CYBORG MEMOIRS

Sci-fi fantasy & speculative media criticism, cyborg magic skillshares, and politics x technology hot takes. For freaks and inbetweeners from Philly crossroads storyteller, M Téllez.

cyborgmemoirs.substack.com

"ROMANCE OF THE COLONY" 05/11/2024

"ROMANCE OF THE COLONY" Timestamps 00:00:00 episode title 00:00:13 Romance of the Colony 00:27:03 our leaders are cowards remix 00:47:53 cool down chat interlude 01:06:07 The Screwfly Solution (1977) by Raccoona Sheldon 02:02:30 parting words & bendiciones Greetings from a long chronic pain flare. This episode of the CM podcast was recorded slowly and painfully over the past 6 months. It features a sample-heavy recording of my essay , a 2017 narrative about the persistent imperialist romance myth of “the colony” in sci-fi, and the dreams of The Colony’s extension into outerspace/surveillance state as seen thru lens of Hollywood blockbusters and anime. It's followed by something of a news/noise collage that I'm calling the OUR LEADERS ARE COWARDS REMIX, featuring backing tracks (used w/permission) from madam data's album, the proceeds of which are matched with their own funds and sent to support Palestinian liberation. After the remix, we take it easy for a sec with a brief chat from yours truly. Then we round out the 2nd half of the episode with a throwback from (before my voice dropped) of James Tiptree Jr/Raccoona Sheldon's wicked story, THE SCREWFLY SOLUTION, ft music & mixing by . I'm in a lot of pain rn, so keeping typing brief. As always, if you like what I'm doing, you can join or buy something from or subscribe to (altho fr the 'stack is just a repost of what I put here, but still). OR you can just send me a message that you like what I'm doing, that is more than enough sometimes. Samples Used (in order of appearance) Keith Courage in Alpha Zones Music – Title Screen | YouTube user OceanBlueKirby Romance of the Colony The Running Man (1987) opening scene excerpt Total Recall (1990) ending scene excerpt Ghost in the Shell ARISE : Border 4 (2014) scene excerpt Ghosts of Mars (2001) scene excerpt Black Power Mixtape (2011) scene excerpt Interstellar (2014) scene excerpt (2016) excerpt ARMITAGE III OVA (1995) scene excerpt Soylent Green (1973) scene excerpt our leaders are coward remix " excerpt from Eiryu-ji Zen Center 2/11/2024 , 3/30/2024 . 3/3/2024 1/17/2024 3/17/2024 2/27/2024 0 civilian casualties 1/28/2024 1/8/2024 (2017) 5/2/2024 NYPD KKK IDF chant from NYC student protests 11/26/2023 (screen record from IG stories) 12/29/2023 5/1/2024 Easter Vigil cont'd Aaron Bushnell last words via 2/25/2024 'united against the propaganda and the dystopia' post [lost the vid/date whoops] Easter Vigil cont'd @thejeriemoore 3/26/2024 3/30/2024 The Screwfly Solution ~ all music original by Outro feat Wii Shopping Channel music =) /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/31606892

