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

When I hear our native tongue in music I feel every inch of my body respond 
I picture the clothing we wear and 
The dances we do 
The ground is still warm with sandy dirt 
As Inti brushes our skin reminding us of what’s true 
That the land that humans have colonized with never be theirs 
And soon they’ll be extracted without a clue 
Because the ground still screams for her children 
Ella sabe lo que está pasando y es testigo del sufrimiento mundial 
Pachamama nunca era propiedad 
They may try to erase connections 
With their industrialization 
And their infections 
But the land screams for her children 
Pachamama siempre se recordará

And when our native music plays 
She remembers how we honor our givers of life 
For a moment we connect the way we did before the colonized days 
Images of my ancestors smiling and yelling with joy 
Inti watching over them as they come alive 
Because even when I was stripped from them 
Memories from the past my blood still relives 
Pachamama siempre gritatará 
Our culture is still surviving 
We will always hear her call 
Every time I hear the music, I feel us rising 
Pachamama will scream for her children 
Until they all can come home

Wiyankiku?

United States

Peru

Andes

Latinx

Created for the Alternative Worlds Andean collection.

I find a lot of inspiration in the tocapu as a symbol embodying the mystery of the cosmos. My first completed tocapu design, I found the process of creating this to be compelling and meditative, and a welcome departure from all of the time I spend programming websites and software.

I’m inspired by the possibility of incorporating more tocapus into my work, and into my life, as I imagine these designs to be not a part of my past, but an active and important part of my present. They’re also, in my humble opinion, very nice to look at.

Sky Tocapu

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 diamond-shaped geometric pattern against a blue background

White text 'Ana Somnia' on white background

Dark audio waveforms against a white background

An autumn landscape with vibrant trees with leaves in oranges, yellows, and reds

Three men standing side-by-side near trees with a bridge in the foggy distance

Simone Biles at the 2016 Rio Olympics waving to the crowd

Memoir

Wow! It’s been a whirlwind few years. I can hardly believe this is happening, yet here we are, debuting AltSalt publicly for the first time. If you're new here, I suggest checking out the <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/about">About</a> page first to get oriented.
With that said, in this post, I thought I'd give more context around the history of AltSalt and this sneak peek launch!
 
The Beginnings of AltSalt
Back in March 2019, I remember sitting in a second-floor Starbucks overlooking Union Square here in New York, chatting with <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/sandycha" target="_self">Sandy Enriquez</a>, when the initial idea for AltSalt dawned on me.
At the time, I’d been researching my Peruvian background, trying to figure out who the heck I am (as one does, y’know?), and I was finding it incredibly difficult.
Andean myths and legends? Disparate and hard to find good sources. Any Andean representation at all? Also possible to find, but way harder than it should've been, especially in the age of the internet.
In fact, I was researching full time for several months, diving into archives at the New York Public Library, taking classes with the <a href="https://ayni.institute" target="_blank">Ayni Institute</a> and the <a href="https://www.quechuacollective.org" target="_blank">Quechua Collective</a>, and only after much effort did I begin to get an inkling of what my Andean cultural inheritance meant to me. (And of course, this is still an ongoing journey!)
 
The Spark
But when Sandy mentioned that she’d been running into similar challenges finding Quechua zines… something clicked. I realized, Oh my god, how many people are researching, trying to find content that speaks to them? And how many people, like me, are finding this way too difficult when the entire lore of Game of Thrones is literally a simple Google search away? What if there were a website that helped make this discovery easier?
I filed the idea away until March 2020, when I finally had the time to research it. And behold! Not only were folks searching for this content, creators were finding challenges connecting with audiences too.
So being a web developer, I set to work! And voila, ! built the site! (As one does). It only took a bajillion hours.
 
