eli nova rose
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unambivalence.bsky.social
eli nova rose
@unambivalence.bsky.social
feminist utopian. doing software. writing about life. wistful about reflexivity. ex-academic. she/her/dr 🏳️‍⚧️
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here's a thread about some things i've written.

this year i finished a little book of prose poems about parenting, drifting, having a gender transition, etc:

i-do-remember-the-flowers.decasia.org
i do remember the flowers
writing about femininity, parenting, drifting
i-do-remember-the-flowers.decasia.org
i wrote a little bit about therapy and emotional capitalism for this forum my partner organized:

www.madinamerica.com/2025/10/ther...
There’s No Escape From the World
There’s always an economic transaction underneath. When the business stops working out, the therapy is apt to end.
www.madinamerica.com
November 8, 2025 at 1:11 PM
it’s funny how certain femme bodies are sometimes called “willowy” and now i’m wondering if masc bodies are ever likened to tree forms (oaken? piney? walnut?)
November 6, 2025 at 10:13 PM
does anyone else find that typing on a phone is ok for basic everyday statements like “fml I’m so tired” or simple questions “when will you be home?” but that somehow it’s v. hard to write anything long and thoughtful in this input format?

when i pick up a pen and a paper notebook it’s different.
November 2, 2025 at 8:56 PM
my neighbors put this in their front lawn
October 30, 2025 at 1:49 AM
a thing about caretaking without reciprocity…

“I don’t read them [=stepkids] my own poems or share my own stories. I am realizing that I can go with them into their world without needing them to come into mine.”

(Ariel Leve, An Abbreviated Life)
October 29, 2025 at 12:50 AM
last year i brought my electric organ outside and played spooky music to the passing trick-or-treaters, and this year it occurred to me that i could repeat the experiment with a more specific theme: lullabies for the dead.
October 27, 2025 at 2:45 AM
I’m reading this stretch of bookshelf as meaning that The 7 Principles of Making Marriage Work are Cruel Optimism, Black Trans Feminism, Transgender Marxism, Females, Desire/Love, the Female Complaint and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
October 25, 2025 at 2:20 PM
6yo spent most of the last 12 hours loudly groaning, lamenting, honestly whining, decrying, deploring, and generally being completely against absolutely everything about the world around him. everything bugs him. even things that are arguably going fine.

i am starting to lose my mind.
October 12, 2025 at 11:44 PM
i woke up today feeling certain that it was a weekend and then realized it was friday, but our kids have a random day off school so idk how i'm going to do 3 hours of meetings…
October 10, 2025 at 11:38 AM
alexa: "if you want, you can say: i have feedback."

6yo: "alexa, i have feedback."

alexa: "ok, what is your feedback?"

6yo: "alexa, you're stupid."

alexa: (various words)

6yo: "alexa, what's feedback?"
October 5, 2025 at 12:56 PM
there is a tuba player randomly wandering around the graveyard at sunset playing aimless little tuba riffs.
October 2, 2025 at 10:34 PM
the biggest euphoria lately is going for long bike rides and probably by 30 minutes into it my body is happy and it feels like flying and then afterwards i feel glowing for a little while
September 19, 2025 at 3:56 PM
amazing trans question of the week: do i count as female for life insurance purposes?

context: life insurance is less expensive for women.
September 18, 2025 at 8:32 PM
for some reason i started wondering whether my kids will actually like me by the time they're grown up, or whether they will mostly feel an exasperated ambivalence towards us, one of those deep irritations that sometimes seem to smother everything.
September 15, 2025 at 11:52 PM
I keep thinking of this Depression-era image of a woman stopping work for the last time:

"Worked every day, rain or shine; never a sick day since her last chap was born until one day she kind of looked around her and then"
September 12, 2025 at 11:35 AM
My kid’s soccer practice is next to a cemetery so I’m hanging out in a cemetery.

Next to me is a spider. It waits motionless in the center of its web.

I’m sitting beside it.

Time passes.

Clouds move in the sky. Aircraft noises. Traffic. Screams. Sirens.

I’m watching the spider.

It never moves.
September 11, 2025 at 10:10 PM
my kids are like:

"they say you can't fold a paper more than 7 times, is that even true?? sounds false. let's test this."
September 8, 2025 at 12:01 AM
San Francisco Gay Freedom Day, 1975
September 6, 2025 at 3:07 PM
"nothing that brings you any amount of joy is dumb"

(–my old neighbor)
September 3, 2025 at 12:04 PM
local parent friend was telling me about her colleague who was, she said, impressively blunt and terse in ways not usually characteristic of women in male-dominated workplaces.

this woman was then fired.
September 2, 2025 at 12:05 PM
am reading Sybil Lamb's "I've Got A Time Bomb," it is absolutely wild.

even the copyright page says among other things "for external use only. DO NOT EAT."
August 30, 2025 at 12:37 PM
six months later: unfortunately we were never a very great match and today i plan to explain that it’s our last session…
omg i think i just found a new therapist who is very queer-friendly and takes my insurance, i guess that sounds administrative but finding therapy can be so hard
August 29, 2025 at 4:46 PM
i'm curious if anyone has a theory of how we stop … needing certain things?

like… the general case in which you start out needing x, but after some process of reflection, inquiry, adjustment, adaptation, unburdening, etc, you then discover that you don't need x anymore (or never did)?
August 29, 2025 at 1:40 AM
it's a staggeringly pretty late summer day, why don't we just get to exist for a minute instead of always being supposed to do something?
August 25, 2025 at 9:28 PM