Howdy everyone how ya doin? Doin alright? How we doin? How yuz doin. How you doin.

(scroll to the big n the bold for EVENTS happening this & next week)

It’s September official. Sun sets before 7:30 now and last light is before 8pm. I remember checking the sunset and last light on my weather app at the height of summer and last light wasn’t till 9:15 and shit. AS THE PLANET TURNS.

I did a thing I’d been wanting for yearrrrs and took a long weekend summer vacation in Wildwood with my boo. Going down to Wildwood at the end of August was our big family vacation when I was a kid. Wildwood, if you don’t know, is/was one of South Jersey’s free beaches. My mom called it the working class beach one time. It’s one of those bastions of Irish/Italian/Polish 1950s vacation utopias of an era past, where every generation’s next immigrant wave (directly or indirectly related to US imperial war efforts) comes thru but the old timers try to act like white is right in these demoralizing patriotic fuckshit ways and it’s like FOR WHAT (i know for what). Wildwood has three piers and three rollercoasters and ––oh this was interesting~ apparently the city decided to pay a falconer daily to fly 2 falcons during the day and 1 owl at night over the boardwalk, to scare away (not kill & eat) the seagulls, which had become extra aggro trying to get food this year…. And now the city is trying to get the boardwalk merchants to cover the costs and everyone’s fighting about it. Anyway, Wildwood wow. When I was a preteen Wildwood was like …super peak 90s macho sexy corny MTV spring break teen cruising hell, with hot body babe crews and water guns and misfit headbanger freaks (like me) hanging around under the boardwalk & in the goofy Sublime t-shirt Operation Ivy patch selling combo bong skate shop (swirled whirld). Like my block in Olney, Wildwood as I remember it in my teen years was a mix of white families and Black and brown families, and it was definitely working class. People used to cruise around town at night with stereos blasting club music, and it felt virile and exciting as fuck to my shy gay freak ass. They eventually put some noise ordinance in place. ~_~

Every year there’s all these horrible crass ignorant shirts and other trending fashions, and this year I was nonplussed to lay eyes on all manner of outrageously SHITTY pro turnp meme shirts. I learned that there’s a Firefighter lives matter flag that looks like the cops one but with a red stripe instead of blue… and I’m like lol OKAY. The militarism and patriotism is SUCH a feeling and experience in these south Jersey beach towns (and swaths of South Philly and the N’east, m i rite?). This one Military Recruitment and Hollywood youtube really lays out some CONS to joining the military, which I found for real compelling and not just some shitty looking down my nose at you for joining the military liberal college educated type attitude – Dude in the video is like MANY people who join the military commit suicide, experience sexual assault, and you know the usual injury, addiction, PTSD and trauma shit AT EXTREMELY HIGH RATES compared to rest of the populace… I think he even offers alternatives to military recruitment? I forget. It’s a good thorough video, and as you all know I LOVE a deeply informative, easy to watch video about complex topics. Shout out to the synthesizers out there.

Anyway I was in Wildwood this weekend and it was giving me lots to reflect upon (like after I said out loud that Wildwood is where my mom and my dad met, working in the same restaurant and my boo was like no wonder ur obsessed with this place, and I was staring at the ocean like damn). Not least of which ALSO was that it was this Roar to the Shore biker rally… I was like oh I wonder… what kinda bikers… are gonna show… up. And by the evening when crews of hard looking dudes in Pagans patches and their women decked out in Property of so and so back patches were strolling all over town, Wildwood police posted up everywhere like rival gangs in a 50s drama, I was like maaaan…. What a fucking scene. Look up some shit about the Pagans if you don’t know. If you read Patrick Califia’s Doc and Fluff, witnessing all this managed to give me some deeper insight into the ruthless violence depicted in the biker crews in that dystopia. :squeamish flirtatious emoji:

I have an internal tactic that I won’t write about the violence capable of mobs of people heavily invested in whiteness and patriotic/nationalistic/outlaw-law identities. I won’t depict it or go out of my way to describe it. But you know I think about Parable of the Talents like fuck.

