#ang.lade

[windupantenna]

[video at the end of post. one video omitted due to tumblr post limits]

sometimes so much is speaking to me that i am overwhelmed: not in the sense of being at loss for words, but out of awe at the sheer power of something i can feel but hardly comprehend. how could so much speak so powerfully? how could i possibly understand everything that is there before me? it’s like gazing at the grand canyon, carved across histories beyond any human memory, holding memories of the earth itself. how could a single being cup the ocean in their hands?

today was such a day. children of the earth, songs of the sky; birds and wind, thunder and lightning, sunshine and hail. my name - both of them; and a song that struck as i found what i was looking for:

“i’m like a bird, i’ll only fly away

i dont know where my soul is

i dont know where my home is”

and a healer i found, on as simple a place as this app, who gives tattoo rituals, a ceremony of the soul and its ancestors. a gift far beyond art. the healing i’ve sought that could understand the promise i’ve made, that i will continue to make.

i’m still in shock at how loud these things spoke, and deeply grateful they made sure i heard them. that i can hear, at all.

i’ve never seen a rainbow from end to end, and i saw it the throughout my journey home from an eye-opening acupuncture session. i don’t know what caught the camera’s lens in the last photo, but i certainly caught my breath when i saw it flash in the live photo. my mom said perhaps it’s my guardian angel, i said it could have been a branch; last night a tiktok said cats could be spirit guides, and today i remembered the conversation with my father where someone else was present. thank you for being here. i think you came the night i received a new name.

__

notes

(the healer i speak of is @julz.bolinayen. they have an article posted today that was transformative for me to read; perhaps their story and practice may speak to you, too)

(ava means “like a bird,” and anglade means something that i am still discovering for myself. i think it may be from the ocean or the rain, which comes from the sea)

posted March 10th, 2021 to @ang.lade

[windupantenna]

“It’s my confidante.”

In the words of one of my favorite characters, Anglade from Children of the Sea, language can be “a dying antenna,” an attempt to capture the world in words as one could scoop the sea into their hands in an attempt to hold the ocean.  But language can also be transformed into something bigger than itself: poetry.  It is a human art, among the ranks of birdsong and beehives, that “has always represented the world richly.“

My intentions for this blog fall somewhere between these two dichotomies of language.  I know I can never come to a full understanding of anything, nor dare attempt to contain it in words; nonetheless, by expressing what comes naturally to me, I can bumble my way to some approximation of truth.  Somewhere between the lines I’ll find poetry.  Or maybe it’s the poetry that finds me...

Language may be an imperfect antenna, but like the wind-up music box is to Anglade, it is also my confidante.

So -- welcome to this little wind-up blog.  I hope the music that plays makes it well worth staying through the distortions by the antenna I’ve chosen.

For now, I’m going to focus on reposting my written works from other locations.  The beta blog for this site was actually my journal Instagram @ang.lade, which was a great place to start publishing my thoughts but ultimately not a viable platform for my goals moving forward. I also have many entries from my physical journals that I’ve often thought of publishing (some of which have already made it to that Instagram) that I may add here.

Any reposted work will be tagged by year and listed in a masterpost archiving my work by the originally written date (since Tumblr’s archive functions by post date).  Eventually, the masterpost will also be organized by criteria such as theme or post type.

Once I’ve uploaded all my Instagram posts and a handful of handwritten journal entries, I’ll begin posting original work here.  I’d like it to be a good mix of poetry, photography, journal entries, reviews of media I’m watching/reading, and analytical discussions and other posts of a more academic tone.  This blog will be a living, breathing collection of my thoughts.

