journal

LIGHTHOUSE rambles\n\nI think of the places on the internet that I visit, as if walking to a destination: stillblog.net, 3191milesapart.com, orangette.blogpost.com, jenniferscheng.com. For some seasons, a certain diary comic or a certain artist's home served the same purpose. If I'm being honest, I also visit vlogbrothers and sortedfood on youtube regularly as well.\n\nI like manually typing in a url and the vibe of the place once I get there.\n\nBecause I don't subscribe to feeds anymore (RSS, social media, even podcasts I download manually instead of subscribing automatically), I have to handtype in a web address. Which adds a sense of decision-making and agency to my internet-exploration time. (Although Robin Sloan calls his <a href="https://desert.glass/archive/news-from-the-republic/#text">collection of inbox newslettersº</a> a "tiny republic" and likens his list to a map of a small town, I actually feel the opposite -- my inbox is one of the places where things come at me instead of me going to them. The newsletter subscriptions, mailchimp missives, and patreon updates I receive in the promotions tab of my inbox are one of the last few vestiges of something-like-spam in my attention arena.)[1]\n\nThe problem with social media (jenny odell, how to do nothing, flattening of context)\nI don't want to broadcast.\nThe problem with newsletters (this rant above)\nI don't want to come unbidden to you.\n\nI want you to come here, when you need it\n(I can talk myself out of any of this. I don't want to make you do extra work either. is this the point? is this the point? that i am using all of this as an excuse NOT to write, and therefore get into a bad spell of unhealth. because i'm not writing\nbecause i don't know the right way to share it.\njust write. \njust make\njust create\nwho CARES\nyou'll figure it out.)\n(also NOT one way, multiple ways. so many ways. more than one way! you can write and share it via broadcasting\nand then you can also have it temporally shared at mt caz\nand then it can live online as an archive that you can share with people when it comes up in conversation\nand all are okay!\neverything is fine!\nbe okay with the cringe.\nmaybe 2020 will be the year of the cringe, as you become more yourself and actually step into your power.\nand it's going to be uncomfortable as heck.\n\n\n<div class="footnotes">\n[1] There is a high chance that the Robin Sloan link will be broken. He did a year-long newsletter-a-week experiment called "Year of the Meteor" in 2019, and at the end of the year, he is going to take down the site and archive it as a PDF or something similar. \n</div>

Stories & Rhymes\n\nSpotify says my most played song of 2019 was Jasmine Power's "Stories & Rhymes". (<a href="https://vimeo.com/144282103">videoº</a>, <a href="https://jasminepowermusic.bandcamp.com/album/jasmine-power-stories-rhymes-ep" target="_blank">audioº</a>) It's true that this song was on repeat during some dark days. "I'll be sitting beneath the sea, like I used to, writing stories and rhymes inside my head. I'll be sitting beneath the sea, like I used to, writing stories and rhymes inside my head."\n\nThere is something haunting about the song, the melodic rhythm of it begging to be put on repeat. It reminds me of the breakdown of the song "Jolene" in the podcast <a href="https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/dolly-partons-america/episodes/only-one-me-jolene" target="_blank">Dolly Parton's Americaº</a>, and how the "melodic circular path as if she's pacing the floor" is in Dorian mode (instead of minor key), which is more ancient, going back to gregorian chant era.\n\nI hesitate to put Dolly Parton's America on my "[[What shaped me in 2019]]" list because I am cognizant of the bias towards late-of-year discoveries on 'best of' lists. But I have a feeling it will stick with me for a long time.\n\nBut moreso because of the constellation of questions and readings I'm doing right now -- around the reckoning of America with our history, and the complexities of how we navigate the layers and levels of: compassion and collective responsibility, amends and communal stewardship, past present and future, individual societal cultural and interpersonal.\n\nIt's funny...when I try to think of media that affected me in 2019, I find myself still thinking back to Hannah Gadsby's Nanette and Spiderman: Into the Spiderverse and To All the Boys I've Loved Before. \n\n\n[[end]]\n01.02.2020\n\n\n+++\n\nEDIT: I have to add this on here: [[02052020]] in which I talk about this episode of <a href="https://onbeing.org/programs/serene-jones-on-grace/" target="_blank">On Being with Serene Jones "On Grace"º</a>.\n

[[5 why's]]\nAdvice Column

Super Patreon\n\nThis is a mini-rant. Patreon founder Jack Conte created a new endowment for artists: "Get $50,000 and take a year off to focus on art for a year!"\n\n<a href="https://www.superpatron.org">Super Patron Fuck Yeah</a>\n\nHe created this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOET2RXdImw" target="_blank">launch videoº</a>, which is pretty epic.\nIn it he says he was inspired to create this endowment partially based on a story about Harper Lee.\n\nStory goes that during a time period when Harper Lee was waitressing and trying to write on the side, her friends and family saw how hard she was working and pooled their money to give her a Christmas gift: enough money so she wouldn't have to work and could instead focus on her writing, no strings attached.\n\nSo Jack Conte created the "super patron" endowment, to give an artist enough money so they wouldn't have to work and could instead focus on their art, no strings attached.\n\nYou just have to apply and compete against a million other creators based on some subjective criteria, and then a handful of judges selected by patreon were going to pick a 'winner' to get the endowment each year.\n\nYay, right?\n\nNO! JACK CONTE MISSED THE WHOLE POINT OF THE HARPER LEE STORY!! Or at least the most crucial elements in my mind. It actually makes a big deal that that money came from her community and not strangers. 'No strings attached' feels completely different when it's prize money from some outside entity vs. when it comes from circles you are also part of. Harper Lee's friends and families might not have expected to be paid back for their gift, but there IS relationship there, and Harper's presence and contributions to that community are the ways in which that gift can move.\n\nI want to live in a world where we support the artists in our communities and where we BE the artists in our communities. I want to live in a world where we live in interdependence, and where resources flow freely between us based on need and desire and capacity and plenitude.\n\nEven though 'community' has been coopted by hyper-capitalism and is in the mouth of every tech company ever, when i say community, i mean place-based local and small communities.\n\n--\n\n\n"If you'll allow me to stretch this metaphor, we could say that Old Survivor [an old-growth redwood tree in Oakland] was too weird or too difficult to proceed easily toward the sawmill. In that way, the tree provides me with an image of 'resistance-in-place.' To resist in place is to make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily be appropriated by a capitalist value system. To do this means refusing the frame of reference: in this case, a frame of reference in which value is determined by productivity, the strength of one's career, and individual entrepreneurship. It means embracing and trying to inhabit somewhat fuzzier or blobbier ideas: of maintenance as productivity, of the importance of nonverbal communication, and of the mere experience of life as the highest goal. It means recognizing and celebrating a form of the self that changes over time, exceeds algorithmic description, and whose identity doesn't always stop at the boundary of the individuals."\n\n{Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing}\n\n--\n\n[[end]]\n01112020\n

Haha!\n\nI made a Chrome extension of the "Play Attention" game that you get an invitation to every time you reach an [[end]] on this here blog. The Chrome extension makes it so that as you're browsing the internet, each time you scroll to the end of a page, you'll get a little pop-up that invites you to: Look around, take a breath, check in, and decide where to go next.\n\nIt's pretty simple code, so it's not a perfect experience. And I'm not sure whether it'll be more annoying than not -- that might depend on your browsing habits and the sites you frequent. And I'm not sure whether a person would get used to it over time as to start ignoring it in general -- that might depend on personal intentionality -- but it might also depend on how annoying the plugin is!\n\nBut I do know: it was fun to make.\nAnd it's a useful reminder if I'm on one of those sites that is made up of an infinite scroll that reloads once you hit the bottom of the page.\n\nSo if you want it, here's the DIY way to get it onto your browser:\n\nInstructions for installing into chrome:\n<ol>\n<li>download and open the <a href="http://sodelightful.com/lighthouse/playattention.zip">zip file here</a></li>\n<li>in a browser window, go to the <a href="chrome://extensions/">extensions page</a></li>\n<li>toggle developer mode "on" (in the upper righthand corner)</li>\n<li>click "load unpacked" and select the folder you downloaded called "playattention"</li>\n</ol>\n\nGo to any site and it should pop up when you reach the bottom of the page.\n\nDoes it work?!?!\n\nIs it helpful!??!\n\nedit\nIt's buggy on some pages, as in there's no way to pause the extension, so it blocks some page's contents outright.\n\nIs it worth me trying to add code to create a pause function? Maybe, maybe not.\n\nDepends whether this is a 'game poem' or a real thing, I guess...\n\n\n***\nDec 28, 2019\n[[end]]

Welcome to a record of Christina's becoming.\nNew entries grow like mushrooms out of trees. Maybe in walking circuitous routes and exploring less-worn paths, over multiple seasons, you will notice something new, or remember something old.\n\nYou might wander til you come to a natural endpoint. When you get there, you are invited to take it.\n\n\n\n<h2>Where do you wanna be?</h2>\nEngage with the content\n>> Follow along in the journey with [[blogposts]]\n>> Read more considered [[essays]].\n>> Peruse faux [[tweets]].\n>> Loop at a map: [[Wander]] around the place, pick up some artifacts, find surprises tucked away into corners.\n\nZoom out to a meta level\n>> Ask [[questions]].\n>> Join me in [[journaling]].\n>> Read the [[State of the Stina]]: life updates or something like it.\n>> Pity the [[archivist]] who has to make order of it all.\n>> Envy the mythmaker who gets to create sense of it all.\n\nStop\n>> [[end]] here.\n\n\n\n

READING CONSTELLATION: Anxiety\nSubject Tags: mental health, loneliness, human condition\n\nQuestions\n<ul>\n<li>What do I do when this fuzz of mental acrobatics in my brain slows down my ability to function as a productive adult?</li>\n</ul>\n\nA course of action\n<ol>\n<li>Read, in this order\n<ul>\n<li>First We Make the Beast Beautiful by Sarah Wilson, to sneak in some reminders of various ways to cope, but mostly to reach an acceptance of the state of things as they currently are -- in all their mess and beauty and incomprehensibility and 'you are not aloneness' of it all.</li>\n<li>everyone's an aliebn when ur an aliebn too by jomny sun, to have a laugh at the nothing that actually does(n't) matter</li>\n<li>Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, to be reminded to 'sure, take things seriously, but don't take things so seriously', to find permission to find lightness amidst it all.</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n<li>Bring in your practices:\n<ul>\n<li>a practice of 'showing up to the mat' each morning</li>\n<li>a practice of writing to try and make sense of things that don't</li>\n<li>a practice of listening to your deepest impulse -- even if (or maybe especially when) -- it leads you to curling up in bed with your current self-soothing cravings</li>\n<li>gratitude for small graces (like when you go straight from work to bed to curl up, that's the evening when your housemates are out and otherwise occupied, so you don't gotta explain nothin')</li>\n</ul>\n</li>\n\n<li>Bonuses (your mileage may vary)\n<ul>\n<li>Have a place (by which I mean a group of people) where you can show up with your full self, where you can in the course of the regular check-in, honestly say, "I feel off-kilter this week...I dunno. Yeah, I dunno." And that's okay and we can let that be.</li>\n<li>But also a couple of those folks will reach out and say hi</li>\n<li>Throw in a movie night in there with friendly faces and community members. Small, intimate, with popcorn and snacks, laidback enough that it's no big thing to flow into soft conversation about the film and its contents and your lives after the screening. We watched Minding the Gap, which if you are already coming into it willing to sit with the ouch of your own lonelinesses, will lead you to feeling extremely tender for the whole endeavor of the human enterprise.</li>\n<li>Which will lead you to wake up the next morning with this insight: Loneliness cannot be solved. It is the human(est) longing that leads us to connection and love.</li>\n<li>Let yourself exhale with the thought of these feelings never going away, so you can honor them as primal clue and ever-present driver.</li>\n</ul>\n\n</li>\n</ol>\n\nI hope you feel more you again, soon.\n\n\n\n[[end]]\n\n03.06.2020\n