Some years ago I decided I was writing fantasy and not science fiction. Fuck the dreams and nightmares of imperial science. Imperial meaning empire. Like evil empire. All encompassing.

But fantasy is not escapism. We need magic and fantasy.

I’m still working on a zine about the crux of absurdities in being mixed European American and [something else/insert other heritage] white passing white person white assimilation cultural forgetting decrepit family ties secrets and loathsome positions of self-negation with ego’s ever present’ness under white supremacist social realities… The working title is The Void of Meaning. Anymore I’ve been feeling so fucked up stuck trying to talk about this shit ANY WHERE online. IRL is another story.

Here we go again with a full failure of words.

Well let me move on for now. September is busy for me. I’m doing an event every week and prepping for like 2-3 collab zines with friends, and still carving away at my own solo projects. I’m gonna wholesale repost the post description from my IG post about the same events:

EEEVVVENTSSSS

1) September/new moon greetings all. I've seen a good handful of posts from friends/neighbors lately about how not being on social is great for their health, and how they'd also be off IG if not for the news/event announce aspect of the network (reminds me of so many ppl's reasons for not leaving FB). At any rate, I'm just here to show my face (plus my fit) again and remind whoever that I post to my stories more often than my wall ~AND~ that @adifficultjoyce made this Some Events in Philly To Attend (SEPTA) Calendar for the people. Please submit your events & financial support to [*]septacalendar at protonmail dot com[*]

2) SEPT 12th /8~11pm/ ~ I'll be emcee'ing and performing at @pauline_darkstar's SIGNS OF AGING tape release show alongside Rainbow Crimes at Vox Populi Gallery. For the crowd that likes/appreciates that outer space odyssey shit.

2) SEPT 19th /7pm~midnight/ ~ I'll be vending at @hawkmothevents __Garden of Celestial Pleasures__ queer equinox celebration & magickal bazaar, w/ethereal costume contest & surprise DJ ft @bb_basura. At Bartram's Garden, wheelchair accessible

3) SEPT 21st /8pm~11pm/ ~ Enter into the dark and listen at the official release soirée for VENUS SATURN SQUARE. This trans-centered erotic zine unfurls from its printed confines for an evening to thrill and confound desires. Come ready to lurk-xuriate in low lighting and heavy listening. Listening masks and phone check will be on offer for a low-distraction experience, along with glow bracelets for anyone who'd rather not talk. Feat reading performances by yours truly, @spaceface2.0 @snaxho_ @theholyhawkmoth, also at VOX.

Every event is sliding scale $$ entry but no one turned away for lack of funds. VOX wheelchair accessibility ~ has 5 steps to the elevator entrance, which is 29-inches wide, so may not accommodate all wheelchairs or motorized chairs. Contact ahead for ramp at events@voxpopuligallery.org or 215.238.1236

~AND~ November 17th, Metropolarity will be at the Philly Zine Fest at The Rotunda, Sunday only (cause the tables sold out immediately). Word on the street is that Alex Smith’s ARKDUST will be back in print by then.

ONGOING

Mil Mundos Books in Bushwick, Brooklyn has started reading Metropolarity’s STYLE OF ATTACK REPORT for their reading group. So cool. Last week I ordered us another batch of books, putting it at 1000 books produced (and hopefully read).

And that might be it for now.

Writing this while listening to Chico Sonido’s latest radio show.

I binge watched the first half of that anime Carole and Tuesday (on netclix). Did you? Would recommend with caveats re: ambivalently negative trans depictions & unfortunate lapse into actual talent show format, but Shinichiro Watanabe (director of *clears throught* Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, Space Dandy, etc) is behind this series so there’s that too.

In Wildwood I finished reading Nell Irvin Painter’s The History of White People and read (in a day) Cherríe Moraga’s Native Country of the Heart. STILL working on Testo Junkie… >_<

Next time I hope to offer up reviews, along with some finished projects, some new audio stories to ~listen~ to, and more deep thoughts. Let me know how you’re doing. I always appreciate those replies, no matter how seemingly trivial. If you’re in the area, would also love to see your faces at the Vox events, ~espécially~ Venus Saturn Square. ;^]

con amor y sore tendons

Monk @}-}-;———

Greetings from what I’ll call a calm between eclipses.

