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book

~~ i always thought i would write a book one day

i have typed “i love you” so many times to so many people

“to the moon and back”

that perhaps I already have

language

is so wild and powerful — it blooms, it reeks, it sets things on fire

or it can be pruned into neat little hedges.

shipped off in boxes:

“Thank you, have a nice day”

“Thank you for your order”

“Thank you”

“Thank you so much!”

language under capitalism is always thanking us, never

quite looking us in the eyes

If we look too hard we may see a vacant stare -

transactional, streamlined for efficiency

make it lean, cut the fat

those line breaks, too, are vacant

informational architecture demands

- hierarchy

- minimalism

- prioritization

ideas, packed neatly under other

actionable ideas

in poetry, we find entire worlds

in the empty space -- in the gutters--

implied danger, mystery, intrigue

growing wild, meeting imaginations

repetition yields music, yields escapisms--

these days, i’ve adopted the habits

of writing under capitalism

of writing without wandering

of writing as a way of shaking hands, curtsying at just the right time

“i dont write anymore” isn’t quite true

i do write

with finger oils on glass -

“Thank you”

“How are you”

“Good morning”

common words,

grabbed from a box

not deep nor wide,

heavily recycled

as if the economy of available lexicon

was manufactured by

just a few major monopolies

i could write a book filled with

“Thanks so much”

“I appreciate your time”

“All the best”

it’s not the worst

and perhaps i already have

collage poem #4

oct 25, 2018

one day all the water on earth dries up and you are a cloud hanging over a desert

you are as old as the sun and you have no borders

collage poem #3

oct 3, 2017 – jan 18, 2019

to be alive is to create trash ~

it always feels very strange to throw away a rock

collage poem #2

(assembled from a series of autocomplete conversations with my brother, nov 29, 2017) wao to the point of forgetting

beautiful and strong genes WHERE are the pictures of oxford comma between the lines

jeff is going to take care of my life

beautiful red chromosphere i can’t see it

collage poem #1

(assembled from old sketchbook notes, mar 21, 2018)

“booty scratcher,” a botanical nomenclature for the urban burdock

marxist slab of granite fights the construction of a freeway

buildings a slow release fertilizer

we might be gone, but the mosses survive

phone poem #6

02/16/2017 Quiet world, under snow Two seeds waiting for spring! Yearning, fire-full, Contemplate bravery: "I'd like to think I would." Anxiety comes in, some restless tide. Sometimes, through the open lid, peek glimpses of the vast world. If not now, when?

phone poem #5

02/11/2017 (might have published this in the past) Take the earth, and using a sharpened blade cut down the center with a firm pressure. Run your finger along the inside— what story does it tell? Once upon a Time, there was stone... And Once upon a Once upon a Time, there was light... and there was heat... Take that story, and knead it through your warm hands, back and forth... Until a billion things are born and die inside of it. As you knead, industries grow on top. Industries that scoop back into the story like a spoon, ladling the story that is stone was once light and turning it into a deconstructed pile of syntax, rubbing out the lexicon of rocks, of crystals, of oils, life, melting down the chapter book of planetary history to create a crude vocabulary of things which can be assembled easily on stockroom shelves. Thousands of stones that were once light and heat fill your home: this spoon, this bulb, this double decker panini press. Some became computers. These appliances you hold in your hand-- they have no interest in storytelling. They are new grammars, existing in isolation; chemically bizarre. Once upon a time, there was a barcode. How will it all read, in ten thousand years? When all is piled into an appendix of things we don't understand, with no beginning and no end—waiting to turn into fire?

phone poem #3

02/11/2017

I dreamt about you

Night after night after night. No, I never saw you, only Freeway signs bore your name In 500 feet, exit the traffic circle The traffic circle The traffic circle The traffic circle In the dreams, I veered towards you, only To discover later that you had been living the next town over, all along but for months already. We spend all this time making up stories. See, I've constructed a straw man out of memories And still I find myself giving advice: "You can't reduce people to ideas." Meanwhile, I worship symbols Wonder, what if-- Creating shrines to all the conversations That don't exist

still coming back to this blog... hello

Sometimes feeling the itch to put words together, but don’t quite know where to turn.

My last post on any kind of blog (this or “pondermake”) was in the fall, around Thanksgiving, a warm quiet time.

Since then it’s been scribbling things down furious in jumps and spurts late at night, when I can’t sleep.

And sometimes instagram seems like a place to put thoughts, but the motivation always feels a little less pure somehow -- I always feel a little more marketed to and like a marketer. Which is not to say, there isn’t nice authentic content on there sometimes. (And a very addicted audience, eep)

As for this blog, I realized I’m not able to make this blog private, but I don’t really have readers these days anyway, so here goes nothing. It’s like an old tree, I planted back in my sophomore year of college, and it’s been rewarding to see how much LIFE I’ve documented since then.

