Grace's paradise requiem beast-time love story: Belize 2022

Abstract

This story is part of a special section in honor of Kathleen Stewart, who is ever mindful of how we language what we world. My story is written as an exercise in poetic force, generating the life of beast-signs and backtalk, which were fundamental concepts in Stewart's early writing. In this “hundreds,” Miss Grace tells a disaster story meant to encourage a scanning for signs of “the beast” in the trauma of a deadly Caribbean hurricane that destroyed her beachside village leaving only anguish and hordes of tourist investors in its wake. Miss Grace worlds beast-time encounters with some'ting crazy, as vibratory conjurations and transductions, as in some quality of an accidental discovery of feelings. I turn to the power of crazy, fluid connections through which Grace's sea-stormy encounters became a make-believe space that composed itself as a dense entanglement of sensation, attention, and matter. I re-imagine the evidence of Grace's beast-time affective economy as a dynamized force, co-constituting enactments of trauma and curiosity, attempts to find room to maneuver in a new tourist real, on a beach, in Belize.