NEWS - New Book, Merch, and moving at a failure's pace 03/10/2024

"NO NEW COLONY" 05/31/2023

"NO NEW COLONY" JUST in time for my solar return (June 6, send well wishes, blessings & presents!), I release to you, friend, a luscious new episode for your listening enjoyment, in which I continue to live up to my calling card slogan: SCIFI MAGIC SMUT SURVIVOR MEMOIR. Chapters 0:00 – Orientation 2:46 – NO NEW COLONY 7:00 – UNDER EMPIRE (Pluto Rx Pause Montage edition) 30:45 – Chat with Monk interlude 43:15 – RAHL (meeting for the first time failed novel draft edition) 1:01:21 – Outro Benediciones This episode has me reading unpublished pieces about trashed space stations, artificial/human superiority tales, and dicey decisions made while working high on the micro farm. Blessings abound. Samples aplenty, plus a sweet Philly field recording for the homesick, and then sommmme. If you haven’t be able to tell lately, I’ve been shifting my newsletter style to providing AUDIO first and text, if any, second, whereas in the past I was obsessed with doing all the writing first and figuring out audio second. Since this episode sees me dropping a number of unreleased drafts, I have it in my head to make a PRINT companion zine for this episode, so that a printed text DOES exist in the world. And it’s still my goal that my text work exists over at cyborgmemoirs.com in full as well, I’m just in the middle of rethinking how things are organized & presented there. Making this episode also got me experimenting with so-called that do things like transcribe and “professionally” EQ audio. And aside from using Audacity to do the final mixing, I used the most basic free multimedia production apps on my phone to gather and record all my audio in the first place. I’m pretty JAZZED about these freshly ubiquitous personal computing robot assistant tools, which did me so well this round, and which is partially what got me thinking to make a print companion zine, in that it would be less time-consuming to produce, less hours on the menial tasks liiiike… if the machine can transcribe the audio of me reading from my notebook more quickly and flawlessly than me transcribing it by hand myself??? I’m ready. So, if you’re like damn Monk when are you gonna put out something I can REAAAADD and UNPLUG TO, just stick with me, I have not forgotten thee. This all to say, thank you for your continued support as I steadily enact my CYBORG MEMOIRS REVIVAL plan, at a failure’s pace. Yes indeed. My goal for this year is to release print objects ANEW. Till then, Please enjoy this aural adventure. Let me know how it strikes you, always love to hear from you out there. @}-}-;—–Monk Samples Used (in order of appearance) * Keith Courage in Alpha Zones Music – Title Screen | YouTube user OceanBlueKirby * Serial Experiments Lain – Cyberia album – Invisible File * PBS Newshour – May 15th, 2023 – Why we are seeing more northern lights segment * Personal field recording May 25th, 2023 – waiting for steak egg n cheese from cart at 4th n market UNDER EMPIRE AI segment { * Green Velvet – Leave My Body (yes I DEF saw the siiiick Liquid Television but better party promo vid using this song that Juliana Huxtable promoted and remembered this song) * Daft Punk – Da Funk * 60 Minutes – April 16th, 2023 – The AI revolution: Google’s developers on the future of artificial intelligence * Armitage III 01 (1995 OVA) English Dub | YouTube user Bad Dubs Delight * PBS Newshour – May 16th, 2023 – The Future of A.I. segment * ChatGPT and the Intelligence Explosion | Youtube user Emergent Garden * Possible End of Humanity from AI? Geoffrey Hinton at MIT Technology Review’s EmTech Digital – May 4th, 2023 | YouTube user Joseph Raczynski * piece itself from CLOG Magazine 2018 * Kentucky Rep. Stevenson Rebuking SB150 – one of the most severe anti-trans laws passed this year. Protestors were arrested as she spoke. | Instagram reels, user @ErinInTheMorn * Ghost in the Shell (1995) My favourite scene | Youtube user LeoAnandaTerapia} * Serial Experiments Lain – Cyberia album – Island in Video Cassette * Personal field recording May 22nd, 2023 – backyard birdsong rahl intro * Sleep and Relax Nature Sounds from the Farm Village | YouTube user Acerting Art This episode also features sound FX from the following games/consoles: * Sonic The Hedgehog 2 * Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Hyperstone Heist * Golden Axe * Nintendo Wii Get full access to CYBORG MEMOIRS at /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883043

