it’s so fun to sleep early and wake up early
waiting for the next day
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dear jisu
you are trying so hard to be helpful and it’s ok to fall back also. and be mysterious. you neeed to build yourself up. your confidence and dignity. your projects and vision
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i am playful and enjoying life like a videogame because i know it is play. we know what is really true which is depression and death and that we are not loved right or enough and our caretakers did not fill in all the gaps they were supposed to. but we play as if this truth is not true. and play is supposed to be fun. i also experience sadness but i experience it as truth
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i need to be off and stay off social media. especially during this election. because i don’t want to be caught up in the common ground of what is happening right now. i want to be pulling from 50, 70 years ago. i don’t want someone to share something intimately with me without breathing alongside them, looking into their eyes and knowing they know that i heard what they said.
recognizing when something is work. it is work. and i don’t want to do work. work is the art of realizing a vision. (taking back the media narrative.) i choose what kind of art i want to do. i can make recommendations, but i cannot enforce them. i have to be okay with that.
my big problem is giving myself false deadlines
i am very good at sticking to the deadline but i will only go by hard deadlines, not soft ones. so i need to set aside time to set deadlines that are accurate and make sense.
i’m crying and feeling overwhelmed with emotion at various points today because i can’t believe my money problems are over. that’s so simplistic to say but what i mean is that so much is opening up to me right now, suddenly, and i can’t believe it. and i’m happy about it. it’s like all these things i didn’t realize i was limited in.
when i had to stand up to [censored], it was “the big one.” everything from then on has been lesser, lower stakes. career, relationship, it doesn’t matter. i didn’t realize how often this would come up. it comes up in:
✿ breakups
✿ confronting a partner
✿ confronting a boss
✿ leaving a job
✿ firing a client
✿ confronting a community member (especially an older, respected one)
✿ confronting a department head
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growing up my mother was a great philosopher
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why is ease important
✿ to show intentionality. to denormalize the status quo by showing an effort was made to create it and an effort continues to be made to maintain it
✿ because labor is important. i saw a group’s teeth taken out because of the cost of labor. because the path forward seemed not easy or natural, seemed like it would take a lot of effort to maintain. what i am trying to say is that being free is easy. being free seems like it might be hard because freedom is isolating. it separates you from support networks and resources. but you might be so close to other networks, connections that are impossible as long as you remain bound in a bad relationship
✿ ease is also a way to gauge consent. the opposite of ease is force
here is how things go:
✿ they reach a limit on capacity
✿ a hierarchy /triage gets invoked
✿ you get deprioritized (if you are lower in the societal hierarchy)
school teaches you this triage and reinforces it constantly. anxiety is golden. status is a helpful hint. especially in-group status
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battle of algiers
✿ a formation. everyone closing their doors in opposition to the army coming in to try to undo the strike. like bacurau. it is not just opposition, it is also style
✿ cultural wins and losses
— the people of paris. what does paris have to say
— the young children to the elders of algeria
✿ where will the colonizers go? back home
— like belgians in congo
✿ who else is watching this movie?
— the pentagon
— the black panthers
performance art as philosophy
style as philosophy. style as infinitely fine-grained rules. broad rules exist, so do small ones. small ones offer more plausible deniability. broad ones are clearer
sometimes we watch a movie or a speech because we already agree with the content, just need to get tips on style. what do we like seeing in complex environments? when things change suddenly? what hits? what resonates with us?
