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'Literally what isn't a drag right now? Trump is president of the US; refugees are being held captive in trauma-inducing prisons off-shore; the Great Barrier Reef is dying; and Neo-Nazis are making a comeback nobody wanted. Just to name a few of the issues I feel upset about within the first ten minutes of my morning. Before I've even properly woken up, I open my digital, blue-screen newspaper (Facebook and Twitter) to absorb the horrors of the day. Almost everyone else is doing this too, from the looks of my Feed. I started doing it in hopes that the exposure to blue light would help wake my serotonin-deficient brain up, but I'm pretty sure it's just making me more depressed. I'm not sure if I'd admire or be extremely cautious of anyone who didn't feel as though their soul was being dragged across hot coals in this political climate.' (Introduction)
'For the same reason people go to China, I might go to Los Angeles on February the fifth. Travel to San Francisco after, stay in the cheapest five-storey hotel with vacancy and think about Black Mountain Poets and 'The Subterraneans' which I study in school.' (Publication abstract)
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'The first time I altered my body was in 2006, when my mother smeared hot wax onto my brow ridge. In retrospect, the two of us didn't know enough about the liquid fabric, the way it would fasten itself to skin, clinging desperately to every last strand of hair. I was 12, and - embarrassingly enough - could hardly tell the time, let alone understand the mechanics of hot wax. My mother was born with no eyebrows or eyelashes, which practically rendered her useless when it came to hair removal practices. Naturally, the wax-strip poked fun at our naivety and took my entire eyebrow hostage, damning me to a three-month eyebrow-less sentence. I was an insecure preteen enjoying the tail end of primary school with half of her face stripped bare.' (Publication abstract)