These days: “I don’t really write anymore.”

Sometimes, I idealize how productive and artistic I was when I was younger. These days, I rarely reach for a pen and paper to let out some feelings.

Maybe it means I’m a more “functional member of society” than I used to be...

Or maybe my identity doesn’t feel quite as centralized to one medium — I am texts and friends and feelings and walks in the park...

In reality, I’m writing all the time, but less wild, soft poetry, and more:

Thanks so much

Thanks for your prompt reply

Thank you

Looking forward to the meeting on Tuesday

Looking forward to it

Please send me the form

Please send at your earliest convenience

All the best—

Things have been a little hard in life this year. I feel like I’ve been forced to GROW UP all of a sudden — yanked from a slow, innocent state of mind where everything lasts forever.

Realizing how much family means to me — more than career anxieties and ambitions to “BE SOMEBODY.” Chasing those gold medals alone matter much less than watching springtime come to life together, doing nothing else.

What are you going to do with your one wild and precious life?

Realizing in that, that relationships in themselves are deeply meaningful side projects. Perhaps the most meaningful side project you could have in life — and a continuous labor of both care and creativity. A real art form, and minus the ego that can come with art.

Building something slow and watering it.

After the break/break up, after the move-out, I’ve been spending more time with mom, and savoring my brother’s freshly baked bread. I’ve been investing in friendships with other women— women who are fierce, gentle, kind, powerful, acutely aware of the world, fun to be around. Watering these friendships, I see them blooming like flowers.

Hoping to water my writing too, it’s been a while. 🌸🌸🌸

It’s late now, but I’m going to share some old poems I found on my phone. Much love.

pondermake

games thought-dump

I’ve recently been getting more into playing and thinking about games. And beginning to treat games with dignity.

I wanted to share a few random thoughts that have been swirling around lately… in no obvious order:

Self-Aware Games

A few weeks ago, I finished Undertale with J. (We did the true pacifist route.) Since then, I’ve been pretty obsessed with it, admiring its “value” awareness and also “media” awareness.

If you’ve played it, you’ll immediately notice that the game forms opinions about your decisions - whether you choose peace or violence. It also breaks the fourth wall by using game mechanics as a story mechanic, e.g. saving and loading as time travel. Sometimes the game program conducts a scripted crash when something intense is going on in the story.

I’ve been reading a thoughtful and practical book called, Values at Play in Digital Games, which has been awesome thought fodder between games.

It’s full of inspiring examples and also frameworks for how to think about your own game construction. There are many levels where you can aim your intentions, from aesthetics and representation, to mechanic, to interactions with environment and other characters…

I think the fact that Undertale gives you a choice, and doesn’t preach you into a direction - but still carries an opinion - is also a great example of how teachers might lead in a classroom. One example that comes to mind: my work friend was subjected to oddly “objective” debate about American Civil War in grade school. We talked about how that was, well, weird and problematic - but the simulation experience in of itself is a valuable tool.

Alternative Universe Super Smash

Recently while talking to my brother and his friend about games, I remembered something pretty interesting from my own childhood.

I remember being about 10 years old, and playing Super Smash Bros on N64 with my friend.

Instead of playing it as a competitive combat game, we finagled the settings so that we started off with MAXIMUM damage (about 100%.) We only turned on FOOD items, which replenish HP.

We usually picked Green Greens from Kirby’s Dreamland, and we would spend the “fight” round trying to protect each other from the bomb blocks and apples in the environment (see picture.) Both of these appear randomly and deal a bunch of damage, especially when the tree blows them into you. Our strategy usually included…

1. Subtractively building little shelters out of the star bricks

2. Waiting for FOOD items to fall from the sky, and often saving it for the person who was the *most* damaged.

Long story short - without really thinking about it, we changed the goals within Super Smash to be a cooperative game about building, environmental resourcefulness, and mutual healing through food. If you think about the crafted intent of Super Smash, it’s pretty unusual that 9 and 10 year olds might deviate from fighting and blowing each other off the stage.

Or maybe.. it’s not unusual at all?

Subverting Designer Intentions - Mischief, Arcana, Power

That brings me to another thought I’ve been having recently. Is there a word for designing systems that make the player/user/person feel like they are subverting the designer’s intention?

Especially during my time at Scratch, I’ve been inspired by how readily kids find opportunities for mischief, deviation, and “breaking” the system - as a deeply creative and joyful activity. And importantly, it’s a powerful activity as well. A few examples:

1. Young teenagers at a public school workshop goofing off during our Scratch demo by mashing the “MEOW” sound. (This is actually something that happens all the time.) As my coworker pointed out, “But they were goofing off within Scratch. They weren’t on Youtube, or on their phones.”

