn__ it?_ said Grace, getting a rag. __eaping out of the closet in a crisis?_ She lowered her voice, __on__ worry, sir. I__ a revolutionary socialist. Everything__ going to be okay.