"we might have to join the dead, you know" 01/31/2023

"we might have to join the dead, you know" Greetings friend and welcome to the depths of winter <33 Late January 2023 finds me pulling threads on militarism, militancy, discipline, Mars, and related martial topics along my usual introspective and media-critical prongs of sci-fi, magic, and survivor memoir. Topics covered, tracks sampled, and side quest links are below. Enjoy and thank you for listening. Topics covered military environments – militancy / militarism needing militant discipline during times of survival Rock Lee and Naruto as child soldier fanfic world idolizing fictional cyborgs like Motoko Kusanagi Juliana Huxtable’s “I ALWAYS PICKED THE GIRLS WHEN I PLAYED VIDEO GAMES” jawn officially titled ‘UNTITLED (FOR STEWART)’ <�–used to be on tumblr but no more! growing up in the city and taking a hobby that makes you disciplined an oral history of nerd stores in downtown Philly militancy and strictness in catholic school “leftist” sentiments against militarism in the media while also existing within military economies linear time and capital, and astrological time and empireside quest: [] “records” and our empire’s prizing of the dead written word and technology/tool use and how it intertwines with the aboveside quest: – [] or [spotify] “the madness of the imperial linear time scale” bdsm, leather, martial & plantation origins??? and erotic visuals impotency and sacrifice in the environments of misappropriated resources “there’s something important about martial discipline” “it’s a fact that all of our lives are caught up in the spiral trajectory of this age of empires, as a form of dominant social organization” the media environments of white noise supporting it?? “we might have to join the dead, you know” “what is the place of militant disciplinewhat is the place of martialmartian disciplinein our lives what does it get uswhat’s it forhow is it to be put to use?” and Towards the end I start to talk about the movie Possessor a little bit, an unpublished story I’m looking forward to recording, the movie Bacurau side quest: discussed at length on [] Tracks sampled: from Sharon Apple The Cream P.U.F.~ album (Macross Plus OST scored by Yoko Kanno) (along w/a couple other Macross Plus OST samples, one of my fave soundtracks of all time it’s looking) from the Darkstalkers 1 OST by Liaisons Dangereuses by Black Quantum Futurism by Deee-lite __ Till next time,Monk@}-}-;————- Get full access to CYBORG MEMOIRS at /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883048

