#like I came here to get the experiential learning if I knew it was unlikely I wouldn’t have fucking bothered

[changguscomet]

so fucking done with school this was a waste of time 😭 I should’ve just kept my $10k and kept working this was so dumb

[aion-rsa]

Each of Us a Desert: How Mark Oshiro Crafted Their YA Latinx Fantasy

https://ift.tt/eA8V8J

Mark Oshiro’s Each of Us a Desert is about finding your place in this world through the most unexpected means, while staying true to yourself. Part coming-of-age story, part fantasy, this book not only delivers an enchanting tale, but also has some of the most creative world building happening in speculative fiction right now—all told through a Latinx lens.

The Each of Us a Desert story follows Xochitl, a cuentista of her home of Empalme. As a cuentista, Xo has the ability and responsibility of retaining the stories and sins from the villagers and returning them to the sun, aka their god Solís,. In this world, Solís has stripped the world bare with its fire and only left far and few in between alive. While this may sound like a post-apocalyptic wasteland a la Mad Max, there is just as much joy, wonder, and love as there is danger, hunger, and pain to be found in this world. There is a romantic element to the book as well, one that tips the scales to the side of good, but doesn’t take away from the coming-of-age elements. Xo’s strength, conviction, and willingness to treat those around her with kindness makes her stand out amongst the cast of characters in this book, her heart guiding her as she finds herself in the desert they call home.

Den of Geek had the chance to speak with Mark Oshiro about creating this compelling story of survival, love, and hope while holding onto his own roots as a Latino man who just so happens to be queer themselves. Here’s what they had to tell us….

Den of Geek: Where did you get the idea for Each of Us a Desert? Where did it come from?

As I talk about the Genesis of this project, I also have to admit that I would say maybe 1% of that first draft is what actually ended up in the final draft.

It happens sometimes… you have an idea, but it takes you on a really weird path. But the initial idea came before I even had a book deal. It was when I had gotten an agent and my agent asked me if I was working on any of the projects. And I was like, “No,” because I’m trying to get this published,” and he gave me a good piece of advice, which is, “Well, the book’s done. We can do whatever work we can to get it hopefully published. But right now you should think about what comes next. Do you have any ideas?” And I was like, “No, not really,” and because I just at that point was, especially when you’re unpublished you’re kind of just hoping the thing that you wrote is the thing that makes it. 

So I started giving it some thought and I had a very coincidental experience that inspired it. So myself and my twin brother, we’re adopted and we know very little about our biological parents. And so for many, many years, we’ve been sort of trying to find out who they are, where they are. I managed to track down our biological mother, but we’ve never met or seen his photo or even known the name of our biological father. And not long after this conversation, I had an experience with my brother where we did actually find our birth father’s whole name, which when you’re searching in records, when you’re searching for the legal stuff, that’s one of the most important parts and we’ve never had it. Unfortunately, in that very same document in which we found his name, we found out that he was not a U.S citizen and that he had given up his parental rights to us. And as far as we knew, went back to Mexico.

And all of a sudden, we went from the elation of, “We have information,” to … “Oh, there’s a border.” There’s this invisible line in the earth has now made this search just as hard as it was before. And so I remember coming back from my brother’s place and having this image in my head of this girl trying to find her parents and she was trying to cross this large expanse. It was just images. And this is the first time I didn’t have a concrete story idea. I just kind of just liked this image of like, “Someone searching for their parents,” because it was something that I was doing and that then took shape. And over the course of a month, I came up with this whole novel idea because it’s not the book that you read. It was very different, the first draft of this book was like far-future dystopia. It wasn’t fantasy at all. And so over the course of many, many edits, it became the book that is now, Each of Us a Desert, but that’s where it came from.

How did you approach the world-building aspect in the book?

The book wasn’t fantasy at the start. So I actually figured out the character arcs, particularly Emelia’s and Xochitl’s, those came naturally and came first. All of the world building came second. So I then designed the world around them, which is why so much of the world building is actually very intimate. It’s very personal and very emotional because unlike literally all fantasy authors ever, I came up with the world second. It was important for me to know what their stories were first. I feel it made the world building easier. If you know where a character’s going and what their journey looks and feels like…because then a lot of the details like the whole myth of cuentista was not a thing until draft three.

Solis was one of the only things that was in the first draft. Everything else came in bits and pieces, as I thought about how their story and what would be interesting about it? Once I realized like, “Oh, I think this is a magical power. It’s not something that’s a myth. What does that magic look like?” So it was coming up with their story and then building the world afterward. I will say that while some parts of it were easier. If I ever wrote a fancy book again, I would definitely come up with the world first, I think. I was just like, “Why didn’t I think of this first? I did this all backward.” So yeah. That’s how the world building went. It was not a typical path for a fantasy writer.

That’s intense, but it sounds like it was fun.

It was. It was fun discovering this stuff and that’s the part that I’ll never regret at all. I’m glad it happened the way it did because it was fun to stumble across things. There is a grand design in the end, but in the beginning it wasn’t, it was all about discovery, which I feel like that … weirdly, that theme is what the book is. It’s so much about discovery and whatnot so it kind of worked out for me.

And what parts of you and your Latinidad are in Each of Us a Desert?