5+ Why's of this twine-blog\n\nWhat is this?\nA <a href="https://twinery.org/" target="_blank">Twineº</a> as a blog! \n\nWhy?\nBecause I've always wanted to write in a way that honors the footnotes in my head, and the synthesis of layered streams of thoughts, and the insights that comes from thinking about the same themes over time, and the delight of following rabbit holes that seem random at the time but which eventually connect to the larger whole.\n\nAnd for awhile now, I have been trying to figure out a <a href="https://tinyletter.com/sodelightful/letters/a-tale-of-hermit-crabs-and-book-clubs" target="_blank">new containerº</a>, a new way of writing, and a new way of sharing my writing online.\n\nWhy?\nBecause I've blogged on and off for many years, with the formats evolving over time -- xanga, livejournal, wordpress, facebook, twitter, tinyletter, patreon...and over time, each platform would start to feel demanding, like an obligation. Which would make writing feel less fun and sharing feel more fraught.\n\nWhy?\nBecause capitalism steers things toward being: \n\n>> efficient, utilitarian, sensible. Sensible as in makes sense to dominant culture, as in not threatening to existing power structures.\n\n>> scaleable, shareable, commoditizable. Commoditizable as in able to be valued and valuated, even if a very warped sense of 'value'.\n\n>> linear, immediate, now-focused, constant. Constant as in always on, always hungry, and always wanting more.\n\nI wanted a way to write and share that was different than that.\n\nWeirder than that.\n\nDumber than that.\n\nMore magical.\n\nAnd more powerful.\n\nWhy?\nBecause my friend paulpew used to say he could tell he liked a board game when he liked the way it made his brain feel.\n\nI like how writing in Twine makes my brain feel.\n\nAnd I hope reading through Twine (making your own choices, choosing your own paths, coming to an [[end]]point each time) gives your brain a different feeling than scrolling through social media or reading through a blog's archives or navigating between your one hundred tabs. I want to give your brain a break from the now-common experiences that are driven by the attention economy or search engine optimization or ads.\n\nWhat if reading something online could feel \n\n>> playful, delightful, mischievous, surprising, weird\n>> simple, restful, spacious\n>> not easily shareable, never commoditizable, confusing to capitalism\n>> complex, nuanced, sourced, thoughtful and thought-provoking\n>> non-linear, connected to lineage, timeless yet for this time\n>> mine, yours, & ours\n\nWhy?\nBecause we deserve to continue trying to connect with the weird squishy curious wandery parts of ourselves \nand with the weird squishy curious wandery parts of each other.\n\nWhy?\nBecause we are human.\n\n\n\n2019.10.19\n\n[[end]]

READING CONSTELLATION\nSubject Tags: amends, reparations, harm, healing, reckoning\n\nQuestions\n<ul>\n<li>How do we take responsibility and make amends for things our ancestors did?</li>\n<li>How do we as individuals heal the harms perpetrated at a cultural level? And that we benefit from systemically?</li>\n<li>How do we acknowledge our responsibility without spiraling into shame?</li>\n<li>How do we imagine systemic, holistic reparations? What does the world look like through and after healing?</li>\n</ul>\n\nFood for thought\n<ul>\n<li>Belonging: A German Reckons with History and Home by Nora Krug</li>\n<li>"The Nuns Who Bought and Sold Humans", by Rachel L. Swarns, New York Times</li>\n<li>"Reparations is Not Only About Money, It's a Healing Process", by Zenobia Jeffries Warfield, Yes! Magazine</li>\n<li>"American Pendulum II", Radiolab More Perfect episode about the Dred Scott Sons and Daughters of Reconciliation conference, October 2, 2017</li>\n<li>John Paul Lederach's prescription for the divisiveness that ails us: "Have coffee with someone different than you once a month...for the rest of your life."</li>\n<li>"Empathy is not endorsement", Dylan Marron's TED talk, April 2018</li>\n<li>Layli Long Soldier interview on On Being</li>\n<li>"Make Amends" episode of On the Media, September 21, 2018. How Jewish concepts of atonement and repentance can help us in the context of the #MeToo movement</li>\n</ul>\n\n\n\n[[end]]\n\n11.16.2019\npost coffeeshop conversation with Aranea Push\n

life updates, or something like it...\nwhat you read here will already be outdated when you read it.\nsnapshots of a person in time.\nher understanding of herself.\nthe raw material of the 'before' necessary for growth.\n\n\n- [[new year's letter 2020]]

THE FRIDGE DOOR\n\nThis experimental audio essay: <a href="https://dispatches.simplecast.com/episodes/get-back-in-the-river" target="_blank">"Get Back in the River"º</a> for artists who feel adrift.\n\nThe feeling when a friend tells me that they've internalized the [[end]]ing of this twineblogjournal thing, and that when she feels the urge to take a look in-between tasks, pauses and checks in with herself and asks 'what do i really want to do right now?' and that she is grateful for it.\n\nEating homemade yogurt, "made with whole milk and love" through our yogurt co-op.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n[[end]]

Ritual over time\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIt's Thanksgiving in America today. \nIt's a tricky holiday for a lot of reasons.\nFor some people, family time is amazing.\nFor some people, family time is hard.\nIt's a holiday built on a story created to justify colonization.\nIt's a holiday that has taken on new meaning.\n\nBraiding Sweetgrass quote\n\nmundane and sacred \n\n\n\n11.28.2019\n\n[[end]]

READING CONSTELLATION\nSubject Tags: \n\nQuestions\n<ul>\n<li>What does it mean to be an American?</li>\n<li>A proud American?</li>\n<li>Pursuing the ideals of democracy?</li>\n</ul>\n\nFood for thought\n<ul>\n<li>On Being, Serene Jones + Krista Tippett (really if everyone could just listen to this and let's talk about it please). It's helped </li>\n\n<li>1619 podcast episode</li>\n<li>All My Relations podcast episode</li>\n<li>This American Life, "Umbrellas Up"</li>\n<li>\n\n\n\n[[end]]\n\n01.31.2020\n

A better metaphor for artmaking\n\nImagine a lighthouse.\n\nA lighthouse is a light, on a border between water and land.\nThis lighthouse and this lighthouse keeper is intimately familiar with this piece of this terrain.\nThere are other lighthouses elsewhere for other terrains.\n\nThe light is constant.\nThe lighthouse is about commitment.\nThe lighthouse keeper shows up day after day, week after week.\nThe light stays on, whether or not there are ships that need it at a particular moment.\nAt some point, someone will need it.\n\nCome visit sometime.\n\n\n\n\n[[end]]\n01.02.20

You have reached an ENDING. You are invited to take it.\n\nPlay Attention every time you see the words THE END.\n\n\nHow to play attention\n>> LOOK AROUND. Where are you?\n>> TAKE A BREATH. How's your body?\n>> CHECK IN. What might you need?\n\n\nNow choose, with intention, where to? Next.\n\n \n \n \n***\n\nThis is a game about noticing.\nThis is a game about reclaiming our attention and our time.\n\nIt is called "Play Attention."\n\nThis is a game with [[variations and credits]],\nbut the basic concept is above.

<a href="https://desert.glass/newsletter/week-40/">Robin Sloan on publishing as social process</a>\n\nmaybe this has been my roadblock in figuring out how to write and ‘publish’ in our current day and age. the writing is the 'easy' part. the 'how to get people to read it' is the hard part, and it's due to lack of GOOD infrastructure as much as it is about my stubbornness around not investing in the available forms of social media, which are laying the groundwork for not-good infrastructure! not-good meaning not collectively owned and non-(re)generative spaces for our imaginations / our attentions / our lives.\n\n<div class="quote">\n"All publishing is, I think, a combination of social and material processes.\n\n"I talk a lot about the durability and ongoing “discoverability” (slightly gross word, sorry) of the physical book, but what good would a physical book be sitting unsorted on a shelf in a vast warehouse, Raiders of the Lost Ark-style? The system of physical books works because of precisely everything besides the book, everything that surrounds and supports the physical object, which includes (but is not limited to) publishing companies, book distributors, sleek independent bookstores, funky used bookstores, public university libraries, categorization schemes, databases. There might even be a card catalog or two out there still.\n\n"So, my question from last week—what does it mean to publish something in the 21st century?—comes at least in part from a sense that the new systems are a little thin. Making a new form of media isn’t the challenge, really (what a thing to say!); the challenge is everything else: helping people find it; having a rich conversation about it; getting PAID; storing a copy; showing it, years later, to a person who might be interested.\n\n"Come to think of, almost no system of distribution and discovery, for any medium, is as organic and resilient and rich as the one that supports physical books. So maybe I’ve just been spoiled."</div>\n\n12.04.2019\n[[end]]

Q & Advice\n\nHow often should I check social media?\nHow do I stay in touch with my friends?\nI fell for the trap of branding myself, how do I get out?\nWhere do I find hope when I am despairing about the state of the world?\nWhere do I find ground when I am flailing?

