#page of poetry from my 2021 journal

[sydfigs]

My name never stays the same

I'm granted my shame

so heavy is the water in my world

give me the money I take it

to the bank we are going

it's for him on the cusp of Sor and Row street

make sure your bags are full of weapons and your arms are full of bags

we love to rob banks

[prekladatelsky-orisek]

🌻My Language Goals🌻

This is gonna be a pretty long post, so I'm going to stick most of it under a read-more link! My goals for languages are shaped a lot by my interests, so a lot of what I want to do is oriented by reading (specifically, I *really love* fantasy books!).

Broad strokes: - journaling is an aim in languages I'm not too confident writing in yet - watching youtube/tv shows is smth I enjoy in languages I'm better at - I think making small presentations about myself or writing about my day would be useful in languages I'm more of a beginner in - I need to study/use more vocabulary

🍃 English (native, C2)

English is my native language, so it's hard to envision a major goal with it... Long term: Teach English abroad :D Short term: Learn grammar, attend TEFL course

🍄 Czech (heritage, ~C1-C2)

Czech is my heritage language. While I speak it fairly well, I do make occasional errors and often lack confidence. I feel like using it more would be good for me. Long term: Be confident writing, read more, speak more confidently (and more like someone my age), read more Short term: Read Časodějové, practice writing in a journal, make new friends in Prague through LGBT events

🌷German (~C1)

German is the language I've been passionate about for the longest. I think I'd like to live/study in Germany someday. Long term: Broaden my vocabulary, speak more confidently, start reading poetry, keep reading, maybe write something? Short term: Finish reading Das Fjordland, practice writing in a journal, practice talking to myself

Spanish (~B1-B2?)

I learned Spanish until I graduated high school. I know it fairly well passively, and I feel like it would be a shame to forget. On the other hand, I strongly associate it with school and grades, which makes me nervous about using it. Long term: Maintenance, pretty much Short term: watch tv shows/youtube videos

Esperanto (~B1-B2?)

I started learning Esperanto in 2021 during Covid, mostly just to have fun. I think it's super cool, and I'd love to get a chance to meet other Esperantists. Long term: Go to an Esperanto congress, enter Esperanto writing contests Short term: Find and participate in Esperanto events online/in person, practice writing in journal/talking to myself

Polish (~B1?)

I'm learning Polish mostly because of my partner. Their dad used to only speak to me in Polish. Besides that, I'm interested in Polish rock music and reading in Polish (especially The Witcher). Long term: Read, strengthen grammar + vocabulary, learn false friends from Czech better, converse more confidently Short term: attend summer course in Poland, write in journal

Russian (~A2-B1??)

There are books I want to read in Russian, and those are my primary motivation! However, there's also a lot of music I like in Russian, and I'm also interested in it because of how much I understand already. Long term: Read Monstrum by Pavlina Grad, read the 3rd book of The Witcher, speak well enough to impress my friend (he is unfortunately hard to impress), get through Russisch in Übungen Short term: Get through the first part of Russisch in übungen, read the first chapter of The Witcher, read 50 pages of Monstrum

toki pona (~A2-B1???)

I started learning toki pona in 2021 because of covid. I don't particularly have a goal, but I'd love to try and use it to talk to people! I feel like I'm stagnating a bit on my own. Long term: no real goal here, just fun! maybe conversation? Short term: start to join calls on discord, send a message in toki pona, engage in biweekly translation challenges

Korean (~A1-A2)

I'm curious about Korean because it's really different from the languages I already know! I really love the way Korean grammar is structured, and it always makes me happy to read something and understand. I have some Korean friends as well, and I hope to someday be good enough to talk to them a bit. I also am exploring Korean food a bunch lately -- I'm vegan, and I've found The Korean Vegan's videos inspirational for quite some time. Long term: Be able to read books, talk to friends Short term: Read a short story in Korean (& learn vocab), write a journal entry

Scottish Gaelic (~A1-A2)

A friend and I agreed to learn Scottish Gaelic a few years ago, but he gave up quite fast. I feel obligated to continue, even though I'm not all that good at it (fathast :P). Long term: Be able to read books in Gaelic, read The Little Prince Short term: Complete the Explorer section on Duolingo, write a journal entry, make a presentation about myself

Zulu (~A1)

I became curious about Zulu after reading Trevor Noah's memoir Born a Crime, and at the same time a friend of mine also got interested (although I don't recall precisely how). A third friend of mine ended up actually taking a Zulu course at the same time! The end result was a pact to study together. Long term: Be able to use Zulu with my friend who also is learning it, work through the resources I have (duolingo & TY zulu) Short term: (longer short-term) complete the Rookie section on Duolingo, do a lesson in my TY zulu book

Japanese (~A1)

I have a lot of friends who are very interested in Japanese. One of them is also a linguist and has repeatedly told me about how elegantly structured the language is... Fundamentally, I have given into peer pressure. Long term: Be able to have basic conversations with my friend, read a bilingual book of short stories in Japanese Short term: Complete Busuu A1 course, make a presentation about myself + what I like/dislike + what I do every day

[perexcri]

hello!! 19 and 24 for the writing asks 😊

HELLOOOO FRIENDDDD i promise i haven't forgotten you!! you sent this right when i decided i needed to cut myself off from laptop time last night lol

also thank you for all of your aftry comments this past week they were so fun to read so thanks for reading it :] 💜💜💜

now: i actually answered both of these here and here! but i have more i can add, so add more i shall 😌

19. Tell me a story about your writing journey. When did you start? Why did you start? Were there bumps along the way? Where are you now and where are you going?

i'll answer for the bumps along the way question :D

um,,,yes. there was this big bump called COLLEGE that completely destroyed any ability i had to think or do anything creative for the better part of four years. because my degree was in a social science and a language, i didn't have a lot of time for pleasure reading, and even when i did read, i resorted to a lot of nonfiction because that's just kinda where my brain was at with my education. this trickled down into my writing, where i just,,,could not come up with story ideas. i spent most of high school writing things for fun and then had four years of college where all i could write were personal essays. i also journaled a lot and wrote a decent amount of poetry, but no fun fictional writing. that combined with the nonfiction books made it so by the time i graduated i was convinced i was just never gonna read or write for fun again. turns out i was just super burnt out!

but i digress: i graduated in spring 2021 and finally started reading for fun again in late-summer 2021 when i read the entire Death Note manga! and then a few months later i was finally able to start creatively writing again. in fact (since you just got done with aftry lol), the main idea i was working on when my writing initially started to come back was one of the predecessor ideas for aftry!!

so yeah, this is all to say college ruined my ability to write for four years. but at least i learned some cool things and made some wonderful friends!

24. How much prep work do you put into your stories? What does that look like for you? Do you enjoy this part or do you just want to get on with it?

[warning: there are spoilers for to hell and back again and a flower that resembles you in this answer!!]

like in my previous answer to this question, it all depends! i'll give you some snippets of my two completed longer fics' outlines/prep pages and let you see for yourself lol

so first off: to hell and back again! this one's weird because i'd have long sections outlining minutia and then just like. one sentence for a major plot point. like below! here's them in the closet at Steve's vs. when Will gets taken by Vecna 💀

and now: a flower that resembles you!

i had absolutely no outline for this fic. i just had random notes at the beginning of the doc. come join me in viewing the chaos!

yeah absolutely no plan here it was just Vibes. also so much changed from the notes i had here but oh well

ANYWAY - thank you for the ask!! i hope you're doing well and that the outline screenshots were amusing heheheh~ :] 💜💜💜

[elenajournals]

Coming back for 2023!

I'm journaling again, with both words and art.

I let a lot of things go this year, for a lot of reasons. My author platform disappeared--no blog posts since March, a barely-there tumblr where I reblogged stuff in spurts but never promoted my work. I stopped reviewing books and posting to my booklr as well. (I am still reading, all the time, but I even stopped recording my books on Goodreads, which I had been using consistently since I found in 2015.)

A lot of times, when someone disappears from social media and come back, they cite depression, and given my history, I'm surprised to say--no, I wasn't depressed, I was busy with a new job, I was focusing my energy elsewhere, but also I was creatively stagnant in my writing and grappling with my lack of "success," and that damaged my motivation to do other creative things.

I needed the time off to figure out what I really wanted to get out of my creative practices, because the pipe dream of making money from it wasn't happening. (Y'all didn't see that part, because elenajournals was never trying to make even the slightest bit of money, this was the safe space where I could do whatever the fuck I wanted, be inspired by anything or nothing, and be answerable to no one. Those of you who found me randomly and followed me for pretty art journal pics would be forgiven for not even knowing I was an author, as I rarely self-promote here.)

But recently, a few things have changed. The one most relevant to this platform is that I found a (lightly used) guided transformation journal at a thrift store on Small Business Saturday during their half-off-everything sale. Sure, the first two pages of lessons, someone had already written in, but they gave up on the journey almost immediately, and I dearly love "used" things that have a history I can share in.

I've been writing in that journal every day since, and I'm not going to share those pages online. They're too personal, too intense in self-examination, and I'm simply not comfortable opening up publicly to that degree.

What the first three weeks of guidance have taught me, though, is that I have, for various reasons, completely cut myself off from anything spiritual, and that I need to make space for meditative practices in my life.

Hence, the return of art journaling. (Also slow stitching, which I may or may not talk about or chronicle here. Stitch journals are a thing, even a thing I've tried before, but I'm still figuring out if that's a good fit for me and if/how it would be practical to share here.)

