I adore orcas. So much so that when I heard IKEA carried an orca plushie, I asked my friend to drive us there asap. Had to have it.
When I am overwhelmed, I imagine myself leagues deep in the water column where the water is near black. So quiet. I feel immediately soothed.
I, at times, also lull myself to serenity by watching asmr documentaries of octopuses, sea angels, and everything else that lives out there.
It’s in my journals via stickers and dolphin washi tapes.
A visit to the Monterey Bay aquarium is written at the top of my please-do-this-before-you-expire list. As is an excursion to the fjords in Norway.
Footage of a humpback swimming peacefully plays when my laptop goes to sleep. I make a note to change the screensaver to something else for the sake of variety. But for some reason, I never get around to it.

It also is an integral part to one of my all time favorite hobbies.

I remember the first time I tried it. Surfing. A couple of friends said they were planning on camping out on the shore in San Diego, and they invited me to come along. Though I am averse to ski and skateboard (no broken bones for me, thank you very much), my mind equated water with safety. So I said yes, my decision a no-brainer.

And boy, did I love it. I still do. Being away from the water has made me forget, but the stickers, the plushie, the videos have been sending me winks of light lately.

Like hey remember this?
And the strange message: you can surf now, if you wanted.

There’s ritual I’ve built up throughout the years. Pick a cute outfit that matches the temperature of the water. San Diego in March required a wetsuit. Pavones had no issue with my Billabong two-pieces. Rent a board if I didn’t bring my own. Or depending on where I am and who is around me, someone will lend me one. After plopping my bag somewhere on the shore, waxing the board, and putting on copious amounts of sunscreen, I put on the ankle leash and paddle in. I check out who else is out in the water — there’s an etiquette to all of this, you know. Don’t steal waves, wait your turn. When a wave is way above my skill level, I get out of the way of the professionals. And unless I have a boat that transports me to a specific spot — where the waves are scarier — and it stays close to me as I wait for the tide to swell up and break, I don’t swim out too, too far. Strong currents are not an urban legend, my friend.

Timing is everything. I tend to favor early morning so I am not burnt to a crisp by the sun later in the day. I intuitively get the overwhelming sense, once in the water, that I will not catch every wave. In fact, at times, I may not even want to. I am busy looking at the horizon, other surfers doing cool things, or if I’m extra lucky, I see porpoises! It also applies to exits too. I remember a friend telling me about the time he had to walk through some coral to get out. The water snuck up on him, tide had been low — he didn’t clock it, and it made him trip and crash into jagged edges. A bloody, painful mess.

Speaking of messes, knowing how to get through the white water will do you well.
Turtle roll for longboard where you flip the board upside down so underside faces the sky, grab the rails, submerge beneath the wave.
And duck dive for shortboard where you use your arms and one leg to push down on it so that you go under the wave.

You can surf now, if you wanted.

That holographic pink dolphin washi tape on my desk has me thinking.

When you are out in the water, you gotta enjoy it for what it is, especially if you’re new to it. You could choose to get frustrated, and that’s valid, but believe me there is something about being out there that is purely, stupidly good. I mean, you’re in the ocean! If you love it as much as I do, that’s already a boon. I swear, you could be paddling for hours with the sun toasting you and be ok if that’s all you end up doing. Because the point is to move, to feel, to see.

Surrender. Enjoy. It’s not that big of a deal.

When you are under a wave, holy shih, it’s dark. Picture the sky on a day you know the clouds are about to deliver torrential rain. Then add a green tinge to it. That’s how it is. Feeling-wise, it’s like being in a washing machine. The wave carries so much energy in several directions. Either roll over, or dive in enough to miss most of the turbulence.

Surrender. Enjoy. You know what to do. You are not the wave, but in a way you’re part of it. Work with it, or avoid it altogether. Go deeper so you can resurface, oriented.

When you do catch a wave — aided (you can hire a surf instructor if you need one) or not — wowee. It’s SURREAL. Is this how birds feel when they fly? That glide! You almost feel like you’re floating. Well, I guess technically you are gliding. And floating. On an epoxy or foam board. Still, it’s not a sensation you feel often on land. It’s exhilarating.

Surrender. Enjoy. You’re capable of wonderful things. You’ve done them before, you’re doing them now, you’ll do them again (especially if you practice).

And when you’ve had your fill, you’ll let the waves push you out. You’ll go get your bag. Maybe eat a rice bowl, with avocado of course. Drink a beer, or a marg. Or just coconut water. Definitely put on some aloe cream. Sit under an umbrella and read, or watch the surfers still out there pump and twirl and cut the water like a heated knife to butter. Maybe you’ll go back out there. The ocean never ceases to call for you. Or instead you’ll join your friends and play a game of cards, chat with your partner about what you’ll have for dinner. The ocean can wait.

Surrender. Enjoy. You almost forgot... This is all for fun.

For fuck’s sake you can want what you want. You don’t have to suffer for it.
You don’t have to feel guilt once you have it either.

I watched Perfect Blue. Someone I trust very much recommended it. I thought, all right let’s do it. It’s on my TBW list anyway.

There was a point in the story that I remember telling myself omg I don’t know whether to be angry at him or not. I had no idea that scene was in it, and of course it was triggering. But maybe the roughness of what I watched — roughness may not even be the right word since the presentation was so colorful and Paprika-like in its mindfuck of it all — was what shot this epiphany right into my forehead.

The bullet hot.

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He presses the Eye of Ra to his chest, and sighs out.

He has so many things he wishes to write, so many things to process, so many things to share with his acolytes. The never-ceasing work of digesting life spurs him on, but it also leaves him weary for his actual responsibilities are many. Sure, he could be replaced, he thinks. But as of right now, no one else has stepped up to the plate.

First and foremost, he’s Ra’s vizier and voice. That role is fun. And very demanding for he speaks Ra’s commands into existence. Navigates, counsels, and during the night, during the journey through the Duat, let’s just say — there’s no rest while Ra travels.

Then there are Horus and Seth. They’ve been at each other’s throats as far as he could remember. He suspects that they may even be in some sort of love, or lust, because that hate is too passionate for it to be mere repulsion. As their eternal mediator, he will arbitrate as well as document whatever happens at the perpetually reconvening tribunal of the gods. At this point it has become a sport for the rest of the Ennead — a diversion, hasn’t it? Almost as if they don’t want them to reconcile. Otherwise what else would excite them?
He even wonders if Seth is sick of his role as the villain. He can tell the constant antagonizing is wearing him thin. Seth tried escaping once. Fuck war, fuck the humans. He dug a hole deep in Deshret, the desert — his home, and refused to come out. Every time Isis called out for him, he dug even deeper. Anubis was eventually called to drag his stepfather out by his ankle back to the tribunal. There was more fun to be had, Ra had murmured once.

Ah right, lest he forget. Isis asked him to meet when the sun is at zenith. She has questions about resurrection magick, and he’s more than happy to help, to guide her through it. She was able to recover all the pieces of her man, all with the exception of his penis. Which a fish devoured. He can help her with making a replacement piece. Gold should work, a phallus fit for a king.
Sometimes though he feels like his bone marrow is being sucked dry. For at times, she pries into his personal life, and to him that is sacred and frankly irrelevant to what she’s trying to do. As if he didn’t have enough things to think about, he has to dodge queries too? Harmless but annoying. Not one for the desert, he still understands Seth’s impulse. Deeply.

So perhaps he’s in need of a good soak in the Nile. Yes. Tomorrow. At dawn. Just before Ra’s barque crests the horizon. The window for today has already passed, sadly. He must howl his hellos at the sun, and then promptly head to The Hall of Two Truths. Chip away at his infinitely long to-do list.

Or... perhaps today, he will go to her instead. Take off his ibis headpiece and lay his head on her lap as she strokes his long hair slowly. So slowly it lulls him to a state of not quite sleep, not quite wakefulness. His favorite state of being for there he floats suspended. Without the weight of executing mandates, regulating the cosmos, tolerating (and pacifying) bickering, nor stoking gossip. With her, talk is optional. The silence divine, her sparse speech wondrous.

They’d chat about many things.

Souls lost to the scale at the last moment.
She’d look at him. He’d know. And say “the stonemason from Waset?”
She’d nod her head, “a good son, father, husband... but the desperation for money corroded his heart. Slowly, but surely. It did.”
The man wasn’t even aware of his tragic condition until the heart on the scale dish thunked down. His face grew pallid. No paradise, no Field of Reeds, for him. Obliteration. Verdict, complete.

Tongue-in-cheek complaints about Ra’s insistence to take the same route every single night.
“The serpent and Ra battle it out literally on the same spot, every single night,” he’d share, “I suggested he change the course of the barque a khet or two. Ra laughed and ignored me.”
Ma’at would chuckle, “Ra will never give up on the theatrics. You know this.”
And she’d give him a wink.