[windupantenna]

the sun is

perhaps

a siren

its heat can kill

burned leaves on the tips of trees

but something about its memory

and the succumbing to the stinging

of hot aired wind on exposed skin

is comforting

summers spent in late afternoon peaks

sweating from exertion

and the unforgiving heat

made lukewarm water and scant shade

all the more sweet

my childhood

days spent worrying less about what was felt

and more about simply feeling

something about the season

of contrasts between

unyielding heat

and icy AC

the shock of it, going inside

when my young skin was so used to the burning

like a cat leaving your lap

and in its place a cold glass

but the entire time you had to pee

so it’s good, i guess

well, it was

when hot meant colder.

i hide in the privilege of inside

while everything left behind tries not to die

summer once had reprieve

in its end, but even then

its reign has reached

the other seasons.

they hardly survive.

i am lucky to be alive.

it will only get worse from here

but leaving is not my greatest fear

i was raised in seasons

when leaves fell in color

and spring meant rain

and the sweat of summer

froze when the next year came

i was raised in a valley

where the sun turned hills gold

rather than a vivid green

if i were to flee

i would feel guilty of denying

something i couldnt admit

i’d miss.

but it can kill, too:

a siren’s love,

or

a californian’s

catch twenty-two

posted September 6th, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

content warning: i address a lot of very heavy things in this poem, so please take care before continuing. this has been a work of several days’ worth of writing and rewriting that began with me reading something i really was not in a place to read; and though i did end up with a work i’m quite proud of, i don’t exactly want it to happen to you.

also, the title of this pertains to a very important part of curanderismo (traditional mexican folk medicine): the thirteen airs. from anguista (anxiety) to susto (shock, trauma), they blow through all of existence, plants and animals and humans alike; through them we are gifted the opportunity to learn great lessons about life… and ourselves. we become unwell when these aires get stuck within us, whether because they have no way out, or because we have grown attached to them. i still have so much to learn, but i know the things i have been working through, in both life and this poem, have come from the aires. this is my way of thanking them, serenading them, really, as i watch them go. so i hope… it’s been a long ride, the past few months.

as always, thank you for reading.

—

los trece aires

i. we kneel to the north, heart-drums beating, and i

kneel to the future and the spirits that shape it. the wind

rises in response to our prayer in movement, powerful

but soft, always, when it meets our skin. it speaks

of things to come and those that have already arrived.

ii. the drive home is quiet, music bleeding out the windows

as the wind roars in. the evening is alive, and so am i,

he who breathes its air.

iii. i stayed inside today, so i breathe the same thoughts over

and over again. it is possible to suffocate in the purest air

when there is no one else to share it with. you only think

of yourself.

iv. the earth breathes, too, in days. the wind carries seeds

that travel far, waiting behind the movement of time

for the right rain. they are spread by birds that eat the worms

and survive the change.

v. i forget to breathe. i don’t know why.

i begin to get used to getting by

in gasps.

vi. the earth keeps spinning, and so do i: in words, in dance,

in confusion, in a trance. i breathe the same thoughts,

though i move on to newer things. the gap between what i do

and what i am going through grows greater.

vii. i roll down the windows to let out the despair.

but the way the wind whips through the car,

it only makes me feel how fast i am going

and how little i care

viii.

ix. sometimes when you open the door, you do not know

what you are letting in. a leap of faith

is a jump off a cliff, and a deep breath in

fills the room with gas

when you are trying to start a fire

trying to keep yourself warm.

x. the air moves slow, caught in a fog.

i take a breath and my throat is clogged.

as i choke, i remember

sweetly that last september.

if i could go back and do things right, i think,

i would make sure that this time i drink

the draught that you served

and label it, “the love i deserve,”

but maybe i already did. the fog has become a noose

of all the memories i’ve hid, that now run loose

in my waking thoughts and unconscious mind.

i must have, for them to grow so unkind.

i come to, alive, and gasping for breath.

i had a dream on the edge of death:

“i’m holding hands with someone dear.”

but it’s now morning, and i’m in tears

wishing that the hand was yours

not because i love you anymore

but because i hate myself

for the parts of me

i still can’t forgive.

i’ve had a year to live.

i still have not learned:

there are i things i cannot have

if i cannot kill my fear.

it scares me, how little it takes to want to die.

i look at your photos laced with cyanide.

xi.

xii. the wind settles, gentle

whisper in my heart:

“child, you are saved

by the things you make.”

there are things you cannot fake.

there are things you could not take.

xiii. i’m walking home in the rain, the wind

singing quietly through the rustle of leaves.

i get to the gate when the sun starts to shine

and am greeted by a spider

rebuilding her web.

