The Ink Seeker Chronicles

Black American, Old, Journal excerpts, books, music, miscellaneous elder millennial nonsense.

[olameni]

Introductions

as of 3/17/26

Hi, I’m Olameni. My life is about the pursuit of knowledge. I read, study, and practice because I enjoy the process of discovering and developing expertise. I follow my curiosity. However, I do have some particular study interests:

Religious Studies (Specifically Black/African Tradition Religion and Spiritualities) Black American Studies Epistemology and Critical Thinking Ethics

I am quite fascinated by religion and spirituality as resistance to colonization (epistemic and otherwise) and its impacts on the ways we make decisions about how to live around one another. This has lead me to studies of culture, ethics, critical thinking and various disciplines within philosophy. As you can imagine given the current state of our world and its unnecessary suffering this can be kinda gloomy.

What I'm Reading: ← click here to see my extended reading list

Previous Book: The Tao of Wing Chun x John Little, Danny Xuan Current Book: Yoruba Metaphysics

Core Resources:

Slavery and Social Death x Orlando Patterson Philosophy of Religion California State University Pedagogy of the Oppressed x Paulo Freire Intro to Africana Philosophy x Lewis R. Gordon History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps: Africana Philosophy Black Sexual Politics x Patricia Hill Collins

Song(s) stuck in my head:

Just Like This (feat. ClubCamo, Rifty, Acu & Poof) by Prod Jay48 The Mad Devil x Rok Nardin Smitten x Sex Driven Isolation

I listen to all kinda of music but mostly these days I’ve been fixated on grandiose classical and anything brooding to compliment my studying.

Hobbies, Collections & Fixations

Vinyl Records (presently spinning) Stationery (ink 1) Letter Writing (wanna be pen pals?) Tea (present obsession) Menswear Fragrances (most recent)

[olameni]

[olameni]

Zoloft is marvelous

It had not occurred to me that one could feel this good. Y’all neurotypicals are spoiled

[alixanderkrex]

Essays on "The Grotesque", "Monstrous", "Otherness" and a general deeper dive into the "Gothic" genre:

Chaos Incarnate: The Paradox of Grotesque Corporeality

The Grotesque in American Literature: Origins and Peculiarities

Grotesque images and carnival culture in the tradition of Ovid

My Proper Flesh": hybridity and the grotesque in Renaissance landscape design

The Cult of the Monstrous: Caricature, Physiognomy, and Monsters in Early Modern Italy

The Logic of Grotesques in Renaissance Art: Marian Figuration at the Limits of Representation

Paradigms of Renaissance Grotesques

C. Pavel, ”Political monsters in Greek art”, in: E. Wolff (ed.), Monstres et monstrosités, de l’antiquité à nos jours, en Occident et en Orient, L’Harmattan, Paris 2022, 67-80.

Jessica Maratsos, Review of The Grotesque in Western Art and Culture: The Image at Play, by Frances S. Connelly

Rejecting and Embracing the Monstrous in Ancient Greece and Rome

Introduction: Monster Theory and Classical Myth

Beauty and the beast: art and its passion for the beautiful, the ugly, and the sublime

How to Look at Monsters: Staging Female Bodies from the Periphery of the Seventeenth-Century Spanish World in Baroque Portraiture and Hapsburg Collections

The Body Re-Imagined: The Bizzarie di Varie Figure and Performative Cycles of Prints in Seventeenth-Century Florence

Domestication in the Theater of the Monstrous: Reexamining Monster Theory

"The Grotesque and the French Revolution," in: Rudi Risatti, Stefan Hulfeld, Andrea Sommer (eds.), Grotesk! Ungeheuerliche Künste und ihre Wiederkehr (Vienna: Hollitzer 2022), 211–233 [Uncorrected Proofs]

"Geo-bio-politics of the Gothic: On the Queer/Inhuman Dislocation of Spanish/English Subjects and their Others (For A Definition of Modernity as an Imperialist Geobiopolitical Fracture)." 1616: Anuario de literatura comparada 4 (2014): 153-67.

Rethinking hybrid 'monsters': how notions of 'self' versus 'other' and the ordering of chaos in Renaissance conceptual frameworks led to the transformation and decline of the grotesque decorative form and the radical marginalization of the Mexican codex

Monstrous Encounters: Feminist Theory and the Monstrous

(PDF) Missing Links and Non/Human Queerings: an Introduction

Monsters and the Monstrous: Ancient Expressions of Cultural Anxieties

(I am in no way saying I believe everything in any of these because I haven't even had the chance to read all of these, I simply found them interesting upon skimming and thought I'd share for anyone else interested in reading these sorts of things. While I might not agree with everything of any writer etc, peoples, I think it's still a fascinating thing to explore deeply any perspective, especially one different from my own in some ways. I will make a separate post on some of my fav quotes on the topics from my skimming of them later and attach it. Please do feel free to make this a conversation and share your own favorite quotes, posts, etc expressions in general on the topic. Thank you!)

[olameni]

Librarians and archivists are necromancers but thoughts rather than bodies if that makes sense

[olameni]

[olameni]

I like to make kabutos as bookmarks.

I use them for annotations when I run out sheet connecting stickers

[olameni]

[olameni]

Sometimes folk can only see you through the lens of their trauma and the most loving and compassionate thing you can do for them is to leave them alone.

[olameni]

Am alive

Very tired

Getting married

Taking meds now

Pen pals are getting long letters as an apology

[olameni]

One day I will listen to this song and dance fondly remembering my beloved dead because I have learned the value of time. But today I’m going to find a corner so I can cry.

- Journal excerpt 2/9/26

[olameni]

i have been distracted as of late.

[olameni]

you never really out grow being a sad teenager. ideally you get money so your coping mechanisms get cooler. sometimes thats enough

[olameni]

Research is worship. Reading and writing a form of prayer.

Tonight I’m doing some accessory reading to better understand Yoruba Metaphysics by Toyin Falola. Im working out the relationship between metaphysics, epistemology, and ontology. Metaphysics feels less like a discipline and more like a goal that we stretch to. We have epistemology to keep us honest about what we know. Ontology to build rules around existence and being.

I’ve also stop letting my annotations just live in my notebooks hence the PowerPoint. It will be foundation for something someday.

It’s hard work squeezed into late hours and breaks in the work day. I miss it when I’m not in it.

[olameni]

My sole mission as a priest is to help people understanding that much of what we consider sacred and unassailable is 1) the product of people arguing and 2) power. And to inspire them to care enough to develop the necessary skill to participate in that argument.

[olameni]

It’s different when you are taking care of you own family

[olameni]