"A long durational constant" 01/09/2023

"A long durational constant" For 2023 I'm going to post my newsletters on CyborgMemoirs.com, my own URL, before crossposting them to my Substack and Patreon mail club accounts. Greetings friend,How have you been? I'm writing to you from the tail end of a blessed week off from the day job. It's New Year's Eve. Philadelphia has been enveloped in a foggy drizzly cloud all day, and it's 53 degrees out in the dark of early evening. I'm finally starting to catch my breath from work during 'the holiday season' (my copy writing brain rings out), aka Q4, aka 3 (arguably 4) straight months of all hands on deck concentrated effort. Back when I started self publishing and distributing my ALL THAT'S LEFT (ATL) zines around town and the early-mid 2010s internet, I had a number of encounters with people who would ask or assume that I was well read in the literary canon of scifi fantasy (SFF) writers of the past 80 or so years, and most of the time I'd be like mmmmnaw, I mainly...watch anime and like, a lot of blockbuster movies and pulpy comics and shit. So around that time I began to read more 'classics' of scifi, kinda more the cyberpunk authors of the 80s and then back into the feminist and 'speculative' wave of the 60s and 70s. Ursula K LeGuin and James Tiptree Jr, Octavia Butler, Stanislaw Lem, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, etc. And I began to, I guess, read more about the lives of scifi authors of those eras. Who was middle class, who was in the CIA, who cooperated with the Pentagon, who was an engineer by trade, who worked in advertising... And I remember starting college at 23, majoring in Communications, telling myself, as I focused on theory, that, shit I could neeeever deliberately go into advertising and marketing —can you tell where this is going? Yeah. Now I'm like 15 years in at a boutique retail job where I started as a part time floor staff/blogger and now work full time as self proclaimed Online Director. Until 2 years ago, I single-handedly translated and wrote all the copy, photographed all the product, designed and operated the ecommerce, admin'd all the social media, researched and selected product we should sell, and basically shaped the voice and branding personality for this small biz. I wound up in a persuasive communications job. The only steady paying, physically doable gig for me in this town. In January 2020 I had officially moved on from this job to pursue writing full time, with my then partner boo willing to cover some of my bills. I wrote like 4-5 chapters of novel manuscript. Then we all know —the pandemic hit, my brain melted, we were in the streets, we were panicking online, massive transfers of power and capital occurred, Instagram and other social media platforms took off the mask re: data mining shopping preference direct to consumer advertising, and by October I went back to my job for that steady paycheck. This is kind of all a setup to say that I realized this year, when Q4 rolls around anymore, I have to relinquish my expectations that I will get ANYTHING else done in a regular fashion besides day job work (half in person half computer jockey), taking care of my body, and prioritizing socializing and rest. The other reason I bring up my day job here in this cyberspace is because I've been ~reflecting~ on the fruits of my efforts of the past ten years. METROPOLARITY officially started 12.12.12 and anyone who came to our events knows, we brought the fucking zeitgeist. About a year before that I had been putting out zines with the first fully formed ATL short stories. I won grants, awards, read up and down the east coast, had stories published, taught classes, facilitated workshops, dropped spoken verses on friends' albums, and generally wrote my ass off in fits of rage and lamentation. I've also experienced my reputation and work falling out of relevance and being forgotten. How short lived some things are, and as they say, you don't realize just how brief they are until the time has already passed. I had started writing what would become ATL around 2005 as a method of claiming mental space for myself through/after a longterm abusive relationship. And nearly since 2012 I was supposed to make this hyper/nonlinear story world a novel ten times over now. I can't seem to finish it. "Who am I writing this for?" reminded me the writing has to be for me. I think writing fiction is one of the most grueling things to do "for fun". Over the years I've lamented how a year's worth of writing and editing a short story resulted in a grand total $50 reprint payment for publication in a book that would go out of print. I've lamented how you have to have time/space/wealth/resources to write books it seems. You need a wifey or a really good friend group to feed you and keep your spirits up from time to time. You need to have a routine, habits, some kind of stability. Your hands and eyes and brain need to be reliable. And you somehow need to "make sense" to publishers when you believe that publishing is full of people who uncritically subscribe to the conventions of upper middle class white society. Over the past ten years, I took to reading some classics, applying to prestigious workshops and grants, used/offered my beliefs as the basis for organizers to imagine what's possible in social justice circles, and said over and over and over again about how all I want to finish this novel is to 1) get access to a mentor I can relate to, and 2) get access to an intensive style writing/arts program that would support me to