making decisions is style. making decisions is philosophy. when we make decisions with an audience, we are performing one of the many ways this could play out. this allows the audience to find truths within themselves, like how the body reacts to different things
this could be innate and cultural. there are large movements sweeping generations (like your saturn sign) that will allow you to resonate when your body or heart or mind is ready. there are also things that have always resonated for you. kids are good at this, then as they grow up they are taught to second-guess
talk to philosophers and artists—ask them many questions until we really get to how they thought when they were young, when they were kids. how early did their philosophies begin? kids do not have to grow up before they start to philosophize
✿ for example, i remember losing religion as a high schooler and thinking i must replace it with a small set of other equally powerful things: love, chance, style (which i am now realizing is philosophy)
✿ so there was a point when they had knowledge that could be useful to the adults in their lives, even as a kid
true knowledge (the knowledge whose truth is proven through resonance) is not something you give to someone else. it is something you awaken in someone else. you perform a real or imagined path (by making decisions in real life or telling a story) and the audience has a reaction to that path. then they will know a truth about themselves. it might seem similar to dogma because usually the reaction is agreement, and so audiences will tend to align with the media they consume. but we can use media literacy to move beyond agreement. we can use media (including real time performance) to uncover the structures of truth we have within ourselves
poetic truth
one of the most “magical” and convincing ways (even for a skeptic) to determine these kinds of truth structures is by uncovering connections. if we take this one thing to be true, we can guess that this other thing is true as well. that is one component of its resonance
the components of resonance
✿ across people (you feel it in your soul, and you know the same is true for others, even if it’s just a few in a thousand)
✿ across contexts
✿ along other fundamental structures
— example: changing from the past to present to future
— if underground is the past, above ground is the present and space is the future
— this is actually not logical outside of the human/earth experience (so to a computer for example) because “under” the ground is not really under anything, it’s inside a random planet
— but we are not aiming for logic outside of the human/earth experience. we are animals subject to certain biases (roygbiv visual spectrum, enjoying narrative, certain thresholds for grouping items together or separating them) and so there are truths that will resonate with our complicated mythics and belief systems. we must understand these to understand ourselves and what we can do and what we can be to each other, and also those subject to different mythics, like animals or aliens
✿ across time
— staying consistent across time
put these words on paintings so people will pay attention to them. they will look occult and i will borrow the definiteness and free pass from explanation, but they are actually very true and clear and unmysterious to me.
every so often, really assess what power you have and what power you do not have. when you do physical labor, or even walk outside, this becomes clearer. you may overestimate or underestimate your power. you are a small creature on this planet, and you are also an entity in a resource-guzzling country with outsized decision making power for the planet
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starling flight patterns. seven neighbors
this is the ideal number for coordinated, decentralized flight decisions. the number is large enough to stay cohesive within the group, while also small enough to quickly receive all the information necessary to make decisions
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something is able to be transmitted to the next generation
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a presidential debate happened yesterday and i didn’t even know! i watched a bit of it today. truly being off social media is so healing. and it’s easy now that i’m so busy.
i’m feeling deliriously happy this evening. not in a high energy way but in a tired, chill way. it’s easy to smile, easy to dance. i just cooked for tomorrow’s lunch and i’m listening to doechii’s new album and drinking tea. i just worked a full day at the preschool
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nourish a generation of people with really good narrativizing skills. storytellers.
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creative things: really crank out as many hardcover books as possible
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i am experiencing things.
thoughts of [censored]. not in a sad way but a little shocking, little intrusions. this is fine for now, my emotion about it is really bland, but a warning for the future.
and not wanting to speak. wanting to be extremely quiet when i am at home.
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story ideas which may flow together:
✿ index finger and pinky moving together
— time travel but not really
— a daughter wishing she knew more about her mother
— the mother finally thinking of providing clues for her daughter to discover
— with different powers of analysis
— fluency in the oppression
— what happens to the next generation after national trauma?
— analyzers, historians, poets
✿ grandmother, mother, and daughter
— grandmother and mother were a duo in science or philosophy. grandmother died, mother becomes obsessed with having a child and has a daughter. slowly everyone around her starts to think she is trying to replace her grandmother with her daughter, in order to have the daughter solve an unsolved problem the mother has been working on for years. this is close, but not true. the mother is aware everyone thinks that. but it’s not that she expects the daughter to solve it. it is that there was a version of herself she was only able to access, a language and personality and cognition, with her mother. she lost that language when her mother died. her hope is to have conversations with her daughter in order to once again experience herself.
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space movie
there is no money in it now, and so the work will be very minimal and freeform (you have a say in the direction of this). i will also submit this for things, in which case everyone will get an equal share of any money that may come
there are surreal sequences (like with masks or in the color of pomegranates) that will emerge from spontaneous interviews or thoughts from the actors
collage backgrounds. or not
outfits - think of shape. silhouette
space blankets?