Of isfet, chaos, almost winning, threatening the community of gods with utter devastation.
Of spells he’s working on, how he’s fascinated by such and such word.
How one of his devoted followers drawled erroneously at the end of a chant, and the spell went awry. So interesting, he’d muse.
Ma’at would arch her brow, “testing fate, I see.” Then give him a little laugh, “good thing you were there, huh?”

Sycamore figs and lotuses, newborn calves and hungry crocodiles.
Of temples and fields.

And sometimes, nothing said at all. Parallel play. She sits. He writes.
Or they both nap together, like cats.
Generate heat between sheets. Lie tangled, breathing.
Walk along the river hand in hand. Steal a kiss, slide his hand down her arm.
Revel in warmth, this companion so perfect.

Some people love the idea of you. Or what you can do for them, especially if you are particularly competent. They mine you for stories, entertainment, knowledge, labor. People can be greedy bottomless pits.

True love, real friendship, requires no interpreter. No translation. When the scales are unbalanced, whatever you give goes right over their heads, and whatever they give will never satisfy. Real love is mutual recognition. Being actually heard, boundaries respected. Someone who walks with you toward the better path without ever hoarding the wheel.

With her, he is known.

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Io, my race engineer, stands next to me by the water cooler faking like she’s waiting to use it. But she is just hovering.

“Out with it,” I laugh.

She takes the opportunity immediately and goes for the jugular, “Have you been sleeping?”

“Uhh...” my dark circles give me away. I rub the back of my head, feigning nonchalance. “Yea. Yea, I think so. Why? I am hitting the targets. Alles gut.” I give her a thumbs-up as double assurance.

She squints her eyes. “You are going to crash and burn if you don’t take care of yourself.”

“Jesus Christ,” I groan, “are you trying to literally manifest that for me?!” My body shivers in remembrance of last year where I did just that. Thankfully, mercifully, I am here in one piece, healthy, bones with no need of mending.

“This isn’t about manifesting. This is about you, your longevity out on the tracks, and how it’ll reflect when podium comes.”

“Hey, I will pull through no matter what,” I frown. Where the hell is this coming from? Aren’t I performing well enough?

“Sure. Sure,” she sounds diametrically opposite of sure. She looses an arrow, doesn’t miss, “We get no pleasure seeing you grind yourself to a nub for the sake of a trophy.”

She digs into the front pocket of her jeans, “I want you to come here at 18:00 later today.”

I open my mouth. She stops me, “No. No. See you there.”

Did I want to be scolded by Io again? No.
But my curiosity wins out every time. Every time. I chuckle.

The chauffeur drops me off at the address Io had scribbled on the piece of paper.

Woah. That’s the cool thing about being an international driver, huh? You get to see the coolest places.

I step towards the tucked-away shophouse in the older part of Tanjong Pagar. The colonial facade opens into something that smells like ginger and dried herbs. Dark stone, low light, steam moving through the air. Not a spa. Something more medicinal than that. Bummer, I think I lowkey need a spa day.

“Hello?” I call out. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if little soot sprites and a boy named Haku came from behind the counter.

I hear steps approaching. An older lady with immaculate makeup and a traditional dress clocks me first, and when I make eye contact gives me a smile.

“Welcome. Ms. Io is waiting for you,” she says.

I gulp. Oh boy, here it comes. I am really, truly, at my limit. I just want to go home, or well, the hotel, and then disappear into whatever adventure—

I didn’t even realize I had started to walk. She opens the door for me. I thank her.

“Please sit down,” the lady says kindly.

“Again, welcome. My name is Dr. Chen. I am a sinseh, a practitioner of traditional Chinese medicine. And I understand you are in need of some...” she glances towards Io, “calibration.”

Calibration??

“Ms. Io will step outside for the rest of the appointment,” she says. Wahh, so kind! I was ready to lie through my teeth, perform perfection.

With Io out of the room, Dr. Chen prepares a tea. Longan, red date, and goji.

The Q&A

She and Io must be cut from the same cloth because gd, she goes right to it.

“All right...” she starts. “When did you last feel like yourself?”

I sit stunned. The fuck? Wait, wait, this is a good question. I look to the side as if digging into my memory. “I feel like I am in constant change,” I answer. “I know who I am, but it’s been a while since I have felt the confidence of when I first started racing, to be honest.”

“Is there anything, say in the past year, that you gloss over? You keep not addressing?” she gently lays as a follow-up.

Sounds like she knows of the accident. Io must have given her a thorough rundown. If Io wasn’t on my team, I’d think she was a sadistic little witch, my biggest opp. Still, anyone that follows F1 knows. People thought that race was going to end in utter tragedy, yet out of the car in flames I emerged. With the exception of a scar or two, I was relatively unscathed.

But something people don’t know is that internally, my mind, has been reeling ever since. My confidence took a deep dive. I tried a complicated maneuver, at a high speed to boot, and I failed. I forget that my life was on the line because the shame and embarrassment of trying and crashing out sears me the most. My eyes start to get a bit moist.

I answer simply, “Yes.”

“Do you want to talk about it?” the sinseh asks.

“No.”

Unfazed but softer, she reaches for me, and lays her hand on top of mine, “Who have you been doing this for?”

This one I feel like is a very easy question. “For the crowds, my fans. The team. My sponsors.” I roll my eyes when I mention the sponsors. They’ve been breathing down my neck, asking in furtive ways if I am up to speed to take championship. The pressure is immense.

“And for yourself maybe?” she offers.

I hem and haw, “I do like what I do. But you know those hamsters and the wheels in their cages?” I twirl my finger in the air demonstrating the perpetual motion of said wheel. “Like that.”

“One more question, and I promise we are done. When did you last truly rest?” she says.

Rest. What is that? Even when I visited Thailand last month, I felt anything but rested. Body immobile. Mind at 1000 km/h. I frown.

Dr. Chen doesn’t push for the answer. She simply nods, as if the silence said everything.

She refills my cup unhurriedly with hot water before speaking.

“You have built something extraordinary. I can see that. Anyone watching you race can see that. But a structure that is never allowed to settle, that keeps adding floors before the foundation has dried...” she tilts her head slightly, “eventually the ground shifts on its own. Not because you failed. Because physics does not negotiate.”

She folds her hands. “You emerged from that fire. Relatively whole. And then you kept going, yes? Because stopping felt like conceding something.” It isn’t quite a question.

“The body remembers what the mind tries to outrun. Your stomach knows. Your eyes know.” A small, not unkind smile. “I think you know too.”

She lets that sit for a moment.

“You are not being asked to stop racing. You are being asked to let the foundation catch up to the height you have already reached. That is not weakness or laziness. That is how anything meant to last is built.”

“Doc,” I start. “How do I do that?” A whispered “help me” follows right after.

The Medicine

Dr. Chen smiles at the “help me” like she’s been waiting for exactly those two words.

“First,” she says, “you treat this body like it belongs to someone you love.” She taps the cup in your hands pointedly. “You sleep. You eat before you do anything else in the morning. Not after. Before. The machine does not run on ambition alone, no matter how much you believe it does.”

She lets that land before continuing.

“I am sending you home with a packet of this tea you’re drinking. It’s earthy, and the combination is perfect for your temperament. Longan nourishes the blood and calms the spirit. Good for anxiety, poor sleep, the kind of exhaustion that lives deeper than tired. Red date supports the spleen and stomach, which is interesting given your symptoms (my tummy has been acting oddly since the start of this year, how did she know?!), and stabilizes energy so it stops spiking and crashing. Goji protects the liver, supports the eyes — those dark circles — and builds foundational reserves that chronic depletion drains first. Together they’re a classical formula for someone burning too bright for too long. Not a sedative. More like... It reminds the nervous system what baseline feels like.”

I don’t know whether or not to be self-conscious of her pointing out the shadows under my eyes. Her honesty is disarming, like the clearest water eroding stone.

“Second. You already know where you are going. You know which races matter most this season — yes?” She doesn’t wait for confirmation. “Then go there. Fully. Stop looking at every other circuit on the calendar with longing eyes. The driver who tries to run every race wins none of them. Wherever you are, be all there. I am sure you’ve heard that many times in your life from spiritual leaders and such, but I invite you to take that phrase and make it your own. Focusing on one thing at a time does not invalidate, does not erase, the other goals you hold. All it does is funnel the tremendous energy available to the you now. The only you there is, frankly.”

She leans forward slightly.

“And you have people. Work worth doing. A life worth living off the track too.” A pointed pause. “Go back to those things. Tend them. Let them tend you.”

I think of my partner. There is always something to optimize, and when there isn’t, there is always somewhere else to disappear to. I keep choosing everything except what’s in front of me.

She’s right.

Dr. Chen sits back, “That is all. It is not complicated. It is only difficult because you have convinced yourself that rest is an irrevocable full stop.” Her eyes are steady on yours. “It is not. It is how you make sure there is still someone in the car come championship day.”