finish this story... and no one was giving it to me. I watched my Metropolarity peers have specific concepts from their works lifted by social justice organizers, who then for years profited off of and built up their own platforms with that work. I have watched the results for #queerscifi and #afrofuturism hashtags transform away from the people who first wrote them. I have watched the SFF publishing industry working to diversify itself away from the myopically middle class cisgender white American concern, mining for fiction to publish to its markets from other parts of the world while unable to notice the WEALTH of POOR and WORKING writers in its own backyard, the ones who could stand to get well paid in advance or at all for their efforts. Furthermore, working by trade for long hours on the internet and all its physically inhospitable devices, I've become so incredibly dismayed by the manipulative infrastructure of today's internet, that my pre-pandemic habits of maintaining a productive and timely internet presence feels crazymaking. I even hesitate to call what we have now the internet —and I would LOVE to hear from any people in their teens and twenties what they think of the internet and what it does to society and how it makes you and other people feel and behave like —but yes, the era of platforms we're in, it sickens me. The platforms Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, we know them all and then some. We know they're built to be addictive. We know they manipulate what images and messages, advertisements and suggested accounts we receive. We know they're full of bots and fake accounts from god knows what operator. We know it makes us feel...something. And how is this place of platforms an appropriate space for sharing information anymore —when it's all every inch a surveilled market? That's how I've been feeling lately. I am feeling the effects of 20+ years staring at an illuminated pane of glass just 2 feet or less from my face. I am standing on the other side of a few generations now, reassessing the terrain and where I stand and why. What do I have to show for myself? Who is looking? I learned 8th house moons need a witness. Angry animal, soul sucked of connection, replaced with ads, noise is deafening, eyes full of light and can't see shitSilo realitiesLurking as a form of protection surprise it's no better than participating passive consumer parasocial experiment make rich miners sons richerWriting a novel may not be for me in this pandemic societyCan't believe how many parties i missed cause I didnt want to willingly disable myself with plague, it's so civil, now I'm isolated from where i startedHello hello are you out there So it's been a sordid and begrudging experience contending with a choice I made midway through 2022. I told myself I had better start taking pride in and acknowledging the work I've put in and contributed over the years. And no where is that more tangible for me than at my motherfucking day job. Through my trade as a self-taught freelance designer. Where has my writing and artistic output gone, I ask myself? Why honey, I've had to use it to make a living now. I've found myself with more responsibility than ever. At pay job but also in mundane life, with myself (physical therapy, therapy, resting), and spiritually. Before this week vacation started my brain was unrelentingly teeeeeeming with tasks and obligations from the second I gained consciousness to the late hour I went to sleep. A long durational constant state for more than a year it feels. An ever-refining pressure that I need utmost efficiency in all my routines, so that I can possibly continue to write produce make things maintain relationships feed myself get enough sleep and... That, if I wasn't staying on top of things, as the saying goes, I would never get this novel done. For a while I've known something is wrong. Something is blocked. Fear lurks in some place just beyond my conscious awareness. Anger threatens to choke and sadness smokes the day away. I ask myself why I feel burnt out and disgruntled, disillusioned and strangely isolated. Why writing has become so difficult and unfun, paralyzing, words brittle and meaningless. The other day I was chatting with about how this 3 years into the pandemic/end of Saturn in Aquarius are bleak fucking times in so many ways, or that shit lately has been taking me back to the bleakest period of my life, where I was working multiple jobs saving money preparing to make a big move out of the 4-years-long abusive situation I had got myself in. The difference between then and now tho is that now the abusive situation is as big as climate catastrophe world war living through a technological paradigm shift. And where do you go to get out of that? Into the ground, honestly. But I'm not talking about killing myself. I'm talking about needing to shed and release a whole body of constraints. Writing all this out is me pulling the cork on a long stopped bottle. I have a backlog of things to say. I may not know who you are, reading this, but I appreciate you. The following is an earlier version of the sentiment in this newsletter, which I started like the day I started my week off. I was trying to lay out all the loose threads connecting internet platforms, internet archives, fruits of one's efforts over time, bodily capability, and what's real. I've been missing connection something terrible, and yet my motivation remains contorted around the never ending task list in my head. I got a new doctor back in the neighborhood I grew up in and