tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-155166592024-03-14T07:11:02.884+01:00Live and Uncensored!Still no porn here; it's just Angela, hosing into the ether.Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.comBlogger1108125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-85761550996060111752023-11-24T01:14:00.000+01:002023-11-24T01:14:01.198+01:00A shortlist of gratitudes<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Marvis Matcha Green Tea toothpaste. It's delightful.</li><li>Caitlin, who talked me into getting a tongue scraper. I worry less about bad breath.</li><li>A sensual, lovely pregnancy with no swollen limbs, in which all my senses are attuned to beauty.</li><li>A partner who takes showing up seriously, who takes our thriving—individually, and together—even more seriously, and who makes me laugh nonstop. Even remembering the rare times we've fought makes me laugh.</li><li>My sweet and nurturing apartment.</li><li>Our shared home in Italy, and the in-laws across the garden who always have a kiss and a hot plate ready. Or just eggs. We always need eggs.</li><li>Being pregnant, and matrescing generally, in the French system.<i> </i>Sometimes it is overbearing and drives me crazy, but the attention to care, and the rigour, are legit. I feel so <i>safe.</i></li><li>My friends, who have coalesced into family, closing ranks as I grow larger and more vulnerable. They show up with food or baby stuff, give me their arms when we go for walks, lift me literally to my feet. They have flown in from different countries, or rolled up from the 'burbs or the other side of Paris. They have loved me with delicacy and humour.</li><li>My actual family—my cousin who encourages me like a boxing coach, my sisters who gossip with me, my parents whose anticipation for this child borders on the frightening.</li><li>Pierre Hermé and Alain Ducasse.</li><li>Persimmons. I live in terror of running out of persimmons. They also remind me of my lola. Ancestors—what we inherit, what we owe to the future—is heavy on my mind.</li><li>The restaurant that makes perfect pie.</li><li>My community. After 15 years in this city, I'm finally in a 'hood where I feel <i>installed, </i>an acknowledged part of the fauna.</li><li>The stories strangers tell about their children, births, pregnancies, breastfeeding woes. People are always giving me stories, but pregnancy makes cups overflow with memories from these particular initiatory gates. This is probably the closest thing we have to being washed and fed by your kin, your neighbours, your <i>people, </i>before traversing said gates yourself. It is an intimate ritual we can't shake off. We don't even know we are doing it, and I am glad it is stronger than our belief in "progress."</li><li>Seasons.</li><li>Paris. Paris every day. Paris in the rain, Paris when it's grey, I don't care. This city is my mother. She called me once and I have never regretted answering. I will love her until I die.</li><li>My new gym ball. I can't wait to drape my arms over it, breathe into my lower back, and feel the pain slide off me like raindrops.</li><li>Maté, and the man who sells it to me.</li><li>Bright, vivid colours. It took me so long to love colour. I'm glad I finally got here.</li></ul><p></p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-35328633304537583442023-11-04T13:46:00.004+01:002023-11-04T13:46:29.673+01:00A thought<p> People gamble what they can afford. We are in no place to dictate to others what they can afford.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-22754971822763609052023-11-02T14:14:00.006+01:002023-11-02T14:14:38.421+01:00A spell for LinkedIn<p>I appreciate the people here looking to educate, share resources and decolonise minds—not only around imperialist, racist, and patriarchal structures, but around the belief that economic growth is the primary metric by which we should value ourselves, others and "progress".</p><p>I also get that many people are just trying to get by. They want to promote their businesses, cheer on successes, humblebrag, thought-lead, boost morale. That's what this platform is for. If I want something else, I can go to another platform and look at humblebrags of kids and vacations instead. If I'm sick of that, maybe I'll read a book, talk to actual humans or take a nap, instead of getting mad about how social media doesn't reward full-spectrum humanity. It's here to make money, not fulfill me.</p><p>With that said—the emotional gotchas, the rage-baiting, the "us vs. them", the zero-sum self-righteous judgment flowing through here now? They're not helping anyone. They're not paving the way to enlightenment. It's fast-acting venom that's making us sick. I don't know what the long-term effects will be, but they won't be good. The nausea I feel after a cursory scroll feels like radiation poisoning.</p><p>Stories are powerful. Words are powerful. Our energy is powerful, and it bleeds through screens. When I say "powerful" I don't just mean mentally. What impacts the body—our organs and cells, our guts and blood—starts in the mind and senses. We can heal and harm in the most literal sense without ever physically touching one another.</p><p>We can make each other ill for years, or try healing ourselves and those within proximity. We're responsible for wielding our powers mindfully.</p><p>It's important to understand this: Stories and words aren't just "technology," or vessels devoid of purpose. They live. They bite and suck and squeeze. They kill and maim. They can also restore, rejuvenate, and create fertile vivid possibility in concrete corsets over scorched earth. They can plant wild runaway gardens inside us and others.</p><p>May we use them kindly, judiciously and well. May we not poison just to poison, or curse others and ourselves. May we heal. I wish this for all of you and I wish this for me.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-4135533595061532802023-10-13T13:25:00.100+02:002023-10-13T19:42:21.603+02:00I want to talk about this once. Then I never want to talk about it again.<p>Early on in my pregnancy I became obsessed with learning everything I could about Marie Antoinette. And while reading the biography on her life by Antonia Fraser, I encountered an explanation for the death of the monarchy that came distinctly across as blood magic—the kind of magic large states and entities engage in all the time, to initiate a new rule, or perhaps just to feed themselves.</p><p>(You think we left mass ritual sacrifice behind with the old gods and the "primitive"? <i>Please.</i>)</p><p>The argument was basically this (I'm paraphrasing, so forgive me that in advance). I'll start with some context:</p><p>Louis XVI wasn't a tyrannous king, or an especially shit one. He was, by all accounts (nobles were prolific, gossipy letter writers and record keepers), stunningly mediocre and passive. He wasn't even his family's first choice for the throne, but his brother died, and nobody even bothered to boost his self-esteem; they made it pretty clear they had no faith in him, even to his face. Many of the problems of France, for which he and his wife would later be blamed, were inherited. (This is the case of most leaders; at the scale of a country, you have to be a rare maverick, for better or worse, to really effect changes that wouldn't have happened anyway.)</p><p>The same can be said for Marie-Antoinette. She's one in 15 children, all strategically placed throughout the ruling world by her mother. She's sickly, small, not especially pretty or clever. But an older sister dies and suddenly she's the best option for Queen of France. She barely has her period when they shunt her over the border; she is oversold and underripe, told all the hopes of Austria rest on her capacity to integrate (which she works hard to do, though she's never quite accepted) while maintaining Germanic rationality and considering Austrian interests (which she tries doing, generally unsuccessfully, because diplomacy is a skill she simply lacks). </p><p>So you've got these two kids with low self-esteem who were nobody's first choice for such important positions on the world stage. The ruling monarch, Louis XVI's grandfather, dies, and even Louis admits, "We are too young to rule." Monarchy's in a weird place; the settlers in the Americas—the exploitation of which made much of Europe rich and kicked off the international marketplace we inherited today—are threatening to overthrow their monarchial obligations. <i>A Frenchman, La Fayette, is helping! He will later embroil France in the US's fight for freedom, then fight to overthrow the French monarchy, too! </i></p><p>Shit's messy.</p><p>I'm going to skip ahead because this isn't really about that; it's about how it ends. When the French constitution is being drafted, there are attempts to strip monarchial powers while maintaining the monarchy symbolically, like what England's done. Louis plays along, wisely but for the wrong reasons: He's trying to stay alive and protect his family. He thinks people will get tired of all this work and go back to the monarchy on their own. There's also lots of people jostling for power, within the country and without, interfering—ultimately fatally—with these tense relations between monarchy and newly self-appointed stewards of a nation.</p><p>You know the rest: This ends with Louis XVI dying. Marie Antoinette is "tried" and killed a few months later. Welcome to the French Republic.</p><p>The issue is <i>why </i>the people saw fit to kill them.</p><p>The deciders of the monarchy's destiny generally agreed Louis XVI wasn't a bad guy, despite those awkward times he was caught trying to escape gilded imprisonment. It was never about him. The issue was<i> the</i> <i>unpardonability of monarchy. </i>If you can find <i>anything </i>in monarchy to forgive, you undermine the legitimacy of the Republic. So it doesn't matter how anybody feels about Louis XVI, or what kind of monarch he actually was. </p><p>For the Republic to succeed, the cord must be cut clean. You cannot sympathise in any respect with the previous system; it must be guilty on all charges. <i>This</i> was the justification for killing Louis XVI: The division, the move from one reality to another, must be whole and complete. So in the first act of blood magic, the monarch is killed to symbolically kill <i>monarchs</i>, and slice the legacy of monarchy away from the country's spirit and future fortunes.</p><p>But what about Marie Antoinette? </p><p>They have a problem with Marie Antoinette. She's 33, and already dying; it's suspected she had ovarian cancer during this time. In prison she's bleeding constantly, and prematurely ageing. She can barely walk. Lots of people think she should just be sent off to a nunnery, or exiled. These are all reasonable considerations. </p><p>It's true that for a long time, MA was a fun and flashy fashionista. But once she had kids, being a mom was all she wanted to do. She didn't want to entertain court, go shopping, do pomp and circumstance; she wanted to hang out in muslin dresses and breastfeed. While this would probably fly today, at the time it was considered unbecoming for a queen. </p><p>What's more, Louis XVI never took a mistress; he was faithful for his whole marriage. This was a political issue; mistresses played a critical role in the king's ear. They influenced policy, so the role was practically considered a cabinet job. (That's why Madame Du Barry, the mistress of Louis's granddad, was such a pill.) </p><p>If the mistress position is open, then presumably Marie Antoinette is fulfilling both roles: That of wife (which she's fucking up, because she had kids and doesn't want to show up to state functions anymore), and of mistress, an influential voice in policy. Unfortunately, even when pressed by her family, all her feeble attempts to weigh in on policy fall flat. </p><p>Nobody cares. Whenever people in France get mad about a decision, they put it all on the Queen: Her excesses, her failure to fulfil her duties, and her ostensible impositions in policymaking—which is inappropriate, because that's what a <i>mistress</i> does. And if Louis XVI doesn't have a mistress, that's all the more proof how influential she is, <i>non?</i></p><p>Before things really go to shit for the monarchy, Marie Antoinette actually works hard to make the life she wants into a new kind of role. She wants to be seen as the mother of the country, so she can be <i>permitted </i>to just hang out and be a mom. Sometimes this works, but most of the time it doesn't.</p><p>Let's return to her trial. The decision is made to kill her well before it begins. But the men in power can't kill MA for the same reason they've killed Louis XVI, because that would suggest a queen is equally as important as a king. That's not part of the French monarchial belief system; what is this, <i>England?! </i>Gross. </p><p>So they instead attack where she's vulnerable: This notion of her as "mother" of the nation. What's the most heinous thing a mother can do? </p><p><i>Incest.</i> </p><p>They separate her from her 7-year-old son. They beat him, get him drunk, play with him, just generally fuck with him—all within earshot of his mother, in a dungeon nearby (two tortures in one!). And they give him a story to tell. When Marie-Antoinette appears on trial, her son—dressed as a mini revolutionary and egged on by his new adult male friends—claims he was repeatedly molested by his mom and aunt. </p><p>It's disgusting, terrible stuff, torn right out of speculative tabloids whose misogynist, xenophobic invective haunted MA's steps for the entirety of her reign. </p><p>You know, I get Harry's trauma about the tabloids. A case can be made that they killed Marie Antoinette, too.