We get up from our seats at the same time. I give her a little nod of the head, a thank you. But fuck it, a hug it is. Hopefully she’s not alarmed. If worse comes to shove, or however that saying goes, I’ll blame it on me being European.

“Thank you so much, Dr. Chen,” I say, a sob and sigh battle it out in my throat. Both lose. The packet of teabags crinkles in the crook of my arm. “I needed this.”

She smiles. “We are rooting for you. Your trajectory is a miracle. I have no doubt in my mind this season will go well for you. You know... My kid has a jacket with your name on its back. It has little flames on the sleeves, a white horse patch on the front. She insisted on every detail.”

How cute! I return the smile. Genuinely. I ask her for a piece of paper and pen. I take a moment to leave her kid a message and autograph.

Lil sis, if I can make it so can you!
I draw a little galloping horse under my name.

Io doesn’t ask me how it went, she can see it on my face. Maybe she’s not a sadistic little witch, I smirk, knowing she has always been on my corner.

“Let’s go! We’ll drop you off first,” she laces her arm through mine.

The full moon is bright up ahead. Glowing cheese…

My thought comes to a halt when Io stops walking. She looks at me with tenderness, and says, “Friend, we are proud of you, and are beyond grateful that you are still on this planet with us.” She nudges me playfully, “Yes, the sponsors too.”

“And remember,” she adds, “a win for you is a win for all of us. You are not alone.”

The pearly gates, entwined with white morning glories, close behind you. No sky here. Only pink and yellow clouds billowing like lungs. Your chest tightens, breath held. How high did I climb? you wonder, though you don’t remember climbing at all.

Before you and your accompanying guardian looms a castle of grey stone, grotesque in its reaching. You crane your neck to find the top. You can’t. Turrets vanish into cloud-cover like severed limbs. Your gaze drops, you gulp.

You jolt, a little shriek almost escapes your body. Out of nowhere a smiling figure with the face of a star and dressed in a white tunic stands right in front of you. Then your eyes meet. His expression blooms with delight.

“Welcome! We’re thrilled you’re visiting Sadalsuud Atheneum. We’ve heard such extraordinary things about you. Truly. Headmaster Ganymede personally assigned me your tour. Quite the honor! Now, shall we?”

He turns and walks. You glance at your guardian. She nods.

You must have crossed a portal.

Inside is nothing like the stone shell. Everything pulses neon blue. Holographic panels, glass floors lit from beneath. Bass thrums through the walls, muffled but relentless. Somewhere, someone is definitely doing ketamine to progressive house. A celestial Berghain.

“The headmaster and administration are visionary leaders, truly cutting-edge... Sir Prometheus founded it right about the time humans received the gift of fire,” he recites, then drops it. “Look, honestly, I come here because it’s fun.”

He extends his kandi-clad arm and hands you a notecard.

“We attract the nerdiest bunch,” he says, matter-of-fact. “We work hard, but we party even harder. Am I right?” He grins. “Anyways, I know you’ll want to know what state-of-the-art equipment we have so I put this together for you.”

Star pupil hits his vape. He notices you're no longer studying the notecard. He smiles, pleased. “Let's go look at some stars.”

I. The Stellar Cartography Lab

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• SOCRATES

• DAIMON

• PYRRHON

• THE TREES (chorus)

• YOU (the reader)

The stoa colonnade in the agora, late afternoon. Bare-footed and clad in a humble himation, SOCRATES descends upon some rocks to sit at the edge of a stone bench. Behind him, the DAIMON skips like a little mountain goat; giggles gurgle from his stomach onto the space. Everything within a meter of his existence seems brighter, the colors ultra-saturated.

SOCRATES sits and looks out yonder towards the agora. It’s very busy, a lot of people milling about. One of his students is loudly stating his thesis, his leg propped up on a box. From far away, one can see his open mouth, some spittle. So passionate, so full of vigor and conviction.

PYRRHON
NO! I SHALL speak. Your logic is weak, it folds to the simplest questioning. What the human spirit needs to do is ask themselves first “what is it that I ACTUALLY want?” not be like — (in sarcastic, high-pitched voice) meh meh meh, I should sacrifice my last three goats to Zeus... because I am scared!

Some people gasp. The TREES tremble with resonance. SOCRATES shakes his head.

SOCRATES
(mutters) He’s not wrong... But when will Pyrrhon learn that volume does not equal power?

He laughs, then sighs. He pats the stone bench.

SOCRATES
(to DAIMON) Come on, little one. Come on. I have questions for you.

The DAIMON hops over the bench and sits contentedly beside him. DAIMON looks up and around at the five trees that provide them with shade. He then looks to the side and winks at the oldest.

SOCRATES looks down at his toes, wiggles them. His hand is on his stomach. He is in obvious pain. Instead of whimpers or yelps, he expresses his deep discomfort with held breath. He is gritting his teeth.

DAIMON notices, and puts his little hand on SOCRATES. The DAIMON’s eyes are very serious, almost scary in their focus.

DAIMON
Breathe out. Or I’ll tickle you.

SOCRATES smiles and lets out the air in measured lengths.

SOCRATES
The powers that be are murmuring.

[BEAT]

That I corrupt the youth, turn them into heathens. That I myself am one. Maybe they’re right. But I believe in what I know, what I see, what I experience. I may not know much, but...

[ANOTHER BEAT]

You are real. I call, you answer. You pull me back when I am off my path, and then let me make the decision. Free will till the very end. Isn’t that much more worthy to consider than capricious gods, puppets of the leadership? Gods who most likely are gallivanting in the fields and the oceans, leaving their statues behind. Having sex, eating, all the things an embodied creature could choose to do in their vessels of flesh.

DAIMON sits very still. His eyes glint like coins peeking through soil.

SOCRATES
(cont.) The wicked are saying, “exile or death.” I don’t want to leave Athens. I don’t want to leave my students. Their growth gives me life, they inspire me to keep questioning, seeking. Seeing Pyrrhon and the others build their mental frameworks and then live their lives accordingly... is a marvel to behold. The cosmos reborn.

SOCRATES grimaces hard, hand pressing deeper into his stomach, as if trying to hold his insides together.

(to DAIMON) What do I do?

The TREES sway around them, and they sing like oracles.

THE TREES
You know, you know, you know.
Responsibility for your life rests on you.
Who but yourself will you answer to at the end of your days?

DAIMON’s eyes soften from intensity to a spaced-out gaze. He still has his little hand on SOCRATES’.

SOCRATES
Should I leave? Go on the run, become everything I am not just to survive. I’d be alive yet dead.

DAIMON
(gently, but with such firmness you’d need a saw to cut it in half) No.

The TREES shiver joyously.

THE TREES
You know, you know, you know.

SOCRATES
(to himself) I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in their manner and live.

SOCRATES stands and hobbles towards the audience, specifically YOU, the reader.

SOCRATES
The unexamined life is not worth living. I may try something and fail... and yet, what a blessing that is. Will you condemn me when the hour is nigh?

YOU
(you answer)

[END]

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He went to his brother’s kingdom, depressed as sin. His brother, funnily enough, suffered the same experience. His wife cheated on him with a slave too. Story has it that they traveled together to soothe their heavy spirits, and ended up crossing paths with a jinn. The jinn’s wife seduced them (mind you, she was captive to the jinn). They couldn’t resist her, oh no. Instead post-nut, they harped on how all these women were just so fucking faithless, unworthy of their care and devotion, undeserving of their loyalty.

The king got back home and sent out an edict through his son. Earlier that lunar year, he’d made the boy vizier, a golden chain to keep his heir close. The boy would have preferred losing himself in travels to and from Cathay, but the king couldn’t stomach the possibility of his heir slipping through his fingers.

The edict? All girls of such and such age were to be sent to the palace. Immediately.

People all over the kingdom assumed he was just amassing a huge harem. How greedy, merchants would whisper. Wails of mothers across the territories covered the land like ash. Who would their sons marry now?! But alas he was king. No one could say no.

Reality was grimmer. After a night spent with the damsel, he would execute them. Every night it was the same. He would devour, then order her to lay very still. He’d reach for his khanjar, and play with her, holding that blade close to her jugular. She’d smile and think he’s only joking, right? She had done nothing wrong, and she gave all of herself that night to please the powerful king, even if this was in fact her first time partaking in intercourse. She had run through all the advice her mother and aunts crammed into her brain before departure, even if her body hadn’t yet readied itself for such things. She did well, she did well... Her chant would come out as increasingly shallow breaths.

He released, and he was smiling.

His grin would spread, savoring her transparent thoughts, and in a breath, he would pick up his arm and swing down. He felt immense pleasure seeing the gush of scarlet spring forth and paint the sheets red.

The vizier was running out of girls, not to mention he was sampling one or two himself.

He summoned us from abroad — me and my cousins. This would have to do, he reasoned begrudgingly. The guilt ate at his entrails with newfound ferocity for he knew exactly what he was doing.

