Kyle Thomas Hemingway: The ephemera edit

“I am a camera, with its shutter open, quite passive. Some day all of this will have to be will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.”

“One always has exaggerated ideas about what one doesn’t know.”

“Our faith might cause our light to shine on some other heart which as yet had no light of its own.”

“You confuse what’s important with what’s impressive.”

“You want to know what my doctor said the first time she saw it? Yes you do. She said everything about it gives evidence of an informed taste. That’s a quote.”

“As the garment industry left the United States, it undid the work of industrial feminists like Clara Lemlich and Rose Schneiderman, who had the audacity to demand that intellectual satisfaction was the birthright of every sewing machine operator. This new brand of feminism didn’t care to protect sewing work as good work; rather it scoured the earth to find the cheapest new sources of exploitable, female labor.”

“But now isn’t simply now. Now is also a cold reminder: one whole day later than yesterday, one year later than last year. Every now is labeled with its date, rendering all past nows obsolete, until—later of sooner—perhaps—no, not perhaps—quite certainly: it will come.”

“There is a kind of energy born out of shame, formed by and in it, that can act as a force for transformation. This energy finds its expression in a theatricalized identity, in performance, in a love of display or extravagance, in parody. Self-display and theatricality are and have been among the most important means of defying heteronormative hegemony—and this is why they have always been the objects of such virulent attacks.”

“Most of life is so dull it is not worth discussing, and it is dull at all ages. When we change our brand of cigarette, move to a new neighborhood, subscribe to a different newspaper, fall in and out of love, we are protesting in ways both frivolous and deep against the not to be diluted dullness of day-to-day living.”

“Most secrets should never be told, but especially those that are more menacing to the listener than to the teller.”