Feeling Gratitude
In all seriousness though, I’m so grateful that I’ve had the time, resources, and skills to invest in the first iteration of this idea.
In particular, I’m grateful to all the folks who have provided their feedback — including <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/sandycha" target="_self">Sandy Enriquez</a>, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/luisaulhoa" target="_self">Luisa Ulhoa</a>, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/shirley" target="_self">Shirley Coenen</a>, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/muditaheart" target="_self">Charles Huang</a>, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/jamie_sa" target="_self">Jamie San Andres</a>, <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/jonmorales22" target="_self">Jonathan Morales</a>, and many others who are not on AltSalt (yet!) — and especially to my family who have endured me talking endlessly about this site for the past 10 months.
I’m also grateful to <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/rimayraiz" target="_self">Rimay Raiz</a> for entrusting AltSalt with showcasing the fantastic work they’ve been doing to create representation of the Andean diaspora. I’m stoked to have their zines here as a part of this sneak peek release!
Through its memory keeping, the <a href="https://ayni.institute" target="_blank">Ayni Institute</a> has also given me the self-knowledge that has rooted AltSalt in Andean notions of reciprocity.
And with so many possibilities ahead, I’m excited to be here at this beginning as we open this platform to creators, and eventually everyone, so we can start new dialogues around our stories and experiences.
 
What’s in Store
With this sneak peek, we hope to start getting feedback on what’s working and not with this site. This is in preparation for a full launch later this month, January 2021!
In anticipation of that official launch, if you’re a creator, I encourage you to <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/submit" target="_self">submit</a>. We’re currently brainstorming ways to build this resource, in particular thinking through how we might collaborate with folks to showcase their work. If this sounds interesting to you, we look forward to seeing your creations!
Feel free also to share this sneak peek URL — <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com" target="_self">https://frontend.altsalt.com</a> — with anyone who may be interested in seeing Rimay Raiz’s content or submitting their own.
Ideas for future site features include collections, commenting, community creative challenges, and more! There are so many possibilities.
Lastly, if you have suggestions on how to promote this resource or build this community, I’m grateful for feedback. You can reach me at artemio [at] altsalt.com
 
Conclusion
And with that, thank you so much for tuning in. Enjoy checking out <a href="https://frontend.altsalt.com/rimayraiz">Rimay Raiz’s</a> work! I look forward to hearing your ideas, seeing your submissions, and developing further as we work towards an official release!
In reciprocity,
Alternative voices, alternative formats. This is AltSalt.

A new resource for discovering alternative voices is here.

Welcome to the AltSalt sneak peek!

Envisioning the Future

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

The Birth of Andean Futurism

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

(Interview)

So I’ve been playing around with creating my own tocapu, or pattern based on Andean sacred geometry. I’ve been inspired by the Andean Futurist Manifesto, and also this idea of fractality, shapes and ideas repeating, reflecting, and refracting on themselves, ad infinitum.

Something I learned from Zadir Milla Euribe, an educator from Peru from who I first began learning about Andean design and cosmovision, is how to begin reading the patterns of the earth and sky.

Tocapus like this one, designed with inspiration from Andean sacred geometry, are intrinsically connected with Andean cosmovision and dialogue with the planet

In the way one can see patterns repeated in nature, from the similarity of the branches of a tree to the bronchi of the lungs, to the spirals in a seashell and the spiral arms of a galaxy, in the tocapus one can see the patterns in small segments repeated in the larger segments.

This is because life itself is dynamic, a spiral — and you can see this play out even in history. Everything is always changing yet circling back on itself, evolving with similarities but transformed — what has happened will come again, and everything is similar yet nothing is the same.

When you walk up to the peak of a mountain, or stand beside a lake, if you look closely and choose to see it, you may see the patterns of clouds represented also in the treeline, and repeated again in the shape of a stone on the ground, and repeated against the horizon — everything always speaking, always dialoguing — this is how the world, how the universe speaks.

The ancestors of the Andes understood this, which is why their architecture takes on natural forms that, in the same way they saw the world speaking to them, attempts to speak with the world. That’s the reason the Nazca lines take on the massive shapes of animals. That’s the reason tocapus have that same characteristic of circling, repeating, the whole contained within the parts.

I’ve come to understand that perhaps this is beyond reason, and when you look at the clouds and see the shapes of animals and objects, perhaps it is all in our imaginations, or perhaps it is also the world thinking, dreaming, and imagining, and trying to speak to us.

In the practice of working with the tocapus, it’s another way of seeing, that’s for sure. It’s not a vision that sees the natural world as a resource to be analyzed, broken down, exploited. And yet maybe it’s this very way of seeing that will allow us to imagine another reality, to speak and create — in contrast to what we know — in reciprocity with the earth.