Like I said, I’m adopted. So I’ve been very open about the fact that I’ve had a very bizarre experience because I am, what’s sort of called, a transracial adoptee because I was adopted by people of a different racial and ethnic group that I have. So my adopted mom is white. My adopted dad is Japanese, born in Hawaii. So it means that I wasn’t necessarily raised in a lot of the traditions or sort of cultural morals or beliefs that a lot of my fellow Latinx people can relate to. It meant that I often felt very isolated. I felt alone. I felt like I didn’t fit in. So on that level, there’s a lot of that sort of spirituary in Each of Us a Desert where you have this character who might be in a group of people who look like her, who believe the same things like her and yet she feels so isolated. She feels so very alone. 

I learned Spanish, bits and pieces as a kid, especially picking it up on the playground. Years ago though… part of how I wanted to sort of reclaim my identity was re-learning Spanish. So I’ve spent the last four years studying it fairly intensely, and this was the first time I wanted to go there. I mean, there’s Spanish in Anger Is a Gift, but it’s in very small pieces. And this is the first time I was like, “Look, I think I really want to do this and I want to commit to it.” 

I’m very proud to be able to say that all of the poems that are in the book, I wrote in Spanish completely. It was only after the fact that I translated them. And even then, I mean, that’s the beauty of Spanish and Spanish as a language is that there is something where the English just doesn’t quite nail what the word means. It’s almost there, but it’s not quite. And so I love that there’s going to be sort of this extra layer for anyone who speaks Spanish. That there’s an extra meaning.

I think that is one way that it shows up, my Latinidad. And it also shows up in talking about queerness, being a Latino and growing up in a place that felt rural. It didn’t feel like a big metropolitan city. And I think there’s a lot of that in the construction of me. I grew up in Riverside, California. It is not a small town by any means.

And you pull from parts of your life as inspiration. But I think the fun, especially with Each of Us a Desert, was getting to just do new things and experiment and write things that may have nothing to do with me. I think most of Each of Us a Desert, where Anger Is a Gift is very business autobiographical, this book is almost an emotional sense, not in experiential sense.

Talking about being queer, and I like that the book talks about change and becoming the person you were always meant to be. Can you talk about exploring those themes in Each of Us a Desert?

I love that this book is not a big city. There is a big city for a small portion of it, but it’s not. It’s about being in a small town. And that feeling of feeling isolated and alone. And I loved getting to write this story that sort of has both a very on-the-page queerness throughout with multiple characters, but then there’s a subtextual queerness to it too, which is that so many of us have to leave the places we were born or leave the places we grew up in order to find ourselves.

And I love getting to write that for Xochitl. And getting to write this journey where she comes to understand who she is. And there’s an agency to that. It’s not just understanding who she is, but choosing where you are. And I love that she gets to choose who she is, who she has in her life and what love means to her. I think out of everything in the book, it’s probably the thing I’m most proud of is her journey and where she ends up. And it comes very much from a place of appreciating my own journey and getting to come into my own and coming into my true self.

That’s beautiful.

Thank you.

I wanted to ask what books inspired this book?

Two in particular were super influential. One is what was one of the only Latinx books I read while in school, which was Rudolfo Anaya’s book Bless Me, Ultima. It’s almost spiritually in conversation with that book, even though one is a contemporary, the other one is very sort of fantasy, I feel like it’s undeniable, when you think about the two books. How they’re in conversation with one another, particularly in how magic can be a personal thing.

The other big one is Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. The original version of Each of Us a Desert was our future dystopia. And so it shares that sort of backbone with it, even though it’s not that book anymore. What it became is so much about this teenage girl sort of facing the notion of dogma. What do her people believe and how is that belief challenged when she gets out of her world? And I think a lot about how Parable of the Sower is about challenging your belief system and challenging what you were raised to believe, but then also how much the protagonist of Parable of the Sower reclaims her identity. She reclaims her belief system. So those were sort of the two guiding influences that I had when I was writing the book.

If one day this was going to end up on TV or made into a movie, who would you dream cast as the major roles?

So here’s an interesting confession. I didn’t really get asked this question for Anger Is a Gift, so I never had an answer ready. But part of the reason why is because I actually don’t cast the things that I write.

Really?

A lot of people will… they’ll do mood boards. I actually avoid using real life images for my characters, because I want them to look like the version in my head, if that makes sense. I sort of fully commit them into my brain. Like, “This is what I think they look like. This is how I think they behave or whatnot.” And so I have actually never really truly thought about who would play these characters in a movie.

Totally understandable.

I saw this question, I was like, “Oh, I haven’t done this because I don’t do this for anything.” That being said, my hope was that in writing it…there’s a very specific way that I talk about characters, their hair textures, their skin colors, and their facial features. Like, I want this cast to be entirely brown.”

Yas!

And I want them to act like Latinx people.

Sounds amazing. 

Hands down. For a reason. And I mean, there’s also a spoiler reason why it needs to be that way, that I can’t really talk about because but I don’t want to spoil a thing that you find out towards the end.

Yeah. I am 75% into the book right now. I am almost done.

Then I definitely don’t want to talk about what it is. There is a reason for the skin tone stuff that’s intentional. And so I wrote the book that way, because if it gets made into something, that’s something that’s going to be very important to me is, I want the people to look a certain way, not only for the internal logic of the role, but it’s also… I think it’s intentional in terms of representing a lot of the people who get ignored in our community too.

Absolutely.