</p><p>(In letters to family members and loved ones, MA asks them to forgive her son for these "confessions." "You know how easy it is to get a child to say what you want," she tells them. My heart aches for her. Nobody will have time to forgive him; her baby will die, isolated and starved, months after her. The new order was never going to keep a <i>dauphin </i>alive.)</p><p>Marie-Antoinette is tried and found guilty of incest: She has corrupted the role of mother in the most intimate way. When asked how she pleads, she says nothing; when prompted further, finally says something to the effect of, "Every mother here knows there can be no response to an accusation against which <i>nature </i>recoils." </p><p>A lot of the women in the room, who were <i>not </i>on her side, are moved. They almost start to defend her. Sensing they might lose control of the situation, the men immediately charge MA guilty, and hustle her out to await death.</p><p>Why? Why did they need to kill her? </p><p>In documentation and correspondence around that time, the case made is this: Nobody whose opinion mattered really felt Marie Antoinette deserved to die, though they allowed that belief to proliferate publicly. This sensibility is doubled once the king is killed; <i>he</i> is the embodiment of monarchy, and she is not. </p><p>A blood sacrifice was already made to separate Republic from Monarchy. But to avoid the Republic meeting the monarchy's fate, to ensure its <i>viability,</i> it must be intimately wedded to its people. One of the best ways to do this is with shared complicity.</p><p>In essence, Marie Antoinette has to die because her death bathes the hands of Republic leaders and ratifiers, <i>and the everyday citizens of France, </i>in the same blood. Whether she merits dying is sufficiently murky a question that there is a tint of guilt, of judicial doubt, to this act—one everyone can share in. <i>We buried and abused the body together. Now we are bound.</i></p><p>Why am I talking about this? </p><p>Because what is happening with Palestine is driving me crazy. I don't want to fall too deep down the rabbit hole of social media, or join others on high horses. But watching this situation unspool makes me feel itchy with dis-ease, a sense of insanity that feels contagious. </p><p><i>Of course </i>people have the right to mourn what Hamas did. But also, <i>of course </i>we have the right to be alarmed, appalled, and frightened by what the Israeli government is currently doing to what remains of the Palestinian people. I don't know how you can see <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/10/12/world/israel-gaza-war-hamas">something like this</a> and still try making the case that mourning genocide in plain sight is an anti-Semitic act.</p><p>Yet those are easy arguments to make, because they're officially sanctioned. I'm not just talking about the propaganda machine at work in the west. I'm talking about the United States' <a href="https://time.com/6322820/israel-aid-biden-congress-hamas/">overwhelming military support</a> to Israel in helping decimate an "enemy" that has no military of its own, that lives in what is commonly acknowledged to be an open-air prison.</p><p>I'm also talking about how, in France, marches in support of Palestine are <a href="https://apnews.com/article/europe-paris-middle-east-israel-palestinian-conflict-government-and-politics-e415198646e3752ed63f1c9627b8cafe">actively, violently</a> suppressed. All this happens in complicity with media, which advances one narrative—that of Hamas' victims—versus another: In the handful of days since Hamas attacked Israel, the latter has <i>decimated</i> their death toll, levelling whole apartment buildings, wiping out Palestinian families at the root. Celebrities have mistakenly posted photos of Gaza, or dying Palestinian children, believing them to be of Israel and Israelis. If they are later alarmed by the reality of their mistakes, it's not obvious; the posts are merely deleted, or sometimes replaced with the ol' "no children should die on any side" argument (I'm looking at <i>you, </i>Jamie Lee Curtis).</p><p>Meanwhile, the invective on social media intensifies. <i>It should be easy to pick a side, </i>comes one set of voices, before advancing the side that is so obviously the right one. <i>Your silence is complicity, </i>say others—as if the energy we've all wasted screaming at each other on these fucking platforms has benefited anyone, or anything, besides the platforms.</p><p>Some people have genuinely terrible takes that make me shudder. They feel dangerous, scary and myopic. I'm sickened by how we've come to conflate posts with action, Likes with impact.</p><p>The problem is, we're all going to waste our time and our lives arguing like this, about any number of things from Covid to climate—to no deeper purpose—because <i>we are all complicit. </i>And if we were to stop for a second, step back, and look at the broader picture, we would finally see it. </p><p>Lots of forces don't want us to do that; they invest in keeping us from doing that. But also, why would we want to?</p><p>It's not our fault. The vast majority of us fuelling this bonkers rage machine live in the heavily-armed, wealthy countries who 1) have an economic interest in ongoing instability in the Middle East, 2) have an ideological interest in continuing to support this colony, in part because they created it to assuage their own guilt (another act of magic!), and also because <i>we are violently-held colonies ourselves, </i>and 3) for all these reasons, must convince people that these issues are not about atrocity. It's about what's moral, what's right. Our countries—who just want democracy for everyone (even as we have suppressed Palestine's attempts to erect one, repeatedly)—are <i>always</i> on the side of right, because we tacitly, lazily equate democracy with freedom.</p><p>This is a lot to take in. Let me try to make this simpler:</p><p>Everything we think we understand about civilisation and progress is informed by violent subjugation. We subjugate others and we subjugate space and resources. In order to sustain itself, the systems we are part of must do this repeatedly, refreshing subjugations and finding new victims in order to continue enriching particular groups.</p><p>This is not the only way humans have ever lived. We fool ourselves by believing this is somehow a <i>defining</i> characteristic of human nature, or inevitable once human cultures scale to a certain size. It wasn't inevitable. Most of the world's cultures resisted European colonisation, and were forced to comply by the barrels of guns. Now the systems binding us are so large and pervasive that they easily sustain themselves (basic systems theory), because justifications for their existence feel like common sense.</p><p><i>This is just what people do. </i>Fuck all the way off. It's one thing people do. It's not what all people do, or what people <i>inevitably </i>do. </p><p>Still, we are complicit in <i>every aspect </i>of these systems of subjugation. The same countries that most loudly condemn human trafficking and slavery, for example, profit most, and <a href="https://www.walkfree.org/global-slavery-index/downloads/">consume the most</a>, from countries that traffic and enslave. Our technology, clothing, food—basically all our consumption habits—make us complicit in those blood sacrifices.</p><p>It is very easy for some people, online, to say that silence is complicity. But that doesn't make allowances for the reasons people might have to speak, or to stay silent. Some are losing jobs or getting shadowbanned for supporting Palestinians' right to exist. And all this gets swept up in the (legitimate) anxiety many Jewish people have that their pain, which is historical, repeatedly triggered, and often evoked in popular culture, is considered less real than other people's. </p><p>This bullying in the direction of one correct opinion isn't happening in a vacuum; think of Colin Kaepernick kneeling, or President Obama being accused of evoking the "race card" when he mourned the death of Trayvon Martin, or how Americans were asked to choose between livelihood and health—for themselves and others—during the most intense period of Covid, when most of the world was confined.</p><p>My family are from a country that was colonised multiple times. The US came to "help" liberate us; once we won, and while still exhausted from those wars, it announced it had purchased us. Filipinos resisted with the very last of their efforts and finally were able to drive the US out, sort of ... under the condition that we mount a democracy they approve of. </p><p>The Philippines, its interests and its autonomy, has been compromised by American interests ever since.</p><p>This is the story of a lot of countries. But it is also the story of <i>us</i>, living in the west, individually<i>. </i>We are encouraged to consume to "help" our economies, then we're told global warming is <i>our </i>fault, our issue to solve by recycling, reducing, reusing; the conglomerates truly responsible for mass-scale resource extraction and pollution get tax breaks and go on producing more than we may ever wish to consume. Whole deserts are covered with clothes we never thought to buy, things nobody wants. Unsustainable objects are cheaper than sustainable ones; the "choice" to be sustainable is considered a luxury.</p><p>How is this <i>our fault?</i></p><p>The bottom line is, we're not free—either to speak or stay silent. All possible positions are compromised because we are embedded in these systems <i>to live. </i>Like the citizens of France, collectively bloodied by the death of Marie Antoinette, we are complicit in the violations of our governments, which operate at the behest of the international market system, which never, <i>ever </i>existed to enrich people locally. It was exploitative from its very inception, bathed in blood once we started killing indigenous peoples for minerals to ship back. </p><p>Local, poor Europeans became complicit in this system even as it subjugated them: Their right to farm was stripped, based on the false case that land privatisation, with harvests nourishing <i>international </i>needs instead of local ones, produces less waste. People suddenly found themselves unable to produce and consume their own food, and this remains the case today, particularly for meat. They were instead made to buy it, and ideally to become merchants themselves. Exploitation and desperation trickled downward. (Women launched food strikes. Guess what followed? <i>Witch hunts. </i>This is an oversimplification, but you get the drift now, I think.)</p><p>In modern times, our complicity deepens because we have really good incentives to hedge our bets. Survival is getting harder for more and more people. We have families to think about, expensive colleges to pay for. We want to keep jobs to keep roofs over our heads. Food is getting pricier, as is transport. Don't even talk to me about healthcare or retirement.</p><p>All these variables compromise our capacity to do a bigger good if it ever invites conflict with the fluid motion of those variables. So we, in turn, engage in compromised medium goods: We can post on social media (the positions have to be correct, somehow both deeply emotive and carefully considered for their potential impact on the poster). We can start a B-corp, run workshops about "conscious capitalism." We keep our hands busy. The blood never washes off.</p><p>In the late days of the Aztec people, human sacrifice was almost unceasing, anxiety-driven: A way to advance empire while terrifying enemies while keeping people in line, culpable, fêting Huītzilōpōchtli—the sun god, who required constant sacrifices to defeat the night—in frenzies of grief, terror and ecstasy.</p><p>That's where we're at now. <i>Rome is burning, </i>the tired saying goes. We're in climate crisis, having clocked the hottest summer <i>ever, </i>and news articles actually have the gall to print things like "humans can withstand more heat than previously believed!" We are not done with what remains an ongoing pandemic. Millions of people have begun to migrate as the result of climate issues—mostly to countries that caused them, but who refuse to take responsibility for climate refugees dying by land and sea. We've watched the progressive genocide in Palestine for decades and are told it is not okay to sympathise; Ukraine, however, remains a priority (though Ukrainian <a href="https://www.euronews.com/2022/03/02/ukrainians-go-first-how-black-and-brown-people-are-struggling-to-escape-the-russian-invasi">refugees of colour</a> have been stopped at European borders, even as their white counterparts are cleared to advance).</p><p>It's a frenzied, sick dance at the foot of a great altar, and we are all awash in blood. We cannot ever blame anyone without blaming ourselves—but also, <i>this is how the systems we engage with were designed. </i>As Gordon White said in a recent ep of Rune Soup, "All the water is poisoned."