I’m in the middle of determining my fate for the coming months and it is difficult and also work that must be done. I ~was~ so incredibly depressed just a week or so ago, and right now I am not. Thank the saints. How are you all doing?

Tomorrow's desire practice/smut writing workshop is on again in Clark Park (West Philly), from 2-4pm. Meet me in the shade on the Baltimore avenue side of the park. I'll have cold iced tea. Bring something to write with. We'll be doing a helpful worksheet and then working with what we get from there.

At the previous workshops I had everyone read pieces of smut stories out loud, but thanks to feedback, we’re just going to do more writing and less of that…vague public humiliation? (i say this jokingly)

…

Due to the incredible astro weather going on right now I am compelled to share that I’ve never been to a writing workshop in my life or had anything I’ve written workshopped, in what I assume is a regular experience if you have a Creative Writing Degree™ (your cohort critiques your writing on some basis of Western narrative convention and contemporary writing style as dictated by New York Times bestseller lists and publishing market controlled by blah blah blah). And I am wondering still how on earth one acts regular trying to get residencies. Shout out to Wesley for sending me hell of residency links that one time–I have not abandoned those.

Enough self-loathing, though. I finally put A CROSS THRU on my website, and there is an explicit call not to talk shit on yourself in there:

This is a time capsule of a 2016 me. I first put pieces of this spell in a personal zine titled SHEDDING, eventually fleshing out this longer version for METROPOLARITY‘S Style of Attack Report, both released in that year. From what I’ve heard since then, many people resonated with the words I set down here. In 2017, I spoke an altered version onto a guest track for SOLARIZED, a Philly hardcore band fronted by METROPOLARITY’s Alex Smith.

Meanwhile, I’ve been reading Nell Irvin Painter’s The History of White People and it is very good. I’ll come back with a review at some point. I’m also ~or was also~ reading Paul B. Preciado’s Testo Junkie: Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era …and it’s like… can the Donna Haraway stans take a chillpill on this DENSELY LAYERED THEORIZING and just tell a damn story? I honestly thought I’d be reading a lot more about taking T and less having to deal w/the portmanteau’ing of 5 post-structural media theories every other sentence. (It’s hilarious to me that Haraway herself has taken to giving narrative lectures, btw.)

Speaking of the cyborg theorist originator, I saw Haraway had a ‘pamphlet book titled Making Kin Not Population, with someone named Adele Clark. The little book struck me as cool, like hell fuckin yah no more white babies in this bitch, but you know– as I paged thru the thing (in the wonderfully air conditioned Penn Book Center), I kept seeing the word feminist. The book is like, it’s troubling that feminists don’t stop and think about how having babies is like, a problem for the environment. And I just wanted to go YOU MEAN WHITE WOMEN DONNA. Or I sure woulda wrote that in the margins if I bought the thing. And that brings me back to Testo Junkie… These very cyberpunk very futuristic very cyborg feminist intellectual writers SAY SOME INTERESTING THINGS but I wish they did more to ~really~ contextualize themselves in the trajectory of whiteness-as-constructed-by-empire. They mention being white and European here and there (in Testo Junkie), and I’m willing to bet the Haraway/Clark book mentions women of color or like, indigenous tribes or something… but can ‘we’ put in the extra effort to strongly articulate ‘ourselves’ away from the center of contemporary thought or some shit???? Do you feel me? Do u follow? These academic texts and radical gender autobiographical-theory books fall short––they fall within the confines of the academic intellectual. And as that tower crumbles, so do their arguments become incomprehensible.

Pshhhhhhhh yeah……….

The Prop Werx workshop was cute. LMK if you want me to come to your area and do it there. We broke down media messages of various kinds and it was Good. It was so hot that day tho and we weren’t in AC, so we didn’t get to crafting our own propaganda messages. I’ll be making a little report-back post with resources, more info, and links when I get the energy. It’s still hot right now.