This is because life itself is dynamic, a spiral — and you can see this play out even in history. Everything is always changing yet circling back on itself, evolving with similarities but transformed.

Andean Sacred Geometry

Every year since my friend Bill committed suicide, his mother and I had exchanged Christmas cards. And I am one of those people who do holiday letters. As I have drifted apart from college friends, those annual missives are the only updates I get or give to them and some others in my life, including Bill’s mother. In the holiday letter of 1997, I had announced to the world that after years of hiding the truth even from myself, I had finally come to terms with being gay.&nbsp;I had just moved to the Normal Heights section San Diego from where I had been living in northern San Diego County, in Carlsbad. The house that I was now renting was on the hill above the Qualcomm Stadium where the 1998 Super Bowl would be held, close enough to hear the blimp engines and we’d be able to walk out to my front porch to see the Blue Angels flyover and watch the fireworks show. I decided to throw a Super Bowl/house warming/coming out party.&nbsp;When I packed for the move from Carlsbad to San Diego, I had vowed I would really weed things out. If I was never going to read that book or wear that shirt again, I’d donate it. Bags of clothes went to Goodwill and boxes of books went to the Carlsbad Library.&nbsp;The Friday before Super Bowl Sunday I still had lots of unpacking to do to and I had promised myself that every single box would be emptied so I’d have Saturday free for party prep. I had about 15 boxes to go and was slicing into them, quickly dispatching whatever I found to the appropriate shelf, closet, or cabinet. Then it happened. I slit open a box that I moved to Carlsbad and from Carlsbad without having ever opened. It had stayed for years out of sight up above my car on the joists of the garage. I knew I was never going to wear the clothes that were in it or read the books or look at the photos hidden in it. In it were all of the things that reminded me of Bill. Photos of the trips we had taken together, music cassettes, books, clothes, and gifts he had given me over the years of our friendship. Shortly after Bill’s death, unable to deal with my guilt and sadness, I had sealed all remembrances of him away and I had no intention of opening that box either before or after the move.&nbsp;Suicide is different. I have lost close friends to cancer and felt terrible, but I never felt guilty. I can’t cure cancer. I couldn’t have done anything to prevent the car accidents that claimed other friends’ lives. But suicide, rightly or wrongly, feels preventable. If I had listened better, if I had been a better friend, maybe it wouldn’t have happened. Bill’s suicide haunted me so badly that I couldn’t bear to think about him without it causing days of depression.&nbsp;I opened that box and on top was a bicycling jersey Bill had given me. It made my heart sink. I hadn’t planned to deal with this box now or ever, but in my haste to finish unpacking, I had attacked the box without reading the magic marker warning on the top. Shit. I didn’t have time to deal with this. But the jersey wouldn’t release my stare. I had way too much to do and couldn’t spend time fixating on a stupid shirt. I should just re-seal the box and get back to work. Then I remembered my self-imposed dictum to get rid of anything I would never wear again. But I couldn’t throw it out. It was one of my last tangible reminders of Bill. A reminder I couldn’t bring myself to even look at, let alone wear, so I should just donate it to Goodwill. But I couldn’t give it away. I should just seal the box and deal with another time. But I had to deal with it sometime. I should just throw it out. And so it went, my wheels spinning in the same circle as I faced what I had avoided for years. I also thought of the absurdity of keeping a cycling jersey—my knees were too shot to ride more than a mile or two anyway. My days of riding centuries were over; that was something else Bill and I had in common, our knees had curtailed our serious cycling.I got tired of standing over the box, but still couldn’t let go of the dilemma. I carried the shirt to the living room and held it as I sat and stared at it and replayed the options in my head. Donate it. I can’t. Wear it. I can’t. Only to dismiss them all and start over again. After at least an hour, maybe two, I grew tired of my stupid indecision. I needed to go pick up my mail from my P.O. box before they closed and I hadn’t put a shirt on yet that day, so I just decided, screw it. It’s just a shirt. Put it on and go get the mail.<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/7/image-7/Ring Crop-152315.jpg" alt="A golden ring on a finger" style="height: auto;width: auto"/>Bill's ringIn that day’s mail was a package slip. I stood in line and gave it to the clerk who retrieved a padded envelope just slightly too large to fit in the box. On it was Bill’s mother’s return address. A month earlier, I had already received my once-a-year communication from her—a card with the usual short note, something to the effect of, “I hope you’re doing well” so I hadn’t expected anything.&nbsp;With great curiosity, I opened the envelope. In it was a gold ring. I recognized it immediately as Bill’s. He treasured that ring and had worn it for years. It had been made for him by his great-uncle, a dentist in England who used scraps of dental gold in wax molds to make jewelry of his own designs. After Bill’s great-uncle’s death, the ring meant even more to him as a daily reminder of the man who had been his surrogate grandfather. Bill and I had that in common, also—we each had a special great-uncle who took the place of the grandfathers we both lacked.&nbsp;After one trip to England to visit his mother’s family, Bill came back heartbroken. He said he had been helping his mother’s brother work in the garden and in the course of the digging and planting apparently the ring had slipped off his wet and slimy finger. He didn’t notice it was gone until they were done and he was washing his hands. They went back the garden and raked and dug and searched. They even borrowed a metal detector, but to no avail. Bill had lost the last piece of his great-uncle and there was no way to replace it.