<i> </i></p><p>With our survival tied to violence, how can we combat the latter in good conscience? We can't. We have to find excuses that absolve us, that "logic" ugliness: <i>It's human nature, these are ancient conflicts, capitalism is the best way to reward creativity, testosterone yields aggression, God made us stewards of all creatures, this is what progress looks like ... </i>Take your pick for the fight in question.</p><p>We will never fight for the right things unless we first square with the reality of our own entangled relationships, and how difficult it is to extract ourselves without losing things we love. I think we have to mourn this—in our desire to protect some things, other, treasured parts of us have been maimed. If we can learn <i>how</i> to mourn this, properly and together, maybe we can start to see clear. Maybe we can get braver, because we know we have support from quarters unexpected.</p><p>Maybe we can starve the correct enemy, not each other or ourselves.</p><p>There's a reason why blood magic is the most vilified form of magic. It goes straight to what gives us life; it is the deepest magic to engage in, the hardest to undo. But the egregores such magic feeds require continuous sating. As they get hungrier, the returns they offer grow thinner. (This is, like, the entire premise of "Cabin in the Woods.") </p><p>What if we just ... stopped? But we can't if we refuse to acknowledge they are there, that we feed them, <i>that we are scared of finding out what happens if we stop</i>. </p><p>This, too, is part of their power: The delusional belief that we've left all this behind—the tearing-out of hearts and rolling-down of inert bodies to protect our fortunes, nourish our crops—that we're rational societies that make rational choices. </p><p>Not all gods thrive by naming. The ones we feed thrive in the shadows of belief, their contours sharp in the negative space. If we can't or won't see them, how can any of us be made free? </p><p>If we closed our eyes for just a second, took a breath and stepped away from our pressure cookers, we could keenly feel how free we are <i>not</i>. We would begin sensing all the ties that bind. We need to find what's on the other side of those threads.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-14950754303433799802023-08-10T01:53:00.002+02:002023-08-10T01:53:14.385+02:00This little light of mine<p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwrX6JJB5kL5W8QpZ_yELVzVxcNtTsNWwf-UOFcGJSOQsSeRfwaM61Wo3liTZzBBh15RRCDXQ14ngaIQoracyrBFTrSoGYyAdBekrco8JdfexZuzrYsKkbf9w8oq_Oeis_HfUuK0uzP1ptGUtfK2dciWQgTTWapHRHQ3hwoaBoPS9MLHsNQjOeuQ/s744/Lori%20&%20Matthieu_Couleur%20(924).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="744" data-original-width="496" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwrX6JJB5kL5W8QpZ_yELVzVxcNtTsNWwf-UOFcGJSOQsSeRfwaM61Wo3liTZzBBh15RRCDXQ14ngaIQoracyrBFTrSoGYyAdBekrco8JdfexZuzrYsKkbf9w8oq_Oeis_HfUuK0uzP1ptGUtfK2dciWQgTTWapHRHQ3hwoaBoPS9MLHsNQjOeuQ/s320/Lori%20&%20Matthieu_Couleur%20(924).jpg" width="213" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>A candle shot from the wedding of two friends.</i></div></i><p></p><p>I was reading about <a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/y1ro37/1900_brothel_candles_popular_in_european_brothels/?rdt=63740">brothel candles</a>, which populated European brothels between 1880 and 1905. The prostitute lit them as a timer, and you had until they ran out. (The candles are about the size and breadth of modern birthday candles, so maybe you're looking at 5 or so minutes? Definitely less than 10.)</p><p>This would be a good thing to implement for when somebody starts holding forth about a topic you just don't care about. You can lift a little birthday candle out of your pocket and hold it somberly aloft, and ideally they'd know they need to get all this out of their system before the flame hits bottom. Then you all have to move on, and they don't get to pick the next topic.</p><p>Blowing the candle out in bad faith would give them poor luck in that particular topic forever. Perhaps they'd develop an incapacity to get through it without stumbling over their words.</p><p>There are some logistical issues. You need to be able to stab a birthday candle into something, so the idea works best if you're in front of food. But you can also get a small conical ceramic holder for one single birthday candle, and just keep it in your pocket. </p><p>I happen to own one, which I procured at a weekend market in Totnes. It's a fun worry item to roll between your fingers, while maximising your capacity to set up a single candle anywhere without losing time, which is of the essence when somebody starts venting about the same old shit, or getting way too excited about a topic that even the furthest-iterated parallel dimension version of you has no interest in.</p><p>That's my big idea. The world suffers from an overabundance of birthday candles, mostly forgotten in drawers. They merit purpose. We could get this off the ground so easily in the TikTok era.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-73705141047059193392023-06-13T02:57:00.003+02:002023-06-13T02:57:18.818+02:00On Strength<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn6ftYfNOzbsysd0R3c4qBTxMaxWJg0oL4zahWLfutL3eYQdYkZbGgy8ogLqA1i5lF9AH-RDSZXUbrYgL8RfsnGN231tS1D-8VknBGNsU02BX08eNLM3LJTk48MhNAKJtiqRn2JwA2BrJ-SrZFzZxxEOfNCjwFZMwf4JGXF0D63elZhD3qb-o/s541/RWS_Tarot_08_Strength.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="541" data-original-width="300" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn6ftYfNOzbsysd0R3c4qBTxMaxWJg0oL4zahWLfutL3eYQdYkZbGgy8ogLqA1i5lF9AH-RDSZXUbrYgL8RfsnGN231tS1D-8VknBGNsU02BX08eNLM3LJTk48MhNAKJtiqRn2JwA2BrJ-SrZFzZxxEOfNCjwFZMwf4JGXF0D63elZhD3qb-o/s320/RWS_Tarot_08_Strength.jpg" width="177" /></a></div><p>I feel strong today. I have not felt <i>this </i>kind of strong, specifically, in a long time: Like there's a wide horizon of possibility ahead, adventures yet untaken, and I'm game. I have the energy for it, the desire to try navigating through new problem space. </p><p>I'm reminded of something my print shop guy said last week: "To worry is to doubt God."</p><p><i>To worry</i> <i>is to doubt. The universe. Oneself. Everything.</i></p><p>Nothing special changed, except that I received a new worry today and it was the worry that finally broke the load. I'm out of capacity for being held hostage by an array of concerns that never quite change and are not especially important, except that they insist on their importance by imposing on my peace.</p><p>We forget, entangled as we are in the intrigues and hamster wheel of economy, that being alive is a <i>crazy thing. </i>So much can happen and is happening all the time. I'm not missing it to be in front of a screen most of my day, infusing myself with heroin shots of eternal-scroll short vids. I refuse.</p><p>I want to move my body on earth and in water and feel the sun kiss my skin. I want the wind to blow hard at me in Tintagel. I want to taste my food, and read books on the terrace with a pleasing beverage. I want to touch trees and breathe in forest, to stoop down and collect chestnuts from their moist, opened armour. I want scrambled eggs and hot chocolate, and sand between my toes, and laughing with my friends over candles. I want to be kissed by my lovers, and to give birth to lots of beauty.</p><p>I don't think I should only get to have these things if I make enough money to avoid the micromanagement of a feudal lord. The game of this past few years has been to frontload these things instead—make <i>them</i> the priorities, not my rewards for good behaviour.</p><p>If I'm honest with myself, it's going <i>fine. </i>Better than fine: Beautifully. Still: I'm not rich, so I worry.</p><p>But I think that's the <i>point: </i>To be able to live beautifully without hoarding resources. To know that compounding interest is only one form of abundance you want in your life, and not the most important by a long shot. You want health first. You want love most. You want beauty, because what is the point of waking up if your senses cannot rest on something truly <i>sublime</i> at least once a day, ideally more?</p><p>Today I divest the worry. I blow it out of my open hand as one would blow a kiss. It doesn't matter. What matters is to live. I can be braver about it now.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-31531607232158917492023-03-24T00:05:00.004+01:002023-03-24T00:05:39.754+01:00Article 49.3<p>If you can walk Paris—if you deign to give her the attention she merits—walk her by night. By night she is ribald, volatile. You can't listen to music. You can't get lost in your thoughts. You have to be alert. She will leave you no choice.</p><p>This is when the city is most eloquent. You cannot ignore her. Tonight, there is no romance. Tonight she is full of discontent. </p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipkmkbEAL9VYdBdJdLw5MjpbPX4lc9pht-BDMDcL-DC_Dp5X21ttmFAhKZzhU4i-pU-Mo0jZk1JlZjTvl_746OhVMwTzL0yk3_UZEpXS5-1xUkegVSnFOYkXZGPan-2ae4kBvxn1U4ig4WSid7kuI9TqnsHEzK1o4w9vCVvQakC2JaIBytYLQ/s834/PXL_20230323_215121981.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="628" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEipkmkbEAL9VYdBdJdLw5MjpbPX4lc9pht-BDMDcL-DC_Dp5X21ttmFAhKZzhU4i-pU-Mo0jZk1JlZjTvl_746OhVMwTzL0yk3_UZEpXS5-1xUkegVSnFOYkXZGPan-2ae4kBvxn1U4ig4WSid7kuI9TqnsHEzK1o4w9vCVvQakC2JaIBytYLQ/s320/PXL_20230323_215121981.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><br /><p><br /></p><p>The results of the day's protest spills over at sundown, like inflamed flesh. The garbage, left weeks uncollected, has exploded into the streets. Bins are aflame.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlmj1eFiuSSUbUUMuo1xjDrDJjKUmKedhcxkESYkIqYWOXT2H_wDys1Kbr1CB601KNjKr4kXT_32IjaBTXS4RdiJN0esI5OU7hnkyux09ZAx2QEzgDwAytqn_IFNQeDa27qj_NJGxUJA3mMimGrVWerVSb72FuYOS7V6yANo7U7LW8fgFA0C4/s834/PXL_20230323_214329768.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="628" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhlmj1eFiuSSUbUUMuo1xjDrDJjKUmKedhcxkESYkIqYWOXT2H_wDys1Kbr1CB601KNjKr4kXT_32IjaBTXS4RdiJN0esI5OU7hnkyux09ZAx2QEzgDwAytqn_IFNQeDa27qj_NJGxUJA3mMimGrVWerVSb72FuYOS7V6yANo7U7LW8fgFA0C4/s320/PXL_20230323_214329768.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><p>But there is also zeal, and for every ten restaurants that have closed as a precaution, one is open, its lights warming the faces peering out from their terraces. This is also Paris. It is Thursday and the night is young, the chaos embraced, no interruption to the desire to flee our small flats. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBBUzsZf7fqzFiD1eJs3CXqrSobXdVNm0TcOLIDbs2mRjQbq4NhWLVp2oU2p9mih1w4hmmmjBaGkvbfIzP0zBPz804vRuTasBDVKG6O-cvvcMMzsOJ9R2DmWbUF5lz_Cj6OElbYf2kOoWBlgN0t6HiGSqmI1WtiTdVMCmgntfvwYDjBSrX-Gw/s834/PXL_20230323_213947699.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="628" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBBUzsZf7fqzFiD1eJs3CXqrSobXdVNm0TcOLIDbs2mRjQbq4NhWLVp2oU2p9mih1w4hmmmjBaGkvbfIzP0zBPz804vRuTasBDVKG6O-cvvcMMzsOJ9R2DmWbUF5lz_Cj6OElbYf2kOoWBlgN0t6HiGSqmI1WtiTdVMCmgntfvwYDjBSrX-Gw/s320/PXL_20230323_213947699.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><p>Swamps are not polite places. They have a character that can't be beat down, no matter how much civilization you build on top of them, how many Haussmann buildings—or, in the case of Florida, how many resorts. The sharks will still come. The alligators will appear in your swimming pool. </p><p>In the case of Paris, the discontent of its people does not fester. Like spirits responding to their mother, to the hurling of this wildland corseted under concrete, it explodes vocally, viscerally. You know the expression, "ask for forgiveness, not for permission"? It doesn't even ask for forgiveness. </p><p>We walk atop what once was wild marshlands and it vibrates beneath us, never allows us to forget. Its character remains irrepressible: Chaos always threatening to retake space from the concrete. This is Paris. And if you're called here, if you live here, you feel it in your blood, vibrating under your skin. There is no taming it.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQTM0QZi-oRVnG-LvYwQHcJXHlMTqUhp7CYcwyL0ke7mISLJD0ZpHY6E-uZRoE-PnFYp-Hw1nU-cCNl4tb9nPdyHvtgIgDiNCmjNLV46d5ALKLXqTVzb-Kyn6Zojy9_5EZ9e7gC4TzqAsSviQGEnljpQEgaRjitPoYip16EQRvbrp7k2fAnA/s834/PXL_20230323_215054348.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" data-original-height="834" data-original-width="628" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhCQTM0QZi-oRVnG-LvYwQHcJXHlMTqUhp7CYcwyL0ke7mISLJD0ZpHY6E-uZRoE-PnFYp-Hw1nU-cCNl4tb9nPdyHvtgIgDiNCmjNLV46d5ALKLXqTVzb-Kyn6Zojy9_5EZ9e7gC4TzqAsSviQGEnljpQEgaRjitPoYip16EQRvbrp7k2fAnA/s320/PXL_20230323_215054348.jpg" width="241" /></a></div><p></p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-79091274483824032832023-02-04T15:13:00.002+01:002023-02-04T15:14:05.974+01:00The divine comedy<p>Many, many years ago, when community management was barely a thing and I was in the vibrating potential of my 20s, I went to New York to provide live social media coverage to a major advertising awards show. The bloggers were all put up in a fine hotel and given access to rare and special people to facilitate our coverage.</p><p>But things started going wrong almost immediately before the first day of work. I can't remember all the details. My wireless internet router didn't work, my Macbook Pro failed me and the Genius Bar took it away and said it would be out of commission for several days. I provisionally bought a new computer which they told me I could return after the week was over, minus the return fee, which I chocked off as a rental fee.