whiterosebrian

[whiterosebrian]

If you've followed me for a while, you may recall that the plush penguin I've staged photographs with is a representation of my original character Arturo Reyes Pingüino. I thought you might like to see him going to see the new Superman. However, because I don't know if I'll get to write and publish fiction, I don't know if I'll keep showing off fictional characters. At a time like this, I don't even know if It's good for me to share such totally light-hearted posts.

I may be going deeper onto a calling of magical practice and pagan priesthood. If I do post photographs in the future, it would more likely based on that, as opposed to works of fiction that may not even happen. We'll see what I do with my social media pages.

[whiterosebrian]

For the new edition of Dungeons and Dragons, I earlier thought of making a character based directly on Skadi, a goddess whom I look up to as a Heathen and magical practitioner. However, I later decided to make a different character based on the same general concept of a frost giant. Thus, I made a goliath barbarian with a few extra snowstorm-themed powers. I still have yet to figure out his basic backstory and personality. Naturally, I made a colored-pencil drawing to show off at the games shop as well. What do you think?

[whiterosebrian]

I used to be an avid player of vanilla fifth edition Dungeons and Dragons. For multiple reasons, I quit and sold my supplies. However, now I'm planning on going back to playing in public organized sessions with the new edition. I could benefit to get out of the condo and socialize over a game, though I'll have to learn to not get so frustrated with the RNG. I could also benefit from taking on the role of heroes powered by the mystic essence of nature--druids, rangers, and barbarians--given the type of person I wish to be, which should be apparent if you're familiar with my profiles.

I decided that I'll remake a forest gnome ranger. I plan on voicing him with an impression of Rodney Dangerfield. Thus, I worked on a brand new colored-pencil drawing to show off at the games shop where I'd be playing. You might see more new drawings of nature-powered heroes in Dungeons and Dragons in the near future, so stay tuned.

[whiterosebrian]

Life at Fort Harrison

It has been a great while since I last typed and posted a public journal entry, much less one discussing my personal life.  I have a very good explanation.  I’ve been going through much. 

I moved into a new residence, a condominium that an organization aiding people with disabilities oversees.  It is located on a site of a former US Army base; it is one of many buildings converted from former barracks.  The site as a whole counts many trees of varied species among its residents.  The trees are a most welcome presence.

Near my condominium is a state park.  I made a few visits there, wishing to get in touch with land spirits.  I introduced myself honestly as a northwestern European man born on Indigenous land.  I introduced myself as a wizard in training learning to harness the very powers of life to benefit as many people as possible.  I expressed a wish to befriend the land.  Based on what I briefly read about the original inhabitants of the Great Lakes region and what they’d offer to the land, I have tried offering cornmeal.  The spirits seemed to at least welcome my gesture.

As of this writing, I still don’t have a regular paid job apart from the occasional gig at a nearby haunted house attraction, though I’m still trying to find one so I can more comfortably pay my bills and pay for daily needs.    I spend most of my days in my unit in the condominium with the annoyingly cuddly cat, whom my father asked me to take along.  I’ve made a large number of my own meals at home, and you might be pleased to hear that most of my meals overall are meatless.  I’ve started paying for my own gym membership and personal cellphone plan, along with the electric bill and the fee for the homeowners’ association.

I tried getting feedback on the first string of chapters in a novel that I’ve tried writing.  Sadly, the prospective alpha readers who agreed to volunteer haven’t had the time for thorough review, felt they simply weren’t the best people to do so, or have taken far too long for my comfort.  How am I to fill my time apart from streaming random videos or assorted movies through free platforms? 

Considering how many people around me will need holistic help in the years ahead, especially with the socio-political climate, I came to believe that I will need to be ready to help as a wizard sooner rather than later.  For that reason, I started a new round of personal meditations on each of the runes of the Elder Futhark, for now focusing on scrying for intuitive imagery and sensing their vibes and powers.  I’ve basically completed my planned collection of assorted magic plants as well (based on my ancestral magico-medical practices, relatives of species native to the Great Lakes and the eastern US, and plants widely cultivated throughout the US), and I hope to start taking notes on those after receiving more reference books as birthday presents.  I also seem to have become more proficient with meditation—not emptying my mind, but mostly calming it enough to still focus on the spiritual milieu.