What I come to find out, once I’m back in my old childhood room, is that his wife, in fact, was very much alive. She still had her own wing and did as she pleased.

Spineless. Complicit. Her passive consent in exchange for comfort and gold. As long as she wasn’t the one that had to entertain that night, any night, she was at peace with looking the other way. Opium became her favorite incense.

Surprisingly, my room was just as I left it before I travelled north to Rus.

I shift to sit closer to my friend, who had refused to let me come back alone. “He hasn’t changed,” I whisper.

“I know,” she replies. She pats the satchel next to her, full of herbs, “You’ll make it through, and perhaps you’ll be the one to put an end to this madness. In the meantime, I will make sure nothing comes of it.”

She is as concerned as I am, but we take turns being scared, and right now, I need her to hold firm. I nod and gulp. If the rumors are true, I may not make it past the night. But in the case that I do... I am nowhere near ready to be a mother, and especially to a child of his. God forbid.

She helps me get ready: prepares a tea of yarrow, dolls me up in blue, tells me she will enter the chamber with me. That I am not alone.

I nod again. What else can I say?

The sun sets, and it is time. We make our way through winding halls. The slaves lower their eyes when we pass. None of us has a speck of power, we are at the whim of a sick man with a depraved appetite.

I decide then: this ends with me.

We stand at the threshold of his chamber. I notice that the light of the candles is amplified by strategically placed bronze mirrors.

“Come forth,” he orders. I step in.

Our eyes lock. Same color, same shape as mine. I’m back again in my personal hell.

“Ah, I knew you’d return,” he purrs.

Back to my old survival ways, I half-smile. He proceeds as intended. When he asks me to look back at him, I stare right at the middle of his forehead.

Truth be told, I am somewhere else.

I would think of a dear friend, the cute boy from Rus, of nights at his grandma’s place listening to her stories of Baba Yaga and all the idiots that came to her for help. I would think of my friend waiting right outside the door (she wasn’t allowed in), of nights spent praying to a god we barely knew, then playing with makeup and fabrics till the sun greeted us again.

My eyes flit back to the king’s face. He looks annoyed. He has finished, and his hand reaches for a sheathed blade next to our faces. With hesitation.

I roll my eyes and let out a small laugh, “O King, shall I tell you the story of Hades and Persephone?”

I will him to get off. Tit-for-tat. A story in exchange for space (and my life).

His chest deflates in relief, “Yes, tell me what you’ve learned. Any investment I make should come back to me with profits.”

He tries to caress my face, but I tense up. He calls my friend in. As she tends to me and cleans me up, I weave him the tale of Hades and Persephone with skillful voicing, charming narrative pace, and of course, smiles peppered everywhere. Just how he likes it.

If there’s one thing this king is good at, it is consistency. Lord, every day, the same. I am free to read, and recover, during the day. Then at twilight, I would be called to his chamber. My friend would wait outside, ready to be let in once it was over and I was to weave something captivating. Greek myths gave way to Egyptian lore, Slavic tales, Hebraic stories. Eventually, I made up my own.

Back in my room, I slump on the bed and sigh, “I’m exhausted. One thousand nights. I’m a little bird with a diamond encrusted leash on its ankle. Chained to this rotting kingdom forever.”

My friend stares at me, then moves closer to hold my hands. “I have news.”

I look up. Do I dare to have hope again? The tears fall like silent soldiers.

She continues, “He has sent me a message. See that falcon over there by the window? He awaits your response.”

“What is it?” I ask, knowing she already ate the paper. My voice trembles.

“He’s here. Ready when you are.”

I breathe in deeply, and squeeze her hand, “Let’s get ready for bed.”

The next morning, I wake and feel something small brush my palm as I pull my arm from under the pillow.

A sugar cube.

“Did you put this here for me?” I ask, confused as I don’t take sugar with my tea.

My friend shakes her head.

I place the cube on my tongue, and let it dissolve. I close my eyes, and for a second I remember the sun, the laughter, the wind on our faces as he and I raced horses by the seashore.

This ends with me.

On my way out, decked in red, I grab the small lighter from my nightstand. A gift received on one of those prayer nights, from the world beyond this one. I flick it open, click it shut. Engraved on its surface: a happy cat with one paw raised.

The king receives me as usual, but before he enters me, I hold my hand up.

“What is it, baby?” he asks.

“Enough,” I croak, “I can’t do this anymore.”

The king, stunned, sits back on his calves.

I push myself up onto my elbows, “I had so much to say, but now that I am allowing myself to speak, there’s nothi...”

“You will let me go.” My eyes pin his, voice resolute. “I will keep silent, you will keep silent. That has been and will continue to be our unspoken deal.”

I slink out of the sheets, and put my crimson robes back on as best I can. I stand next to the bed, and add, “Let the other girls go, don’t look for more. And find god, for fuck’s sake.”

I slip the lighter from its hidden pocket, flick the flame, and touch it to the sheets.

It catches.

He honors our deal, and doesn’t call for his guards. Once I am out the door, he finally lets himself stand.

“Let’s go!” I hiss on my way out, locking arms with her. I don’t look back.

Past the rose garden, a rider in black waits with two horses.

I look up. The night sky is clear, and directly above, Sirius illuminates the way.

Such a faithful star. He has heard all my prayers.

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I fear, I fear, I fear.

Still my hands keep on moving.

Tight threads, lift, a flick of the wrist, thunk, release, switch, repeat.

The fear is unbearable. My heart a gory bloody mess in its tight grip. The anxiety surges upwards. A sore throat, a painful jaw, a piercing of the ear drum.

But what if... NO. I’m scared. I can’t see. This all feels too real.

I pause the motions of my hands, and run fingers over the textile I’ve made in this short life. Bumps, perhaps the wrong colors — I can’t see. What strings am I even using? I have to redo this. I have time. Or better said, time does not fucking matter. Time is my enemy. It’s like I have this constant beef with the stickiest tar-like sand. It’s been getting everywhere.

I keep on weaving because I feel I must. Or I can’t stop.

The hands were made to move, and move they will.

Stop. Stop. The body is in a state of alarm, sending a continuous SOS. It hurts.

My hands rise in a posture of surrender. Ok. I breathe. In, out, in, out. My hands reach for the blindfold, they can’t help but move, act. They are shaking. I can hardly swallow. Did I fuck things up beyond repair? Am I lost? If there’s one thing I’ve lost it is perspective, that’s for sure.

What if... It can be remade? I can start again. I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t like it. Right?

Clammy tips touch white silk. Oh I am scared. Wait, why am I scared? I am sweating though the body is cold. I pull the fabric down.

Oh. Suspended breath. Dark indigo infinite space.

My eyes run down certain areas clocking the patterns that please me, the snags that don’t. The textile is a mess, but there are some parts I do like. Call them experimental, if you will. Not a complete loss. Maybe not a loss at all.

I pull threads, snip here and there. Like Odysseus’ Penelope I undo it all until it’s just me, a tangle of many strings, and the loom. I reach for a yarn of lovely red, and rub the string between my fingers. So warm. So lovely I could make it all this color. I think that would please me immensely. But then a blue catches my eyes. Blueberry, the Arctic Sea. It reminds me of him. I pull it gently, persistently, out of the mess, and weave it in.

Tight threads, lift, a flick of the wrist, thunk, release, switch, repeat.

Beautiful.

And what about that yellow, almost gold? It looks like tinsel. Gorgeous. And some white? Yes.

The body pangs in remembrance of the years I roamed the earth sick with existential amnesia. Perhaps, we’ll skip the grey.

But this green?

I gulp down the last of my fears.

I look up and around me again. On walls hang many of my past tapestries. Each unique: some feature one color predominantly, others are a kaleidoscopic fever dream. A few are very short. One is black and tattered, eaten by moths. Some are made from diaphanous strings, others from the thickest yarn I could possibly make. Delicate. Robust. Chunky. Neat. Pathetic. Triumphant. There isn’t a reality I haven’t explored.

I look down at my current project. Hmm, I think this one... I will make extra special.

I chuckle because I say that every time.

Tight threads, lift, a flick of the wrist, thunk, release, switch, repeat.

a story of death and rebirth
 

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“Hey, can you set the dinner table silverware for the event tonight? Put two forks here, then two tablespoons, and a sharpie knife there, and a...”

“Please set the example on the main table,” I interjected.

“Come on. You can’t remember this?”

I sucked in my breath sharply. I wanted to scream. Poor man wasn’t even the reason. He was just doing his job, but the money being swiped from my bank mere hours ago, this job paying me half the rate after 4.5 hrs (so fucking weird, I know) and it potentially lasting till 11pm (my call time? 4pm), and generally being super displeased that I am not elsewhere geographically...

“Give me a second,” I say, and in a faint exasperated murmur I trail off, “I am at my wit’s end.” I flee to the restroom where I clench my fists as hard as I possible can.

I hate this. I hate this so much, I chant, channeling my rage out through brutally frank affirmations. I unfurl my hands, my fingers feel sore.