</p><p>I didn't know New York that well, and barely had the funds for these emergencies. All this running-about, trying to get my shit together before the event started, was taxing. But finally it was done, and I got to my hotel and touched the key card to the door. It didn't open.</p><p>That is when I pressed my head to the wood and burst into tears.</p><p>It happened that, in the room next door, a housekeeper was just coming out. She dashed across to me with a look of alarm and buried my head in her copious bosoms.</p><p>"He hurt you," she said with conviction. "I'm so sorry, love, so sorry he hurt you."</p><p>I relaxed all my weight into her and kept on crying. It didn't seem important to correct her. In a way, a he <i>did </i>hurt me: Steve Jobs.</p><p>I blubbered about my door key and she sorted me out and ushered me into the room, tut-tutting the whole time, tucking me into my bed like a little rolly-polly.</p><p>The rest of the week went fine. But thereafter, I had the strong feeling that I was on the hotel's suicide watch. I came home every day to a pyramid of chocolates and handwritten notes from housekeeping. The staff kept calling to "check in." In the midst of all that stress—the week did not turn out so great in the end, though it had nothing to do with my work, nor anything I could have done—I felt loved and held by strangers.</p><p>This is how I feel at this moment. I'm standing at the very edge of a private endeavour I've poured months of myself into. It twisted my life around, made things chaotic, and at the same time I kept encountering people—improbable strangers and professionals—who seemed destined to help me succeed. Kisses from the universe.</p><p>Now we're nearly at the end, and success does not look like the most likely possibility. The grief sits heavy on my heart. There's one last salvo, then few remaining paths. It will be over, and the machine will simply stop.</p><p><br /></p><p>Discovering what we truly desire, and why, is a transformative act. We spend so much of our lives being encouraged to measure and temper our desires against the societies and norms we grow up in; to deviate from this single-mindedly, in the pursuit of what we <i>alone</i> want, is a radical thing.</p><p>But desire is not equivalent to entitlement. You are owed nothing; the universe is not a meritocracy, and I'm not even convinced that a meritocracy is an ideal. Desire is merely a compass. You follow the direction where your heart beats loud and strong, and that's important; it vitalises you.</p><p>I have finally arrived at the place I've struggled with finding for the past three months. <i>I cannot control this outcome. </i>It has nothing to do with me "rising to the occasion" or "meeting the challenges." This is not a gauntlet for the gods. From my vantage point at this moment, life is playful, our time here a series of games. We learn things or don't, we feel things or don't; there are no wrong answers, only experiences and new possibilities, and all that enriches the cosmos. </p><p>It's about us, sure, but we can't forget the macro sense of who we are. My life is about me insofar as that I'm living it, but <i>I </i>extend beyond my body. </p><p>I am kapwa: <i>I </i>am me and you, me and the community, the community and the environment. <i>I </i>extend to my interactions, known or unknown, and cannot be divided from this fertile, murky mess in any meaningful way. So this story can only be about <i>me </i>in that sense. It's me <i>as </i>the cosmos, not me as a small slice of anxious ego wanting a happy ending from a very narrow spectrum of perspective.</p><p>I brought up the story of that woman and the hotel because it's on my mind. It feels related to this moment. Over the course of this project I've met with many forms of chaos, but also many people that, for a multitude of reasons, I believed were signs I was on the right track, and a "positive" outcome to this project was meant for me. They were strangers who became friends and they fought for my interests and still do, or spontaneously reassure my fears without me asking them to, or answer questions I didn't know I had, seemingly making the path clearer ahead.</p><p>All this time, I thought this was about me getting the right ending. But this isn't about the ending at all. It's specifically about <i>those </i>interactions. All those years ago at that hotel, everything went wrong but I felt held by strangers, cradled by the universe. I feel this now: As the project slowly unravels in front of me, as hope begins to rise softly from her chair and move toward the door, I realise I'm not alone in this room, have <i>never </i>been alone.</p><p>I am still held by strangers. I am still cradled by the universe. And this says more about my value to myself, my value to <i>everything, </i>than securing the fucking outcome. Though losing it, to be frank, breaks my heart. </p><p>I can feel it: softening me, making me more malleable, relaxing my muscles with the grief. I bury my head in the copious bosoms of the universe. May I be worthy of the gift of the hands that go on holding me, and moulding me.</p><p>It is beautiful to be here. </p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-61760502268241200332023-02-01T10:27:00.003+01:002023-02-01T10:27:33.142+01:00Brigid's creation song<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn1Z1HT5wV0X7zGZiYUIPPtrq25GetOO-6UgJ0-w4bESM4qynrkp4SXrUsHJ6TthQPAmsU6XStzt3t5xGR__muxtgLA2a7RagKMkHoY1qOFF0D9QAIYi0rNF0whsIb_oG1rqtCmAdE2P0-114s2dfKd68ztU3ef4fq5fjMTiljVrZJhd8QhmU/s960/2014-03-21-16_opt-1-960x480.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="960" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn1Z1HT5wV0X7zGZiYUIPPtrq25GetOO-6UgJ0-w4bESM4qynrkp4SXrUsHJ6TthQPAmsU6XStzt3t5xGR__muxtgLA2a7RagKMkHoY1qOFF0D9QAIYi0rNF0whsIb_oG1rqtCmAdE2P0-114s2dfKd68ztU3ef4fq5fjMTiljVrZJhd8QhmU/s320/2014-03-21-16_opt-1-960x480.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>St. Brigid's Cloak, <a href="http://www.shannonacademy.com/st-brigid-and-the-coming-of-early-spring-in-ireland/">the Shannon Academy</a>.</i></div></i><p>It is Imbolc, that middle place between the winter solstice and spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere. We're in that first salvo of the creation principle, awakening after a long sleep. Imbolc is the primary feast of Brigid, goddess of fire and water, with dominion over midwifery, poetry, crafts, brewing, iron-working, and technology, per Judika Illes in "Imbolc: Crafting the Creative Flame," in Taschen's <i>Witchcraft </i>tome.</p><p>I lit a candle yesterday, on Brigid Eve. This morning—sun bright, frost still clinging to its edges—I dug through Sean Kane's <i>Wisdom of the Mythtellers </i>and found one of my favourite passages. This is Brigid's song of creation, written by Ella Young as told by Alice Kane: </p><p><i>Now comes the hour foretold, a god gift-bringing,<br />A wonder sight.<br />Is it a star, newborn, and splendid up springing<br />Out of the night? <br />Is it a wave from the Fountain of Youth, that is upflinging<br />A foam of delight?<br />Is it a great immortal bird that is winging<br />Hither its flight?</i></p><p><i>It is a wave, high-crested, melodious, triumphant, <br />Breaking in light.<br />It is a star, rose-hearted and joyous,<br />Risen from night.<br />it is a flame from the world of the gods, and love runs before it,<br />A quenchless delight.</i></p><p><i>Let the wave break, let the star rise, <br />Let the flame leap.<br />Ours, if our hearts are wise,<br />To take and keep.</i></p><div>Brigid sings this song and moves the hearts of the other gods, who quickly recognise it doesn't come from her alone. She describes it as the song of the earth, who dreamt of beauty and longs for it now. Thus inspired, the gods descend to earth—a dark, formless abyss, chaotic and frightening—then begin paving it with beauty, each gifting it with their own pulsating wildfire touch.</div><div><br /></div><div>When they have finished, the earth is rampant green and blue, clothed in flowers. They commit not to duplicate, there, the things that exist in other places. They decide to stay and collaborate with the earth, helping cultivate a beauty that is hers alone.</div><div><br /></div><div>Only Brigid opts to leave. Her work done here, she turns her mind to other matters. The gods lace a ribbon of remembrance to her mantle, and off she goes, needfully separating herself from the creation she contributed to.</div><div><br /></div>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-61159599201130531932023-01-20T14:38:00.003+01:002023-01-20T14:38:22.819+01:00Every fire<p>Each morning I wake, put on my rubbery boots, and gather wood and kindling from the shelter in the garden.</p><p>At the stove, I clean the ashes out from the previous day.</p><p>I make a sandwich of paper, kindling, cardboard, more paper. I light it bottom to top.</p><p>In some configurations I know this will go well, but it doesn't always; the fire can be colicky, slow to take.</p><p>Every fire is a different fire. Each has its own temperament, its own way of being coaxed into autonomy. I start it off with soft foods, then move on to progressively bigger, harder comestibles. </p><p>It will spend its first hour toddling, needing careful attention—a spare ear or eye forever monitoring its condition, even as I prepare breakfast, stretch, start my computer. By afternoon it will seem more confident, but experience knows this is not the case; left to its own for an hour, it could be dead-cold, not an ember left to revive it.</p><p>Every fire is a different fire. My job is to forget the nature of the one that accompanied me yesterday. I spend the day weaving my attention to it, hoping that by nightfall it will be fully its own, raging hot and radiating, dangerous in its certainty.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-30370057118418913092023-01-18T16:15:00.000+01:002023-01-18T16:15:20.467+01:00On making my new phone mine<p>There's a lot of change happening—shifts backed by years of marinating. In the midst of two big shifts I'm engaged in at the moment, I had my phone stolen a month ago and decided to break it off with Apple. I'd been considering it awhile, the cost of it had started outweighing the value, and a chaotic, stressful situation was the perfect last straw.</p><p>So I got a Google Pixel and lost half the data I've accumulated over 13 years—phone numbers, apps, messaging data (iMessage!), any number of things that seemed really important at the time. I spent a weekend in a foetal position and another week trying to understand my new normal, then came out the other side and decided it was time to start adapting the phone to my needs.</p><p>I'm very much an Otterbox fan because I drop my phone a lot and have often enjoyed the exercise of throwing it across the room to demonstrate the value of "military-grade" protection. But I'm over that now. Protection for ordinary drops is fine, which means I don't need a case the size of a commando's walkie-talkie. In keeping with that, I also decided against getting a phone clip, which in any case has proven too bulky for the type of gear I carry lately, and utterly impractical for attaching to a bicycle.</p><p>I still want to be practical. But it's a time of change, and I'm interested<i> </i>in who I'm changing into and how she manifests herself, especially in terms of styles and textures. These are the things I got:</p><p>First, this most delicious <a href="https://bellroy.com/products/leather-case-for-pixel-7?color=evergreen&material=leather&size=pixel7pro#slide-1">leather phone case from Bellroy</a> with a secret orange interior that I have already forgotten about and which has consequently delighted me all over again. It is delicious to touch and yields perfect grip.</p><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPn51QvjDLkGu03RUO6JfiRPHF4p1QxZyAs37YlXaItZ81QZPFwdYzRRTZhqp3kwhdD3LLyH10a4oAGag8o1ZaMkPwj0GltXxRG0JiKn-Qm82xLvG5Hc3-2gFL1k7EBCYS2GlTNj0MeUJim5j2fXbjLykOpio-ABKkuF6LgRLZDHq5-l2OY8/s958/Screenshot%202023-01-18%20at%2015.49.58.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="958" data-original-width="758" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzPn51QvjDLkGu03RUO6JfiRPHF4p1QxZyAs37YlXaItZ81QZPFwdYzRRTZhqp3kwhdD3LLyH10a4oAGag8o1ZaMkPwj0GltXxRG0JiKn-Qm82xLvG5Hc3-2gFL1k7EBCYS2GlTNj0MeUJim5j2fXbjLykOpio-ABKkuF6LgRLZDHq5-l2OY8/s320/Screenshot%202023-01-18%20at%2015.49.58.png" width="253" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXuwRQ3isaG-Gk7YLOVDokrZdM_WIhAJCC2RB-ORQ3QeX2pjjVHr9ktsIzf91S6slAd1dsAhZrojhmyOuVio2OdefTyY686rDV95kPhIkfYUzpXJAy6PxgNTgKMRSdnJBRzBVhGH7iT5UJobadnlAt5B2tkSA8qE0I8Ipn9RgqoQmIpHw74HQ/s966/Screenshot%202023-01-18%20at%2015.50.10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="966" data-original-width="922" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiXuwRQ3isaG-Gk7YLOVDokrZdM_WIhAJCC2RB-ORQ3QeX2pjjVHr9ktsIzf91S6slAd1dsAhZrojhmyOuVio2OdefTyY686rDV95kPhIkfYUzpXJAy6PxgNTgKMRSdnJBRzBVhGH7iT5UJobadnlAt5B2tkSA8qE0I8Ipn9RgqoQmIpHw74HQ/s320/Screenshot%202023-01-18%20at%2015.50.10.png" width="305" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Second, this fully-rotatable <a href="https://www.burga.com/products/designer-phone-ring-holder?variant=41430844113071">ring and stand from Burga</a> which is pleasingly smooth and niftily associates with my <a href="https://www.chillys.com/uk/products/bottle-tropical-leopard?sku=B750TRLPD_3D">tropical leopard water bottle</a>—an acquisition that followed the loss of my black Zojirushi bottle, which vanished as I was sliding off a cliff face last year.