&nbsp;In the package with Bill’s ring was a handwritten note from his mother. She said her brother had been working in his garden and found the ring. He thought she should have it. She received the ring the same day she got my coming out letter and she knew I had to have the ring. She said she was giving it to me by proxy for Bill and that she was happy that I had finally found the self-acceptance that Bill never had. Suddenly everything fell into place. The real reason Bill had killed himself.&nbsp;I sat in the car and cried until I calmed down enough to drive home. It also seemed beyond coincidence that for the first time since Bill had died, I was wearing a shirt he had given me while I was holding his ring.&nbsp;Bill’s death had always been a scab for me. Not an open wound, but a barely-healed scab over a wound I was afraid to go anywhere near for fear of causing damage too deep to handle. I had a hard time ever remembering the good times with Bill since the ending was so horrible and my guilt so overwhelming that I shut out thinking about him at all. With the ring, I felt like he had forgiven me (if there was ever anything to forgive) and I knew I could finally start to think of him without immediately going to the bad places.&nbsp;When I got home, I called a friend of Bill’s in L.A. and asked how soon I could see him. Monday, the day after the Super Bowl, I drove to L.A. to have dinner with him. He and Bill had gone to high school together and lived together in Belgium for almost a year when they were trying to break into the ranks of professional track cyclists. I figured if anyone knew if Bill was secretly gay, he would. He said that even in high school, Bill’s friends had assured him that it was okay to come out. He’d still be their friend, and it would be okay. But Bill always vehemently denied being gay.<img src="https://altsalt.s3.amazonaws.com/catalog/article/7/image-7/IYWH cover small-091429.jpg" alt="A book cover containing the title " style="height: auto;width: auto"/>The memoir containing this and other storiesI asked why he thought Bill was gay and he ran through a list of stereotypical gay interests including liking Morrissey, Lucy, and Marilyn Monroe. The way he dressed and held his cigarette. I had noticed some of those things, but attributed the mannerism to being half English and spending so much time in Europe. (There is the old joke: Is he gay? No, just European.) The friend also said he wondered about my friendship with Bill and how quickly Bill and I became friends when we started working together and Bill at times saying things about me that crossed the line from friendship to crush.&nbsp;The talk helped me understand so much. In my mind I replayed many of the moments I’d had with Bill and they made so much more sense now.&nbsp;Once I sorted out the flood of emotions, I wrote to his mother and told her that far more than his ring, she given me back Bill. I know Bill is still with me. He is a part of me and I can enjoy the good memories without having to dwell on the bad. I cried for days when he died, but had been afraid to since; afraid to start again for fear I’d never stop. I finally let out what I had kept inside. It put one more piece of my old unhappy life behind me, to be even happier out of the closet.&nbsp;I was able to unpack the rest of the box of Bill’s stuff. Wear those shirts again. Look at photos of him, have on display some of the other gifts he had given me.&nbsp;I sent Bill’s mother her annual Christmas card about three years ago and a few days later got an email from a real estate agent in Pasadena. He said he was sorry to inform me that Bill’s mother had died. He said in addition to selling the house for the family in England, he had been asked to check mail and follow up on things that required it. His mother never got over the death of her only son so at least now she was at peace.&nbsp;My eyes are moist and I am wearing his ring as I type this, and although still weirded out by the coincidence of the timing, but there has to be a message here: if I ever needed a final endorsement that I was doing the right thing by choosing to be happy for the first time in my life, Bill’s ring was certainly it.I have had so many people ask about the ring over the years. Sometimes just holding out my credit card to pay in a store, the clerk has grabbed my hand and wanted to look at the ring. Some seemed to sense there is some magic to it and asked if it had a story. Once at a drug store, I started telling the story to the clerk and then I realized a line was forming at the register and I apologized and stepped aside and everyone in the line said, “No, this is good. Go on. Finish the story. Please continue.”&nbsp;◇ ◇ ◇The story of The Coming Out Ring is abridged and adapted from <a href="http://www.waltergmeyer.com/product/werent-not-happening/" target="_blank">If You Weren’t Here, This Would Not Be Happening: plogs from my life</a>.&nbsp;Walter G. Meyer is the co- or ghost-writer of six nonfiction books and his the author of critically-acclaimed, award-winning, and Amazon-bestselling gay-themed novel Rounding Third. He has been on radio and television programs including NPR and he has spoken at colleges, libraries and community centers across the country.&nbsp;Mr. Meyer told his own coming out story in The Los Angeles Times, he has written for all of the major gay publications including Out and Advocate and he has written on LGBT topics for the mainstream press including The San Diego Union-Tribune and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. His articles have appeared in Kiplinger’s Personal Finance, Orange County Register, Westways, Baja Explorer, and dozens of other magazines and newspapers. He is the co-author of a widely-produced stage play GAM3RS.&nbsp;Originally from Pittsburgh, Mr. Meyer has a degree from the School of Communications at Penn State and currently resides in San Diego.