Why can’t people pay their employees reasonable wages? Why do I have to grovel to get MY money back? Why is it taking so long to get their problem fixed?

If this country I live in is all about free market, then why am I not seeing that? All I see instead is exploitation. Callous handling of company mistakes at the expense of the worker. Two or so years ago I even had to report a restaurant to the labor department because they were pocketing all our tips! Rest assured that unscrupulous man paid out what he owed us.

I currently work two jobs. People I know juggle same amount, sometimes more. Others work doubles, regularly. And mind you, most of us are using that money for basic necessities. Forget Gucci, we want groceries, bus passes, no debt!

I’ve had experience on the other side of the spectrum too. I remember living in LA and almost falling into depression because no matter what little hobbies I picked up, everything seemed soulless. Giving it my all as a ‘kingdom builder,’ I volunteered countless hours every week at my church (audio, camera, teen program), and tithed generously on the regular. Come to find out that the pastor and his wife had been using it to fund a new lifestyle — Cartier bracelets, first class flight tickets, expensive dinners, and all. It felt like these religious leaders completely forgot who Jesus was.

I used to have such an easy relationship with money growing up. It was always there, and so I never really had to think about it. I wanted to take a trip to India after freshman year. No problem. New LV Neverfull? Cool, want your initials embossed on it? Going to college was an immense joy. The privilege was incredible. But after graduation, I cut off that easy access. The money bound me to a family that hurt me, no matter the distance.

So now that I am in different circumstances, class consciousness: on, I grapple with the question — what do I actually want. Do I want billions? Honestly, no, not really. I care too much about people to go down that road anyhow as there is no such thing as an ethical billionaire. Do I want to own 5 houses? Nope. All the latest “luxury” items? I mean if it’s made well and I actually need it, sure? But I am good. What I want is to be with my man, write, travel, pet cats, puppies, birds, laugh with my friends, bake for my neighbors. I want to live.

WHITE BUTTER

I made a torta paradiso a few weeks ago. One of the first steps was to mix the sugar with the butter for up to 15 minutes. You’ll know it’s ready when the mixture turns white — not cream, not pale yellow, but white. The minutes flew by, and though my arm grew tired, I marched on, excited for the delicious cake I was making. There’s something almost meditative about that repetition, the way the texture changes under your hands, granules dissolving, resistance giving way to silk. Later I’d add the eggs. I almost freaked out because the batter now looked a bit curdled but I trusted the process and the recipe.

The cake was divine.

I don’t mind putting in the elbow grease. I can work long hours. I can make guests feel welcome and taken care of, anticipating needs before they’re spoken. I can sit myself down and write satisfying amounts of words within a specific time frame, wrestling language into something that sings. I can do a lot. I have the endurance and general goodwill to deliver something wonderful.

But here’s where it gets murky: that transformation I create — where does it actually go? When I whip butter and sugar into something white and cloud-like for a cake, I know exactly what I’m making and who will eat it. The exchange is clear. The value is visible. But when I work a shift that generates thousands of dollars for an establishment, creates repeat customers through careful attention and genuine care, transforms a dining room from empty tables into an experience people remember — what am I actually receiving in return?

Getting paid less than $25 an hour is crazy to me when I can track my labor’s worth in real time. Even more insane is how in the US, a la carte servers are paid $2.13 an hour in some states, with the rest supposedly made up in tips. Many restaurants expect you to stay after closing to clean the entire front of house. So yes, you’re scrubbing floors and wiping down every surface for $2.13 an hour. We are such cheap labor, my god. The transformation we create — turning strangers into regulars, chaos into smooth service, raw ingredients into memorable meals — that alchemy is worth so much more than what hits our bank accounts every two weeks.

I think about my arm getting tired while making that cake, and how I joyfully pushed through because I knew it’d turn out great. But when our efforts out there in the world don’t even guarantee personal satisfaction, much less a livable wage, how are we to reconcile out innate sense of fairness? Our labor transforms and transforms and transforms, and the white butter we’ve created just... disappears into someone else’s profit margin and pockets.

The question isn’t whether I can do the work. I can. The question is: what is my labor actually producing in this exchange, and why does it feel like I’m giving pound cake but getting back crumbs?

RASPBERRY COMPOTE

Money, currency, is like a flowing river. Or at least it should be. I receive, I let go. I bless, I am blessed. Over and over again.

This summer I really tried to get down to it. I wanted to get the metaphysics right. It’s an energy. Got it. You have to allow flow. All right. Don’t block yourself from receiving. ...Umm? As if I would turn down a windfall.

You know what though? There’s some truth to that advice, even if it sounds like LinkedIn wellness nonsense. When you’ve experienced hardship, what do you tend to do when you hold something in your hands? You hold it tighter. Scarcity doesn’t just empty your wallet. It rewires your nervous system. Every dollar becomes precious in a way that makes it hard to let anything move through you. The river freezes.

When I had steady income and family money, I definitely overbought, but I also dropped off the coolest things at the closest Goodwill without a second thought. Circulation felt natural. So I personally can’t speak to why many wealthy individuals are so keen on rolling around on their mountains of gold, fuck everyone else. Maybe it’s a different kind of scarcity they’re responding to? Never enough power, never enough security, never enough proof that they matter. I don’t know. What I do know is that this experience — working hard and still struggling — taught me how fear can dam up the flow.

For a moment, I had to surrender and ask for help. My community, mainly neighbors, didn’t give handouts (I’m too proud for that anyway) but their kindness softened my anxiety. The little culinary treats we exchange are a delight. Someone leaves banana bread or the tastiest shrimp EVER at my door. I bring over tangerines, flowers, slices of torta paradiso. We’re not doing charity; we’re doing circulation. I keep trucking at work, but at least now I am not mentally tortured by constant worry. I feel loved. The jar I give away, raspberry compote with a gingham lid and ribbon, comes back as something else. A quiet pleasure that sits warmly in the navel. Joy.

I didn’t stop giving things away, even when money got tight. In fact, I may be generous to a fault — or maybe not, because I don’t regret anything I’ve given. I think things through. I’m deliberate, keeping in mind the receiver’s likes and dislikes, how to give it without making a big deal out of it, and so on. I simply refused to let fear of a proverbial winter turn me into a dam. When I have extra food, I share it. When I have books I’ve finished, I leave them on bus seats or little libraries in front of people’s houses. When someone needs something I have, and I can spare it, I give.

It would be easy to call this foolish when I’m working two jobs and tracking every dollar, right? But no, friend. Wealth isn’t just what you hold. It’s what moves through you. Raspberry compote takes time: gathering the berries, cooking them down with sugar, jarring them carefully, sealing the lids. It’s preservation, yes, but preservation for sharing. You can’t eat seventeen jars of compote yourself. The abundance is in the circulation.

Community wealth works like this. You give what you can, you receive what you need, and somehow (✨ mysteriously ✨, against all capitalist logic) everyone ends up fed. Not equally, not perfectly, but genuinely. The metaphysics supersedes manifestation magic, the ‘attracting abundance through positive thinking’ line of thought1. Laws of the universe are about recognizing that you’re already part of a system of exchange that’s older and truer than the modern take on money. You’re the raspberry plant and the person dissolving the raspberries in sugar and the neighbor who’ll receive the jar. All at once.

To quote Job from the Old Testament, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither.” I give. I receive. What a joy it is to experience life as an unending gift exchange.

BLUE FUR PELT

One of my friends who is older and Canadian, grew up on a farm, was telling me how a kid will be so completely bewildered when they’re told that the nugget they’re eating is a dead chicken. Knowing a creature’s life had to be stopped short so one can eat feels weird, doesn’t it? I’m not saying I don’t eat meat, but when I do, the thought of what it used to be does cross my mind. And I feel gratitude. For the creature that I’d probably pet if it let me, back when it had life. For the hands that prepared it, and those that cooked it.

Sometimes I imagine this awareness as a blue fur pelt. Strange, not from this world, something that fell into my hands when I wasn’t looking. Now that I have it, I can’t pretend I don’t see. The pelt is alien, uncomfortable even, doesn’t quite sit naturally on my shoulders. But it’s real, not synthetic. As in something had to shift, crack open, maybe even die in me for this awareness to arrive. Once you wear it, everything looks different.

I see the chicken nugget differently now. I see my paycheck differently too. I see the phone in my hand and know what it cost to extract the minerals inside it. Not just dollars, but Congolese blood, children’s hands in mines, ecosystems destroyed. This is why I went and got a refurbished phone instead of giving Apple more money. Now that I know what that piece of technology costs us, I refuse to be a complacent participant in the suffering of another fellow human being. The blue fur pelt on my shoulders doesn’t let me look away.