Later today, I will finish the final spread in my Rose Journal, the found poetry one I started in 2017, and before this past week, hadn't worked on since January of 2021.

I picked that one to finish because it was the closest to done, it has small pages that I don't feel intimidated by (large blank spaces can feel so challenging sometimes!) and though I tried out many techniques and styles over the course of filling it, it was primarily a zentangle book and I felt comfortable returning to it with the goal of meditation-as-art, rather than Making Art to Maybe Impress Other People.

Over the next few days, I intend to photograph and post those pages, plus the usual finished-journal retrospective of my favorites. Also to talk about some of my journal-related goals and practices for next year.

Then it's going to be radio silence for a week, because holiday vacation with no laptop and limited time to be online. So yes, I will disappear again for a bit, if I haven't gotten enough done to queue. Though I'm sure I can find enough stuff from others to queue for inspiration, which was always half my blog (when it was active) anyway.

So that's the update. I know that I've said before that I'm coming back, and then little or nothing happens. That's why I waited until I actually had done some journaling before I said so, rather than feeling vaguely inspired, saying so, but not following through.

[caltropspress]

RAPS + CRAFTS #18: Slumber Logic

1. Introduce yourself. Past projects? Current projects?

Slumber Logic, Toronto Producer/MC. 

Past projects: Greyscale Oblivion (album, production and vocals) 2021; Talking to Walls - w/ Mantis the Miasma (album, production and vocals) 2022; Live From the Corner - w/ TreDoes (EP, production only) 2022; Juan Ep is Life Podcast theme song.

Current Projects: Serenity Now - w/ Darkfield (EP, vocals only) 2023; Detachment, Homie and Only Detachment (production and vocals) 2023.

I’ve been making beats for 18 years rapping for 16, and was off the internet until 2019.

2. Where do you write? Do you have a routine time you write? Do you discipline yourself, or just let the words come when they will? Do you typically write on a daily basis?

My only consistent, extended alone-time is between 9:00 pm and 1:00 am in my basement studio these days. I prefer outside in the morning, but my 1-year-old rises at 7. Because I do beats as well, this isn’t necessarily dedicated writing time, just the only time and place I can write.

I've been writing at least 20 minutes a day, every day, as a rule for the past 5 years; verses or a hook, editing, rewriting, poetry, journaling, but the 20 has to be for songwriting. 20 turns into hours when there’s time, but the M.O. is keeping the motor running, even if just a little. The subconscious throws out more to work with when it’s getting exercise. I seldom break the rule and it’s excruciating sometimes, but rewarding.

Throughout the day, I write ideas in bullet points in the small notebook starting from the bottom of the page–anything remotely inspired. The best words do not come where they will. They follow Murphy’s Law when they choose to pull up, and I don’t remember things, so I write them down in the car, out the shower, falling asleep, jogging, cooking, washing dishes and all that. I put these together in the evening.

3. What’s your medium—pen and paper, laptop, on your phone? Or do you compose a verse in your head and keep it there until it’s time to record?

I have one small notebook for ideas and sketches, one larger sketchbook with fancy thick paper for putting the sketches together into longer segments and rewrites, and a 2’ x 3’ sketchpad (The Big Bastard) to keep scrap bullet points in one place.

Once something is almost done in the big book, I type it into Google Docs and record the demo sitting down with a mic on a moveable arm so I can edit as I go. I’ll rework in Docs on the laptop or phone if it’s still not done, but try to stay away from those because social media is devastatingly distracting. 

I admire folks who can write a verse in their head. I can do that with beat ideas, but can barely remember the date on a good day.

4. Do you write in bars, or is it more disorganized than that?

I’m usually compiling snippets and editing, subbing, filling blanks, so it’s scrappy collage work to finalize something cohesive. It’s with the intention of fitting into a bar structure, but there’s lots of stream of consciousness connectors that get whittled and adapted very slowly until, lo, bars.

5. How long into writing a verse or a song do you know it’s not working out the way you had in mind? Do you trash the material forever, or do you keep the discarded material to be reworked later?

Usually, I scrap most of what I write per sitting, but hoard the dross in bullet points and the Big Bastard, if I’m organized. A lot of songs are built off these. Years of killing darlings for cohesivity keeps me loose enough to not ditch the entire verse. A 16 usually takes me about a week, on a good week. 

If I decide not to move forward, it’s usually after a few hours of work. I’m always pushing past the feeling that it’s not working because it usually works out, but I’ve got a couple abandoned joints where the concept was very ambitious/specific and I either wrote myself into a corner, stopped feeling inspired to continue the concept, or decided the verse would best suit another beat. 

I gave up on many songs in my 20s. They could have been fire had I seen them through, but I hadn’t yet learned the patience to turn potential into something I could live with in the long term.

6. Have you engaged with any other type of writing, whether presently or in the past? Fiction? Poetry? Playwriting? If so, how has that mode influenced your songwriting?

I’ve written poems for years, but these days it takes a conscious effort to leave them as poems and not work them into songs. I wrote a screenplay years ago and several short stories more recently. Adapting descriptive styles, dialogue, atmosphere into song form is something I work at.

I’ve taken a few creative writing and poetry courses as an adult. With poetry, it helps me get loose in a medium where the reader more often assumes intentionality with challenging work and works to unravel it, rather than incompetence, which is how my neural pathways formed as a young MC. This line of thinking helped me become less judgemental towards my own writing and that of others. My process of heavy whittling was itself whittled by having to hand shit in, and I decided over the course of these courses that it doesn’t count unless I actually hand shit in. That helped me decide when joints are done.

I journal frequently to sort out life issues, and cement memories and gratitude, which often gets paraphrased into raps. Lots of joints are just fly journal entries. My joint “Tardigrade Finnegan’s Wake” is about journaling for resilience.

7. How much editing do you do after initially writing a verse/song? Do you labor over verses, working on them over a long period of time, or do you start and finish a piece in a quick burst?

Everything’s a stage but right now, I’ll mention again, I labour to all hell. I’ve only more recently learned how long it takes for me to be truly satisfied with the end product in the long term and the patience to see it through. Even then it’s elusive. A quick verse for me is usually a week, but some take months, some years. I haven’t put out any verses since the bad old days that didn’t take at least one edit. This is fluid and may change with time but there’s always a feeling that I’m shooting for at the end of it. If I don’t achieve that feeling then I’m not done. 

A few bits of writing advice I keep close are “kill your darlings” (if it doesn’t serve the premise, no matter how much you like it, cut it) and write shitty first drafts (get the thoughts down without judging). Dan-O of Freemusicempire reminded me recently; take the best line from the draft and make every other line as good as that. If I’m stuck, new lines present themselves in the process of rewriting. Time consuming, but seeing out the process that works for me is comforting most of the time. 

8. Do you write to a beat, or do you adjust and tweak lyrics to fit a beat?

Depends on the day. Beats and electronics can be distracting, so total silence is helpful for ideas, and I can ditch the devices. Once I have something, I’m recording it and tweaking to the beat. 

If it's a 4/4 70-110 bpm, I can usually hear 4 bars and map the syllable rhythms in silence, sometimes marking the beat to start on, notes for speed tone and inflection, sometimes recording in a phone app. That initial rush of the first take is hindered if I’m bored with the beat already, so silence helps. If it's drumless or a different time signature, I'm listening to the beat for cues and writing at the desk with the mic arm. Klwn Kat just gave me something so messed up recently, the silent approach doesn’t work here. 

Writing just to write without a beat in mind is helpful, too. I’ll have ideas or concepts that I need to flesh out and know I can adapt them to a beat later.

9. What dictates the direction of your lyrics? Are you led by an idea or topic you have in mind beforehand? Is it stream-of-consciousness? Is what you come up with determined by the constraint of the rhymes?

Usually, the beat suggests a topic/vibe/sentence, and I’ll use that as a lead, or choose a beat around one true sentence. Sometimes I’ll have one that fits in the bullet points or Big Bastard, sometimes it’s on the fly, but I’m usually building off that first sentence. I do that with beats too–the intro and first 10 seconds set the standard of quality I want the rest to meet. Not always–it has to be a fluid process with room for error and changes or else it’s frustrating. 

Stream-of-consciousness is a great exercise to flesh out the idea, fill in gaps, say something literal to connect ideas, or thicken the plot. I usually edit it so that I’m impressed by every line both on paper and in the recording after letting it breathe. Journaling helps establish direction, asking “where is this going/what am I trying to say here?” has gotten me out of some bar jams, as in real life.

The end product is always constrained by the rhymes to a degree. 90s NY boom bap is ingrained in my musical DNA and there was a tight technical expectation or else you weren't doing it right. I still have more I want to release with tight rhyme schemes, but have been developing a looser style–it’s just a matter of me being satisfied with a less technical flow.

10. Do you like to experiment with different forms and rhyme schemes, or do you keep your bars free and flexible?

I experiment. My default flows allow me to focus more on what needs to be said. I need to evolve rhythmically and break away from what comes ingrained, and that only happens by trying new things. There's much to explore and that keeps the process exciting. Drumless joints motivate a looser flow, pulling off not rhyming is a skill just as rhyming to a tight meter, and because I've been doing the latter for so long, the former is almost more of a “skill.” There can be heavy nuance in a well-delivered classic flow pattern.

11. What’s a verse you’re particularly proud of, one where you met the vision for what you desire to do with your lyrics?

