the first quarter's moons

summary: winter is a period of examination and contemplation, when the world encourages you to retreat and listen. I have heard very much and I have also been up to quite a lot in the meantime.

reminder

at least once a week, listen to everything around you. place every discrete sound. tune in. awaken. I feel as though I was on autopilot for so long before remembering that this is there, and that each and every time I resolve to do it more often, until the routines take me again and make me forget. do you feel that chill? that's you coming back into your own body. tell the others it happened today. I'm feeling myself again.

first moon: what I read

Indus Ladies forum thread

SuiDhaaga – Oct 11, 2019
I plan to make Phulkari stole.
For border, I wish to do simple embroidery stitch (as I am learning)
But I just realized, embroidery hoop won't fit.
What are your experiences with embroidering WITHOUT embroidery hoop?
Do you think it is better to embroider WITHOUT hoop?
I really wish to learn from your experiences.

Amulet – Oct 12, 2019
You need the base fabric stay stretched while you do embroidery. Otherwise, not only would the process be tough to impossible, even if you achieve that, you might end up causing wrinkles in the finished product.
If a hoop cannot fit, use a rectangular FRAME. You can buy these online in both India and forin.

SuiDhaaga – Oct 12, 2019
Certainly I shall search amazon...

Threadgeek04 – Oct 19, 2019
Any type of embroidery can be done without a frame . in hand waste actual practice in the olden days.
Yes the fabric might be limp or you might have to adjust the way you work or holder.. But it might be tough but not impossible. If you make a habit of it at the start itself.. Then there would be less hassle and they are travel friendly too.
I cross stitch and do other sorts of laces too.. And do it all in hand.
Mann aur dimaag lagaane ki deri hey.
Phirdekhiye !!

(can be translated as: "use your head and think about it. just wait and see!")

SuiDhaaga – Oct 19, 2019
I Already ordered rectangular frames :-(
Perhaps I can wean myself off them

Threadgeek04 – Oct 19, 2019
Hey..i didnt mean that.
What i meant was that.. Even at times when you can't getframe.. You can do it in hands .
Don't wean away from its usage.. Knowing multiple techniques is good for your creative growth dear

SuiDhaaga – Oct 19, 2019
Ohhhh ... What a relief. Will use rectangle frames and If Situation arises, will know how to embroider without frame.

Threadgeek04 – Nov 9, 2019
exactly.. nothing should hinder our creative expression

Mount Analogue by René Daumal

'… My Superior was right: I suffer from an incurable need to understand. I don't want to die without having understood why I lived. What about you? Have you ever been afraid of death?'

In silence I hunted around among my memories, deep memories where words had never before pried. And I spoke with difficulty. 'Yes. When I was around six I heard something about flies which sting you when you're asleep. And naturally someone dragged in the old joke: "When you wake up you're dead." The words haunted me. That evening in bed with the light out, I tried to picture death, the "no more of anything". In my imagination I did away with all the outward circumstances of my life and felt myself confined in ever tightening circles of anguish: there was no longer any "I" ... What does it mean, "I"? I couldn't succeed in grasping it. "I" slipped out of my thoughts like a fish out of the hands of a blind man, and I couldn't sleep. For three years these nights of questioning in the dark recurred fairly frequently.

Then, one particular night, a marvelous idea came to me: instead of just enduring this agony, try to observe it, to see where it comes from and what it is. I perceived that it all seemed to come from a tightening of something in my stomach, as well as under my ribs and in my throat. I remembered that I was subject to angina and forced myself to relax, especially my abdomen. The anguish disappeared. When I tried again in this new condition to think about death, instead of being clawed by anxiety, I was filled with an entirely new feeling. I knew no name for it - a feeling between mystery and hope.'

'And then you grew up, went to school, and began to "philosophize", didn't you? We all go through the same thing. It seems that during adolescence a person's inner life is suddenly weakened, stripped of its natural courage. In his thinking he no longer dares stand face to face with reality or mystery; he begins to see them through the opinions of "grown-ups", through books and courses and professors. Still, a voice remains which is not completely muffled and which cries out every so often - every time its gag is loosened by an unexpected jolt in the routine. The voice cries out its great questioning of everything, but we stifle it again right away.