It’s something that’s important to me. So I have to think about who I would cast. I don’t know. Off the top of my head, I would love… Oh, I mean, now that I say that….

Yeah? What are you thinking? 

A lot of people don’t know, for example, that Lupita Nyong’o is both black and Mexican. And I would love. There’s a … oh, I can’t tell you because I think it’s a spoiler. But there is a role that I’m like, “Oh shit, she would kill it.”

That would be perfect. Lupita in anything and everything.

Yes, in anything. But I think that’s a very intentional thing, too, is that a lot of people get mistaken about race and ethnicity when it comes to Latinx people and with Hispanic people. And I want to break that. I want to constantly support that and surprise who you expect to see is a Latinx person.

I love it. Last question, what else, if anything, are you working on right now?

Oh my God. So the timing of this is perfect because I can start to sort of talk about anything. So two things. First is that I just turned it edits on my middle grade debut, which is called Insiders. It’s out next year, which is a contemporary book with a dose of chaotic magic. It’s about a 12-year-old boy who, while fleeing from bullies, finds a magical closet that unites him with two other kids at different schools across the country. And they discover this weird, magical area that not only brings them together as friends, but helps them solve each other’s problems. It is my joyous, chaos bedded book, and I’m so excited about it. So that’s out of next year. I don’t have a schedule for it yet.

I just, literally, before this had a long meeting about my next book, which is going to be me returning to the contemporary world, but it is going to be a dark contemporary horror novel. I’m so excited because I wanted to write a fairly strict horror novel for a long time. There’s elements of it in Each of Us a Desert, but it’s not purely that. And I think this is my first chance I’ll be able to do that. And so right now I’m pitching it as if the movie Hereditary didn’t have any supernatural stuff in it and was somehow mixed with Aristotle and Dante: Discover the Secrets of the Universe, which are totally completely opposite things. But I think that’s a very weirdly good description of what this book is going to be.

That’s an amazing description. I want this now.

That’s the goal. I got to finish writing it. So I’m very excited about it. It’s much more autobiographical than Each of Us a Desert. And it’s really me leading it to a lot of my experience as a teenager in a way that I haven’t really written about it. So I’m excited to do something that is very personal to me, but also to kind of have fun with it and introduce you to this very frightening story.

I’m excited.

I’m so excited.

Thank you for talking with me today about this. It really, really has given me such amazing perspective on the book.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Oh, thank you.

Each of Us a Desert is now available to buy. You can found out more about Mark Oshiro on their website.

The post Each of Us a Desert: How Mark Oshiro Crafted Their YA Latinx Fantasy appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3iTi8Ji

[viswas]

Vipassana - An atheist meditates

TL;DR - Vipassana is not religious or spiritual and is a mind rewiring exercise that allows one to take greater control of the subconscious (and conscious mind). Subsequently, it empowers one to deal with problems previously beyond the reach of one's mental and physical capabilities. I highly recommend the ten-day program (see www.dhamma.org for more details) to everyone who can spare the time. There are over 150 vipassana centers around the world. And it is financially free - accommodation, teachings, and food included. One just needs to make the time. Full version - I try to stay clear of all religious and spiritual activities. I still don't know what spirituality means because I don't understand the concept of the spirit. It sounds like an esoteric word for unnecessary mysticism that is always beyond human reach. At best, I think spirituality is religion minus the branding. I had put meditation under the umbrella of spirituality and hence steered clear of it thus far. The only meditation I knew about is the one where people close their eyes and chant the name of their favorite god, and for an atheist, this sounded like an exercise in vain. No one is listening. Then life's challenges made vipassana happen. All my deep thoughts over the last couple of years have been about everything but myself. I am a massive consumer of information - books, news, movies, podcasts, etc. Any time I am not at work or asleep, I seek knowledge. So my most profound thoughts (albeit to serve no meaningful, practical outcomes) for a long time have been about the social, economic, and political problems of the country and the world. These have been eating up my brain cycles. I also regretted that I only consumed and didn't produce anything of value. Life has been unfulfilling for a while. I was left with a string of unresolved personal problems that have dragged on for a long time. I felt like I was in a rut and seemed incapable of thinking and acting my way out of these problems. The breakthrough came when I had the awareness that I have been so distracted by everything outside myself; no wonder then my personal problems have lingered. No effort was put at the depth required to resolve these problems. It wasn't always like this, and something had to give. With this realization, I desired to isolate myself and buy me space and time needed for deep introspection on personal matters. I had heard of silent retreats before but didn't give them a second thought. So I finally mentioned to my Significant Other to help me find such a place. A few months later, she told me she had signed us up at a Vipassana meditation silent retreat. A silent retreat I sought, but meditation made me suspicious. She assured me there was nothing religious about it. So unlike my usual self, I decided to take the plunge without reading anything about Vipassana. As far as I was concerned, I was going to a place where I could be silent for 10 days with no one to talk to me. That alone had great value. And if things got too spiritual for my liking, I could always leave. With some disclaimers to my Significant Other about the possibility of an early exit, we both set out to our 10-day program. We reached, registered, and handed over our phones and valuables for safekeeping. All reading and writing material had to be given up. Men's quarters separated from women's, I found myself allocated a private room with basic amenities, and thence started my 10 days of silence. I was required to not make eye contact with anyone, and if anything was needed, I could write requests in chits to volunteers who served the course. Except for a bar of soap and a broom on day one, I never used the chit again. A schedule with precise times for waking up, food, meditation, training, breaks, and sleep was published. What then followed was 10 days of rigorous discipline in meditation, sleep, and food habits. I haven't had this much discipline in my life in a long time - there is always that one more episode to watch, one more dish to eat, one more round of poker to play, or one more article to read. But I was able to let go of all my excuses (thanks to the distraction-free environment) and adhere to a demanding regimen. I was free to walk out at any time I wanted. But I didn't. I was intrigued the very first day, and each day had new realizations that kept me hooked despite the body and mind throwing up withdrawal symptoms and masturbating my mind to give up and go back into my Netflixed life.