I’m proud of how “A Steppenwolf’s Whirling Dervish” starts (from Detachment, Homie, and Only Detachment.) I wanted to do a full story in 2nd point-of-view narration steeped in metaphor for emerging from reclusion. 

I have a joint collaboration album with Rap Man Gavin (release slated for late 2023) that I worked on for about 3 weeks. It's a story with dialogue between me and a priest. I expect him to evict me because I'm drinking and smoking in the pews but I end up taking his confession of his and the church's failures. Eventually he renounces his faith in lieu of the deity of technology. I had the general story outlined but really struggled balancing a clear plot arc, transitions, unique language, dialogue and metre. I kept at it, rewriting, trying new ideas, trashing lots, but listening back, I think it stands up.

12. Can you pick a favorite bar of yours and describe the genesis of it?

“But how I was complicit in creating the conditions so thoughtlessly counter to the outcome of the mission?

And how do I condition someone so willing to play the victim that they’re both worthy of love and the firmest versions of discipline?”

With “Rakes,” I was trying to write about these physical jolts I get when thinking about painful events in my past. More specifically, mistakes I’ve made that have hurt others and myself. At worst, they jolt you out of your sleep or train of thought and it feels like you got slammed in the face with a rake (the beat is sprinkled with sound clips of Sideshow Bob stepping on rakes). Thinking about mental health in black-and-white, I can either say, “I made mistakes and hurt because I’m a piece of shit,” or “All these things were outside of my control, and I did the best I could,” but it’s often both, and finding the degree to which either one is more true is trying. The album title Grayscale Oblivion represents following that dichotomy to the bottom of the spiral until you don’t know what is what, and by doing so, subconsciously learning the tools to climb out and regain decisiveness. To what degree of responsibility I have over my own happiness; how much is chemical and genetic, how much of it we are able to influence, how I can take more responsibility and forgive myself for my chemical makeup and blunders. Like a serenity prayer for clinical depression. We inevitably learn even when static, even while failing. 

The two bars are an interpolated question that came up in an interview with Jerry Colona: “How have I been complicit in creating the conditions I say I don’t want?” I wasn’t going to cold jack the whole line, so I left it in my notebook as “How have I been complicit in creating the conditions _____________” and journaled to work out the but. That was both music and personal work. 

In memory, the second half was trying to transcribe “I’m trying to be better, I have a tendency to take no responsibility, but I can love myself and look at the consequences of being flawed in the face–it’s both” into rhyme form. It’s playing with different options on the end word and syllable matching in between. I had to play with many options to meet the technical standard I was going for. Worked on that little bridge for a few hours over a couple of days, and I tell myself that’s why I’m still happy with it.

13. Do you feel strongly one way or another about punch-ins? Will you whittle a bar down in order to account for breath control, or are you comfortable punching-in so you don’t have to sacrifice any words?

I’m pro-punch-in as long as it’s indistinguishable where it needs to be. First recording drafts with a few punch-ins help establish the flow, then get more comfortable rapping it. I'll tweak as I go, sometimes leave in a punch if it suits. Sometimes the continuity of one take sounds better; sometimes the contrast in vocal tones accentuates beat transitions. The homie Rap Man Gavin does this very well. It's gotta be doable live, but I'll do both if and when it melts my butter. Most of my tracks are one-takes, but punch-ins have their place. ODB punched in all the time, and it sounded perfect. 

I’m steady whittling verses for breath control. Rap has always been a compromise between technicality and expressing what would be easier expressed in non-rhyme form. I expect the degrees of compromise to change over time.

14. What non-hiphop material do you turn to for inspiration? What non-music has influenced your work recently?

Therapy has helped me channel emotions without straight whining or being inauthentically aggressive. It’s given me tools to say what I’m feeling out loud, and rap allows me to get playful with that. Likewise, meditation inspires the writing in the sense that I’m often encouraging groundedness in songs. 

This is a condensed list but authors like Baldwin, Robbins (Tom), McCarthy, Pynchon, Angelou, Hesse, Vonnegut, Tim Kreider, Castaneda, Hunter S., and Salinger get me excited to attempt beautiful phrasing. Pema Chodron and Tara Brach have me thinking and writing much about acceptance, healthy detachment, and resilience. Books on the writing craft motivate me to persevere, Steven King’s On Writing, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Hemingway’s On Writing. 

Then it’s just the stuff I’ve always loved. South Park, Aqua Teen, Chapelle, all things Eddie Murphy, Beavis and Butthead, Trailer Park Boys, Futurama, skate videos I grew up on. Cartoons and comedy. The art of skateboarding has so many parallels in terms of creative technicality and I try to work these less heady elements into my music. Eastern philosophy and judo inspires my mindset when I write.

Conversations with friends and family are always working their way in as well. Recently, I was talking to my homie Keith about our kids’ sleep difficulty and he said, “You have to pretend you’re 90 and on your deathbed and were given a time machine ride, but the ride only goes to this moment right now.”

15. Writers are often saddled with self-doubt. Do you struggle to like your own shit, or does it all sound dope to you?

Yes, saddled. It often sounds awful, and I worry about what other people think more than I should. Knowing I’m not alone in that, and acknowledging the variance of my reactions between listens, prevents it from hindering the process. The only solution is to push through and chip away until I can’t improve on it any further. Without the doubt, I may not have put in the hours to make music I can live with and be proud of sharing. 

Per the intro, I only started doing social media and connecting with folks online around 2021. I subscribed to the Rap Music Plug Podcast, joined Twitter and connected with some folks who give me frequent boosts, and I’d like to shout out to some of those MFs if it pleases the court: TreDoes, Rap Man Gavin, Dan-O, Levi, Rhino, Ayo Big Man, Mantis, nogod., Fick, Unsung, Bloodmoney Perez, Teddy Faley, Killvongard, Rohan, hbnd, Keith. 

All that said, doubt rises mostly when listening back. When the pen is hitting paper, there’s a core confidence I attribute to my teachers and homies in elementary and high school.  I could see their genuine shock that certain things came out of me. That feeling of being nice with it early on helps me never step lightly. Big thanks to my creative writing teacher Janet Somerville. I owe her a debt of gratitude. Please buy her books, hardcover.

16. Who’s a rapper you listen to with such a distinguishable style that you need to resist the urge to imitate them?

Such a good and difficult question. I have a few thoughts on this, so your patience is appreciated. 

In my early 20s it was One Be Lo and Deca. I was a sad sack because they were so close to the vision I had for my art, only years ahead. I avoided listening to them to avoid influence, because it was all so devastatingly impressive to me at that time. The feeling was, “This is so much better than I could ever be”–petty, arrogant, maybe true, but human. Over time I decided absorbing the influence, feeding off the inspiration, and creatively differentiating myself was more productive.

Further, Aesop Rock is to interesting rap word choice as The Simpsons is to sitcom plots. So many times I got smug about a unique word or play on a phrase and a week later bump Aes and realize it’s back to the drawing board. I Genius things sometimes to make sure I’m not getting too close to or bodied. 

Hemingway, problematic jackass though he was, said something like, "read everything so you know who you have to beat." Competitiveness has never helped me, but it’s good to know if your writing is as clever as you think it is, and what’s going to make eyes roll. Standards are elevating constantly, so I like to keep on top of it.

These days listening to unique folks is like watching a skate video before a session. You can’t duplicate Peter Smolik’s switch-back 5-0 at Hubba Hideaway, but it sure as hell makes you amped to skate, and you’ll dip into your own bag and shoot to evoke the same reaction. There’s power in that. 

Also, woods, SKECH185, E L U C I D, and Joe from Caltrops. If Joe rapped, we’d all be fucked. I listen to/read them lots, so the influence is ingrained. It’s not so much an urge to imitate, more to differentiate when it comes out unintentionally sounding like them.

17. Do you have an agenda as an artist? Are there overarching concerns you want to communicate to the listener?

My overarching goal is to create a catalog of records over many years that I’m proud of. Secondary to that, I’d like to build with more producers and MCs. Staying focused on creating a catalog anchors me so that external factors like recognition, promotion, media, don’t distract me from it. 

I’d like my joints to show how many sides there are to every story, the necessity of kindness and that harnessing it requires more power than its opposing force, that hurt people hurt people, and that we are accountable. I’d like to show my respects to the architects and trailblazers of the genre and be a part of the solution to the problem of white supremacy. I’d like to translate gorgeous narratives, devices, dialogues of other art forms into a rap format. I want every line to count and to show, not tell. I could be better at all of this, going back to the overarching goal: keep trying.

RAPS + CRAFTS is a series of questions posed to rappers about their craft and process. It is designed to give respect and credit to their engagement with the art of songwriting. The format is inspired, in part, by Rob McLennan’s 12 or 20 interview series.

Photo credit: Slumber Logic

[lockejhaven]

↪ WIP List Tag Game!

Rules: Post the titles of all saved WIP files, no matter how random or non-descriptive, and let your followers send you an ask with the title that intrigues them the most!  Share as much or as little as you want about the WIP in question and then tag a few writers to keep the game going!

Thank you to @purgatorydotexe for the tag! I'll also be tagging anyone who sees this, if you want to do it. You're welcome to mention me as well, but no pressure!

My folder is,,, quite a mess, so I'll be adding everything under the cut! (At this rate, I may just use this as a masterlist for my works in general, and later, link the pieces I've posted on tumblr...)

