wontgoup

[wontgoup]

Im in deep, deep mourning and Thai empathy runs quite deep. They knew, before i did.

It has surprised me, entirely. I remember when friends parents died. I was there at the funeral, full of candid love. But when its my tita lita. Its a pain that is so deeply engrained in the layers attached to me. That only real empathy can detect and make space for.

I think only they would know how it feels. To be this deep in mourning and moments away from a victory. What does victory look like, not sure. But to lose someone that loves you endlessly, and always is a real, loss.

It feels fine but there are glimpses of this real displacement knowing that the one person that you only met three times in your life and they worked entirely for you, the complete time. That makes things feel, strange. She just loved us all, somehow. And always.

Sometimes in disguise, sometimes, in total awe of us. But she loved us, always. She didnt bargain or become complicit with other people, she just gave them everything and kept the boxes of surprises alive and const ant.

She had a lot to say, it hurt, i never did anything to disappoint. I just was her big love. Her diaries will tell us all the true story attached to being the rock. When the ships about to flip.

But she died. As she was always going to. Im in this weird part of mourning. Where i csnt make more space, for anyone, but my Almendras clan. I dont owe them anything. I dont know them. Like my Almendras clan, who I owe everything to. Because, i think, my Dad knew my Tita. And she didnt bargain, she just gave everything to give us herself.

Boxes upon boxes and phone calls, emergency love, whenever you thought you would be entirely fucked oth er wise. She was our first aid kit. And she wore it proudly like a disguise. I used to speak to her for hours. When i was 8-9. And she just saw forward. And God

My favourite love. She terrified everybody else, while trying to make me as bold. Well, she did it. The only person my Mummy feared. The most loving with the sharpest tongue. The one that sold h er self repeatedly to keep giving.

The saddest part of this, is knowing, some people sell themselves for themselves. But, we, some of us, just sell ourselves for the boxes of surprises. That only grandma sees candy, can show.

The way, life, and people, can try to give you something but never actually, want anything but respect for all the many ways th3y contorted their bodies, to s imply just give. Rather than t a ke.

Because, as an Almendras, we mend, there is no spa c e for ok or a bag here. My Dad surname will get dropped. As he always knew it would. That he died for, that others raped instead. Its a wall. That will never, in my lifetime get crossed. Its a bulwark of attributes that disgust me, just as much as cause me to never return, because you have harmed upon arrival. Almendras' mend, what we think we can and hope you always try t o do the same, for yourself. Too.

But we do not rape for others. Nor harm. We, mend. While entirely nuts x

Silk, Textiles, Tapestries, Asia, Japan, 18th–19th century, Japan, Silk, Metropolitan Museum of Art

[wontgoup]

Cape Disappointment

[wontgoup]

Fan, 1760, France.

[wontgoup]

Men, are complicated just as much as they are, not that different from us, Girls.

They are socially constructed like time and calendar dates. Concepts we create as categories to function and become or seem modern.

The fluidity of this is expressed distinctly across a variety of complex language groups communicated by people, geographically and religiously sculpted into specific designs.

Feudalism exists, just as much as complete state control of screens and technology. The english as they themselves admit to, are designed to use technology start wars and make money from their killings. They are taught to believe that the state also is the head of their religious beliefs, a divine right, that can seem like real weather.

A body that when exposed to fake food, becomes a sick person that should be killed. Since only quality food is for the worthy. A squandering that economics expouses to the already vulnerable. A scarcity model, that makes quantity versus quality the main problem that no amount of banking, land titles, nobility and history can reorient.

We all just fell into the hole that said, written by the dominant and wealthy that more always equates to less for people who are not of, a certain standard. Some people assimilate, other people play along. Since playing has always been the easiest way to survive and function.

Its hard to see, a little girl, be designed at an early age to be sold. But in a system where men often buy their resources to reproduce wealth, status and their own security. It is a hard truth that we disguise rather than admit to.

Where there is a scarcity of women and an over abundance in the elderly, there becomes this strange highly unnatural compulsion to eradicate and start again. These strangers designed to reign but never follow their own rules.