i watch.

this is what i was meant to learn.

soon the wind

ushers me in, where i towel off the wet hair sticking to my skin.

so that is why i write the things i feel;

so that is why i weave:

the spider’s web is strong as steel;

her creativity outlasts grief.

posted September 1st, 2022 in three parts to @ ang.lade (link is to the first part)

[windupantenna]

i wrote this on the last ferry back to the airport, trying to make sense of the anxiety that has gripped me terribly every time i travel. why am i writing an introduction, though, instead of just posting the words as they are? i don’t know. but i do want you to know it isn’t easy sharing these things. it feels like… a torrent of honest passion that i shove into the world hastily, averting my eyes to the fact other people know these things about me. i treat this like i am posting privately, to an anonymous audience of strangers… even though this is a public account, and i know most of you here. but please don’t take for granted the things i share, as i often do. i forget the courage it takes to be vulnerable. it’s so easy to log out of an account and dissociate from the reality of people seeing what i wrote; it’s closer to brazen impulse, really. but it’s much harder to vocalize these things in person. i feel like i am choking on my words, that my ability to string them together in the moment will blow away into meaninglessness once spoken. a weak cobweb in a strong wind, feeble silk trying to hold something bigger than words i speak. and those words fall short of their meaning, because my words in my voice never feel special enough. they are easy to forget, easy to stumble over. but in writing… i am able to give my words the meaning i intend, and the weight they deserve. so here they are. thank you as always for reading.

——————

“and i know that it’s hard to digest:

the realization is as good as a guess”

(new person, same old mistakes - tame impala)

last year when i flew home in the late summer with hope in my chest, i was crushed by the reality of how wrong i was to believe in the love i thought was real.

and in the years before, i held my dreams of crossing countries and living in a great city in the palm of my hand, confident — and ignorant, utterly ignorant, of the disasters that lay ahead.

after a while, anyone would begin to feel like a fool when they start to trust the hope again. or, rather, it’s the fear that makes them a fool, that makes me a fool: the fear that i’m going to be proven wrong again.

so maybe that’s why i’ve felt so unsure of myself lately, even though everything seems to be going right. why i cannot recognize myself in the mirror, timid and terrified beneath the passing emotions of daily distraction. why these good things in life are bringing out the worst in me, when they usually bring out the best.

it makes me feel even worse, because my reaction to this fear only seems to prove it true… even though somewhere, deep down, i know it only proves my humanity. the thoughts which equate that humanness with moral flaw are not my own, but come from another. i know who it is, and they are no longer a part of my life; but the effects of their words, the scars left by their twisted reality that i spent months untangling, the wounds i guess have still not healed… those haunt me yet. and it has caught me by surprise. i thought i was over it. but that is not how trauma works, is it?

last year i barely made it out alive, staggering out of one of the worst depressions i’ve endured on crutches made from my closest friends’ and family’s support. but this time… i think this time, the support needs to come from within. i’m being careful to not confuse it with isolation, but the only way to face the self is by going alone. no one else can guide you, no one else can accompany you, as you enter the forest where your truest self lives.

but they can help you remember who you are when you lose your way, when your flashlight dies and you’re stricken with fear.

maybe that’s why i love the moments to myself when traveling home. i watch the sea and sun and hours slide by, leafing through my memories of the people i came to see and the people i’m coming home to, holding both a reverent silence and an honest conversation with myself. it is a coming to truth made possible only in solo travel, in the potent magic of its transience…

…which is something i’ve been doing a lot of this summer. i’ve traveled up and down the state and in and out of the country no less than five times, and after all these hours of passing reflection i think the only thing i’ve made sense of is death. everything around me is dying, and by that i mean everything is changing. there was a reason this year was birthed in the blood of death, carried over from the death of a relationship last year and continued with the cat i buried at the start of this one. i’m still here, but i find my heart already saying its goodbyes: to people, to places, to this life as i know it. i’m going someplace far away, and i have a feeling that once i’m there, there is no going back.