A lot of us simply forget that we truly only have one planet we can call home, and whether we like it or not, we share it. I smile when I remember that as I type away there are pods of orcas traversing the Pacific. That when I clock in for my dinner shift, pigeons are cuddling in forgotten recesses of the city, maybe cooing to each other about what fries and donuts they got to eat that day. During my breaks, I go to the park nearby, and as I inhale deep, I watch how the trees sway over me. They’ve been breathing out what I breathe in long before I arrived, and they’ll continue long after I’m gone.

The awareness sits heavy sometimes. It’s a gift I didn’t ask for and can’t return. To be honest, I don’t think I even want to return it. Going back to ignorance gives me zero solace. Once you see that everything you touch required someone else’s life force, whether it be animals, tech devices, trees breathing out oxygen, or the labor of invisible hands, you’re responsible for how you hold that knowledge. You become a steward whether you want to be one or not.

The blue fur pelt also reminds me of what Jesus said about how man doesn’t live on bread alone. Beyond the terrestrial, there is the momentarily unseen. Our ecosystem is far greater than what we imagine. It extends beyond the ecological and encompasses the spiritual, the energetic, and the relational. We’re bound up in exchanges we can’t even track. The orcas and I share saltwater currents. The pigeons and I share city air. The Congolese and I share humanity. My heart beats just like theirs.

Suddenly my banquet serving job seems like a speck of sand on a very long shoreline. Not because it doesn’t matter, but because it’s part of something so much larger than the transaction my employer thinks we’re having. They think they’re buying my time, and morbidly so, they may even think they own me. But what’s actually happening is I’m in constant life force exchange: with my neighbors, the orcas and the trees, Congolese children, my coworkers and the guests. And you.

Money is not the end all, be all. But you know who is? Honey...

It’s us.

White butter, raspberry compote, blue fur pelt.

Labor, community, stewardship.

We are what gives money meaning.

A letter from Self to self.

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Friends, I tried to write something palatable, something quiet and poetic. But my jaw is tight, eyes laser focused, and my fingertips are tapping away on the keyboard in flurries.

Rage is holy too.

So grab your drink, and join me for we are going in. Today’s offering is going to burn the throat as it goes down; I am going to remind you that that clutch of the heart you feel when your eyes glance quickly over certain posts is not to be ignored. I am going to ask you not to lose your humanity when others have forsaken theirs. Your humanity — your capacity to feel, empathize, and also act with conviction even when your hands are shaking — is the only worthy thing a person should aim to hold on to.

We are witnessing a brutal genocide via our phones, 4K UHD. Correction: genocides. And much to the powers-that-be’s dismay, their once trusty propaganda doesn’t work because first, it’s bad on a technical level. Flooding social platforms with bots running on exposed scripts won’t do you any favors, much like a retailer banking on the same tactic ends up shooting themselves in the foot. And second, this isn’t the 1990s. We don’t go to the bought-out news channels to find out what is happening in the world. Heck, not even domestically. When devastating Hurricane Helene touched ground on the Carolinas, I went directly to TikTok (back when it was not under fascist hands) to hear from the people themselves. Plus we don’t trust our leaders. Oh WMDs, they say? Last time one of them said that, it ended with over a million Iraqis dead so they better show proof, and show it fast. Also, now that they mention Iranian WMDs, can they confirm what we already know? Yea, the part they keep shoving under the rug: Israel has had nukes since day one. Are we going after them too? No? Oh, of course not. Silly me. USA + Israel = 4eva.

I work a lot and somehow feel like I am running in circles. Rising cost of living, overwhelming news domestically (the ICE raids in Chicago are horrific), and globally (every day, I feel like Netanyahu and his cursed administration think up new ways to be crueler; these people should be locked up in Tartarus ffr, for their own sake), plus whatever I am dealing with at the moment: good, bad, and everything in between. I am a good citizen, a sweet neighbor, a good friend. I am relatively obedient, but hey, what do we do when the soul is saying, “Psst, listen. LISTEN. Something is not right, and you do have agency.” What do we do then?

When the events of October 7 happened, I was confused. Before then, I had only heard of Palestine in passing. I have friends with Pali blood, well-to-do members of the diaspora, and I didn’t quite understand. They seemed to be doing okay.

But something felt very off. Israel is notoriously shifty with data, history, and evidence. Also, who the fuck holds a rave miles away from a concentration camp?

The numbers of Israeli casualties rose. Then halved. Then shifted again. Eventually, we found out most of the casualties were IOF, inflicted by their own: Apache helicopters, destroyed CCTV, the works. Something, something Samson Option, Plan Dalet, Haavara Agreement, Nakba. The information has always been there. I felt like I lifted a heavy rock and underneath was nothing but writhing rot. Has this really been happening for years while I lived relatively carefree, traveling between the US, Latin America, and Europe?

My worldview? Rocked.

I followed inklings. I read (still do; Said, Finkelstein — I love you). I weighed the words being said... and I was, am, horrified. But the plunge didn’t stop there. I saw things I NEVER thought I’d see in this lifetime.

Look me in the eye and mutter about hostages again — but first, ask Netanyahu why he kills his own — and know that what scrolls through my mind while you mumble stale, old-ass Hasbara script are videos of:

A child without a head, held up by a father stunned beyond grief in Rafah.

Men peacefully walking down the seashore, suddenly obliterated by a bomb.

A Taehyung BTS photo card found in the rubble of what once was a home — that ARMY member is no longer with us.

A weekday list taped to a hospital wall labeled terrorist activity by global media conglomerates (BRO! Did they forget a lot of people can read Arabic?!).

The IOF luring purposefully starved Palestinians with “aid,” only to open fire on them. Multiple times.

The forced migration from one end of the Gaza Strip to the other, then back again.

And more.

It’s like I’m narrating a Hitler fever dream.

Jesus... Has our world really come to this?

I donated to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund. I followed the Jewish Voice for Peace from the get-go and lent my support. I wore my keffiyeh despite the fear that someone might spit on me (no one did; in fact, it encouraged others to wear their own).

I moved information online with celerity and precision.

I called the White House1 every lunch break for six months. I called my senators too. That got demoralizing fast. The only bright light? One of my House reps. Everyone else is a sellout. Or so supremely blackmailed that they’re basically puppets, even Bernie. What absolute shills. To the MAGA camp, I ask this: how is this “putting America first”? Explain to me why an Israeli has free healthcare and billions in American foreign aid, but most Americans can’t afford insurance and live paycheck to paycheck. Hmm?

In the realm of the astral, of course I executed rituals, powerful ones still active to this day.

Circumstances eventually forced me to tend to myself again. I was running myself ragged. My thinking? Imagine those actually living in the horror! I still have my hand on the world’s pulse, but I came to terms with the truth: I can’t give out of an empty cup. I reluctantly retreated momentarily and focused on personal finances, my mental health, and figuring out next steps with my boyfriend who lives across the Atlantic.

I think what makes people afraid to speak out is that Zionists are unhinged. Remember the attacks on college students at Columbia University? Ex-IOF members sprayed protestors with a substance they use with glee on Palestinians. That attack would have been considered domestic terrorism were it anyone else. Mass media sure swept that one under the rug quick. They can be violent — are violent — and what makes it worse is that it’s sanctioned. Just look at how the U.S. votes in the UN. You’d think Israel was the 51st state but with better perks lmao.

It’s terrifying to realize that there are IOF soldiers walking around in plain sight, sipping overpriced lattes, shopping for succulents, moving through the world as if they didn’t leave horror in their wake. I remember once, back in late fall of 2023, I sold a cactus to one at the flower shop where I worked. I had a feeling. His accent gave him away anyhow. He was hesitant to say where he was from (I asked), but when he confirmed it, my blood ran cold.

And still, I smiled. I handed over the pot gently, like I didn’t want to scream. Because what else could I do? I needed the job. I had a sweet coworker next to me that I wanted to protect in case anything happened. And I was already seen.

These moments wedge themselves under the skin. What happens when the body is obedient but the soul is done submitting to what’s blatantly wrong? I think about that all the time. So yeah. I understand. We do care. But at times you look away because you’re scared and overwhelmed. Sometimes I am scared and overwhelmed too.

I’m not here to offer false closure nor a quick fix. In fact, there’s a lot I haven’t touched on in this essay — there is so much to say. This immense injustice doesn’t end neatly. It won’t. Not until the bombs stop, the land is returned, the bodies are buried with dignity, and the living are free to live on their native land without fear of imprisonment, rape, starvation, and continued apartheid. Not until the western world confesses just how evil we have been to the global majority and pays reparations. The USA and its compulsory allies keep on making their list of debts long... and they will eventually have to pay out. Empires run on spilled blood like this can’t sustain themselves indefinitely. They may have to clear the ledger earlier than they thought too, for they don’t really treat their own citizens well either. It’s almost like their blindness is barreling them forward towards the end they are trying desperately to avoid.

But I am here to tell you: once you see, you can’t unsee. To see is not a curse. It’s the beginning of your awakening. Don’t let this world dull your intuitive edge, or tell you this is all just too complicated to understand. It’s not. Let your grief be a conduit for clarity. Let your anger surface and affirm your suspicions that what is happening isn’t right. Allow the fear to walk beside you. Doing things we know we should do while scared is still brave.