The life of an animistic pagan wizard may be my life now.  Part of why I have been so depressed is that I utterly failed, after decades of development and effort, to gain large followings online and get discovered by executives, thereby starting a professional creative career that can lead into meaningful works of art.  Ancestral spirits, including gods, may well have been bringing me into the life of a wizard.  I have even sometimes really felt the presence of the elven woman who, as you may recall me saying, reached to me in a dream. 

I reached out to a more experienced rune-caster living in Italy and paid for a somewhat elaborate reading.    First of all, it has seemingly confirmed something about my fylgia—a semi-independent guarding and guiding spirit reflecting my innermost essence, typically animal in shape, roughly equivalent to the Ojibwe totem—that I’ve suspected through much careful reflection.  My fylgia does indeed seem to favor the form of a deer, whether a stag or a doe.  Second, I haven’t wanted to be presumptuous about the name of the elf, so I asked about that as well.  Vaguely similar to what I’ve heard from other psychic readers and in the original dream, I learned that the elf’s name is Saelwynn, which can be translated from Old English roots to sacred joy.  I trust that Saelwynn will not only be a crucial ally and teacher to me as a wizard, but also a friend to me as an autistic loner. 

Speaking of loner, I may need to get out of the condo more often.  How, though?  I’ve actually thought of going back to playing Dungeons and Dragons after thinking that I was permanently done with it.  Sure, the random number generation from the dice has caused needless frustration.  Sure, rebuying the books and dice will be expensive.  I may well benefit from playing the roles of heroes powered by the mystic forces of nature and life, as druids and rangers and barbarians, given the kind of person I wish to be.  I may well benefit from the socialization as well.  I’ll have to give that idea more thought.

I have also experienced existential angst.  Am I too much of a pasty-white mutant savage colonizing cave-beast to count as fully human?  Am I able to befriend those more marginalized than I?  Is it wrong to wish to see peace and harmony and friendship instead of further strife and destruction and death?  Can I still make a large, meaningful difference in the world and in many, many people’s lives?  Is the Earth itself too doomed for me to have a point in living?  I do not expect easy answers.  I’m simply being honest about my depression.  I may well be going through a long, painful death of self—not a literal death, I should hope, but instead a necessary purgation to becoming a truer human who can do great and good things.

If you’re able to donate to mutual-aid campaigns, do so.  If you’re able to contact elected officials where you live and demand action on environmental protection or safeguarding human lives or civil liberties, do so.  Yes, I’ve offered such exhortations before.  It’s necessary.  As for me, it’s possible that I am still not fit for public activism of any sort.  I may need to stand back and learn how to give holistic and supernatural aid.  So be it, then.  Let my training continue.

[whiterosebrian]

I've seen this movie promoted for months, but this is another case where I just made a quick decision to see the movie after hearing good things about it. Yet again, I've staged photos of the plush Arturo Reyes Pingüino going to the movie!

[whiterosebrian]

It was about time to work on an image to attach to the front of a sketchbook for the next volume of my personal journal. What sort of image should I make, though? I decided to draw a picture of Freya (based loosely on a drawing that I made for her before as an offering) with her magic staff and a summoned white rose (a personal emblem of sorts). I must confess that, due to some serious depression, I haven't felt up to going beyond darkening lines within the sketch with a darker pencil. It may not be much, but do you still like it?

[whiterosebrian]

I wondered if you folks might want to see more highlights among my own pencil drawings within my personal grimoire. That's why I assembled and posted another batch. Some of these drawings are indeed newer than others. I'm not sure yet when I'll share an entirely new drawing.