Setting the Table for Yourself\n\nMany of us have that experience of being asked to clear the table -- usually it's the dining room table, and usually it's right before a shared meal.\n\nIt's a way to contribute to the meal, and it's a way to make the food taste better.\n\nI've been appreciating how 'setting the table' for myself to get back into a project or to work on my graphic novel feels very similar.\n\nWhen I haven't been working on a project for awhile, and there is some unease about diving back into it, the "to do list" item isn't "work on your project". It's "take out your last iteration and read through it" or "clear the desk" or "tape the pages to the wall."\n\nClearing off the desk, pulling out the pile in the corner, and laying it out again gives me a clear next step.\n\nI don't have to work on it right away, but it'll be waiting for me the next time I want to sit down and write.\n\nSetting the table for myself is an act of kindness,\nand it contributes to the work as much as the act of writing.\n\nIn the book The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp talks about rituals of preparation:\n\n<div class="quote">\nI begin each day of my life with a ritual: I wake up at 5:30 a.m., put on my workout clothes, my leg warners, my sweatshirts, and my hat. I walk outside my Manhattan home, hail a taxi, and tell the driver to take me to the Pumping Iron Gym at 91st Street and First Avenue, where I work out for two hours. The ritual is not the stretching and weight training I put my body through each morning at the gym; the ritual is the cab. The moment I tell the driver where to go I have completed the ritual.\n\nIt's a simple act, but doing it the same way each morning habitualizes it, makes it repeatable, easy to do. It reduces the chance that I would skip it or do it differently. It is one more item in my arsenal of routines, and one less thing to think about.\n\n...First steps are hard...It's vital to establish some rituals-- automatic but decisive patterns of behavior -- at the beginning of the creative process, when you are most at peril of turning back, chickening out, giving up, or going the wrong way.\n</div>\n\nSimple acts help us pave the way for the work to happen.\n\nThank you for setting the table.\n\n11.14.2019\n\n[[end]]

"We have thick and thin splints to work with, and John shakes out a bag full of brightly dyed splints in every color...'Just think of the tree and all its hard work before you start,' he says. 'It gave its life for this basket, so you know your responsibility. Make something beautiful in return.'\n\n\n"Responsibility to the tree makes everyone pause before beginning. Sometimes I have that same sense when I face a blank sheet of paper. For me, writing is an act of reciprocity with the world; it is what I can give back in return for everything that has been given to me. And now there's another layer of responsibility, writing on a thin sheet of tree and hoping the words are worth it. Such a thought could make a person set down her pen."\n\n...\n\n"What would it be like, I wondered, to live with that heightened sensitivity to the lives given for ours? To consider the tree in the Kleenex, the algae in the toothpaste, the oaks in the floor, the grapes in the wine; to follow back the thread of life in everything and pay it respect? Once you start, it's hard to stop, and you begin to feel yourself awash in gifts...In that awareness, looking over the objects on my desk -- the basket, the candle, the paper -- I delight in following their origins back to the ground. I twirl a pencil -- a magic wand lathed from incense cedar -- between my fingers. The willow bark in the aspirin. Even the metal of my lamp asks me to consider its roots in the strata of the earth...every once in awhile, with a basket in hand, or a peach or a pencil, there is that moment when the mind and spirit open to all the connections, to all the lives and our responsibility to use them well. And just in that moment, I can hear John Pigeon say, 'Slow down -- it's thirty years of a tree's life you've got in your hands there. Don't you owe it a few minutes to think about what you'll do with it?'"\n\nBraiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer\n\n\n\n2019.10.17

\n"There's a phrase I learned earlier this year, by way of Laverne Cox. When it was suggested that Laverne might be a role model for other trans women, she said that she preferred the term 'possibility model.' The idea she was proposing, I think, was that we don't need more roles to live up to. We don't need more standards by which we must judge ourselves. Instead, we need possibilities. We need inspirations. We need more options...When we shift from 'role models' to 'possibility models,' we also shift our focus from performing to being...\n\n"I've been thinking about possibility models as they relate to roleplaying, as they relate to games and imagination. And I've been wondering: can we have possibility models that defy possibility?...\n\n"Can we have impossibility models?"\n\n---\n\n"The world we live in likes to tell us that some of us are not powerful or worthy. It leaps to tell us this.\n\n"Speaking as a queer person, a trans person, and a depressed person: it's easy to buy into the paradigm that you are not powerful or worthy.\n\n"When you see others succeeding by metrics that you fail at, when you see others exercising forms of power that you don't have access to, it's easy to conclude that your own self-actualization is beyond reach - that it is impossible.\n\n"If we're already internalizing impossibility, if we're already letting impossibility define us...then why not choose the impossibilities where we are strong beyond measure, where our wounds heal overnight, where we can change forms as needed?"\n\n--\n\n"If a story hurts us to tell, we should stop telling it.\n\n"If a story affirms our feelings and our strengths and our identities, if a story heals us, then we owe it to ourselves to remember that story, to tell it often, to believe in its words, even if those words are foolish, even if those words are impossible."\n\n--\n\nexcerpts from "We've Been Stranger Things" by Avery [[Alder]] from variations on your body\n\n\n\n[[end]]\n2019.10.17

CHANGELOG\n+++\n\nWeek of 3/5/20\nhappy birthday brother. it's too early but it's already cherry-blossom and plum-blossom and magnolia-party season\n\nENTRIES\n[[03062020]] - reading constellation\n\nBONES\n[[blogposts]]\n\nMISC\n[[CSS]]\n\n+++\n\nWeek of 2/21/20\nMostly doin cleanup around the site, here and there, before sending it out as a tinyletter\n\nENTRIES\n[[new year's letter 2020]]\n\nMISC\n[[end]]\n[[variations and credits]]\n\n+++\n\nEither side of the week of Feb 1st, 2020\n\nENTRIES\n[[01022020]] (edits)\n01312020 - reading constellation about americanness\n[[02052020]] - Serene Jones, On Being\n\nBONES\n[[blogposts]]\n[[land]]\n[[fridge door]]\n\n+++\n\nWeek of 1/2/20\n\nENTRIES\n12312019 - lighthouse rambles\n[[01012020]]\n[[What shaped me in 2019]]\n[[01022020]]\n[[01032020]]\n\nBONES\n[[essays]]\n[[blogposts]]\n[[State of the Stina]]\n\nMISC\n[[CSS]] >> winter greys\n[[lighthouse]]\ntest\n\n+++\n\nWeek of 12/28/19\nplaying with the metaphor of a lighthouse, made a chrome extension for "Play Attention", quilting a lot\n\nENTRIES\n[[12282019]]\n[[lighthouse]]\n\nMISC.\n[[reminders]]\n[[5 why's]]\n\nBONES\n[[questions]] (became a sorter page)\n\n+++\n\nWeek of 12/04/19\n\nENTRIES\n[[12042019]]\n[[12052019]]\n\n+++\n\nWeek of 11/28/19\nMORE THAN ONE WAY!!\n\nBONES\n[[end]]\n[[variations and credits]]\n\n+++\n\nWeek of 11/18/19\nI love how this project asks me to reflect on the meta questions of sorting and presenting information -- and the often invisible biases therein. E.g. Should I order my blog in chronological or reverse-chronological order, thus favoring the new or the old? Should I abstain from linking out to articles in general, or should I take the opportunity to link books to Indiebound or their Library of Congress counterparts (instead of Amazon)?\n\nBONES\n[[bookshelves]]\n\nENTRIES\n[[11162019]]\n\n+++\n\nWeek of 11/11/19\nI got REALLY excited when I figured out that the color scheme of this twineblog can change PER SEASON!\n\nBONES\n[[blogposts]]\n[[bookshelves]]\n\nENTRIES\n[[11112019]]\n[[11142019]]\n11152019\n\nMISC.\n[[CSS]]\n\n+++\n\nWeek of 11/8/19\nfinally adding some content, will this experiment actually be a container i want to write in?\n\nBONES\n[[tweets]]\n[[blogposts]]\n\nENTRIES\n[[08302019]]\n\nMISC.\n[[glossary]]\n\n+++\n\nWeek of 10/16/19\nsetting up the bones\n\nBONES\n[[journaling]]\n[[Wander]]\n[[bookshelves]]\n[[end]]\n\nENTRIES\nnone\n\nSOURCES\n[[gratitude to the trees]] - Robin Wall Kimmerer\n[[impossibility models]] - Avery [[Alder]]\n\nMISC.\n[[land]]\n[[reminders]]\n[[questions]]\n\n+++

"When we encounter a story that heals us, we owe it to ourselves to remember it, to tell it often, and to believe in it."\n\n-- "We've Been Stranger Things" by Avery [[Alder]] from variations on your body\n\n\n\n\n2019.10.17

HOW WE'RE DOING THE MUCH\n\nOn Wednesday, I had a day free of meetings, which hooray meant a whole day to sit down at my computer and get some work done, but in reality meant I had to make some choices about how to use my time.\n\nThese things were all true:\n\n<ul>\n<li>The previous evening, I had facilitated a brainstorm at Mt Caz for a radical education initiative we're workin on. My energy in the morning wanted to synthesize and document those notes, but I knew that I had other more pressing and more professional obligations that I should attend to.</li>\n<li>>> But the effort required to divert that energy meant less energy for what I needed to be doing.</li>\n<li>I've been working weekends (library shifts; property management; work for my remote job which I can't actually do during my meeting-ful days when I'm working my remote job)</li>\n<li>>> When any wild free time that appears on my calendar, my body automatically prepares itself for a weekend day.</li>\n<li>Last week, I had experienced the wildly unsatisfying dissonance between wanting to spend time with the artists-in-residence who were sitting at my dining table and having to keep jumping off our conversation to join online work calls on my little screen.</li>\n<li>>> This Wednesday morning when my breakfast-time conversation with Donna turned into a "let's do this guided meditation together," I let it.</li>\n<li>It was high of 102º on Tuesday and high of upper-90's on Wednesday. Mt Caz doesn't have a/c. </li>\n<li>>> As the place slowly slowly becomes hotter, my brain starts to little by little become more sluggish and more distractible and less productive.</li>\n<li>My to-do list is very long these days.</li>\n<li>>> It's easier to procrastinate on the more important stuff by working on the less important stuff. E.g. it's easier to work through a bunch of nuts-and-bolts admin tasks than it is to create the bumper to Chapter 7 of It's Okay That It's Not Okay since it doesn't even have a thumbnail yet and I'm a bit fuzzy on what the next chapter is all about because I haven't looked at the script in awhile.*</li>\n</ul>\n\nWhich is all to say, "Dear Teacher, the dog ate my homework." There is no new comic page this week. \n\nMy to-do list and my overcommitted self is actually at the point where I am coming to terms with the fact that I'm not going to be able to do everything I want to be able to do. It's going to take some hard-to-make-no's and some ask-for-help's and some deadline-postponements to juggle it all.\n\nIt doesn't feel great, but there's also a new freedom to getting to that point. \n\nThe past few months have seen me "buckling down" and turning on hyper-efficiency mode and putting on my steely-eyed focus and trying to get it all done. It worked, I got it all done.\n\nBut hyper-efficiency mode means I don't linger over lunch. It means I don't go in to say hi to the baby when I'm dropping something off. It means I protect my morning sleep-time over partner-connection time. It means I spend all my energy diverting energy to the should's on my to-do list. I prioritize deadlines over silliness and my professional dependability over my personal connections. \n\nI felt like shit. I felt tired. I felt disconnected. I felt cranky, and then I felt bad about acting bitchy. I felt burned out.\n\nI was a lot of 'no' energy in all of my creative and professional projects: let's slow down, let's do less, let's be real.\n\nIn contrast, this week, I had a lot to do, I didn't do a lot of it, and I feel like a kid on summer vacation. I feel joyful. I feel connected. I feel happy.\n\nI'm opening up to a lot more 'yes' energy.\n\nThe question is:\n\nWhat is the LESS WORK that I do in between the HUMAN WORK of being human?\n\nMy current auto-pilot reaction to experiencing burnout is to go into a vigilant conflict-avoidant mode to prevent future times of stress: I must stop doing so much. I must say no more. I must cut things out. No surprise trips. No unplanned projects. No to anything that will make me anything less than comfortable. DO LESS. LIVE LESS. SAY NO TO EVERYTHING.\n\nNumb one, numb all.\n\nIf I let myself stay in that mode, and if I let the avoidance of stress drive my decision making, that leads to a pretty narrow life.\n\nAnd a person I don't recognize.\n\nMy relationships with Mt Caz, Zine Fests, Comics, Residencies, Albert, Art, Noise, Dance -- none of these would exist if I always lived in my DO LESS LAND OF NO.\n\nWhat I'm learning is:\n\nBurn out is less about HOW MUCH,\nand more about HOW you're doing the MUCH.\n\nThe surprising thing I'm learning about burnout is that it's NOT proportional to the amount of stuff I have going on. I can't actually prevent it by just doing less overall.\n\nWhile on some level, I need to be wary of overcommitting myself at the expense of my own needs, the needs of my relationships, and the needs of our community... I also have to accept the reality that there's always going to be a lot going on in my life. Because that's what living a full life is all about.\n\nMultiple wisdom sources will tell you: it's not about avoiding the conflict but about using the conflict that's arisen as a potential learning/transformation point.**\n\nInstead of trying to ward off "busy" for some idealized schedule that won't ever require hard decisions, instead of going into hyper efficient mode and "waiting for the busy-ness to end", I should instead focus my energy on how I'm showing up even during those busy times.\n\nI feel freer when I'm making decisions that prioritize human connection over work even if that means less work gets done -- even if that means I'm likely to disappoint myself and others. When I can make choices that honor the humanity of myself and others (even during the busy stressful times!), I am acting in accordance with my values, and I feel better than when I achieve all of my to-do list goals at the expense of being human.***\n\nIt's still a value of mine to be dependable and trustworthy (by meeting the promises I make), but I'm slowly starting to untangle my worth from my output, and my worth can remain in tact even if I miss a deadline or drop a ball now and again.\n\nThis week, I have also been able to prioritize creativity and art in various arenas, even if it wasn't with this comic page. That is an ongoing question of integrity I want and need to figure out for myself. What is the juggling of art + pay-the-bills work + other work? I owe y'all (and myself) more writing about where I currently am with the question of how to art+money because it's shifted in the past six months. And I'm still trying to figure it out.\n\nWhen I can make choices that honor my creative energies (even during the busy stressful times!), I am acting in accordance with my values, and I feel better than when I achieve all of my money goals at the expense of growing my artistic practice.\n\nXO,\n\nChristina\n\n\n\n* The actual broken-down to-do item is not "Chapter 7, bumper page" but actually "Pull out the script/thumbnails. Look through it."\n\n** Grateful this week for Rachael Maddox talks and meditations about embodied processing. This post's insights are grounded in these re-connectings with body wisdom and all the woo-woo that is not so much woo as us remembering our wholeness. (and h/t to Jumakae's "Your Story Medicine" webinars for introducing me to Rachael's work)\n\n*** These sentence structures are influenced by Joe Edelman's writings on Human Values. I particularly love <a href="https://medium.com/what-to-build/human-values-a-quick-primer-b01ef9617925" target="_blank">the charts hereº</a>. When I used it for an exercise during Nuns & Nones work recently, we laughed because I said "Emotions Are Fun And Powerful Clues" and we were picturing what a great children's book that could be.\n\n\n08.30.2019\n\n[[end]]

