A sequence of pieces going back through time exploring lineage, ancestors, history, memory, remembrance, and loss.

It begins in the present day with me, as one piece in a portrait series spanning three generations of women in my family.

1. "Me / 2020"

2. "Mother / 1994"

3. "Grandmother / Before I Even Was on This Earth"

4. "49 Days". When we arrive at my grandmother, we see her recent journey to the afterlife in the video piece <a href="https://www.altsalt.com/movie/49-days/1">49 Days</a>.

5. "The Time Before-" 

The last piece in the series, a generation from a neural network of a Chinese papercut, represents the imperfection of memory & dissolution of generational history, as time inexorably marches on 

I've been thinking about memory, history that is relayed and recounted by family members through the foggy lens peering through generations past. And why I use AI in my work... As an artist using AI, you experience an extreme loss of control when you put several hundred ""representative"" images of a subject or theme into a neural network. 

The process often goes like: You put in what fragments of an idea or theme you can scrape together, something unexpected always comes out of the machine, and you try to piece it all together. Sometimes it makes sense, often it doesn't. 

It's a similar feeling to when you're grasping for a stable story about generations past, and you're left with a feeling of loss and unrecoverable truth.

Generations

Philippines

China

Cantonese

This Mandala was a project of mine during the winter months a few years ago, where I was inspired by moving into a new home and wanting to create something that represented where I come from, and just flowing with life in a circular pattern.

Winter 2019

A woman with her eyes closed and a contemplative expression

A spectacled woman holding a baby; they are both laughing and happy

A woman's bust from behind, with a tattoo on her upper back

A circular mandala with geometric patterns

Black lines on white background with words 'Rimay Raiz'

White text 'Ana Somnia' on white background

Dark audio waveforms against a white background

Close-up of an Irish Setter puppy with reddish fur

About a dozen uncooked dumplings sitting upon a white plate dusted with flower

Film poster for 90s Disney Film "Honey I Blew Up the Kid". Depicts actor Rick Moranis standing in the middle of a white background with a giant red and white toddler's sneaker ominously hanging over him about to stomp on him. Poor man!

Simone Biles at the 2016 Rio Olympics waving to the crowd

Whoopi Goldberg as her character Guinan from Star Trek: The Next Generation with a caption "There'll be others. But every time you feel love, it'll be different. Every time it's different."

It is shortly after the celebration of Thanksgiving holiday here in the United States. It's a holiday that was founded on a false idea of togetherness that sought to erase some really bad things in US history, but what's been so reassuring is that I see a lot of friends are able to see some good come out of the holiday: a goal of merriment with friends of all beliefs and backgrounds in the coldest part of Winter. Perhaps, for many of my cosmopolitan friends in New York City especially, we've remixed Thanksgiving into our own holiday to represent the values of camaraderie that we so desperately need in these times, just as we are surfacing our understanding the new Omicron variant of COVID as we go into December.

I had some thoughts I wanted to visit for some time, and have only gotten the time to settle them down into some recognizable shape. Like you say, it feels like we're in times where thoughts and ideas and revelations seem to pour out of every conversation and interaction, digital and in-person, but for the sake of posterity, I want to capture at least some of the ones I've had over the past month before I write my next letter to you.

My first set of thoughts center around young people. My next set of thoughts center around Asian American-ness. My last set of thoughts center around doing good.

(Be warned, we're going to have quotes being thrown left and right.)

"Best Day Ever!" image from Nickelodeon's Spongebob Squarepants, which echoes my cousin once-removed's declaration during Thanksgiving

This last month marks my shift in working life to education. As someone who admired the work of people like Mr. Rogers and Jim Henson, who placed such an emphasis on reaching and influencing young people, it seemed only proper for me to actually work with young people firsthand to see what they're like rather than read books about it.

And simply being around young people for a few weeks, I've already felt stirring in my soul to the memories, sounds, and textures of the mental landscape of being a young person again. What a wonder it is to view the world as so fresh and new! During Thanksgiving, my 5 year old cousin once-removed (my cousin's daughter) kept saying "This is the best day ever!" I can't be certain if it's something that kids just say because it's fun to say, or they saw it on a TV show like Spongebob. But part of me tries to remember what it was like to form memories as a 5 year old, and there were probably days where in maybe 2-3 years of conscious living, a simple Thanksgiving can truly be one of the best days of one's short life.

Another thought I've been delighting in pondering: are they 'young people'? Are they 'children'? Are they 'adults of the future'? 'Future thinkers and creators and doers' feels like it's already creating pressure. What vocabulary should we be using to describe people who are so new to this world? I see that young people themselves are whole people in their own right, even if adults can instinctively view them as lesser. But often, while they lack in developmental milestones and life experiences, they can often exhibit whole personalities that are unique and whole in their own right from a young age. We've often internalized the right for a person or entity to exist based on their utility to society, but I think maybe to reclaim young people's rights to exist for their own sake, I like to refer to them as 'young people.'

On another note, young people simultaneously give us hope, yet we are also the ones who must model for them and give them hope that there can be a better future. I hope I learn something new every day to be a good model for young people in the future, and create practices and expectations that encourage them to be clever, emotionally intelligent, and brave.

I like the quote "We do not inherit the land from our ancestors, but we borrow it from our children." I had first seen the quote in an exercise at an old job where we had to choose a quote from a selection of quotes set up on a vast array of tables, almost like how the Dalai Lama is said to be found when as a child, choosing his favorite toys from a vast selection of toys, presumably able to because he has memories from his past life. Apparently this particular quote is unclear in origin, as per Quote Investigator, but I still appreciate the elegance and sentiment of it, especially in times where we as a collection of generations are so consciously thinking about the future state we are leaving the planet in.

Another thing I've noticed, which might sound like it goes without saying, is that young people are all completely different each time. I believe I heard a marine biologist on a podcast once say she couldn't eat meat after she saw that the face of every fish was individual and different, just like the face of every human was unique and personal.

Likewise, each child is born to a different family, and you can't reduce them to simplistic terms. And when I look at them, I can't help but be in amazement that every one of them is singular, individual, and special. There's also a meme I saw of Star Trek: The Next Generation that said love with someone is different every time.

And of course, there's the Mr. Rogers quote,

"You make each day a special day by just your being you. Everything you do is just a little bit different from everybody else. In that way, you've already won."

And of course, that's true for adults too, because every adult was once a child. There's no need to be perfect or some platonic ideal of human accomplishment, because there's no one way to be, each person is already perfect, like every fish, every animal, every plant, every leaf, every snowflake, and every blade of grass.

Additionally, on the topic of young people, as hopeful and kindhearted I try to be, I wrestle with all these cynical feelings around the world, how there's many days where it seems very difficult to have high hopes. But I see the students bright faces and think of their futures, and I can't face them with cynicism. I think of this quote by Hayao Miyazaki:

“Personally I am very pessimistic. But when, for instance, one of my staff has a baby you can't help but bless them for a good future. Because I can't tell that child, 'Oh, you shouldn't have come into this life.' And yet I know the world is heading in a bad direction. So with those conflicting thoughts in mind, I think about what kind of films I should be making.”

