#❪ ⊱ — ❛ trees have their roots and their leaves are our dreams. ❜ ┊MEMES.

[autumnalwalker]

A Dream About Missing Children

I am a teacher, or perhaps a teacher's aide at school after-hours.  Or perhaps school is out early today.  Either way, there are still some kids around, roaming the halls knowing that their parents will be late in picking them up.  It is a cloudy, dreary day outside.

There are flickering lights coming from one of the restrooms, but when two kids step out of the restrooms with guilty expressions, I assume they were just playing around with the light switch and let them off with a warning.

Another teacher sees me in the hall and calls me over to where she's looking out the window at an utterly bizarre sight.  A small cloud has come down and is flying low over the ground.  The cloud dissipates and reveals a red-and-black ship or drone.  Neither of us know what to make of it.  The drone turns around and comes towards us and then passes through the window, taking up most of the hallway.  We watch, paralyzed in fear and wonder and it slowly drifts by and then out through another window.

Neither of us know what is going on, but we decide that it's time to leave and get any remaining kids out too.  The flickering lights from the restroom seem more ominous now in retrospect.

We pick up four kids near the restrooms (the two from earlier and two others that had apparently been there with them) and head out, saying we'll get them home and trying to hide how afraid we are.  Just outside the school's main entrance/exit I find two more kids poking at the blue-painted brick wall as if they are expecting something to happen; like if they find just the right combination of bricks a secret passage might open up.  On any other day I'd write it off as a fun game of imagination, but now the possibility of them being right and finding something terrifies me.  I warn them to stop and be careful what they're looking for, and offer to give them a ride home.

That thirty seconds or so of turning around to address the wall-poking kids is all it takes to lose track of two of my charges.  I catch up with the other teach and she says she thought they were with me.  We send the remaining kids off with some parents who have arrived and go searching for the two missing kids, calling their names and checking my phone to see if they or any of their friends might have posted something on social media about where they might have gone.

The internet is abuzz with stories (and irreverent jokes about memes, movies, and the rapture) about people and objects suddenly getting sucked up into the sky.

Our search lasts the rest of the day without success.  Several times we hear crashing noises and soon after come across statues, cars, lawn furniture, or tree branches that all look as if they have been dropped from a great height.

We expand our search to the nearby woods, despite the sun nearly being down.  In the dark with flashlights, we wander the woods, shouting the names of the missing children.  We don't notice until too late that two trees are actually the legs of some giant entity.  

It chases us.  We run.  It catches the other teacher.  It smashes her head against a rock, painting it red.  I stumble over a large stump and writhing roots emerge from the ground to entangle me and drag me down.  The giant entity catches up with me and the thing within the stump decides it is a better meal.  I am let go and the two kill one another.

I find the two missing kids.  They are scared and scratched up, but ultimately alive and without major injury.

[lesbianlovelanguage]

Look at What You've Done to Me

Greek Mythology AU I've been talking about is officially beginning! Read it on Ao3, or below! Also check out @memes-saved-me AMAZING moodboard that inspired this!

Prologue: Our Gods Have Abandoned Us

He sees flashes of trees and smoke and bodies, swirling before him before it all suddenly just.

Stops.

He’s standing on the precipice of something.

Something wide. Something carnivorous. Something hungry.

He looks down to see he’s standing on the lip of a cliff, listening to the wind howl as it picks up rocks and throws them into the abyss below.

He looks up and he’s standing in a cave full of skulls, they’re eye sockets look angry.

A low vibration begins to shake the cave, and a gravelly voice calls out to him.

A warning.

He’s coming. It’s time. Aidoneus, it’s time to wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP.

Billy scrambled out of his bed before he even registered he was awake. All he felt was the overpowering urge to move. And possibly to throw up.

The cold air shocked him awake though, and the nausea subsided when he started to register where he was.

New room. New house. New town.

He heard the sounds of yelling and the crash of a plate breaking.

Same Neil.

If he was already at the stage of breaking plates, Billy knew he needed to leave. His face was usually Neil’s next target. So, as quietly as he could, Billy opened his window and slipped out into the dark.

He had learned early to always be ready to leave. Living with Neil, it was a necessity. He never slept with his boots off, always had an exit strategy, and knew just where to go to wait out the storm.

It wasn’t until he was standing in the tree line bordering the house that he realized he didn’t know where to go in Hawkins. There was no beach waiting for him. No playful tides. No moonlight making the waves glimmer. Just trees and bugs and shit for miles and miles around. He almost suffocated at the thought, but instead he moved forwards. Things in motion stay in motion.

Still with no clue where to go, Billy let himself wander. Probably not the smartest thing to do in an unknown forest at ass o’clock, but something in his brain told him it would be okay. It would all work out.

Images of his dream circled around his head, and the feeling of being watched started to grow heavier the further he walked. Had the forest been this quiet when he started walking? Had it been this dark? This ominous?

A twig snapped behind him, and he ran as fast as he could, tripping over roots and crashing through the underbrush. It felt like hours before he finally stopped in the middle of a clearing, gasping for breath. His shirt was sticky with sweat that the cool air was quickly drying, and he felt a warm wetness of what had to be blood dripping down the side of his face where a sharp branch had caught his cheek. He turned in a slow circle, looking for any sign of either the monster that had been chasing him or how to get home, but all he saw was the thick ring of trees he had burst out of. Everything was just as dark and quiet as before, as if his frantic dash hadn’t even happened. Everything was dormant, just as one expected it to be with the moon so high.

After a few tense hours, he found a set of abandoned railroad tracks and followed them back to a road, which he was able to navigate back to dear old Cherry Lane.

He didn’t go back into the forest, but the nightmares never stopped.

It’s time. Aidoneus, it’s time to wake up.

—

The forest had always spoken to Steve.

He didn’t know how to explain it. It wasn’t in words, but rather something more primal, more ancient than the English language. Than any language really.

It just was. Somehow.

He used to drive his parents crazy, always babbling to the trees around the house and crying every time they brought him inside the house and away from the nature that called for him to return. Eventually they couldn’t stand it any more, or at least that’s what Steve assumed, as he was passed from nanny to nanny as soon as he was weaned.

He would scare every one of them away because as soon as he could walk, as soon as he could run, he would disappear into the underbrush and hide with the rabbits and squirrels. By the time he was seven, he had gone through every nanny that would make the drive out to Hawkins and no amount of money from his parents could convince them, so Steve was left alone. But it was okay, because he wasn’t truly alone. He still had the forest after all.

As he grew up and learned more about the human world, the forest became his secret hideaway. When he kept failing English because it made no sense, he would hide away and listen to the peace of the forest. When his mom told him Oh Steven, I’m so sorry but the business trip was extended another week, he would retreat and watch how gentle the doe were to their fawns as they wandered on shaky legs. When Nancy called his bullshit, he practically ran towards the trees and screamed for help, even though he didn’t know how he could be helped.