Challenges I faced: • Follow a rigid schedule (which I eventually got to respect) • Eat bland vegetarian food only (which I ultimately found tasty) • Skip dinner (which I found easily doable) • Meditate 14 hours a day (which I was able to bear through because I could perceive the gains) • Sit in a single spot for a very long duration without any motion (I managed this for 3 hours a day) • Not talk to anyone or even look at them Vipassana, at its core, is 3 elements: 1) Psychology - Wisdom about how the mind works. Patterns of the mind's behavior. A precise model is provided for how people behave - the brain receives inputs, processes it, and then produces output. Insight is provided into the types of inputs, outputs, and the various paths of processes between these inputs and outputs. This information is vital because it allows us to define a  reference for how we usually experience the world (inputs), analyze it (process), and then react to the world (outputs). If we have a good understanding of the mind works, and then if we recognize that certain types of thinking/behavior are undesirable, then we can reference our behavior/thoughts against this model and correct it. Correction can be real-time before we behave or think to our own and other's detriment. Vipassana aims to map any experience into a reaction that improves outcomes in life. To achieve this, it helps us rewire our mind to help us recognize every moment we deviate from the learned mind model or don't use the most optimized paths between the experiences and reactions through proper analysis. Vipassana intends to change our thinking to pick optimal outcomes or reduce the chances of making poor choices in behavior/action. I was aware of a few mind models at a surface level that psychologists teach/use to help their clients introspect about their own behavior. The psychology offered in Vipassana may not be too different from some of these models. But what I liked about the mental model proposed in Vipassana is that it is very accessible to the layman. It is simplified and distilled into the basics without jargon, and that allows pretty much anyone to absorb the model. Vipassana has been used to perform mass prisoner reforms in one of the largest prisons in the world in India. The model is not perfect. It is incomplete and/or doesn't deal with (at least in sufficient depth with) many aspects of human thinking. It also seems to operate in binaries than in a continuum. But then I suspect no mental model accounts for everything either. I am very curious to see what a psychologist would have to say about it. Vipassana supposedly was put together and formally taught by Buddha. So I suspect this makes Buddha one of the earliest psychologists who documented his work, shared knowledge, and provided therapy. Perhaps there is a thesis for bridging modern psychology with Buddhist psychology. Maybe it has already been done. 2) Mental gymnastics - As a part of the meditation process, we are asked to perform increasingly complex mental exercises for ten days. It is a gymnasium for the mind. In the gym, as we develop, we increase weights and repetitions. In vipassana meditation, we increase the workload on the brain. What seemed like a huge load once then becomes trivial, and we find new challenging workloads for the mind. As the complexities of these workloads increase, the brain is stronger and is much more capable of dealing with complex real-world problems. The reason the mental gymnastics is very important is, without it, all the learned psychology is just theory. We can read much material on mental models and human behavior. We can read books and learn good behavior and morals from the experiences of others. All this intellectual information is good to keep. But this knowledge is not useful if it can't be recalled and used at the moment we need it to solve the problems we face. The teachings contend that despite our intellectual knowledge, we don't recall and apply our learning often enough because of the lack of experiential learning. Experiential learning is about acquiring knowledge through experience and reacting with wisdom. The mental gymnastics that we do in vipassana sharpens our mind and gives us the ability to continually monitor our sub-conscious and conscious behavior (through focus and discipline) against the previously defined model and produce a better response. Without the mental gymnastics, the psychology is mostly useless. However, the mental gymnastics from the meditation has excellent value even in isolation. It is a tool that teaches us the discipline needed for sustained effort. It sharpens our minds to solve complex problems (not of our mind and behavior if we don't absorb the psychology). This was the most useful part of vipassana.

