desire practice and other undulations

well good evening everyone.

the full moon looms and i find myself with little to say in the face of everything being said on my social streams.

this will be a short newsletter. a few of you have said that you haven't been getting my newsletters, and that is because of how gmail wants to handle encryption related to my otra email account (protonmail). so, for tinyletter, i switched my sender email back to my gmail, and everyone better get my damn newsletters now. >.<

So in case you missed the last few, where i announced an audio recording of Discipline Welcomes Beauty, debuted the first half of the new All That's Left chapter, or dropped a call for submissions for Venus Saturn Square, my smut zine/workshop/reading series to-be ~ check the letter archive.

Since i work in this peculiar niche of retail, i'm already in the thrust of plotting holiday campaigns and I feel that strange stiffness take hold of my jaw where I must find joy in small and great things around me. Thank the saints I live somewhere the HEAT comes on with steadfast dependability now. The temps are in the mid to low 40ºs at night. I'm thrilled I don't have to go to sleep with what I refer to as my bonnet anymore. Jesus christ. Thank the saints I have tap water I can drink out the faucet. Hot water in my shower. Cans of beans in my cupboard. Polish for my shoes. Fresh clothes from a swap. And so on.

Mask Magazine published this lovely transcription of a panel talk: "Samuel R Delany, Jackie Wang, and Huw Lemmy discuss technology and public sex during Arika's Episode 9."

In it, Delany grills Wang to talk about their sex life all out in the open like ppl always ask him. Then he also acknowledges that cruising is like considerably harder and more difficult for not men, and for some reason that validated me deeply in all my past (and perhaps ongoing) sexual frustrations.
Then, since I've been having fun watching college lectures and so on from my tv, I looked if anything good with Delany was online and came back with bell hooks Hosts an Open Dialogue on Transgressive Sexual Practice at The New School

An open dialogue hosted by Eugene Lang College The New School for Liberal Arts on sexuality with bell hooks, Marci Blackman (Author of Tradition), Samuel “Chip” Delany (Director, Creative Writing (Fiction), College of Liberal Arts, Temple University), and M. Lamar (video artist and sculptor). bell hooks (née Gloria Watkins) is among the leading public intellectuals of her generation. Her writings cover a broad range of topics including gender, race, teaching, and contemporary culture. This fall marks the 20th Anniversary of the publication of Teaching to Transgress: Education as a Practice of Freedom, Dr. hooks’ seminal book on educational practices. This weeklong residency is an opportunity for The New School community to directly engage with Dr. hooks and her commitment to education and learning as a place “where paradise can be created”

And that was really good too! Halfway into things Delany acknowledges he's getting long-winded (as he does), and I was reminded of reading (in James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon) how back in the 70s him and Tiptree (before they were outed as 'not a man') were the only two men on this 'women in sci-fi' round-table and how they both got kicked out of it for talking too much. The round-table was done via correspondence, btw. Tiptree evaded in-person interviews for the whole of their career.

I'm still very much questioning if the people who currently do things on Tiptree's behalf (like the award and publishers of anthologies, etc) acknowledge or even consider that the person behind Tiptree was trans??? Does it matter?

If you've missed any of my previous long-posting about Tiptree, well I'm sorry. Their short stories can be found across the net, although Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (short story collection) is so good. Their life was complicated, and remains this peculiar personal fixation. And I suppose it's a very keen example of how wealth hoarding, white supremacy, and colonialism destroys the lives of white people themselves.

I'm still enjoying these intellectual theory vids by Cuck Philosophy. This one came out teasing apart neoliberalism & world music. An enjoyable watch. I think this person's vids are fun to watch ur intellectual friends who don't like to read.

And shout out to the person who passed me this documentary on the connections between the internet, the una-bomber, and lsd. it's subtitled from german but alllso an enjoyable watch.

Shout out to the tarot circle and Chrome City and to Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha x Carolyn Lazard for a life-giving book tour talk re: Care Work (dreaming disability justice). Shout out to Cutty. Shout out to zeeemy. Shout out to spacer. All we have are each other.

Speaking of which, if you're in Philly, you're invited to this smut writing practice space!


And if you're thinking of submitting to the smut zine, I just put up this desire practice worksheet for download. PDF or text, your choice.


FIRST DRAFTS of stories are due november 16th. again, allllll details for this project are here. my hands are about to give up on me.

pour a little water or a little drink or a little smoke for someone you love.

till next time.

monk
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