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open thread (2025 October)

Posted by Emily Greenquist on October 01, 2025

The many limbs of Robert Wun...

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The Effect of Arsenic on Chlorophyll: or, Thoughts After Purchasing a Second Sage Puffer Coat

Lately, I’m head-to-toe encased in shades of green. A swaying pine wreath. A sifting matcha powder. A sofa. Green is a stand-in for the color I can’t see. I think Pina Bausch saw it. This is a color that would present itself to ballerinas performing with their eyes closed. I don’t have that kind of stamina; imagination; spotlight. In the meantime, I’m green all over. If I stretch my arm sleeves and pant legs to their absolute extremities, I’m chartreuse, teal—yellow-blue just outside of yellow, blue. When I shut my eyes, my heart is cobalt; my soul is orange; the pit of my stomach, an inky black. These colors look terrible on me. All guts about.

forever is finite: brick and mortar nostalgia

Earlier this week I read that Forever 21 is declaring bankruptcy. The death of the mall continues to leave large empty buildings and store fronts that are featured on Instagram reels by urban explorers exposing abandoned spaces. Some of these malls shelves still fully stocked with items waiting to be purchased as if the news came and everyone merely disappeared. A bizarre still life that no one is coming to paint. Part of me doesn't care that Forever 21 is closing. Just another place that sells cheap sweatshop clothing will be gone. I haven't been to Forever 21 in 17 years so I personally am not losing a space that I benefit from as a consumer or on any level spiritually. Another part of me mourns having brick and mortar stores that continue to vanish as an option. Is all shopping going to become an online activity? No trying on clothes in the dressing rooms with your girlfriends. Not that I am trying to glorify the dressing room experience. The dres...

office buddies

I share an office with a boxelder bug, likely one of many. I take pictures of it, but I won’t show them in full here because it keeps landing on spaces that need cleaning—a dusty shelf, a tangle of wires, my lapel. Always around, its antennae seek something—perhaps to point to another mess—but now, they point to the back room, the sloping woods, an approaching deer turning into a cow, turning into a lady in a short skirt, urgently asking me for the way to the bathroom.

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open thread (2025 October)

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