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0gxC3z4iOb2sIOU_bwz41gQyUY1B0_q7RbhaSfqGMl3BN6CkFIjYcsOpQcCKGlm9Fa4CgS9EGidK8KbdvMVBx6rxtAw8-CRdpipJtM9H8-TBXYrOz9ohJ3A8ObgiN27B3WRDrhGnk3axYJNUEooV92oFikDUXHSY6Qw_oDY6WuPYI3OvTYqY/s1340/Screenshot%202023-01-18%20at%2015.49.26.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1122" data-original-width="1340" height="268" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0gxC3z4iOb2sIOU_bwz41gQyUY1B0_q7RbhaSfqGMl3BN6CkFIjYcsOpQcCKGlm9Fa4CgS9EGidK8KbdvMVBx6rxtAw8-CRdpipJtM9H8-TBXYrOz9ohJ3A8ObgiN27B3WRDrhGnk3axYJNUEooV92oFikDUXHSY6Qw_oDY6WuPYI3OvTYqY/s320/Screenshot%202023-01-18%20at%2015.49.26.png" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>I like this—these leaping-out greens and oranges that mark such delectable contrast to the monochrome accessories I have favoured most of my adult and adolescent life. It's a new language, muted but playful. It leaves room for other kinds of exclamations, new ways of being.</p><p>None of this is very important but I wanted to put it somewhere because it makes me happy. I also like how these colours interact with others in my life: The orange metal pen sitting beside my phone at this moment, the black Merci wristwatch with the subtle red details. Why have I spent so much of my life refusing my eyes this lush indulgence?</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-41161539929340292122023-01-10T23:47:00.001+01:002023-01-10T23:47:45.257+01:00On heroes<p>There's a convention in the very old oral stories where a prophecy is given, but its completion relies entirely on the central person not knowing about it.<br /><br />This is a crucial distinction, completely at odds with the convention that you, the Hero, are aware of and thus driven by your destiny. Knowing or believing you're the Hero is a burden for you and others.<br /><br />In the older tales, there aren't any side characters, not really; the whole universe conspires to bring the prophecy to fruition. Even your mistakes are critical. Sometimes you have to die. Sometimes you resurrect, unable to be the person you were before. But you need everybody. You are part of a larger story that isn't really about you at all.<br /><br />A story where a central character is infused by their own heroism enables the hero to use (and treat) everyone around them as collateral. The hero is not only protected and supported but enabled, including by the audience. Their belief in their own story—that they act in the service of a Greater Good—ultimately corrodes the very qualities that made them heroic, because there is no place for a greater good—for others—to flourish. <br /><br />Somewhere along the way, the story came to be about them alone. <br /></p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-19892114842929973392022-12-30T17:50:00.005+01:002022-12-30T17:52:48.512+01:00What is your kiwi?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2xejnn5WcueeVGkBV7o1lYbHJ0Gx82ix5eBTMKzZUtx_lwSCgsrE3UF1ZZCFI3Db6Wzobhv7fWKzTCPS4s8jsb6jm5tK59wAVMGZJ5s3TiV_AET8BiXYY14sPSTMMWGxo_Fb-hTbhTL7LZYvfCtXebFiS6Hjk0xf-u63PKUXx30a-Om9p5ac/s998/Screenshot%202022-12-30%20at%2017.15.25.png" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="924" data-original-width="998" height="296" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2xejnn5WcueeVGkBV7o1lYbHJ0Gx82ix5eBTMKzZUtx_lwSCgsrE3UF1ZZCFI3Db6Wzobhv7fWKzTCPS4s8jsb6jm5tK59wAVMGZJ5s3TiV_AET8BiXYY14sPSTMMWGxo_Fb-hTbhTL7LZYvfCtXebFiS6Hjk0xf-u63PKUXx30a-Om9p5ac/s320/Screenshot%202022-12-30%20at%2017.15.25.png" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><i><a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/left_ism/7938135922/in/photolist-d6t2fs-aYmMAV-7KWuZa-4A6Tcj-jSg1k-6GWN1V-6pQPTp-7BK13o-dQ8kZN-dfE7oN-6YEpc-pBiFah-9EKNmn-9ENG11-9E9Chm-6p72ug-4xeqra-dQ2JYt-7Q2BA1-cVPWas-8XvS7F-cXXgN-9sKqiX-4WxvYf-snhaUu-9aK3xM-4urbE2-bAcmaD-96TVbS-9eXi53-396eFb-baetEF-7uPHbB-bueMaf-5TpFqJ-dVUij-bwSwmu-cv8HJ7-pjwE82-5UHETR-wGgN-6JFXdB-5BVM8m-7Q2BDb-aieRSg-PgeDS3-x7hZ-acZFnr-azvraw-CdK9Lz">Credit.</a></i></div><br /><p>A few years ago I had lunch with a former intern who was in town and wanted to catch up. He told me a story of a man who had never eaten a kiwi.</p><p>"It's not a very interesting story," he said. "His parents didn't like kiwis so he never had them as a child. Only when he was older, and people started saying, 'you've never had a kiwi?', did he realise it was a weird thing. But he decided to make it a choice. He still hasn't eaten a kiwi."</p><p>"Why?" I asked.</p><p>"Because he thought, one day when life gets too dull or repetitive, or he feels depressed, he will know there is still something new to look forward to. All he has to do is go downstairs to the nearest shop and buy a kiwi." He paused heavily on that ending and leaned over our empty plates. "Angela. Do you have a kiwi?"</p><p>I can't remember how I answered. I like the idea of having some small, easily-accessible thing that remains to be experienced, a hedge against the everyday travails that can make life feel Sisyphean. In moments I've considered the question since, I mostly think about big kiwis: Moving to Paris. Half-moving to Italy. Learning to forge and tend fires. Learning to cook. That one time when, lonely in my new Paris life, so long ago, I took a four-hour improv class.</p><p>But the point of the story is that a kiwi isn't a big thing. It's a tiny thing that reinfuses a tiny dose of magic into life, enough to keep going, to hope again. I went to the Italian bookshop in Paris and practiced Italian with the shopkeeper, which made me nervous. I let Demo talk me into buying butter cookie-scented candles. I ate dark chocolate with octopus on top. I conducted that Covid experiment where I stayed up as late as I wanted, and slept when I wanted, and ended up living on a reverse schedule to everyone else: Breakfast became dinner, sunrise my sunsets.</p><p>The general vibe on the social networks right now is that people are tired of hoping for a "better" 2023 than the 2022 we got. I think of something a client said, months ago: Nobody believes anymore that life will be better tomorrow than it is today. Nobody thinks anymore that their children will do better than they did. </p><p>Hope is being crushed, at a growing pace, under the burden of capital.</p><p>What a mindset to find oneself in, though. Where does one go from there? I've already done the rage against the machine, shuttled through the abject desolation that follows. There's no solace there. There is no <i>there </i>there. As King Solomon once said: "Meaningless! Everything is meaningless!"</p><p>It occurred to me, the other day, what my kiwi actually is. I've been fooling around with it for the last few years, and it has never stopped restoring my sense of wonder. </p><p><b>My kiwi is making weird choices. Big, small. Doesn't matter.</b></p><p>When you're finally ready to cede to chaos, it merits remembering that chaos yields new cosmos. This is the lesson of trickster gods, and, oddly enough, kiwis: The fruit is thus named because it resembles the furry egg of the kiwi bird. It is a something that looks like something else—deceptive, but not shatteringly so. (Unless you're a kiwi bird, I suppose.)</p><p>Social conventions are collapsing. All the things we didn't dare do, for fear of punishment or opprobrium? Fuck it. Make the weird choice you didn't think was allowed. Go on vacation alone. Do the wacky masters degree. Run away from all the war news and take a salsa class. Quit your job and live on unemployment awhile. Take up a weird hobby that has zero viable hope for becoming a "career." Fuck careers. Learn High Valerian—or better yet, a real language like Tagalog—and speak it to strangers.</p><p>Call reality's bluff. Test the elasticity of your possible, your normal.</p><p>We spend so much time chasing rewards and avoiding punishment. Half of the rewards and punishments don't come to fruition. I suspect the worst thing we can do in this time is dig our heels into the old, dying promises and threats our system has made to sustain itself, and find ourselves alone holding an empty bag in the end.</p><p>Norbert Wiener once observed that the more one learns about the universe, the more one realises that life was an improbable gift, utterly squandered when you measure it by the arbitrary benchmarks of civilisation. <i>The sum of this gift cannot simply be spent desperately pursuing capital or some golden standard of success. </i>We need more.</p><p>Make weird choices. My weird choices have done more for me, and borne more beautiful fruit, than my careful plans. Sometimes the outcomes have sucked, but that was less than 5% of the time, and 0% were devastating. It has all been a good exercise in staying open, curious and childlike; and learning the many nuanced lessons that love still has to teach me.</p><p>To return to the topic of kiwis, though, here's a weird choice I made about them specifically once, when I felt too lazy to peel one. I bit straight into the skin. It wasn't fibrous or unpleasant; improbably, the skin is totally edible. Practically melts in your mouth. Because of this weird and vaguely antisocial choice, I will now spend the rest of my life knowing that peeling a kiwi is a luxury I can indulge in or not. </p><p>It doesn't take a massive weird choice to make your life richer.</p><p>Chaos makes new cosmos. If you don't happen to like the one you find yourself in, another awaits around the corner of your next decision.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-37849374226115815562022-12-22T17:20:00.000+01:002022-12-22T17:20:18.954+01:00Fitful hibernation<p>I'm on a complicated journey. It's entangled in my feelings about capital and exploitation, and a newfound fear about whether I can continue to sustain myself—to <i>make </i>money, as if from air—as I've done for almost two decades.</p><p>I've changed, but the world has also changed.</p><p>This past month or so in Paris energised me, as it always does, a wolf mother feeding a prodigal cub. I activated myself for work in ways I haven't in two years. I began new projects, started turning the wheels on a different kind of life that will cost more and demand more of me. I barely slept. </p><p>In those weeks, which slid by like water—and despite the challenges, which were numerous and <i>insane—</i>everything seemed possible. <i>I </i>seemed possible.</p><p>But now I'm back in Italy. However long I run the fire—and I've become so good at igniting it, nurturing it, feeding it and cleaning it—upstairs it remains cold as a marble tomb under night air. I can see my breath, even wrapped under covers. It is hard to crawl out of bed, to initiate the day. It is hard to do anything but tend fire.</p><p>My mobility, of course, is also not what it is in Paris. As long as I don't have a car here, I'm limited. The nights are longer, solstice having passed. I didn't mark it, but watched the sky go darker earlier. I spend the nights on the phone with banks, trying to sort international transfers, paving the way for new things.</p><p>We are in the lee of holiday time. Everything grinds to a halt; I shouldn't fret, that's what this time is for. It's Hekate's time, Crone time: A moment reflected in our days by the auspice of night, in our months through menstruation, and in the year with winter. Like all animals, we slow and recuperate energies for waking time, waking season. Sugar and water will once again rush up the veins of trees.</p><p>When I walk across the garden for firewood, I become aware of the stillness of the plants, and of the careful coverings Demo's father placed over the crops and the external faucets. The chickens no longer squawk. Everything is sleeping. Braced against the cold, I do my yoga—stilling my racing heart, trying to locate quiet as I listen to my body. Where are we aching, where is it tight? I refilled my private apothecary, combining oils and plants for muscular pain, nail fungi, lip balm, mouthwash, moisturiser. </p><p>Constant movement but still I feel that anxiety, that all the energy I whipped up in Paris will somehow snuff out beyond reach and beyond reignition. That the hope and possibility I felt were contextual and temporary and now I'm back to stillness, waiting for a new life to begin while uncertain what to chase, or whether to chase.</p><p>I oscillate between offering services to people and wondering if there is anything, really, I can or want to offer. In a matter of days I've again lost my sense of fit. I drink peppermint tea mixed with cacao, filling my body with familiarity and comfort. I make porridges, alternating between salty and sweet.</p><p>In the night I'm fed by offerings: Thick stews Demo prepared, cool bean-based mixes his father set on the doorstep, one morning when I hadn't yet found the courage to face the chill beyond the sheets. My life here is quiet and almost maddeningly calm, and I think again about how, during our time together in Paris, Demo said it was hard to sleep because my relationship to time is different, I <i>vibrate </i>with stress, it rolls off my skin and permeates space. He's contemplating changes, too, to ease my back and forth swinging.