suddenly I'm speaking to a behavioral health specialist, starting physical therapy for my chronic inflammation, getting an EYE EXAM… My brain does not feel good when I start to think about what I used to concern myself with before the pandemic. I say this referencing its capacity to stick to a task. Now I am flooding over with tasks. Every bit of divinatory advice has repeated the following: * go with the flow * release the water (pent up emotions) * rest the brain Instead my notion of rest is getting a spare minute to concentrate and write this missive from behind a dining room desk strewn with notebooks, PT weights and bands, pens and markers, a poetry book open face down, tarot cards, gum, a doob tube, a couple empty bowls that could get washed………………………………… So, as if I never spent so many days several years ago waxing and waning about the treatments of Saturn, I feel myself once more undergoing some form of submission. I'm writing this listening to , thinking about the other night when I was standing outside in the lumpy backyard where it's dark, smoking a jazz cig and staring up at that commanding red wanderer, Mars. Lust and distraction. Tell me a lesson. What to do with it and how to focus. I was the one who wrote "you have to forge yourself into a weapon" and I'm still here struggling to grip the tongs. Or so it seems, in my haste. I've been attempting to find this flow or go with it, but then I stop to ask myself do I even know the end goal. The old one that I started with doesn't seem to stand, or… I question its merit. Frankly I'm sick of myself and this ever present berating of what I still haven't accomplished. There are so many hours in the day and I have to allot quite a chunk of them to a day job in this unseemly, insulting American society. I read that article too about there being considerably less working class artists in British society now. Do we all really have to keep working? I'd been wanting to update my URL cyborgmemoirs.com to the latest Wordpress theme, but then got so sad when I realized I truly did not have the capacity to get into the outrageously nice WYSIWYG theme editor functionality and so on and so forth. So I changed a typeface on my current theme and feel a little better. What bothers me, in all this task keeping, is the way I feel splintered and my voice, my broadcast, my "internet presence" is as shattered and disjointed as its ever been. Am I showing signs of information burnout? Me, the one who calls their personal site Cyborg Memoirs? The internet as anonymous journal, cyber refuge—that's all over. For me, with this moniker, maybe... One thing I've never forgotten through reading that 90s experimental academic anthology The Cyborg Handbook, is that cyborgs historically, as entities, arise from war culture. If I disappeared and unplugged what would there be to come back to? It's a question I've only asked myself in this moment typing it. I keep finding myself at junctures where the question is how much do you believe the story you're telling yourself? Are these the real reasons? Where's the scent gone? What do I need to give up? Did I give up the wrong things? It's that kind of shit. Perhaps a misleading tangent to come back and say that all these conniving platforms has my archive-oriented brain STRESSSSSSSSSED OUUUUUUT!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't believe how much impactful writing I did on that deleted tumblr (2011-2015?) that is gone, and from such a particular era. I'm stupid for deleting, and I even have a personal policy that I don't trash my old journals. I can't believe how much collected writing stands to be generated just by piecing together the archive of . You know, I talk about how I've been struggling to write this novel, meanwhile I've written tomes in other forms. Shit, I've had a tumblr archive zine all gathered together and "just needs to be laid out" that I haven't gotten to for over a year… And it was only this week, maybe even TODAY, that I realized how much of my creative energy now goes to my job. A classic cautionary tale. Don't be a jack of all trades and don't be someone who HAS TO WORK!!!!!!! And yet, who will keep the lights on and your belly fed? Who will wash the dishes? Who will do the laundry and sweep the floors? I swear there is a long game in this forlorn recounting. Rather than, say, intuitively building out a website because I have the energy agility and willpower to burn, experimenting and learning along the way, turning up exhausted after overlong hours at the deck… I have to think about my end goal, my actual desire, what I REALLY WANT at the end of my effort. I have to pay better attention. I'm amazed at all that I've done and made and accomplished from my 'sheer force of will' style of doing things. But the way I've been trying to "finish this manuscript" or "write this novel" hasn't been working. I've spent the last seven'ish years steadily prioritizing this book, scheduling my "free time" for isolated writing (since I haaate a co-work session where ppl don't respect the silence), attempting various routines/cycles/methods, running my own writing intensives, and cutting out every and any possible side project or collab that would take my focus off the book. And I'm not getting the results I desire. So. It's time to change up what I'm doing. Happy "2023". NOTES: The audio of this has a scathing bonus review of Avatar 2. Tracks sampled: off their What Dreams May Come album it's so good! Get full access to CYBORG MEMOIRS at /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883053