shot from far away, cinematic even geometric scenes. but audio up close (recorded separately). to make it more like a fable
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dream i had:
apocalypse situation everyone is in a building or trailer type thing. only a few people left, humanity is dying off and there is a definite end date. or maybe not every single person will die but structures of humanity will fall
you have resigned yourself to death within a few days and made peace with it. there are only a few people left in your bunker. it took you a lot to be okay with this ending, probably the biggest mental journey (accomplishment) of your life. you cannot imagine a mental stretch beyond this, beyond accepting your own imminent death
but there is a beyond. you wake up in the middle of the night to see older women authority figures (nuns?) smothering some of the few remaining people in their sleep, mercy killings so they can have a quick death without the terror of waiting the next few days. you realize this might happen to you, or maybe you could convince the nuns to spare you because you can honestly tell them you can be okay waiting to die, but is that true? whatever the reason, you are now spooked to the point that nothing that was true before is necessarily true now. you run as fast as you can out of the bunker, locking the door as you leave so you can’t get back in. you run across the barren landscape, passing empty gas stations. you don’t know why at first, and then your mind replays what you have seen. what you saw scared you to life.
maybe what you are scared of is not that they would kill you, but that you can’t argue it’s not the best option. but you viscerally hate it, and you thought you had come to peace with the world ending in a few days. so did you really come to peace with that kind of thing?
you are running and suddenly become certain you must run to the mountains, where there are fields of flowers and deep valleys. it comes to you like: of course. there must be others who have had the same thought. why not spend your last days in the most beautiful surroundings possible? these are your last days alive. you should frolic and scream. even if you will die of starvation, you will see things you have never seen. and you might not even starve, you could gather berries and things. you realize it’s not the end of the world, just the end of most humanity, and that doesn’t mean you have to even die.
this is what happened when i came out. i thought the biggest mental stretch i would ever have to make was going from someone who deeply loves the people around me including my family to someone who is okay losing my family. being okay with that. that was the most extreme thing i could imagine. but there is something even beyond that, which is going through all that and still not releasing, instead fighting every day to love again
like holding onto the edge of a cliff and your arms are so so tired. and finally you decide to accept death and let go. which is so hard. but you have no other choice, the strength in your arms is gone. but then when you try to do it, you realize your fingers are frozen in this position. you cannot let go. you could not imagine there could be something worse than dying, but there is: living. you thought there was no choice because the strength in your arms was depleted, but somehow you are forced to have strength, a different kind. it is both a curse and a blessing (because you are forced to live). it is a nightmare
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it’s hard to know when to respond and when to not. part of me is like let’s focus on our shit and whatever cannot keep up won’t
i talked to helen the other day but i don’t know if it did anything. i told her to listen to what people have already said. i tapped my head and said i hope you really think
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freedom means letting go of control
it also means having a good relationship with control. knowing what you do control, and exercising that well
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band names: cosmic microwave, noise complaint
perhaps this is needed, in real life or in a story: girls stating privately that they will not die by suicide. if they are found dead it will not be suicide and an investigation is necessary. signed, fingerprinted, whatever it needs to be. keep it in your house
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cycles
✿ knowing when you have to poop. people are so bad at this
✿ people also end up in bad cycles of relationsships
✿ nature has a lot of cycles
✿ but human math is not great at cycles. maybe just how we evolved or something
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i like you but i’m not going to your opening
every time i see another promotion for ely center, my stomach sinks like on an existential plane. like their goal was to have people forget, and sometimes it feels like they are achieving that. a lot of times it doesn’t. i look at names of people doing their next group show or event and recognize almost no one on the list. the ones i do recognize are people who moved here recently. in a way this is for them.
i saw helen kauder out and about recently and told her to remember what i said last year, that she would find herself wondering how this all happened, what to do next, and she might even wish she could talk to the people who left. but i told her, these people have already given her the answers. they have already given her wisdom she is still unwilling to hear. so i told her last year, and told her again this year, to think. please, if nothing else, think.
she assured me she does think about this often. if that’s true, i’m not sure what other advice to give her. people have already told her to just leave the ely center, and she agreed, on record, to do so by the end of 2023. it’s in the newspaper. it’s almost the end of 2024 and i asked her why that hasn’t happened yet. this was a simple instruction.
i told helen that at first people were trying to hold out hope for a complete turnover in power at the ely center, that maybe that would solve things. but now i don’t have that hope. the turnover, whenever it is finally done, will not have been quick enough. i witnessed with my own eyes, people who are new to the center, who have no reason to defend events of the past, bend over backwards to extend grace to ridiculous things.