Saints, please grant me the ability to know what and where to focus. May I leave my own self-loathing behind one day soon.

Take care of yourself, love.

@}-}-;———

Monk

Hey everyone, this is a head’s up that the VENUS SATURN SQUARE SMUT READING slated for this Saturday the 29th is postponed due to lack of venue. My June has been busy, plus I been underworlding and working thru depressive episodes, as life goes. So I wasn’t able to get that shit nailed down in time–oh well. HOWEVER, the reading will happen this summer, and I’ll have plenty of hype & info to follow once all the TBA stuff is confirmed.

As for the smut writing/desire practice workshops, are you interested in coming to the one slated for this Saturday from 2 to 4pm? I should have made RSVPs. Is it too late to ask for RSVPs?? (Just so I don’t put my limited efforts into something few or no people will actually attend.) It’s looking like I’m gonna wing it and find shady area for students on Penn or Drexel’s campus.

For the two smut writing/desire practice workshops slated for July 13th and July 20th, we’ve got tentative space at Threshold Wellness at 440 East Girard Ave (a few blocks past Frankford Ave and across from Sketch Burger if u want a dank burger before or after). There are five steps and it’s likely we’ll be seated on cushions on the floor.

As for the PROPAGANDA WORKSHOP slated for July 4th– I’ve secured a venue thanks to a gay angel in my life. Meet me from 1 to 3pm this coming Thursday at 5213 Grays Avenue [Grays Ave Warehouse]. There are 2 flights of stairs and incense/fragrance is sometimes going on in the space (but won’t be for the workshop).

Also, I posted this to my IG profile highlights: How do we who are “mixed race” and treated as white by society work in unison against white supremacist empire without centering ourselves? If you are thinking about this shit too it’s time for us to convene. Please contact me so we can coordinate.

~ * ~

Remember when I was like I’M BOUT TO RECORD ALL MY LATEST STORIES JUST LIKE OLD TIMES GET READY FOR THE AUDIO TALES!!!! a few weeks back? Turns out living by a busy ass street a bus runs on by a busy ass intersection means all kinds of other sounds are in the background of what i’m trying to record, and that’s frustrating. Part of me is seriously like fuck it on the pristine vocal audio goals cause I don’t have energy like that to pursue a good recording place blah blah (only now it occurs to me to ask my friends with studios for some halp)… My tarot cards seem to continue to remind me that I can’t be doing shit alone. damn.

I wrote a tumblr-style reflection on the fate of All That’s Left zine. It’s an update on the series tucked inside a historical context/recollection of events that brought it to fruition in the first place.

I saw Moor Mother’s Circuit City play last week and it was a blessing. I got the latest issue of the beautifully produced Commune magazine in the mail and it’s better than the last. This wild/cool looking gender nonconforming thrift/consignment store in Savannah, GA ~ Civvies on Broughtin ~ recently picked up my (very internet famous five years ago) slogans for cyborgs patches.

I woke up crying from my dream this morning, and tonight my tendons ache and ache. I have more to communicate but this will have to do for now.

look up at jupiter in the sky and dream dream <3

(and see some of you this Saturday)

Monk

@}-}-;———

Greetings all,

I hope that as you receive this message, shortly before or after, something incredibly humorous to you occurs and brightens your spirits. A true laugh out loud moment.

My birthday was on the 6th and I had an excellent day, plus my reading party on the 1st was also fun! Thanks if you came or wanted to come. =)

As the title of this newsletter implies, I decided to move it over from the weirdly censorship loving tinyletter over to this substack service. So the look of things might be different in your inbox––I have little idea what to expect just yet. From the backend dashboard that I’m writing in, it’s very bland (but not dissimilar from tinyletter’s). I am annoyed that I can’t change the white background to a dark background but OH WELL.

Alex from Metropolarity and me were texting about substack the other day, and that made me decide to just go ahead and try it. The thing about substack is that you can set up a paid subscription tier if you want. A paid tier newsletter is a bit beyond me at the moment. I set it up so that you can pay if you’re feeling me like that, but right now I’m still in the ‘all my digital content should be free’ boat. I have a job that supports me financially so I don’t want to be charging people for shit, and you’re talkin to the bitch who one way or another puts all their content out for free on the net anyway, so hey. Hi. Hello.