Another feeling that I'm unsure of how to address, but I feel I must talk about is a feeling of unmoored-ness around my Asian American identity. I've been wrestling with it quite a bit in the past several years, having an awakening moment in grad school, but I also am able to find myself forgetting what that means to me. And in my letters with you, Art, when I see you embrace your Andean heritage, I stand in admiration. You seem to embrace your cultural identity so warmly, whereas I am confronted with my own touch starvation from my Asian American identity. Do I know it's there? Is it set aside unless I pick it up? When I call to it, will it say it loves me back? Where is it situated in my body? (If I were to place a bet, I think it'd probably be in my stomach.)

As a result, my ambivalent feelings towards my cultural identity has confounded my efforts to feel comfortable in any artistic expression of these feelings. Whatever efforts would be made in the immediate future would be messy, and lack full awareness, and I worry might be insulting to myself and others for reasons I can't articulate easily. So if you're wondering why I couldn't participate more in your Alt Salt celebration of Andean and Asian American heritage, that apprehension is a large part of that answer.

One thing that gives me comfort in my apprehension, is that I understand a lot of my feelings of my Asian American identity are relatable to others in the diaspora as well. And I think through living through this foggy haze of unknown territory, I will gradually live my way into the answers I seek, and I hope that will guide others in their journeys as well. I suppose what I want to say is, where I walk, I know I do not walk alone.

For Asian Americans, it feels as if we each exist as separate islands, unmoored to a continent or culture, either of Asia or America... We don't know what we look like. We see ourselves as we are seen by others in media. Sometimes we can spend most of our lives not even seeing ourselves as Asian. (My cousin's daughter told her that she thought they spoke Spanish at home... Oof.) Asian Americans float around, half blending into our assimilated identities in our new world, half losing our place in a homeland, lost in a foggy mirror. We can seem like foreigners to each other or even ourselves.

And it's strange, even though I feel it's more pronounced in Asian Americans in some ways, I think that's the state of affairs for all Americans to some degree. To note, not Asian Americans, but Americans. Part of the process of coming to America, as a nation of immigrants, is that one has to lose that attachment to a homeland and become unmoored in one's identity, to fit in with the others in our new collective homeland. We each must strike out a new place for ourselves, and carve ourselves a home out of whatever shelter we can, with our own bare hands if necessary. Through coming here, we all have gone through the trauma of losing part of our ancestry and cultural identity, whether in our immediate families or our ancestors. And that's true whether we're people of color, or if we're white. On some level, we're all a bunch of kids with insecure identities trying to fit in at a lunch table which wants to displace us.

We think of the United States as a large country on a single body of land, but really, America is an archipelago nation of 300 million islands. A nation of nations. A collection of people who look at themselves with foggy mirrors.

And now, I sense it in the air, there are cultural forces are at work tectonically shifting underneath Asian Americans, and we find ourselves looking to see where our feet are rooted.

But I think the richness of American identity can be found in our collective understanding that we can all share a place at the table. Like my friends who shared their Thanksgiving tables with other friends in New York City. America is a nation that can gain something from each of us and share it with each other and the rest of the world. That's one of the places I see a wealth of hope in America. I already quoted it last letter, but I realize it's resonating once again, that these words by the poet Maya Angelou speak to a deeper understanding that all people have in America:

“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.” - Maya Angelou

Lastly, I have recently been mulling over doing good after some prompts this month.

The definition of what good is is not a concern to me. I spent a lot of time in undergrad learning about ethics and moral philosophy (and being in my professors' office hours!) and my general conclusions were straightforward: We all must encourage each other's pleasure, limit each other's pain, and do so as sustainably as possible. So that's easy. But when I think about how to do good, I get discouraged since it's felt recently that live in a world where hope, truth, and justice have been in recession for some time.

My therapist gave me an assignment to mull over what I enjoyed in life that was something I enjoyed for its own sake rather than something I am doing for explicit or implicit external validation. A huge assignment! We acquire so many layers of rationality and ego and societal expectation to protect ourselves that I think any adult barely understands why they do half the things they do. Understanding why we act the way we act is a challenge for maybe two or more lifetimes!

That being said, I still took the assignment seriously and have been mulling over the idea of being good and being perfect. In 15.15 of the Analects, Confucius says "If a person is not in the habit of asking, 'What is this? What is this?' then I cannot do anything for him."

Basically, Confucius can't teach anyone who isn't willing to ask questions, so it's kind of a good place to be. You can't expect yourself to improve if you aren't always asking yourself how you can do better. There's definitely insufferable people we all meet who instantly know the answer to all questions without thinking things through! And oftentimes, the most learned people in a field are much less certain about the validity of truth than people who have a rudimentary understanding of the field. That's the Dunning Kruger Effect at work, after all. If anything, believing you know 100% what the right thing to do is as an individual, is the voice of one's inner tyrant, who demands to be listened to. That is all to say, that short of thinking ourselves into a dangerous maddening loop, asking ourselves how to do better and better is part of a healthy orientation towards good and just living. And it often gets better in concert with our peers and their own guidance and stories.

There is also the saying "Perfect is the enemy of the good". This has served me well to quell the anxious paralyzing part of my mind that tries to anticipate every single possible future and try to prepare for all the catastrophic events that seem to be right around every corner. It cuts through and reassures me that, "hey, just do something good, not perfect, and leave the rest up to fate."

However, maybe there is one most resonant take on doing good that does the best job cutting through all the rational mind and practical aspects of creating solutions that's been helping me recently. It comes from the poem Wild Geese by Mary Oliver, which goes:

“You do not have to be good...You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

I've also been exploring a lot of vocabulary around being an artist, and I think that doing good in the world seems to have a lot of similar vocabulary.

As an artist, you need to let your work live and breathe and be released from you. I will be one of the first people to tell you, in games I've made, spending one, two, or three years, there's a half life in which the game will eat at your insides, telling you to get it made. Reflections at Sunset demanded I get released by one October and after two years of development, it was released. 'Released' is a great word for that sensation. It wasn't perfect, after being 'released' from the weight of the game, my spirit felt lighter, and the game probably felt relieved as well. A similar thing happened for Confessions of an NPC. Art will be like that. And as Elizabeth Gilbert says in Big Magic, if you don't answer the call, then the art will stop knocking at your door, and perhaps fly to someone else in the world.

Ultimately, I've been working to attune myself to the quiet voice inside me that knows what it wants after I'm able to settle down all the other noise in my spirit. Improving one's life is being able to constantly peel away all the factors that create noise in our spirit, like feeding our stomach when it distracts us, feeding our mind when we need thoughts, feeding our social animal when we feel lonely, being in a peaceful environment when things have been noisy, and hopefully eventually being able to ask ourselves the questions that have been rapping at our soul for years and answering the call. Part of the work of being an artist and being a human being is knowing how to listen to when the quiet parts of your spirit are pulling at you to go one way in life, to see what lies on the horizon, and not stop walking til you get where you know you were meant to be getting to, tending to the restless inner fire. If we are unable to do so, then there will be dire consequences in our internal worlds and eventually our physical being.

However, if we are able to consistently answer the call from within, attune ourselves to its needs more and more over time, like soothing a frustrated fearful child, eventually we might be able to practice our way into a state of being where our actions are mostly in line with our desires. One of my Eastern Philosophy professor's favorite lines from the Analects (that he probably told me during his office hours) goes:

"At fifteen, I had my mind bent on learning. "At thirty, I stood firm. "At forty, I had no doubts. "At fifty, I knew the decrees of Heaven. "At sixty, my ear was an obedient organ for the reception of truth. "At seventy, I could follow what my heart desired, without transgressing what was right."

