This is some of my best advice. Never do these things:
What, you think you don’t have control over these things?
Never do them if you value your health and your life.
Photo by me
So much for my good intentions to keep posting on vacation. As soon as my flight landed, my brain went on vacation too. I spent most of my time reading beach novels, frolicking in the sun, and sleeping.
I clearly needed a vacation, and I refuse to feel bad about it.
It became especially clear as my travelling companion had little interest in listening to my passing thoughts (many of which will become future blog posts) that I miss writing daily—so posting here will resume post-haste.
I’m also contemplating some sort of podcast, perhaps to document my upcoming journey of de-gnostification. It’s a bit early to set firm goals (I typically do that between Christmas and New Year’s), but I’d like 2019 to be a year of face-to-face relationships, doing art IRL, and examining many of my prior assumptions.
Anyway. I’m back.
Photo By David Hanjani
There are a few things converging in my life right now:
I don’t want to let vacation stop the momentum here, but my brain also needs time to relax and unwind. Give me a minute to figure out how we’re going to play this—currently I’m considering uploading a daily sketch diary of my travels.
The visual focus will give my brain a break and maybe something cool will develop out of it.
In the meantime, enjoy looking at this rad picture or read about what blew my mind last week.
Thank you, and goodnight.
Light rose over the Kingdom of Nod, flooding in rosy waves over rivers and valleys, barns and boulders, roads and fields. over winking crystalline fields of Anyeo and the singing brooks and sighing ponds.
People were stirring, slowly moving in the yards and on the roads. Mornings were peaceful in the Kingdom of Nod, because it was protected by a mountain range from the Kingdom of Fog, where the enemy reigned.
Nestled into the foothills of the mountains lay the fields of a great master of growing thing, which lay splendidly over the rich soil. The master of growing things was a wise man, running his household in a generous and fair manner. In return, both his servants and his crops gave abundantly and with joy.
While most of the crops were foodstuff or fields for grazing sheep and goats, a few choice fields were held back for Anyeo. This fiber was prized by the king for its soft texture yet its twinkling visuals—when treated right its threads could provide a subtle glow in addition to the warmth of regular yarn made out of wool or flax.
Anyeo grew slowly, and required great care, so the master of growing things—who gained his reputation by successfully sorting out the seeds of the Anyeo from the seeds of the Dago, a similar plant from the Kingdom of Fog but whose fibers were rough and gnarled, thrashing the hands of the people who worked with it—carefully taught the most conscientious of his servants how to grow the Anyeo plant, how to tend and water it, how to spot when things were growing wrong or when the plants might not yield the revered sparkle texture.
Yves, a maid in this household, moved through a courtyard. She was a spinner who spun the plant of the Anyeo into threads of many colors, and wove those threads into great tapestries and embroideries that adorned the halls of her masters house. She one day hoped to spin and weave for the king.
Each morning, before she bent over her work, Yves took time to stretch her back and her legs, to remind herself of where the Anyeo fibers came from, and the work it took to get them to grow by walking through the fields. Over time, she had come to know the other servants, and they developed a friendship over dedication to growing the best Anyeo ever.
On this ever-so-slightly chilly day, Yves marveled at how the rosy light of the dawn glinted off the tender buds of the Anyeo. they sprouted across the field like little rows of marching toy soldiers. Dappled light from the Yangtee Trees overhead dampened some of the sparkle, except…and at this, she stopped short. It wasn’t just the dampened light, something wasn’t quite right. some of the plants didn’t glimmer. the buds looked smaller, sharper. the stalks looked a bit menacing.
Something was wrong.
Yves whirled, and hurried along the path to the outbuildings. the first person she came across, an established gardener named Roland, looked up in surprise as she rounded the corner, out of breath.
“Roland!” She puffed. “Something is wrong in the Anyeo fields!”
“Wrong?” Roland said.
“Yes! Some of the plants look different, like they’re dying or something.”