Brainstorms

Files: - Common Dialect - Fable (BS) - Hades - Illume's Apiary - Illumology - Lockehaven - Maji - Tropes/BS - Wolfies

Faded Figures

Poems for individual characters, each in a specified format

Eventually, will be used for character intros and mood boards.

Files: - Acelin - Bane - Dhares - Dresden - Maximillian

Fragility in Ruins

A private story I'm hosting with friends; I may or may not share snippets, depending on how they feel about that.

I can, however, share worldbuilding about it!

Poetry

Originally included Faded Figures, until that became its own collection.

Now, just a bunch of random poems.

Files: - Death's Remorse - Left - Past - Refusal - Ruin - They Told Us

Snippets

Exactly what it sounds like; standalone documents, scraps of writing, quotes, etc.

Often includes AUs and single scenes I came up with at 3am.

Sometimes I'll even write chapters and realize they could fit into specific WIPs later on!

2018: - An Idiotic Plan - An Exchange - Destruction or Control - The Bookshop - The Match - The Wikkir

2019: - Élan Vital - EoW - Abandoned - Alysdair Fremont's Journal - Aritihne - Hundreds of Years - Genesis

2020: - Spite - Alchios Wins AU - Knight // link - Short Story

2021: - Tallie/LJH

2022: - Ariuk - Horizon Ombre

Stories

Alchemist: A backburner WIP with half a page. MC is a side character from Arcane.

Arcane: One of the first WIPs I started on my own. Centers around a young mercenary/assassin whose world is turned upside down when the woman they love betrays them.

Encounters of the Primal Sort: A collection of short stories written in-universe by Krisdi Varalei. Each focuses on a different primordial or 'god' and the author's experiences of them.

Fable: Another in-universe collection. Centers on the 'truth' behind fairytales, aka twisted fairytales, written as journal entries by Myhren, or 'Merlin' as they are better known in our world.

A Ghost, a Quill, and a Mockingbird: My first short story WIP of 8 parts and 3,000 words. Also the first WIP I ever finished a first draft of. wip page // wip intro

The Minutemage Compendium: A browser-based RPG concept, currently on hold as I figure out everything else in my life. wip page

Wane of the Lunar Human: A floating idea of a WIP. Centers around a human destined to save the universe at the cost of his life.

[insomnnastudies]

things I learned in my five years of bullet journaling ✍🏻

April 2022 officially marks the fifth year of my bullet journaling journey! My spreads aren’t exactly stellar or aesthetic, but it’s been great looking back at the journals I’ve kept throughout the years. I fell into the rabbit hole of the study community in the fall of 2016, and got myself to finally start in April 2017. 

I unfortunately do not have a picture of all the journals I’ve used, and still have to pick and choose + blur out stuff from spreads I’ve taken pictures of, before sharing them on the internet (for privacy reasons of course) ☺️

In the meantime, I’ll be sharing some things I’ve learned throughout this journey!

Colour schemes!

Honestly, I’m quite awful with mixing and matching colour and would wear all monotone if not for my mom helping me out ;-; Having a theme palette, or an accent colour for the month usually helps to give some diversity to your journal! I’ve usually seen people align it with the seasons and events associated with the month, like the colour green for March (spring) or red for November (fall)

My theme for 2021 went like this: 

January (royal/cornflower blue)

February (gray)

March (purple)

April (yellow)

May (red)

June (brown)

July (turquoise)

August (pink)

September (green)

October (navy blue)

November (orange)

December (sky blue)

“Inspiration, not imitation”

Use posts and videos on social media platforms (e.g. tumblr, instagram, pinterest, youtube, etc.) as inspiration for your journal layouts, themes, and other tips. Take what you need—you don’t need to copy everything! You can incorporate other people’s style into your own journal and use it to come up with creative ideas of your own! This was one of the biggest mistakes I made when I was starting out. I tried to copy exactly what other people were doing, even to go as far as buying what they had to get the “same result”. I’ll elaborate on this further in the next point...

Do what works for you!

Do you create collages? Scrapbook? Do you love to sketch? paint? Write poetry? stories? songs? your travels? Keep track of your habits? movies/shows you’ve watched? books you’ve read? I’m fully aware I sound like a Spotify ad, but really, your journal can have it all! Like what I said in the previous point, I wasn’t making the bullet journal I was keeping my own. The art of journaling empowered me to unleash my creative freedom, but I failed to realize that until I started implementing things I loved. As @tbhstudying has repeatedly mentioned in her videos, a bullet journal is basically a “glorified to-do list”. 

My bullet journal is a planner, diary, scrapbook all in one! It contains tasks, important events, reminders, notes, entries, pictures, tickets, receipts, favourite songs, quotes, poems... you name it!

“My journal is my trusted best friend”

I’ve been able to build a relationship, so to speak, with my yearly journals. I get to spend 365/366 days with each one. Like a friend, my journal gets to know me, or rather that version of me for that year. Its blank pages provide a safe haven for me to express myself, my thoughts, and the words I can’t express to people at times. It shares my both my happy and sad memories. My journal even gets to know people in my laugh when I write about them and when I let others doodle/write in it! It also stores our precious memories in its back pocket, and seals its lips shut when I put the elastic back on.  Our journey together ends once the year is over. But just like an old friend who you may keep in touch with, my previous journals and I reconnect once again when I take it out of the stationery bin to open it up and read its pages. 

“Where do you get your stuff from?”

Journals: muji (spiral dot-grid a5 with the clear cover, no elastic; 15-month undated monthly/weekly journal) amazon (peter pauper black a5 essentials grid journal with back pocket)

Washi Tape: muji, staples, michaels, oomomo, walmart/canadian superstore (double-sided tape)

Supplies: 0.5 mechanical pencil, 0.38 & 0.5 muji gel pens, zebra mildliners, crayola supertips, pentel fude touch sign pen, tombow dual brush pen, watercolour pencils

Pictures: paint samples from the hardware store, cut-outs from magazines, travel brochures, etc.. I only print pictures when I really need to (I used to print every month, but I use so much coloured ink, it’s quite a waste)

Final Thoughts:

To the person reading this awfully long post, thank you so much for sticking around til the end. My sincere apologies for writing this essay ;-;

I hope I was able to inspire you to start your bullet journaling journey too, just as how many in the study community helped me. Let me know how it goes!

[aheavenlylake]

As a white person converting to Judaism, I love learning about my European heritage and culture as well as anything Jewish. Traditions are very comforting and important, and I thought it would be awesome to learn more about the different ways Judaism flourished in the countries my heritage can be traced back to - England, Ireland, Scotland, & Scandinavia. So here are some resources concerning Jewish culture & life in those areas!

Anglo-Jewish Culture and the Condition of England: The Poetry of Marion and Celia Moss - an essay/article about Romantic/post-Romantic era Jewish poetry and culture, specifically about the English-Jewish sisters Marion and Celia Moss. I have more information on these sisters at the bottom of this post under ‘Tales of Jewish History’.

Det Mosaiske Trossamfund - the Jewish community in Norway is ridiculously tiny and is centered in Oslo. This website focuses on that community and has a couple of links as well.

European Jewish Congress - they have little historical tidbits about Jews in Europe for pretty much every single country, plus news concerning Jews in both Europe and Israel.

Irish Jewish Genealogical Society - anyone who does have both Jewish and Irish ancestry should have a look at this website!

Irish Jewish Museum - a nice resource for basic information on Irish-Jewish history! Unfortunately, they’re currently closed due to COVID.

Jewish Culture and Literature in England - I think this pdf is an essay or an excerpt from an educational source.

JGuide Europe - this site is really similar to the European Jewish Congress, but is still an awesome resources with some really beautiful photos of European-Jewish culture!

Jewish Ireland - the website is currently (as of Jan. 19, 2021) under construction and you can’t access anything on it, but they do have contact information posted. Hopefully they’ll have everything updated soon! (I found the link to this website from a myjewishlearning article about Irish Jews.)

Jewish Museum London - dedicated to the history and culture of Jewish life in London. They’re also partnered with the Jewish Military Museum, which is focused on Jewish soldiers who fought for Britain in the past.

Jews and Judaism in Norway Today - apparently this essay was part of a “podium discussion on Judaism in Norway today held at the Jewish Museum in Oslo on 4 March 2018.”

Judiska Forsamlingen i Stockholm - the official website for the Jewish community in Stockholm, Sweden. Use google translate to navigate!

National Minorities in Sweden - this article has some very basic information about the Jews, Roma, Sami, Swedish Fins, and Tornedalers and their history in Sweden.

The Rediscovery of Jewish Ireland - an interesting essay about Jewish Ireland.

Scottish Council of Jewish Communities - their website is obviously mainly focused on outreach for Jewish communities in Scotland, but they also have some resources that talk about Scottish-Jewish culture and history. Their ‘Resources’ page has a bunch of downloadable pdfs that I would recommend looking at!

Shylock in Finland: the Jew in the literature of Finland, 1900-1970 - the title is pretty self-explanatory.

Singing in a Foreign Land: Anglo-Jewish Poetry, 1812-1847 - buying this book in ridiculously expensive, but I I really wanted to include it because of my personal love for poetry.

Sveriges Jiddischforbund - all about Yiddish speakers in Sweden! The website is solely in Swedish, but you can use google translate to translate it.

Tales of Jewish History - this isn’t specifically related to Anglo-Jewish culture, but was written by the English-Jewish sisters Marion and Celia Moss who were great-granddaughters of the founder of the Portsmouth Jewish community. Marion Moss was not only an author and poet, but the editor of the first Jewish women’s periodical ‘The Jewish Sabbath Journal’.