"double layer light compression" 09/28/2022

"double layer light compression" AUDIO NOTES: 1st sound clip: One of the regular speakers on the mic earlier in the day during the press conference and rally on the east side of City Hall. 9/7/22 2nd sound clip: Livestream IG audio from when the People's Townhomes disrupted the packed Building Industry Association PAC fundraiser meeting which Brent Altman sits on the board of. 9/7/22 3rd sound clip: Multiple People's Townhomes speakers on the mic outside after disrupting the event and talking about what went down and what's next. 9/7/22 Followed by greetings & light discussion (talking writing process, experience at the Cascade workshop, tribulations and pitfalls — and for fellow Central alum, the after school club in mention was LYRIC.) Story begins around 28min mark. Interlude / 4th sound clip: Audio taken from @PhillyThrive's Instagram livestream recording, featuring somebody from Philly Thrive speaking about Hilco redevelopment being bullshit thus far & outlining community action responses ongoing. 9/14/22 Tracks in order of appearance: Sisterhood's The Giving Ground Ornette Coleman's Lonely Woman Deborah Cox's Nobody's Supposed to Be Here followed by a DJ Swisha chopped n screwed version Drexciya's Neon Falls Midori Takada's Trompe-l'oeil thanks for listening ~ GREETING NOTES: Hello friends :0} It's a lovely early autumn's day here in Philly and I've got a long listen for you today. A typical mashup of discussion, field recordings, and an original piece of climate survivor fiction—a new All That's Left story—from yours truly. I hope you like it. I know I call myself a writer but playing with and layering audio is what makes me realllly happy sometimes. It only took about 10 years for me to get a semi-decent recording setup in place, and after moving this summer it only took me 3 months to set up the microphone and record this for you. As usual, there's a glut of other projects that I want to do—a vol 2 of Transitional Times Transitional Body, new bookmarks, a tumblr archive zine, a 2023 planner, audio collabs w/friends—but no, you'll hear what I'm making myself focus on instead in the audio. >>> To , how did you like your lil stationery package some months ago? I think it's time for another one, maybe with a lil zine or something. Please feel free to lmk. In other news, the Mercury Monastery continues to be a quiet but useful little writing group. Please message me if you too are working on a long fiction project and need a generative cyberspace to occasionally commiserate and share word count, drafts, etc. As well, if you follow me on Instagram @cyborgmemoirs, I'm occasionally posting in my stories about Philly area events I'm vending. For a while I had stopped vending altogether because it was too much pressure to produce (esp as it became a solo endeavor), but over the summer I reprinted a load of out-of-print Metropolarity and my own zines for a market that wound up being a bust due to the heat. But it's been interesting vending again, since when those now dated zines were first made, seven to TEN years have passed, and there's a whole new gen of people encountering the work. Well there's lots more to ~ruminate~ on, but is that enjoyable for you to read?? I wonder. I hope you're taking this turn into autumn (spring for my south hemisphere ppl) nicely. I had such a hectic summer that this autumnal slowing down is wholly welcome. Cook for yourself. Move your body. Get some fresh air on your face. Drink water. Call your friends. Look at the stars. Talk to you soon, Monk @}-}-;------- Get full access to CYBORG MEMOIRS at /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883058