3) Philosophy - Absorb the mental model and use the power of the mental gymnastics to live a glorious life. Here the philosophy defines the ideal glory for the individual and the whole of mankind. This is the weakest part of vipassana. The philosophy suggests that vipassana is the only and the most truthful mental model. The philosophy gets preachy about an ideal life that can be realized by combining psychology with the meditative techniques. It raised more questions than it answered. Yet, the philosophy gets a pass because even the teacher suggests that if we don't subscribe to the philosophy, it doesn't matter. Focus on meditation. Good things will follow. I could agree with this. Thankfully, the course is also light on philosophy and heavy on the mental gymnastics. But I am now more curious about Buddhist philosophies. I find it hard to believe that this much thinking went into vipassana, yet there were glaring flaws in the philosophy. I suspect there isn't enough time in ten days to cover all philosophical ground, and further reading is required. Nothing has pushed my mind to its limits the way vipassana has. There were constant dropouts from the course who couldn't muster the determination to see through the ten days. The mind plays tricks when pushed hard. One must resolve to not give up, no matter what. What I gained: • Tremendous amounts of patience. I stopped being bored of not doing anything. I can now meditate anywhere I am, and it keeps my mind occupied enough to not get bored. • Total comfort with silence and lack of necessity to have a conversation • Body control - I have now been able to stop my sneezes on will (say 4 out of 7 times). I can clear a blocked nose by thought. I can clear heartburn (acid indigestion) on-demand when it surfaces. I can desensitize myself to body pain as it arises. • Indifference to unpleasant sensations - Ability to eat food I strongly disliked (papaya). I may not seek it out, but I will no longer be repulsed by it. • Getting high from meditation - substitution for hallucinogens (though I wonder how it would be if both can be combined) • I spent a lot of time recalling not-trivial math and electronics I studied in school and college from almost 2 decades ago. A lot of this happened because I had meant to refresh some engineering basics to enable me to be better at work. I had forgotten a lot of concepts that I was able to recall and create problems and solutions in my head with eyes closed. • Regulate my breath and be calm in the face of inputs that have the potential to agitate me • Be at peace with undesirable events/outcomes. • Lost 4 Kg in 10 days and dropped below 70 Kg for the first time a decade. • I had the time to think through in great detail many aspects of life - marriage, other relationships, career, personal development (physical and mental), finance. In all these areas, I had stagnated one way or another, and now I have definite thoughts on what needs to be done in each of these areas to fix the problems and make things exciting. I came back and was immediately able to resolve some issues in some of these aspects of life. The others will be acted upon in time. It's too early to tell how useful these actions are, but at least I don't feel incapable of making decisions and changes in life. • I no longer feel like procrastinating. I have been very productive since I have come back. I have written more in 2 days since coming back than I have in the whole of last year (admittedly not a high benchmark). I am very motivated to put in a lot of effort to make things better for me and others around me. • Inner peace   What I experienced was uniquely mine. When silence was broken on the last day, different people described different experiences, but none were harmful. I think everyone who stuck around benefited from the experience. It is essential to go into a project like this without expectations of experiences. The only thing one must go with is the hope that there is value to be gained for the discomforts one has to experience. I felt sustained long duration meditation for 10 days was really necessary to drill in the discipline, build the mental model, and develop the mental tools to realize desired outcomes. A vipassana course or a meditative technique that is shorter may not yield sufficient value to make this a sustainable habit once the course ends. While there is some rewiring in the brain and life is likely to get better, I am convinced that if I can meditate for even 15 minutes a day, I will only improve at dealing with myself and the world around me. Should I stop the meditation, I expect that at least some of these gains will be reversed. This is not a one-time exercise.

Other aspects: The principal teacher whose audio and video discourses are played, SN Goenka, had lots of nuggets of wisdom. However, he has passed away, and the training material has not been updated with examples and analogies more relevant to modern times. Doing this would have made the experience more personal to a lot of people. The assistant teachers are not worthy of that title are best left unspoken about. Thankfully, they are inconsequential to the course, and everything you need to know is well drilled into you from the principal teacher's discourses. The training of new students, their food, and accommodation are funded from donations from previous students. At the end of the course, if you thought there was value in the course, you may choose to donate any amount of your liking. If you decide to not give, there is really no one around to judge you for it. It is your call. The ten days at a Vipassana silent retreat has convinced me that (vipassana) meditation doesn't belong to the realm of spirituality. It belongs to the fields of psychology and gymnastics. The world is a better place for it, and everyone should try it once.

P.S:

I have intentionally left out the specific details of the vipassana philosophy, psychology, and the actual mental gymnastic techniques. There is a vast difference between intellectualizing the experience from someone else versus experiencing it personally, and I firmly believe the former devalues the latter. I think it would be very hard to go into this experience unbiased if I spell out the specifics. I don’t mean to make it sound cultish by masking this information. Everything about the process so is elementary and straightforward that one is very likely to dismiss it as trivial if the details are called out. This could very well demotivate people from seeking out this experience. 

[theladysmith]

Elevation

It’s been such a long while. I’m going to fight the urge to do that thing where I lament about how much time has passed and all the ways I suck for not posting more often…

Anyway, hi. It’s good to be back - and I mean that in a few ways. We recently got back from an amazing 5 day trip to Colorado Springs, that equal parts vacation and hard work. Well, if you’re Mike, it was more hard work than anything, but I got to unwind a little and immerse myself in mind-blowing scenery before immersing myself in the deep end of learning about my craft. More on that later.

I haven’t really been to the mountains before. I grew up near “hills” and have skied “ranges” and toured “highlands” and lived near “escarpments”, but I’ve never really experienced that #mountainlife. Colorado has been on my bucket list since I was a little kid, mostly because the name itself sounds like an adventure epic. Thanks to Mike’s hard work, we suddenly had an opportunity, and I couldn’t wait to see somewhere new. Like, totally, never-seen-it-before new. The majority of the past 6 months have been flat af. My eyes were actually hungry for it.