I do feel I'm starting to see that progress in my life now. And I hope that I can help others in their journey, no matter their age or race or background. We are all valid and special and I hope to continue my work in reminding myself and others of essential truths like these.

I hope to hear from you soon during this winter season. Stay warm and many blessings.

Letter to Art #3 - Young People, Unmoored Asian Americans, and Doing Good

Envisioning the Future

On "Different Folks" and Andean musical fusion

Letter to Art #4 - Ukraine, Trans Rights, and Doomscrolling (March 2022)

Rima(y) Raíz is a community collective created by and for the Andean/Andinx1 diaspora community of the United States. Launched in 2018 in New York City and New Jersey, our collective now has members in California and Illinois. We are: <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/jamie_sa">Jamie San Andres</a>, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/claudia.urd">Claudia Urdanivia</a>, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/sandycha">Sandy Enriquez</a>, Ben Kruse-Calla, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/layqakuna">Layqa Nuna Yawar</a>, and <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/sbarretolastra">Stephanie Barreto-Lastra</a>, among others that come and go.

Rimay Raiz was created given the erasure and racist portrayals of Andean and Andean-descendant communities among both Latinx and white communities in the United States. Thus, our collective seeks to confront this discrimination and sense of dual exclusion by uplifting and sharing the stories and experiencies of our communities on our own terms, as a way of exposing and resisting the insidious ways that colonialism and imperialism continue to impose their binary and Western epistemologies on our bodies, minds, spirits, and communities, across time and across borders. This resistance is also represented in our name, which connects two sides of our cultural heritage by using the Quechua/Kichwa word ‘rimay’ (to speak) and the Spanish word ‘raíz’ (roots). We are speaking from our roots. Quechua/Kichwa is an ancestral Indigenous language of the Andes and remains one of the most widely spoken Native American languages in the Americas today.

Our goal is to (1) interview three generations across the US-Andean diaspora, from youth, adults, and elders, and include community leaders that have been carving spaces for our community for decades, be that cultural or political (2) archive the oral histories in a public website, (3) share and discuss our stories through multimedia, via a podcast, zine, public space installations, and Raymikuna or virtual parties in this pandemic era, and (4) organize gatherings to celebrate and unite Andean cultural advocacy efforts. Through these initiatives, we aim to reclaim a sense of identity, alter dominant narratives about our communities, preserve experiences and knowledge of our elders, and create a sense of solidarity across borders within the Andean diaspora.

Porque las historias nos llaman, las historias nos limpian y sanan, como el agua y neblina bendita de la montaña.

The last three years we have recorded 14 oral histories and published two zines, some of which are featured here.

 

Issue #1: Choclo y Chicha, self titled

<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/listing/10/cover-10/Screen_Shot_2021-01-07_at_5.25.08_PM-original-489444.png"/>

In March 2020, Rimay Raiz launched <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/listing/choclo-y-chicha-vol-1/10">Choclo y Chicha</a>, a zine that shares the contributions of the Andinx diaspora through poetry, art, and storytelling. Both choclo and chicha are Quechua words for our ancestral foods of fresh corn and maize drinks, we chose them to reflect our cultural connections and create a space for a uniquely Andean zine. Chicha is also a type of music, Peruvian cumbia, that musicologists and sociologists claim emerged in the Amazon of Peru out of a sentiment of exclusion and otherness by dominant white, criollo elites.

We chose to include zines as part of our core mission because they would allow us to showcase creative, multimedia works from our communities on our own terms, without the need to compromise our vision through mainstream publishing. We also want to acknowledge the diverse ways that our communities express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences, some orally, while others visually or through text. We hope to distribute the zines widely and inspire others in our community to value and share their own stories and experiences through this, and other mediums.

Our first zine featured profound stories such as “Camino hacia la Boca del Lobo-Simiatug” by Jimena Vega, powerful poems such as “Mama Negra, Mama Tierra” by Mónica Carrillo Zegarra, and art by colectivo member Layqa Nuna Yawar, Lenny Correa.

Initially, our zine launch was scheduled to be an intimate event with members of the collective and fellow contributors for the zine, with music, food, and dance. Once the pandemic swept the globe, we made the decision to transition to a virtual event that could replicate this celebration while holding space for our community during this immensely difficult time. You can watch our first two Raymikuna, virtual parties on the <a href="https://www.facebook.com/RimayRaiz" target="_blank">RR page</a> on Facebook.

 

Issue #2: Family Portraits

<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/listing/9/cover-9/Screen_Shot_2021-01-07_at_4.33.36_PM-original-483649.png"/>

Our <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/listing/choclo-y-chicha-vol-2/9">second zine</a> focuses on the intersection of stories and memory through family photos. In this section we feature excerpts from the incredible oral history of Analisa Freitas and the beautiful poem by Marisol Silva, “when I make chicha morada and play your huaynos full blast, and I carry a backpack on the 7 train from Queens to Brooklyn brimming with jars of aji panca, aji amarillos, rocotos, I hold onto Ayni when I can’t remember words in any language, I hold onto Ayni, when I remember that who we are as a people is much too strong to ever be forgotten,” she writes.
 
Additionally, inspired by our colectivo member Jamie San Andres’ call to action, we are excited to also introduce a new section to our zine entitled Andean Political Reflections, that speaks to the issues and uprisings the Andean region has experienced in the last two years. It is impossible to do cultural work without addressing the political.

We invite you to join our Choclo y Chicha Zine Vol. 2 Raymikuna, virtual zine parties, this Sunday, January 10th from 4-6pm, to hear from contributors of the Family Portraits section, and Sunday February, 28th from 4-6pm, to hear from contributors of the Andean Political Reflection section.

 

Conclusion

To learn more about our work and stay in touch, please follow us @RimayRaiz on <a href="https://instagram.com/rimayraiz/" target="_blank">Instagram</a> and <a href="https://facebook.com/rimayraiz">Facebook</a>. We will also be launching our website in Summer 2021 which will feature our oral history archive, zines, and other projects. If you would like to get in touch about potential collaborations or have questions, reach out to us at <a href="mailto:rimayraiz@gmail.com">rimayraiz@gmail.com</a>. We would love to hear from you.

Until then, tupananchiskama!

 

<hr/>

 

1&nbsp;The Andean diasporic community includes people with South American heritage from Andean countries such as Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru. Hence, Rimay Raiz utilizes the term Andean to refer to this region of South America, as opposed to folks that are strictly from the highlands. 
We remain inclusive of the many nationalities in the Andean region, and recognize that people that may identify with diverse backgrounds, such as that of the coast and the Amazon, Black Indigenous, and mestizo. We welcome all people who identify with our mission and background, whether they are recent immigrants, second generation, or have not connected to their ancestral countries for generations.

Rima(y) Raíz is a community collective created by and for the Andean/Andinx diaspora community of the United States.

Choclo y Chicha: a zine for (and from) the Andean Diaspora

<a href="https://anasomnia.com">Ana Somnia</a> is a meditation on what it’s like to dream. It’s also a piece that uses a single interactive element to draw us into an animated world, a clever decision that is minimalism at its best.

On the title screen, atmospheric sounds introduce us to Ana Somnia’s creepy Tim Burton-esque world. We promptly find ourselves inside a little girl’s bedroom. The girl, sitting up in bed, tells us to turn off the lights and goes to sleep. The piece then waits for our interaction, and we hear a music box playing in the background.