this is about child pornography, but this is also about workers’ rights. it came to light last year that a board member at the ely center was previously charged with possession of child pornography. it was on his computer at work as a finance head of a casino, and it was enough that it left him with a 10-year period of limited internet and access to children. when a young worker at the center found out about this, he also realized why he was told to sign that board member’s tax forms under his name. he was stressed, obviously, about the legality of everything that was happening at the center, and when he spoke up about it he was harassed and forced to quit.
the specifics of how they applied this pressure are bonkers to me. the worker was given a performance review, and they brought in someone who works with the center but who is not a normal or expected part of these reviews. she also happens to be the wife of the board member in question. and of course, she proceeded to yell at and berate the worker in a completely unprofessional way. the inappropriateness of this was confirmed by the worker himself as well as the other members of the board.
the ely center’s first big answer was that they would start doing background checks on new board members. this is the opposite of what i cared about or wanted.
their second big answer was that they believe deeply in restorative justice. which, first of all, conflicts with their first answer. and beyond that, it’s just not genuine. there was no process to deal with the board member’s wrongs. they just didn’t want to deal with it. he had money, he was their friend, and they thought no one would ask too many questions.
the ely center planned four community listening sessions, all contentious. the first one was in person, and not well advertised. it was a tiny circle of chairs with wine and chocolates ominously placed directly on the floor in the center. the second was on zoom, with one of the guest moderators getting increasingly nervous throughout and remarking at the end that he didn’t know what he was getting himself into. the third and fourth did not even happen. they were cancelled.
shortly before the second session, an article came out.
i worked at an art store, and one of my regulars was an artist in residence at the newly opened third floor of the ely center. this was shortly after the whole child porn scandal. i asked her how the air quality was at her studio there, because i had heard it was bad. she said she couldn’t be in there too long or she would start tearing up. one time, she forced herself to stay a couple hours to work on a piece and couldn’t bear it and had to leave. the truth was, the third floor was not safe to open up to artists in residence.
the people in power are not looking out for the youth at all. not our physical health, not our psyches, not our money. they will have you tearing up from bad air quality, put in the center of a legal and ethical nightmare when you’re just trying to do your job, and dangling your own money in front of you for no reason.
it’s okay to be a messy local art org, creating drama among your friends. but what i saw was adults with massive amounts of power acting like children, at the expense of actual young people in the area.
i had coffee with the new HR person as the scandal was unfolding, to ask if she really believes in all this or resents the mess she was thrown into. she’s going to hate me for this, but she told me, basically, that helen and debbie have so much money they will just inevitably join another board after this. they always land on their feet.
it’s exhausting even when you’re trying not to be exhausted by it. even when you’re trying to do good work and stay focused as an artist. let me walk you through it. the first question is whether to fight the ely center or not. you know the truth, there are already news articles written about it, your friends know what’s up. so why fight in public? just avoid it and let it fall apart, right? great. you stay focused, don’t let them trap you into overexplaining. in the meantime, the ely center cleans up their image. you start to see new friends’ names on their promotional materials. you wish there was an easy way to tip them off about what happened, but there isn’t. because you haven’t been so public. you could tell your new friends one by one, but that’s exhausting too.
so i guess i am just trying to explain myself all at once and hoping it sticks.
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why and how did i become this thing that cannot be authentically me in my own hometown
is there a way i can be me in my hometown
i guess election years always make me think of pennsylvania. how ‘important’ it is, only once every four years.
high production in unexpected places
screening movies
third cinema
radical movie theater
anarchist movie theater in nepa
movies in concrete city
events in concrete city
project on fabric, embroider a projection screen (embroider the frame)
concrete city's wikipedia: “uninterested in paying for required improvements and unable to demolish it due to its robust construction”
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i’m so happy and relieved that the show went well. that was so great and felt so NEPA haha
that’s me. i’m best when i’m fully me.
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spiraling because
new job and last day of old job
one very nice night
9th anniversary of a traumatic death. or 10th
ok so what am i doing! i literally work at a bookstore that has an audience for books and sells homemade books. i know how to make hardcovers now, out of recycled cardboard. i just need to make more books. and polish the ones i have. i can start promoting my theories, in analog form. straight to book. don’t even post about it.
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being kidnapped is such a scary concept because you can imagine what someone might do to you. you feel it is inevitable they will do the worst to you.
this is the reality of occupation and slavery. it’s not ridiculous to imagine the worst. the worst is happening because of the evils of oppression. the logic of oppression.