or, the fear whispers, i will come crawling back, battered and bloodied, just like i did last year and the years before. but are those really the defeats that this fear makes them out to be? a love made from fool’s gold, though it left many scars, brought to light the genuine love i’ve had all along; the poor health that cast me away after college, though still not resolved, brought me back to the place and people who have fostered my spiritual growth. and every time i came crawling back, i was very far from where i was the last time i had been. it was never a regression. i had come back deeply changed, or just about to undergo the change.

and that… that’s scary, too. it’s easier when the change catches you by surprise, but when you anticipate it, the feeling is much more foreboding. like knowing a tree will fall, but not when or where.

i think of the poem i wrote at the beginning of this summer, its final lines:

“fingers dusted in parched earth

i lay my heart and await its birth”

all i can do is take it day by day, place one foot in front of the other, until i look up suddenly and realize it’s already happened: the tree has fallen, and my heart, reborn.

posted August 21st, 2022 in three parts to @ ang.lade (link is to the first part)

[windupantenna]

there’s a certain sadness in looking back at all the selves i’ve lived and recognizing that they are all me, but i will never be them again. it’s easy to reject the past, but it creates the paradox of rejecting the present sometime in the future. the self is outside time, as much as it is created in the passage of time. i can’t wrap my mind around the sadness. i think it should be enough to feel it in the heart, but what if i were to make decisions now that will forever affect the possibilities of my future selves?

-

i can lose weight, i can gain weight, but i cannot gain and lose and gain again single parts of the body. i am talking about top surgery. i am talking about my body, in relationship to my past selves, in relationship to others. i am talking about my body as a home, a work in progress, a safety blanket, a limitation. i am talking about identity lived and felt, and the passage of time that necessitates change.

the safety lies in inaction; but though i may not move, i think. and think. and think. and therein lies the danger, that once again i live in possibilities, instead of the present.

-

dry vegetation rattles in the wind, the soft song of summer foliage. the gentle sound of the here and now, the present, breathing and heart-beating, quietly.

smooth metal wings sweep silent over cities, engines muffled by the womb of the cabin. the peaceful violence of modern movement, the quiet violence of change. it is only felt when looking back at what you can no longer reach.

posted August 1st, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

standing amidst clamor, conflict, confusion and violence — or was it the ancient drums beating, the ayoyotes singing — blood spilling, blood seeping, blood weeping from my chest, ribs cracked and flesh torn in the great cavity of birthing — or was it the red fabric dancing in the wind, clutched to my chest, spreading to my stomach, as i knelt to the fire of the east — i drink from the sea, its brine in an oyster, a sacrament of the unspoken promise — or was it my ears heeding the sound of the sea, the call of the concha as the westward wind and setting sun whispered past me in a language beyond words…

(the dancing and the dreaming are one)

___

When we turn to the left, we dance for our ancestors; when we turn to the right, we dance for the here and now. In dance, we thread together the past and the present, healing the traumas that came before in our celebration of the moment we have now, and everything through this moment that will come to be. A union across time, a union within the self; a union in community, a union of love. The dancing is the dreaming, and the living is the loving. And through the doing we heal, and by the doing we hope.

posted July 29th, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

it is very late, and i need to sleep. but tonight i learned something very important about love, and about being. about loving and being many people and many things at once. i know my task in life has always been to remember that it is through the parts, not despite them, that i am whole; but it is difficult work, and i find myself sliding back again and again, forgetting how to be whole… but tonight i threaded several stitches in this healing heart of mine. and for once, i can see clearly. the future is uncertain, but i know what it is that i see right now. and that is all that i need.

posted July 28th, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

you’ll be different in the spring

i know

youre a seasonal beast

but i cant understand the different you

in the morning when it’s

time to play

at being human for a while…

(excerpts from sea song, tears for fears: a song i sang once, to the wrong person; that i sing again now, to myself, wondering what it always meant to tell me, wondering if i am the seasonal beast. wondering at the terrible truth of being human. being earth. being ocean. the fear of being greater than one thing, being as uncontained as the sea, being part of an ever-moving cycle of seasons and tides. a dance i forgot, stumbling as i try to remember. as meaningless as a wave crashing to earth, losing itself once again in the greater body. a thought, this post, crashing against the surface thought, from somewhere long ago and deep below, and dissipating in the ever-moving consciousness of the living. i await its return.)