<h2>Tweets I would tweet if I still tweeted</h2>\n\nPINNED TWEET\nMaybe John Green says it better than I as to why I don't tweet (or Facebook, or Instagram) anymore: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SERiv_TCg9E\n\n***\n\nIMPORTANT INFORMATION\nEvery 5 tweets, I will invite you to stop and [[end]] your reading instead. \n\n***\n\n2\n"Community, friendship and family, mutual aid, solidarity...these are the antidote and only we can create them."\n\n(Preceding sentences: "Our predicament is not new. The historical events in the organizer are useful for perspective, because people before us have faced long odds too, yet they fought and even won sometimes! Let's take care of each other, feel our rage, and build community together.")\n\n(Preceding sentences: "There is still abundant beauty and joy in the world. Let's enjoy it as best we can, even while we acknowledge and experience the suffering, injustice and ecological collapse that is also around us. Holding both of these in our hearts deepens us and humbles us.")\n\n~2018 Slingshot Organizer\n\n***\n\n1\n"That is, maybe we need a thousand acts of kindness and connection, rather than deus ex machina drugs to mute the pain of their absence." Rebecca Solnit on human murmurations https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-when-the-hero-is-the-problem/\n\n***\n\n[[end]] here?\n\n***\n\n5\nIs the reason we have kids (and then grandkids) is to revisit the stories we learned as children, as adults, with more mature lens. An opportunity to grow and rewrite history and to pass on better stories than those told to us?\n\n***\n\n4\nHave you heard of the bot Quittr who pops into your timeline every hour to suggest you "Quit looking at social media." https://twitter.com/QuittrBot\n\n***\n\n3\nWhat does your body want while it's here?\nWhat does your muse want while it's here?\n\n***\n\n2\n"Beautiful means most self" -an author's 3 years old daughter.\n"Beauty is anyone in the grip of freedom or pleasure" -Gaulier (bouffon)\n\n\n***\n\n1\nJust edited and uploaded a Dispatches from Mt Caz podcast episode about EDUCATION. I love the shownotes: https://dispatches.simplecast.com/episodes/episode-15-question-driven-and-learner-directed\n\n***\n\n[[end]] here?\n\n***\n\n5\nRabbit hole of trippy storytelling, using the digital medium in a mixed up "form+function" kinda way: Dora Garcia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SERiv_TCg9E\n\n***\n\n4\nAvery Alder on the type of charismatic spiritual leadership as embodied by the character The Torch: \nhttps://twitter.com/lackingceremony/status/1185220113127165953?s=20\n\n\n***\n\n3\nmatt fraction in their last newsletter:\nI'm sorry I've been so quiet for so long. It's been a ferociously busy year, even for me, and while that's meant not a lot of books coming out (yet) it's been a shitload of writing. It's easier -- healthier, mentally -- for me to submerge under the water and swim through it rather than poke my head up and wave. It's a constant duel between time and psychic energy. Going dark and getting quiet is okay sometimes. Besides the work does the talking. Anyway. I'm okay. I hope you're okay too.\n\n***\n\n2\nThe Month of Magical Eating by Tienlon Ho\nhttps://www.refinery29.com/en-us/tienlon-ho-women-on-food-book-excerpt\n\n***\n\n1\nhttps://www.thelineofbestfit.com/features/longread/amanda-palmer-no-intermission-interview\nAFP on grief and collective grief, and on art as tool for processing loss — sometimes it’s an unkindness to try and sit down during the depths of loss to try to mine art our of it — sometimes the quickest way through is you just have to feel it and then later the art will come. \n\n^ relates to episode 14 of dispatches with donna and kaori!\nhttps://dispatches.simplecast.com/episodes/episode-14-art-for-healing\n\n***\n\n[[end]]

Lighthouse

WHY ESSAYS\nIt has been said so many times before, but the word essay comes from the french word essayer which means "to try" or "to attempt". Aldous Huxley says there are three poles of reference for an essayist: 1) the personal, 2) the concrete factual, and 3) the abstract-universal.\n\nI was writing essays and making comic essays long before I knew that I could put myself into the box of 'essayist'.\n\nHere I will post new ones, when they cohere.\n\n\nWHAT ESSAYS\n[[What shaped me in 2019]]\n

Ever since I heard Maria Popova describe the origins and pull of <a href="https://www.brainpickings.org/about/" target="_blank">Brainpickingsº</a> as "a record of my own becoming as a person -- intellectually, creatively, spiritually" I have been enthralled with the concept.\n\nHow can we let ourselves shift and evolve, even as we put footsteps into the sand, into the concrete, into the pixels, into the ears and eyes of our friends, of strangers, of archivists?\nWhat is the attachment or non-attachment we ascribe to these words, these markers of who we are? \n\n\n\n[[end]]\n2019.10.17