Thanks to Scandinavia - in their ‘About Us’ page, they say that the goal of the program is to “telling the inspiring story of how Scandinavians and Bulgarians protected thousands of their Jewish neighbors during the Holocaust years; granting educational opportunities to students in continued gratitude [through scholarships]; building relationships among Scandinavians, Bulgarians, Americans, and Jews worldwide that are vibrant today and into the future.”

If anyone happens to come across any other accessible resources, please let me know or reblog and add them yourself!

[covermeinclouds]

last days of 2021:

i've purchased more books than i could possibly keep. i don't have enough space in my room of my closet to keep any of them. but i like having them sort of messy every where even if it triggers the neurotic in me. it's nice seeing myself getting into something i know that will last

i'm so so so close to finishing gilmore girls and like i said before i know i'll feel extremely empty once it's over. i'm not even planning on watching the spin off right away.

already planned out my expense plan for next year. i'm deleting shopping apps and will be thrifting from now on unless it's something i know that will last with me

thinking of letting of pieces i have in my closet that i've had since i was a teenager. change isn't always bad. and i have to remind myself of that everyday because i'm a taurus

learning how to file leaves without feeling guilty. i'm getting there. i file a leave every month now.

finally finished reading Normal People and will now watch the series

started reading the sequel to aristotle and dante discover the secrets of the universe. i'm excited for it. i don't know why i held off on buying the 2nd book for months

got my last pay of the year and it wasn't as big as i expected so i probably won't be going out for awhile until spiderman: no way home hits theaters here

thinking of getting myself pesto pasta from starbucks today. it's become one of my favorites

kinda sad cause i really wanted to take myself out but it looks like i'm gonna hold off on that too

reread my journal since i'm so close to finishing and filling its pages. rereading journal entries and old poetry/prose feels like dipping into uncharted waters. sometimes, i don't remember the person i was when they were written entirely. i remember but i don't, if that makes sense. all the days bleed together now. i just remember major major events like how i applied for a new job then but i don't remember ever dreaming of anything peculiar during that time or having the worst case of intrusive thoughts

i'm good now.

[sydfigs]

We are banging on his wall again, and we are convincing harsh noises.

Light thoughts for the soul.

A rummage. A rummaging. No need for these aggressive rouses and mouses cluttering this kitchen. OH! The duration of escapism clutching the velvet curtain taking us all off our feet, an awesome flight, when the swift felt fabric climbs in the thin sky. A swallowing floorboards. A distance and a fateful fall. A million hateful pounds are a chorus at Mrs. door. And the grey young rodent scatters about the walls. What's with all this sound? This complete bouquet against your chest? Mrs. I miss you so dangerously I have come into the dark spots in my vision. Do you want to chase something to seem as though you are not running from [something]? And the feet you chase with are covered-crusted mud patches missing from the backyard; nowhere to be found. Except your expression knows if there is the lagoon below you. Release your grasp and create a SPLASH. This collapse is great, I sound my flute. If the flute places a warmth in your heart you should chase me. Unless you have died. A part of you shivers against the death of flesh. I call you to remember a gesture of the sun. A cold damo cave cannot dry you off. Do not discard ill voices, bury them in the dirt patch harmlessly. [scratched out- Unaware of matters and written language]

Waking up to the light.

[justforbooks]

Lawrence Ferlinghetti, poet, artist, activist and founder of San Francisco’s famous City Lights Bookstore, who has died aged 101 of interstitial lung disease, was the least “beat” of the Beat Generation. In addition to a political commitment that blended anarchism and ecology – he loathed the motor car, calling it “the infernal combustion engine” – he had an instinctive business sense, founded on the philosophy of small is beautiful. City Lights, which he started in partnership with the magazine editor Peter Martin in the early 1950s, is still among the most welcoming of shops, with its tables and chairs, sheaves of magazines, and signs saying: “Pick a book, sit down, and read.”

Ferlinghetti discouraged interviewers and seekers of personal information. “If I had some biographical questionnaire to answer, I would always make something up,” he once said. Different reference books give different dates of birth, and one published story had it that he wrote his doctoral dissertation on the place of the pissoir in French literature. For many years, he listed his dog, Homer, as City Lights’ publicity and public relations officer. The poet recalled that Homer Ferlinghetti received regular mail, but that his public relations career stalled when he peed against a policeman’s leg. For this act of citizenship, he was immortalised by his master in the poem Dog.

Perhaps the facts made Ferlinghetti uncomfortable. He was born Lawrence Monsanto Ferling in Yonkers, New York, to a French mother, Albertine Mendes-Monsanto, and an Italian father, Carlo Ferlinghetti, an auctioneer, who had shortened the family name to Ferling. His parents were unable to care for him, however (sometimes Ferlinghetti said his father had died before his birth, sometimes after), and he was rescued by an aunt, Emily Monsanto. She took him to France, where they lived for his first six years. Returning to the US, Emily was employed as a governess by a family called Lawrence, a branch of the one that founded Sarah Lawrence College. “Then she left me there,” Ferlinghetti told an interviewer in 1978. “She just disappeared one day, and that family brought me up.”

His education was extensive. In the early 1940s, he attended the University of North Carolina, where a professor introduced him to the vernacular voice in poetry. This was a revelation: you didn’t have to sound like TS Eliot to write a poem. After wartime naval service had taken him back to Europe, Ferlinghetti enrolled at the Sorbonne, studying French literature while translating poets and novelists in his spare time. One day in a restaurant, he noticed that the paper tablecloth had a poem written on it, and that it was signed “Jacques Prévert”. He took the tablecloth with him as he left the restaurant, and some years later translated the poems in Prévert’s Paroles, eventually published, under the original title, by his own City Lights Books.

Back in New York again in 1946, Ferlinghetti went to Columbia University, preparing a thesis on Ruskin and Turner. He just missed meeting Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, who by then had either been banned from (Ginsberg) or had dropped out of (Kerouac) the university. Ferlinghetti did not team up with the Beats until eight years later, in San Francisco.

Drawn to Paris once more at the end of the 1940s, he met George Whitman, proprietor of the English-language bookshop opposite Notre Dame, which was first known as Le Mistral and is now Shakespeare and Company. Ferlinghetti looked to Whitman as an example when he opened City Lights Bookstore in 1953. It was the first all-paperback bookshop in the US, and, as Ferlinghetti said, “Once we opened, we just couldn’t get the doors closed.” He ran the place more in the spirit of public service than for profit, and by the 70s was content to live on his book royalties and plough the takings at the counter back into the shop.

Two years after starting City Lights, Ferlinghetti published his own collection of poems, Pictures of the Gone World, as No 1 in the Pocket Poets series, little four by five-inch, black-and-white paperbacks, which continue to appear today – one of the most popular literary lists of modern times. It was at this stage that he reverted to the original family name, Ferlinghetti. The next two Pocket Poets after Ferlinghetti were Kenneth Rexroth and Kenneth Patchen – as a result, both were drafted as “fathers of the Beat Generation”, somewhat to their displeasure – but it was the fourth in the series that ensured the list’s success. And for that, as Ferlinghetti was quick to point out, they had to thank the San Francisco police department.

The book was Howl and Other Poems, by Allen Ginsberg. Ferlinghetti had heard Ginsberg read the title poem at an event at the Six Gallery, San Francisco, in October 1955. On returning home, he sent the poet a message that consciously echoed the famous letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson to Walt Whitman after Emerson had read Whitman’s Leaves of Grass: “I greet you at the beginning of a great career.” The proprietor of City Lights added: “When do I get the manuscript?”

The book was published the following year, in an edition of 1,000 copies. However, after a failed attempt by the police to prosecute the bookseller for peddling obscene material, the reprints could not come fast enough. Ferlinghetti joked that the police “took over the advertising account and did a much better job”. Howl remains the bedrock of City Lights’ success as a publishing concern. It has now gone through well over 50 reprints, often more than one a year.

Ferlinghetti’s own poetry is irreverent, cajoling, casual and loose-limbed, sometimes excessively so. His models were Whitman and William Carlos Williams. In partnership with Rexroth, he took part in many poetry and jazz events on the West Coast, and the two made a record together. Ferlinghetti later became disillusioned with the poetry and jazz combination – “The poet ended up sounding like he was hawking fish from a street corner,” he said.

His verse on the page, though, suggests a spoken origin, as in his poem Underwear:

Underwear controls everything in the end Take foundation garments for instance They are really fascist forms of underground government ….

In addition to his many collections of verse, including A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), The Secret Meaning of Things (1969) and Endless Life (1981), Ferlinghetti wrote two novels: Love in the Days of Rage (1988), which is set during the student revolt of 1968 in Paris, and Her (1960), a more experimental work, a classic “poet’s novel”.

On one of his transatlantic voyages, Ferlinghetti met Selden Kirby-Smith (known as Kirby), whom he had had a passing acquaintance with at Columbia. They married in 1951 and had two children, Julie and Lorenzo, but were divorced in 1976.

In 1971, Nancy Peters, a former librarian at the Library of Congress, joined the company, and as time went on played a larger part in running the business, leaving Ferlinghetti to his creative work. She served as executive director from 1984 until 2007, and then continued to be involved as a co-owner of the business.

Ferlinghetti also had a serious interest in painting, and in 1990 the University of California mounted a retrospective. Many poems feature the names of painters, or employ a self-consciously “painterly” style, such as Short Story in a Painting of Gustav Klimt or Returning to Paris with Pissarro.