Roland’s brow crinkled. “Show me.”
So Yves and Roland found themselves back in the Aneyo fields, examining the crop. With the sun a bit higher, the difference between plants was stark. Some grew normally, their tender, pale yellow buds turning toward the sunlight. Others, growing in and around the normal Anyeo plants, were dull with only a hint of bud or growth.
Roland poked around the plants, stroking his beard and poking in the dirt around the rows of plants.
Finally, Roland spoke. “Hmmph, I’ve never seen this before. Let us take it to the Master.” Carefully donning a pair of gardening gloves, Roland snipped samples from each of the plants and wrapped them carefully in his handkerchief.
“Come,” he said, and so Roland and Yves set off to see the Master of Growing Things.
***
Later that morning, Roland and Yves found themselves in the main hall of the manor house. The late morning sun poured into the room from the paned glass windows up at the top. A stained-glass rosette over the heavy oak doors cast a brilliant blue patterns on the polished stone floors. Yves waited patiently. Roland could not help but pace back and forth, much to the chagrin of the guard on watch.
Finally, their names were called and this unlikely pair crossed the cavernous hall to the Master of Growing Things. He was seated on a high chair, but somehow looked friendly and accessible. Roland unfolded the handkerchief bundle containing the Anyeo and the not-Anyeo plants, and explained the situation quickly.
As he did, the Master’s face fell into a darker and darker countenance.
“Bring the plants to me,” he commanded.
Roland did so, bringing the little bundle before the high seat. The Master of Growing things bent over the seedlings for a great while. Then he looked up:
“It is as I feared,” he said. “An enemy has sown the seeds of the Dago plant in amongst the Anyeo.”
Yves let out an involuntary gasp. The Master of Growing Things looked her way. “Do not worry, my child. We will fix this.”
Roland snapped to attention. “My Lord,” he said, “let me gather the men. We will have the last Dago plant routed by sundown.”
The Master shook his head. “No, no,” he said.
Roland stopped short, crestfallen. “No?”
“If you rout out the Dago, you’ll disturb the roots of the Anyeo, which could impact a smaller, tougher harvest.”
“But sir, with the Dago mixed in there won’t BE a harvest!” Roland was indignant. He wanted to ACT. In the absence of marching over the mountains to take revenge on whoever (someone, anyone) who had done this act of violence on his field, he wanted to take out his anger on the Dago plants.
“Patience,” the Master said. “Let the two plants grow up together. As they grow, they will be even easier to distinguish. When the harvest comes, sort the crop. Bring the piles of Anyeo plant into my barns for Yves and the other weavers to prepare. Take the Dago plants to the edge of my lands and burn them.”
At once, Yves saw the wisdom of this plan. This way would cause the least harm to the tender growing Anyeo plants, and would be easy for the harvesters to carry out since the Dago had no sparkle or sheen.
She glanced at Roland, who blew out a breath very forcefully into his beard, but nodded. The Master clapped his hands together, and their audience was at an end.
***
And so it came to pass. The Anyeo and the Dago grew together in the field, peacefully with plenty of light and water. (Although Roland assigned a young man to watch each field by night.) As harvest time arrived, the Anyeo plants grew lighter and shimmerier, while the Dago plants grew darker and duller. It was quick work for the threshers to pull the Anyeo from the Dago, and toss the Dago unceremoniously into the firepits.
Yves and the other weavers transformed the raw Anyeo buds into works of art. The weavings from that year’s harvest were among the most beautiful ever seen.
I’ve been sick(ish) this weekend, and watching more YouTube than usual, so there’s some fatty videos at the end of this post. It’s one of those times when I can’t tell if this is a real upper respiratory infection, if my body is processing out yet another round of SIBO toxins, or if it’s something else—perhaps the physical manifestation of a mental transformation? Weird, I know. I still wonder. I’ve watched my mind and body chase each other around enough times that it’s not outside the realm of possibility.