ABUNDANCE REVISITED\n\n- <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20190217142230/https://www.thebillfold.com/2018/09/tracking-abundance-in-our-grocery-budget/" target="newWindow">this articleº</a> I wrote for The Billfold about how 'tracking your zeroes' in your grocery budget opens your eyes to look for the abundance that exists in your life\n- <a href="https://dispatches.simplecast.com/episodes/episode-13-plenitude-and-abundance" target="newWindow">this discussionº</a> on Dispatches for Mt Caz where we discuss how attitudes of plenty and giving and abundance are foundational to a resilient community\n\nOne wondrous thing that still brings me awe is how this lens of plenty has continued -- and indeed has snowballed. I started tracking the bounty that came into my life as part of my monthly budgeting spreadsheets back in October 2018. I didn't expect the list to keep getting longer and longer. I didn't expect summer's abundant harvests to extend into winter holidays' generous supply of pies.\n\nIt's had an effect on reducing our expenses, sure, but more powerful than that -- it has had a hand in subverting my scarcity mindset, and it has strengthened my connection with the ecosystem that is our community.\n\nI thought it'd be a fun thing to revisit, so I'm just copy/pasting here all my bounty lists (at least the ones I've tracked), without context! ^_^\n\nIt's also a nice random-ish list of memories and people in our lives.\n\n---\n\nOCT 2018\nwe’ve gotten squash, greens, yow choi, grapes, pears, tomatoes from people’s gardens this month. <3\n\nNOV 2018\nfree screws to get my bike rack on at bicycle coop\nleftover dinners and hotpots at silverbelle x 3-4\nfriendsgiving potluck leftovers = 2-3 meals\napples from silverbelle\nbread machine from silverbelle\n\nDEC 2018\nchristmas dinner @ albert’s aunt in eugene\nleftovers from solstice potluck\nso much chocolate\nbra from cam’s work\npersimmons from albert’s mom\napple butter + ghost pepper salt from caitlin\njey treated us to coffee, kelvin treated us to dinner at luc lac\nshirley leftover birthday cake\npickled eggs from min\nbox of lively matters we can gift to friends\n\nJAN 2019\nmeals and lodging and time at Mercy Center\nleftovers and meals at jenn’s\nlodging at Jenn’s\nwatercress\nsara poetry potluck leftovers\n\nFEB 2019\nno waste potluck dinner 2/11 (cheese, baby corn, salad greens from alisha’s interview, sara’s white bean soup and bread)\n$10 starbuck’s gift card from Carlos\nmercy center stay + shabbat dinner\nstaying with jimmy in LA\nstaying with mees and meriel in arcata\nalbert’s grandma’s birthday banquet\ncookies and popcorn left here after writing circle\n\nMAR 2019\nGrandma birthday dinner\nCarpool to Eugene for co-op visit\ndinner with Kate and her mom Deb\ndinner at silverbelle\nclothing swap at alisha’s friend’s amanda’s in philomath: pink sweater, new dress, gloves for another animal, couple cardigans\ncheesecake from ellen\nnoise fest\n\nAPR 2019\npotluck + pizza @ souwester\ntortellini @ aranea’s and soup @ silverbelle\nveggies, lap yok, dried scallops ($100 / box!), something else from albert’s dad’s trip to LA\nplaying overcooked at other people’s houses haha.\neric paid for dinner at nearly normal’s after dinner\nextended parkour training with albert and eric and bryant\nwatercress\ngarage cleanout - baking stuff, trash cans\ncilantro from Sara\nleeks from marina\nmovement lab time at majestic with El\n\nMAY 2019\npizza on betrayal night\nspinach from neighbors\nwatercress from neighbors\ntong ho (chrysanthemum greens from neighbors)\nfree Rx bar at Spring Roll\nbiscuit and chips from catsitting\nleftovers dinner @ sara’s\nmore watercress\nswap meet things: sweater, shirt, leggings, fabric scraps, clippy flower things, earrings, kimono book, \nmeal of noodle soup from swap meet\n\nJUNE 2019\nclothing swap at OSU women’s and gender center: ski jacket, sweater, cardigan, pants for fabric for quilting, couple scarves, one dress\nbalsamic vinegar and sour cherry compote from matteo\nsmoothie from rachel with oregon humanities\ngreen veggies from neighbors, chard from hallie\nuncle peter soymilk\nallllll the leftovers from wander conference\n\nJULY 2019\nso much pantry stuff from alisha’s move\ncardstock + clipboard from alisha’s move \nsweet onions from walla walla WA (lea brought em right when we ran out of onions and had put it on our shopping list!)\nwill’s birthday party extra food and extra drinks\nalbert’s makin pineapple soda from the peels of the pineapple\nborrowed lil plates and bowls from silverbelle\nborrowing aranea’s camera for event capturing purposes\ngreens: watercress, cauliflower, chung ho\njen brought snacks to zine work party\nalbert's dad brought more veggies (cherry tomatoes, snap peas, green beans) and also dessert soup and also a branch of plums that we shared at Flotsam!\nclothing swap (skirts, shirts, tights, workout shorts, jean jacket, fruit dress, red cardigan)\nmaribeth gave me her planet/star mrs. frizzle dress \ngourd from a LBCC instructor\nMaria gave us a bat print for free :)\nyo, poncili’s show.\n\nAUG 2019\nlargest zucchini\nbunch of sauce tomatoes\nso much summer produce: cherry tomatoes, more zucchini, \nfrom library: pear, cherry tomatoes, half-bag popcorn\ntong sui from albert’s aunt x 2 batches\nmore dumplings\nnot’cho cheese\nplums, figs\nrobert’s fig galette\nsteven’s apple cider\neeeeting potluck food\nkimberley’s potluck food\nplums, pears, figs! albert went pickin at silverbelle\ngrapes from uncle peter\ndinner @ silverbelle\na/c at chateau reve during 102º days\n\nSEPT 2019\nsan marzanos and cherry tomatoes from caitlin\nmoon harvest grilling feast on 8 month 15 day\nkimchi from sara\n(gave some grape jelly)\npears and plums\nmoon cakes\nprickly squash\ngreen onions and garlic chives\n(potluck at hoobee house)\nlotsa food at N&N team retreat\n\nOCT 2019\na pile of fruit appeared on the counter! pears and figs\npiles and piles of veggies! chayote squash and large taiwanese spinach and kabocha squash and onions/garlics and watercress from kwans, kale and cherry tomatoes and tomatoes from caitlin’s garden\n8uncle-sourced fancy mushroom dinner with albert’s dad + leftovers\nmore fruit from silverbelle: pears and grapes and figs\ntea from jen for podcast recording\nwoot woot free parking at macarthur bart in the new still-being-built lot haha.\nfrom silverbelle: apples\nfrom albert’s fam / albert’s mom / LA: kumquats (2 kinds), mooncake, rice cakes, the largest wintermelon ever\ntomatoes from sara\nsoup from albert’s dad / nachos from sara\nGOOD TRADES: games from deernicorn: sign, dialect, BFF, zine games by jackson\n3 squash (spaghetti, sweetmeat melon, and butternut) from alisha’s dan’s childhood friend’s parent’s garden (chambers)\nchips and guac from kenna's contribution to halloween party. also halloween party mulled wine, roast veggies, good goat cheese from nathan, dumplings from ellen, chickpea flour pancakes and cabbage from sara, banana vinagrette for salad, etc.\n\nNOV 2019\nchamote squash and apples from silverbelle\nkenna brought mille foie cake for her birthday\naranea used our printer and left some extra paper she bought here for it\nkabocha squash\nmore tomatoes and apples\nleftovers from potluck! tomato soup, tortilla chips, guac, chocolate peanut butter pie, pumpkin bundt cake\napples so many apples\nbutternut squash\nvalencia oranges\ntin of sesame oil\npersimmons (both hachiya and fuyu)\nso much watercress\n(tortellini dinner at aranea’s)\nmore wintermelon\nbutternut squash, big bag of carrots, bag of grapes\nthanksgiving leftovers: siu yok (roast pork) and korean beef, duck confit and cherry pie and baclava from jen and john’s, pecan pie, madeleines, macarons\nthanksgiving ingredient leftovers: cabbage, red leaf lettuce, clementines, mussels and clams, bean curd skins\nroot beer\nthanksgiving pie swap: chocolate cream pie\nswap: pie tin, the new jim crow books, who we be by jeff chang\nharry potter books from aranea and cam\n\nUnaccounted for things that I'm either looking at or can think of off the top of my head\nWhiteboard from neighbor\nPiano stand from aranea\nAlbert's foraging: large black lanterns, baseball cards which we painted and traded at the goblin market\nGoblin market trades (! haha: elder wisdom pills, forgetfulness drops, slug stickers, a fortune, lychee + dragonfruit, a mini diorama in a candle tin)\nProjector from M\n\n---\n\n\n12.05.2019\n[[end]]

BOOKSHELF\nmost of my bookshelf will be BIPOC, women, femme, queer, self-published authors to the front...but it's worth saying explicitly in case you miss it\n\n\n[[Alder]], Avery, variations on your body\n\t<div class = "quote">[[impossibility models]]</div>\n\nbrown, adrienne maree, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds\n\nCheng, Jennifer S., MOON: Letters, Maps, Poems \n\nKimmerer, Robin Wall, Braiding Sweetgrass\n\t<div class = "quote">[[gratitude to the trees]]</div>\n\nOdell, Jenny, How to Do Nothing\n\nPalmer, Amanda, The Art of Asking and Lewis Hyde's The Gift\n\n\n+++\n\nREADING CONSTELLATIONS\nReading lists / food for thought / syllabi for topics and themes\n\nAmends, reparations, harm, healing, reckoning: [[11162019]]\nAnxiety, loneliness, & the human condition: [[03062020]]

Because I want to share some of my writing with you in ways that aren't demanding of your immediate attention or adding to the clutter of your social media feeds for the sake of feeding the feeds. Not that I can control your attention at all, but as a media creator and a media consumer, it's something worth being thoughtful about.\n\nWhy?\n\n\nI am a writer -- and I am healthier when writing is a part of my life. And sharing is a part of being a writer.\n\n\nBecause a [Twine as a blog] is a really dum idea, and it's also really great.\n\n\n\n<li>"Descendants Gather to Heal Wounds of Slavery", audiopiece about descendants of slaves and slave owners meeting at an annual convention, reported by Nancy Marshall-Genzer for NPR News, March 2006</li>\n\n\n===\n\nbody\n{background-color: #8B4789;\ncolor: #EEC591;}\n\na, a:visited, a:link, a:active\n{color: #D98719;}\n\n.bodycontent a, a:visited, a:link, a:active\n{color: #D98719;}\n\na: hover\n{color: #FFA824;}\n\n#sidebar #title, #sidebar #title:hover, #sidebar #title a \n{color: #FFC469;}\n\n#sidebar li a, #sidebar #credits\n\n.bodycontent .quote\n{margin-left: 10px;\npadding-left: 25px;}

\n<script>\n//http://www.javascriptkit.com/javatutors/randomorder.shtml\n\nvar contents=new Array()\ncontents[0]='I worked at <a href="http://www.daylightdesign.com/">Daylight</a> as a human-centered designer, researcher, & strategist.'\ncontents[1]='I <a href="https://twitter.com/s0delightful">Twitter</a> more than I Facebook, but would rather send you <a href="http://tinyletter.com/sodelightful">tiny letters.</a>'\ncontents[2]='I feel compelled to <a href="https://sodelightful.wordpress.com/">blog</a> when my thoughts feel too nuanced for social media.'\ncontents[3]='My friends and I gather regularly for pop-up potlucks because we missed Sunday night dinners.'\ncontents[4]='I make <a href="http://sodelightful.com/comics/">comics and visual essays</a> that help us imagine a more compassionate world where we help each other navigate the complexities of our worlds\s' emotions.'\ncontents[5]='I take <a href="https://www.instagram.com/s0delightful/">photos</a> as a form of visual notetaking and inspiration sharing.'\ncontents[6]='I co-ran <a href="http://planet.globalservicejam.org/">LA Service Jam</a> (x2) and <a href="https://www.facebook.com/GlobalGovjam/">GovJam LA</a> (x1).'\ncontents[7]='Jenn and I created <a href="https://emptyhouseartlab.wordpress.com/">Empty House Art Lab</a> as a playground and whitespace for creativity.'\ncontents[8]='I tabled with All Y\s'all Ladies Club at <a href="http://www.sfzinefest.org/">SF Zine Fest</a> in 2015 for the first time, and I absolutely heart the zine community.'\ncontents[9]='I like writing letters to you, so would love for you to sign up for <a href="http://tinyletter.com/sodelightful">my newsletter.</a>'\ncontents[10]='I lost both my parents when I was in college. I\s'm a <a href="http://thedinnerparty.org/">Dinner Partier,</a> and I contributed to writing and designing their <a href="http://thedinnerparty.org/manifesto">manifesto.</a>'\ncontents[11]='I geek out about pedagogy of the oppressed and <a href="images/DesigningWith_CTran.pdf">theater of the oppressed.</a>'\ncontents[12]='I believe in the transformative power of co-design.'\ncontents[13]='I was part of the inaugural guinea pig class of the <a href="http://www.ac4d.com/">Austin Center for Design.</a> Therefore, I have a lot of ever-evolving thoughts about the role of <a href="https://sodelightful.wordpress.com/category/social-innovation/">design in social impact.</a>'\ncontents[14]='I only ever name-drop one thing: <a href="http://www.npr.org/about/nextgen/internedition/sum06/">interning at NPR</a> for a summer after college.'\ncontents[15]='I\s'm a mapmaker: <a href="images/storymap1.jpg">storymaps</a> and <a href="https://christinatrandesign.wordpress.com/2009/06/27/ucsf-medical-center-wayfinding-system/">wayfinding maps</a> and <a href="http://tranversation.tumblr.com/">family maps.</a>'\ncontents[16]='I\s'm a fan of the following and think you should Google: \s'SF Neofuturists\s', \s'No Proscenium\s', \s'Embodiment Project\s'.'\ncontents[17]='I\s've taught art and writing and literacy and design and other stuff pretty much across all ages.'\ncontents[18]='I started my career as a graphic designer under the wings of <a href="http://buckodesign.com/">Ellen Buckmaster.</a>'\ncontents[19]='This is what I look like when <a href="https://vimeo.com/155600873">I\s'm working.</a>'\ncontents[20]='This is what I look like <a href="images/portrait_by_trixie.jpg">from a 5-year-old\s's perspective.</a>'\ncontents[21]='I am storyteller, wanderer, lightchaser, do-gooder. I am an active geek girl who gives a damn.'\ncontents[22]='Here\s's my post-Buckmaster/pre-Daylight <a href="https://christinatrandesign.wordpress.com/">design portfolio</a> when I was trying to shift from graphic design to human-centered design thinking.'\ncontents[23]='I am a holder of blank spaces. I am an enabler of creativity.'\ncontents[24]='I like webpages that make you want to hit <a href="http://sodelightful.com/">refresh</a> over and over again.'\ncontents[25]='I\s'm putting messages of empowerment out into the world via <a href="deardaughter/index.html">Dear Daughter.</a> And I\s'm writing Sunday letters into the future by channeling the wisdom of the past at <a href="http://sodelightful.com/dearbeloved/">Dear Beloved.</a>'\ncontents[26]='My name is Christina. My name is Gaa Yan. My name means family, my name means grace.'\ncontents[27]='I was a member and co-director of Multiculturalism & Inclusion at <a href="http://www.doubleunion.org/">Double Union</a>, a feminist hacker/maker space in SF.'\ncontents[28]='I taught with the Interaction Design program at <a href="https://www.cca.edu/academics/interaction-design">CCA</a> and their <a href="http://www.ixd.cca.edu/social-lab/">Social Lab</a>.'\ncontents[29]='I believe in Community-Supported Art. If you want to practice the muscle of throwing energy at art: support the work via a <a href="https://ko-fi.com/sodelightful">one-time tip</a> or <a href="http://patreon.com/sodelightful">an ongoing pledge</a> or whatever other kind of energy makes sense.'\ncontents[30]='I\s'm working on a <a href="https://christinatran.com">graphic memoir</a> about the sabbatical I took in order to grieve -- and how hard it is for us to stop to feel the emotions we need to feel.'\ncontents[31]='I helped <a href="http://hourschool.com/">HourSchool</a> pilot <a href="https://christinatrandesign.wordpress.com/2012/06/01/service-design-peer-learning-programs/">peer learning programs</a> in Austin.'\ncontents[32]='I am a caretaker at <a href="http://mtcaz.tumblr.com/">Mt. Caz,</a> a renegade community arts space and DIY artist residency.'\ncontents[33]='I host monthly <a href="https://www.nunsandnones.org/community/">Nuns & Nones</a> online hangouts where we make slow time to connect and chat.'\n\n\nvar neonColors = ["#006699", "#006600", "#330099"];\n\nvar i=0\n//variable used to contain controlled random number \nvar random\n// var beginning=""\nvar spacing=" "\n//while all of array elements haven't been cycled thru\nwhile (i<contents.length){\n //generate random num between 0 and arraylength-1\n random=Math.floor(Math.random()*contents.length)\n randomColor=Math.floor(Math.random()*neonColors.length)\n //if element hasn't been marked as "selected"\n if (contents[random] != "selected"){\n document.write("" + contents[random] + spacing)\n //mark element as selected\n contents[random]="selected"\n i++\n\n }\n}\n\n\n</script>