</p><p>Eventually I will adjust, like always. I need to find a way to make peace with these dynamics and move forward regardless of where I am, locating equilibrium between these two selves, which can no doubt serve whatever I decide to do in their own way.</p><p>"What's happened with your PhD?" my Italian instructor asked pointedly.</p><p>"Nothing," I answered. "It's too expensive and I can't take it on right now."</p><p>He frowned. We talked a bit about where I could look in France. "France would be easier, and cheaper," he said. I told him about my fear of complex writing in French, even after all these years; he said he wrote his PhD in French while still learning it. "Some things I would say better today, other things not," he said. Then he shared his own anxiety: Next year he'll apply for a fascinating programme in California, one that excites even me, and he worries for his English.</p><p>I laughed. "I can help with that," I offered, and he smiled. I know he won't take me up on it but I also know he's glad that card is there. We like each other and share affinities. That I found an Italian instructor as taken by mythology as I am doesn't feel accidental.</p><p>I'm going to read, and do some handwriting—things I haven't done in weeks, so taken was I by the tides of Paris and what I've been needing to do there. The fire has finally caught, so I can step away for awhile. It wouldn't be right to say I don't dare to hope; rather, I don't <i>have </i>to hope. Instead I have to wait, slow down and reflect. I will need this rest for what's to come, whatever it is.</p><p>I think of the woman who married a bear. It burst into her tent, spiriting her away, locking her in his cave just in time for hibernation. Beside him, she falls into deep slumber; sometimes, in that time out of time, she wakes in the dark, her tummy a sharp hollow, and pokes him sharply. He groans and gives her his paw, from which she licks thick tears of oil. Just enough nourishment to fall back into sleep until spring, when she wakes as his wife.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-63474485607171814342022-11-15T22:50:00.004+01:002022-11-15T22:52:08.463+01:00Pendulaire<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihITDTFfSN2FyNlZOYr3x4Tw3fwC_K2NkLTc2iWn3LBSZJ4uaMzANcsP7JSsp6PHz4yma1osMNJfzFqo5hVOlO7dXwvvlsebTZHZEapm0pN_pEcKz85wkqjMqLSJRd05nzIY0neY34uJakFv0Qa34Gl3NhDTdKAppGzLhbcFNtMhrVcY9TZ6A/s526/12244387_10104764648023973_8627098758904788888_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="526" data-original-width="526" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihITDTFfSN2FyNlZOYr3x4Tw3fwC_K2NkLTc2iWn3LBSZJ4uaMzANcsP7JSsp6PHz4yma1osMNJfzFqo5hVOlO7dXwvvlsebTZHZEapm0pN_pEcKz85wkqjMqLSJRd05nzIY0neY34uJakFv0Qa34Gl3NhDTdKAppGzLhbcFNtMhrVcY9TZ6A/s320/12244387_10104764648023973_8627098758904788888_o.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><i><div style="text-align: center;"><i>14 novembre, 2015.</i></div></i><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>This is a love story.</div><div><br /></div><div>My entanglements, my worries, my fears. My swinging back and forth between Friuli Italy and Paris—<i>une vie de pendulaire</i>. Returning to Paris just in time to remember November 13: The day I got married. It rained, Romain went home to take a nap, I bought perfume.</div><div><br /></div><div>I took my cousins to dinner at Le Depanneur, minutes away from where I now live. Back then, it was on the other side of the city. When it all came crashing down, we caught the last Uber back home, with a driver who panicked midway and tried to kick us out of the car. <i>"Je me suis mariée aujourd'hui et il ne répond pas au telephone !"</i> I shouted. My voice cracked. He was silent the rest of the way.</div><div><br /></div><div>The days that followed. Romain’s early-morning grocery shopping. Trying to get up to run, sitting in the dark in the hallway for an eternity, playing with my laces. Something in me had slowed and become fearful. Cousin Dave messaging: “Time to come home, lol?” </div><div><br /></div><div>The <i>recoil</i> I felt.</div><div><br /></div><div>How a guy who raped me was the only person I wanted to talk to, the only person who struck the right chord. It was the most peaceful and forgiving conversation we’d had, and our last.</div><div><br /></div><div>I recently considered leaving Paris for good. Sustaining this life divided is tough. I feel like giving up. And every time I go back and forth, it’s not only me who has to adjust; it’s Demo, too. It stretches our elasticity, wears us thin even as it makes us burn for each other again.</div><div><br /></div><div>But then I came home, back to my city, after midnight. Paris was wet and slick from recent rain. The pavements were shiny black and the air smelled clean. (Also: cigarettes, and in the metro, piss.) The winter lights string stars across the city, glimmering between buildings. I can’t see Orion here, I can’t see Gemini, I can’t see the moon. But I can see the cobblestones under my feet, and the red sky that first seduced me.</div><div><br /></div><div>I poured out water and wine, let it bleed into the crevices of the concrete. Paris kissed me back.</div><div><br /></div><div>She is my oldest and most enduring love. She took me as I am, made space for me; I started a company here, married and divorced and cried, made friends that became family because I had none here, and needed that. As we get older, I see how important these ties are. How many secrets have been accumulated and honoured in the girl group, how many struggles divulged over whisky and cigar smoke in the guy group. We hold each other close, witness one another’s lives. We need each other in a way that is visceral.</div><div><br /></div><div>What a strange thing, to have fallen in love with a man who loves me exactly as I am—Demo of the autumn eyes—and whose first declaration to me, witnessed by the mulberry trees of Tricesimo, was “I’m going to die on this land.” What a Hermean thing: A heart divided, inevitably, between loyalty to a land and loyalty to a man as bound to his earth as if it were part of his own body.</div><div><br /></div><div>It’s beautiful and sad. It’s sublime: To experience love here, to experience love there, forever laced with an ache. Humans are slow data delivery devices; we are bound by space and time.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I have to hold them both, carefully, at once. But to touch either of them, I swing: back and forth, back and forth, whatever the cost. <i>Pendulaire</i>. It's a good destiny. It's one whose cost hurts, but this is also how I know it matters.</div>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-42689177770530057412022-11-08T16:59:00.000+01:002022-11-08T16:59:02.547+01:00Things that mattered<p>I'm still doing that thing where I divide my time between North Italy and Paris. Presently in Italy, it's getting cold enough to start the fire stove. This was the topic of my last Ko.fi post—the pleasure and necessity of the fire stove, and preparing the wood over the course of the year. </p><p>Having the wood now, nicely dried and chopped down to size, is a pleasure to gather from the garden every morning, just after emptying the cindres from the previous day (the cindres will later be used for the garden itself).</p><p>I've gotten back into the rhythm of work, which has its highs and lows.</p><p>I found a store going out of business that I want to save, and won't, so I will just love it until it is gone.</p><p>I decided to delete and black-hole all emails that sell me things, and already my brain feels freer.</p><p>I indulge every idea that flits by my face, for the afternoon or for however long it's around. Most of them will never fruit, but at least we got to try each other awhile.</p><p>These are the things that mattered lately.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-87937327538380600122022-11-08T16:22:00.001+01:002022-11-08T16:53:10.196+01:00Remember His Name<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh7P4YrAcyDEAKC0XJZ9vKDU1GG3pS6J0F6F_idqV_Dm-q1QAjBDl0ddJrfL8-E47ZaEa3gvSKbnwaur5kDwN4AMZJX4_KYSOm-iHKMium1Xbr4svGvTAOew2MDuX-rQd33m1i7RGpheqO6sl0hJJ0AUpZHPLvMX6nPgbzxI95toQEbnKm570/s360/Screenshot%202022-09-07%20at%2014.14.58.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="360" data-original-width="243" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh7P4YrAcyDEAKC0XJZ9vKDU1GG3pS6J0F6F_idqV_Dm-q1QAjBDl0ddJrfL8-E47ZaEa3gvSKbnwaur5kDwN4AMZJX4_KYSOm-iHKMium1Xbr4svGvTAOew2MDuX-rQd33m1i7RGpheqO6sl0hJJ0AUpZHPLvMX6nPgbzxI95toQEbnKm570/w270-h400/Screenshot%202022-09-07%20at%2014.14.58.png" width="270" /></a></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><p>For those seeking a short but dense read, I've published my masters dissertation!</p><p>The dissy itself is a bit over 19,000 words and describes how gods are made, how they impact us, and what kind of god is scaffolding global imperialist capitalism. You can scoop it up <a href="https://ko-fi.com/s/dc4fb4ca9e">here</a>. Also, I've screenshot the table of contents, which you can check out below:</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWfuRdSnL8svEjRo-WeKDLFtKqSZMf1WrpHjGeoEvfkDRBJuWIOpaO4H_pqB_GKhPDl7mp1tsdtO07KJ4nEi186zMAVc0yqKM0vuw9AcT0Bjp8BrVaEuTo3bAt9QYmA3BMvlc_vszYHqkG_I-ZKN59cNtyhaJM3S-TvqXN-DZYXvAzRpD0Nro/s1566/Screenshot%202022-11-08%20at%2016.46.10.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1166" data-original-width="1566" height="297" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWfuRdSnL8svEjRo-WeKDLFtKqSZMf1WrpHjGeoEvfkDRBJuWIOpaO4H_pqB_GKhPDl7mp1tsdtO07KJ4nEi186zMAVc0yqKM0vuw9AcT0Bjp8BrVaEuTo3bAt9QYmA3BMvlc_vszYHqkG_I-ZKN59cNtyhaJM3S-TvqXN-DZYXvAzRpD0Nro/w400-h297/Screenshot%202022-11-08%20at%2016.46.10.png" width="400" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I wish these images were clearer but it is what it is; I fear that once Google remembers that Blogger exists, it will simply go away.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">I am writing more regularly <a href="https://ko-fi.com/angelanatividad">on Ko.fi</a>, though. It is a platform that will most definitely go obsolete as Substack takes precedence. It's probably stubborn to resist Substack. But I feel like the latter will push me into something that I'm not interested in being in right now; namely, choosing a "personal brand" and a focus. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Can we just not do that? Everybody hates that. Nobody wants to be whittled down to flesh versions of their LinkedIn and Instagram. I just don't want to live that way and I don't think anybody else wants to either.</div><br /><p><br /></p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-25380314200456289952022-07-18T20:47:00.005+02:002022-07-18T20:51:42.620+02:00A pointless story<p>When I was about five years old, we lived in a small apartment on a street called Sierra Road, which I always remember as a mysteriously contoured woman with flowing hair. </p><p>It had stairs. I placed a plastic fish on the floor, then went upstairs, sat with my legs swinging through the bannister directly over the fish, and released the end of my jumprope. I did this for several afternoons, waiting patiently to catch the fish.</p><p>My father walked by downstairs. I heard him laugh. There was some bustling, then a violent tug on the end of my line. I looked down. Nobody was there. I pulled up my jumprope. My fish was tied to the end of it.</p><p>For a long time I was convinced that my experiment worked and I had effectively caught the fish on account of my clear understanding of how fish are caught, nourished by patient men on television. I told my parents; my mom congratulated me warmly and my father just laughed for reasons I didn't get, but in any case I didn't care.</p><p>Time went by. I realised I could never have "caught" the plastic fish, it being inert and me having no bait, so I decided it was magic. "God," my mom said. This seemed viable. Someone once pushed me into a fountain and my mother said it was the devil, so it tracked. Later that same day I found a squashed banana I had forgotten about in my backpack, further proof that the devil existed, and thus the divine spectrum upon which he resides.</p><p>More time went by. I mostly forgot about this event, and maybe things would have ended there—with me thinking this was divine intervention. Then something made me remember it again, I don't know what. It was only then, years later, that I saw it must have been my dad tampering with the line, because he doesn't respect <strike>my</strike> the scientific method. It also explained his mysterious laughter and the violence of the tug (he never quite got the measure of his own strength relative to ours).</p><p>The end.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-89616020053666520052022-04-20T13:48:00.001+02:002022-04-20T13:48:03.967+02:00On finding new ways to exist<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii8dXvHPHGspcMHudb3WrNa77Qx6_Xr2WwepE4ALOguUDHcetdxAFEvVVgMV2_EsoTUzM1dAGXTwJjfdBHBp615JfaSyBEKCUOTn0s2laDcm_9OSG78dyZRWWLxWyaYBs5_em9nZJ0U6q2038pTWLvbLm3X5MY4hgvabia_HXKjNPM0O3iOQA/s1024/IMG_5101.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="768" data-original-width="1024" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii8dXvHPHGspcMHudb3WrNa77Qx6_Xr2WwepE4ALOguUDHcetdxAFEvVVgMV2_EsoTUzM1dAGXTwJjfdBHBp615JfaSyBEKCUOTn0s2laDcm_9OSG78dyZRWWLxWyaYBs5_em9nZJ0U6q2038pTWLvbLm3X5MY4hgvabia_HXKjNPM0O3iOQA/s320/IMG_5101.