Anyway, there’s lots of interesting stuff on the internet this week.
» Literally everybody is getting behind the SUB PEWDIEPIE campaign (btw, while you’re reading this, consider subscribing to Pewdiepie)
» The “Why I left Buzzfeed” of the beauty industry. Fashion and beauty editors are discovering the power of the personal brand, and are “defecting” to join the ranks of bloggers that they once railed so hard against.
Some editors say they ask their managers before agreeing to appear in a campaign or post sponsored content. Others say they often agree to work with brands and ask for forgiveness afterwards, especially if the brand is from outside their beat.
Steinherr did not ask for permission from Condé Nast to sign with the agency Storm Models in 2016, but she informed them afterwards and says the company was always supportive of her partnerships with third parties, which she identifies with “#ad.” “I have my own code of conduct,” she says. “I don’t find it difficult because I’m used to it — to say this is editorial, this is advertising — to me, there are no blurred lines.”
» From the other end, ROOKIE is shutting down. Tavi was a blogger who became the editorial establishment, so we’re kind of coming full circle.
» We all knew it was coming: CRISPR babies. Pray for these children.
» True confessions of a trans person. I appreciate the honesty, even though I can’t begin to wrap my head around how this is a good thing. Then again, I have spent my life getting my body to heal, so it’s unthinkable to deliberately inflict a wound upon myself.
» The media’s credibility is dead (but we already knew that)
» This one is long, but worth it (and funny to boot): On diet, health, and the wisdom of crowds
» Overly obsessed k-pop stalkers (sasaengs) are nightmare fuel
» Why restaurants are so loud (hint: you’ll see this pattern in other arenas as well)
The merger of fine and casual dining seems to show no signs of abating. As a result, even moderately quiet restaurants have become few and far between. Things have gotten so bad, there’s even an app for helping potential diners find quieter places to eat. The culinary establishment once aimed to dismantle the stuffiness and high cost of dining out by blurring the line between casual and fine dining, eliminating classist dress codes, and make dining a more collective experience. But ironically, that democratization of eating out has produced a new and more hidden tyranny: making people tolerate unhealthy, distracting noise for good food—and then duping them into spending more, drinking more (along with the risk of vulnerable situations that can result from alcohol), and shouting over the din to socialize. By comparison, the worst thing that could happen at one of the upscale establishments of old was using the wrong fork or running afoul of the dress code.
» Reverse Foundation tutorial…but really an interesting ramble on personal beauty.
» I like how Gabbie Hanna describes the process of change. It’s never linear, and always includes setbacks. The mental transformation is the toughest part. If you’re going through any sort of major change, you might find this helpful.
» Gary Vaynerchuk always provides food for thought (edited slightly for clarity):
There’s a reason that people are struggling mentally, and I’m telling you: everybody wants to blame social media. It’s bullshit. It’s parents creating fake environments for children. We’re building zoo animals. When you take a tiger from the Bronx zoo and you put it in the actual jungle, he dies in one second—because he’s not grown up in the actual environment.
You take kids who think they’re good at baseball, because in school up until 12th grade everybody’s good, and then you actually go and play baseball and get struck out 900 times in a row, you go back to your dorm room and start doing cocaine.
“Oh come on, Gary, it doesn’t work like that.”
That’s exactly how it works. …
Creating fake environments is an issue that needs to talked about much more. “[Don’t create] fake environments” doesn’t mean be mean, just don’t create delusion.
This poem has stuck with me since childhood.
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod one night
Sailed off in a wooden shoe,—
Sailed on a river of crystal light
Into a sea of dew.
“Where are you going, and what do you wish?”
The old moon asked the three.
“We have come to fish for the herring-fish
That live in this beautiful sea;
Nets of silver and gold have we,”
Said Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
The old moon laughed and sang a song,
As they rocked in the wooden shoe;
And the wind that sped them all night long
Ruffled the waves of dew;
The little stars were the herring-fish
That lived in the beautiful sea.