Ferlinghetti disliked being associated with the Beats, though he benefited from it, and, despite his love of Ginsberg, was apt to lament the commercialisation of the Beat Generation. Ginsberg, he said, “fabricated the whole thing out of his imagination”. But, happily contradicting himself, he could add, as late as 1996, “It’s still the only rebellion around.”

A collection of the correspondence between Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg was published in 2015, under the title I Greet You at the Beginning of a Great Career. At the same time, a selection of his travel journals appeared, Writing Across Landscapes.

Ferlinghetti expressed disappointment in other Beat writers for their unstructured approach to politics. He decided to travel to Cuba to see the Castro regime for himself and later wrote One Thousand Words for Fidel Castro, which ends, “Fidel … I give you my sprig of laurel.” Another political poem evoked a surrealistic scene by Goya, showing “freeways 50 lanes wide”, with “fewer tumbrils / but more maimed citizens / in painted cars”. In 2012 he declined to accept an award from the Hungarian Pen club, in protest at the policies of prime minister Viktor Orbán.

City Lights, open till midnight seven days a week, was Ferlinghetti’s way of infusing the spirit of resistance peacefully into the streets of San Francisco.

With Peters, he wrote a Literary Guide to San Francisco (1980), and in 1988 was responsible for the renaming of 10 streets after writers associated with the city, including Jack Kerouac Alley, partly composed of City Lights’ back wall. In 1994, he himself was similarly honoured by Via Ferlinghetti, the first time a street has been named after a living writer in the history of the city.

He is survived by his children and three grandchildren.

• Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti, poet, artist and bookseller, born 24 March 1919; died 22 February 2021

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[finishinglinepress]

FLP POETRY BOOK OF THE DAY: Fourth World Woman by Lara Gularte

TO ORDER GO TO: https://www.finishinglinepress.com/product/fourth-world-woman-by-lara-gularte/ RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY

Lara Gularte lives and writes in the Sierra Foothills of California. She is El Dorado County Poet Laureate 2021-2023. Her book of poetry, Kissing the Bee, was published by “The Bitter Oleander Press,” in 2018. Nominated for several Pushcart Prizes, Gularte has been published in national and international journals and anthologies. Her poetry depicting her Azorean heritage is included in the The Gávea-Brown Book of Portuguese-American Poetry, and in Writers of the Portuguese Diaspora in the United States and Canada. She is affiliated with the Cagarro Colloquium: Azorian Diaspora Writers, at the Portuguese Beyond Borders Institute (PBBI), California State University-Fresno. In 2017 Gularte traveled to Cuba with a delegation of American poets and presented her poetry at the Festival Internacional de Poesia de la Habana. She’s a proud member of the esteemed, “Escritores Del Nuevo Sol.” Gularte is a creative writing instructor for California Transformative Arts at Mule Creek prison.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR Fourth World Woman by Lara Gularte

Gularte’s identification with herself through the natural world and through the lives of others with whom she feels more than just symbolic empathy, provides us with something unique to the usual landscape that poetry’s created in our late 20th and early 21st century: passion. Engaged to the particular, Gularte brings us closer to a world we all rarely have time to visit and she accomplishes this not with elaborate description or pretention of any kind, but with an immediacy that reveals something heretofore unseen or unheard. You don’t stand still in these poems nor does their steady pace hurry you in any way. Each word matters and, without getting in their way, they allow us the opportunity to experience what we never knew was there.

–Paul B. Roth, The Bitter Oleander Press

Plant, wildlife and human converge into one unified voice of nature and spirituality in Lara Gularte’s Fourth World Woman. The poet easily travels between dimensions and species, as ancestors drift through the pages. She manages to write from several layers at once, combing the depths of imagination while describing sensitive emotions involved in a mastectomy. She waits for the test to come back negative/while death leans into the side of the house…. Her face at the open pane, half here and half there –/where her mother ghosts among the trees. Readers will find themselves entranced and unable to resist following Gularte to glimpse heaven and the afterlife when, the moon throws a rope down for her to climb.

–Patty Dickson Pieczka, Beyond the Moon’s White Claw

Lara Gularte‘s Fourth World Woman is both a wild read and a surrealistic delight. Inhabited by creatures from the natural and geophysical worlds—doves, a giant fish shape, wolves, even the moon and clouds—the poems surprise with some deft shape-shifting: a dead dove comes alive, a “brown bear bellows/from the voice of an old woman,” and clouds are transformed into “a sky of old shoes.” But there’s a purpose to the flash and sleight of hand. Whether the startling poetic landscape is navigated by an unnamed “she” or by a first-person narrator, Gularte takes on issues like border crossings, family separation, the pandemic, the 2018 Camp Fire in California, and, ultimately, mortality. As she writes in “Leaves,” “the distance between now/and my future shortens . . .” The most personal poems in this collection—”The Close Sky,” “Transcending My Daylight Body,” and “Beauty”—are probably the strongest. You will be deeply moved by this book.

–Nancy Vieira Couto, Carlisle & the Common Accident

Please share/please repost [PROMO]#flpauthor #preorder #AwesomeCoverArt #poetry

[aloisofmissouri]

A Journal Entry

July 20th, 2021

11:44pm

Trigger Warning:

 Sexual Assault, Self Harm,Mental Health, physical health, and occasional swears.

Dear Reader,

I’m only eighteen but I have experienced a lot, and so have many other teens I know. I know at least four of my classmates have been raped at some point in their life. And who knows what others may have been through and I never knew. 

But I’m not writing to share their story, unless they decide that they want their story told. As of now, I am writing to share my story. 

So, let's start with my earliest memory.

My earliest memory is watching Elmo and Little Bear from my crib in the living room when I was probably a toddler. I don’t remember much, other than enjoying the cartoons. It was happy and innocent. One of the few childhood memories I can look back on and smile. 

I was really young when I was first raped. First raped, you caught that part, right? Yeah, I wasn’t raped just once, but multiple times by one man. The man I had grown up calling my father. The man on my birth certificate. I’m not exactly how old I was when it started, but if I had to guess, I was probably in the first or  second grade when it went past the occasional groping and lewd comments. 

Near the end of third grade, my mother decided to take me and my sibling to live with our grandmother. But that didn’t last long.

We ended up moving back in with our mother and abusive father when I was in fifth grade. I didn’t want to but my father manipulated me into doing so. He threatened to place a restraining order on my grandmother when I wanted to stay with her. 

Things were miserable and the abuse continued. But luckily I was able to go back to my grandmother by sixth grade. But I still had to deal with what happened.

I believe my grandmother meant well, but she use to tell me not to let people know what had happened to me. She said that no one would want to be with someone who was raped because a lot of people view them as used or damaged goods basically. 

My grandmother was a bit emotionally damaging, though I know she more than likely didn’t know that she was being so. I have reason to believe that she has dementia and possibly a personality disorder. 

I remember her saying that I shouldn’t wear plaid or spotted clothing because it would make me look bigger than the broad side of a barn. She also told me to stay away from bright colors because they would have the same effect. I refused to stay away from plaid though, I kept that jacket from middle school until junior year when I could no longer zip it. But it took me a long time to wear bright colors, and it is still hard. I also have a hard time feeling comfortable in my own skin, and not just because of the occasional comment about my weight from my grandmother, but also because of the abuse I had dealt with from my father. I spent the majority of school always wearing jeans, jackets, and dark clothing. I didn’t feel comfortable wearing shorts. And I’m still getting used to wearing them. 

I had to go to court in middle school. Someone had apparently turned my father in for what he had done to me (I was living with my grandmother again by then) and we still do not know who reported them. I wish I could thank whoever turned him in. 

Sadly, they only gave him three years despite the evidence. And he was only going to have to serve one and a half years because of the amount of time spent in a jail cell waiting for court that kept getting rescheduled. He died of stage four lung cancer though before he was half way through his time.

My freshman year I finally realised I had anxiety and that there was something definitely wrong with me mentally. By my sophomore year, I was self harming and in counselling and diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder, PTSD, OCD, and Anxiety. By junior year I was on a lot of medication thanks to a pill happy psychiatrist. And I was miserable. But thankfully, I found a new psychiatrist who quickly helped me get cut down to just one pill. Near the end of junior year, I quit self harming. And I also finally started to get a bit of control over my mania and my depression.

I have a Google Doc somewhere that has over 150 pages of poetry, and the majority of it is about depression, trauma, and anger. And they were all written during middle school and highschool. Writing poetry helped me then. Now, I don’t really write poetry anymore. I have only written a handful of poems within the last year. And they were mostly in Shakespearean English because I thought it would be fun.

I believe I might have religious anxiety. I don’t remember the technical term though. I grew up going to Baptist Churches and had a heavy christian influence. But sadly, Christians aren’t quite as christian as they are supposed to be. 

Due to being constantly worried about sinning and about being too filthy and being damned to hell, my depression and anxiety got to me from a different angle. I kept breaking up with everyone I dated if I feared we were getting too close. I would either feel like I wasn’t good enough or I would fear that we would have sex and I would be damned. I also hated myself for my sexuality, though it took me a long time to figure that out. I supported my LGBTA+ friends but when it came to myself, I couldn’t accept myself. 

When I self harmed, I would do it because I felt filthy and had this urge to scratch my skin off my body because I never felt clean. I never hurt myself too severely, just scratches and shallow cuts on my wrist and my thigh. But I still found it hard to quit. It became far too easy to always turn to the blade, regardless of if I was feeling filthy or if I was dissociating or if I was having a panic attack. 