And for seventeen years the forest gave him peace, acceptance he would never find anywhere else, but recently it seemed that the trees were screaming and flowers would die or never even bloom. But he couldn’t figure out why.

He found himself wandering every night, searching for answers as to what was causing the pain, but never finding anything.

Until he saw Billy Hargrove climb out of his Camaro and something deep inside him clicked. He knew the other boy held the answers, the remedy for his forest’s sickness.

And then he actually met Billy Hargrove, and for the first time he doubted his instincts because how could this dickhead help his peaceful, sweet, gentle forest?

Loud. Mean. Angry. Billy Fucking Hargrove.

Savior of the forest? As if.

But then he steps into the forest again, and the screams are so loud, and this time they almost sound like english.

Kore. Persephone. Wake up wake up wake up wakeupwakeupwakeup WAKE UP.

—

Deep underneath an old government laboratory, a crack begins to break in the wall, glowing red. It beats like a heart, deep and heavy thumps echoing throughout the cavern.

A few floors above them, Dr. Brenner feels the building shake and smiles at the little girl sitting in front of him.

“Good job, Eleven. It seems you have fulfilled your higher purpose. You shall be rewarded.”

[antihumanism]

Mein gott, how many times must I say this: that phallus and penis are not the same, the penis (the physical object that exists by accident) is just a metaphor in physically existing flesh form for phallus (the exercise of power in the world), and this is no more more clear than when one considers the fundamental design of this world of individuals from its first inception found separating itself from the primordial stew, building membranes and cell walls that must be pierced by cilia and flagella and so on in order to destroy them and clear space out for oneself, and we’ve also said before and again that the Death Drive predates the sublimation of this thirst for destruction into totally inadequate sexually reproductive mechanisms because it literally could not be more obvious that the moment where one wants to give most what one wants most to receive is the moment of mutual penetration with spears or teeth or flagella or so on, and at this moment I’d like you to imagine me (if you’d so please) having cornered you and with my arms outspread as I gesticulate as if ready to destroy and devour you at any moment, and moving on from that, the flagella (the phallus) retains its central role as a weapon, as a means to inflict oneself upon the world, and this is an irony of Psychoanalysis because Freud’s most misogynistic moment is only the result of falling just a few steps short and failing to go to far enough, when he says that the production of a child is the woman’s replacement for phallus because he is right, but the production of a child is also the father’s replacement for phallus because both of them embody in the child the dreams that they were too chicken to achieve in their life, and these are too be understood as dreams of vengeance and violence, yes, yes, we should all understand ourselves in that way, our bodies and cells and our accompanying microbiota are just violence deferred by past generations and those past generations go all the way back to the first decision to divide in a failed attempt to overcome the world, and this is present everywhere that anything living exists because, well, let us take this moment as an example or perhaps this tree that you can see out the window, and I’ll just ask you to see the tree with me, adorned with brightly colored blossoms, and each one of those blossoms screams out the same thing: “look at me, look at only me, look at only me, let there be only me, let I and I alone exist and cast everything else into the void without mercy” because each of those blossoms on the cherry tree understands the consequences of a single moment of weakness, and it isn’t only the blossoms because it is also the spread of the boughs and leaves designed to snuff out the world beneath them and the fungicides in the roots, and this is the whole of it, total war of all against all on a molecular level dating back to when some DNA or protein molecule figured out how to hijack a peacefully self-replicating RNA molecule and led to the creations of the first fatty acids, and so we find ourself back again where we came from again in the real original sin: the creation of self, and from that moment every atrocity including this one descends; to exist is an act of violence and to deny that is to fail to understand yourself on a molecular level and to lose phallus, because phallus is just that: bacteria use their pilli to inject DNA into one another as an act of aggression that makes the “victim” stronger as they learn the true pattern of the world they inhabit and learn, and memes are just that too, the spread of information which too is an act of violence against the world, and the modern castrated Twitter user attempts to act is if they had ever been victim or spread anything, but they haven’t, they haven’t, they’ve never been through true fire, instead all they have are false appeals to some imagined bad guy that they can’t fight and so they won’t fight, and nothing more clearly demonstrates this than their obsession with the so-third-world-lit-it-hurts garbage fire Children of Men, a story every bit as cum-brained as anything Freud masturbated too, where the final completion of the cellular project being within reach is treated as a terrible thing and the deferment is itself deferred and the conclusion is itself the most dystopian thing possible to be imagined, life venturing away protected by death and returning again and again and again

[lee-mac]

Get to know meme

Tagged by @c-pywrit - thanks!

RULES: Answer 20 questions, then tag 20 bloggers you want to get to know better.

1. NAME: Trix

2. NICKNAMES: well, my mother doesn’t call me “Trix”, so you know. However, I have had more than one person in multiple countries independenty call me “Professor” - I am NOT academic - so I don’t know wtf that’s about (affectionate version of “smug know-it-all” perhaps. The glasses?)

3. ZODIAC SIGN: Cancer. I am not a very typical Cancerian beyond the sideways movement around emotional topics, external shell vs squishy parts inside, and crabbiness. Well, OK then. (Well, no. I don’t care about kids and “domesticity”.) Moon in Scorp, Aries rising, Mercury in Gemini, I can do the whole thing, no, I don’t “believe” in it.

4. HEIGHT: 1.68m - 5′6″

5. LANGUAGES: English - enough French, German and Maori to get a beer or something to eat but not converse much

6. NATIONALITY: NZ - and I’m not “patriotic” as such, but there are worse places, especially rn

7. FAVORITE SEASON: Late summer/early autumn. Maybe there’s a name for those couple of months in other cultures. Harvest time? I like spring in Europe as well, because the way that the flowers and new growth are so dramatic (since I am from a place where the native trees are not deciduous, spring isn’t such a big thing, although it kind of is with the exotic plants in everyone’s gardens. Lots and lots and lots of rain back home in spring tho.)

8. FAVORITE FLOWER: water lilies. And single or formal double camellia blooms (yes, it’s specific, no, don’t know why)

9. FAVORITE SCENT: trees, especially trees that have some kind of resin in them that isn’t too overpowering - a couple of cedars have a slightly unpleasant note. I love most conifers. Birches, etc. Woody herbs like thyme and bay. Spices like nutmeg, clove, cardamom. And this extends to natural extracts of the less intense of those plants - sandalwood, cedarwood, myrrh, even amber (tea tree and eucalyptus extracts are too much). Fresh kauri gum (from the tree) makes me cry. Also, petrichor from rain. Fallen leaves, mature compost. The smell of the bush/forest after it’s been raining, with the wet earth and trees. Oh, and the smell of fire as well. Wood fires, hah. Um, women I’m attracted to (and wrong smell = no attraction).