<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/3/anasomnia-2-1024x652.jpg">



It’s here that the clever trick comes out. To “turn off the lights,” you can spoil the fun and cover up your webcam with your hand; or, if willing to play along for a moment, you can turn off the lights in the room you’re physically in (yes, that involves getting up and turning the lights off in real life), to trigger the webcam into opening the rest of the story.

After doing so, Ana’s dream world comes alive, and we progress through a series of animated images, including strange creatures, tentacles, and assorted objects, as well as music and sound effects to match.



<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/3/anasomnia-3-1024x695.jpg">



For me, it’s the subtleties that really make this piece come alive. The world is nicely fleshed out, from the sound design and music down to the seemingly trivial details (in the opening scene, for example, hovering over the teddy bear will cause it to cover its eyes).

Also interesting is how much the webcam adds to the experience. It’s a great example of creating new kinds of artistic meaning with technology. This animation could’ve been a simple video… but isn’t it cooler when there’s interactivity involved?



<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/3/anasomnia-4-1024x648.jpg">



I always love to see artists doing interesting things with the technology at their disposal. Now this is just an idea, but it’d be great to see, for example, an e-book that uses the same webcam principle to add some extra immersion in telling its story.

Ana Somnia was created by German artist <a target="_blank" href="http://www.kimkoester.com">Kim Köster</a>. You can support him by purchasing Ana Somnia posters and other merchandise <a target="_blank" href="https://rostlaub.com">here</a>.

Ana Somnia is a meditation on what it’s like to dream. It’s also a piece that uses a single interactive element to draw us into an animated world, a clever decision that is minimalism at its best.

Get Lost Dark Ana Somnia

Turn out the lights and explore a dream world in Ana Somnia

Alternative Worlds: The Andes and Asian America

Mundos Alternatives: Los Andes y América Asiatica

"To Dream and Be Intentional" — Interview with Shirley Man-Kin Leung

Bibliography of Asian American Resources

Alternative Worlds Workshop Weekend Schedule

Poetry, in the popular imagination, is usually seen as a solo act. The lone poet bares their soul to the world, writes beautiful tortured lines, etc.

When it comes to electric literature, though, what happens a computer algorithm is thrown into the creative process? Does the computer get copyright? And, most importantly, does it get royalties?

Joking aside, some poets these days are embracing the digital and don’t necessarily write poems the old-fashioned way. Here are some innovative poems that turn the idea of poetry – and the solo poet – on its head.

 

1.) Taroko Gorge, by Nick Montfort, et al

<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/5/taroko1-edited.png" width="723" height="571"/>

Taroko Gorge uses a computer algorithm to generate lines of poetry. The sidebar shows versions by writers who have hacked the code to make spinoffs.

 

At Taroko Gorge in Taiwan, Nick Montfort wrote a poem to celebrate the national park’s awesome beauty. Or, rather, in 21st century style, he wrote a computer program to make such poems for him.

The resulting work, <a href="http://nickm.com/taroko_gorge/" target="_blank">Taroko Gorge</a>, randomly chooses words from a list and endlessly assembles them into stanzas.


But Taroko Gorge is more than a single poem: it’s a platform that digital authors use to experiment, collaborate, and build new works. The code can be easily hacked to write any kind of poem imaginable. For example, in writer Flourish Klink's spinoff, <a href="http://nickm.com/taroko_gorge/fred_and_george/" target="_blank">Fred &amp; George</a>, Taroko Gorge transforms into a Harry Potter fanfic about an encounter between the twins and their… um, “wands.”

The poem’s sidebar lists many authors who have taken up the challenge of hacking Montfort’s original JavaScript code. (My own version, <a href="http://nickm.com/taroko_gorge/54_61_72_6f_6b_6f/" target="_blank">54_61_72_6F_6B_6F</a>, can be found on the page as well.)

 

2.) Pentametron, by Ranjit Bhatnagar, et al

<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/5/pentametron1.png" width="750" height="746"/>

Move aside, Shakespeare! Make room for... a Twitter bot!

 

"I’m just a squirrel looking for a nut 
You are a wizard harry i’m a what 
Glad to believe in #Jesus, He’s the best… 
From Fresno to Pomona fuck the rest" 
-A couple of random retweets, by Pentametron

Though these couplets have the right rhythm and the rhyme, no, they aren't authentic Elizabethan prose – they were actually strung together by a computer program.

Along with thousands more, these couplets  are the product of <a href="https://twitter.com/pentametron?lang=en" target="_blank">Pentametron</a>, a Twitter bot by <a href="http://moonmilk.com/" target="_blank">Ranjit Bhatnagar</a> that automatically retweets rhyming lines that users have written, consciously or otherwise, in iambic pentameter.

This raises the question, who “wrote” this endless epic poem?

Was it the Twitter users whose fragments were appropriated and put in a different context? Was the “author” the program itself? Or is Ranjit Bhatnagar the author of the work, even though he wrote none of the prose by himself?


 

3.) The Last Performance, by Judd Morrissey, et al

<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/5/last-performance-1.png" width="1226" height="970"/>

The Last Performance is a poem whose structure is based on a cathedral. Here, we see a zoomed-out view of the "dome" and just a few of the "lenses" that constitute it.

 

<a href="http://thelastperformance.org/cupola_triads.php" target="_blank">The Last Performance</a>, by <a href="http://www.judisdaid.org/" target="_blank">Judd Morrissey</a>, is a digital poem based on architecture. (Note: If using a mobile device inside the piece, tap each link twice to proceed.)

Specifically, The Last Performance is about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagia_Sophia" target="_blank">Hagia Sophia</a>, a Byzantine cathedral that was converted to a mosque and eventually to a museum. In Morrissey’s textual cathedral, though, words don’t only provide meaning – they also define space.

In the mainstay of the piece, the reader encounters the “dome” of the poem, which consists of thousands of “lenses,” or texts, that were contributed by readers, writers, and collaborators.

Each word in a lens is a hyperlink that leads to another lens. The result is a labyrinthine structure that can be traversed in any number of ways, allowing the visitor to encounter any number of poems written by any number of authors.


 

4.) Bicycle Built for 2000, by Aaron Koblin and Daniel Massey, et al

<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/5/cover-5/bicycle-888413.png" width="1041" height="720"/>

Bicycle Built for 2000, a performative digital piece, was created by more than 2000 anonymous workers from around the world.

 


	<a href="http://www.bicyclebuiltfortwothousand.com/" target="_blank">Bicycle Built for 2000</a> is the product of 2000 people around the globe working together, albeit without knowing it. (Note: It requires Flash.)


Through Amazon’s <a href="https://www.mturk.com/mturk/welcome" target="_blank">Mechanical Turk service</a>, hired workers were given a short audio clip and tasked with recreating it with his or her own voice. Put together, these thousands of samples recreate Daisy Bell, a popular song from late 1800s.

Interestingly, Daisy Bell was previously used in 1962 to demonstrate the invention of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speech_synthesis" target="_blank">computer speech synthesis</a>. Part of the project of Bicycle Built for 2000, then, is to reverse that formula, using countless human voices to create something digital.


 

So there you have it!