We flew with friends to Denver, rented a car and drove south to Colorado Springs, a smaller, chill little city just over an hour south, and way closer to the mountains. They grew increasingly more impressive with every mile we drove - a car full of creatives and we started to run out of expletives to describe what we were seeing. Half an hour into the road trip, I feigned wanting a quick break at a look-out point so that we could take some photos, but if I’m being honest, I needed some fresh air to calm the sensory overwhelm that was swamping my sleep-deprived brain. There was too much to take in; too many colours, too many beautiful subtleties, too much dramatic contrast, too many extraordinary qualities of light, too much texture and pattern and rhythm. Too much. And not quite enough oxygen for my little low-lander lungs, as I felt the overwhelm of the scenery highlight the fact that I was feeling actually breathless. In those 2 hours, I realized that all I could do is just greedily open myself up to this shameless consumption of beauty, open my eyes to every damn detail and trust that my brain wouldn’t short out, open my lungs as wide as I could (given my usual shallow breathing habit) and trust that my lung capacity/comfort would improve, and if I could just do that, this trip might just be the thing to blow the front door open on the past 6 months.

At the risk of sounding like I’m backtracking on my promise of not lamenting on all the time that has passed, the past 4 months (well, year, really…) have been a thing. I’m going to assume that if you are reading my blog you might have some interest in the environment that feeds the life that feeds my process as an artist, so I’ll be brief in catching you up here. Letting go in CO was really hard, because the past 6 months have been all about holding on for dear life. Our financial situation hasn’t been exactly “fluid”, I’ve been working longer hours than I’d like, I’ve been in more constant pain than I’d like, there’s been an unending shitshow of chasing clients to pay their invoices, big changes rolled through Mike’s work life, there has been so much work to do all the time, and a long-ass, very cold winter to contend with (although we did a pretty good job getting out into it as much as we could.) And then there’s the neighbour sitch. For 10 months we have been living next to an ever-changing cast of loud, violent characters who have kept us awake all hours of the night, whose constant high-level noise have stressed my cats out to the point of visibly changing their behaviours and personalities, and whose explosive anger has woven a sharp thread of uneasiness into the fabric of our home life. Hell is other people*. Shitty neighbours are the worst.

Anyhow, onwards. The neighbours are finally gone (evicted; like I said, they were terrible), the shitshow has been reduced to chasing just one client (goddamn it Kennedy Ford, pay me…) and while it won’t immediately improve my financial situation, I’m dropping back to working 3 days a week at the shop instead of 4, which will probably help reduce my retail fatigue* (and possibly the extensor tendonitis in my feet) and allow me more time to work on my freelance business and to get into the studio to prepare to for the upcoming show season.

It will also give me more time to hang out here. I’ve been aiming to “complete” my website for some time, but the longer I work on it, the more I realize that completing what is supposed to be a running log of my creative life is impossible. I’ve put it off for almost 4 months, citing all of the above as reasons why I couldn’t get it done. So I’m “launching” it this way - incomplete - on the 3rd anniversary of my cancer surgery, feeling a bit silly and sentimental that this little project that I’ve been planning, working through and dreaming about for probably a decade is finally aloft. I’m proud to say that this site is me, as far as representing myself digitally, and it will stand as my sounding board and experiential diary of my creative life. I intend to write more about how I’ve gotten to be 43 yrs old as a semi-fuctioning artist/human, about how Mike and I navigate running our businesses together, and my on-going observations and frustrations with this life I am living. I am not pretending that I know even 1% of it all, but I’m 43 and I’ve lived some shit and I’m still making art, now more than ever. That is my motivation for this website, at its more basic. That, and publishing my work. Oh, and selling stuff

Aaaaaanyway… So, when we were in Colorado, I had the great fortune (and fun) of studying with Bonnie Nelson and Jerry Ruhland of Cottonwood Silversmithing and Lapidary Supply in downtown Colorado Springs. I spent about 6 hours a day on Saturday and Sunday, learning the ropes of casting a wire ingot, drawing it out to beautiful bezel wire with the rolling mill (which really put me through the ropes of learning how to fully use my recently acquired rolling mill!) I worked on a pendant using a eudialyte cabochon and 5 tiny faceted sapphires haloed above, that Jerry spent most of Sunday showing me how to flush set. Bonnie taught me about fold forming while we put some copper through its paces, and Jerry taught me some fabrication and hammering techniques that completely changed how I understand metal. As instructors they were excellent; friendly and open and eager to let me work at my pace in my own direction. I loved working in another artist’s studio, and getting a feel for their ergonomics and workflow. I loved it so much that as soon as I came home to my studio, I knew it totally had to change. It had to change because I had.

I think the thing that really stuck with me the most from studying with them was of how capable they held me. Both instructors gave me lots of positive feedback on my technique and approach, which made me feel skilled, relaxed and resourceful. I rarely feel this way in my studio. So much of my inner dialog is low-level imposter mutter when I am working - I am generally convinced that I am doing everything wrong (sometimes that is backed up by project fails) and that everyone will be able to tell that I am teaching myself as I go along, that I obviously haven’t gone to school for this, and that because I haven’t been able to connect with any sort of supportive metalsmithing or jewellery artist community here I must be unqualified, unlikeable, or an outsider. I know it sounds melodramatic, but this is how my brain works.

