Everybody Loves the Sunshine
with words from a lecture by Timothy Morton and Roy Ayers’ song “Everybody Loves the Sunshine”
I am never not thinking about ecology
and also I am never not experiencing ecology
to put it very abstractly
ambiguity is a major chemical component
of antifascism—art being a dirty word
for propaganda, propaganda a dirty word
for art—most things in America are from hell
but heaven is really just hell for nice people
(consider claustrophobia, uninspired music,
intervals easily resolved, no ambiguity whatsoever)
and philosophy is not some wire armature for ideas
but a contact sport where mindbrains
bump up against each other, electrified
with a particular quality of not-yet-ness
Darwin said the mere sight of a peacock’s tail made him want to vomit
(ostensibly because its opulence undermined natural selection)
because he liked it (in a gay way)
And nature is (GOD) so beautiful (in a gay way)
and I am a pack of cards
dropped on the floor (pick me up, pick me
up) and I’ve been playing fifty-two-card pickup
with my gender since I realized I live
in America where everything is available
which logically means I am in hell
but logic is how you fold your laundry
or how clothes hang in your closet
and eco(logy) is how organisms hang together
and phenomeno(logy) is how phenomena
hang together and no one can stop you
(ever) from inventing new logics
by which to fold your laundry
even if the colors make Darwin sick
I’m not explaining this very well
which is fine because lack of diction
induces hallucination which is fun!! until
the fascists figure it out—a violation
of the ecology of the mind where I struggle
to remember natural beauty as queer always
queerness being a major antifascist chemical
sometimes I forget to go outside
and then the sunshine hits my bloodstream
like the inverse of hallucinogen
and it’s a lie—how could everyone love the sunshine
when global capitalism has weaponized the sun?–
(it’s called gaslighting, it’s how ideology works)
it’s called atavism, this opposite of evolving,
this want to unlearn humanness,
to predate logic, to lie in a field under the sun
with no invisible rules laid across your body (impossible,
I know, I know)
so I am walking to the corner store
where they sell cereal and cigarettes
and sex and race and class at bargain prices
(we WANT you to have this!!)
and I’m pacing the aisles under sun-
adjacent fluorescence looking for not-yet-ness
and everything here is from the past, past
expiration date, on sale, everything must go—
and I’m thinking-feeling ecology
(always, always)
thinking of sunshine, peacocks,
the store’s popcorn ceiling interspersed
with rectangles of fake white light, as if
there’s something brighter up there—
I’m thinking who runs this place, anyway?
Esmé Kaplan-Kinsey is a California transplant living in Portland, Oregon. In their writing, they hope to explore human-nature relation and deconstruct binaries that cast humankind in opposition to the natural world. Their work appears in publications such as Adroit Journal, SmokeLong Quarterly, and the Cincinnati Review. They can be found on X/Bluesky/Instagram @esmepromise.
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