Personally, I have never been shy to pursue knowledge and stand by what is right. My internal fire perennially burns bright — sometimes too bright for the blaze eats me from the inside when the holy rage and deep grief reaches new levels. What I’ve noticed, in full transparency, is the hesitation to speak louder. So fuck it, here it is. I am not alone. You are not alone either. I look around and see many like me, like us, eyes and souls lucid. We don’t want to live in a society that constantly tramples over justice, even if we, those who live in the belly of the beast, benefit from it.

So trust that beating organ within you — the heart, your compass. Your compass is working just fine. You just have to heed it. Stay human, and set sail towards what’s just. One day, our children will look to us and ask why we didn’t stop this sooner. And I (and my partner) will say: “Right. We asked ourselves that too. We witnessed the most evil of evils, but we also saw great courage. As they say, courage was made in Palestine. We did everything we could to help re-balance the skewed scales of justice. Which is why2, we can say now: Palestine is free, healthy, and thriving. As is the Congo, Yemen, and the rest of the world.”

A remix of sorts. Part return, part continuation — all in the spirit of curiosity-fueled experimentation. If anything is possible, and that includes how we approach self-care and healing, then why not lean into that?

Inside, you’ll find:

⋆ a recorded reading of perched (the original essay on the rite of sitting down, accessible to all) in my own voice

⋆ a note on what’s shifted since then

⋆ and a small gift: a downloadable guided meditation, available through Chiron’s Daughter

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I recently caught up on the Mononoke films. As a huge fan of Kusuriuri, a character I’ve long admired and even wanted to be, I delighted in the reprise of the medicine seller: his mysterious allure, the handsome sword man who takes over right before the battle, the overwhelmingly beautiful imagery, and the music that sometimes unsettles even as it enchants. What I did not expect this time was to be fascinated by his tools — the scales, or tenbin, in particular — and the three-part process he follows: identify the form of the spirit, pinpoint its truth, and understand its reason, its why.

As I browsed Pinterest for fanart after my movie binge, I thought, “Wait… doesn’t this three-step process sound familiar?” Not for exorcising spirits, but for creation. Every time I sit down before a blank Obsidian note, I ask: What do I want to say? Why do I want to say it? And what form should it take? The order differs from Kusuriuri’s, since my purpose is not to drive something out, but to mold ether into perceivable matter. A magical goblin does what it must within its cosmology. For Goblin Nina, the order is reason, truth, form. Though sometimes two or all three arrive together, tangled, as if to keep me on my toes.

For my last post, königin, the three conditions rushed in at once. I just knew it had to be a poem celebrating a relationship I hold dear. The fire inside me demanded it. The message needed to come to light the way that it did.

Per the Mononoke wiki, “the style of exorcism the Medicine Seller employs is derived from mikkyō's Three Mysteries”: mudra, mantra, and mandala. Body, Speech, and Mind. Form, Truth, Reason.

Let’s start with Form.

For as long as I can remember, I have engaged with the non-tangible. I’d write short stories as a little kid, make theaters out of tissue boxes and tempera paint, engross my Barbies in complicated drama and lore. I’d transcribe the most surprising poems — like one when I was 14 about two people completely unmasking before each other. A kid next desk over whispered to a friend, asking if it was about sex. Maybe it was. I don’t know. I channeled it, shaping the invisible into something that could stand, breathe, and speak.

Over the years, I’d engage with it via more traditional rituals: prayers, attending mass, reciting the Gayatri Mantra with a mala as counter. Yet the wild in me never fully retreated. I planted my bare feet on the grass to feel the warmth of the earth, took naps under different trees at college, stared at squirrels as if I could speak to them telepathically. Each step grounded the idea, pressed it into the earth, gave it weight and possibility.

Creatively, I fumbled about, leaning heavily on intuition. When stuck or pressed for time, I banked on what I did best: push forward. I trusted that the idea would take a body, and that trust was always met with confirmation. What I have realized now is that the process could be as easy as it was in childhood. Straining is unnecessary. If an idea comes to mind, it is more than possible to birth it. Thoughts want to be made flesh; my hand is only the instrument.

For Chiron’s Daughter, my digital garden website (my feral digital garden, haha), I leave no potential media tool off limits. I want to talk to an angel? Why not write a play. Summer is ending, oh no! What if I made a fantastical bucket list? The latest is all about ‘what the wind told me.’ I had never edited a video to completion in my life — till now. The scales tipped, the bells tinkled, and the message was clear: it wanted to be experienced a certain way. No better time than the present to learn a skill, so I stitched together a little film, shy of two minutes, to share the Zephyr’s whisper. Breathe, just breathe.

It’s not necessarily the message that matters, but how it is presented. Look at how the wind plays with the alocasia leaves under the sunlight. You see birds, bees, and dancing butterflies. I overlay a voice reading my take on Matthew 6:26-34 (NIV... Nina's International Version bwehehe), emphasizing that if the universe takes care of the birds, what makes you think it wouldn’t take care of you?

Form emerges, insists, persists.

Next: Truth.

It took a lot of humility to admit that I have carried years of trauma on my back, and it was a painful pill to swallow to learn that my reactions to those less-than-stellar experiences shaped my beliefs about the world. I started my human existence as a trusting golden child, and gradually, because I gave those experiences too much power, I became fearful, withdrawn, afraid to be seen.

I didn’t want to be seen because what if that attention turned to jealousy? I paid more attention to the snide remarks about being a nerd than to the gentle encouragement of teachers who saw me as a sapling with the potential to bear the most interesting fruits. I thought the way I was treated by certain family members was the norm, and I almost let it color the way I viewed all men. Thankfully, I met someone rather special early on, so that specific viewpoint never hardened into full-on bitterness. Just caution.

People say the truth is relative. Relative to whom? You. The lenses you wear shape not only what you see, but the way the truth flows through you. I wrote an essay on the rite of sitting down (perched) last month, and the words flowed through my fingertips with ease. What was hell was editing. I don’t think I have ever edited a piece as much as that one. I’d type a sentence, tweak a word. Sometimes the edit resonated — the little bells jingled. Other times it didn’t. The fuckkkk. I’d rock in my seat, hands on my temples. What was not clicking?

My truth.

Yes, sitting down with yourself is needed, and this is how you do it: x, y, z. But that doesn’t mean it was easy in that period of my life. Far from it. I wanted to run on all cylinders, to exhaust the body to near depletion. What made the essay finally click was that admission. I may doubt the clarity I receive when I pipe down and actually listen to my inner world, but ultimately I trust it. That is why I return to that rite again and again.

Your truth changes as you evolve, and that’s ok. For the purpose of creating, it doesn’t matter that it will change in the future. In the moment, in the now, what do you want to say? Write it down, draw it, dance to it. Even if the truth isn’t packaged neatly, even if it’s messy... Even if it's ugly.

There’s a line in Phantom of the Rain where the Medicine Seller of Kun tells the guard of the Ōoku that truth is heard rather than just seen. Or at least that's how I remember it 😅. Whether or not I quote it perfectly, the line left this imprint: listening carefully, with awareness, reveals the truth in ways sight alone cannot.

The last element of this triad? Reason.

I hid myself from the world for months at a time. Yes, that was true. And later, much later, when I had the courage to trace the pattern back, I asked: why? The answer rang clear. I feared my joy would be stolen if I showed it. I feared that if I lived too openly, I’d invite the losses, the cutting words, the violations I had already endured. I worried my spirit wasn’t strong enough to survive a repeat.

Ding! went the bell.

So I hid.

Every action has its cause. Every choice, its root. My reasons might have looked absurd to an outsider, but to me they made perfect sense. They were survival, not folly. And whether the path was “right” is almost irrelevant because only hindsight could tell me that. The point is that it was my path, and at the time, it was the only one I thought I could walk.

Lately I’ve been circling the concept of sovereignty. I’d define it as: Autonomy. Agency. Self-rule. One of my first EFT tapping sessions had me repeating a line that grated at first: I take full responsibility for myself. Over time, those words changed shape. I finally understood. They became a declaration of power, not a source of shame nor guilt. Whatever happens, I choose what to make of it. Justice may or may not come from outside, but I can still decide whether to give the wound more of my life, or to redirect my breath elsewhere.

Reason is the compass. It doesn’t always excuse the past, but it makes the present intelligible. When it comes to creation, Reason is what pulls others close. Sometimes it’s raw survival (you just wanna make money, I get it); sometimes it’s euphoric love; sometimes it’s joy or grief spilling over into form. When I honor the reason, I notice I stop caring about metrics. If a piece is read, wonderful. If not, it still exists, still holds its weight, because the force behind it was true.

With the three conditions met (Form! Truth! Reason!), the Sacred Sword cries,
       Tokihanatsu! Release.