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things i want in my life:
✿ once a week home improvement job
✿ a moving train on a track set up all around the house
— and a cat village going around the train
✿ wake up early. spend time with cats on couch while responding to emails or reading
— then reunite with the cats at night
✿ in the winter, always throw in a pair of socks in the wash/dryer. then wear them for a treat
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i was very precious about some things when i was small. i didn’t want anything to happen to them. now i am precious about very little, or if i am precious it is as if through a translation, like it’s someone else who needs it to stay intact.
now i have none of those things i was so precious about.
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My mother could go all day with one apple and be happy.
I’ve never gotten used to this world. I am always uneasy at a café, there is not a café that feels right, I still have not gotten used to these prices. Coffee should be $1, then I would feel I could go every day. My life has been me preparing for a world that would not exist by the time I grew up.
It is imperative that I escape my old life. Recently I was fooled into nostalgia. But I left that all behind. It was a difficult decision and I made it.
After my mother threatened to [censored], she visited me, along with her older sister. I convinced them stay the night even though they said several times that they were going to drive home. We stayed in my bed under the fluffy covers and they laughed until they couldn’t breathe. Three of us. There was enough room. They used to sleep all together on the floor growing up.
A new sticker pack had just been released on KakaoTalk. They were kicking their feet, saying they were going to pee. It was one of those late nights that could go on forever. I took them for brunch the next day. It felt like a happy and selfish win. This was my win. I was saying to them: Despite everything, I can still love you. Despite everything, I am still the best at loving you. There is nothing in this world you can take from me.
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crying my eyes out watching this movie called beans
and reading about abu ghraib and guantánamo, i’m really shocked. it all goes together. torture, humiliation, homophobia. this is what oppression is made of. rush limbaugh’s mention of skull and bones. release, pleasure. pleasure from the oppressive force cannot be trusted. it is not something good.
they are wondering whether it’s possible the israeli forces would really do the torture they are being accused of. yes, it’s not only possible but true. and u.s. soldiers did it too, and are continuing to. there are so many photographs. there would be more but obama decided not to release them.
just like we are saying you must look at the pictures out of palestine right now. you must see these. whatever you need to do to ground yourself or be ok after, you must take the time to see these pictures. similarly you must see these pictures from abu ghraib.
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anger is the negotiation, after a violation, of "how bad it was"
back and forth
thats why anger builds boundaries. it really just reflects them
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I’m still ruminating and going around in circles a bit, but less than yesterday. It really gets better. And it gets worse also, of course. But it also gets better.
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When I moved to this neighborhood, I started shopping sometimes at the market a few blocks away from my house, called Shanghai. I noticed they have those plastic soup containers you get from restaurants. I had never seen them in the store, never even considered you could just buy a bunch of them as a regular consumer. When the time came that I needed them, I went and got a pack of about 4 tall containers with lids. Life has been so good since then. Whenever I need to store leftovers, I know for a fact I will have a container ready, and a lid to match. It’s like wondering how you will survive with a pack of 6 frozen waffles. The way to survive is to have multiple breakfast options. Then you don’t run out of waffles in a week, and 6 waffles seems like plenty. Excess really does make life easier. Being richer makes things cheaper.
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I cried a lot during the 2016 election. And I am finding myself crying during this 2024 election, eight years later. I am made up of people who hate each other, really hate each other. Seeing people in Connecticut making phone calls to voters in Pennsylvania, undecided voters, I feel like: wow, they really hate us. They hate us so bad. They do not care about us and on top of that, they want us to do something for them. At the same time I see how I can’t be gay in NEPA. Not a one, not a single one—I did not know a gay woman. I don’t keep in touch with any of the people there because of the terrifying hate. They told me to not move away for college, because it would make me lose god. And all of this threatens to tear me apart, like maybe my destiny is to make really emotional art in a barn somewhere. I am a gay Korean woman from NEPA, born in West Virginia, living in New Haven, Connecticut. I want to go to North Korea, where both sets of my grandparents are from. Of course everyone hates that. Given all this hate, it is remarkable that I am good at love.
One thing that I know is good is finding and doing magic tricks for good-hearted people. There are people in this world, of all kinds, who are very special and good. They deserve a little enchantment, and I plan to give it to them.
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making decisions:
if you know what you want, you will know which thing you want more. you can compare two wants. but people think decision making is about something objective, logical, pros and cons lists. what about desire, which is true to you?