Four digital poems that play with the idea of poetry, and that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Bookmark us or follow us on <a href="https://www.facebook.com/thisisaltsalt/" target="_blank">Facebook</a> or <a href="https://twitter.com/thisisaltsalt?lang=en" target="_blank">Twitter</a> to learn more about exciting developments happening in digital literature!

When it comes to electric literature, though, what happens a computer algorithm is thrown into the creative process? Does the computer get copyright? And, most importantly, does it get royalties?

4 Digital Poems That Will Make You Rethink What Poetry Is

[Generations]

49 Days

A couple of days ago, I came to Pennsylvania to visit my parents and meet the newest addition to our family, a four-month old puppy named Bruno.

After a 2.5-hour trip out of New York, I arrived among the blossoming trees and cold spring of the Poconos. Getting out of the car into the quiet woods, so different from the bustle of the city, I breathed in the crisp air. It felt, as it always does, like breathing for the first time.

The neighborhood road outside my parents' house in Pennsylvania.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting on coming here. I do know that when I saw Bruno, my world froze as I saw his Irish Setter chocolate eyes, wiry frame, and red-orange fur. I knelt down to pet him, he jumped on me in excitement and my mind and body were instantly transported to the past.

Bruno lying down after an impromptu play session with a bunch of old blankets.

I’d grown up with an Irish Setter too, one that passed away 10 years ago. Seeing Bruno reminded me of physical memories I didn’t even know I had, recalling sensations from when I was nine years old playing with my first puppy.

Things are different now. Yet I’ve been thinking about the different portals we have to our memories, how the present is always intersecting, coexisting, recreating with the past.

This 2000-year-old fabric and its mesmerizing shapes was on display at an Andean textile exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum.

At the Brooklyn Museum, I once attended an Andean textile exhibit, seeing mantles woven 2,000 years ago. Following mesmerizing masterful figures and geometric patterns in the cloth, I recall how the pieces felt so familiar and foreign at the same time.

Inherently, we’re not so different from cultures of a thousand years ago. Yet everything is always in a process of change, akin to proceeding in spirals — what has happened reverberates in the present, transformed, circling back on itself, repeating and digressing — recalling, reinventing, ad infinitum.

I do know that when I saw Bruno, my world froze as I saw his Irish Setter chocolate eyes, wiry frame, and red-orange fur. I knelt down to pet him, he jumped on me in excitement and my mind and body...

Reverberating with the past

Untitled

A short story about legacy, revolution, and obliquely, terraforming Mars. Also contains a dumpling recipe.

The morning of the ritual, my fathers assured me there was no need to be nervous. One reminded me I would have all the time I needed. The other said nothing, only tugged gently on my earlobe, to remind me of where I bit my grandmother the first time I met her and that we still laughed about it at family gatherings.

In truth, my nai nai, my grandmother, was a jovial woman who alleviated her rare bad moods with marathon cooking sessions that earned her a legendary status within the neighborhood. She promised me a simple conversation, but I knew it was more, this beginning of my journey into adulthood, the first time I would be listening to a story as its caretaker rather than its recipient.

The whole way to her home, I imagined what it would be like: solemn, I thought, precise, for certain. By the time I arrived on the third floor of a building set into the wall of the lava tube, I thought anyone might be able tell that I was not fit to begin. I hovered outside the curtain in the open doorway until a voice called out from within.

“Suying, no need to loiter. Come in, haizi.” I smiled, both charmed and worried that she would see me as a child no matter how old I grew.

I took a deep breath to brace myself, straightened out of the slouch the aunties in my building always hollered about and ducked through the curtain. I thought there might be incense, perhaps offerings to the ancestors and worried about the appropriateness of my simple smock. I even brought a notebook, real paper and a pen to help the words lodge within my mind. So I was startled to see my grandmother in the kitchen with an array of ingredients on the stone top island counter.

I paused in the doorframe, but my grandma smiled at me, corners of her eyes wrinkling up. She gestured for me to come to the counter and took the notebook from my hand. “Take notes another time. This time, you need only to listen.”

“I thought I was learning a story,” I said, hesitant, surveying the ingredients. A bowl of flour, already shifted, small dishes of spices, apportioned out, and a bundle of green onions, picked fresh from the hydroponic garden shared by the building. The large head of napa cabbage and a package of ground bean-based meat substitute made it clear that my grandmother was preparing to make our traditional family dumplings.

“I am going to tell you a story and I will teach you a skill,” my grandmother said as she directed me to the sink. She said nothing else until I cleaned my hands, dried them upon a dish towel she embroidered with a dancing fish, and rolled my sleeves above my elbows. When we stood over the ingredients, my fear of having to learn multiple things obvious by the way my eyebrows pulled together, she said, “This story will be yours to keep and preserve. One day, you will choose how to pass it on. Today, we do things this way.”

First, we mixed the dough, one part water to four parts flour. I put my hands into a heavy stone bowl and pressed the clumps of flour into each other, rolling and kneading to pick up the dusting of powder that remained. As I worked, beads of sweat building on my temple and an honest ache building up in strange parts of my arm, unused muscles stretching and pulling from the strain, my grandmother began to tell her story.

You already know that your three times great grandparent Zhou Daitan participated in the revolutionary struggles. I will not speak about that today. Instead, I will tell you of their life before the revolution, what made them the sort of person willing to stand arm in arm with their neighbors, the world that shaped them and that they shaped in turn. And though I did not know your three times great grandparent, this story comes to me from their daughter, to her daughter, and down to me. Through them, I bestow it upon you.

Once I punched the dough into a smooth ball, my grandmother declared the task done and we set it aside to rest. Then, I added soy sauce, salt, white pepper, as well as an egg to the meat substitute. With rhythmic, circular motions, I folded these ingredients together.

Daitan grew up on earth, on a patch of sparse and harsh land set aside for refugees. They were a rambunctious child, creative in inventing games and new ways to attract trouble. Though they received the mandatory years of education, provided by the international government for all refugee children, they were not an attentive student. Still, they read widely and thought freely, a difficult thing to do. And someone must have seen potential in that for they received a scholarship to university, sponsored by companies eager to showcase their generosity. They studied as widely as they read and meandered out of university two years too late with a degree in food science. Without sufficient social capital to obtain a posting in a lab, they returned to and worked in the packaging factory next to the camp where they grew tall and strong.

Under my grandmother’s watchful eye, I minced a handful of wood ear mushrooms, the slivers sticking to my hands, as well as a few shitake mushrooms, their unami infused scent filling my nostrils. These I deposited into the marinating meat substitute along with a dollop of sesame oil. Again, I accepted the wooden chopsticks my grandmother passed to me and mixed to integrate the dark pieces of seasoning.

Daitan’s time in university turned them quiet and contemplative. But working in the factory alongside childhood friends and strangers turned into family by proximity and shared struggle, they found their voice again. That voice spoke against exploitation and it wasn’t long before they drew the ire of those who hoped a heavy hand could crush dissent before it bloomed in full.

Then I went back to the bamboo chopping board, passed down through the generations, lovingly cared for by each. I recalled running my hands across the surface as a toddler, feeling the marks left it in by use, some sanded down or covered by newer marks over the years, and wondering when I’d get a chance to use it. Now that I was older, I didn’t have quite the same fascination with chopping vegetables. Still, I found the crunch and thunk of the knife through the green onions and the napa cabbage satisfying. I thought I’d have trouble listening and avoiding injury, but the rhythmic motion proved no distraction.