Staircase

Shooting date: Early May 2023

©Abeja Mariposa

[wontgoup]

Pussy feeds families not stones.

I have come to truly adhere to this advice, as a statement of fact and of respect for women. Racism, being confronted by it even amongst Asians. That wanna be white because they are poor. He was Nigerian, a bar staffer had sliced the small of my back with a laminated piece of the menu. He quickly gave it a rub and bought me a white rose. Then some candies from the old lady that just kept trying to sell her stock to drunken, selfish, entitled and rude tourists.

Cities that thrive from tourism as a party city but actually, formed part of the compromise to stay its own place. No falang that lives here is Thai. They may marry in, speak the language, have children, but they are and their kids, are still, falangs. To actual Thai people.

Just as much as blacks, to them, are seen as the same sort of poor people, not like an english man or some white falang, same same, poor. When education lacks, because so much is untaxed, pricing models chop and change depending on the location. An old city, one of the oldest in the world, still lacking clear regulations on food and business standards to keep the water standards, clean. A place that provides insurance to all its citizens to ensure affordable access to public health but a rather wide retail sector that only caters to a small cohort that can afford it. The english speaking cohort, the youth, addicted to screens, the easily manipulated, populist, ultra religious-Christian group, that hold most of the wealth and make the blacks come across as something to ignore rather than beg for.

You end up in a doozy whenever you pretend like you arent curious about how other people manage to survive in a world that is disproportionately unfair. You step into their world, spend intimate time with them, then you also depart before any promises are made. Meet some of their friends by chance, not because they were ordered to. He was like any other struggling exchange student, just with a rather squeaky mattress and unwashed plates sitting in corners of his room. With toothbrushes sitting on top of cisterns and sink taps.

He was lovely. Just as much as he was blaccckkkk. A structured, responsible, educated black guy. There were clear boundaries in his life. He did not eat where he shit. He knew how to look after himself. Pay for things, share, find work. To learn to put clear walls that section people up is always key to realising even in that tiny corner you occupy, nothing can come in, nothing can go out, without you saying so. The transcience of other peoples preferences after other peoples data was hacked during covid, using only 2 systems to control the world. Apple and microsoft.

But in this tiny corner, we do not use bathroom sinks as kitchen sinks, constantly. We do not cook and clean where we also do our banking and printing. Businesses may close, but welfare probably is far more sustainable too and equates to about the same, upskilling workforces, encouraging more international students, from other parts of the world that need to be educated, relatively reasonably. Regulating airbnbs, keeping transport and entrepreneurs accessible, while ensuring the cash flow stays strong and the drugs stay prescribed rather than simply another dumping ground for the us and netherlands, to zonk out entire young people and ruin a future burgeoning workforce.

We see into the lives of other people, to understand that people lie and will kill to protect their unreasonable status', using populist leaders and poor policing of their own hopes for themselves but more so, Siam. A wonderful nation state, always free.

Instagram.com/rubyroseopal

[wontgoup]

Drugs fuel developing countries just as much as they kill and keep the poor, poor.

He asked me in a black bucket hat whether I was a teacher. I replied, starkly, no. Just did all the admin for the students. Which i, know, how to do.

Rapists rape, who cares about having your own bathroom, if your own bedroom resembles a jail cell, that is most peoples minds, after causing such harm.

They can drug you out, then also kill you, either using nucleur weapons, start a war or organise a pandemic to ruin you from the outside/in. But major cities as old as this, are so much more than just drugs, noise, parties and cheap sex.

But, really, selling sex is far more worthwhile than capitul a ting to an image they fell for that you wore as a disguise while everything was removed from you, one by one. Like plucking pubic hairs from your bikini-line.

All to suit an image that they created and kill for, to keep their currency the most potent while starving their masses. A pound and then some, served up to you, like a donut, as you walk the streets, learning how one of the oldest cities in the world was designed. You manage to find yourself back to where you had began. Standing infront of a large monument and roundabout. See you around, takes on a whole new meaning. As you prepare to get lost, somewhere else, this time.