[whiterosebrian]

I made a spontaneous choice today to go see the movie Sinners after suddenly hearing good things about it.  I also thought it would nice to support an original horror movie provided by a Black director (who also directed an above-average Marvel movie that meant a lot to so many who saw it).  Once again, I also staged photos of the plush Arturo Reyes Pingüino going to the movie.

[whiterosebrian]

This photoset will require explanation. For the past five years, while studying magic and animism and thus forming my own practice, I have slowly worked on what will ultimately be a beginning grimoire. I do not expect it to be finished so soon. I want to make certain that I articulate the fundamentals and principles very well. I have also created illustrations alongside hand-written texts. I have even replaced and redrawn multiple pages as I've refined my understanding and developed my personal practice. I figured that I can show you a handful of the illustrations that I've made over the years. Would you like to see more?

I thought that I would also share that, for multiple reasons, I am switching my personal focus from fiction-writing to continuing magical research and training. I have just began a (second) round of in-depth meditations on each of the runes of the Elder Futhark so as to better sense the powers that lay behind them. For one thing, I feel like I need to learn to be a real adept and a real help to my community and beyond sooner rather than later.

[whiterosebrian]

THIS IS NOT A BRAND NEW DRAWING. I actually originally drew and posted this back in 2021, shortly after the peak of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. I wanted to show solidarity with the Black community as a Germanic neopagan. I deleted this the first time because I had given up on gaining supporters--and getting noticed by executives--as an illustrator. For a number of reasons, I believed that I needed to again offer some sign of solidarity with the Black community, so now I'm reposting this four-year-old drawing of Tyr. Incidentally, I don't (yet) go on astral trips to see various gods, but rather I figure out "character designs" that could potentially suit them well, and in this case the "character design" is influenced by both Batman and Sephiroth.

[whiterosebrian]

More Chants to Reach Yggdrasil

Some time ago, I composed, typed, and posted a series of chants meant to connect to Yggdrasil, the cosmic tree serving as the axis mundi in Nordic-Germanic mythos, as a means of starting sessions of meditation and magical practice.  Now I decided that I may need a wider variety of chants to write into my personal grimoire, hence this seconds set.  Again, I fiddled with different schemes of meter, rhyme, and alliteration.  Writing these turned out to be a major hassle as I tried hard to figure out yet more different concepts for chanting about Yggdrasil.  I may have completely exhausted such concepts at this point.

I am a simple human

Rising to the hallowed.

Patiently I approach Yggdrasil.

I join the presence

Of the giants and gods.

Thusly I wait to be welcomed.

Out from Vanaheim Freya travels

To teach the mystic arts

To humble students who travel Yggdrasil.

That is why I depart

During this hour to connect to Yggdrasil

To find the goddess in my heart.

The World Ash

Is the axis mundi

Holding together the whole.

Ruptures impoverish

The realms and their denizens.

I forge renewed friendship.

The great cosmic ash houses

Beings live and dead.

Life and death occur in the ash.

Even in catastrophes ahead,

The ash provides the surest refuge

For life that eventually spreads.

I drift towards

The cosmic tree

With a most serious motive.

I will learn to bring

Medicine back

For healing wounded hearts.

I touch the length of the World Tree,

Sensing a passage from air to soil.

My whole self is set free.

[whiterosebrian]

I have mostly given up on drawing for somewhat complicated reasons, though not entirely. I'm a Heathen, and during this winter I've offered gifts to Skadi, Freya, and Odin thus far to foster relations with them. The only one left on my list (except, perhaps, for the pink-haired elf, though I expect to contact her more often) is Freyr. I've read that one of the things that the fertility god likes is erotica. I took it on myself to make a drawing of Freyr making passionate love with his giantess bride Gerd. I decided on simply using sketching pencils for shading.

I also decided on scanning and posting it before approaching the altar with it, I doubt that most websites would let me post the whole thing. Thus, here I present a crop centered on Freyr and a crop centered on Gerd. I trust that you'll like these samples and that Freyr will appreciate my gift.

