February is for fermenting.

chinese new year, authority, worming around.

It has already been a month since my last newsletter!! As usual time has passed fast but slow in the sense that it has been packed full but I am still going. It has also been a year since my post ‘fermenting’, and I do feel this is the month to ferment. I am coming to life and changing inexplicably from what I was before.

A lot of important stuff happened for me this month personally, relationally, organisationally — all the -llys. Some things I will unpack, others I will leave for myself. Importantly, it was Chinese New Year over halfway through the month. This has had a very profound impact on me this year - like last year - but this time in a drastically positive way. Last year, I felt a lot of negative things over the new year. My grandma passed away two weeks later, when the new year celebrations came to a close. I’m grateful she got to go after a period of coming together as a family, joy, and eating together. This year, my CNY was coloured by this loss. And I am grateful to the friends around me who caught and held me in it - although they didn’t know how much I needed it!!

A quote which was on my mind since about mid-February is “You will need to remember that your parents aren’t the only gatekeepers to your culture and that you must open your own gate.” I have been thinking a lot about alternative relationships and also what this would look like as a ‘family’ dynamic. I am at a place where I do not hold resentments for my parents in how they raise me (as many do). While they were not perfect, they tried their best and in many many ways were failed themselves. I do not wish they had done better, but I wish there were others I could’ve turned to. In the same breath, I wish they had support they could’ve turned to. My parents, and their authority, needs to be taken off its pedestal (and the same goes for all of us to be honest). This doesn’t mean don’t respect them - I am a big advocate of respecting your elders!! - but it does mean that the faults, struggles, and issues in my adolescence and early adulthood should not be put to them alone. They were not the source of my issues, and while in many ways I felt failed and emotionally estranged from them, I know now that this resentment directed at them alone is a projection, and is an attempt of gaining control. When really, there are much bigger forces at play which they are also subject to. Don’t get me wrong, the interpersonal element is still a struggle! But I think I can also forgive through this understanding and it empowers me to know what support systems I want to forge for my future. I think February has been about that.

Gratitude

• Shared meals - Iftars, Chinese New Year Dinners, events, meetings, spontaneous dinners with friends, dessert and gossip, Najars - I am so grateful that so many of my meals this month have been in the company of other wonderful people! I love eating together!!!!!!!

• Friendship milestones - of which, this month, there have been many. I am so grateful to my friends and the intimacy we are building together

• The sun has been peaking out lately! I truly feel refreshed and ready for the new year

• Collaging as a concept - also collaging for reals but thinking of art making as collaging, writing as collaging etc etc, lets me take what comes from my memory in the moment and believe in the significance of the meaning, as sourced from my heart/mind/intuition/memory.

• Artists - thank you to the artists

• Free yoga classes I attend weekly. So grateful for this.

On Da Brain

food from food security ladders to my personal diet: fibre and high fibre foods and gut health I have been really focused on trying to get as many nutrient dense foods in my system like broccoli (I LOVE BROCCOLI!) and pumpkin seeds and boiled eggs ofc and I have started making chia seed pudding which is completely new for me but with a good yoghurt yummm; thinking about tempeh because how do I incorporate a totally unfamiliar ingredient into my cooking? It seems the key is marinating it for 10 minutes at least. I had one really delicious tempeh dish and its been on the brain; piercings and body modifications - got a cartilage piercing and I love it and I want a tragus and so many helixes; been thinking of my elders and how important it is to incorporate our elders more into our organising and communities; on a more serious note I cant stop thinking about the epstein files and now the war on iran and how much I hate the fucking western media they all spew such dissonant bullshit its actually insane how can you be condemning a country for retaliating when it was literally bombed unprovoked in the middle of negotiations with the countries that bombed it?!?!?!!?! and how this is going to spin out into a much bigger, longer war; serious climate crisis anxiety lately and just panic over what the day to day will look like in the future; also on a lighthearted note (to give you a taste of my daily whiplash) I’ve also been thinking about queer raves which I want to go to as the sun emerges, lmk if you know any ones I shld check out

Works in Progress

• Book club - I have started reading Perfect Victims! I need to be more concrete with the plans for this

• I have made a spreadsheet with my sister to track our de-googling/de-microsoft/analogue journeys to keep us accountable

• Got a CD player! CDs still need burning because I haven’t found a CD-R burner yet. I am growing my downloads collection but still need a phone music alternative

• I am working on a piece for my friends late bday gift!

• I have not TOUCHED my zine oh my fucking god

• Last time I wrote ‘nervous system resilience’ - I have a series of free counselling sessions with a trained therapist which I’ll be starting at the end of this month. I actually have a tiny bit of hope that I won’t be let down again??

• Some internship applications have been made. Are in progress.

• My lovely beautiful plants I am so proud of them and I really need to repot my monstera and spider plant. I have been saying this for almost 2 months now.

Also - to celebrate some hard things I did this month. I have been more vulnerable with words. It is more vulnerable to be honest about your feelings when it is your feelings about someone you care a lot about. I think I have done this and done it to the best of my ability several times this month.

A mood, a summary, a carnal feeling - February has been

rhizomes, a network for interconnecting roots. Also very cosy, cold but sunny. chaos, but balance? moving through and through and through