Every year since my friend Bill committed suicide, his mother and I had exchanged Christmas cards. And I am one of those people who do holiday letters...

The Coming Out Ring

Untitled

Within the Fold

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

Love your post, Art. "Repeating, the whole contained within the parts." In chinese water color art and patterns, my teacher taught me how, the whole is a mirror of the parts. And in traditional chinese medicince they say that the health of the cell is the health of the species and the planet. There are so many different ways of seeing, thinking, dreaming &lt;3&nbsp;

<a href="/shirley" target="_self">@Shirley Man-Kin Leung</a> Thanks so much! it’s so cool to hearing about that similarity. It’s making me think of how the little things matter, of ways to potentially create harmony when making and designing in lots of different fields of practice thinking of how the components relate to the whole

Thanks Walter! Lovely story of healing and love.

Walter, this is so beautiful and moving. I resonate a lot with having jewelry that serves as a portal to another person's memories and life and stories.&nbsp;

<a href="/shirley" target="_self">@Shirley Man-Kin Leung</a> Hi Shirley - Thanks for writing. As I wrote in the story, the ring does seem to have a magic power that draws people. They want to talk about it I get to talk about Bill. At times I find myself twisting the ring on my finger and memories come flooding back.&nbsp;

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Red, green, and yellow art with choclo and geometric iconography.

Blue text on white background: "These are the things they took from us, They left us bare These are the things they couldn’t"

A group of people surrounding a frustrated girl trying to draw, they all seem to be looking at what she's doing.

The cover uses a retrofuturistic artist's rendering of a space colony from NASA's Ames Research Center.

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Two people in a book store, Jackson and Felix. Felix says, "I'm kinda pissed", Jackson responds and asks, "Why?".

**SHORTLISTED for the New Media Writing Prize 2017** **SHORTLISTED for the Opening Up Digital Fiction People's Choice Award 2017** **FEATURED in the upcoming Electronic Literature Collection Volume 4 by ELO** **FEATURED in the Babycastles Art Gallery Wordhack Anthology**◇ ◇ ◇"Above the mirror, small and low, hung a fluorescent bulb whose light shone through my skin..."People we love often fade away. As time goes on, how do we remember our relationships, and what insights does that distance afford us?Featuring an original soundtrack, 22 photo illustrations, and a few innovative surprises, A MODERN GHOST explores a young man's memories of a love that was never realized.A prototype story, it is the first release by Artmayu Studios.