[whiterosebrian]

As I prepared to move into a condominium newly built for people with disabilities (I am autstic), I knew that I should familiarize myself with that part of the city, starting with visiting restaurants.  I got the idea to stage photos of a plush penguin representing my OC Arturo Reyes Pingüino, AKA Pengee, eating seafood.  Some restaurants are pricier than others, so of course I'd have to visit those less often.  One place that I've taken a liking to, but haven't included here, is a little German cafe offering different sausages, pastries, and knicknacks for sale.  By the time I've edited and posted these photographs, I have moved and settled into the condominium.

[whiterosebrian]

Well, folks, this is my last posting for the year. Yes, Arturo Reyes Pingüino is going to the movies again, this time to see the Nosferatu remake. I'm still unsure of what I should do with my social media profiles. In all honesty, throughout this past year, I've been burdened with brutal depression, intrusive thoughts of destruction and punishment, intrense existential angst, and extreme self-loathing. Sharing it all in a post like this is sadly impossible.

I wish to at least be better in the coming year. I plan to move out on my own to a new condominium built for adults with disabilities. After that move, I intend to focus on writing Bronze Dreyfus, a magic-realist novel meant to act as a dark satire of fundamentalist Catholicism. I hope to make a real difference in this wounded world.

[whiterosebrian]

Musings on Ritual Performances

Within previous journal entries, I mentioned the potential for narrating audiobooks of my writings.  I have also discussed the how storytelling has historically taken the form of very basic performances.   I have discussed storytelling as a means of reinforcing social bonds, frequently by the sorts of ritual specialists whom I wish to be like.  I have also thought much of ritual performance—not simply the public liturgies that we may be familiar with, but dramatic ritualistic performances that engage on a visceral and emotional level—as much, much more than an entertainment to be consumed and expelled. 

More than once—probably due to my autism—I have watched most of the videos from a series on theatre on the Crash Course channel on YouTube, if not the whole series.   Many of them note how theatre apparently directly evolved from ritual, from ancient Greece to medieval Christendom to China to India.  Some traditional forms of theatre continued to be tied to ritual and spirituality, or at least draw heavy influence from ritual and spirituality. 

Some modern thinkers have tried to return theatre to its apparent roots in ritual.  Most prominent among them is Antonin Artaud of “theatre of cruelty” fame— “cruelty” meaning overwhelming and shaking the senses and mind, thereby ripping the senses and mind from the banality in ordinary life.  He balked at basic, superficial realism in story and one-sided staging.  As well as ancient Greek theatre—especially with his intention of fostering catharsis—he drew inspiration from a Balinese theatre that he actually barely understood. 

He believed that his theatre of cruelty, by deeply impacting spectators, would help reawaken the deep spirits within disenchanted, discontented modern folks, helping them recover livelihood within their lives.  Within performances of this type of theatre, he proposed overwhelming sounds, minimalist and often chanted dialog, brutally expressive physical actions, intense visual effects, and even the sorts of costumes that might be considered ritual regalia in other contexts.  He further encouraged staging that would encircle or be up-close and personal with audience members, offering some form of participation and thus bringing them more fully into the experience.  Incidentally, Artaud crafted magic spells and astrological charts during one of his stays at different mental institutions. 

I would also like to note Jerzy Grotowski.  After his deconstruction of modern theatre into its very barest essentials with “poor theatre”, he began to research various traditional performance cultures in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean to inform ideas of “theatre of sources”.  His animating idea was finding the fundamental human and even natural roots of performance as a communal act.  In both cases, he attempted to involve audience members as more than passive, unthinking spectators—he tried to attempted to bring involve them as fellow participants in the overall experience, as fellows within a communion, outside a simple confrontation or presentation.  Other modern theatrical modernists, such as Bertolt Brecht of “epic theatre” and Augusto Boal of “theatre of the oppressed”, saw theater as a means of preparing people away to engage with the real world. 