2. An 8-year-old visitor to the Media Lab telling me - very urgently, and importantly - that his absolute favorite feature of Scratch is the ability to use a community javascript hack to do something you’re not supposed to do with… project… thumbnails? It’s not really very interesting in of itself. But the important thing is not how special the feature is - just imagine the joy and power of peeking into the black box, and getting it to listen to you.

Leaving space for disobedience, and deliberately encouraging you to subvert what the tool makers are offering. It’s kind of paradoxical, but there are also ways to do it.

How to create a system open enough, but also constrained enough, in all the right ways? Or maybe there’s select situations where the only “right” thing to do is to ignore what an in-game authority is telling you? Or maybe it’s not so much disobedience but exploration that’s encouraged - loads of rewards for persisting off the mainstream path.

One of my favorite secrets as a kid, in SBM2. Gif from Youtube.

Folks at work brought up Minecraft as an example. I can also think of weird moments in the Sims that were delightfully bizarre. Maybe you don’t need to design the secrets, but design the conditions in which someone can create a secret of their own?

It’s something I want to keep thinking about more and more. Given the time and space, I would love to take it on as a research question.

One suggestion I got from a new friend at a party - is there a word for it? You should make a word for it.

To be continued…

lifeofwoohoo

(some more reflections of late)

heppy thunksgravy

I’m writing this from my second visit in Lexington public library.... It’s such an inspiring space! Definitely in my top 3 libraries, I’d say. They’ve got an afternoon showing of the Incredibles 2, as an alternative activity to Black Friday frenzies, and in the teen space, a pair of siblings are playing Mario Kart on the public Wii.

In the front of the library, there’s a display shelf with “Library of Things.” This is totally amazing and I’ve posted this before, but thought to share again...

And this moving photo exhibit about family members separated after the Korean War. Titled, "A Long Separation.”

Happy Thanksgiving, world. Grateful to have access to such a great resource - among other things! In my bucket list in life, it would be pretty neat to be a librarian someday - and give back to this kind of environment that offers us so much.

Lately (other than fangirling about games) I’ve been thinking about a dozen different things.

One big theme that’s been marinating: Emotionality vs. rationality - and constant attempts to squish emotions into logical frameworks.

I know that I do that internally all the time. But there is so much soft energy, spiritual explanation, and things that just are. My friend and I ranted about this. We both come from contexts of constant analysis- where logic is the epitome of intelligence. But there is so much more to existing as a human than just rationality.

The mind is so often thought of as superior. “Mind over body,” “Thoughts over feelings.” Although there is sometimes the risk of arbitrarily gendering everything, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that Mind and Logic feel more coded “male,” in my mind. Already a trope: shutting up women because they “are too emotional.”

I’ve been having these really interesting conversations about how to tell people in all honesty how you feel about them. Vulnerability ripples in slow but powerful ways. Been talking about female-ness and soft-ness – and trying to stuff yourself in male frameworks to be “successful,” instead of valuing what you have as a “gift.”

“Such a gift!” my roommate says, so emphatically. Having your period? A gift, which, I have thought about but never really believed.

Have been thinking a lot about family and things that get carried on generational levels. What if people lived to be 700 years old? Of course the knee-jerk is concern for overpopulation, which is legit. But if you could suspend disbelief on that note - think about what scales of understanding you could know?

Have been thinking about mindfulness and how everything is a verb in a state of happening, not so much a noun. Plastic bags can eventually become garbage, and so can nuclear waste. Thich Naht Hahn’s quote which makes me cry a little:

“Nuclear waste is the worst kind of garbage. It takes 25,000 years to become flowers.”

That’s all for now. Not the most coherent/graceful post - but feels good to get these random thoughts out!

bean tree at hiatus end

I went to Nashoba Brook Bakery yesterday with an old high school friend. The leaves were yellow under a white sky. In the bakery’s backyard, the brook babbled (are there any other verbs that a brook can do?) Tall bean tree loomed overhead, dropping giant leaves big as fans.

Writing is awkward and unfamiliar; it has been a while for sure, since last December - and then, even, writing was sparse.

Something about meeting up with K, and being in my hometown made me feel very centered in a nice way - I forgot about writing, poetry, drawing, as a means for self-understanding.

I’m living in Cambridge now - I never thought I’d make my way back to this small city, equally cobblestoned and techno-gentrifying. I love my neighborhood; it’s shaded with old trees and adjacent houses proudly sport anti-facist signage.

The last year has been full of adventure; there’s no way to fully summarize it. I did, though, find a folder full of pictures of feet (my feet), that I had taken in places all over the world. It would be nice to show them all in a short reel.

Here’s one I took near the tree at work.