Somewhere not so, pumped and expensive, awaiting a new bereft feeling of emptiness, that some would say is enlightened but you, instead feel, a closing out of stories. Some people, dont even get to choose, they just get taken and justice, never gets served. Nor are others taught. They just become white rubbish.

[wontgoup]

My favourite type of womens rights issue, is a western issue that then gets shoved onto 'other' people.

Yes, women do most of the cooking and cleaning in society (generally). But men, in various nation states, work the longest hours, have to not only support, their own families like their partner and children but also their partners families plus their own families that they originated from.

Thats almost in Asian countries, 50 people, that you emotionally and fiscally, give everything you have, to. Often women, may work and have menial education backgrounds. They will, most likely get paired off with someone who should be able to work for you, your kids, your family and his own. At any given time.

This extension of familial ties. Is starkly different to western concepts of family, duty and giving. To pin on a man, their inability to cook and clean for you, with a clear preference that they instead take you out for dinner and pick up the kids in a functional and relatively well placed vehicle (that you yourself) can also drive. Is far more practical as it is logical.

It begins with these men, that can work. And are encouraging of womens development, understanding their role to simply not be at home, but out in the world, educated, working and with a strong ability to share. That we may perhaps, redefine the strong armed stance of male leadership. While female leaders and identity politics, subsume our hopes just as much as all our data gets hacked.

In Asian societies, depending on who they may be doing the relationship dan c e with, men and women, change, to survive. And not simply for themselves, but the entire extensions of people, they connect. This changing, or transient process, is a structural advantage where certain regimes may impose, restrictive or uncertain realities that stealing, lying and corruption always have to rely on.

Men and women can possess all of these skills to gain some control over a life, that can often feel out of control. A man can behave like a small spoilt girl, in a family of many that tolerate this. A woman can be unico eiho, if it serves everyone else better, fiscally. Where there is no food. But there are so many bodies. The only option at best, is to occupy both, the more fascinating side, are the illusions and performances these people embody, telling stories, to survive.

[wontgoup]

Uncomfortable sex, is uncomfortable.

It is annoying, it is an intimacy you want but your mouths taste like bins, from all the beers and cigs and its been a few days since youve changed your sheets. Plus you are stressed, so as much as you want the sex and the intimacy, your room is not big enough for two people.

Because you feel immense just being you, right now.

Is it the title? Of boyfriend? Or the circumstance that makes things more uncomfortable as it is just another fucking horrible fist like grip you are having to balance.

Some people take it all, shoved into a corner while fisted in. Or tight holes being loosened that feel fine, as they are happening but your bed is too small, its so public, its like being in a bad porn that is active research. Trying to debase a lot of the strangeness attached to bodies in religious places that are wildly conservative as they are intricately involved with peoples bodies, that will change, easily, to open their horizons and shed the weight of responsibility prescribed by particular places and the way they work.

Women can like women, if it pays for their lives. Whether they are actually attracted to those people to begin with is a whole other question, but children are far more expensive than simply being looked after alone. Men must bear it all, if they, cant be stuffed. They can change and do, get surgeries, with everyone just giving parts of themselves to share.

Trying to learn how to survive in and around people that struggle. They find someone slightly nice, they assimilate or feel the pressure to never be as they once were, a hard road they trudged too many a time, not something to return to.

A obedience that comes from relying on someone else or other people, and all their unfair conditions that prevent them from showing the world the truth that comes with never being the same person, you once were before, they arrived and made you feel like you had to change because who you once were, is gone.

They have taken it. By paying for it.

Sex machines, sluts, plastic gloves flexed taut on our hands, masks on, eyes wild, sneakily hiding our dirty minds behind caps, masks and plastic gloves, staring at your sexy body. All day long and then some.

Except, some of us, just dance and let others dance on us, to perform the pain that comes with lending to people that often may never pay us back but take from us, wildly. A responsibility that comes for men, firstly, a spoilt tendency that needs to be dissolved but what do you do with all of them, when they themselves feel a tad useless with too much time on their hands but nothing to do, with all of it.

