It really hasn’t been hard at all.
It hasn’t been hard. It really hasn’t. It hasn’t been hard at all, really. Really, it
hasn’t been hard. At all. It hasn’t been hard, really, at all. It isn’t hard. It’s not hard.
It’s not hard to flinch.
It’s not hard to think of your flaws as likable.
It’s not hard if you shut your eyes.
It’s not hard to shape up.
It’s not hard to get exhausted by all people.
It’s not hard if you have the right equipment.
It’s not hard if your body fills your skin right up.
It’s not hard if you know how to spend time alone.
It’s not hard if you have good teachers.
It’s not hard to be particular if memory doesn’t fail.
It’s not hard to be an American.
It’s not hard if it’s not too hot.
It’s not hard if someone else does it.
It’s not hard if you take frequent breaks.
It wasn’t hard in the 1970s.
It never used to be hard.
It will never have been harder.
It’s not hard to hate the Olympics and love women’s volleyball.
It’s not hard to just get out there and do something.
It’s not hard to know what to do.
It’s not hard to give up drinking or anyway be more moderate about it.
It’s not hard to imagine alternatives.
It’s not hard to proliferate feminist principles.
It’s not hard to live on adrenaline.
It’s not hard to radically reconfigure how we think about money, work, sex, power bodies, food, physical and emotional violence, state violence, fashion, theory, transportation, literature, art, nationality and ethnicity, gender, orientation, education, leisure, desire, penetration, time, space, biology, evolution, genetics, facts, truth, physics, architecture, experience, language, disability, knowledge, research, behavior, freedom, family, familiarity, hygiene, individuality, subjectivity, the self, the other, fellatio, cunnilingus, entertainment, entitlement, mood, consciousness, presence, nature, history, the future, apocalypse, technology, childhood, failure and success, narrative, performativity, communal living, modernity, comfort, death, religion and spirituality, aesthetics, production, administration, systems, media, electronics, craft, love, ethics, governance rationality, use, laziness, representation, identity, privacy, gossip, power, reality, organization, intelligence, information, code, mechanics, the arbitrary, taxonomy, genre, evaluation, criticism, popular culture, curating, cosmology, universalism, transgression, limits, design, causation, transcendence, immanence, dichotomy, pain, illness, mourning, health, harmony, sensation, nausea, authority, convenience, communication, the sacred, the everyday, the virtual, the Internet, the subconscious, the unconscious, the weather, speed, authenticity, camp, kitsch, commitment, communion, care, nostalgia, theatre, prayer, punishment beauty, dreams, the grotesque, the monstrous, the personal, the petty, fear, patience, action, militance, comedy, lightness, darkness, thought, adaptation, enthusiasm, volunteerism, the public, the archive, the museum, institutions, hierarchy, medicine, psychology, therapy, taste, pathology, tragedy, victory, competence, criticality, imagination, talent, duty, obligation, excrement, wholeness, secrets, comprehension, surface, patronage, sustainability, transparency, environment, colonialism, domesticity, the dialectic, tension, trauma, idealism, the liminal, the carnival, the negative, sleep, advertising, bullying, process, popularity, self-control, grammar, syntax, competition, lineage, reproduction, coincidence, measurement, increments, the multiverse, obscenity, refuse, dirt, cleanliness, the banal, the law, the queer, fun, availability, luxury, pretension, substance, perception, the unknown, progress, age, peace, fairness, agency, intention, translation, brands, the silly, the slight, chaos, composition, wonder, stupidity, effort, depression, withdrawal, refusal, sequence, virtue, goals, the animal, the object, growth, stress, embarrassment, shame, charity, spectacle, the audience, disappointment, privacy, obsession, mistakes, memory, revelation, magic, ideas, concepts, reducibility, meaning, significance, standards, illusion, evil, the swindle, the scam, the trick, home, recovery, agriculture, adventure, novelty, cliché, hegemony, obviousness, destruction, oppression, rescue, redemption, the avant-garde, poetry, war, activism, the proletariat, the bourgeoisie, the ruling class, precarity, affect, urban space, suburbia, the rural, the pastoral, the sublime, geography, qualification, loyalty, betrayal, identity or pornography.
It’s not hard to be angry.
It’s not hard to dream about Angela Davis.
It’s not hard to make a plan.
It’s not hard to tell – at a glance – what people think of you and how you are because of that.
It’s not hard to picture Angela Davis on trial, splendid and clear.
It’s not hard to snub death – just don’t ever talk about it or listen to it or think about it or close your eyes.
Anybody can swim.
Anybody can paint.
Anybody can write a poem.
Anybody could just walk right in here.
Anybody would think.
Anybody would do.
Anybody who blinks gets shot.
Anybody who fucks gets lost.
Anybody met me in the old car park. Anybody noticed my mind was elsewhere. O! Anybody! Observant and subtle! You always know what to say. Anybody’s guess heats up, and anybody’s girl slows down. O! Anybody! Take me to the edge. Take me, firm but ethical. Plagiarize me as a form of flattery. Pop up and pop round. Anybody – awkward autodidact, self-important clown, crazy bastard – I love you, I love anybody.
Everybody is an expert. Everybody is an artist. Everybody wins.
—
“nbd” is from our spring 2014 issue, Women’s Work