I feel connected to my job - so much so! The people are warm and so awake. They are loving and thoughtful and playful and they care, so much. The odds of this kind of place existing - slim! At one of our team retreats, we talked about values. I think this quote sums my experience up pretty well:

“I think of our team as valuing playfulness, joy, and humor,” someone said.

“But also,” someone else chimed. “It’s okay if there are days where we aren’t playful.”

Folks agreed.

“We’re here to care about the whole person.” We are whole human beings.

There’s joy, care, vision, and silliness. I’m incredibly grateful and I hope I can do a good job- serving our mission, and adding to our community.

Today in particular, I think I was drawn back to writing because I’m having a pretty hard day. If I think about where I am - successful by all traditional means, successful by many “spiritual” means, and deeply lucky to feel safe in my identity, in my neighborhood. Family, friends, work, privilege. Almost makes me feel like a hard day shouldn’t be so hard.

But still – a hard day. When you experience pain in one of your close relationships, you carry it everywhere. Today this pain has been seeping into my work, my sense of self. I know that even a very healthy relationship has stormy days, though it doesn’t feel easier.

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about peace and violence - in particular expanding the definition of violence.

Violence can exist on long time scales, and at large: policy and corporations denying you agency, safety, and care.

Violence can exist in non-physical form: emotional abuse, manipulation, control.

Violence can exist internally: self-criticism, self-anger, fighting yourself.

Violence is passed down through generations, and generations.

Some of this comes from reading Thich Nhat Han’s book, Peace is Every Step.

I’m interested in this last point in particular: it can take incredible mindfulness and practice to *not* do the thing that your parent did, that their parent did. Fear from abuse, poverty, discrimination lingers, and while anxiety also has a biological root, anxiety does not exist in a cultural vacuum.

Some of this rears its head when you fight with a loved one.

I don’t mean to wax too sad for too long here. But I am prompted to think about how to where things come from, when we fight. At couple’s scale, at community scale, at nation scale. And what are ways to cultivate peace?

Peace, and caring for the whole person. I’m still working on it, and trying to go about it in a playful spirit. In the meantime, there’s always rambling on Tumblr.

thenearsightedmonkey

Dear Students,

Here are some drawings by two of my 4-K co-researchers.

For extra credit, copy any or all of these images, including handwriting, into your compbook.

Sincerely,

Professor SASQUATCH!

afunnythinghappens

laurkellyart

When my mom was little, she drew on the walls. Sometime between yelling at her and cleaning it up, my grandmother transferred the drawing onto tracing paper. She kept it in a file for nearly twenty years, then adapted my mom’s wall sketch into needlepoint. It’s nuts, right? The saturated colors, the textures, the bizarre figures rendered so lovingly - it’s the kind of stuff I look to make. Side note: my mom is one of NINE kids but in making the image she wanted to live in, she goes, “BYE Y’ALL, IT’S JUST ME AND MOM AND DAD NOW, HAHAHAHA.”

Smash cut to me, 2012, having a nervous breakdown. My mom drove 215 miles to care for me while I struggled to finish up the semester. While I studied Spanish, I asked her to draw me something. It was this sweet little sketch, and I kept it ever since.

I’m a sucker for parallels in fiction, so I thought I might as well make my own.

Reaching back, five years later, and remaking my mom’s beautiful, beautiful, beautiful sketch that helped keep me alive until now. Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Grandma. Thank you to everybody who’s ever been kind to me. May your doodles be reborn in yarn and floss.

thenearsightedmonkey

Dear Students,

Images travel through time in a different way than we do, and they make their appearances in our 3-D world in unexpected forms at unexpected times.

Here, classmate Princess Leia, (Earth name: Lauren Kelly) tells us more about it.

Sincerely,

Professor SASQUATCH!

yappy new hear

A great snow fell while I was at home. It’s melted now, but I remember everything feeling tinkling and bright. After the intense semester of burnout and depression, I felt new.

I started to let go of cynicisms, and let go of obligations that I built for myself, that didn’t serve me– e.g. you can’t give yourself too much single-handed credit for gentrification, climate change, race politics. You can stay vigilant and still compassionate. You can still enjoy a new pair of shoes– without reeling from the industries that produce everything you touch.

Not everyone copes this way; for me, the act of caring became an intellectual one, and an exhausting one. It had to be rigorous, fastidious. At times, I would intellectually invalidate my own experience, on the basis of my own privilege, and end up with a net compassion of zero.

It has been a long time since I remember cultivating optimism. It is easy to be cynical because you are saved face from being “wrong.” To distrust is an extremely popular default. And somehow being called idealistic has become quite an insulting term.

For me, I’m working slowly, and that’s all I can do. Sincerity, and courage, and patience.

In the meantime, some small things, some nice memories.

Leading into the new year with hands, with making, and play, and a generous spirit.

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