I see many people offering harsh criticisms of contemporary entertainment industries—and I’m not talking about complaints about diversity or insufficient puritanism or whatever.  Evidently, those industries are going through a rough patch despite their size and prevalence, especially with questionable business practices aimed at maximizing profits (and not always succeeding).  Obviously, the current rough patch, induced partly by the Covid pandemic, can’t give a real forecast of a long-term fate of modern entertainment industries.  One still must wonder what that might mean for human art and culture.  What alternatives might arise should modern entertainment industries drastically crash?

I don’t want to sneer at popular culture or write it off as complete trash for degenerate plebians.  I recall seeing highbrow conservative-Christian polemics during my time as a Catholic, and I came to realize how ugly the reactionary elitism can be.  People seek emotion, joy, and sometimes beauty where they can find it.  Some of the things coming out of popular entertainment can be quite artful, or at least affecting.  At a certain point, it needs to be admitted that simple escapism won’t do.  Especially when we have difficulties paying bills and need to work to keep our livelihoods, should we really spend so much time and money on simple escapism that ultimately adds very little to our lives?

Even when I still held onto the longtime dream of being a popular professional entertainer, I had ambitions of being more than that.  I wished to eventually craft meaningful, lasting works of art, as I’ve talked about elsewhere.  I wished to do something great and good.  Now, I no longer see myself as an entertainer, but rather as something like a druid or shaman.  Once again, I’ve come to see literary writing as part of my duty as a druidic wizard in training. 

Sadly, I feel like I can’t approach my altar so readily.  I currently still live my father, who often has his television turned on, though I’m due to move soon.  My mind is often preoccupied with what I intend to do on any given day or week—and that does include working on my satiric magic-realist novel, Bronze Dreyfus.  I also feel like I have limited energy most days.  I also fear that I am unworthy to approach the gods and spirits in my mental state.  The point I’m making here is that I ask you to consider meditation and, perhaps, prayer in your days instead of always trying to amuse yourself.  That may invite needed sacred powers into your life.  If you don’t believe in gods, spirits, or mystic energies—I respect earnest skeptics—consider going out into nature, among plants and animals and elements, whenever your personal schedule and local weather permit.

My followers should recall that I am animist.  In other words, I wish to encounter and honor spirits in our world.  I wish to learn from ancient pagan cultures and ancestors as well as unbroken (though embattled) Indigenous cultures.  I have argued for recovering wisdom of ancient pagan cultures.  It is true that “ancient wisdom” can be a serious fallacy.  I’ve acknowledged that before, and I’ll acknowledge it again.  It’s true that fascists and fundamentalists make dubious appeals to “ancient wisdom” to promote their authoritarian and exclusionary agendas.  The point I’m making is that we should consider drawing good ideas from ancient pagan cultures and surviving Indigenous cultures, including how they approach art. 

I ask you to consider ritual performance as a potential avenue for rebuilding a healthy culture where people can be reharmonized with each other and their landscapes.  Again, even as a writer of fiction, I imagine myself reading aloud in solo performances, whether to a small group of returning listeners or for audiobooks.  That is similar to ancient poets of Greece or Britain telling stories as they played musical instruments.  It’s also possible that, in addition to more basic personal spells for others, I might also involve folks in elaborate magical ceremonies as beneficiaries. 

Could other people go further and stage performances dedicated to gods and spirits and landscapes bringing in music, poetry, and dance as well as finely crafted narrative and audience participation?  Everyone involved could be in an elevated experience in encountering the very forces of life and the gods and spirits.  At the very least, audiences could reflect deeply on philosophy, spirituality, nature, and life, afterwards going home ready to engage with the real world. 

Yes, that concept is very fuzzy.  I could never realistically expect to really define a new ritual theatre in a text like this.  This whole journal entry might be fuzzy in its expressions. 

For those reasons, this journal entry could be mere rambling from a depressed middle-aged man.  Do I have any real point at all?  If I at least prompted you to carefully consider art and entertainment and culture and life in another light, then perhaps I still did my job.