The kind of practical, targeted instruction and positive, friendly feedback that I received in Colorado, coupled with the intense atmospheric beauty really made me soar. I had renewed confidence when I got home, full to overflowing with ideas and audacity and with a newly expanded skill set. I couldn’t get into the studio fast enough to tear it all down and rebuild it into something more supportive, something evolved. After spending a few days creeping Kijiji for a suitable desk, a perfect one showed up in the garbage area behind our building, and Mike heroically got it up 2 flights of stairs, through the confusion-corner that is the hallway to the studio, and assembled for me as a surprise when I came home from work. I bought some casting equipment so that I could start reclaiming some of my sterling scrap to make new work. I got to know my new big torch better and experimented with drawing bezel wire on my own mill. And through all these experiments, this whirlwind, this chaos, some strong new work has been made and there is more underway.

I admit that sometimes I’m not very good at remembering that there are edges to the storm when I’m stuck in the middle of it. It’s been a long, flat low period, the last few months, but just as flat plains feed a gathering storm front, they are also instrumental in pushing the storm through. The last decade of doubt and timidity about publishing myself and my work, the last 10 months of hellish neighbours, the last 6 months of crap luck and kicks when we’re down…all flattened, blown away, as if by wind whipping down the mountains. With this new confidence, this new certainty, it’s easier for me to see each day as fresh and new now, even if it isn’t, really.

I’m eager now to just work at what I’m here to do. I’m glad to be able to share my perspective and my work here, and I’m absolutely thankful for any and all support be it reading my words, engaging with me here or on IG or irl, or purchasing my work to embellish your life in some way. The storm has passed, clear skies ahead. Thank you for holding fast.

[ohtheurbanity-blog]

The City of Movement

The past few days have been quite a whirlwind getting adjusted to the city and to jet lag. At this rate, I don’t know how I’ll be able to make it to the clubs, which open around 1am and don’t get really #lit until 3am, if I go to bed at 9pm every night! To quote Glenda, our country coordinator for Brazil, this culture of going out means our homestay parents expect us back “by dawn.”

Wednesday was International Women’s Day, which I actually knew little about before. Turns out it’s not just about celebrating women but it has its origins in labor movements when the US Socialist Party founded it in the 20th century for women garment workers. Today, it commemorates the social progress and economic and political participation of women around the world, and even though it was started in the United States it’s reached dozens of other countries which arguably celebrate it even more than the US! Sao Paulo, with its reputation for urban social movements and protests, of course held a giant march downtown and a bunch of us went with Glenda who has connections with a group that works for migrant and immigrant women’s rights. Hundreds of people wearing different colored t-shirts associated with various organizations were assembled around Praça de Sé, the iconic cathedral and plaza at the heart of the city. Even though the march was to protest a new policy that raised the minimum retirement age (an inherently classist move as people from lower classes start working much earlier in their lives and receive less benefits and protections as they age like pensions), the atmosphere was jovial and empowering. People marched to the beat of instruments and chants. I feel so lucky to have had the opportunity to go to a large scale movement like this and see the turnout from so many women, young, old, queer, and POC, fighting for change and recognition.

On Friday we had Neighborhood Day: SP Edition. Our group went to the commercial district of Berrini, a few miles south of downtown. We took the subway and train (kind of like a commuter rail) to get there, which was part of the ‘experiential learning’ part. Watching the landscape zoom by and morph so quickly from low-rise settlements to glass towers on the metro rail really pointed to the rapidly changing land use and development going up in these commercial areas of the city. On our way there, we passed by more informal houses stacked up on each other to dizzying heights, like blocks. I’ve never seen anything close to that kind of unrestricted low-rise density. Then as suddenly as the houses appear one on top of each other, you have these huge white apartment buildings rising above the trees contrasting with the jumble and cluster of burgundy settlements. The contrast is so marked that it could be the cover of an urban studies textbook.

Unlike the downtown area, Berrini did not have people walking on the streets. Even though it’s serviced by public transit, it took us a while to get there and transferring a bunch of lines. We walked from the subway to the mall, trying to find an entrance that wasn’t for cars. The backbone of the district is an avenue in the middle and along it you have tall buildings from corporate offices to hotels, high-rises, and malls. Even though the middle was bisected by a protected bike lane (!) and there were sidewalks, you didn’t see many people out on the street. Maybe that’s because everyone was at the mall instead; even though it was midday on a weekday there were still a healthy number of people shopping, eating at the food court, and walking around in there. After a lunch at the very bougie food court which can only be described as "indoor French plaza cafe meets multiplex mall," we walked around the area to interview people. Our guide/professor pointed us to a building that was social housing built by the municipality. Basically they were resettlement public housing for people who were evicted from their original homes to make all this commercial development possible. Contrary to everything we’ve learned about displacement, eviction, and resettlement in our classes, the residents we spoke to actually really liked it there! The place was well-designed and had the amenities they needed. None of them even minded living next to a freeway or in the midst of all these imposing buildings or on a busy commercial street with cars going by all the time. That said, the government has the money to construct more to meet the staggering demand for public housing, yet this is the only one of its kind. Seems fishy...