“Now cast your nets wherever you wish,—
Never afraid are we!”
So cried the stars to the fishermen three,
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
All night long their nets they threw
To the stars in the twinkling foam,—
Then down from the skies came the wooden shoe,
Bringing the fishermen home:
‘Twas all so pretty a sail, it seemed
As if it could not be;
And some folk thought ‘twas a dream they’d dreamed
Of sailing that beautiful sea;
But I shall name you the fishermen three:
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
Wynken and Blynken are two little eyes,
And Nod is a little head,
And the wooden shoe that sailed the skies
Is a wee one’s trundle-bed;
So shut your eyes while Mother sings
Of wonderful sights that be,
And you shall see the beautiful things
As you rock in the misty sea
Where the old shoe rocked the fishermen three:—
Wynken,
Blynken,
And Nod.
Some weeks you just need a laff.
At first I thought this meme was just shitposting and silliness. Then I looked closer.
Ah yes, pogs.
I will never forget the time that my brother and his friend challenged each other to a six-pack-of-Surge challenge during a Superbowl. (I think they made it to four.) Or the framed Pikachu card I have in my kitchen (yes I’m serious), gifted to me by my brother after he moved on from dominating the Pokemon card came.
Personally, I had a—briefly—a collection of pogs.
My brother is Core Gen Y (he’s younger than me).
I’m Early Gen Y.
I’ve never loved thinking of myself as a Millennial, but I’ve come to terms with it. As a generation, they’re too whiny and short-sighted (at least as described by Boomers) to be something that I wanted to identify myself with. Birth years don’t lie, and no matter how much I hate thinking about myself in that way, my life trajectory is quite Millennial.
The best descriptor I’ve found for myself is “Old Millennial.” There was a time in my life when I didn’t know what the internet was, and I became an adult without owning a cell phone. Most of my childhood was spent reading books or running around in the woods or at ballet class. Growing up, our household was wired—my dad loves computers and we had a lot of PC games—but my first encounter with high-speed internet or AOL messaging was in college. My folks still had dial-up well into my undergraduate days (I would connect to open wifi when I was home for breaks, otherwise my blossoming internet habit tied up the phone line for hours).
Anyway.
I love how memes can convey such depth of truth with such brevity. The best memes refine a complex concept or set of symbols to a very fine point, presented in such an unrefined manner that they demand that your mind do the work of assembling the pieces back together.
That’s why they’re so sticky. The meme only sets the stage.
You still have to do the work.
I love the feeling of learning. Of unwrinkling a crumpled corner of my brain. Unfurling a little thread of understanding, tender and new and open to exploring.
Or the complete opposite, when your former mental model is pulled out from under you so fast that you don’t know what’s going on and have to reorient yourself on the fly before you break something.
Getting my chest bashed in last week was the latter. Since then, it (and I’m not even sure exactly of what “it” is) has been like drinking from a firehose.
I don’t really know how to react to this day, or to this week. It’s more than I can handle at this time. I also know, in the way that you can feel down to your bones, that there’s an answer to prayer in here somewhere. I’m note entirely sure what, and I’m not entirely sure why, but it’s clear that I’m on the right track.
There’s a crazy amount for me to process, and years of intuitive frameworks to rip apart, but this is only the start of the fun.
Lately I’ve been in a bad mood.
“Bad mood” is perhaps understating it.
A creeping feeling of malaise. Low-level anxiety about the future. A tendency toward the Doomer mentality. Extra difficulties with my work situation. Conveniently finding ways to avoid interacting with people. And the tiredness. Always the tiredness.
(Sounds kind of like depression.)
I used to feel like this all the time.
I’m noticing it now because I don’t feel like that much anymore. Sure, there are random bouts of melancholy (and always will be), but the all-encompassing black cloud left when I started cleaning the sugar and grains out of my diet.
