llorar de tristeza llorar de alegría

catching up, this moon's events & releases, and the usual info share~

Hi everyone. Welcome to December. I’m not surprised we’re here, and in fact I’m glad because the sooner we get to XMAS the sooner the frenzy for sales at my work can diminish.

How are you? I’ve been enduring a week plus of what I would now call hypomanic ~type~ ~symptoms~ …heart pounding, holding my breath, trouble breathing deeply, staying up late as fuck, low appetite, extreme focus/distractedness and so on. Had to take a day off work last week I was feeling so thinned out. YouTube must have also sensed my preoccupation with online windowshopping and suggested me to watch a video on cyclomythia. Fascinating. I have struggled with lots of self-esteem/personal/mood/energy/interpersonal issues throughout my life, but none to the degree as to require medication or hospitalization. Since my late 20s, perhaps around when my Saturn Return was approaching, I’ve come to learn about many ways to take care of your body or to get care from others, and how to be more kind to yourself. Yourself meaning myself. Exercise, food choice, herbal regimens. It has not been lost on me how I have long loved and admired cyborgs, pinnacles of empire-state technological labor, yet towards my own corporeal form I have tried to make due without their assistance. And that is just me – I mean no disrespect to anyone else’s corporeal condition & needs demands.

This brings me to a point… Jessica Dore—whose tarot circle I have attended for a small while now and who is steadily receiving greater attention (and who is currently working on a book about tarot that I am very much looking forward to)—posted an image of the book Woman Who Glows in the Dark. It reminded me oh! I have been meaning to read that! Oh and now that I connected my library card to their online database, I can request holds on books to my local branch, and ~ cut to today and I’m around 60% through. This book is about curanderismo, a healer tradition of Aztec/Mexica and mestiza/mixed race peoples from what is now called Mexico, the American Southwest, and the armed & surveilled border area maintained by the United States on the land. A curandera wrote the book, and the curandera, Elena Avila, is also a trained psychiatric nurse. The book actually goes in on the origins of curanderismo and acknowledges the cultural influence & importance of enslaved Africans alongside Spanish and Indigenous peoples’. I’m interested to read more thoroughly about those topics, but for the purpose of this conversation, I want to shift over to my dad.

My dad is an old Mexican man from a ranch in Hidalgo state. He is healthy, he is proud, he is a survivor. All my life he has lectured me and instructed me about how to comport myself, how to carry myself, how to eat, how to deal with skin issues, how to breathe, how to rely on the power of the ocean and the sun and the wind to heal my body and soul, and so on and so forth. When I ask him about brujería he repeats what he has always told me about psychics, tarot card readers, and other non-Christian activities—that it’s all bullshit and to not let it take advantage of you. I asked him about curanderos once before and he had the same attitude. In Avila’s book, she talks about how many charlatan ‘curanderos’ are out there and the harm they do. This book has me thinking that it might be wiser to tell my dad that I think he does things a curandero does, and see how he will respond to that. It’s famous, right? How immigrant parents are so unwilling to say much when you ask them about their lives growing up? Their childhood? I’m not totally sure it’s famous, but I’ve sure heard enough children of immigrants say it’s like that. I just want him to give me a few more clues, and not insist upon a Christian and European identified Mexican existence when I know he’s told me otherwise before. From my perspective I perceive an assimilation survival strategy, but who knows what else there is. I muse about my father a lot and he is very secretive. And I probably shouldn’t talk about him like this, but I also find myself grappling with how else to make use of my observations and feelings. I am tired of assimilation. The forgetting. The letting go.

news/events

This morning I pulled the Fool card and met the artist Johanna Hedva, who some of you may know as author of the essay Sick Woman Theory. Johanna is here to participate in & perform for Bodies Assembled, this intriguing Philadelphia Area Creative Collaborations project of which I am also a part. They are performing at Haverford College for free, this Tuesday the 3rd night at 7pm. I’m going to go, see you if you’ll be there. On Thursday the 5th there will an open-to-the-public art showing & performance from all involved parties, and I will read the opening from my book’s 2nd chapter ~ soon to be published on my site and my Wattpad.