Well, we already understand each other a little. I can admit to you that I fear death. Not what we imagine about death, for such fear is itself imaginary. And not my death as it will be set down with a date in the public records. But that death I suffer every moment, the death of that voice which, out of the depths of my childhood, keeps questioning me as it does you : "Who am I?" Everything in and around us seems to conspire to strangle it once and for all. Whenever that voice is silent - and it doesn't speak often - I'm an empty body, a perambulating carcass. I'm afraid that one day it will fall silent forever, or that it will speak too late - as in your story about the flies: when you wake up, you're dead.'

(from Daumal's letters):
I am dead because I lack desire;
I lack desire because I think I possess;
I think I possess because I do not try to give. In trying to give, you see that you have nothing;
Seeing you have nothing, you try to give of yourself;
Trying to give of yourself, you see that you are nothing;
Seeing you are nothing, you desire to become;
In desiring to become, you begin to live.

angelolatry II by audry asphodel scarlett

im a materialist about gender idk how it couldnt be all in the expression like its a thing you Do its a thing you materially Prove i wasnt always a woman i always felt like a woman but i wasnt one in any way that mattered till i started transitioning and asserting that. along a similar line i dont really believe in “sentience” as a concept i havent for a long time tbqh. like possession of consciousness/sensory awareness ig. like how do you prove someone has that in a way differentiable from AI. and there are species of slime mold that have a kind of sensory awareness despite a lack of sensory organs by leaving a residue behind. yet ppl still try to define humans by differentiating their “sentience” its silly to me. someone i suggested i meant the word “sapience” but aint that word circular in and of itself? oh yes these homo Sapiens are very Sapient headass sgjdskgjkds. tomato tomahto.

these material-layer things get silly people get too lost in the sauce forgetting about the angels. ig it might be a sublimated gender dysphoria ting this implicit asserting a level of “real” womanhood, proving your reality, i wasnt allowed to be a woman but i shoulda railed against the powers that were anyway. but yea like literally why else do we as trans women get on HRT. societal construction of reality the prospect of further masculinization made me so suicidal i had no choice but to start DIY. but yeah like sentience is impossible to prove on a material level gender is proved on a material level its funny. i guess cause gender is made of the same stuff as society unlike sentience. to break the rules u gotta learn the rules and the material layer is my dojo. black belt mathemagician. witch of origins. yeah what u gotta understand is gender dysphoria is structurally an anxiety, and to paraphrase emil cioran, never separate a woman from her anxiety. when the drunk cig hits and now im morbid rationalist against paranoid ideation around telepathy bruh

The Third Sex by Talia Bhatt

Therefore, we are only ever subconsciously regarded as women. We are womanized in the way everything considered beneath a Man is feminized, yet our womanhood is repudiated, even as those who seek to destroy us bring the full force of misogynistic degradation to bear. We are assaulted and told we invited assault, that our deviancy and perversion and pretensions to womanhood carries implicit permission for deviants and perverts to treat us like women. We are discriminated against in employment and housing, frequently impoverished and turned out onto the streets, pushed disproportionately into survival sex work, and routinely face stringent access barriers to transition technologies. ...

The existence of a third sex does no more to challenge societal male-supremacy than does the existence of a fourth, fifth, or even second sex. Every sex that is not the First Amongst Sexes, that is not the Most Vaunted, Most Esteemed, and Most Adored Sex, simply becomes another sexual resource to be exploited. Patriarchy’s basis is not inherently a dichotomy, and the “rich history” of transfeminized populations across cultures—including the West—ought to have illustrated that plainly. The existence of hijras did little to challenge Hinduism’s enshrinement of male-supremacy, and the existence of transsexuals has only made the West’s ideological commitments to a dualistic sex model more pronounced. ...

“Old women do not have babies; they have outlived their husbands; there is no reason to value them. They live in poverty because the society that has no use for them has sentenced them to death.”
If you are not of the First Sex, pride and heir to your line, Third-Sexing will come for you sooner or later.

P-Chess

You will one day meet a Player. It is a game that by its nature changes the Mind and the World. It is a game best played unseen. You must understand these facts.

You are not in control. Your Mind, your World are part of the battlefield. You are part of the battlefield.

You are not in control. Who You are is a weapon. As all weapons, it is something to be used within the Game.

You are not in control. You do not control who You are. You do not control what you like. All these things can be shaped within the game of P-Chess.