VARIATIONS AND CREDITS FOR THE GAME "PLAY ATTENTION"\n\n***\n\nPLAY ATTENTION:\nPlay Attention every time you see the words THE END.\n\n\nHow to play attention\n>> LOOK AROUND. Where are you?\n>> TAKE A BREATH. How's your body?\n>> CHECK IN. What might you need?\n\n\nNow choose, with intention, where to? Next.\n\n***\n\nVARIATION: Play attention at the end of every activity.\n\nLook for endings everywhere --> at the end of...a podcast, an activity, a meeting, a meal, a conversation, a walk, a poop.\n\nPlay attention to the endings we normally breeze by --> at the end of...a day, a season, a sunset, a moment, a relationship, a life, a breath.\n\n\nADVANCED PLAY: Play attention every time you notice there is no end.\n\nPlay attention every time you notice yourself scrolling mindlessly.\n\nPlay attention every time you catch yourself wondering, 'why did I come here in the first place?'\n\nPlay attention when you catch yourself starting something new (e.g. opening a new tab/app/window) while waiting for a response or a sense of closure, from someone somewhere outside of your self.\n\nPlay attention before autoplay kicks in,\nPlay attention before clicking the next link,\nPlay attention before the feeds are able to refresh.\n\nThe possibilities are endless.\n\nFind & end them all.\n\n\nTHE REVOLUTIONARY GAME: Play attention with all. your. time.\n\nPlay attention every time someone demands you pay attention.\n\nPlay attention every time something demands you 'pay' with your attention.\n\n\n\n\n\n***\n\n<ul>\nWith Gratitude To\n\n<li>"Revolutionary Game", a workshop, manifesto, and zine by Albert Kong</li>\n<li>"How to Do Nothing", an Eyeo talk, transcription, and eventual book by Jenny Odell</li>\n<li>"Lively Matter", a card game and way of being by Lea Redmond</li>\n<li>"Embodied Trust", a guided meditation by Rachael Maddox</li>\n<li>The books of Robin Wall Kimmerer and Terry Tempest Williams</li>\n<li>The comics and zines of Yumi Sakugawa and Elise Bernal</li>\n<li>The long, slow extrication from social media -- with possibility models along the way including Gwen Bell's digital sabbaticals</li>\n<li>All those who have ever invited me to shabbat</li>\n<li>Solo-LARP writers, including J Li and Avery Alder and PH Lee</li>\n<li>Big Bad Con, for showcasing the weird indie rpgs and larps</li>\n<li>The trees and trails I have walked again and again on the ancestral homelands of the Kalapuya people who were forcibly removed in 1855</li>\n\n</ul>\n\nUPDATE: Haha, I made a Chrome extension for Play Attention, which you can install into your browser for reminders to play!\nView instructions here: [[12282019]]\n\n\n[[end]]

BLOG\n\n[[08302019]] - HOW we're doing the much\n[[11112019]] - Superpatron\n[[11142019]] - Setting the table\n11152019 - Afflicting the comfortable\n[[11162019]] - Reading constellation: amends and reparations\n[[12042019]] - Publishing as social process\n[[12052019]] - Abundance revisited\n[[12282019]] - Play Attention chrome extension\n[[01012020]] - Writing new year's letters, the years blur\n[[01022020]] - Stories & Rhymes\n[[01032020]] - a changing relationship to book\n[[02052020]] - Serene Jones, On Being\n[[03062020]] - Reading constellation: anxiety

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<h1>This is (not) a game about journaling</h1>\nWith important [[reminders]] to self\n\nWHAT TO WRITE ON\nPiles of papers, looseleaf\nand secondhand notebooks.\nUnlined rules.\nThe thinner the paper the better,\nwith [[gratitude to the trees]].\nStart one thread front to back. \nStart another thread back to front.\nTurn the page and jot sideways. \nInsert pages in midstream.\nSkip around.\nGo forward. Go back.\nThere is no 'up'. \nThere is no 'right' when we write.\n\nWHAT TO WRITE WITH\nThe delight of writing instruments which flow freely \n(but which do not bleed through the page)\nSigno .38 rollerball refills\nor -- more often -- so many free pens from the bank\nRarely pencil (for archival purposes)\nRarely glitter pen (for archival purposes)\n\nWHAT TO WRITE ABOUT\nHelp yourself remember why you write.\nHelp yourself become who you want to become.\nAsk questions and be a channel for new clarity.\nShare insights you have stumbled upon.\nCapture delights to remember by candlelight on the dark days.\nToss in snippets you might post on social media if you were still on social media.\nHave tea with your past selves.\nWonder about the curiosities that won't leave you alone, the same themes you've been circling for years.\nFind new rabbit holes, and chase them til they meet with other ones.\nWrite down the things that make you laugh.\nGive space for things that make you sad.\nVent your anger.\nWatch it all transmute, alchemize, swirl and dance, until it becomes something...else.\n\nWHEN TO STOP\nMake flower hands by pretending to hold a quarter between your middle finger and your thumb. Twirl them around each other, wafting them up and down and around and around. Listen to the cracks in your wrist.\n\nCircle your neck one way,\nand then the other way.\nListen to the crunch of your spine.\n\nTake a walk.\nKeep writing in your head.\nOr not.\n\n[[Wander]] somewhere else.\n\nCONSIDER...\nThrowing away all your childhood journals in a dumpster behind your fourplex when you move because they sink you into a heartspace that hurts.\n\nCreating fiction as journals for all the [[impossibility models]] of who you could become, and of who you already are.\n\nReading through the drifts of papers when you are feeling lost with new questions, only to discover that these are actually old questions you've been asking all along. \n\nPaying attention to your power. Pay attention to the throughlines. Pay attention to what you wrote back thenthat has since manifest into now. \n\nPaying attention to the clues. Pay attention to how time is not linear but rather cyclical. Pay attention to how far you have come, how little you have moved. Pay attention to how much journeying you have done -- and how much you have ahead of you. Pay attention to how much journaling you have done -- and how much you have ahead of you.\n\nCONSIDER PLAYING ATTENTION\n\n[[end]] here.\n\n\n\n2019.10.17

I write these words from the ancestral lands of the Kalapuya People, who were forcibly removed in 1855. The Kalapuya people are still alive and are now members of Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians.\n\nWe and speak these truths in order to move toward full truth, continued relationship, and reconciliation.\n\nI write these truths into this space because I am committed to being in right relationship with the people we’ve wronged, the non-human beings who are on this land, and with the land herself. I want to invite my communities into this ongoing journey of learning, listening, reconciliation, right relationship, and right action. (keep learning, keep growing, keep being.)\n\n+++\n\n\n\n\nLearn more about land acknowledgements:\n<ul>\n<li><a href="https://usdac.us/nativeland" target="_blank">USDAC's Honor Native Land guideº</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://usdac.us/news-long/2018/4/26/honor-native-land-are-you-hesitating-acknowledgment-faqs" target="_blank">USDAC's FAQ about honoring native landº</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://native-land.ca/" target="_blank">Map of Native Landsº</a></li>\n<li><a href="https://www.teenvogue.com/story/indigenous-land-acknowledgement-explained" target="_blank">"Indigenous Land Acknowledgement" in Teen Vogueº</a></li>\n</ul>\n\n\n[[end]]\n2019.10.17\n2020.02.09 updated\n\n\n\n+++\n\nPREVIOUS ITERATIONS\n\nI write these words from the ancestral lands of the Kalapuya People, who were forcibly removed in 1855. The Kalapuya people are still alive and are now members of Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde Community of Oregon and the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians. We acknowledge these truths in order to move toward full truth, continued relationship, and reconciliation. \n-- 2019.10.17\n

GLOSSARY\nI use words as shorthand a lot. That's why I feel like I should have footnotes even when I talk. Here's what I mean sometimes when I say these words.\n\n{in reverse alpha order}\n\nzine\nzine ethos = \n- you don't have to wait for permission\n- there are no gatekeepers\n- everyone has access to the 'means of production' (aka whatever you need to make a thing a thing)\n\nqueer\n<a href="http://www.mattiebrice.com/queer-as-in-fuck-me-a-design-manifesto/">queer as in fuck meº</a> a design manifesto by mattie brice\n\nintimacy, markers of\nuncontrollable fits of giggling, together.\n\ncommunity\nthe ability to ask for help\nknow that people got yo back\nknow what you have to offer\nfeel you belong\ntrust\n\n\n

Why is it so visceral, this bodily reaction against sitting in this row of chairs and listening placidly to this panel of presenters of mostly dominant-sphered \n\n