While I haven’t been eating carbs lately,* I definitely haven’t been getting enough sleep. Especially now that I’m back in the gym lifting weights, which probably requires more sleep rather than less.
To compensate, of course, I drink coffee. Hot, black, and delicious.
As I feel more tired, I drink more coffee.
As I drink more coffee, I feel wired longer and tend to stay awake at night.
Which leads to me feeling tired, which leads to more coffee, which leads to staying up at night….
You know how this works. I’m not the only person who has this problem.
The thing is, it’s not just a “coffee” problem. Or a “tiredness” problem. This vicious cycle has started to change my baseline mood for the worse.
This is not a time in my life when I want to have a bad mood.
I want to be on it: optimistic, future-oriented, clear eyed, and ready to go. There is a volatile time coming up in our history, and I need to be prepared but not terrified. There are many goals that I’d like to reach, and I need to be working on them instead of beating myself up over and over that I’m not doing something right (or better, or at all).
The coffee-fatigue cycle is not helping me at all.
So. The way to break out is by breaking out. Like many things in life, this recursive loop will require breaking. I’ll go to bed earlier tonight, and drink less coffee tomorrow.
The next night, I’ll go to bed even earlier and drink less coffee still. I’ll probably drop the ball a few nights, but that’s okay. Compound interest will help me fix my problem.
If you’re also having troubles with the DOOM mentality, look at where you stand in the Coffee-No Sleep cycle.
(And join me in breaking out.)
*PSA: If you’re extremely sensitive to carbs like me, even a little bit of honey in a beef stick will mess you up. Always read the labels. ALWAYS.
With the release of the repack album Regulate and its single “Simon Says,” NCT 127 completes the Regular-Irregular cycle.
“Cycle” seems like the wrong word to use. It calls up Wagner and epics and possibly Vikings. This is just k-pop. And yet, it fits.
Perhaps this is because with the “Simon Says” video, we loop back to the very first teasers for “Regular.” Our group, as office workers, dreaming of something better. Fully fledged, those dreams became the “Regular” video.
In “Simon Says,” office dreams have turned into a nightmare.
Or at least a weird fashion dystopia featuring a giant table fit for a cabal of villains.
“Simon Says” is a fabulously NCT 127-type of song. It’s rhythmic, bass-heavy, a little bit grotty, and weird. This is why we like NCT 127, because they provide something different from a typical refined, pre-packaged k-pop release.
For me, standout bits of this song are, in no particular order:
The music video wasn’t super-exciting, but I can deal with that. I’d like to get a dance practice video to get a good look at the choreography, but I’m not holding out for a masterpiece. Apparently they learned this choreo in an insanely short amount of time while they were promoting “Regular” in the US.
Side note: I love the timbre of Taeyong’s voice. It has this stretchy, almost creaky texture to it.
Turning to Regulate, the repack album, I prefer the original. The concept and song selection on Regular-Irregular is already fantastic, and I don’t feel like the addition of new songs made it any better. The Korean version of “Chain,” while great (…off the chain, you might say), doesn’t match with the vibe of this album at all. It’s jarring to me, and not in a good way. “Welcome to my Playground” doesn’t grab me.
The one exception is “Simon Says.” It enters at just the right time—directly after the dream-turned-nightmare of the interlude—and that war chant at the beginning helps to set off the “irregular” portion of the album.
Conceptually, this comeback was a success. The overall concept of Regular-Irregular/Regulate is pretty cool, albeit a bit complicated. Hey, it’s NCT. Complication comes with the territory.
Some of the details of execution could have been done better, such as the other b-sides in the repack, but I don’t think they detracted enough from the overall concept to be a problem. The biggest issue, for me, is the title track. I still dislike “Regular” and don’t see that changing anytime soon.
I can deal with that. Concept is king.
NCT 127 will always be “NCT one-twenty-seven” to me, instead of “NCT one-two-seven.” You’re welcome.
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