This is a placeholder draft post that will later be about the process/story of how I assembled and utilized data for one of my creative projects—in this case, the list of all agents I queried and their responses, response types, and so on. Fun fact: my first queried novel got over 50 rejections!
Read moreHow MENSA Improved my Mental Health
Last year, I joined MENSA.
As a joke, mostly.
But also because it was a childhood dream of the Maya who picked up that those in my intersecting social categories were often dehumanized, who realized that she was good at school, who yearned for meritocracy to be a real deciding factor in the world, and who believed that education was the path to a successful and prosperous future.
Read moreBut what if you never get better? & other small reckonings
You ever have an epiphany, forget you had it, and rerealize it?
I recently rerealized that some people who think they like me actually like who they think I would be if I magically stopped having social anxiety and became more confident. People don't like "Bad Vibes" so having a mental illness that makes you permanently a bit neurotic makes you less appealing, less attractive.
Read moredreams of a gay myspace killer
I spend a lot of time wondering what it would look like if Facebook were rooted in the science of relationships and positive psychology instead of capitalism and the science of addiction.
———
Rather than the whiplash of seeing newborn announcements, police assault videos, global crises in headline, and metaironic memes with a mayfly lifespan all colliding into each other; maybe Grammarly-style tone detectors could suggest post categorizations that people could either accept or insert their own. Those categories could be used to filter the timeline: I may want only to see pet photos today, but tomorrow I may review which of my queer friends in crisis are holding GoFundMes. If I’m well enough the day after, I will review everyone’s achievements and life updates with only compersion without envy.
Read more[late] National Poetry Month poem #5: for haruko, utena, crona, & and every pink girly i see on the street
I have a date with a screen tonight, images
of dancing light and flat color, painted caves & wonder.
The word root of anime is life, soul, breath
The latinate dead knew how many hands
it takes to infuse a drawing with movement…
[late] National Poetry Month poem #4: dental cultures
there's no such thing as a colorblind toothbrush.
the analog and electric, target-bought and mail-ordered
discuss cuisines, agendas, class war
[late] National Poetry Month poem #3: a golden state
named for queen Calafia
from khalifa from caliph,
my love is muslim at her core
carrying jasmin & date palm with her
i was born hers, in a stolen land
of milk and honey. jannahic
are her oases, meccan her temper
her sands crossed by parents
caravan of vagrants transients homeless
exiles awelcome. what else is Blackness
beyond a pilgrimage from ash?
our bottleblonde hollywood mother
(permissive, permissible, halal)
lets yajuj & majuj pigs & dogs
run feral through Hidden Hills
lets the quakes rockabye us all
bathes in brimstone & smokescent
& we no longer know who to follow
let each tsunami wash as wudu
let a new variant of faith blaze & bloom
let the mahdi be born tan, soon
here in the home of all sunsets. here
we stand at the end of the earth,
all eyes on us. here is where i shall die