Okay, so. This one very specific thing I wrote, that has a background & context in my life & art, has now repeatedly gone viral *for other people* via screencaps & vaguequotes across at least three major social media platforms.

At this point, yes I do feel sorta weird about it. https://twitter.com/JulianKJarboe/status/952536916590776320

I'm deeply, deeply moved and honored that it's resonated the way it has for so many. I genuinely think there's spiritual longing among the vague overlap of the vague categories of "queer" and "left", as evidenced. I did not arrive at theological thinking easily or comfortably.

The people who comment on it somewhat skeptically or incredulously, usually a variation of "kinda sweet but I'm an atheist cause fuck the Church" or "what so God wants us to suffer???" are, actually, going in the right direction and not far from the feelings that produced it!

I was raised Catholic but at some point was mostly known at church for 1. growling at a priest (sorry Father Jim) and 2. arguing with my Sunday School teacher about the nature of infinity and omniscience (hahaha not sorry). I stopped going as a teenager and it was not a big deal.

Then I got engaged to someone from a devoutly observant Jewish family. If you are not from such a family, I simply need you to understand that me being a gay transsexual seducing their oldest son to a life of decadent sodomy *did not matter* nearly as much as me not being Jewish.

Wedding planning itself was not stressful. I'm an event producer, he's a project manager, all our friends are caterers, photographers, DJs, etc. None of that was hard for us.

But it did have to be a Jewish wedding! And suddenly everyone was like " so u converting, or..."

Meanwhile I was working on a bunch of body horror short stories & cyborg poetry that would become EVERYONE ON THE MOON IS ESSENTIAL PERSONNEL, having a grand old furious time "processing" & "inquiring" about disability, gender, race, fatness, colonialism and the whole to-do.

Here's the opening stanza of "The Android That Designed Itself", a horny robot poem that some take for ~merely~ a "trans metaphor." Kinda!

This stanza at least comes from my husband & I discussing rhetorical questions in rabbinical argument + rules & lore about golems.

The terminology of "Good Works" is Catholic, the argument is Jewish, the interfaith adaptability is on purpose, the sentiment is sincere, and *also* the context is me writing sad fucky gay sci fi and trying to use the residual specialness of Sundays to remember to take my T shot.

And now you know! There is a ton of weird God moods in the book as a whole, from "huh, Marian devotion dovetails nicely with mommy issues, maybe I'll launch myself into space?" to "anything that powerful should be destroyed (& eaten as a delicious snack)." https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51813429-everyone-on-the-moon-is-essential-personnel