Despite what had happened to me, I’m finally starting to become me. Even though I am still discovering who I am. I quite self harming, I don’t have quite as many panic attacks or nightmares, I lost my virginity, learned I am demisexual (leaning a bit towards asexuality though) Panromantic and Nonbinary. I also discovered I have some other health issues outside of my mental health. I am apparently allergic to alphagall, peanuts, and wheat. Thankfully I just get slightly sick if I eat those things though, but it is still a bit annoying when those things are basically in everything you like to eat. 

I also found out that the reason my menstrual cycle has always been so irregular is because I have cysts. Originally I thought I had PCOS but now after some ultrasounds, it is looking like Endometriosis. I have cysts on my uterus and my ovaries. The doctor told me that my insurance should cover the surgery if I were to get a total hysterectomy. 

I never really wanted to give birth so that part of this doesn’t bother me, my fear is that there will be issues from the surgery. And it has also spurred some identity issues. But so far, I am sticking to they/them pronouns. Even though my family still calls me she/her. But I haven’t really come out to them. They know I’m not 100% straight, but who wants to sit down and explain to their grandmother (who dropped out of school in eight grade to care for her grandma, has a flip phone, and just a few years ago decided to accept the lgbt+ part of her family) that I’m nonbinary? I barely manage to explain to my mother (highschool dropout because of pregnancy, has a touch screen phone and understand some things of the current century) that there is more than just straight, gay, and bisexual. I explained to my mother the other day what omnigender and nonbinary is. Had to explain transgender to my mother when I was a junior and introduced her to a friend of mine who was afab but went by he/him pronouns. 

I suppose that despite all the shit I’ve been through, at least my mother doesn’t give two flying fucks who I like. When I told her that I thought I was pansexual in middle school, all she did was ask me what that meant. Then she just nodded her head and went with it. Same thing when I decided I was Wiccan in middle school. She even bought me a pentacle necklace and every book (mostly fantasy) that mentioned witches. I no longer identify as Wiccan, I mostly just stick to animist. But my point being, my mother didn’t throw a fit when two of her nine kids came out as gay. Even if she does identify as a Saturday Adventist, she supports us. She even listens to me ramble about mistranslated things in the Bible and my views on theology. And my rants about Supernatural. Though she did laugh when I spent about an hour crying after the Supernatural second to last episode of season 15. She did listen to me rant about Castiel and the plot lines and everything. Though I had to keep explaining some of the characters to her. 

Despite the things I’ve been through, I managed to graduate high school, survive my severe depression and anxiety, and now I am thinking about possibly applying for Law school and going to college. And I now also have the confidence to do what I want and wear what I want. Though I still feel all nervous about asking out a girl I’ve been friends with for about three or more years. I’ve now made the excuse to wait and see if she mentions not being completely straight. Oh, and she now has a boyfriend too so yeah, gonna have to wait a bit.

Until next time,

Alois 🐧

[firewoodfigs]

(long post, but I’m gonna try and make journalling a thing in 2021 😆)

The first day of the new year was nice. :) I woke up to the sounds of rain crashing against my windowsills - a strangely chilly morning in this tropical country where it’s summer all year round. For a moment it felt like I was back in Canada again, all cloudy grey skies and whimsical rain - the perfect weather for introspection. 

I started my day with a pot of hot green tea, then settled down by my reading lamp to finish a book that I’ve been putting off for far too long - Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I only had about forty pages left, but somehow couldn’t bring myself to finish it. I hate when books end because it feels like that little world I’ve created and compartmentalised in my head has likewise ceased, but the good thing about books is that you can always re-read them and immerse yourself in the same fantasy. (Maybe even a different one, if the same words lend themselves to a different interpretation!) But it truly was an absolute masterpiece: such a stunning, intricate exploration of humanity that tugged at my heartstrings and led me into still waters of reflection. I know that I will definitely carry this tale in my heart for a long, long time to come. 

Afterwards, I had some instant ramen while watching The Queen’s Gambit. I’m not a big fan of watching shows usually because I often feel like they move too slowly or tend to miss details from the book, but this one is pretty exceptional. Like, the acting and the artistic direction are incredible - the constant juxtaposition between Beth’s traumatic past and her glorified present, and the exploration of the fallibility of genius were executed so brilliantly. Another thing that really stood out to me were the scenes where she’d hole herself in the toilet and rebuke herself aloud for weaknesses in her play and/or being weak, in general. I cannot begin to explain how many times I’ve done that to myself in law school for even the most trivial of infractions, the most minor of errors - Lord knows I’m my harshest critic. 

I promised to try, however, to be a little bit kinder to myself in 2021. My perfectionism tends to be a bar to goodness and growth because sometimes I get so afraid that my subconscious keeps demanding that my first draft has to be perfect. But it really doesn’t. That’s what editing is for. And writing, like any other talents and passions, requires nurturing and constant practice. I saw a quote yesterday about how we cannot just sit around and magically expect to be Faulkners overnight, and that is so true. I definitely need to find a sweet spot where I’m not berating myself to the point of giving up, but still demand growth so that I can keep bettering myself. 

In the evening I headed out to a friend’s for tacos, which were an absolute delight in itself. And then my bf and I got to walk his dog, who I am convinced is the most precious thing in the entire universe - maybe even more so than my bf himself (I kid... or maybe not) - and who is just such a gentle-natured darling. It began to drizzle, so she led us home and we spent the rest of the night playing Sherlock and Among Us with the rest. :) It was a very peaceful evening. For a moment I’d forgotten all about the fact that I start work next Monday and was simply content to bask in the Christmas lights, the heavy downpour and the anomalous chill that came along with it. Just... living in the present, enjoying the moment. 

Now that’s definitely something else on my to-do list for 2020 as well. So often the beauty of the present tends to be marred by my worries and anxieties of the future, but I always remind myself of this quote from Scripture: “Which one of you, by worrying, can add another day to his life?” And when I look back at my life and all the times I’ve worried and fretted and cried, feeling like there was no way for us to extricate ourselves from this rut, this perennial cycle of debt and other things that have plagued me from birth, I am also reminded of God’s grace and providence that has brought me through so, so much. It would’ve been impossible to have done all of this by myself; I frankly might not have had the will to continue living if not for those things. 

Talking about my lived experiences also ties in to the last part of my day - where I thought about how exclusive and inaccessible the poetry scene here feels. You would think otherwise, in a country of no more than 5-6 million folks, but no. I was ranting about this a little to my boyfriend: how it feels like a lot of the spaces within are reserved for the elites of society with silver spoons in their mouths and golden plates on their tables offering them anything they wanted while I was struggling to put food on the table at fourteen. Sometimes I also lament the fact that I didn’t have my parents to tell me bedtime stories, to encourage me to read and cultivate my vocabulary. Perhaps it’s jealousy, or inferiority, or a mix of both. 

But my boyfriend, ever wise and supportive, offered me a different perspective. He made a fair point about how I still fell in love with books and writing regardless, and how literature is oftentimes only a harbour that the privileged visit because the marginalised, the poor are too busy working for basic necessities to even think about such things. To the ordinary blue-collar layperson, poetry is just frankly a frivolous sentiment that won’t turn itself into gold. I agree with this wholeheartedly. It’s one of the reasons why I always felt like I didn’t have time to write, and one of the reasons why my first job was at a library (so I could read as much as I wanted! For free!). Then he said, “But see, no one wants to read about the rich waxing poetic about how lovely and grand their sunny little island is. But people will want to read about your perspective - your poems of the brokenhearted clinging on desperately to their inner child, your poems about the poor working to make ends’ meet, your poems about your tangible struggles - all of those will resonate with the masses, for sure.” And I was like, well, that’s fair. But I certainly don’t express myself as eloquently as these people do. Next to them I’m like an uncultured swine who can’t even tell the difference between all the different forks splayed on the table. 

His response was that people need to understand these things before appreciating them, and sometimes simplicity works best - a lesson that’s been drilled into us from the very inception of law school. And I was like, okay, fair, but deep down my heart was exploding with the sheer warmth of having someone so incredibly supportive of everything I do, even if it’s worthless in society’s eyes. I remember one night when I was telling him about how, as a twelve-year-old, I had a dream to one day study Literature at Yale. I would hole myself up in the library after school, feverishly flipping through books to expand my imaginations and horizons, my mental dictionary of words, dreaming about the day where I could escape all of this and dwell in nothing but imaginative worlds one day. Where reality failed me, I knew that I could always count on my imagination to transport me to somewhere safe and special, filled with joy and sorrow and tragedy and hope. 

I ended up studying law. Not a bad thing, because as stressful as it was I really did enjoy the things I’ve learnt - international and constitutional law, especially - and it has certainly given me new, mature perspectives on so many things; taught me to argue with reason and objectivity instead of just emotion and passion and has led me to meet so many wonderful (also trashy, but I’m out of this hellhole) people. I just don’t like the fact that 80-hour work weeks are the norm and that there’s always so much to... read. If you gave me a piece of fiction I could happily indulge in it for hours, but sometimes judgments can be so ridiculously mundane to read, especially if they’re just itemising every single case on illegality from the 19th century. Lord knows I need at least two cups of coffee for that. Black, to be specific. 