10. FAVORITE COLOR: black and deep jewel tones, like deep ruby/maroons, indigo, that blue colour on the walls of the Royal Portuguese Cabinet of Reading in Rio, deep foresty greens, even saffron yellow, in little dollops. I don’t like “muddy” colours. 

11. FAVORITE ANIMAL: they’re pretty much all cool in their own ways? You can keep bugs away from me tho.

12. FAVORITE FICTIONAL CHARACTER(s): Root from POI. Shaw. Mercy Thompson. Ripley. Babylon Steele. Nyx. Phèdre de Montrève. Murderbot. Ekaterin Vorkosigan. Commander Shepherd.

13. COFFEE, TEA, OR HOT CHOCOLATE: all. Coffee is my intense love - it has to be good, and too much is too much. (Hot) tea every day. Hot choc for special occasions. I do an awesome alcoholic one.

14. AVERAGE SLEEP HOURS: Too few. Not managing my ADHD very well at present.

15. DOG OR CAT PERSON: Cat person who loves dogs who aren’t too clingy or fluffy or yappy/aggressive (same with cats tbh)

16. NUMBER OF BLANKETS YOU SLEEP WITH: as few as I can get away with - don’t like too much blanket weight. Although I need something on me even in summer (keep your minds out of the gutter).

17. DREAM TRIP: anywhere with trees, water, sunshine and rain in good quantities, and time for books. And some good museums and/or art nearby are bonuses. (Randomly, if you haven’t been to the Bishop Museum in Hawai’i, go)

18. BLOG ESTABLISHED: last year?

19. FOLLOWERS: 40. How did that happen? *waves at all these surprising people*

20. RANDOM FACT: I was conceived in a brothel. My mother announced this fact at our birthday meal (she and I have the same birthday) some years back at a restaurant in front of my (half-)siblings. She was not a sex worker, though.

tagging @bealittlestar(too) @brcauli @zensers @princessroot - apologies to anyone here that’s done it already and I missed it!

[tr33-g1rl]

I don’t know what to tell you,

Which is a shame, because I’m supposed to be good with words.

Yet my mouth is dry and my tongue lays sleeping

In the quiet of this late night turned early morning.

The sky has been dark for many cold hours,

And goosebumps have been present on my skin for even longer,

Yet I refuse to get up and change into warmer clothes,

Because I dare not leave out of fear that you will be gone when I return.

For so long, I sat alone, watching the sky change with the hours.

My skin was covered in everything 

From sunburn and morning dew, 

To icicles and snow.

From new blooms and cool rainwater,

To absolutely nothing at all.

I believe it was the barrenness I despised the most,

For I was a shy youth who used her branches and leaves to hide herself.

Thankfully, my serrated leaves and long branches kept people away;

They would admire my appearance from afar

And comment that I was a quiet girl,

Before moving on to a flashier specimen

(Much to my relief).

However, as I grew, 

I found the distance between myself and others...

Melancholic.

Sorrowful.

Depressing.

Yes... 

Yes. 

It was depressing.

I was depressed.

Depressed and so very alone.

My meals were eaten in silence as I hid behind my branches.

My free time was spent at my tree, hidden from sight.

I was alone, so alone, and I didn’t know how to fix it.

Then one of my branches was cut,

And my tree was cut down.

I had to follow my branch to its new home, 

To make sure that last living part of me stayed alive.

And then it was planted in a new place, a place that scared me.

But now it was my home.

My new home was crowded, but not by many trees. 

Instead, there were lecture halls, labs and dorm buildings,

Restaurants, cafes and bakeries,

Clothing stores, craft shops and bus stops.

I was lost, and more alone than ever.

I couldn’t find help from anyone around me,

Because I was too scared to ask for it.

Instead, I hid behind my branches 

As I waited for my new roots to grow and form.

It was such a delicate situation, 

Because I knew I needed help to grow,

But anyone could have decided to yank me out

And leave me, with withered roots exposed, to die.

I was scared.

Of course I was.

Who wouldn’t have been?

But I couldn’t get my hopes up and let my roots grow,

Only to find they weren’t secure

And the friends I thought I had made left me behind.

So instead, I stayed at my tree, which was now surrounded

By buildings on one side and roads on the other.

I felt so out of place, but I still tried to grow on my own.

It was hard, because I wasn’t used to my new home. 

I was out of place, and it showed.

Even in my classes, I was out of my element.

What I had been good at in my old school, 

I couldn’t seem to do right here.

Every class, every assignment, was a battle,

And I lost each and every one.

The semester was a war,

And I was soundly beat.

I ended up waving a white flag stained with teardrops and raindrops

Before I carried myself back to my tree and wept.

But then I found one of you, 

The selkie who had swam in the same pond as I had been planted near.

I remembered you;

From the sapphire eyes to the pale skin,

The daffodil hair to the grin.

And you remembered me, too.

It was only minutes,

Seconds after you called me into the conference room,

Before I had met so many others.

First I met a sandman that I talked video games with,

Followed quickly by his best friend, a demon,

Who had gone to a catholic school.

Then I met a a faun and a sylph, 

The best of friends who shared a love for memes.

I chatted with a valkyrie who had had hair like wildfire

And a personality to match.

I groaned at the robot’s terrible puns 

And laughed with the vampire and pixie

And talked about nerdy things with the dream fairy.

Before long, my roots were growing strong.

They soaked up the sunlight of all of your collective laughter

And grew in the shade of our movie nights.

I soon began to develop the strong branches I’d had back at home,

But I stopped hiding behind them.

Instead, I now tie them back and proudly show my face,

Even if I have marks or scars or cracking skin or dry lips.

Because now I know that my branches are not to hide behind,

That my tree isn’t my only home.

Now I can raise my voice and speak my mind.

I don’t have to let myself freeze alone on a winter night

Or stay up to study on my own,

Because now, I have friends,

I have a family. 

But I can’t tell you that.

I can’t tell you all that I’ve never had friends I was this close to.

I can’t tell you that you make the pain go away.

I can’t tell you that I’ve cried over the thought of not seeing you again.

None of that can fall from my guarded lips.

Because I know that you don’t expect that of me.

You only know me as the tough one, 

The one who’s gotten in fights,

The one who’s stronger than any challenge 

(Except for anything that tests the mind).

I’m the badass with a smirk and a hyena’s laugh,

The one with a leather jacket and black boots,

The rebel with bad grades who couldn’t care less about their health.

I’m the one who doesn’t give a shit or a damn or a fuck.

...

Or, at least, you all think so.

And I love having that reputation.

So I’m going to let you think that for just a little longer,

Just until I break for the first time in a long time

And I find myself in desperate need of all of you around me

As I live up to my namesake.

But, when that time comes,

My tongue will not stay still.

And though I may have tears flowing like rivers down my face,

Know that I mean it when I tell you all that I love you.