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br /><p>I started <a href="http://ko-fi.com/angelanatividad" target="_blank">a Ko.fi page</a>, and here is <a href="https://ko-fi.com/post/On-finding-new-ways-to-exist-B0B5C8ZSN?justpublished=true&alias=On-finding-new-ways-to-exist-B0B5C8ZSN" target="_blank">everything I have to say about that</a>.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-26294972756425445092022-04-10T17:26:00.004+02:002022-04-14T23:49:37.463+02:00Loose reflections on voting, and also getting older<p>I don't have a lot of time to write at the moment, so I'll try to be quick.</p><p>I just went to vote for the first time in France. I stood in my line for my voting bureau, which is tied to my address, with neighbours I have never seen. We entered a school. It's the first time I've been inside a French school for children. I observed the high bannisters, the carefully painted walls, the sign along the stairs that said "I keep to the right, and advance quietly!" </p><p>The tall, heavy doors reminded me of my own school halls. Memories collect in these places. I felt I could almost touch that potential; my memories of school mixing and mingling with the everyday sights that accompany long days here.</p><p>Behind me, a little girl sighed beside her mother. "The line is too long," she said. "We should just go home." She was impatient for the rest of her day to start.</p><p>Her mother laughed. "This is something we have to do," she said. "It will be over soon. Someday you will be proud to stand in this line."</p><p>A few people brought dogs. My <i>quartier</i> has the highest concentration of dog owners in the city. A soft-spoken volunteer tried to tell them that dogs are not allowed. One woman asked if an exception could be made because they were not aware until now. The line was long. It was a hassle. He said, "This time we'll close our eyes to it."</p><p>We let older and less able people advance ahead of us. "We can't just let them stand there for an hour," a woman said, and no one disagreed. We made way. This is what we do for each other.</p><p>People were cheerful in the voting room, but there was also a sense of officiation. I entered the <i>isoloir </i>and folded my choice into a small envelope: oiling the Republic. Is that a bad metaphor? Is the Republic's problem that it is too oiled? I stepped out and toward the man at the ballot box. "Please cast your vote," he said.</p><p>I placed my ballot inside. Another man looked for my name in a registry. He pronounced it, <i>my full name,</i> with care and gravity. It gave me a frisson. Then he pointed to a place for my signature. A transparent ruler sat over my information, ensuring I did not sign in the wrong place. I signed with a Kaweco Lilliput pen that is very scratchy. "Thank you," he said. My voting card was stamped.</p><p>Then I walked back out into the sun, cutting through the lengthening line and home again. The act took 45 minutes.</p><p>I was in college the first time I voted in the American elections. It felt important. I took it seriously because that's what I was educated to do: You're an adult now, your liberal education tells you about the importance of this act, you go and vote and do it infused with the sense that this small gesture may bend democracy in the direction you prefer.</p><p>It is different doing it as an immigrant. I've been in France for 13 years. Regardless of how I felt about the leadership, the impact of presidential shifts rippled through my life in ways they did not, not quite, as a de-facto American citizen. Under Sarkozy, my visa renewals were more arduous. Under Hollande, they felt more like formalities. But in renewing a visa, there remains a distance between you and the person on the other side of the table. </p><p>You need to be careful. You are, ultimately, a guest.</p><p>This sensation disappeared when I received citizenship. The ceremony explained our rights and responsibilities (we can be called to war, not just for France but for Europe!), but there was also a sense of levity. When we sang the Marseillaise, they gave us the words and said, "We won't sing the whole thing. Just the parts that are used for football." It felt good to sign the citizenship book. France has cared for me, and I felt myself folding into her, weaving into her tapestry.</p><p>There have been moments that really reminded me what it is to belong to a country. When the November 13 attacks happened, I remember Romain did something odd: The day after, he got up early in the morning and did groceries. There was a purposefulness to this.</p><p>Once he returned, I walked outside our door to lace up my running shoes. But I just sat there, letting the automatic lights go dark before remembering to hit the switch again. One of our neighbours, who'd also done morning groceries, stepped out of the elevator and encountered me there.</p><p>"Are you all right?" she asked.</p><p>"I think so," I said. I was twisting a lace around my finger and releasing it.</p><p>She kept on staring. The lights went off. She switched them back on. She put her groceries down.</p><p>"I have a daughter about your age," she said. "She had friends at the Bataclan and friends trapped in restaurants. She keeps watching the news over and over. She can't get out of bed today." Her lips thinned. "It is a trauma, what happened. But to go on replaying that moment for yourself is to live it over and over." </p><p>I switched the light back on.</p><p>"If you're afraid about running today," she went on, "run in the gardens of the hospital Salpétrière. You'll feel safer. But I think if you are sitting out here, you have to go outside."</p><p>I went. In the end I ran along the Seine. An older couple was feeding swans. A younger couple pushed a stroller. Teenagers lay across concrete benches, photosynthesising in silence. </p><p>The sun was bright. There was a kind of tentative bravery to being outside, trying to welcome a day marred by blood drying on the cloak of an evening that had grown sinister. </p><p>When the attacks happened, I was at a bar with my cousin and his wife. </p><p>It happened I was there again last night, or across from it anyway, smoking a cigarette and staring at where I was sitting when something anomalous tore through the fabric of the terrace's cheerful reality.</p><p>Hours before the attacks, Romain and I had been PACSed at the Mairie du 5è. We'd meant to have drinks in the area surrounding the Bataclan, but he didn't feel like it, so my cousin and I changed our plans and I took them to Montmartre. I'd managed to catch the last Uber running; the guy tried dropping us off halfway through Paris, while the shooters were still roving, and I'd screamed, <i>"I just got married and my husband is not picking up the phone!"</i></p><p>Later the next day, a cousin texted me: "Time for you to go home? LOL"</p><p>I winced. What a crass thing to say. He immigrated too, from the Philippines, when he was very young. Did it occur to him to "go home" when 9/11 happened?</p><p>On November 14 I could feel how Paris' knees buckled and how difficult it felt to get back up. We were only a few months out of the Charlie Hebdo attack. Things feel real as they draw nearer to you, and these particular attacks weren't only a matter of proximity; they hit worlds I inhabit, touched people I know, bleeding into my profession and social circles. I had my first French date at the Petit Cambodge, which was also attacked on the night of the Bataclan. </p><p>I still remember that date. I had bird poo drying on my head and Gaël, who became my first boyfriend, didn't tell me until after dinner.</p><p>You don't abandon your family in times of difficulty—or, well, you do your best not to. I could not imagine leaving Paris like a thief in the night when I could feel her fragility.</p><p>So today I voted. I voted because after that night and those bleak, traumatic times, we curled closer together instead of moving apart. When I received citizenship, I felt the country recognise me as one of its own. <i>Rights and responsibilities. </i>This isn't just a matter of having a new passport, or more mobility in the Schengen area. It's a matter of what I owe to my country, who folded me into her in the peaks and valleys of our shared life.</p><p>This also doesn't make me less American. I still vote in the US, and sometimes it hurts. My last ballot never reached the counting stage, joining the many mail-ins mysteriously lost in the last election. </p><p>This upset me. A relationship to a country is also a contract: I will take my responsibilities seriously, but you have to, too. I am not saying this because I want to compare whose democracy is better; my feelings about democracy are, it's an ancient model, and it's generally been known to collapse. It requires a rigorous upkeep that, neglected, renders the model fragile as power begins to concentrate and pool ... making the powerful more inclined to accumulate and hoard it, siphoning strength from everywhere else.</p><p>Time is passing. Last night was a good friend's 40th birthday. Everyone, mostly all parents now, was committed to getting drunk and dancing and staying out as late as possible. We don't have nights like this often anymore, and people threw themselves into it with resolve. It felt like New Years. </p><p>But I also noticed how we have changed. Tentative friend groups have hardened with time. People I barely speak to, but spent years just kind of "around," feel intimate to me now; our presence in each other's lives is taken for granted, and we've come to take solace in the familiarity of our faces, the casual brushing of our hands over one another's bodies—layers of contact we lost in nigh-on three years of a pandemic. I used to think intimacy was a matter of intense face time. Now I know it can blossom, surprise seeds sown and germinated, just because you keep showing up.</p><p>We used to start drinking and keep drinking, letting the alcohol sweat itself out with dancing. Now we alternate alcohol subtly, with diet Cokes and<i> menthes à l'eau</i>. Shots of hard liquor don't dance around the room. We dance a little, but mostly just sit and mill together, weaving in and out of each other's conversations. We make space for how we have all gotten older, for the ways our lives have changed.</p><p>I am getting older and as I get older I am also increasingly aware of how young the concept of a country is, and how much I still have to learn about what we owe to one another. We are never truly safe. We can never be enwombed again. But I get it now: Rigid control over variables is not the move. The move is dispersed indebtedness. The move is stepping closer to each other and breaking bread. It always requires courage. But I think it gets easier. I think we just have to keep trying.</p><p>Okay, this took a really long time, and I've still got a dissertation proposal to wrap. </p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-18495259609523643832022-04-06T19:14:00.004+02:002022-04-06T19:15:29.850+02:00Pleasures<p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Going to bed in linen sheets, in a gigantic bed that is only mine, and that I sometimes share with a few books and notepads.</li><li>Riding my robins egg-blue bicycle through this mad city. I feel so <i>connected </i>to it. And there is so much I know now about how to care for and love it!</li><li>Coming home and listening to Mark Ronson's "The Bike Song," which no longer makes me sad now that I have a bike again.</li></ul><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/rVELTxKRoHA" width="320" youtube-src-id="rVELTxKRoHA"></iframe></div><br /><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Drinking peppermint-infused water from my fun but reasonably subtle jungle-themed water bottle, which replaces the one I lost when I slid down the cliff last month. RIP, sweet Zojirushi thermos.</li><li>Thumping on my drum, which always kinda makes it feel like something is coming, but actually nothing is coming, I just don't know how to drum in any way besides the one that sounds like a T-Rex is heading toward you.</li><li>Reading books on sunny terraces.</li><li>Just fucking being in Paris, frankly. It's <i>home</i>. It's a very serious lover. (But I'll also love being back in Italy, and I'll also feel <i>home, </i>etc.)</li></ul><p></p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-81239998322585245482022-04-05T12:31:00.002+02:002022-04-05T12:31:09.180+02:00A funny sidenote<p>All these years, all this change, and you know what? I've never gotten sick of the design format I chose for this website.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-62171059779708978632022-04-05T12:13:00.005+02:002022-04-05T12:29:48.549+02:00Things I'm trying right now<p>I just need to put this list somewhere, and here's as good a place as any. </p><p><b>Things I'm trying right now:</b></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Seed cycling. This is meant to naturally balance hormones at different moments in the menstrual month, and accompanies other food choices that should be favoured to reinforce this, but the seed bits are easiest to remember. I'm getting this from a book called <i>Eat with the Moon, </i>which is mostly a cookbook but explains seed cycling in a <i>For Dummies</i> kinda way that's sufficient to kick me off.