archived publications contain at least one term from this page's conservative lexical set.
literal matches in the 212-work archive.
This intentionally narrow scan searches explicit protection/neglect/caregiving vocabulary. Much actual care is enacted without being named, so the lexical total understates the subject.
Protection appears as an ethical floor
“You were supposed to protect each other,” from The Planning Animal, is among the least ornate moral sentences in the corpus. It does not require a theory of virtue. Protection is treated as a basic expected function whose failure becomes evidence against a person, family, institution or civilization.
Care is practical before it is sentimental
People drive, feed, house, examine, bandage, watch, walk dogs, fix rooms, call doctors, manage substances, make introductions, lend space, or simply remain nearby. The corpus frequently trusts these operations more than declarations of love. Care becomes visible as work performed on another being’s continued viability.
Neglect is often infrastructural
Broken glass left beside a rental-car lot, unattended bodies, bad housing, missing supervision, institutions that process but do not protect: carelessness expands from interpersonal failure into civic condition. This is where care begins to overlap maintenance without becoming identical to it.
Kindness can be severe
“It was the kindest thing she could do” in The Fused Man is useful because kindness does not necessarily look gentle. The work is willing to let care involve endings, refusal, unpleasant action or recognition that continuation may itself be cruel.
Animals make the ethics harder to abstract
Dogs and other animals recur as beings whose dependence is obvious and whose needs cannot be solved through rhetoric. The lost dog in NULL⁰ 1.1, repeated dog-walking, feeding, danger and animal presence create a mundane test of whether the person actually protects what depends on them.
Anchor works
- The Planning Animal — the explicit protection proposition.
- The Fused Man — care, bodily dependency, family decision and the harsh edge of kindness.
- NULL⁰ 1.1: 'Guy Stole My Dog' — care becomes search, pursuit and practical responsibility.
- RETIRE HER — medical, familial, domestic and erotic forms of care under aging and exhaustion.
- I Drank What? — care translated into triage, investigation, medicine and institutional procedure.
- Beauty is a Public Good — care expanded toward civic access and environmental provision.
- PREPARED PIANO: WALK 00001 — community neglect, broken glass, fire and the physical consequences of nobody maintaining common ground.