A Modern Ghost

In May 2020, Rimay Raiz launched Choclo y Chicha, a zine that shares the contributions of the Andean/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 media 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 features 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.

Choclo y Chicha Vol. 1

See Sandy

The Life is a Freestyle Quaranzine

Quechualish: An Indigenous Language Zine

Part of the Kiona Ligtvoet’s solo exhibition “These Are the Things” at <a href="https://www.latitude53.org" target="_blank">Latitude 53</a>, this document is collaborator Paxsi's contribution to this gentle attempt at navigating intergenerational barriers to grief, tenderness and longing, in the presence of enfranchisement and personal displacement.In their essay, Paxsi, an Aymara and Welsh-Irish writer and artist, reflects on their Aymara roots as it relates to family connection and their trans non-binary identity.From the author:“I am honoured and privileged to be contributing to this collaboration with this piece of writing which expresses my grief and longing for the things that were taken from me, as well as a celebration of the things that cannot and will never be.“As you reflect upon and consume my words and Kiona’s work, please consider contributing reparations to Kiona’s home community, Michel First Nation, for the legal fees required to reclaim their land and status rights. Reparations can be sent as e-transfers to kionaligtvoet@gmail.com, which will be forwarded to Michel First Nation.”

Letter to Miguel, from “These Are the Things”

The first Cat Scratch Fever comic! 3 short comics in zine format, a total of 12 pages. About a big group of friends and their relationships.The zine is 8.5 by 5.5 inches. The comics were inked traditionally and scanned, then edited in photoshop.!!!!! CAT SCRATCH FEVER IS 18+ !!!! for nudity and adult themes.

Cat Scratch Fever vol. 1

Beanie Hat Prototype

You are passengers aboard the interstellar ark Nabi. With 90 years remaining until your destination, New Earth, you must maintain the ship and its onboard sustainable farms by drawing inspiration from the agricultural customs of communal labor—PUMASI.PUMASI is a hack of John Harper’s Lasers & Feelings.

Pumasi: A Lasers & Feelings Hack

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With a Lever: The DIY Guide to Institutional Change for Racial Equity

Cultural Correspondence

In the Andes, geometric images known as tocapus carry within them a coded language whose meaning has been lost and that no Western science can read. However, the ancestors of the Andes did not themselves believe in death — and the meaning of these geometries may yet continue to live on within Andean descendants.

The Manifesto calls on those of Andean heritage to awaken these meanings by looking into their past, then project the meaning of these symbols into the future through a process of transrationality, whereby one may acquire the vision that will birth new Andean technologies and the reshaping of our reality.

Andean Futurist Manifesto

Rooombra to the Rescue

Test Publication

Choclo y Chicha Vol. 2

The back of a woman's head, where a tattoo is visible near her shoulder blades

A collage of a woman in summer clothes beside one in winter clothes; three authoritative-looking women; a girl against a night sky; a woman with her eyes closed; a colorful pattern of sacred geometry; a Chinese water color of birds; a sleeping woman; a woman wearing a poncho; a woman holding a gun.

In Buddhist tradition, they say that the soul wanders the earth for 49 days before crossing to the afterlife. This is my imagining of my grandmother's journey after she passed.

49 Days

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Philippines

An animated collage created to kick off the <a href="https://www.altsalt.com/community/project/alternative-worlds/1">Alternative Worlds</a> project, this contains art and music by AltSalt contributors from both the Andean and Asian American communities.
From left by row: Artwork by Jessica Tin, Jamie San Andres of Rimay Raiz, Layqa Nuna Yawar, Lia Coleman, Felix Kar-wah Fok courtesy of Shirley Man-Kin Leung, Sandy Enriquez, Adina Farinango, and Angela DelosReyes. Background pattern by Artemio Morales with gratitude to the teachings of Zadir Milla Euribe. Music by Jonathan Morales.

Envisioning an alternative world

Letter to Miguel, from “These Are the Things”

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