[spamzineglasgow]

(REVIEW) Arboreally Speaking: Amy Todman’s Twig and Katherine Osborne’s Descansos

(‘I have a mind for puzzles but this is final / level for the win’ (Osborne, Descansos 2018, p. 5))

In this review, Rhian Williams compares the arboreal language, sprawling branches, vibrations, snaps and tactility of two rich and generative pamphlets: Katherine Osborne’s Descansos (salo press, 2018) and Amy Todman’s Twig (Amy Todman, 2019).

> When Katherine Osborne tells us that ‘Trees have advanced language.’ (2018, p. 2) Amy Todman might have been listening attentively. Druid-like with her divining rods (to call on a divining rod is to ‘work the twig’), Todman opens her Twig (2019) – a strange, unsettling four-part drama – with the assertions, ‘Twigs are not forming letters / Twigs are not characters’ (‘Act One’, n.p.). And yet, they are mobilised in the service of this intense, visceral engagement with utterance. Todman’s commitment to making her piece open to the communication of stubby branches (‘The Hum of Concordance’, Act 3) calls to mind ancient woody language – the ogham, the Welsh bard Taliesin’s Cad Goddeu – those early models of language as root and branch, as anticipating leafy protuberances, as arboreal mysticism. And yet, Todman’s piece is resolutely calm, steady, grounded (the epigram to Osborne’s collection, from Clarissa Pinkola Estés, perhaps provides some explanation: ‘There is a lot to be said for pinning things to the earth so they don’t follow us around’). At least at first, Todman’s twigs are entirely ‘twiggy’ – sui generis, they are twig; not branches anticipating growth, not decimated tree awaiting kindling, but insouciant objects, confident in themselves – ‘The twig is slender and I enjoy the way it looks, its natural curve and blunt hard end’ (‘Stick Meme’, n.p.). But in Todman’s avant-garde handling, the twigs become forceful conductors of bodily energy: ‘While twig balances page and chest I am contained, point of pressure located’ (‘Stick Meme’, n.p.), suggesting a materiality that feels reiterated in the chapbook’s haptic mise-en-scène of thick, creamy paper enclosed in a laid paper cover that combines digital printing with some kind of hand roughing: spots of pulp-y exposure allow the material’s woody origins to suggest themselves in glimpses that remind me of the fate of a book cover I once left out overnight and was trailed over by slugs. Twig has a seductive, analogue hand feel.

> This piece is odd and enigmatic; tonally it feels almost anarchic in its provocations – sad, absurd, funny, ominous. Each of Twig’s four acts begins with exposition – including quasi stage direction – in prose before slowly splaying out into ‘scenes’ of experimental poetics that utilise space and layout to create spare formations that suggest a kind of released breath in relation to the tight, pressurised scenes of poetic labour. For Twig seems (at least to me) to be a drama of expression. Its movements oscillate between an intense scene of domestic privacy and the seemingly public space of the theatre; its protagonists are a poet and a twig, bound together as bridge, and the twig and lettering, caught in a drama of takeover. In this absurdist theatre, humans (or at least, ‘characters’; I understand the pun here on person in a play and a written letter to be intentional) contort to manipulate twigs on threads, only to be eviscerated from the scene by Act Two as ‘The twigs are untethered and still’, leaving just a struggling voice that falters through letters that have been described in sticks and circles: ‘The stick is part of this descriptive process but we are not sure how’ (‘One Twig, One Edge’, n.p.). By Act Three the twigs are losing their material integrity: dissolving into letter sounds, losing their edge, ‘There is no twig’ (‘What Has Twig?’, n.p.) and at this point of dissolution we understand that ‘twig and human move closer, or human is closer to twig’ (ibid.).

> In this drama of mutability, even metamorphosis, the twigs are overtaken by letters in sticks and circles; before this, Twig has probed in its short, curious interludes the twig’s relationship to line, to words, and to curves, but concludes ‘A line that circles is not a twig’ (‘Words For’). All this is staged in relation to the private scene of effort that is the poet’s heroic struggle to write at the kitchen table, where ‘The twig is a bridge between body and table and I am careful with the pressure on my chest’ (‘Stick Meme’, n.p.). Here the effort of writing is dramatized as the poet moves the twig to inscription, awkward and unsteady always, and deeply breathing through restriction (one feels the breath of ancient lyric utterance in this piece’s respiratory poet machine). The deliberate setting up of barriers, obstacles (in the text’s own terms, awkwardnesses), wilfully works at revelation, intensity, or some kind of excavation of the act of writerly expression: ‘My movements are stilted and the words come with slow violence, attention beyond the capabilities of computer keyboard or pen’ (Stick Meme, n.p.). The piece is too physical to be nostalgic, but it certainly evokes the histories of writing, of ancient processes and poses the quality of their manifestation in the digital present as some kind of question.

> Act Four’s soft, gentle, wetting rain, when it finally comes, feels like an irrigation… or a flood; the kind of rain that the chapbook itself perhaps has been left out in, following its touch-driven logic. And so Twig’s absurdist theatricality dramatizes a coming to language – earlier there was ‘Release        soft as butter’ (‘The Edge of My Body Where I Write’, n.p.) – with all the ambiguity of the theatre’s space’s intersection of subjectivity with spectacle. The murmurings and stutterings of the text gather together in the final exquisite line, ‘It is a fine rain of the uncertain forming of shapes in the mouth of the narrator’ (‘Twigs Are Not’, n.p.). I feel I have been through a drama myself, through an effort of comprehension. This perplexing, probing piece worries at the act of writing – William Carlos Williams’ famous maxim that ‘the poem is a machine made of words’ is refigured as visceral commitment: ‘my body / a machine that breathes’ (‘Dead Wood’, n.p.). Gesturing at the langue/parole dyad through its generic modes of drama and lyric, Twig engages dialectics of abstraction/materiality; community/individual; expressed/repressed. I’m not entirely sure what this strange piece looks to stage, what it mourns, what it divines, but I found myself caught on its branches.