You are not in control. Whether you become a Player or stay a person, you must understand that the game of P-Chess exists. You cannot stop this fact. You cannot stop yourself from being changed.

also

I read all of Jujutsu Kaisen in one week. it was really good. I read a bunch of yuri smut, too.

second moon: what I heard

my friend whimsy, on the subject of community

burned a flame so big and so long that a community formed around it including people who could actually love me and connect with me where most others have failed to reach me

to put it another way, it cost too damn much for a bite to eat

like beyond even just the material cost of food, the emotional and social cost of being retarded or disabled and surviving in society

how hard you have to work, not just physically, but also socially, artistically, spiritually etc

i have done so much work in my life that has not shown me a single cent

theres so much labor, (especially done by women) that goes uncredited, or unspoken of, that forms and binds communities

dana, on the subject of her award

the only time I will go "above" is for emergent patient care at this point

I think it's hilarious that I think my attitude went in the toilet the second I got "above and beyond" award for the second time in three years

that actually turned me into a far worse worker

because what do I have to show for it? a $15 dunkin gift card I never used?

eff this

I can't separate my real self and work self anymore

I'm all jekyll or hyde or whichever is the bad one

but I'm the only person who can do my job at the level I do it so unfortunately I do feel untouchable

which is why I have been so vocal because I know many people agree with me but fear repercussions

but all it's actually done is made me look like a big angry person who's spiteful so ~shrugs~

I'm just trying to give less craps but it's hard because I do care about my patients

and like when it affects them that's when I really get mad

We Buy Diabetic Test Strips by Armand Hammer

released 2023

EARWAX by six impala

released 2023

silva cervorum, sanguis cari mei by sicut cervus

released 2025

from the love of my life

you're the light of my life

third moon: what I said

to the love of my life

you're the light of my life

to my friend

you have a tremendous amount of compassion for others and I think I haven't understood you as well as I do now

understanding magic as philosophy instead

(in reference to P-Chess)

there is a certain kind of thinking that is the basis for magic. it's difficult to explain it directly because it requires you to change your way of thinking. there are two ways to approach it - you can explain it technically, which may be useful analytically, but it's like describing the properties of a color you've never seen and expecting that you will then be able to reproduce that color. or you can explain it by demonstration, which P-Chess does.

if you don't believe in magic, if you don't want to believe in it or you don't care about it, then it won't make sense or you might read other things into it as you try to understand it. but if you are invested and if you're willing to play the game and think differently, it's useful. anyway that's what it's for, and that's what other things like this are for. to teach you.

(after some conversation expressing anxieties about P-Chess)

maybe it would help if I explain what magic is, as I understand it. magic is real and it's also not. it depends on the power of belief and willpower, to some extent. magic is a set of systems and ways of thinking that can be explainable by other methods. if it feels overwhelming or frightening, if it feels like this will be a problem for you and will harm you, it can help to remember that the discrete things surrounding it and materially going into it are normal, natural events and actions viewed through the lens of a philosophy. it's just a philosophy, just as other philosophies shape the views of others. philosophies enable us to do the same actions differently because of our different perceptions and beliefs about what those things will do. I'm framing this in this particular way not because I don't believe in magic, as I do, but because it's helpful to have a way to ground yourself. it's all a kind of play :) the playing isn't inherently sinister or harmful, and it's not necessarily altruistic or good either. it's just a particular way of thinking about the world. you can think of it as a kind of thought experiment if you need to.

to the ocean on a very cold day

mom, did you see me? did you see that? didn't I do a good job?

last moon: what I made

in the past few months, I've been making a return to digital art after a couple years away from it. late last year, I was working on on drawing in my sketchbook more often, usually on the train during my commute. I spent a lot of time drawing people, but I always end up naturally inclined towards drawing cuter things, so I ended up starting a short series called Puppy Plays Outside. I think Puppy is a really cute and sweet character and I plan to draw more of her and her friends and family. :)

for a while, I've been wanting a place for all my art. the current method of sharing my art tends to involve looking through my phone and finding each of them by hand, which is a little tedious even if I don't mind it. I have all this space on this website, though, and in fact, there are many uses for it. it can help me keep track of learning resources and what films I have and haven't seen. it can be a repository for art. I can store recipes here.

for a little longer than the last three months, I've been working hard behind the scenes to completely overhaul the Look section here on my site, both to create tools for myself and to share the things I care about with you. if you've been following me for a while already, thank you for being here all this time and having patience when I disappear. regardless of whether you're old or new, why don't you go and have a look for yourself? :)