And so it was that Daitan found themselves cast out, blacklisted, unable to obtain even the meanest of jobs. Their fellow refugees knew what it was to be forced to the margins of society and offered them sustenance. For a time, Daitan was able to do good work within the camp, using what they learned in the factory to rebuild the hastily raised residences, repair the solar still that produced water. These odd jobs also allowed them to distribute the revolutionary literature published by friends within the factory. And when the operation was discovered, Daitan volunteered to take the fall.

The green onions went on top of the mixture and the cabbage went in a separate dish with salt to pull out water. While both rested, my grandmother upended the ball of dough onto a dusting of flour and put me to work pushing it across the counter until it tightened. With one smooth motion, she twisted the dough in half and began to roll her half out, until it resembled a snake.

As there were few places to exile someone who was already a refugee, Daitan found themselves on a one-way trip to the stars. They were still terraforming the planet then and Daitan, like many who grew up in the camps, found it difficult to breathe on the red planet. Even so, they tended to the legume fields for though they did not choose to come to Mars, they were forced to work off the cost of the fuel.

Slowly, so I could copy each step, my grandmother lifted the length of dough and pinched the top of it between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand. With her left, she twisted off pieces of dough. Mine were nowhere near as uniform, some small, some large, most torn off with great force rather than the deft and precise motions I failed to copy. When I grimaced at my collection of however, my grandmother only reached out to wipe a bit of flour from my chin and continued.

Daitan was hardly the only one who came to the planet unwillingly. Except for the youngest, taken in by a flashy recruitment poster and the promises of an unscrupulous earth-side recruitment center whose manager sated himself on kickbacks, all of their bunkmates fell afoul of one planetary power or another. And all of them dreamed of something different.

In synchronized motions, we crushed each knob of dough flat and tossed them in the flour so they would not stick together. Then I tipped the cabbage into the rest of the filling and mixed one last time, trying to ignore the ache in my arm and flinging a bit of filling onto the table in the process. Without

skipping a beat, my grandmother swiped the filling into a pan and set it atop the induction stove. Almost immediately, it began to sizzle and pop. She snatched it up with a pair of chopsticks, blew on it, and offered it to me. I closed my eyes as I considered the flavor and layered textures, to see if it needed anything else. When I decided it needed a bit more salt, I picked up the shaker, an old porcelain vinegar bottle repurposed and passed down.

During the day cycles, they rode lifts to the surface, where the vast legume fields blanketed the red dirt of the blossoming planet and fantasized about escaping over the horizon. At the end of their shifts, they urged the bovine herds that consumed the legumes into the shelter of the lava tubes and contemplated letting the animals loose. During their night cycle, they lay in their rickety three-layer bunks, six workers to a room, and traded stories or comfort.

My grandmother handed me a rolling pin, not much wider than my finger. She took one of the knobs of dough and brought the edge of it underneath the pin. In practiced motions, the pressed the dough from the outside in, turning the disc after each stroke. I ended up with an oblong shape of uneven thickness that made me wince when I compared it with her thin circle of dough. She took the wrapper from me without comment and began to fix it, gesturing for me to start another.

Life went on thus and though it seemed as if nothing changed as they repeated the same work against their ever-mounting debt, Daitan came to understood that they were building community. People who might have been enemies on earth taught each other their languages. No mode of living seemed all that strange from two meters away. Games and song and dance from different cultures passed back and forth, used to speed the trickle of time. And in these ways, large and small, sedition spread.

We continued rolling and pressing until we piled the wrappers high, dusted flour between each layer. I used chopsticks to position a dollop of filling in the middle of a wrapper. I set the chopsticks down and gathered the wrapper into my palm, watching my grandmother draw the edges together in folds that held the weight of her experience. Perhaps that’s what kept her dumplings closed because mine invariably peeked open at the edges, bits of filling threatening to burst out or the wrapper simply gaping wide.

At the factory, Daitan learned to play a game of make believe and magic. It was fantastical and fanciful and so no one took notice when they began to teach it to their friends. For diversion and escape, yes, but also to pass messages best left unsaid in rooms owned and operated by people who held debt over them like blades. And some things were better conveyed through simulation and practice than through explanation anyway.

My grandmother said that skill would come with time and practice. And I thought that this too, was a lesson she meant to impart. So I kept at it, crimping and folding and often failing, yet in the end, producing a precious few dumplings I would be proud to present to my fathers. Finally, we dropped them into the boiling water atop the stove, easing them into the roiling water one by one so that the hot water did not splash.

So it was that when the revolution began, Daitan knew what to do. They were part of a community once more, indebted to it, embedded within it, reliant upon it. Because what makes a person is not just who they are but what they do, the people who raise them, the society that shapes them, the atmosphere they breathe, the horizons they see. So it was with your three times great grandparent. So it will be with you. That is why we tell these stories, why we ask you to remember them, why we hope that you hold them to your hearts as we did, so you will make different mistakes, and so you will know what was freely given and what was taken to make a better world.

Within the Fold

Dear Art,

I'm happy to be writing to you in this new format, in these times. I think it feels like taking a coat of fresh paint to refresh my perspective on things and what better way to do it than in a new platform like Zonelets? [Note: This is now on AltSalt, which is a fine platform as well, ha]

This platform invokes a lot of technology, but as I approach my 31st birthday this Friday, I'm feeling many layers of emotions that are hard to parse through (Charlie Brown style).

Here's a list of things that have got me down on my birthday:

It definitely feels hard to be celebrating anything during these times! But ultimately even when I think of all these things I still try to find hope, and I would like to articulate some of those things that I look to that give me that hope.

Somehow, I think a lot of things really come down to the things that I'm learning as I'm being around my family. I've been back with them for the past several months to recover after grad school, but ultimately they bring forth a lot of deep memories and feelings within me. Pains, for all the mistakes they've made, but also hope at the same time, since ultimately many people are just like them, all trying their best to make the best lives for their families and children, but getting mixed up in the world.

Despite what platforms like social media might have us believe, I truly believe that only a very small percentage of the population does not have any empathy for other people. We, as any New Yorker knows, tend to go into our own worlds and walk as if we don't even see each other, but as soon as we see someone fall down in the street, you'll see people flock over to help, as if we're broken from our spell. And then, we all just move on. People are like that on a macro level too I think. Most of us would never truly wish harm on other people especially if we see that affect right in front of us, it's only when we are confused or angry or frustrated or misled that we end up losing empathy for others... Ultimately, the majority of people wish each other peace and goodwill, and it's only when our lines of communication break that we feel we can become cruel to each other...

That's my hope anyway!

I've talked a little about technology with you, so I won't dwell on that too much, and socioeconomic upheaval is way too big a conversation for me to talk about. But something that I think connects these things has been something I haven't brought up, neither in our past conversations nor in this writing so far, and it's that I've been taking an interest in the principles of child development, parenting, and psychology. Maybe the easiest entry point I can think of for all this is the idea that children need to live as children first. This might sound funny, but have you seen "Honey I Blew up the Kid?"

"Honey I Blew Up the Kid" if you don't know, is a sequel to the hit 80s live action Disney film "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids." In "Honey, I Shrunk the Kids" a goofy scientist father Wayne Szalinski, played by Rick Moranis, accidentally leaves his experimental shrink ray on and his children end up getting shrunk to ant size and must find their way home from their backyard. It's a technical marvel and became the basis for a Disney theme parks attraction. "Honey I Blew Up the Kid" is the sequel to this movie with a reversal, where a toddler is blown up to 50 feet high and begins to walk towards downtown Las Vegas, filled with product placement for the Hard Rock Cafe amongst other things. I actually consider it the better movie, but that's besides the point.