> Twig foregrounds methodology, taking us through the active processes that might allow us to discern ‘Fallen lines and heavy human traces’ (‘The Hum of Concordance’, n.p.). For Osborne such traces have already been marked; the poet’s work, as intimated in Descansos’s recurring motifs of communication, is to notice the markings and to tune into the presences that endure to accompany all our wanderings. Named for the small shrines of tokens that mark sites of sudden death, often at roadsides, Descansos is a collection of lyrics – some prose poems, many more fragmentary, but still left-aligned pieces – that register as aftermaths, as records of anguished grief, hot-tempered responses to deadening methods of assimilation (‘Take me to your Research Team. I will give them. Evidence’, p. 2), as insistences on the persistence of spirit, of the potency of portals (arboreal again):

           Your tree is out loud & the party

           going on is a disappearing act /

           is the portal

           we can afterlife through (p. 19)

> Despite its more apparent occasion, and its leading trope of visually enshrined memorialising, Osborne’s collection too is indirect and enigmatic in its method. Descansos is preoccupied by ways of knowing, by epistemology; littered with tokens of correspondence (dreams, telephones, omens ) and processes of attunement (vibrations, magical thinking, automatic writing, spirit guides, Shaman), the collection is in a continual, sometimes-disorientating, process of discerning, channelling, conducting: ‘I am driving. Divining a message / from the hearse in front of me’ (p. 12). In this commitment to engaging the unsaid, the buried, the suppressed, the lifeworlds beneath contemporary accounting, Descansos feels like a collection for our times. To read it is to join with its commitment to storytelling, to swerve with its movements between narration and lyric expression, and to listen as command of the lyric ‘I’ shifts between voices, speaking from now, speaking from before, insisting on ontological disruptions: ‘I was an astronaut showing up at the funeral. I was lava pouring down into the village’ (p. 14).

> Perhaps most strikingly, this is a collection that engages – complexly, sometimes covertly, sometimes overtly – with the work of reckoning with America’s colonial-settler past and present, its status as stolen land. We are confronted with frontiers, with the landscapes of capture and extermination – Omaha, ‘gateway’ to the West, the Great Plains on fire – and with the violences that mark the distinctions between animals as companion/spirit species, the stolen cattle, those being ‘meadowed / to death’ (p. 16), and those mere simulacra in New York apartments: ‘where there / are no animals, just pictures of the / animals in calendars sold half price’ (p. 16). The scene is post-industrial (‘Oil fields up in smoke’, p. 1; ‘on a planet being mined to death’, p. 13; ‘I sign to the crops that alibi the pesticides driven into their lyric’, p. 14) and not post-colonial enough (‘Drums are circling / with this Message’, in ‘(Biloxi, MS)’, p. 16, historical site of civil rights activists swimming in resistance, and location of a memorial for those lost in Hurricane Katrina). In this way, Osborne weaves an intense sense of personal quests for reassurance, for answers, for explanations – relationships with a missing mother, an appetite for learning that teeters into a distracting voraciousness (‘I can only pay attention if I think / it has to do with me’, p. 19) – with the maddening effects of a nation’s disregard for the duty of acknowledgement, reparation, repair. The earthy contents – fire, animal, woods, water – in relation with Descansos’s beautiful cover art of constellations, seems determined to focus, even if unevenly and mysteriously, America’s relationship with territory, the dysfunction of its relationship with space (both terrestrial and ET).

> As with Todman’s Twig, Osborne’s Descansos – like all the best poetry – does not determine its contexts entirely, does not restrict its vibrational affects. Both texts seem intent on the intensity of poetry as a means of enquiry, as a ‘way into’ something, as a tool for both enigma and expression. In its offering of itself as a series of Latinx shrines, Descansos points abstrusely to the missing, to the lacunae (all too material in the numbers of missing persons from Native communities in North America), to the exterminations and evaporations of American history. To the stuttering analogue tapes of record (the grammar of penultimate stops in the prose-poem sentences makes this textual), Descansos draws our attention, asks us to: ‘Rewind. I know nothing at the beginning and. Here. Pause the video. Did you catch that? The start of knowing’ (p. 8); we are compelled to advance. And yet the collection is ominous, foreboding, anthropocenic. The archer draws back the string, the arrow quivers, the horses hooves thunder. And still we are drunk on certainty, on mapping:

With some laughter between

           Trees we map with all I know

           About trees

           A boat could rescue us

           So we go deeper into the woods

                                               (p. 13)

I sense Todman listening again. Somewhere a twig is cracking.

~

Amy Todman, Twig, Chapbook, 32pp, edition of 100 (Amy Todman, 2019)

Katherine Osborne, Descansos, 32pp (salo press, 2018)

~

Text: Rhian Williams

Images: Salo Press/Amy Todman

Published: 5/6/20

[godsfavoriteasian]

Thoughts only High AF people wonder

*Hits blunt* *thinks of weird things and questions* (honestly one of my favorite memes!) WArningz!!!!1 long list is long!!! High AF thoughts/questions: - Is the color orange named after the fruit orange, or is the orange fruit named after the color? - Why is it called "apartments" if they're built together? - Bro why are babies in the womb for 9 months but ain't 9 months old when they're born? - Is it called "sand" because it's between the land and sea? - If I hit myself and it hurts, am I weak or strong? - If nothing is impossible then is it possible for something to be impossible? - Bruh...who put the alphabet in order? - Every book you ever read is just a remix of the same 26 letters over and over again. - "Bologna" and "pony" rhymes, despite the completely different spelling. - Do clothes in China say "Made around the corner" or some shit? - Who closes the bus door after the bus driver gets off? - Bruh...how did the niggas who made the first clock knew what time it was? - If it only costs 80 cents to feed kids on TV, why is child support so damn expensive? - Why is the pizza box square if the pizza comes in a circle, and a slice is a triangle? - If you put weed in a high school vents, it is indeed a HIGH school. - Who delivers the mailman's mail? - Why do kamikaze pilots wear helmets if they know they gonna not survive? - If we can drink a drink, can we food a food? - Today is the oldest you've ever been, but also the youngest you'll ever be again. - At one point in time, you held the world record of being the youngest thing in existence.   - First man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. His name backwards in Neil A... = Alien!!! - If we can't see air, can fish see water? - Is the C or S silent in "scent"? - Try to explain the difference between "right" and "left" without using the words "right" or "left". - If Nike is pronounces as "Nikee", why isn't bike pronounced as "Bikee"? - Bruh, what if Soy Milk is just regular milk introducing itself in Spanish? - Would a fly without wings be called a Walk? - The following statement is true: the previous statement is false. - Isn't it weird that we all have this little voice in our head, like the one you used to read this? - What color is a mirror?? - Combine Hillary's and Bill's names together and you get "Hillbilly". - If money is the root for all evil, why do they ask for it in church? - What water taste like? - What air taste like?! - If people with only one arm gets a manicure, do they get half price? - How come our noses run but our feet smell? - If Apple made a car, would it still have windows? - If 55 is "fifty-five" and 44 is "forty-four", shouldn't 11 be "onety-one?" - If I crash my car on purpose, is it still considered an accident? - If you're waiting for the waiter aren't you the waiter? - Why's it called a building when it's already build?? - If I erase a word with an eraser where does it go...? - If an illegal immigrants fought off a child molester, would it be Alien vs Predator? - If you're born deaf, what language do you think in? - If Cinderella's shoe fit perfectly, why'd it fall off? - If you tell a homeless man to go home where does he go? - Are leaves on a tree called "leaves" because they leave the tree? - Who taught the first teacher? - History class will just get longer and harder as the years go by. - The 2016 Presidential elections will be remembered as the most bat-shit insane election ever.   - If two vegans are debating, is it still considered "beef"? - What if rocks are actually soft, but they tense up when you touch them? - If showers make us clean, how come towels become dirty? - If soap touched the ground, is the ground clean or is the soap dirty? - What if someone died in the living room? - Is the ocean salty because the land never waves back? - If a person is born blind and they had a dream, can they see it? - If you believe in reincarnation, would your tombstone say R.I.P or B.R.B? - If an alligator wore a vest, would that make him an investigator? - We use flavors to describe people. - If two right-handed people killed each other, who's left? - Buying a bigger bed gives you more bed room, but less bedroom. - "Never odd or even" is the same forwards as it is backwards. - True blue fireworks are next to impossible to create; yoU CUNTLORD BLUE FIREWORKS!!! - if I try to fail and succeed, which one did I do? - Why's it called a "cold" if your temperature goes up; shouldn't it be a "hot"? - Why's there's no B batteries? - Is it possible to think of a new color?