Just keep paying for the girls and their pusssies and assholes. With a few beers and some cigs, thanks for the comfort. Youll leave at some point. But ill always be, me. Here. Even after 20 years. Rockstar, cutie pie. Asian warlord on a motorbike, drink driving. Putting his hometown on the global platform. To be known and remembered. Just as much as a place to simply pass through, as we do, to each other.

Renegotiating the lines, one person in outright dissent, the other just hoping for some continuous work and stories to share.

Its a bad deal. But thats how the worlds been structured. Only the highest seem to take it all and everyone else sells all the last parts of themselves to simply survive.

[wontgoup]

Reading parts of us, that never change but are instead strategically known.

Makes them, seem, unknown. Inlove without a clutch learning to be happy alone. But realising someone maynever always be there, anyway.

Which is the one thing you can never raise doubt against. And the one thing they always did.

Barbie Mummys. Devoted to golden books, but not the person. just sharing what i know they deserve. As bees. And a never queen.

[wontgoup]

All at once. But caught in a world that demands you are simply one thing but not all the rest of it.

So we sell those last bits instead x

Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

[wontgoup]

I dont know.

Its a very simple answer. That many people find daunting, i remember being a kid and one of my titas always said never to reply back to people with, i dont know.

Only now, as an adult, saying i dont know is actually far safer as it is, honest.

Anything can happen, most things never go as we plan, let alone, expect. Sometimes, we drink our own pee in training, other times, people steal repeatedly. Not for themselves, but for others, based on stories, they think are, theirs.

When really, they just kept stealing, so everything is now c ompletely, worthless for them at least.

People worth a tonne of used bricks that we spend our days rearranging rather than completely destroying.

Destroyed, like all the things they stole from other people, repeteadly.

One car crash away from that milky sunset, they spent years, trying to pretend may one day be a flight away.

[wontgoup]

― L. M. Montgomery, Anne of the Island

[text ID: I wonder what it would be like to live in a world where it was always June.]

[wontgoup]

Making music that is who we are

Not what we t hink we should be, is very h ard. It is unconscious. It is creative. It is torn into a million pieces like the keys of a piano and the wind instruments we blow through to be, or seem, show, sound, feel, as we are.

Lots of small fragments, joined together, with no escape. Just stuck in the middle, with all of you.

Caught in the grasps, waiting for a pick up and a happi ly ever after. Or the closest to that at least.

We give parts of ourselves to the realities we support, some people. Take these things for granted. Some people need us to be close by, to know you are there. But we never left, we were always there, just perhaps, in a different place.

Rather than time. Learning to be like ivory keys and chiselled wind instruments, brazen and soulful. Something to play around with and hit at. But still managing to show, who we are.

People searching for safety in a game that takes parts of us, entirely. Tongues caught in the throws of wordless sounds but bodies to always return to in a relentless game that swallows some of us, whole.

The rest, playing relentlessly through it all. Givin g the world, who they are. The last parts that they cant even piece together. That we instead work through. Global. Free. At home, despite knowing we are like the pieces torn out, b oundless and simply another b ody to come hometo. In the long line of bodies we occupy, across time. Felt in specific places.

Tonight, something bows that should not bend. Something stiffens that should slide. Something, loose and not right, rakes or forges itself all night.

Nocturne, Li-Young Lee

[wontgoup]

Survival is not only for the fittest but the most tenacious.

Divine rights that take what other people refuse to give. In the natural order of the world as we know it. Is it me? Am i participating in tests that other royals know firstly, setting up the parameters when perhaps they should just simply be left alone.

Someone elses robbing becomes your own nonchalance. Despite the vast work involved in knowing that no ships or sails will save those from their own downfalls. A constant art work in progress, sculpted into being. That only the biggest defeats can resolve.

As we learn to fend for ourselves. Eggsluts full of rice. And a love for our roots despite what control says we should return to, energys that cut across the follies of the fake.