When I first drafted this essay, I thought: it can’t possibly be this simple. And in a way, it is …but also, no. Our feelings are layered, our memories prone to suggestion. What this structure gives me is not a shortcut, but scaffolding. A way to move through the overwhelm.

But before I even step into the threefold process of creation, I take note of the scales. The tenbin is my signal. First, I watch and listen. When they tip, when the bells ring, I know something worthy of contemplation and exploration is surfacing. I listen, then follow. I trust that whatever I topple into I can handle. If not all at once, at least I can begin with one of the conditions and move from there. Form, truth, or reason as it comes.

If I were a Kusuriuri, I’m not sure what hexagram I’d be1. Maybe Hexagram 30: Li / The Clinging, Fire. What I do know is that I have my own medicine box. The words and images I craft, the tools I reach for whether familiar or new, and always, my tenbin with its little bells. My intuition.

Lately, the bells have been ringing nonstop. I’m listening. Curious. For they haven’t failed me yet, and what they signal to has always proven to be, at the very least, transformative. I don’t have a pipe like Kusuriuri, but I do have a vape. With a little smile on my face and vape in hand, I wait to see what wants to break through next.

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These are the fruits of a rite I’ve come to go to again and again, that of sitting down with myself, and myself alone.

Not too long ago, my internal dialogue sounded a bit different…
       If I were to sit down and just breathe, would life still hold me?
Or would I be dragged down with the current, no matter what?
If I were to lay my Apple pencil down, or put a pause in the search for more gigs — just for a moment — would I be betraying myself?
Shouldn’t I be going at full blown speed trying to get everything, anything, my hands can get a hold of?

A voice, unidentified, but somehow with the audacity to speak loudest, replies:
       No rest. You don’t deserve rest. Work yourself to the bone.

My body is an obedient, loving animal. Were I to be despotic about how I go about my time, it would do its best to fall in line. It has before.

However, let’s look at that language. It isn’t something you would tell a friend, right?

That voice again, it couldn’t care less that it’s interrupting me:
       You SUCK. You better shut the fuck up and keep on doing the same old shit. Because it’s obvious you don’t know what else to do.

Ouch.

I am not much of masochist, at least not in the day-to-day, and one morning, I’d had enough. I yanked my journal from under a stack of books and grabbed a pen. I was going to have a serious talk with myself and see why the hell I was speaking to the receptive-me like this.

In the thick of my no-nonsense era, my body showed signs of great distress. My skin was acting up. My eyes looked so sad, sadder than I’d ever seen them. My teeth and gums were incredibly sensitive; I had to brush them gingerly to avoid that surge of nerve pain. I was on edge. My lived experience was freaking me out. I felt like I wasn’t doing enough. I felt like I wasn’t enough.

I am mildly vain, and on top of that, the pain (teeth, neck, lower back) tugged at me to listen. If I didn’t stop whatever I was doing for my own mental sake, I had to do it for my body’s comfort …and aesthetics. My vanity does serve a noble purpose. Ha!

Like a mad metaphysical scientist, I reached for alternatives in the midst of demolition. The tone I had chosen to address myself — the rigidity, the constant pin-down to that electric chair — was sheer torture. The body expressed itself in the only way it could given those circumstances: hot, angry tears. It came to a point where the dam I had built caved to the mounting pressure, and cue: the ✨crashout✨. I let the heavy tears roll down the cheeks. I allowed some whining — WHY WhY whY whyyy — until I was tuckered out and once again receptive to self-care.

Then, I would repeat truths while Magdalena Bay’s “Live 4ever” played on repeat for an hour. I’d let the gentle words of an affirmation tape lull me as I wrapped myself in a blanket and sometimes… I allowed myself to take a delicious nap. No alarm set.

Given the frequency of these crashouts, I’ve come to learn what to do when the body buckles. But surely there must be a gentler, softer way to do this — all of this — and avoid getting into that emergency state in the first place. How do I honor myself above all circumstances, without the need to gaslight myself or slap metaphorical band-aids over gaping psychic wounds?

✦ Astral Field Note: I have a chat with the nasty voice.
Materials used: journal, pen, imagination.

I pictured myself in the greenhouse of Howl’s Moving Castle. I am Mme. Suliman — or her younger sister, lol — and I summon the me (the voice that interrupted us earlier in this essay) that had been nasty to the rest of the flock.

I debated internally whether I should ban them outright from the kingdom. Wisdom advised differently: Listen, and see what they say first.

Bellicose exasperated-me sat down surly on the chair I offered. I gestured towards the cookies and the tea, and made myself a cup right after. The Other, still nameless, touched nothing.

I sipped my tea. My gaze soaked her in. I couldn’t hold my curiosity any longer, so I asked, “Why do you speak to the rest the way you do?”

She replied, eyes ardent, “Because if I don’t do this, then how will we make it through this?!”

Oh! That changes things, doesn’t it? This person is not my enemy — just misguided —and maybe, just maybe, I haven’t been very present.

✧ Rite in Practice ✧

mirrorfeast has three category tags: mirror, feast, and rite. You’ve already tasted a sampling of the first two. This post dips into rite.

After much experimentation, there is a self-made liturgy I follow to turn down the noise, stop the scramble and the inner competition between all my selves: the one that wants to create 24/7, the one that is worried about finances, the one that has been eyeing that one-way Lufthansa flight ticket for months, the one that wants to stay here for at least a few more months so I can stabilize, and more.

It’s not complicated or ceremonial. No incense, no velvet robe. But it is a rite. A return. Something that grounds me.

The Rite of Sitting Down.

Sitting down entails presence. And nothing more.

It doesn’t mean I am giving up on what I desire. It doesn’t mean I am forsaking responsibility. It means choosing softness over performance, devotion over battle.

I am choosing presence.

✦ Astral Field Note, Part 2: Integration.
Result: The meeting was a success!

The conversation continued. I let her speak. Poor thing, she’s traumatized, and though she chose sharp fire to combat the world, I understand why.

I tell her that I could be like Zeus and with brute force, push my thumb down on them all — especially her, My Prometheus (for I think I know what her name is though she doesn’t have the faintest clue).

But I opted not to do that. I did invite her into the greenhouse for a heart-to-heart after all.

She took in those words and humbly recognized the power I held and that I, in fact, was not a tyrant. I could see her body relax. She reached for a cookie and took a bite.

“I know your name,” I said. Her ears perk up. “You are Change. With the right role, clear constraints, and with ample space to create and experiment, I have a feeling you’d bloom beautifully.”

The Other leaned in, a wonderful sparkle in her eyes. We chatted about how we could utilize her vigor, her sense of right and wrong, and bountiful energy in a way better aligned.

She was all in.

✧ Rite in Practice Continued ✧

You can get technical about the rite of sitting down, thinking, “Oh yea, I am intentionally breathing slower. I am counting the inhale in (4 beats) and the longer exhale out (6).”

When I am really off-kilter and feeling queasy, I place one hand over my upper stomach and the other one on my heart. Aloud, I remind myself: I am here. My breath is enough. About ten minutes in, I am able to start mulling over my intentions for the day without the danger of triggering myself back into crisis mode.

It can also look like zoning out, but instead of focusing on whatever your last TikTok doomscroll imprinted on you, you’re paying attention to your body (Is it heavy, tight in some spaces, in pain? Does it feel relief when you offer something specific? Do you need food, water, sleep?) as well as the thoughts that drift through the marquee of your mental space.

For this rite, there is no need to fix or chase anything. In my personal experience, when I’m not caught in the storm, the solution comes forth like a sweet summer breeze. Since there is no longer a tempest within, life reclaims agency and readjusts to the gentler tempo.

So to summarize:

Awareness first.

Then sink into yourself. Embody… your body.

Slowly come into right relationship with the self, with what you tend. Take your time. I tend to rush this part, and suffer for it later when I choose to push mercilessly instead.

If you’re like me, treating yourself softly may be one of the most frustrating things to do ever because it feels like you’re not "doing" anything. The mind wants action, results, movement. If that’s the case, make this the goal: gentleness.

After that, you can yap to yourself, journal it out with pen and paper like I did in that particular case with the "nasty" voice, or type away in your notes app.
For those of you that like more structure, you can map out your ideas.
And if you are not feeling words, draw. Or move the body how you like best. Dance. Stretch. Pilates. Play a sport where you can be a little rowdy.

Inspired action naturally follows this deceptively simple practice. Eventually… don’t force it. And remember this: the world does wait for you. It’s a thousand times more effective to act from a calm, focused center than from a state with no center at all, where you’re constantly reacting to external stimuli.

It’s comforting, the thought — that we are safe, that we are okay. Even if some days, I still eye that with suspicion. Because ultimately, we are in good hands.

Our own.

Every time I sit down with myself, even if it’s the last thing I want to do, I’m learning to hold that close.

Take your time.

• · • · •

Five poems, soft and startling as sugar-dusted truths, wait for you.

Let’s begin.

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