[bittcrglory]

✤ w/ joan !!!

—  SEND ME ✤ FOR A SHIP MEME !

below the cut !

who laughs when the other trips?

joan, probably because indiana asked her  ❛ is it rEALLY bad luck if you step on the cracks in the sidewalk, , , ❜ and completely freaked out at one point when she dID because joan told her it was like ?? 10yrs bad luck FOR SURE to step on a crack. but indiana is just, , naturally clumsy and joan just finds it amusing at the amount of stuff she manages to do tbh. indiana on the other hand would nevER laugh at joan if he tripped, , ,she’s already run off to get 2000 ice packs because of that Motherly Smothering™

who pays the bills?

neither?? or, , i guess indiana just a bIT more but like ? i definitely wouldn’t trust her with the responsibility to pay the bills tbh she’s forgetful and hoRRIBLE w/money. and anyway, everytime she sits down to deal w/ all that paperwork and bills ?? joan drags her away, because responsibility?? Not Important. it’s boring adult stuff and joan will not stand for it.

which one makes a bigger deal around the holidays?

indiANA. she doesn’t care how much joan hates christmas sweaters, , ,it’s Happening. joan is ok with it but, the Indiana Version of the holidays is. . unbearable…and indi is less freaked out by things when she’s distracted by being festive ?? Not Fun. but still…  * joan voice * the spirits don’t like the way you wrapped that present, indiana do it again.

who’s more clumsy?

what sort of question is this, indiana for sure. joan is a Slick Fox

who checks their daily horoscope?

both. indiana checks hers on a weekly basis because ?? what if she misses her calling?? she needs to know what week is the Best to find her next future husband ?? joan checks anyway for her ~business~ but she makes sure to check up on indi’s sign just for new ways to razz her up. joan’s gonna be there like ❛ i mean it’s up to u but ur horoscope wasn’t lookin’ too shabby this week. ❜ and u can beT indiana is gonna take all of joan’s advice because?? she’s a professional at this stuff, why shOULDN’t she.

who sings louder in the car?

joan ! she usually starts it since she controls all the music choices and indiana ?? is just the driver, mainly because she doesn’t trust joan’s driving ok even though her oWn driving is pretty shifty. joan ends up yelling most of the lyrics and bursting indiana’s eaRDRUMS with the volume but it’s ok because she likes when joan is happy.

who leaves the cap off the toothpaste?

joan, because why put the cap back on if you’re just going to have to unscrew it in the morning?? you’re saving like, , ,5 seconds of your life you could put to good use if you just, , ,Don’t screw the cap back on.

who is more up to date in pop culture?

i mean?? joan understands pop culture more than indi does, and isn’t as enthusiastic abt it as indiana is. ig joan is just, , more knowledgeable with it ?? more chill ?? not gonna’ throw a hissy if a certain actor didn’t get the part like somEONE ELSE WOULD.

who insists on going to see the newest movies?

indiana. tho ?? she’s a major chic-flick lover and joan is more adventure/thriller/horror?? so there’s alwayS an argument whenever indiana wants to drag joan to the movies.

who cries when the abused animal commercials come on?

indiana. a real sobber. i feel like joan would just get uncomfortable and then try and change the subject/channel ?? 

who’s the lighter sleeper?

neither. i feel like they’re pretty comfortable about each other that they just sleep easily?? there’s trust there ok but like, , in terms of who would Probably wake up quicker if there was an attack or s/t?? joan. indiana is completely deAD to the world when she’s asleep. 

who believes in ghosts?

tbh joan has a better understanding on all this spiritual stuff but ?? indiana is truly TERRIFIED of it. joan pulls out the ouija board?? and indiana already has the sage out and wants to d e s t r o y that piece of Evil. the ghosts can be left alone thank u, leave them be and joan won’t have to detach indiana from the ceiling.

who does the grocery shopping?

indiana. but in saying that, the only time indi’s house ever has good snacking stuff is when joan goes grocery shopping too, sO.

who updates their facebook status more often?

i say joan just because she’s the youngin’ & i imagine her being the person on fb who has all the good Memes and #RelatableContent ?? indiana is more the annoying instagramer who posts photos of her flowERS with cheesy daily quotes and too many selfies. 

[seekingnomad-blog]

Homo Mathematicus

The soul as a sphere in equilibrium: not grasping at things beyond it or retreating inward. Not fragmenting outward, not sinking back in itself, but ablaze with light and looking at the truth, without and within.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 11.12 The world is how it´s always has been: neverending, everchanging, and yet oddly static. Whether it is the essence or the manifestation that changes, I do not know. It doesn´t matter right now. To me, at least. Tonight I don´t care about the specifics of change and stasis, but about how the way we look at the world is evolving.

The world used to be a place full of magic. Or rather, people used to see the world as a place full of magic. A magical place, even, created by gods, corrupted by demons, inhabited by spirits. A world in which apotropaic magic kept us safe from the horrors that lurked in the night, in the forests, in the waters, in the air itself.

But today we look at the world and we see something different. We see things. Numbers. Everything around us is being explored, analized, tested, catalogued and carefully archived. This effort began very, very long ago, even though it´s been accelerating at an absurd rate since the Age of Enlightenment. A trip to nowhere and everywhere at the same time. And it´s changing us. The world isn´t a magical place anymore. It is a roughly 4.5 billion years old planet with a circumference of roughly 40.000 kilometers that revolves around this one particular star 365.256 times per year. The walls of the city aren´t sacred anymore, but a X kilometers long ruin made of stone and mortar. The night isn´t dark anymore. We light up the world and forced the darkness to retreat away, into the sky. When was the last time you saw the stars? It´s been a while since I spotted any. And what happened to the horrors that lurked in the night? And those in the forests and waters? They´re gone too. There´s no space for them anymore, because now the light fills everything, and no shadow can stand against the encompassing light. They must retreat farther away, deeper into the heart of the 20.163 hectare forest of whitebeams and oaks and pine trees and conifers, located 1919 meters over sea level on ground created during the Cenozoic and Paleozoic periods and populated by a sadly decreasing list of specific animals species that I won´t develop now because I think you already got the point.