Since, this is the real deal. Loved and protected so intensely by all those that died, protecting you. Not them.

Seat belts on while scaling roads.

To you I belong, however time may wear me away. 

Rainer Maria Rilke, "You, You Only, Exist"

[wontgoup]

I still often unconsciously feel like my/an independent childrens lawyer.

It doesnt cloud my judgement it just makes people and their insecurities after experiencing various forms of injustice become loud as a bell.

Some people steal, others keep their closest knowing what can happen when it goes bad. People get forced into corners they dont belong to. Doing things they dont want to, but feel they have to. Our parents and the rest of our families blur those lines. Quite easily.

But it is always because they love you and know how brutal this game can be. So we learn to operate alone, shared, learning from all sides.

Stuck in the middle and then some, always knowing the opportunities that these things offer. Learning to question. Rather than putting up a position. A person open to the realities of both sides. That could swallow all of you, whole.

Except, the future, is not as unpredictable as people stipulate. There is a machine cog a t work. And it wants yourblood.

Its not a storyline worth of judgement. Its a real. Understanding that they will and have previously sold many parts of themselves, not for you. But the one person who has done everything, is the one person being taken away.

pushed away.

Sometimes that person that has changed rather than run, may be our only bet. In a performance that doesnt simply want your b lood. But your territory, as well.

Something we understand after looking at previous decisions and the choices that have neither hurt people, but only demonstrated the blood sport at play, that others have gone into exile over. That we then, learn to scale above, build better relationships around and buy them all out. To keep everyone, safe. And then some. Sometimes they die too, not because you didnt want them to but because, they had to.

They had to.

[wontgoup]

Its funny looking at younger people, they resemble parts of people we know, the parts in them that shirk under the weight of, legacy.

The tough decisions and numerous mistakes they have to bear on behalf of their parents because of legacy. Its a pulling at the core of people, that often turns into a neurosis or a difficult habit. Sometimes an inability to be alone.

Another mother, rather than sister. Or friend. An entire story that has somehow had the pause button pressed, and a new one offshooting in its place. Just with a new person, a new way of doing things and a hard truth;

Theyre kinda stuck to people that have to make tough choices all the time that are neither neat and tidy nor comfortable. It becomes an awkward uneasiness they learn to work through with lots of help. All the awkwardness of knowing the right people and all the self love that needs to be cultivated, slowly.

[wontgoup]

He turned off the lights. After letting another person in as a keeper. People always on the run, finding places to rest, reset, to reinvigorate their imagination and be peaceful.

Even when peaceful may seem like a pipedream. In the vastness of the world and all its many roads and seas. We become self protective just as much as we become loudspeakers of the atrocities in cities.

Mouthpieces that resound truth when voices are purposefully quashed. We learn from all the people that call these places their homes, then find ourselves occupying parts of them. In between trying to find the creativity to mesh and meld it into our existing ways of doing what we think we know. Always a critique, or a room for improvement, or simply a wonderful place to be in a time where we are falling into the very flows, of peoplehood.

Some bleed into these forms, others squirt, some shake. Others find time to accept these things and zoom on by. We marvel at them as they weave their existences into one. Always a giving and taking that the bitter seem to never move beyond, whilst the hopeful examine the exchange and marvel at its meaning.

A layered existence, a small corner to sit in, trying to keep the small shards of what we know, are ours. Open but not wartorn. It is a constant reconfiguration of priorities and examples. One that may not seem like all the rest but still part of that whole. The neverending wheel.

One for you, 3 for them. Some people put all their last bits of hope into you. After experiencing so much across their bloodlines, only to be disapppointed with the final result. Never something for them to claim as a victory but a victory all the same. Not everything they hoped for, will become theirs. Other things, do. Across these lines.

While walking toward a peace of mind knowing, some disguises are actually golden and another victory, just not as we expected it to be. And for those that hate surprises, often the hardest thing to accept.

Even before, being in their company, at 5AM and feeling aplenty. A Devi in her own form. In disguise x

Tbilisi, Georgia - May 2023

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