the collective history of humans is a difficult thing to put your finger on and say there, which is a way of gathering things together, bunching them to form a point at which something occurred.  this is partly because every thing stands in for some thing other, saying i am this thing when it is clear to every one that it is not that thing, but despite these problems it would appear that at some point, due to some forces (which are never measurable, less measurable than penises [who can say whose is bigger?], though forces are able to be felt, but the feeling will depend on the fullness of the bladder, what one has eaten in the morning, etc) families stopped including people, and people stopped becoming families. many people do still ‘have families’, but these are throwbacks to another era, and eventually they will fall into the slowness of past things, and they will be funny to us, like foreskins, or the absence thereof, they will sound immediately familiar and strange, as does the term water closet. the complete alienation of people and families can be seen in the way that a suburb that is a-good-place-to-raise-children, now never coincides with a-good-place-in-which-to-be-a-human-being. well may we look back on these days and say ah, back then we were workers. we may even form images of picking dried paint from our fingers with our dried-out nails. and it is good that we will say and do this. for a line is a completely slick thing. or a completely barbed thing. it can be slid in anywhere. it will take hold anyway. there is nothing unique about them. people say them all over the world, all the time. mothers say fucking hell, get off the bike. but equally, we might say fuck you you stupid yuppie bitch. and each line meets the other on its own terms. each one is a form. form being a deformation of from. so each is from something other. things begin to take on their own force. is this a logical progression? it is definitely a progression of words. maybe things have come too far now for us o follow the lines back, maybe we can never become families. it is us and them now. the continual question that never turns from me is: do you actually mean any of this? but all i can say is that i want to say it. which in some languages would be enough. the mothers don’t know that i would have said sorry.