Is this good? I´d argue that people no longer being scared of demons eating their souls if they go outside at night is a good thing. As is medicine, technology, knowledge in general - pitfalls aside.

But it wasn´t that long ago (at least on a historic scale) that two friends who went for a walk in the park could suddenly stop to improvise some poems about this or that old tree. Nowadays there´s this perception that poetry is something that comes from deep in the soul of an inspired poet - but poetry has always been a rather public thing. Something to be shared. Educated people in Ancient times used to compose and recite poetry when meeting their friends. Still in the XVIII And XIX centuries we find plenty of public poetry and literature and sharing in general.

But not anymore. I believe that the World Wars are partially at fault. The world was too busy for poetry and songs - even though I´d argue that´s when they were needed the most. There´s plenty of poetry from that time, but it is of a more private sort. Sad, harsh, painful. I knew a simple soldier boy Who grinned at life in empty joy. Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, And whistled early with the lark.

In Winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum, He put a bullet through his brain. No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye Who cheer when soldier lads march by, Sneak home and pray you´ll never know The hell where youth and laughter go.

-Siegfried Sassoon, Suicide in the Trenches Not the kind of stuff you´d just start reciting out of the blue in a park.

But still, there´s more to that than a couple generations being mutilated, traumatized, and generally kept busy rebuilding their world. During the last century, coupled with the turn towards materialism, globalization, industry, and the absolutely BRUTAL acceleration of progress and technological development*, our culture has taken a sharp turn towards Mathematics. *(Someone could have been a cheeky teenager or early in their 20s during 1903 and laughed at those fools who claimed they could build a machine to fly in, and still be alive to watch the retransmission of the first men walking on the Moon. Take a second to think how they must have felt remembering their childhood, in which the idea of flying at all was something between a dream and a joke) And this is where I wanted to get. This is not about poetry. It´s about math. The world is crazy about math. Everything is quantified. And while we can light a lamp at night and find comfort in its light and warmth, when a whole city, a whole country, the whole world turn on their lights… The darkness is vanquished, yes, but at what price? I miss the stars.

There is one big problem with the human nature, and that is that we´re not good at sticking to the middle path. People tend to stay still and never move, no matter how unhappy they are being stuck in old, harmful traditions; or they rush forwards with an unstoppable thirst for more knowledge, for new ideas and new traditions, no matter how many good things they leave behind of break in the way. What drives us to explore the world is that we don´t know it. And the more we know it, the more we find that we don´t know - but those unknown parts are deeper and deeper every time. For the average person, most of the world has already been explored. They don´t have neither the formative background neither the interest required to care about WHY does this very specific aspect of this or that field behave the way it does. As far as they can see, things make sense. The mystery of the world is gone. All there´s left to do is to wait until the next breakthrough so there´s something to be amused about, even if just for a little while.

And the explorer go on and on, always looking for those new breakthroughs. Because that´s what explorers do: they keep going, always hoping to find more. And with their rain of information they desensitize themselves, desensitize everyone else to the beauty that´s already there, because all the eyes are already placed on the next thing. There´s two trends I see here that I like, though. The first one is that the new generation seems to be back to the old roots. Most of them are removed enough from the great wars that none of their living relatives were directly involved. There´s been time for wounds to heal. Internet memes, often quickly disregarded as the lowest tier of… whatever, are actually a form of expression. They are a new birth of the old habit of spontaneously breaking out in poetry. Different on the surface, definitely, but ultimately the same thing: an act of personal creativeness that combines something from the world with your own vision, and is shared freely with others. The comparison might seem odd, or even absurd. You might be tempted to say that the old poetry was valuable and memes are quick fading crap. But cut them some slack, will you? They´re recovering a very important part of our culture that has been forgotten for generations. People three centuries ago grew up watching other people, who had grew up watching other people, etc. The craft improves with time and through generations. Kids nowadays are rebuilding the habit from the ground up. And covering it with a layer of absurdism and cynicism that´s very fitting to the current world climate. It must be quite confusing to be 15 nowadays. Politics made little sense to me when I was 15, and back then they DID make some sense. Trying to puzzle the pieces together to understand how the world works nowadays must be a maddening challenge.

The second one is that the world seems to be recovering a bit of that wonder. We´re turning everything into math, but we are using that math to find more beauty. While the world is speeding up, it is also slowing down, in a way.

And while the schism with the old world -the old customs, old traditions, old values- maybe be more and more inevitable as capitalism and marketing replace everything we used to hold dear, I see that a new world is formed. A new old world. Different. With its own customs, traditions, values. Not the ones we´ve had for centuries, but new ones. When 1 and 1 meet and combine themselves, they become 11. And no 1 knows which 1 it is anymore, but they´re both the same, although different. And with time, they merge into a single entity: 2. New. Different. A global world in which individual traditions are forgotten. And while some might call that chaotic mix a mess (and they´re not wrong), I think there´s also beauty in the amalgam of cultures that will, if everything goes right, last a very long time. Until the next major schism between past and future which, like the one we´re going through right now, will likely be caused by technological advancement, and hopefully not but maybe also war, or some other major catastrophe. Maybe it´ll come when we spread through the stars, if we ever reach that point. And the world goes on. Neverending, ever-changing, and oddly static.

Isn´t it beautiful? Our inward power, when it obeys nature, reacts to events by accommodating itself to what it faces – to what is possible. It needs no specific material. It pursues its own aims as circumstances allow; it turns obstacles into fuel. As a fire overwhelms what would have quenched a lamp. What´s thrown on top of the conflagration is absorbed, consumed by it – and makes it burn still higher.

-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 5.1

[jeremyhechtsblog-blog]

All Roads Lead Home

I wake up in the place that I have called home for the past three months. My bedside fan is blowing loudly and the sun is creeping through my window. I’m not sure if I just woke up from a long dream, or if I’m still dreaming. I open my blind and see palm trees. I smile. They are a reminder of where I am and how much work it took to get here. All of the years I put into this, whether I knew what I was working towards at the time or not. The strange sensation of the unknown creeps into my mind as I think about how far I’ve come and what the future holds. But a simple breath reminds me of the present moment. 

I get a text from my mom telling me to give myself some time to get settled in. I remember the first blog post I ever wrote and what I was thinking. I was nervous and put a lot of pressure on myself to succeed. I missed my friends and family back home and had really no clue what I was doing out here. Then I started writing my thoughts down. People started reading. I started growing and learning. I’m so thankful.