posted July 27th, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

every single day, i am writing, i am imagining, i am reading, i am feeling. the time to learn and the time to create are one. there’s so much inside to process, to unravel, to heal and to weave; and so much without to write, to study, to do do do. so much thinking, where do i have time for the talking? but not the talking of idleness. the talking of community, of family, of friends, of kin. the necessary reminder that i live ever in the presence of others: of other people, of all of nature, the birds and bees and spiders and trees. so much listening. so much love. so much pain! such a limiting body, that needs sleep and peace and silence and sustenance. that needs routine, a morning tradition and a nightly ceremony. its daily bread, many times a day. its rest, much more than the few hours i’ve been getting. its healing, which is beyond words, beyond attempts to think my way out of it. what is trauma, what is soul sickness, what is this that stirs in my body? the winds of thought, the waters of emotion, the fires of imagination, my passion. the healing is in the movement, the sickness in stagnation — oh but where to go, where does it go, where must i go, where will i go? down, down, down, to the sea; and up, up, up, if it truly calls me. i am learning to dance. the movement is leaving me. i am remembering breath, the in and the out, the rhythm, the cycle of seasons. it is leaving me, the soul-sickness. it is leaving me, the spider-silk. i can weave, i can breathe; but i am not done, i am far from done. just give me time, give me time, but it is right here, it is always here, infinite, if i slow my breath, there is always enough. time waits for you, it does not run from you but chase after. where are you going? follow me. there is no time to waste, only this moment to celebrate. the blessing of your presence, the blessing of the present. the here and now, the only thing we have but never for long. ever moving, ever dancing. take my hand, would you? i’ll be back soon. i’m right here. i’ll be back soon. thank you for waiting. i never left. thank you for waiting. it never left.

the singing, and the dancing, the living and the loving. i remember. and then i forget. and i get to remember, all over again. can i have this dance? i sang this song already. i never heard it, but i know it. thank you for waiting.

posted July 20th, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

i think… the reason i love mornings so much is the early sunlight, in the hours past the faint yawning of dawn and before the unyielding cast of noon:

the iridescent rawness. an angled exposure that catches the rainbows in little hairs, caresses the texture of surfaces and skin, the taste of something only known in the living moment. the esoteric revelation upon the retinas.

…

soft shedding fur and ticking of a clock. the passage of seasons and time, caught in the eternal now.

the gift of a morning spent with sophie.

posted March 25th, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

the earth knows what you are

posted July 18th, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

thinking of stretching as pain that just wants to be felt. muscles dont need to think things over, dont need to take any major action… they just need to sit in the place where it hurts until the pain abates, the pain is enough heard. and over time, it doesnt hurt at all anymore, and you can stretch deeper.

i think there’s a lesson in that.

i dont know how to feel sad without justifying it, explaining it, deciding what is the right way to feel it. i dont know how to feel without thought

posted July 16th, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

riverbed

——————

the sun is hot,

and surface quick,

but the ever-moving body keeps its shape,

anchored by a calculated weight.

no dance above could set the course

but this quiet force that lies in wait

(the day is long,

and my patience great)

posted July 4th, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

heart-worms

————————

small creatures crawling

scuttling, digging

drilling through the soft bed

of the heart, seeking home

where they do not belong

but burrow, reaching

feeling for the slip-sands

of fear, feast on the flesh

where the sickness of self

festers: an affliction

and a famine gained

in the sea-maggots’ feeding

and forgetting

of one’s own name

posted July 3rd, 2022 to @ ang.lade

[windupantenna]

i am too tired to put many thoughts together… but something about that dream and the mayfly… i knew a death was coming. the dream was foretelling me falling ill; the mayfly, jumping right at me, telling of a transformation, the death of a short-lived era, a reminder of the preciousness of life. and now today, a spell of sleep upon me like dust that catches the late afternoon light, the golden magic of sunlight… and a collection of stories simmering in my unconscious from the same mind that started it all, the same author of my favorite series…

posted June 17th, 2022 to @ ang.lade