Annnyway, that’s the update on that.

Now to the workshop information:

Text:

a smut reading and you’re invited

A zine release party & reading for the prototype edition of VENUS SATURN SQUARE smut zine. Come see area freaks read their smut from the zine out loud in full person &/or veiled in silhouette!

Open mic signups for those who wish to read their own favorite smut, trashy fanfic, and other conflicted erotic pieces.

This will be a casual affair for the lurkers and lovers. Bring a friend. Send questions to @cyborgmemoirs [me]

SATURDAY JUNE 29th, 6pm to 8pm, LOCATION TBA

Text:

venus saturn square workshops return

You’re invited to a smut writing practice space. For the curious shy embarrassed repressed fighting shame trouble expressing feeling desire saying no saying yes asking for what you want without fear etc. For ppl who have already written freaky shit. Low pressure but come ready to peel back a layer. Bring your favorite smut if you have any. We’ll write & practice reading out loud. Let’s submerge.

june 29 ~ july 13 ~ july 20

2pm to 4pm, LOCATION TBA

Text:

PROP WERX

Learn to read between the lines, hear what’s not said & more in this propaganda dissection workshop. We’ll pick apart ads, movies, headlines, conversations & other content with a simple, repeatable technique.

JULY 4th, 1pm to 3pm, LOCATION TBA

All these events are gonna be in Philly. I should have the locations and everything else pinned down in another week, so stay tuned for that information.

In the mean time, w00t. I watched POSE on netflix finally and it was so nice to watch a show centering trans women and gay people of color without having any violence or fucked up straight gaze objectification shit happening. The other night me and my boo watched some of the new Black Mirror, which again if you missed my previous critiques, has become trash propaganda in SO many ways ever since it’s first harrowing season. The first ep of this new jawn is [SPOILER ALERT]

like oh, ‘no homo’ cis man sexuality at its finest??? SLASH wow I been there role playing wild fantasy sex/tension with friends who I otherwise am not attracted to IRL… buuuut… I was just disappointed in the continual lack of explicit societal consequences––not even consequences, but lack of discourse? If you feel me, the episode is cool in that there’s no white people in the whole episode. It centers Black men and there’s no grotesque or explicit violence that happens to anyone (even when the police show up). But it’s centers cis heteronormative men and their relationships, and makes something of a safe space for them to explore their sexuality in role playing virtual space… and in the end, they’re still just some straight dudes with their wives and girlfriends and kids, and you know, just normal guy stuff no homo! Like dude’s rationalizing of RPing a woman and getting fucked is that it’s ‘like porn’… SIGH!

Then the next episode with that hostage situation and how it all ends, I JUST DONT KNOW MY FRIENDS IT’S NOT THAT GOOD IMO. Wasted opportunities. Normalizing surveillance culture and that deeeep total surveillance via social media giants working with government agencies (finding out everything about dude before the police do and then patching in a tap on his cell phone in real time??), depicting a sympathetic billionaire, a young Black man having sympathy in the end for a guy who threatened to shoot him over and over again, like…………….???????????????????????????

[END SPOILER]

In short, POSE is better sci-fi than motherfucking Black Mirror at this point.

In positive news, I saw some fireflies last night and was glad.

Till next time

-Monk

@}-}-;——

Welcome to the DHD newsletter. This is a continuation of my newsletter that started on tinyletter*, for fans of my speculative storytelling work as M. Téllez and in collaboration with my collective, METROPOLARITY.

Subscribe and look froward to my monthly missives where I share critical perspectives on science fiction & fantasy popular media, literary and art institutions, and technology, among other things. It’s relaxed. It’s conversational. You’ll know when I have workshop or reading/performance events coming up, or new zine/book, audio & gear releases, as well.

And please be my guest – tell your peoples if this is their wave. =)

Till next time.

- Monk

@}-}-;———-

*view tinyletter archive here