[whiterosebrian]

In the Cards, Part 2

I’ve previously talked about potentially establishing and leading a druidic circle, a circle of animists who can care for the Great Lakes region and all its inhabitants, both human and nonhuman.  A tarot reader whom I visited twice, Victoria, gave me that idea.  That idea has so much potential to do so much good.  However, I became convinced that I am simply not ready for anything public or even communal.

I have been plagued by depression and self-loathing.  I have been emotionally disturbed.  For purposes of this post, I’ll reiterate and rephrase what I’ve typed before.  My decades-long efforts to become a popular illustrator and writer through the Internet failed.  My hopes of launching a professional creative career that can eventually lead to meaningful, long-lasting works of art failed.  My mother died earlier this year, and with his own serious health problems my father is not long for this world either.   My upcoming move to a condo built for adults with disabilities will be difficult, as will my initial time living there, even if the trust fund that has been set up for me should help. 

The mass death in Palestine may well have broken me.  I have been at a loss as to how to advocate for Palestinians without threatening a long-persecuted ethno-religion, one with a distinct culture tied to the land of Israel, with total erasure.  I have long wished for a meaningful solution for the decades-long crisis that doesn’t involve total erasure of anyone, even before I learned about the background of Zionism.  I see so much rhetoric seeming to suggest that the Jewish community is a greedy, selfish, bloodthirsty, lying, hyper-privileged, totalitarian settler-colonial project, or a theological abstraction completely detached from nature at best—though I would be happy to be proven wrong about my impression.  I can’t even completely shake intrusive thoughts of the entire Jewish community somehow deserving hideously brutal punishment!  Am I supposed to command ordinary Jewish people to shut their mouths and ignore their trauma and renounce their culture?  Nick Fuentes may be a glorified Internet troll, but are there not many, many people who salivate at the thought of undoing all liberal-democratic social progress, and haven’t Neo-Nazism and religious fundamentalism been steadily mainstreamed?

I’ve tried to ask good-faith questions about how I’m supposed to side with Palestinians without erasing Jewish people, but I confess that I’ve sometimes been clumsy and failed to be sensitive.  The harsher responses that I’ve received began to convince me that I am not yet ready to publicly advocate for persecuted people.  I wish to heal, protect, guide, and care, but I’ve feared that I can barely even talk like a normal human being.  Let me again stress my long-standing desire for a meaningful solution to the decades-long crisis in Palestine, one bringing peace and freedom to all.

If ordinary Israelis are born oppressors as many assert, then I, a so-called “Aryan”, am even more oppressive and thus much more worthy of punishment.  I’ve sensed myself as a Lovecraftian alien monstrosity not fit to join a diverse humanity, much less be a child of Mother Earth.  As with the above, I’ve sadly been clumsy and failed to be sensitive when talking about my sense of guilt and wretchedness, no matter how I’ve tried to phrase myself, and sometimes I’ve received harsh responses.  I don’t want to be dismissive of people more marginalized than I.  I don’t want to seem selfish or entitled.  Does my relative privilege—being European-American, male, cisgender, and middle-class—mean that I’m utterly unworthy of care despite being an autistic loner?  On a side note, the historical entanglement of the Germanic pagan revival with Nazism causes further embarrassment—I recently watched a video series from the Extra History channel on YouTube discussing Nazi occultism. 

I still have pain left over from the divorce from Catholicism, as well as pain from the years of seeking truth, goodness, and beauty as an increasingly questioning though still ardent convert.  I’ve already started writing a magic-realist novel, one meant as a dark Juvenalian satire of Catholic fundamentalism, as a means of working through those pains.  Victoria and I had already talked about writing as part of druidic or shamanic work.  Indeed, I do recall reading about shamanic figures being speakers of poems and stories for imparting knowledge and wisdom, even if literary fiction is different from archaic storytelling (though I do imagine narrating audiobooks of my writings). 

I may still yet establish and lead a druidic circle.  However, that would have to come at a much later time.  I simply can’t do so anytime soon.  I started typing an elaborate manifesto for a druidic circle, but I’ve abandoned that for now.  I may have to focus on writing instead.  Alternately, I thought of focusing my personal time more on magical training, thinking that I may need to touch, feel, and manipulate the powers of life around me or that spirits may wish to meet me more often.