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the backing of the authority of the state. that is what teachers depend on for classroom management. which is necessary because there are so many kids to one adult. when it’s one on one, it’s easy to make a student feel good because you do see them as something good, and when you talk to them genuinely your conversation reflects that. when it’s a lot of students, it’s easy to think of their requests as something bad, because it is pushing on a limit you didn’t agree to.
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‘don’t litter’ just means don’t litter on american soil.
✿ trash here vs trash there
✿ we make other countries take our trash
✿ and the seas
ok maybe this is not so true? the trash can be compacted in landfills which is nicer
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where are you looking? are you going to find what you’re looking for there?
just heard from outside “i’ll fuck you up.” i think it might be some minor car accident because before that i heard “you hit my car?” hearing these voices, they sound so healthy. like what does it mean to fuck someone up? it’s a serious threat.
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quick question: if prosecutors decide both the charge and the plea bargain, can’t they just start with a higher charge and set the conditions of the bargain for a lower charge, so they can avoid trial?
it’s presented as a not-corrupt deal because it’s not for like money or anything, but it is for something in the interest of the prosecutor. the time they spend on this case.
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when you finally do the thing, you will maybe be sad and feel overwhelming doom because of how long you stopped yourself and all those years you will never get back, but then you will experience joy.
people think the following things are serious: the state, the government, police, teachers, professors, chairs of departments, family expectations
but when you come face to face with death, you will see these things are serious: humor, food, living your full potential
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news as buttons or shirts. freely given away. maybe cyanotyped. marker on plexi. dated and with the plants in season. fades with wash. do something about it before it fades. including record it in another way.
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skill is for ease. that’s it. people have convinced us it’s for something else, and they took away our ease. they stole it.
ease is important.
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losing public interest in our oppression is not the same as losing culture. we cannot control what the people are interested in. more often than not, they will be interested in an engaging analysis. our culture is something different from the mainstream narrative.
when ‘stop asian hate’ was big in the news, i didn’t feel more korean or more proud to be korean. i understood we were in a media cycle that would last some months and then change to something else. i understood we were in a window of time when certain things surfaced to the common ground and that we would be able to talk about more freely, but there wasn’t even enough time to take these opportunities. i appreciated what others were able to accomplish during this time, but I mostly opted out.
i was also of course disappointed by who got to be the spokespeople for asians during this time, who got to be on the news explaining our predicament. mostly, it was east asians from new york or big cities in california. their experiences were different from mine.
i offer this for your consideration: having your oppression be widely legible, for whatever period of time, is not everything. many people fought and continue to fight very hard for public understanding, and that creates routes of access for various projects. but legibility is largely out of our control. and losing it, whether it’s due to the media cycle or putting it on the back burner for the sake of some important analysis, is not a loss of culture.
so while it is very true that asians face discrimination, i can see this is not what’s important in say, a discussion about akai gurley. i do not attempt to “balance” the conversation by bringing up anti-asian racism. there is no balance to be had. peter liang murdered akai gurley in broad daylight. to me, it’s like saying “but the cop was a woman!” or “the cop has a disability!” we know discrimination against these groups exists. but can we start to see how it barely matters here? how it is not part of the analysis being made? how it is used not as a contribution to the analysis but as an individualization that detracts from an important generalization about police in the u.s.?
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analysis is important, and the most engaging analysis is going to be from the ground up. that is because it closes the gap between the truth inside ourselves and what is accepted as truth in the mainstream. and analysis that is not engaging is practically worthless. (or: boring).
that is why humor ‘punches up’, not down. that’s not about being an ethical comedian. that’s about being funny. analysis that repeats the false veneers that empires already spend billions of dollars on is not funny or engaging. it is boring. it does not close a gap.
the success of an engaging analysis is something you feel. and it depends on you seeing something that has been obscured.
so if no one understands you, don’t cry. decide.
if no one understands why you make the decision you make, make it anyway.
use the gap in understanding to perform magic. to make as if you can tell the future, when you are just following the clear path you see.
use the gap to confuse your enemies*. to waste their time trying to figure you out when you’re already two steps ahead.
*don’t pretend you don’t have enemies either, or that the concept of an ‘enemy’ is something archaic or un-evolved. an enemy is just someone whose vision of success harms your vision of success (and who, therefore, must fail). someone can temporarily be an enemy. politicians pretend they are above enemies, and yet the whole thing is about enemies. kamala harris versus donald trump, et cetera. just understand what everyone’s vision of success is, and be okay with needing them to fail.