I look through my little notebook of wisdom that I always carry on me. Ever since I saw my Zaida write in his a few years back, I started carrying one around and writing down little quotes and goals. I wrote down a list of my 5 year goals a year ago and I re-read them for the first time. Two of them were: meet my idols. Have my idols tell me I’m dope. I check those both off the list. I have so many other goals written down and so many new ones that I’ve made over the last year. Talk about what you want to do. The law of attraction is real. The secret is real. And the universe will guide you. But all roads lead back home. So I headed on a snowy path back to my hometown. Here are some of my thoughts going back to my city.

The past three weeks have been amazing. Relaxing, cleansing and motivating. For the holidays I went back to my hometown. A place I like to call Win City but many other people like to call Winterpeg. The place that raised me. The people that know me. The city I love. Winnipeg, Manitoba.

“My smiles don’t result from good things, they result IN good things. I only leave to show you it’s possible. To turn ideas from a notebook into real life. To show you that if this normal kid from Michigan can be living his dreams. Then maybe you can too.

And that’s why it’s important, that we ALWAYS return home.”

-       Mike Posner

I’m sitting on my computer in my parents’ basement. It’s technically my room – well, my old room, but since I’m not paying rent I’m gonna call it my parents’. I’m watching old YouTube videos and Mike Posner says that quote in his song “Top of the World.” I may not be from Michigan but it feels really relevant. I’ll use that one in my next blog post, I think to myself.

Being home feels weird. It feels like nothing has changed. And maybe nothing has changed. Same people, same friends, same bars, same negative 20 weather. But still, something feels different.

I go to the gym to play ball with my old friends Jonny, Stephen and Ben. I go to the bar with my high school friends Griff, Shael, Dan, Ben, Benj and Ethan and we have too many tequila shots. Then I talk about life with Griff and we reflect on the year that has passed. I play a few games of 2k with my buddy Kerr where we had to score at least 25 points with our most washed up player. Mine was Meta World Peace.. he struggled to get 25 in a triple-overtime thriller and lost to Anthony Bennett. I get a McFlurry, play Madden (losing most games) and watch movies with my man Justin but I end up choosing the wrong kind of McFlurry. I’ll know for next time. I play 2k and watch The Office with my brother Brendan and make (what I think to be hilarious) memes with my sister Alexa. I go for a drink at Timothy’s with my boy Jared for one of our specialty coffee drinks and catch up at Ordnry with the boys there. I have good taIks with my friends Roger and Myazwe about music and life and with an old friend from philosophy Alexandre about the future and settling into a new place. I go for coffee with an old girl and for drinks with a new girl. I have pizza from Little Pizza Heaven and I reminisce on old times. I watch TV and have some drinks with my dad while we relax and enjoy some of the best food in the world – my mom’s home cooking while we talk about my girl situations. I love my family so much and it was amazing to spend time with them. So much food I think I’m still full. I do a lot of the things that I would have done a year ago. I stay up until 4:30 and wake up at 12. Now it’s time to go back to my second home. LA.

I learned a few things while I was in Winnipeg and I thought I would share them with you. So many random people came up to me over the course of my break and told me how much my last blog post affected them in a positive way or how much they needed to hear what I was writing. Thank you to everyone who keeps reading. I will continue to provide to you as much value as I can as we grow together.

Lessons Learned:

1) You need people who love you unconditionally in your life. They are important to your growth. 

Everyone has someone who will love them unwaveringly, regardless of their flaws, but also regardless of their successes. I am proud of everything that I have accomplished, but I don’t want any sort of success to change the way people perceive me. More importantly, I don’t want it to change the way I perceive myself. And that’s why it’s important to have people in my life who keep me grounded and remind me who I have always been. These people can be your family, an old teacher, forever friends or an old co-worker. Just keep these people close, because in order to keep pushing forward and growing, you need your roots to be watered.

2) People never really change, and sometimes you outgrow people.

In the same way that it’s important to have the people surrounding you who love you unconditionally, you have to have enough love for yourself to let people go who are not bringing anything positive into your life. It’s always hard for people to let go of someone who has been around for a long time. Someone who they may have grown up with or considered a good friend, but sometimes you outgrow people. And maybe some people outgrow you. It isn’t something to take personally, just a truth in life. 

There are people who I once would have spent a lot of time with, but at this point in our lives, we are just at different places. It can be an old relationship, an old friend or family member, but there are just some people I need to let go of for my own sake. It’s nothing personal and it’s still all love when we see each other, I’m just not going out of my way for anything that may bring me down.

3) Make sure everyone in your life brings something positive to you and adds to your happiness

There are a lot of people who I could have chosen to spend my time with while in the city, over the course of my three weeks there, but I really only spent time with people who mattered most to me. The people who have unconditional love for me and support me in everything I do. Everyone in my life brings something positive to it. Maybe that’s selfish, but I think in terms of my own happiness I am allowed to be selfish. So are you. That doesn’t mean treating people poorly, it just means finding extra time for those who matter most. Some people bring a laugh when I need it, some people bring insight about life, others just calm me down or excite me when I need those emotions. But regardless, everyone who is in my life plays a role. 

Think about the people in your life as your own personal board of directors. Would you want random people on the board who have nothing to contribute? No. You want everyone sitting up there to have a unique role in your operation. Everyone on my team contributes to my success in some way. And I’m so thankful for all of you. You know who you are.

4) Be careful who you share your dreams with

“Fake Love” by Drake was in my headphones a lot over the break. 

“They smile in my face, whole time they wanna take my place. I can tell the love is fake. I don’t trust a word they say.” 

Coming back from a place where so much is happening to a place where a lot is the same, there are going to be a lot of people who either try to hop on your bandwagon when they see potential, or who try to tear you down. Either way, I don’t show much attention to those people.

Me and my friends Eidan and Griffin were out for a drink and Eidan mentioned that the city we’re from is a place of complacency. Where people are okay with how it is and always has been, so when someone is doing something different, it scares people and they try to bring you down. I think that’s true. That night I was also talking about how I only share my dreams and goals with people who react positively to what I’m trying to do. If people get jealous, try to turn the conversation to them or don’t care then I won’t continue to share. Only real love

5) Don’t Chase People

I live by a two-strike rule. I will ask someone to hang out or meet or work together or whatever the case may be, twice. If they say they can’t the first time around but suggest another time or date then cool I’m with it. If not, then I won’t bother asking again. If they cancel on the rescheduled meeting, then I will not ever ask them to do something again. You can’t be close with everyone. So don’t chase the people who don’t care enough to see you. Spend your time with the people who do. And sometimes the timing just isn’t right, but that doesn’t mean things won’t happen for you in the future. Just pay attention to the signs that the universe shows you, as always.

I am about to go eat the French Toast that John made and I could not be more excited for the future and the present moment. I hope you have an incredible week and I’ll talk to you soon. Thank you for reading. Blessings and love your way.