</li><li>Managing my hair in an Ayurvedic manner. Okay, that's a big way to convey the small lazy thing I'm doing. I'm just massaging my head more, and also moisturising with coconut oil for just a few hours once a week instead of overnight, to avoid what the lady I'm following on Instagram calls "abuse." It feels like it's working. Basically I'm just trying to stress my hair out less.</li><li>Putting my shed hair outside, for the birds. I've been doing this for awhile. It feels like a subversion. The thought that my hair is helping make nests, or even provide nutrients to natural space (if it finds any), is a good way of remembering that my existence mattered today. It's a vote for a different world.</li><li>Kundalini yoga? Sometimes. Not lately. </li></ul><p></p><p><b>Things that are harder to do right now:</b></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Barefoot walking. I started this in Devon, but now I'm back in Paris and it's complicated.</li><li>The professional gig stuff I've spent the last 16 years doing. I'm different now. I'm not sure how that happened, but it did, and I'm glad. I can't do this anymore. </li></ul><p></p><p><b>Things I should be doing, come on Angela, you're at gunpoint:</b></p><p></p><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Working.</li><li>Completing my family project.</li><li>Re-reading <i>The Homeric Hymns </i>and Gaston Bachelard's <i>The Poetics of Space </i>(both for school, not that either of those books require a justification to reread).</li><li>Prepping my dissertation proposal, which is due NEXT WEEK ANGELA COME ON</li><li>Prepping my PhD proposal, which still requires a lot of back-and-forth before it's turned in END OF MONTH ANGELA COME ON</li><li>Advocating better for my own creativity. I'm going to buy watercolour paints today. That counts, right? Like, in a kindergarten way. Not to hate on watercolours; I meant in the sense that it's a way of appeasing this need to advocate better for my own creativity without actually <i>doing</i> the things I know I should be doing to advocate for it. But I'll get over this. I have to, otherwise it'll be gig work all the way down. </li></ul><div>My profession has been good to me. <i>More </i>than good. If I hadn't changed, I'd be happy to go on doing it into infinity. But I've spent the last few years reconnecting with desire—initially, letting my desires dilettante around. Then nurturing the ones that stuck, until a few grew strong and sharp like knives, and cut my spirit out of my skin. I realised she's strong and wild, and has a <i>lot </i>of desires. It's a compass I can follow the rest of my life. And I have much terrain to catch up on, those years I mostly kept her in a box under Persephone's throne.</div><div><br /></div><div>For awhile I had to demonstrate that her function in my life was not to support me in the market; I would love her, and prioritise her, anyway. But now I've initiated into a different relationship with her. Now I want to marry her. </div><div><br /></div><div>I'm making this sound more woo-woo than it is in practice, which isn't to say it isn't still woo-woo:</div><div><ul style="text-align: left;"><li>Part of prioritising my spirit is understanding that cleaning my space, including bed-making—something I've had no fucks available for in the past—is a way of administering to the altar of myself. </li><li>As a person who now lives between three places that speak three different languages and, in fact, host three different Angelas, maintaining stable rituals between all three, however small, is work I'm taking very seriously.</li><li>My days are no longer organised around what I do for work. They're organised around relationships—to myself, to my space, which is alive and in constant conversation with my body; to the people around me; to past and future. I've spent most of my life shirking all the big-deal stuff to run on the treadmill of an abusive capitalist system that's incentivised to separate me from my desires and keep me working until I die. The Nap Ministry is right: Rest is revolution, and that's my priority now.</li></ul></div><div>To clarify, I love what I do for work. It's my relationship to it, or rather my relationship to the market's treatment of it, that became corrosive. I've also expanded my sense of what work is. The work that's important in my life is a lot bigger than what I do for money. And it is increasingly my suspicion that what I do for money is <i>not</i> the most important thing I have to do in most moments. </div><div><br /></div><div>The latter discovery isn't something our market is designed to value in any meaningful way. And that's a problem, because market value has somehow become married to our intrinsic value in the larger social world.</div><div><br /></div><div>So I'm uncoupling this stuff. I suspect a lot of people think this is a midlife crisis of some kind. That's okay. We're all trying to get a grip on different things. There's room for all of it.</div><p></p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-50407127040917340582022-02-19T19:01:00.007+01:002022-02-19T19:11:25.291+01:00"If you love Jesus..."<p> I’ve been thinking about those chain letters from the early days of the internet.</p><p><i>“If you love Jesus, don’t be ashamed to proclaim it! Send this to 10 people…”</i></p><p>I used to take those letters really seriously. I had all these thoughts, like, <i>Wow, I really </i>do<i> feel hesitant to send this around. What differentiates me from Judas, or Thomas, or Peter?</i> For awhile it felt brave to forward them. I was proving something to myself—that I wasn’t afraid who knew I was a Christian. I’d say it loud and proud when called upon! All that kind of nonsense.</p><p>Those chain letters migrated into social networks alongside us. I still get them from time to time, in new variations, from religious aunties, usually, in the Philippines. They slide into my DMs, utterly disinterested in me, strangers really, unless they’ve got a holiday GIF or a chain letter to bomb me with. I started removing them from my contacts. Blood and shared names don’t mean relationship.</p><p>The internet still functions like in the early days, but faster and more efficiently now. Social media amplifies our every writ thought and emotion, finding traction for them like a magical loudspeaker, locating more sympathetic (or antipathetic) readers. Lately I’ve been feeling pressure to say something about myself—reveal a position, make some kind of stand. About vaccination, about magic, about animism, about science and technology, about my work, about the latest race killing, about Asians supporting Black brothers and sisters, about what people get wrong…</p><p>And there are new pressures now, memes that ominously read, “We are taking note of your silence.”</p><p>I get it now, about the Jesus chain letters. Sharing them with ten people doesn’t mean you’d be more likely to hide a Jewish family during the Third Reich. It doesn’t mean you recycle, or that you’d reach out to help someone having trouble in the street. It didn’t mean you pray, refuse to masturbate, take communion. </p><p>Really, it was a pressure game: <i>if we push this button inside you, do you comply? Will you go on amplifying beside us? Are you in or out?</i></p><p>That’s what so many of these hot takes feel like on the internet. It really doesn’t matter what you say, or how often you say it; everyone is saying too much, thinking it’s important in ways most would be hard-pressed to explain if asked. No one is listening much. They’re all just waiting their turn to show whose side they’re on—for you, against you, seeking to <i>educate</i> you. We are just itching to clarify our positions on the broader stage to other actors on stages.</p><p>But this isn’t the move. It isn’t really a move at all. It’s just forwarding the chain letter.</p><p>It matters more to know when to speak and when to act, and to speak and act when it counts. Sometimes we’re going to fuck up, to misfire, to fail to read the nuances of the moment. It’s all right. It’s part of the messiness of being human.</p><p>It’s not that I don’t think the hot takes matter. Sometimes they’re good therapy and expiation. Sometimes you learn something, find the words for something you’ve suspected and felt, but didn’t have time to fully think through. Some of that stuff needs to be said, and needs to be read.</p><p>Sometimes they just seem designed to make a few targeted individuals feel bad about something. Mobile, viral Puritanism.</p><p>I don’t think the idea of hot takes matters as much as anybody thinks they do (assuming anyone does). Sometimes even clever, thoughtful people get addicted to them, convinced it’s part of the service they provide to the body public; another product, then, to reliably get out the door on time.</p><p>Most of the time, I don’t think anybody needs me to weigh in on anything. This is not a lack of confidence, or some kind of judgment call. It’s also a way to conserve my energy, to save it for what I think matters, and when it does. I often find that the private moments matter, between me and one or two other people. You have time, then, and space, to exchange on the nuances of what you’re saying, to think it through, to change your mind, to change someone else’s, to add to each other’s inner constellations.</p><p>The larger stage, the broadcast platform? Less so.</p><p>It's helpful to remember when I believed in the Jesus chain letters—<i>oh my God, I need to share this or I’m just as bad as those fallible disciples! </i>It was an immediate reflexive reaction to what I thought was a moment of conviction, but what was actually a transparent and childish social pressure play. The chain letters had no meaning. They delivered no value. They won no souls to Jesus. Their entire function was to go on being passed on, ostensibly until every person on earth had seen them and meaningfully interrogated themselves (or deleted them, thereby dooming them to hell, I suppose, where Judas would be waiting to weep with them).</p><p>These days when I feel a hot conviction to say something —and truly, it’s constant, practically a plague—I stop and ask myself what my motivations are. Quite often I find that the motivation is something to the effect of, “To show where I stand!” </p><p>And that’s when I know I’m 13 again, knee-jerk reacting to a chain letter that’s just gotten subtler, more insidious.</p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15516659.post-12485756105346802072021-10-20T19:07:00.006+02:002022-02-19T19:18:04.767+01:004 beautiful songs, 3 of which were served by YouTube<p>I'm sick and it sucks. It's not fun being sick alone, getting up on your own in the night to find something cold to lay on your swollen mucus-filled eyes, scrambling for extra tissues you haven't already soiled. But it is what it is, and presents a nice opportunity to be like, "hey, it's just you and me, what's going on?" with my body.</p><p>Anyway, my colleague at Muse, David Gianatasio, reminded me of that one time Redbone did a tribal dance ahead of its performance of "Come and Get Your Love" in 1974, and seeing them smile while singing is everything.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Dj0drevGOgA" width="320" youtube-src-id="Dj0drevGOgA"></iframe></div><br /><p>Once it ended, YouTube served me The Avalanche's "Because I'm Me," which has the cutest music video in the world. It also vibes super old-school, even though this came out in 2016.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/eu0KsZ_MVBc" width="320" youtube-src-id="eu0KsZ_MVBc"></iframe></div><br /><p>By this point I'd taken an interest in what YouTube would serve up next: "Colors" by Black Pumas, which came out in 2019. And while this is firmly set in the present, it's got a soulfulness and an aesthetic that harks back to decades prior. Not to mention that tribal collar, which was like a blow-kiss back in the direction of Redbone and our country's indigenous roots...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" class="BLOG_video_class" height="266" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0G383538qzQ" width="320" youtube-src-id="0G383538qzQ"></iframe></div><div><br /></div>(I could go on like this forever, but I won't. What followed that video: <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iBAs3TGIz7M">The Teskey Brothers</a>, which made me want to dance slowly around my living room with eyes closed like TV people.)<br /><p>These feel like warm gifts as I struggle to work, negotiate a move, and just generally get my shit together on a day when my entire face is clogged and my body feels mostly like a lump of clay, held aloft by energy alone. They started with a person, a connection, a memory ... and continued with what YouTube's algo knows about me, and the funny relationships these videos have to one another, and I am reminded that there are no closed systems, we are embraced. </p><p>Not even technology is exempt from that. It expresses this because it expresses <i>us, </i>even as, ever so gently, it develops its own egregore.</p><p>I love being alive together. I love the music we bring to each other and into the world. I love what it expresses—this vivid manifestation of our firing synapses, and the longing our atoms have to take shape, make new ones, interact across space. A kaleidoscopic coalescence. </p>Angela Natividadhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14122974605784803487noreply@blogger.com0