REMINDERS TO SELF\n\nYou don't have to share everything -- or even anything -- that you write.\n\nThis is not actually your personal journal. You have your own personal, analog versions for that. Don't share your #shittyfirstdrafts. Let them be information, keep them for your eyes only, and let them transmute into what they need to become over time.\n\nThis is not your only outlet for writing -- or even for blogging.\n\nIf you have any doubts about whether to post something, just sleep on it. Or ask a trusted someone about it. First. Before you do it.\n\nYou can always delete or take stuff down.\nNo questions asked.\nDoesn't really matter.\n\nYou can always stop.\nYou can always start again.\n\nYou can always change things up.\n\nThis is a [[lighthouse]],\nand you are a lighthouse keeper. \n\n\n[[end]]\nupdated 2019.10.20\nupdated 2019.12.27

<h1>What shaped me in 2019:</h1>\n\nOr: "My Best of 2019 List" in 4 parts\nOr: If I had the magic power to have everyone engage with the same pieces of 'media', these would be them's\nOr: Some recommendations, that speak to the ongoing questions I'll be bringing into 2020\n\n\n1\n<h3>Our conversations about power and humility</h3>\n\nHands down, I think this is 'the thing' that has grown me the most in 2019. Yet it's the hardest one to write about: Because it is many-peopled, it is over time, it is slow, it is ongoing, it is nebulous. But those are the very nature of the things I want to write more about; those are the very things I want to be IN in 2020.\n\nThese types of changes are: intangible, fractal, emergent. These shifts color everything else, and they have been influenced by so many other things...so they are hard to pinpoint.\n\nBut if I had to create a container for talking about them, it is here: in the conversations I've had with the Nuns & Nones community over the course of the months of 2019, which started with the July 2019 monthly zoom call, where we explore deeply a topic or theme. This month's theme was power and the question "What is my/our relationship to power?" What does it feel like in our body to think of power over vs. power with. And why are we afraid of our own power?\n\nIt didn't come as a surprise to us that because sisters were involved, a conversation about power went hand-in-hand with a conversation around humility, so we slated August 2019's zoom call around the question of: Where is the power in humility? And: What is the difference between humility and shrinking?\n\nThe enduring insight I carry with me from those conversations is the image of two people standing in a circle. Humility is saying/acting/believing that there is room in the circle for someone other than you, and 'humility without shrinking' is saying/acting/believing that there is room in the circle for your full self, standing in full power -- that that is actually the only way you can make room for others in the circle in a healthy way, with healthy boundaries.\n\nThese shifts, these insights, these grapplings, these questions continued to live with me through other conversations and transformations that happened the second half of 2019 -- in core team discussions as we grappled with how to organize ourselves in our awkward transition from 'group of volunteers' to 'national organizing team', and in sessions we had guided by facilitators versed in conflict transformation, organizational development, spiritual direction, and social justice.\n\nOur team went through a 'master class' in conflict transformation this year, and for me they rested on a foundation of these open-hearted queries into: what is power, and what is my relationship to power, and what is my desired relationship to power?\n\nThese shifts and growth and reckoning and learnings bled into my relationships with those in the Mt Caz community. It drew from my ongoing relationship with Albert. It challenged and strengthened all of my relationships.\n\nThat I could wander into the kinds of vulnerability required from this kind of questioning and know that there was both the softness of compassionate collective care and the backbone of courageous collective responsibility...that is the power of Nuns & Nones: what makes it special to me, why I hold these people dear in my heart, why it's sometimes hard for me to talk about.\n\nIn the organization, we have started to use the language of "sacred relationships" as a vision for how to liberate life. By "sacred relationships", we mean "mutual loving transformation." For me, that means we are willing to be changed by one another, and that we walk willingly into that change. It's beautiful, heartful, joyous, challenging work.\n\nI am so grateful to be doing some of this work within Nuns & Nones, and I'm sure it's happening all over the place, wherever groups of people gather who care about one another enough to push each other to grow. Where is it happening in your own life?\n\nYou are not alone in questioning.\n\n2\n<h3>"Voicemail for Jill" by Amanda Palmer</h3>\n(<a href="https://amandapalmer.bandcamp.com/track/voicemail-for-jill" target="_blank">audioº</a>, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Npq_ieGCzes" target="_blank">videoº</a>, <a href="https://www.patreon.com/posts/song-about-for-24809982" target="_blank">about the songº</a>)\n\nThis song made me cry. Every line is laced with compassion. And it's a compassion that I wish for every womb-having person facing every decision about kid-having or not. And it's a compassion I wish I had had for myself back when. And it's a compassion that I want to infuse into every single 'political' conversation we are currently having in these United States.\n\nSo does Amanda Palmer, radical compassion is the thesis of her touring show for her latest album, There Will Be No Intermission. I saw a live recording of one of her London performances, and it's a brutally kind show that is an essay about: abortion, miscarriages, birth, loss, prison, death, killing, compassion, and letting go. And being there for each other.\n\nYou are not alone.\n\n3\n<h3>BRAIDING SWEETGRASS: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer</h3>\n(buy from her <a href="https://milkweed.org/book/braiding-sweetgrass" target="_blank">indie publisherº</a>)\n\nOne of the hardest parts of reckoning with my own power as a person is accepting the fact that I can -- and do -- hurt others.[1] If I am not able to stomach the responsibility of that impact, I turn instead toward minimizing impact...good or bad or tender or harsh or purple or sweet...which means shrinking my self, stepping back from my own power, abdicating my role in affecting relationships, refusing the links between us, refuting the idea that we can be in healthy relationship that grows over time from the very thing I am trying to avoid -- conflict, trial, tension, confusion.[2]\n\nThe same is true of our human relationship with the environment and the natural world. When the only narratives we have are those that say we humans cause harm (to rivers, to land, to endangered species, to monocultured crops, to air, to forests), it's tempting to believe that we are in the wrong, and that in order to make things right we have to step back and stop being our full selves. That if we were gone, the earth would be better for it.\n\nWhat Braiding Sweetgrass does is offer different lenses on the idea of our relationship(s) with nature. In the eponymous essay about sweetgrass, Kimmerer's graduate student is researching human's harvesting impacts on the plant. The thesis committee shrugs off the research, confident in their knowledge that fields left fallow will be better off than those that bear the brunt of human interaction. In fact, the researchers find that there is a benefit to harvesting with respectful moderation. Both humans and sweetgrass thrive when both are of use -- and in relationship with one another.\n\nAnd this is not the only species or environment or landscape where this is true.\n\nI'm reading this book slowly, so I'm not done yet. But I already feel the shifts: It has realigned and regrounded some fundamental orientation inside of my human body and spirit.\n\nA part of me wants to bookclub this book. But in a way that means conversations happening over decades, held over meals throughout the seasons, sometimes with our hands in the dirt and sometimes breathing the mountain air. Look up. Look around. Where are you, and who is there with you?\n\nWe are not alone.\n\n4\n<h3>The nature here</h3>\nIn thinking back on this year, I realized that I have to give credit where credit is due —– that I would not be the person I am today if it weren't for the walks I have been taking on as many days as I can. The [[land]] where I am, the paths I walk, the trees I hear, the birds I have learned to see, the wind and the weather and the skies and the clouds. I want to learn more of their names. I want to understand what they have to teach me.[3]\n\nIf we are to understand the "thou-ness" of every other living being on earth, and to realize that we humans are definitely definitely DEFINITELY not the only ones working on the climate change issue...\n\nI want to say: watch birds flying in formation, and ask what can we learn?\nI want to say: have you ever walked up to a wetlands and looked out at a scene where you presumed "no one was there", but then after a moment you realize there are many ducks swimming and dunking and kicking near that stand of trees?\nI want to say: do you know what the moon is up to these days? Where she's been rising, where she is going?\nI want to say: have you ever seen the wind drawing on the water's surface? Noticed how she affects a bank of trees?\nI want to say: go on more walks. Every day, go on more walks.\n\nWe are not alone in questioning.\n\n\n\n\n\n[[end]]\n01.02.2020\n\n<div class = "footnotes">\nFOOTNOTES:\n[1] Part of the reason the netflix movie To All the Boys I've Loved Before is so powerful is that it's a journey for the protagonist Lara Jean to realizing that she's not just a nobody wallflower who no one pays any attention to -- that her actions DO have consequences, and that they DO affect others.\n[2] see the reading constellation on reckoning with history from [[11162019]].\n[3] Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy is a good intro to bioregionalism and birdwatching.\n</div>

Writing new year's letters\n\nThe last hand-full of years have really started to blur together in my mind, and overall I think I like it. \n\nIt's a symptom of: non-linear thinking and time travel.\nIt's a side-effect of: being able to be more fully present during more often's.\nIt's a bonus: longer-term thinking, ongoing relationships.\n\nWhen everything is interconnected, does it matter whether this event happened during this year or that?\nThe revelations span weeks.\nThe insights are months in the making.\nA community grows over a number of years.\nA landscape morphs through the decades.\nCulture shifts through increments large and small.\n\nWhen I think of my relationship with Albert, it is this jumbled collection of years.\nWhen I think of Mt Caz and what we are trying to live into, it is the same jumble of years. It is also the future pulling us toward itself.\nWhen I think of how I have grown this past year, it is on the groundwork of the past decade, the foundation poured during my last few moves. The slow taking back of time and attention and energy and self.\nIt has happened in the morning tarot pulls and the mid-afternoon walks and the conversations here and the conversations there. This pile of books that bled into that pile of books that bled into an article shared via Slack via a friend of a friend who is now a yogurt friend.\n\nIf I were to set down the lineage of that growth, it would arc backward into 2018 (when Yumi Sakugawa was writing on her Patreon and shared a morning intention practice she had adapted from a woman writer she had read and loved). It would run parallel to the rushing river that is Amanda Palmer's community-funded art-making process for the last 3-4 years, her sharing and oversharing and vulnerability and interdependence with her fans on Patreon. It would live in my body: the "Release" dance class at ODC, the butoh spirits that Min Yoon left behind in the echoes of the rooms of Mt Caz as our first serendipitous artist-in-residence, the intention of taking a full hour to rise from laying on the ground to standing with the voice of Anastazia (Stahz) Louise reminding us that we could go even slower, belly dancing at a indie roleplaying games convention, learning in a paratheater workshop with Antero Alli the full extent of my exhale which means I am always holding my breath even though all I've been trying to do for the last decade is to breathe and don't forget to breathe...and only getting there because of friends like El and Lily who have been dancing for decades, because of failed auditions, because of grief, because of joy, because of salsa, because of music, because of texas, because of trees.\n\nIt would lead to me quitting my own Patreon.\nIt would have me circling this same feeling of: can't talk, don't know how to say, speechless, stunted, bound, self-censoring, and not sharing.\n\nThe foundational growth that happened in 2019 that will lead to what may come in 2020, a fuller unleashing of standing-in-self power that is necessary for the weave of collective action that is the only way forward towards interdependence and co-arising with the planetary.\n\nMaybe it's all a new voice,\none I'm unfamiliar with.\nbecause we in our culture prize the <a href="https://lithub.com/rebecca-solnit-when-the-hero-is-the-problem/" target="_blank">hero narrativeº</a>, and the sole narrator, and the tidy plotline, and a thing that makes sense.\nAt least a certain kind of sense.\n\nAnd I'm learning to write a longer story that began before me and ends after me and which I am a circular fractal version of, in this particular moment.\n\nAnd how do you share this? \nwithout being afraid to share it?\nbecause what will people think?\nand is it okay if they leave?\n\nyes, yes it is.\n\nis it okay if they consider this "bad writing"?\nthat you should take some more essay-writing classes, learn how to edit yourself, learn how to focus and come to a point?\nhave some rigor if you're going to go down the lyric essay route?\nlearn to edit if you're going to go abstract?\n\nyes, yes, this is bad writing.\n\nand this is my open mic\nmy variety show\nmy process and practice\nof keeping the light on and showing up at my [[lighthouse]] week after week.\nto write my way (back)(forward)(around) into my own voice.\n\nto reacquaint myself with the familiar-non-familiar.\nso that we may survive this thing that is killing us: one answer, certainty, belief.\nThe giving away of our power to the idea that there is a 'right' way to do this, or that there is someone to please by doing it, or that any of this should make sense.\n\nWhat if we tread the same loop of human-constructed wooden boardwalk around the Jackson-Frazier Wetlands over and over again, day after day, just being with the birds and the trees and the invasive grasses and the rabbit and the hidden frog (heard but never seen) that also be here?\n\nWhat if that is the only way I can write in 2020?\nWhat if it infuriates me but writing through it is the only way I can get anywhere, anywhere at all?\n\nThen okay, these may read like scrambled eggs, like morning pages, which lulu called the "cheapest form of self-therapy",\nso what.\nthey are worth putting down here.\nbecause we need other words for 'worth' and 'value' that aren't tied to money. \n\nwhat we find in the journeying is the whole point of journeying.\n\n[[end]]\n01.01.2020

