#eyesof

[eyesof]

I want to get into making commonplace books. I just found out about it two days ago but I feel like that makes so much sense for my minds cape. All of the notes and ideas spread across Evernote, my various Notion databases, text messages and emails sent to myself and scribbles are just not...the goal. I can still have that and still do them, especially because I like far reach and spread and knowing if I lose a platform or an account I have back ups of everything I ever thought of, but having physical commonplace books for my archives of thought is a big yes.

And the day I have to put things in my time capsule(s), I will have those to give the world for later.

I firstly want to have a commonplace book for each of my ten core values:

Autonomy, Authenticity, Adaptability, Creativity, Curiosity, Connection, Community, Dignity, Discovery and Exploration.

I then want commonplace books on Value, Integrity, Love, Hate, Purpose, Desire, Violence, Life and Death.

Lastly, I want commonplace books on various systems of oppression, power structures and hegemonies/hierarchies.

One of each: Colonialism and Colonisation, Imperialism, Capitalism, Patriarchy, White Supremacy, Anti-Blackness, Anti-semitism, Anti-Indigenous, Queerphobia, Transphobia, Ableism and Sanism, Lookism and Uglification and Genocide in all its versions. I then want to bind them all together titled "The Hydra". Or maybe I'll buy just a big ass book and make them all a chapter of it.

I want my commonplace books to be part collage, part painting, part paper cut out, part paper pop up art, part essay. I want it to have so much texture and visuals and tie all the words and quotes of others with the reflections of my mind.

So, here's to another goal to add to my life!

[eyesof]

"One of the Good Ones": on escaping the ego death of confronting your bigotry

I was watching a react channel react to Season 4 Episode 6 of Teen Titans. The episode was titled "Troq", a slur used against Tamaraneans that was constantly hurled and mocked at Starfire, as if the slur was a nickname.

Many reference this episode tackling racism by specifically citing the moment when Cyborg calls her Troqqy and has a conversation of what Val-Yor is really saying when he calls her that, and what it means to be named nothing or of no value based on merely what you look like or come from.

I think another incredible moment, one that is missed, is the moment Val-Yor calls Starfire "one of the good ones".

Many racists, xenophobes, transphobes and queerphobes, across the spectrum of insensitivity to downright hate and contempt, may come across a person belonging to the group they are prejudiced to. That person may prove them wrong about their universal truths they made of that community based on stereotypes or affirmed-generalizations based on anecdotal experience and confirmation bias and not know what to do with the reality that, hey, maybe the Blacks aren't beasts. Maybe the Tamaraneans aren't nothingness Troqs.

So, in attempt to save face of being indicted a bigot, or even save merely themselves of guilt or shame for being one, they will escape the cognitive dissonance of "wait, all Blacks are savage beasts, but this one is nice and civilized. Well, these things are both true, but the latter proves the former false... but no! The first is true!"

They do this by concluding that "this is one of the good ones".

This way, Blacks can still be savage beasts, and when you come across a Black person that proves that isn't true, you can still dig your heels in the sands of your closed-minded prejudice and say "yes, they are, you are just a mere exception." Why, of course, there are always exceptions to a rule, but the belief still stands. Non-savage Black people are just statistical anomalies, is all.

Tamaraneans are still Troqs.

[eyesof]

No technology a man can make can go anywhere close to the sound of a cat's purr. No attempts at becoming God will ever work. And that is why hierarchy is ridiculous and hegemony is non-sensical. If no man is a God then how can one be above another? Even at your greatest, your closest attempt at being God or god-like, you are still my equal.

Humans in caste is as deludedly Icarian as trying to manufacture a cat's purr and expecting to beat God at godliness. A man amongst man is a man equivalent.

[eyesof]

Paralleling Icarus's Ambitions with the Neoliberal Feminist Girlboss

I'm in my writing bag right now.

[eyesof]

Updates on "Books I Am Reading": On Stagnancy, Overconsuming and Procrastination

So...from January to April I have posted the out loud promise to myself that I would read what is now a total of 5 books. I was supposed to complete them for each month and got completely overwhelmed with the idea of reading that I didn't. I kept pushing back and pushing back, and adding a new book still to continue the new month while completing the book of the last month.

I am going to take my time and reintroduce myself to the practice of reading.

This year is lined up to be a reflective and introspective one. I am digging into myself and simultaneously trying to put out and share my truths with the world through various digital platforms. For over a decade I have been lost to myself due to multiple forms of anxiety, self hate in three layers and long term depression.

One thing I don't thing people talk about much is how when you treat your depression and are seemingly better, you have lost so much time in regards to the things you used to do and loved to do. I draw at the same level I did when I was 10-11. I am 25. 14-15 of artistic stagnancy is something I have to live with and push past. I have to forgive myself when I compare myself to the 14 year old who has a set style or the other 25 year old who has never stopped drawing since a kid and now can switch between art styles and draw from simplistically to caricatured to hyper-realism.

I also have to come to terms with having patience over guilt with the other things I loved to do: reading and writing. If I want to have these things I have to not let those lost years eat me. If I want to perfect these things I have to practice.

It may feel like I am starting from zero after all this time but it is okay.

Apart of me knows that by focusing on arbitrary time limits on reading and writing a check list to cross out I am intentionally running away from DOING. I am procrastination on the things that I currently am capable of, and for what? Fear? Of what?

Perfection.

I am over consuming on research and methods of thinking so that I can perfect thinking...when I should just take the time and think. Then I take too much time with that because I think the thinking isn't finished, the thoughts aren't realized, so I can't possibly then speak! Or write!

I have been stagnant and I should not be letting this be so for another day. I am not in the years of 10 through 22. I have my ups and downs with my mental health but there is no cure for these things - only time, care and treatment.

I have to stop overconsuming to figure out the perfect way to then create. I just have to take the first step and create.

I have to be done procrastinating. Done-done.

I'm done.

[eyesof]

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.”

- Natalie Goldberg

[eyesof]

To the women who want to keep up their end of the bargain for the 14 words. The patriarchy's feminine line of defense. The fascists who want to be kept women.

I just had a eureka moment about an hour ago, that seems fairly obvious.

A lot of people give so much grace to patriarchal women where they will not give grace to patriarchal men because they will infantilize them or angelicize them. If they are misogynistic and enforce bio essentialism, if they police and surveil others and force gender expectations and act as shields to violence then we can come up with 1001 reasons to empathize with their internalized misogyny. But, everyone is internalizing misogyny and patriarchal beliefs - that's just socialization from birth. So why do they get passes?

Even I would make excuses and explain away things for women that I would never for men. This changed when I viewed the misogynistic woman who upholds and uplifts patriarchy so lovingly as facists.

That's it. A patriarchal woman who loves the idea of the decadence, luxury and softness that being a patriarchy princess will "give her" is just a fascist. She is just as dominating and authoritative as her man counterpart, she is just doing it to not be the conqueror at the end of the world, but the conqueror at the end of the world's kept woman.

[eyesof]

A little piece on being apart of humiliating castes

What is the line between humbling someone and humiliating them?

When it comes to the marginalized undesirables, the disempowered who has low social capital, there is no line. Humbling is a nice excuse for humiliating the humiliated.

Black women, queer and trans folk, they are a joke. Their existence to this antiblack, white supremacist, queerphobic, transphobic cis-heteropatriarchal society is the punchline.

So when the punchline tries to be human, a humbling is due to remind them they are removed from being able to be anything but a joke. You are here for laughs and sneers. For shame and scapegoating. For names and kicking. How dare you try to make your bleeding serious.

6/21/2022 - 6:35pm