Over the weekend my roommate DyAnna and I went to Paulista Avenue, the main commercial street in São Paulo which as of a few years ago has been closed to cars on Sunday's for pedestrian activity. It was every urbanist's dream: people coming out onto the streets, on roller blades and bikes and foot, old and young, male and female and non gendered, gay and straight, to enjoy the city. Each side of the roads bustled with recreational use, vendors sold handicrafts from paintings to jewelry and there were mini live concerts and street performers creating a literal buzz on the street. We came upon a park after browsing through a street fair and buying some freshly squeezed juice, or as they call it here "suco". Once we entered the gates we were transported to a verdant paradise away from the hectic street scene. People walked around and sat on benches in the shade of huge palm trees and the dense vegetation of plants I've never seen or heard of. Despite the inequality we've been learning about and issues of access in the city, seeing the public participation and liveliness of Paulista that weekend reinvigorated my urbanist ideals that everyone can define a collective experience of the city, that well designed public space can improve the quality of life and enable democratic processes, and planning can be for fun as well as for justice.

[bikarova-blog]

Ginseng sweets and Seoul Munmyo Some Velvet Morning

In the Spring, in March a ceremony is taking place in Seoul Munmyo, Confucian shrine. It brings back memories...

Ceremonies were taking place continuously throughout the centuries with Korea being at some point one of the last resorts for some two hours long ritual.

      I was preparing my trip to Seoul thoroughly. City guides, books, numerous websites, calculating prices and routes of my intended taxi trips. I planned my workshops, meetings and lectures and spaces in between to see as much as possible. There is one place I wanted to see most of all. It is not a famous tourist site in Seoul, but to me, it had a lot of meaning.

Like everyone else, I have been struggling in life, and at some point and to me, a person that lives in the country rooted in Catholic tradition, at that point, the Analects of Confucius (and other writings later on) spoke directly. It does sound funny, I finished studies in Philosophy and did have some contact with Eastern philosophies and religions. However, at that time we had no experts in Chinese philosophy, let alone chances to learn how it influenced Vietnam, Japan or Korea. When I started, I was reading the Analects with little scholarly interpretations. At that point I felt as if I understand some experiences condensed in these sayings, as if they were comforting me, teaching me how to lead a better life and practice balance, which is not an easy task. It will always be important, that milestone, encountering a bad Croatian translation of the Analects some thirteen years ago.

On the night flight, I had to switch planes in Frankfurt and then fly from Germany to Korea. I was trying to relax and get as much sleep as possible. I had the plan to go straight to Calligraphy Academy in Seoul Arts Centre the next day, right after I check in the hotel and before the afternoon meeting, I was saving the shrine visit for one special morning. Unlike other places, I didn't bother to see many pictures of it on the Internet, and I wanted to keep it that way. I wanted the place to be new to me.

The driver took me all the way around the campus while I was watching the scenery half hidden by raindrops. Sungkyunkwan University. Big campus. I asked him to take me to the main entrance since I knew that is where Seoul Munmyo is. We passed the main gate, drove all around the walls and came back again. Is he joking? He started mumbling something in English and then I realised he was about to take me for another spin. It happens, sometimes it is only to keep the meter going, pretending not to understand me. I saw the roofs, the typical traditional Korean roofs and asked him to stop. I was determined, and he ended up apologising. I didn't care much I was excited since my moment was there.

    The first thing I saw after entering campus was the building that I knew was meant for the state examination. The complex with the shrine was still closed,  and it was before nine which was the time of the opening, and I needed to wait. I was enjoying the silence, my half-broken umbrella on my arm while I was trying to take pictures and the first taste of that I was about to see. Small building compared to grand palaces, with brick red to some shade of almost pink piers supporting the simple roof and holding bright green window screens.

I was approaching slowly following the stone pathway on the grass. It was so quiet, no one was disturbing me. I walked around the building observing the main complex that was surrounded by walls. Somebody must have noticed me since after some fifteen minutes of my enjoying the site the entrance to the complex of the old academy was opened and I heard footsteps. I reached the entrance and noticed they had opened it before nine AM just for me as if they knew how I feel about this place. They did it without stopping my moment here.

I enjoyed ginko trees, courtyards, calligraphies in Hanja, shamanist figurines on some rooftops, geomancy... the whole compound is still fresh in my memory.  The elegance of this complex seems to mirror both intuitive and experiential as well as intellectual and rational in the Analects. Those two parts of human being that my culture separates come together as one since there is only one word for heart and mind in Chinese systems.  I know Confucianism is blamed for many things, examinations, arrogant government officials, some things in mentality even today. I remember reading in some magazine how K-pop and sexualization of teen girls had to do with Neo-Confucianism.

Now I knew what I was going to say to the lady at the tourist agency stand- I saw beauty in simplicity. Actually, similar to rustic arches surrounding the fishpond in a renaissance castle of a poet from the island of my ancestors. Odd association and yet the core is there, no matter the richness and complications of all the layers and veils of distant cultures.

      There was a traffic jam on my way back, and I already knew it I was not taken to a longer route just to keep the meter going. The lady driving the taxi was eating an apple, nervously smiling at me. She could speak some English, and it seems she was really upset and worried she wouldn't get me on time for the conference. Then she offered me some ginseng sweets. I smiled and thanked her and told her not to worry. She encouraged me to taste the sweets when she noticed I am not eating. I told her I want to keep them as a memory, but I don't think she understood me. In my mind, those were my Madelaine cakes, and I wanted to keep them for one Proustian moment when I get back home. I was certain they would bring back memories although I didn't need such anchor. I am going to carry these moments in my heart and mind, whether it is two abilities or one, and I'll always want to come back. Since I've seen it in fall maybe one Spring to commemorate Confucius death.