Formless/full prescribes meaning to nothingness precisely because of its thingness. We fill a void with liquid, of the nondescript variety. An institutional safety concern. A bureaucratic hazard.

Everything can be, should be, and is (un)fixed. To be (un)fixed is a politics of disbelief that anything is “predetermined and not subject to or able to be changed”. This is trans praxis. This is the teachings of our world:

1. Transformation is the singular constant.
2. Desire is the second.
3. Creation is the third.
 

For those who resist reason, and for those who construct their own logic you are formless/full. To be formless/full is to be both and. The human condition is riddled with contradiction, incongruence, opposition, internal dialectics. I’ve lied to you in this manifesto, given you impossible truths. But, they are also a truth. A promise of a truth is a lie. “That’s the basic paradox of aesthetic judgments: they are, simultaneously, subjective and universal.”

Formless/full comprises all of the both and: thinkers, anarchists, readers, freaks, gender abolitionists, trans materialists, note-takers, dancers, erratic and frenetic speakers, the religiously traumatized, givers and takers and lovemakers, so-called “free-thinkers,” anti-mastery apprentices, people who still believe in education, people who know our education system’s deep flaws (often the same people; a venn-diagram becomes a circle), writers that aren’t always journalers but sometimes are, shame-deniers, art apologists, former baristas, (in)voluntary insomniacs, anxious potheads, people afraid to loosen up (but who love to confront their fears), cliff divers standing on the precipice of something larger than their egos.

To be formless/full is to remain flexible, to accept unending evolution as your investigation. To consider reorientation as a given, to use impracticality to disrupt efficiency. To commit to never having learned enough. Never having made enough. Never having had enough. To desire is to lack. To have something you seek.

To be formless/full is to make something from nothing and return it to nothing again. To value the imprecious but to let it all breathe without fear. To give it permission to live a full life.

To be formless/full means knowing that human error is inevitable, mistakes are often the goal. Faults only exist under rigid interpretations of Christian morality and superhero ideology; good vs. evil. Most things are somewhere in between. Correctness was made up by someone who told the lie (read: truth) that singularism makes life easier. What about those of us who don’t want easy. Or aren’t capable of having it. People who have only known hard and are afraid of easy. People who know that if something seems too good to be true, it is.

To be formless/full means to expand. To contract. To writhe. To embody. To grow nearer. To give a shit and to feel apathetic from giving too much of a shit. To make judgements and then rescind them. To give yourself to something other than yourself. To know that it’s egocentric to think that anyone will change the world. To know that it’s worth trying anyways because some people do, for better or worse. To challenge authority (in practice and as a construct). And to forget all of the rules that tell you how to be formed.


Form the formlessness: email kurt-tomerlin@uiowa.edu to learn more about confounding your foundation.