My point that I want to get to is that I love how this movie uses this sci-fi analogy for what happens when a child grows up too fast. The baby is still psychologically a toddler, so he thinks a truck is a toy truck, and he thinks a giant guitar sign at the Hard Rock Cafe is a guitar. But ultimately, he's still a child, so when he gets inevitably gets injured, he cries, and the audience feels sorry for him, because even though he's really big, he's not capable of being responsible. At that point, they realize the solution to stopping the baby is to send in mama, because that's the only thing the baby will respond to.

My point is a little on the nose here, but I think that lots of things in society are in this constant balancing act to rush children to become mature and responsible adults who can fend for themselves. This dysfunction is not only present in something like a sci fi contraption like a shrink ray, but also in how we push kids to think about college or careers from a young age, or how we punish them for being creative because we want them to have a stable career, or how we punish boys for being sensitive because men don't show their emotions ("man up" and all that).

I think this kind of problem in society has been a tricky balancing act in different eras, the problem of wanting our children to have a childhood, but also want them to be ready for adulthood. I do think with our current era, however, technology takes things to a whole new dimension, where parents are unable to keep up with the young crowd, with rapid change within a single generation. If a younger cousin or a niece or nephew were having struggles with something like cyberbullying or social media, I don't think most parents would even know how to begin to approach dealing with those things, whether from an emotional perspective or a technological perspective, and I think a lot of young people have to look to half a generation above them. I sense that now with many Gen Z friends looking to their Millennial friends for advice.

Anyway, the hope that I get is that young people are able to learn quicker and more capably than their predecessors with faster technology, dialogs, and better toolsets to converse. It's really remarkable, like you said last week in our chat about the students nowadays. It's also a bit terrifying as a slightly older person! But I think we, as any older generation, can only hope to shepherd the younger generation as best we can and have faith they'll make the right decisions. We can guide them, but ultimately our responsibility is to leave the future in the hands of young people (whose hands it was always in the whole time). We just have to be ready to show up like their mama or papa when the babies are in danger of getting themselves hurt.

I also think that this kind of balancing problem of allowing things to mature before they become adults is also prevalent in how we approach creating technology, and I think there's a thesis to be made that a lot of our problems in technology are as fundamental as the issues that a child faces psychologically... but I think that's a whole point to discuss for another piece entirely. I wanted to keep this first piece of writing short.

I also sense your perspective on going back to basics and getting away from the bloat of modern living, beyond just technology, is also going to be insightful in our conversations. I've already sensed that in our talks about growing gardens and such.

Anyway, like I said, I don't want to keep too long, so I'll eagerly await your response.

In his first letter to Art, Charles writes on human nature, technology, and the 90s Disney film "Honey I Blew Up the Baby"

First Letter to Art - Human Nature, Technology, and Blown Up Babies

Created for the Asian American collection of Alternative Worlds.  

Called forth from the dreamers, healers,
witches, womxn of our bloodline
we are the beginning of a new story,
no longer forced to migrate
between truths too small,
stuck in someone else's stomach.
We are not only her aching body
we are dawn
we are light breaking free.
Our ancestors are at our back,
in the rustling of trees and leaves.
They've always been alive.
And when we pray,
we pray whole body into the earth.
We become our own prayer

Called forth from the dreamers, healers, witches, womxn of our bloodline, we are the beginning of a new story,..

Becoming Our Own Prayer

This letter is part of an ongoing series of public exchanges between me and Artemio.

Thanks so much for your letter last time. It has so many resonances that I think are weaving their way into my life as well, that I've been arriving at independently but converging towards similar conclusions.

I can't speak to what your words mean to you, which I think is very personal in your worldview, but I believe they are shaping your life in meaningful ways and perspectives. That being said, what resonates with me about them is the idea of seeing oneself as part of a greater whole, which can be divided by time and place, through ancestry, through place in the world. In contrast, the conventional inclination to identify with that larger whole is something that settles us, more than living in fear of our own individual existence, which is all too fragile and easy to obsess over. 

Often we associate the concept of "ego" with being self-obsessed in a self-important "I'm so big" kind of way. However, in other senses of the word, it can refer to being self-obsessed in a shrinking violet kind of way. Like this old Charlie Brown comic where he worries about why people keep talking about him behind his back, but really no one cares enough to talk about him to begin with! To which he has a hilarious reply...

Many of us have an aspect of ourselves, or know someone who has an aspect, that says, "Everyone must hate me" in the face of zero evidence. However, in light of this, we are also making the assumption that people even care about them enough to be constantly making fun of them, when in fact, most of the time people are generally worried about their own lives, like what they're going to eat, and their own insecurities. This is an important thing to overcome as a creative person who's duty is to put one's work out there. (In my experience, oftentimes creative people have a call to share their work, and if that call is unanswered, bad things can happen.)

This is also true if you think about it on a larger level than people, like if you think the world is being mean to you specifically, you are also assuming that the world cares enough about you to torture you!

So, next I'm going to zoom out once again, because why not? We're in times that are making us see the consequences of humanity's actions over and over again, while we are often sitting at home alone with our thoughts to contemplate these circumstances.

So, to zoom out once again, it seems like we're being tested as a species. We're collectively being tasked with finding solutions to the challenges of the 21st century and finding our place in them, climate change, pandemic, discrimination, and so on. There's not a spot on this planet that is not affected by our connection to each other, both through the literal wires and waves of the internet, the atmosphere that we breathe, and the other things that make us all part of one tribe of being human beings.

And there's a literal clock on how we need to figure out solutions to these problems.

On one hand, this is obviously terrible. We have to grieve. We have to mourn.

But also, can be caught in a state of being unable to mourn, what humans are not able to comprehend without imagery which can communicates to us the issue. yet also impossible to wrap our human minds around. The timescale is so un-immediate, and the scope of the problem so vast, on the scale of the whole planet, that our primitive human brains, which evolved to think in terms of a small tribe of humans, are not used to fathoming. And maybe many problems in our world now are rooted in our lack of ability to collectively fathom long term issues, because there are so many of us that are focused on problems with vivid imagery, like the perception of the increase in violent crime, even though statistics have shown violent crime has dropped over the last several decades.

Anyway, beyond the problems of our world being terrible, when you think about it, these circumstances can also can be seen as liberating.

It's kinda like being in school again, and the teacher tells everyone to work on a big final but doesn't give a deadline or say how it'll affect your grades. What happens, as we know, is that the class doesn't bother starting it, except for maybe the few kids who feel way too invested in this class compared to the rest of us who have other things to focus on.

But then! The teacher says if we don't do the assignment, you'll fail the class! And on top of that, there's a hard deadline that if you don't get everything in by then, there's no makeups! We're mad for a little bit, but after we see they mean business, it's off to the races. Of course, the whole class scrambles to get things done, set up group meetings, meet up after class, etc etc. (And of course, we go to the kids who started way earlier to give us a leg up on things, ha.)