I approached Victoria once again at the New Age store when she showed up at this month’s psychic fair.  I told her about most of the thoughts I’ve outlined above.  Her response was, by her own admission, convoluted, though I did bring my personal journal and take notes.  I may indeed be in a standstill in life.  Druidic and heathen ancestors may be looking for me and guiding me.  I do need healing from self-judgement and I do need to take in love.  I should focus on writing as long as it is fulfilling (not necessarily joyful, as I do intend to write a heavy story), and writing is indeed a major part of my life.  I can still be a storyteller as a druidic or shamanic figure, and the past energy that I put into a career that never happened can come back to me.  I should still follow my magico-religious interest as well.  I need to reconnect with nature as much as I can, finding love and healing outdoors.  I can finally become a healing and leading presence.  The gods and spirits will be ready when I’m finally ready to establish a druidic circle or become a public figure.

I also visited a different psychic reader on the previous month, not knowing when Victoria would be back.  I gave this reader a similar narrative to what I described above, and I wished to hear her insights.  She said that I have much power in writing and speaking.  She also said that I can shed whatever I don’t need anymore as I go on a healing quest.  She even claimed that I had a starry silver-blue aura suggesting a deep mysticism combined with good sense. 

Lately, I’ve been at a loss regarding what to do with my social media profiles, as I am no longer trying to make it big as an illustrator.  I’ve contemplated going on another extended hiatus from social media, this time to focus on writing the novel.  I haven’t made any firm decision as to when I’ll actually do so.  Whatever psychic readers have said about me, I certainly need healing to dig out whatever nobility and power lays within. 

I ask my readers to pressure their elected officials into cutting support for Israeli fascists, providing aid and justice to people in Sudan and Congo, hastening the transition away from fossil fuels, and seriously dealing with plastic pollution.  You can at least do that much for me.  Because there are so many people less privileged than I, I’m not entirely comfortable with asking for solace or support for myself.  I only ask for whatever emotional labor you’re able and willing to spare at the moment. 

[whiterosebrian]

Where, Where do I Belong

I was reluctant to write another confessional poetic exercise.  I can explain.  On a number of postings around Instagram (I won’t delve into details), I have expressed self-loathing over being an “Aryan”, triggered partly by the renewed discourse over settler colonialism.  One anti-Zionist Jewish lady whom I follow (yes, there is a growing divide in the international Jewish community over Israel, to say the least) suggested that I make art from my angst.  I thought of writing an exercise in blank verse.  I wasn’t entirely sure if I wanted to post this publicly, as I did not want to seem to be a self-centered brat.  I tried to gesture to real oppression and gesture to the real point of guilt, but I don’t know how effective the execution is.  As I state in the final line, I’ll keep waiting for whoever is willing and able to help me.

Please tell me, where, where do I belong?

My fair skin and blue eyes are a mutation

Scarcely found across the human race.

Darker skins match the sacred soil,

The same soil that forms spiritual heritage.

Am I in truth an alien monstrosity in Lovecraft’s stories?

Are my roots in the blackest hole in outer space

Or in a plastic cup of expired vanilla pudding? 

What ancient spiritual heritage do I carry?

A broken heritage obscured after centuries?

One that is exploited by the likes of Heinrich Himmler?

As much as I wish to join a diverse humanity,

I seem to offer nothing to Mother Earth.

Even a parasite serves a purpose in an ecosystem.

If Israelis are white oppressors, as many assert,

I am a hideous Aryan overlord worthy of punishment!

That is a brutally honest impression of myself. 

Console me if you wish—however, please remember

The people who suffer far worse torments.

Tend to them and lift them; speak with them and demand justice.

They all belong on Earth’s sacred soil.

I only ask to join a diverse humanity

And belong on Mother Earth as an equal citizen.

I wait for an able and willing teacher to come.