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don’t wait on everyone to understand you. in fact, don’t wait on anyone to understand you. you can still make decisions. that is your art.
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the important thing is we do not suppress the analysis. generalizations are inherently too broad, and inherently untrue. but they are important for analysis. we do not operate in the truth of the generalization, but in the hard-to-describe truth that its analysis points to. generalizations can always be defeated by individual circumstances. there are a thousand exceptions and explanations for why any individual might be excluded from the generalization. does that mean it should be thrown out? no, the generalization has the specific use of analysis.
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it takes significant energy to restrain yourself. just as much as it takes to exert yourself. this should not be taken lightly
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raise money to send people to travel. or form connections for it.
travel and bring back what we learned
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chef friend talking about rich people having a restaurant just to have a cool place for friends to come to. that wouldn’t be so bad if we could all enjoy that, not just the owner.
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principles is rules
rules is style
religion is poetry (the word, it is written, the word of god), especially spoken poetry
so we should really practice speaking, spoken word poetry
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when you don’t use principles, you wait on the group decision. you follow the trend. this is also a principle, the most default one. or maybe you follow your gut instincts, but i believe those are principled and not random.
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had a good dream for the first time in a really long time
we had met before
there was winter on the new haven green, twice
and i was walking alone and you were
telling me about the friends you would be with
and i was happy thinking of them
the cats were not there
i didn’t miss them but i miss them now, waking up
i want the wind to know your heart, to whisper about it
12:17am, just slept for 4 hours, i really needed that. poem waking up
i wish i still had that one as a guide
the one with the bright eyes
i wish i could see her again
i will wait, there are cats in real life, i will see one on my walk home from work
in my dream i could step into that world
just in my mind still not in real
but in the dream there was no difference
or the difference didn’t matter
what a thrill and an impossibility
to know someone’s heart
i want everyone to know your heart
it would all make sense then i think
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looking back at my imperfect line of kids and feeling overwhelmed with cuteness and joy — to be among all these little kids! who are kind of trying to keep it together!
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still need to bring him some sujeonggwa
crying and snotty in the smoke
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when i get my own place
there will be movies rolling every night
or several times a week
i will make movies
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breakfast scene in vida
that’s exactly what i want and what i want to be able to provide
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dont force it
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it’s not about finding the perfect fit
i think we could make each other happy
i think we could be disastrously good for each other for some time
andré 3000's moving day
it doesn’t matter where we live
it matters what we get up to when we’re together
it matters who we hold in our hearts no matter what. t shirt with our faves’ faces on it.
i like having a weird face
i want to be undercover for a while and when my face is shown, it’s a weird one
like ok we get why you were not the frontrunner or pop star or model
you were the photographer or something
making sundials
and weather forecasts in special locations
don’t have to tell people, just make it enchanting and they will discover and tell each other
news updates wheatpasted and on shirts and buttons
making sundials out of natural shadows around new haven. things that stick out. from a material (mud paint?) that will come off and can be updated on the regular (chalk?)
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art store manifesto
rocket ship screenplay
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it makes me angry that i cannot reach my family in north korea. why can’t i talk to them. they will go their whole lives and die and we will never get that back. this was taken from us by the united states government.
“The colonels consulted a National Geographic map and focused on the 38th parallel, a degree of latitude north of the equator, passing through the middle of the Korean peninsula. Korea’s ancient capital, Seoul, was conveniently located sixty miles south. The 38th parallel followed no river or mountain range. It went indifferently through farms and villages, roads, and railroad lines. The colonels recommended to Truman that the parallel separate the two zones. Truman offered the idea to the Soviets, and they accepted. Korea was split into the communist north and the democratic south. Thirty million Koreans would be affected, but not a single one of them had a say.”
https://www.neh.gov/article/korea-and-thirty-eighth-parallel
i know it’s impossible (meeting my family) because so many people desire it and don’t get it. their desire is so big i know what is possible and what isn’t.
i wish i could demand it
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end pre trial detention
it’s just torture
systems need torture
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i come from a people with impossibly deep longing
i know it’s impossible because the desire is so big
nothing could fill that gap. nothing could
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so much will change once we are able to enjoy a good work life