Afflicting the Comfortable\n\nYesterday, we went to a ramen place in town and I ordered a veggie ramen with tonkotsu pork (I know it's contradictory forgive me) and the "shoyu" soy sauce flavoring. The mushrooms and veggies and noodles and perfectly-soft-boiled egg were delicious, but I was having trouble with the broth because it was so salty. The more I ate, the more inedible it became.\n\nMy partner tasted it and agreed that it was too salty. They advised me to say something.\n\nI hemmed and hawed and wished they could do it for me.\n\nEventually I went up to the counter and 'asked a weird question' about whether the broth was normally so salty. They said it varied, did i want more broth, did i want a new bowl with salt on the side? I said a non-specific 'sure' to one of those options, and they took my bowl of noodles away. I apologized before sitting down again.\n\nWhy did I apologize?\n\nI was in a state of unease for the rest of the evening.\n\nIt's such a hard thing for me to state my needs and ask for them to be met.\n\nOne problem was that we were in a restaurant, a place of business. This particular one included counter service, and our meal had already been paid for. Our transaction was technically over. (The show The Good Place asks "What do we owe each other?" and the answer here was nothing, in the technical sense of the word. In the sense that capitalism creates transactional nature of interactions that sever the bonds of human relationships.) So in some sense, I had no right to ask for a change.\n\n(Re: communicating needs and radical honesty, see adrienne maree brown's Emergent Strategy or Katie Morton's Are U Okay?)\n\nThe discomfiting thought I woke up with was this:\n\nIf I can't even send back a Ramen without shrinking and feeling uncomfortable...how can I afflict the comfortable in the saying,\n\n<div class="quote">Comfort the afflicted,\nand afflict the comfortable</div>\n\n?\n\nI am much more comfortable operating in the realm of comforting the afflicted (and it may even be where my natural gifts lie), but I am learning to lean into the conflict that arises in order to help us transform ourselves, our relationships, our communities, our planet. The world requires all of us to become more familiar with the feeling of discomfort and to not run away with it.\n\nAnd it is in our relationships that we can become braver.\n(see mutual accompaniment, prophetic community, Nuns & Nones work)\n\nFor now, I am practicing getting clearer on my needs, naming them, asking for them -- whether that is meeting them myself, asking directly for others to help me, or in finding creative ways to meet them.\n\nWe cannot do any of it alone.\n\n11.15.2019\n\n[[end]]

From looking up the word essay...\n\nWikipedia says: \n\n"Zuihitsu (随筆) is a genre of Japanese literature consisting of loosely connected personal essays and fragmented ideas that typically respond to the author's surroundings. The name is derived from two Kanji meaning "at will" and "pen."...Thus works of the genre should be considered not as traditionally planned literary pieces but rather as casual or randomly recorded thoughts by the authors."\n\n!\n\n\n\n+++\n\ni wonder if my relationship to books is changing.\ni no longer want to read anything straight through, from front to back, in one sitting. Certainly not within the 3-week check-out period that i have something from the library (or haha let's be real, the 3-week + 5 re-checkouts, so really 15-week check-out period).\n\ni want to wander and metabolize what i'm reading. \ni want the books to linger around my life.\n\ni just read parts of emergent strategy again.\nthat i hadn't seen before.\nthey are more relevant now, therefore more potent.\nis good.\nis how it should be\nnon-linear\nand engaged\nand adaptible\nand interwoven.\n\n...

New Year's Letter 2020\n\nHappy new year. Happy 2020. Happy reflect-back-on-2019 time.\n\n\n<h3>Here's a look back at 2019: the splashy stuff, and the more foundational shifts, happening in the quiet sense of things.</h3>\n\n\n<img src="images/shift.gif" />\nFirst the quieter shifts: \n\n- [[What shaped me in 2019]]\n\n\n<img src="images/splash.gif" />\nThen the splashy:\n\n<div class="quote">\nDID YOU KNOW...?!\n- that we have a podcast?! <a href="https://dispatches.simplecast.com/" target="_blank">Dispatches from Mt Cazº</a>\n- that we have hosted 10 <a href="https://mtcaz.tumblr.com/air" target="_blank">artists-in-residence at Mt Cazº</a> since 2018\n- that we are starting a <a href="https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TzU_xcknqlvowq6FwekUyz9Pug3eEGj-CUGuln2GQzw/edit#heading=h.k9vstxjp923u" target="_blank">yogurt co-opº</a> in the Willamette Valley\n- that I quit my <a href="patreon.com/sodelightful/" target="_blank">Patreonº</a> (but that I haven't given up on my graphic novel <a href="http://slowinglycomic.tumblr.com/" target="_blank">It's Okay That It's Not Okayº</a> yet.)\n- ?? I dunno, what else? Corzine was this year. PZS with mt caz collective was this year. POS- continued. I hosted some zine-making workshops at the library. We did some weird(read:amazing) events: cajun vegan pop-up restaurant, wander conference, science+art showcase, drawn together... Noise Fest. N&NNNN \n</div>\n\n+++\n\n<h3>Here are the things I want to let go of from 2019 and the things I want to welcome in in 2020.</h3>\n\n<div class="quote">\nLET GO OF: self-doubt spirals\nTO WELCOME IN: honoring my intuition\n\nLET GO OF: giving into shrinking\nTO WELCOME IN: more boldy being.\nI recently read this quote: "Try again, this time more you."\n\nLET GO OF: misbelieving my own powerlessness \nTO WELCOME IN: expressing my needs, acting from intention -- as a being with power\n(Me feeling unable to take a pause, breathe, and express my real/micro-truth in the moment often leads to me feeling like I'm caught up on a momentum train where I can't change my mind, or I'm at the mercy of forces I can't control...often leads to a victim mindset that breeds resentment, which leaks out as meanness and contempt.)\n(reckoning with my own power and our interdependent influence on each other)\n\nAnd finally,\nI think 2019 was a lot of work in getting into relationship with the POWER OF NO,\nand I want to get to know and welcome in and dance with the POWER OF YES in 2020.\nBecause too much of one is definitely not as strong (read:resilient) as being able to honor the wisdom in both.\n\n</div>\n\n+++\n\n<h3>These are the questions I'm entering the new year with.</h3>\n\nThey are what I want to honor, grapple with, and send [[lighthouse]] missives for here in this space. I want to find people who are asking the same questions: mutual accompaniment in asking the tough questions. in living into our answers.\n\n<div class="quote">\n- If the last season of my life was an exploration of the word FRACTAL in embodiment and practice and inquiry and hmmmm, the next season of my life is moving into an exploration of the concept of MORE THAN ONE WAY: multiple possibilities, collective collaboration, more allowing, more us-ness, more more. As embodiment and practice and inquiry and praxis and hmmmmm.\n-(more to come!)\n</div>\n\n+++\n\n[[end]]\n20200220

by Christina Tran\n<a href="http://sodelightful.com/">sodelightful.com</a>\n\n[[questions]]\n[[reminders]]

\nthe books lying open on the table\n\t- one is a crowdsourced dictionary, full of red ink and post-it notes. \n[[bookshelves]] full of comics and memoirs and food for the soul\nthe zine library tree\nrecipe book\nthe dining table\nsomething smells good in the kitchen: ask for the homechef's choice, served family style. (give me whatever is in season, whatever you think might nourish me tonight.)\nthe garden\nthe [[fridge door]], magneted full of things to show n tell\nthe [[land]]\nthe trees, the birds sitting in the tree on two different branches, one higher than the other.\n\n\n2019.10.17

This episode of <a href="https://onbeing.org/programs/serene-jones-on-grace/" target="_blank">On Being with Serene Jones "On Grace"º</a>. is so so necessary for how we as a country can face the injustices that we have benefited on and which are so woven into our history as a nation -- with honesty, compassion, grief, and collective mourning -- so that we may move forward in action instead of hiding in shame, or sidestepping, or tiptoeing, or denying, or invisibilizing.\n\nShe talks about repentance: \n\n\nIt’s also not just saying, “Oh, that was horrible. I’m so sorry.” It’s much more than “I’m sorry” or “ That makes me so uncomfortable, and I’m sad that happened.” It’s really saying, “That is horrible. And this is the path that we’re going to walk on together to fix it.” Not “fix it” in the sense of “cover up the past,” but fix it so that the horrors that hold us don’t keep happening. And so, that active grasping, walking towards a different future, has to be done together. It’s not just me, deciding, “Oh, Serene, now that you’ve come to grips with your horrible past, you’re gonna walk out there and fix it and walk in the right direction,” because the things that bind us are not just ours alone, but they’re ours as a whole society. So if we don’t walk collectively, we’re not getting at the chains, the sins, that hold us down.\n\n\nAnd here's what I wrote to Albert about our <a href="https://usdac.us/nativeland" target="_blank">land acknowledgementº</a> that we do at the beginning of our Mt Caz events:\n\nOne part that I think worth having a Mt Caz conversation about is this notion of repentance. I think it's what I've been grasping for in having the intuition that I want to go farther with our land acknowledgement. I do see that I went in the wrong direction previously, wherein I neutralized the stark wrongness of what happened by trying to position the stolen land and massacres within a timeline of events that have also happened on this same piece of land. \n\nSo/and...\n\nI DO want us to try to get past the shame of it \nto this place of collective responsibility \nand commitment to doing differently \nby our actions \nbeyond the acknowledgement of "something bad happened" \nwhich still affects us to this day....\n\nI'm curious what that is \nfor us as individuals and \nfor us as a mt caz community, \nand for us as a corvallis community, \nand for us as a nation, \nand for us as a people.\n\n--\n\nI think it's one piece of the journey, ongoing as it is.\nMuch more to glean and learn and reflect on from the interview. Highly recommended.\nAnd let's talk about it, if you want!!\n\n\n[[end]]\n2020.02.05