Anyway, I digress (as I always do lmao). My bf ended up researching all night until he stumbled across this Literature programme at Harvard - which frankly sounds amazing, but also unattainable. Which was what I said. And he was like, “Do I think it’s impossible? No. I think you have a very compelling life story, and you’re full of amazing stories within you to tell. And if you want to do it, I will support you wholeheartedly.” 

Again, as is usually the case, I had nothing left to offer apart from muted sobs under my blanket. It still sounds absurd to me - unthinkable, even - but I am just so, so grateful to have someone like him support me through everything. Literally everything. This is the man who has spent hours tutoring me in the subjects that I was hopeless in in first year, because I was too busy tutoring random folks in economics and geography and catching up on sleep (in class, no less), who has patiently helped me prepare for every single mooting competition and watched every single one of them, who has seen me cry and admonish myself for being a failure (only to spend hours trying to convince me otherwise), who has celebrated every single one of my victories and losses - you deserve a treat, anyway! Let’s go eat something nice and put it behind us, for now! This is the same man who has so much passion for what he does, who is so darn good at it without even realising that he is (I wept when he won a mooting competition this year because I was so proud of and happy for him), and who inspires confidence and compassion in me every day. 

I am grateful to share all our triumphs and tribulations together, and I look forward to starting a new chapter in life with you. :) 

[sing-selah]

Selah.

If you read through the Psalms of the Bible, you’ll find this word regularly.

History has lost the true definition of the word, but it’s thought to express the sentiment of “forever”, or perhaps it means “to take a break.” One online dictionary indicates that it may indicate a pause for contemplation.

2020 was a year for Selah.

Everyone took a break, and it felt like it was going to last forever.

The whole world was forced to take a step back and evaluate operations, contemplate the nature of how we live. For many, the chaos and stress were too much to process. Mental health assistance was hot in demand, and so were yoga mats. I, myself, also attended therapy and bought a hot pink foam mat. We were all looking for comfort and means to cope in the chaos.

I lost 20 pounds and gained 80 with the new addition of my dog-son Samson. (He’s a Great Pyrenees, a massive fluff.) I know I’m quite blessed to be able to say I gained good things during the pandemic, when so many suffered unimaginable loss.

When the New Year approached, we all awaited with bated breath.

Would 2021 be a better year for us?

This year was the first New Year’s Eve I have ever spent alone. I thought this would sadden me, but as I sat on my bed sipping wine and watching Samson gobble down his celebratory ice cream, I was surprised at the peace I felt.

I had achieved more than I thought myself capable with losing that 20 pounds; making small but consistent changes in my daily diet and habits. As I reflected on this, I decided to make 2021 a year for even more growth!

I took to Amazon, searching for a goal-oriented planner. I knew I needed something more than years past, where I would make a list of what I wanted and promptly forget where it was placed (also forgetting the declarations therein).

I decided on a sunshine-yellow beauty by BoxcleverPress that broke the year into quarters and had sufficient room to document my goals and plan for success. This lovely agenda contained pages for 8 goals, with space to document what the goal would mean for me and keep track via quarterly check-ins. The blank pages in the back were perfect for brainstorming, and I made good use of it. I also asked friends on social media what their most rewarding resolutions had been and used that as fuel for thought.

Of the MANY ideas I had, I settled on the following:

1. Lose 60 pounds

· Being the shortie that I am, charts for my height indicates a “healthy” weight for me is 140 pounds. I haven’t been 140 lbs since I was 16 years old, and honestly I was probably being optimistic on my driver’s license even then…

· For those that hate the maths, this is only 5 pounds a month. This felt semi-do-able for me. I figured if I missed it, better to aim high (or low, as it were).

2. Create more, enjoying hobbies

· 1 piece of art

· 1 poem or song

· 1 playlist (I planned to make playlists for those I love, so this also seemed like a good relationship builder.)

· 1 journal entry per month

3. Read 1 book per month

· In my ambition, I thought it would be beneficial to pick a different category every month. I chose English lit, health/wellness, non-fiction, poetry, fiction, historical, International classic, self-help, biography, science focused, math focused, spiritual/faith. These distinctions were quickly thrown out of the window, as I already own a lot of books that needed to be read. And as all lit nerds know… I continue to acquire more! I’ve just been selecting the one I was most excited to read every month.

4. Better manage my finances.

· Save $1000 by the end of the year

· Eliminate my credit card debt

· Spend $120 on groceries per month

· Cut unnecessary spending (Read: regular online shopping for undies and makeup. I also found it helpful to take a break from social media, as this is where I was constantly being advertised to by my favorite brands.)

5. Explore areas of curiosity

· 1 focus per quarter

· I wasn’t sure what this would look like, I just wanted to focus on learning more about areas of interest, like fashion and nutrition.

6. Complete 1 home improvement project per quarter

· I had plenty to work with here. Fixing the kitchen light, garage door, garage light, painting front porch, painting back porch, painting the exterior, painting my bathroom, cleaning out the overgrown backyard…

7. Grow my abilities in the kitchen!

· 1 new savory (preferably International) dish per month

· 1 new baked good per month

· Note: Originally, I said 1 new recipe a week. This did not happen. I adjusted.

8. Be more intentional in my spirituality

· Keep the Sabbath regularly

· Fast once a quarter

Phew.

That was a lot to outline! It seemed a little (a lot) ambitious, but I felt it would be better to set the bar high for myself. I wasn’t sure if I could manage all of that, but monthly self-check-ins were a helpful tool in seeing growth. Perfect, I am not. I’ve yet to meet all of those goals; but seeing even some achievement is a constant encouragement.

As the adage proclaims, change doesn’t happen overnight!

So why share now?

First, journaling once a month is part of the goals!

Secondly, I’m hoping a shared blog will hold me more accountable, and maybe I’ll even get some helpful tips from others as I work towards my goals.

Third, I believe any achievement is a result of hard work and blessings from God. I think it’s only right to share that light with others. I hope my journey can be encouraging, or at least entertaining, for my friends and family.

I’ll be sharing a blog post at least once a month, maybe more if I’m feeling feisty. I’ll be posting to tumblr under the username sing-selah and sharing on my social media.

I'll end my post by asking you to implement a little Selah (pause to contemplate) in your life.

[portfoliostudio-chantellecalitz]

Blog Post #7: Case Study Refined [in progress]

Portal magazine

I was the graphic designer for Portal, the literary magazine for Vancouver Island University for three years. Portal is nationally distributed to newsstands across Canada through Magazines Canada and is also sold locally in the university’s bookstore. I work with the Portal team, the Creative Writing and Journalism third and fourth-year students. All VIU students are encouraged to submit their fiction, non-fiction, poetry, scripts, photography, paintings or illustrations. The student magazine department then decide which pieces will make it into the issue, and I design the magazines’ layout, fliers for their fundraising events, ads for ad swaps with other literary magazines, programs and tickets. 

I started designing Portal in my second year at VIU, studying graphic design. Being the only designer meant that I was given responsibilities that a lot of junior designers wouldn’t have been able to have yet. It also required that I design 90 pages in two weeks time. This position gave me the opportunity to become more confident using Adobe software and I got more experience designing layouts. It is a unique experience working on this magazine every year. The 2021 issue was Portal’s 30th anniversary issue. To celebrate this milestone, Portal added 3 more articles which made this issue the largest Portal magazine to date. Portal is also one of just a few literary magazines in the area that print in colour, and we took full advantage of that by showing vibrant colours throughout the magazine through the artwork and color coded genres. For example, fiction is orange, scripts are green, non fiction is blue, and poetry is purple. In the past, interviews have also been placed in the non-fiction category, but since the 2021 issue had three additional interviews, I created a category specifically for these articles called Features which was red. These colours would be present in the drop cap, pull quotes, page number and title. Being able to design three Portal issues allowed me to improve on my previous designs every year. Before I designed a new issue I would try to find new ways to create interesting shapes or interactions between the text and imagery that suited the tone of the written piece.

Portfolio Reading Series

The Portfolio reading series is a series of events held throughout the year where Portal invites authors to speak and read from their books. I was tasked with designing a logo for this series and a poster series that’ll be used to advertise each event.

Logo Design

I used elements from the Portal logo for recognizability. It was named Portfolio to associate it with Portal as well as the Portent Prize, also part of Portal. Portal uses their parenthesis icon throughout their collateral. The parenthesis changes colour based on the images it’s paired with. The publisher wanted to include a microphone since this is a series where authors and students do readings.

Poster Series Throughout the Years

3 different designs for each year

2019. The readings were held in The White Room in Nanaimo. The poster alludes to the interior of The White Room by using a recognizable light fixture in the posters as a background. The design stayed consistent through the year, and I switched out the book cover and author images throughout the series.

2020. The location changed; it was now being held at The White Rabbit cafe. Again, I made the poster design resemble the interior of the cafe: white walls, art hanging, sandwich board outside advertising their specials. I placed author’s image and the book cover in the frames and the event’s information on the sandwich board. This was an improvement from the previous year’s design, because I overlapped the sandwich board with the frames to create one focal point (instead of three different elements) and kept lots of whitespace in this poster  to create balance.

2021. The series moved online due to covid. Now that these readings were posted on Youtube, the publisher wanted to include movie themes like the clapboard and the film strip. Like the frames from the previous year, I used the film strip to contain the author’s image and the book cover. I used colours from both images to create the gradient.

Portal Fundraising Events Posters

I see every thing I design as an opportunity to improve. Looking through the posters that I’ve designed over the last three years, I see improvement in the way the posters communicate. The posters now have one focal point with an established hierarchy.