Speaking of publishing, there is finally an AUDIO story version of my tale, HEAT DEATH OF WESTERN HUMAN ARROGANCE, which if you didn’t know and are impressed by awards, was in two anthologies nominated for or that won Lambda Awards, and one that won a American Library Association Stonewall Book Award. So poo poo on you! Skssss ummm but for real, I honestly live to write my stories with the intention of delivering them aloud, so dear reader, consider this an invitation to luxuriate in my storytelling talents. Let me also express my gratitude to Paul Walker, who remains a steadfast support and is always down to contribute compositions & mix down my audio offerings. <3

As for audio, remember last time when I announced I would be on Weird Kids Wanted podcast for a live-recording speculative fiction panel? That episode [ep11] is up for your listening pleasure as well.

Annnnd

CALL FOR SMUT: Slow-moving /venus saturn sqaure/ zine returns. An attempt to straddle the realms of fandom kink & fantasy, cruising & BDSM, service, obliteration & satisfaction. A private hot tub invite to those who find themselves stuck, conflicted, in denial, or self-sabotaging of their own desires. ISO smut dreams & fanfic that lives between the confines of existing canons and trips into the surreal and ecstatic. No pressure to climax, penetrate, or deal with Western narrative. Drafts welcome. Editing help provided. Tag a freak.

first drafts due:
FEBRUARY 29TH, 2020
to magusmonk at protonmail dot com
details/archive/practice materials at cyborgmemoirs.com
workshop dates on the way.

so. now you know. feel free to share. feel free to ask me questions. feel free to connect me to opportunities i may be unaware of.

oh, and i’m sold out of my first run of TRANSITIONAL TIMES TRANSITIONAL BODY short story collection. Thanks everyone. I’ll be printing an expanded version soon. In the meantime, all the stories from that collection are on my site 4 free, with recordings of all to follow.

meanwhile[links],

Annie Mok recently dropped an essay on learning to play 2D fighting games, and because watchful Youtube and Twitter were paying attention to my browsing, I was shown a video dissecting the animation of BB Hood from Darkstalkers, my favorite fighting game ever. It made me instantly wonder about my main demonic bitch, Morrigan Aensland. And several hours later, I had listened to her Marvel Vs Capcom stage theme on loop about 20 times.

My note to self for this email draft was: this shit makes me horny

Give it a listen! And check out that ~artwork~ <3

PLEASE have a look at the comments, too.

Then there’s the Darkstalkers 3 BGM below here, which you could say established her 18+ adult club music theme:

And since I love Morrigan to the extent that I’m contemplating writing a zine dedication, let me share my faves from this voice actor montage below: Yayoi Jinguji [at 0:12] who voiced her in the original game, and Rie Tanaka [at 2:42] from her Marvel vs Capcom 3 appearance. Yayoi Jinguji’s gutteral attacks were my shit, so therapeutic to beat someone’s ass to. And Rie Tanaka’s voice acting gave me SOOO much life. This Morrigan, thanks to her voice acting, gave me SUCH bitch fem energy in the midst of some of the worst times of my life! I still fantasize about embodying that high shattering dismissive bitch cackle! One day, one day. :))))

why does this instagram-driven design aesthetic transfix me? i have so many thoughts: https://www.instagram.com/youthloser/

i don’t think i’ll ever get around to reading this webcomic, but it has a following and fuckinnnn look at the way it’s presented: https://superposecomic.com/

and then you know, i been listening to shit like this when i’m trying to give my eyes a rest:

Alright yall, I’m gonna call it quits for now. I don’t have the energy to go into it at this point, but Philly check out Deep Space Mind 215 [IG] that the homie Ras Cutty is doing. I’ll be attending their next gathering.

Take care of yourself. Meant to write back everyone who wrote me back last time, but it’s been a ~braiiinns~ month. ~_~;

@}-}-;———

Monk