Hi! I'm selling something, so I'd better mention that first:
🐰 Rabbit Rites triptych 🐰 for $15 🐰

Rabbit Rites Zine Trio
The Rabbit Rites triptych consists of:Ceremony (8 pages)Pilgrimage (12 pages)Sanctuary (8 pages)In addition to the bundle of print zines, you will receive high-res, print-quality files of every page. (Members already have access to these files through the main website.)Free shipping within the Unite…
Gumroad

This mixed-media zine trio from September 2020 revisits a key theme of Instructions Unclear (2019): Rituals bind people together while harmonizing the subagents of each individual psyche. Bun-style.

"blessed, sacred energy" — @visakanv

As with previous zine bundles, when Rabbit Rites is gone, it's gone!
🐇 Jump 🐇 on this limited-edition opportunity 🐇

Decorative gourd season is upon us. I went to CVS and the holiday aisle was resplendent in orange. Where I live, a jot northeast of San Francisco, our real weather trails after the retail cycle. Autumn is warm and the cornucopia overfloweth, blending late summer into harvest, then Samhain and Día de los Muertos...

Seasonal change makes me pensive. What's my deal? Ah, the perennial query.

I'm still afraid of unleashing myself, afraid of my own fire. Like, fair, right? The passion and the ugly spill forth from the same chasm; share the same magma. When I crack my protective mineral crust and let the fire gush out, it's always embarrassing.

I dunno. Sometimes embarrassing is the price of making progress.

— June happy mail
Planner from Shop AmandaRachLee.

My yoga teacher talks about using our core muscles to stabilize the whole body, supporting limb movement and balance with an engaged abdomen and purposeful breath. We envision the spinal energy flow, down through the tailbone, beaming up from the top of the head.

I think the principle applies to everything: a stable, solid core enables exploration and growth.

Yoga is more than a series of exercises for flexibility and strength. It's a syncing practice. You align the muscles and joints, drawing toward center line, your bones and breath and attention all holding a unified rhythm. A moment of complete focus on your specific eddy within the eternal stream.

Macro photo of metal kaleidoscope spinner
Photo by Patrick Hoesly.

My teacher opens each class with a triple chant of Om, the sound of beingness, God's ever-ringing bell. At the end she quotes Swami Vivekananda: "You are lions, you are souls, pure, infinite, and perfect. The might of the universe is within you."

I can see why various Christian sects regard yoga as suspicious, borderline occult. The practice is both carnal and spiritual, an intoxicating combination. Beware of "dark yoga"!! Heheh. Flexibility without strength is a recipe for injury... Pro tip, no one can stop you from meditating on the Lord's Prayer during shavasana 😎

The past is a foreign country, but I find myself wandering through the wilderness of spirits that I imagine my ancestors encountered. The yearly round of nature's liturgy, the moon blooming and withering, the ebb and flow of unseen visitors through any portal left unlatched. A world in which one ought to be wary of witchcraft — out of respect for its potency. Dance on the edge of madness and you will never dance alone!

Q3 Report

My website was broken for a bit. After TLC and chicken soup, it's feeling better, with merely one or two remaining hiccups... For example, the default footer promises "new updates every week," which is an abject lie to be disregarded.

Do let me know if you hit any 404s! Most improved page: About.

So far this year, I've published:

I continue to ruminate on the dual nature of desire. Which do I "truly" want, that which I wish I would do, or that which I actually do? I suppose the answer is: both.

Within me, aversion is always desire's malignant twin — why? I mean, I know why; because I build up terrifying expectations and struggle to dispel them. As ever the antidote is simply starting. Yet I shy away, indulgently skittish.

^ referencing Lana's "Black Bathing Suit" 💅

Grenadine quarantine, I like you a lot
It's LA, "Hey" on Zoom, Target parking lot

Wow, same. Target parking lot? I have so much in common with her.

During July and August I ruminated, apparently. Still I think that's a decent showing overall.

Goals for the rest of the year:

I would be remiss not to mention the novel Shining Path by Matthew Skala.

This Part of Twitter (TPOT) is a loose association of tweeters.
TPOT has as many definitions as it has participants.
Some participants make and do some things.
One reader wondered what it was that make these aesthetics managerial. Think, perhaps, here about how Baroque artwork glorified emerging absolutist monarchy — through aesthetically pleasing representation of both absolutist figures but also through aesthetic pleasing representations of absolutist power — for instance, consider the way that Las Meninas demonstrates the power of the almost unseen Philip IV. Even though the King is only a tiny figure in the painting, everything in in space of the painting looks towards him.

By analogy, managerial aesthetics produces aesthetically pleasing representations of the "subjects" of managerial power, who are, in this case, nonprofit figureheads, and also aestheticizes managerial power itself. Contemporary art turns everything into material for contemporary art in a similar way that managerialism turns everything into something to be managed.

Also from Will...

The other writer with multiple entrants is Josh Centers:

Back to the mishmash of everybody.

Videos

I am obsessed with southern gothic auteur Ethel Cain, née Hayden Anhedönia. A small sampler:

A couple of others...

Bye. Luv u. Prepare for sp00ky szn!