It's unfortunate, but it's also human nature, that we have to figure out all this stuff. And the thing is, sometimes if we don't give ourselves a deadline, however arbitrary or external, we'll never get anything done. And ultimately, even without a world crisis to deal with, each individual has a final deadline to get all the things done in one lifetime, which we can often forget.

Maybe this is just from the perspective of someone who tends to overthink things and get a lot of analysis paralysis.

I think there's a good comparison to be made between this analysis paralysis of a grand scale to the analysis paralysis of athletes. I think almost everyone has heard of Simone Biles's struggles at the Tokyo Olympics games this year.

Wikipedia notes of Simone Biles, aged 24, with her being "the gymnast with the most World medals (25) and most World gold medals (19)." This year in Tokyo, she was heavily promoted as going to lead the U.S. Women's Gymnastics team to Gold. I had personally seen several promotional ads encouraging viewers to tune into NBC or NBC owned streaming platform Peacock specifically to witness her success, so you can see there was a lot of pressure mounting on her.

With all these expectations, it was a bit of a disappointment, but maybe not a shock, that she withdrew from her participation this year. She specifically cited as having a case of the "twisties". I would learn that "the twisties" are a phenomena that gymnasts cite as when the muscle memory that would be responsible for keeping an athlete in alignment while spinning in the air becomes out of sync, leading to disorienting and potentially life endangering falls. During practice, she said she was trying to do a two-and-a-half twisting vault, but ended up doing a one-and-a-half. In an interview with the Washington Post, they reported her saying "I had no idea where I was in the air... I could have hurt myself."

While everyone would point fingers to blame her for "being a quitter", I don't think we can blame her.

"The twisties" are not unique to gymnastics. There are parallels in other sports as well. The "yips" happen to pro level golfers who report basically suddenly forgetting how to putt, sometimes even ending their whole golfing careers. In darts, there's dartitis. Archers get "target panic". In baseball, players lose their ability to throw a ball. Losing the ability to throw specifically to the first baseman is known as "Steve Blass disease".

Beyond all sports, in wikipedia, related to the twisties, is simply the expression of "analysis paralysis". It's a wikipedia entry that does not seem to have a formal definition but still has merit as a concept that's resulted in citations across history. From Aesop's Fable of The Fox and the Cat ("Better one safe way [to escape], than a hundred on which you cannot reckon"), to Shakespeare's Hamlet who thinks too much ("sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought"), to Voltaire popularizing an old Italian proverb (the English variant being "Perfect is the enemy of the good").

The time honored tradition of "overthinking" things, is virtually timeless.

The twisties, the yips, analysis paralysis, a culture of anxiety, I think these are all on the uptick, and I think we have to deal with that as a society.

It might, in fact, already be happening. This past week, my dad went to see the doctor after having sudden sensations of the room spinning after getting up from bed. I looked up the symptoms and it sounded like he was getting a case of vertigo. The doctor would tell him that it was an inner ear issue, and my dad would later look up doing exercises to ease his vertigo symptoms.

Earlier in the week, I was talking to my brother about my dad's habits and it sounded like he had mostly given up a lot of his vices.

When did he start gardening anyway? He seemed to really like gardening these past few months after having shown little interest before. He worked in the garden each day, getting soil and fertilizer, pulling weeds, watering tomatoes and string beans, capturing squash and bittermelon, picking leaves from sweet potato plants (which I learned would serve as a delicious substitute for spinach with garlic and oil, yum!).

"Right around when the pandemic started."

Twitch personality Dr. Alok Kanojia, or he is known on Twitch as Dr. K, is a Harvard medical school educator, therapist, and student of Eastern Philosophy who recently released a series of modules on mental health. In one module, he breaks down anxiety as a cognitive phenomena and a physiologic response, which evolved to anticipate danger in the future in order for us to respond to it. For example, if we have a job interview coming soon, then we can become anxious about doing well on it.

Long term anxieties, like eco-anxiety, from my understanding, do not seem like something humans can respond to easily. If we are unable to resolve that fear meaningfully, I would posit that we can internalize all kinds of bad effects and then that can result in emotions, attitudes, and behaviors, which we don't even realize are related.

I don't feel comfortable saying exactly how to deal with these things because I'm not a doctor.

What I do feel comfortable saying is this:

One day recently, I was browsing social media. And I realized, I couldn't stand watching it anymore. I couldn't stand seeing more and more suffering and future suffering in the world. I realized I had too much empathy for people and felt too much of their fear and sorrow that I couldn't bother anymore. It all just felt like the negative emotions of it were welling up inside me like a dam that was bursting. I simply closed my phone and wept for a bit in my room. And after that I felt a little better.

“You know everyone has lots of ways of feeling, and all those ways of feeling are fine. It’s what we do with our feelings that matter in this life. I trust that you’re growing in ways that will help you with whatever feelings you may have. When you’re a child and when you’re a grown up. I hope you’re able to grow to respect whoever you are inside.”

I hope a lot of us are able to find not only healthy ways to express these negative feelings, but also find sources of strength and identity with others as well. Like with the previous points about how we need to remove our singular selves from the equation, hopefully, we are able to think about things beyond the scope of external deadlines, our individual selves, or our individual species in a larger ecosystem.

I've had to turn this quote by Maya Angelou in my mind for maybe the better part of two years, but it's starting to resonate more now.

“You only are free when you realize you belong no place — you belong every place — no place at all.”

In terms of what is bigger than us, I've been hovering a lot over what we owe to future generations now, what with the world crises we see. They say adults are caught in the "sandwich years" when we are sandwiched between caring for our parents and our children. Now as a generation, we are sandwiched between the prospect of unlearning the generational trauma instilled in us from the past, and the opportunity and demand to create a better future for our descendants and our planet this coming century.

The deadline's coming and our final grade depends on it...

Anyway, I think I'm writing too much now, and I've actually had a draft that I've completely second guessed and re-written at this point, so speaking of overthinking, I should wrap up trying to write this post and just post it. Let's continue this conversation about saving the world at a lunch meeting, preferably with a Reuben sandwich. I'm in the mood for sandwiches now.

One day recently, I was browsing social media. And I realized, I couldn't stand watching it anymore. I couldn't stand seeing more and more suffering and future suffering in the world...

Letter to Art #2 - Egos, Deadlines, The Twisties, and Sandwiches

ALTERNATIVE

WORLDS

ASIAN AMERICA

THE ANDES

I absolutely love this! This checks so many of my boxes; Social justice, Science fiction, Humanity and food.

I appreciated every second of reading this and the observations throughout. I really felt The Last Maven's piece about reading the room, and the situational awareness they have in so many situations and how every moment requires so many decisions to be "free." I resonated with the observations from everyone in the interview excerpts, in particular Buddhika Bellana talking about the constraints you're given in life, working within those limitations, and recombining things in interesting ways to learn from them.There were so many moments throughout that I connected with and I really appreciate everyone putting this publication together. Thanks for sharing it!

<a href="/artemiosans" target="_self">@Artemio Morales</a> Thanks very much, Art! Many, though not all, of the contributions were developed in other contexts as part of the broader Life is a Freestyle project. The Last Maven's piece started as a blog post. Buddhika Bellana's insights were shared in an interview that was done on IG Live. So not only is the zine a collaboration, it's also a gathering from these and other contexts.And, as you may have guessed, the contributors are not mainly zine writers. It's the first experience for most to contribute to a zine. What unites Full Circle is being rappers.

Envisioning an alternative world

Winter 2019

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