"both young and old recovered boast" 03/05/2022

"Reality is bending and warping all around us" 01/04/2022

"Reality is bending and warping all around us" Some of the content of this newsletter was originally published at my Cyborg Memoirs Fan Club. Some of it is new, but the Fan Club heard it first. And at any rate, I do a LOT of freestyling in the audio that is not at all in the text. So feel free to enjoy the text if that’s your thing, but the audio is where it’s at this edition. Tidying at the end of the year Friends, I work in a boutique retail environment where I have become responsible for the time keeping of our communications and campaigns. I am into logistics. Usually my brain is full of the tasks I am fixing or going or about to do. It's not very fun sometimes, but it is my area of expertise. In 2020 I left my job, and by that September I was back. At the start of 2020 I had been thinking to myself wow I'm going to be able to just not worry about shit for "holiday" this year. Now it's year 2 of—actually—"holiday" and I told myself, you know what, if I'm never gonna catch a break on that front, I'm gonna tell myself close this year out right, enjoy yourself, and celebrate. I'm gonna NOT DO SHIT extra. Or rather I'm simply gonna let my mentality rest, let it stop scanning and searching for what else, and return its attention to that which has happened, lived through, enjoyed, and accomplished. You're making it through another year. [image: an altar to Santa Muerte set with dried flowers, water, a shot of alcohol, an apple, and other smaller items, on a white cloth] Yes, this is usually a time of year when my experience of the world is hampered by a background running task list going on on my head. Zoom zoom. I work in timeliness and relevance, manufactured and reinforced. (It's for a boutique, so I am underpaid—but aren't we all?) In early 2020 I had the time to begin listening to long and tedious astrology podcasts covering recently revived and translated texts and techniques of ancient Egypt and Greece, medieval, Vedic, and so on... Before this I was fond of buying a workbook around the phases of the moon. ((Oh I wish I could tell you so much more, but I don't have the strength in my tendons for it and these dictation setups I've tried so far have been very clunky)) I am fascinated by stargazing and time keeping, cycle plotting, pattern weaving, meaning making. It's been helpful to me over the years, and enjoyable too, to study (lightly) into Hellenistic astrology, and listen to astrologers forecast on the astroweather because it introduces measures, influences, and cycles of time that break me out of the imperial linear calendar—the mindset, the dread, the haste. I was raised by a star gazer and also by a lover of the seasons, and during my saturn return around 30, I was compelled by despair to cultivate a deeper awareness and appreciation for the seasons according to the solstices and equinoxes, the angle of the sun in the sky, the appearance and position of planets. I stopped lamenting the cold months as winter, and began to think of spring as occurring earlier into the new year. Spring is cold when it starts, but it's still spring. And so on. [image: a wooden desk by a window with a whole buncha shit on it, like books, pencils, tarot cards, candles, but there is a cleared spot in the center] The winter solstice is this coming day, the shortest day of the year for some, and the start of the lengthening of day for some as well. For several years now, I wonder how the winter will pan out, and here we are again. So I am telling myself to stop fretting about the world of plans and plan making, as if that can only be done frantically, manically even... I have been trying to get messy, less tidy, to have every notebook open and all the books im reading everywhere. strewn. i usually put my things up and away. i am trying to do things enjoyably, rather than by obligation. Writing this out confirms this is magic. So that is a small message I wanted to send tonight. I am in the middle of , on Rune Soup, a podcast I don't really love for the lack of melanated people that appear on it. But I'm fascinated with Coppock's explications of the astroweather of next calendar year, along with whatshisface's goings on about significations in finance and geopolitical economic realms. I guess if you wanna know what I'm watching on youtube usually, it's drum n bass mixtapes and shit like this. As if we many didn't already see it happening all around us, the astroweather for the United States in particular in 2022 is concerning for it as a nation state or something. Bruh just watch the video and get into the vibe, I would tell you over a j but not here. [image: the waxing moon as a watery indistinct disc through the window in the night sky] 1/1/2022 entry in my notebook I started growing my hair out. Today my nails are suddenly long, tinted orange from chopping turmeric when making something of a medicinal honey—one I first learned from a Black Haitian person on IG during the start of lockdown, one she said was a common remedy for colds and infections (ginger, turmeric, cloves, garlic, onion, chop it up & throw it in a jar, fill it with honey, then turn the thing around every day for a week or 3, take a spoonful a day, strain optional). I made it last year and began taking a spoonful of it daily—a practice my recently deceased father would push on me, showing up with mentholated honey and saying here mijita, take a spoonful every day. And make me take a giant spoonful right there in front of him so I knew how to do it. Oof. The habit now sticks. Omicron is all around me, and people are reporting they're "fine" and I just keep thinking of long covid and my functioning and respiratory health in a city famous for its children having asthma. I revive the routines from 2020—mouthwash 30 seconds when coming back from an outing, drinking strong decoctions of my regular favorite herbs (licorice, nettles, elecampene, burdock, milky oats; marshmallow root & ground ivy for my air passages and ear canals, so prone to blockages already). I put the plastic face shield back on for being in stores, at work. I do believe we will all get covid, since it is in the family of viruses related to the common cold and flu, none of which have ever gone away. Strong and weak versions make the rounds, generation after generation. I have faith. This is unrelated to my previous paragraph. It is something keeping me active, aware, childlike and Mercurial. Fancy. Whimsy. Laughter jester helpful demon. Reality is bending and warping all around us as the powers that be continue to play theater of the pious. Things no longer have the same meanings they once did. Do you know which things those are for you? I am someone who knows change and soul crushing hurt. Aren't we all familiar? At this point in the pandemic I am transformed. The first stage is now being set. I'm afraid, too, that over all these moments of silence, (when words have failed me and I've felt that the machinations of "social media" are unfriendly to deep communication), I have been more involved with the study of , , magic, , and I have rarely shared any of that here. It strikes me as a suitable progression after all the seasons I've spent researching scientific developments, reading history, analyzying, criticizing, and confessing the substance of my perception. "Sometimes technology fails you and magic is your only recourse." Let me gleefully become the magus of my friendly moniker (Magus Monk). I have been down on my talents and secretive of it for too long. Part of this is that I've become more and more agitated by whats feel like the confines of academic thought on what was once my much LIVELIER style of expression. I wrote so much poetry and lyric and impulsive spells and shit... I want my life back. I want my power of words and image back. So I will have it. I have this feeling that all the sexy VR promise and failed attempts at adoption back in the 90s is now primed and ready for its time. I think it's time all of us 90s and early 00s AOL and MSN messenger denizens reflect on what was happening to us in those times—to our experiences as what was known and possible with embodiment, personhood, imagined fantastic bodies. 1/2/22 People have a habit of believing my chronic and often enough debilitating ~chronic bilateral epicondylitis~ as JOINT PAIN, when the culprit is LIGAMENT INFLAMMATION. The keyboard, the FLATTTTT is an enemy to the comfort and care of my precious body. I am demoralized trying to hold this pen as firm as I once could and make it create the forms I desire. Disabled people, we'll join the ranks if we haven't already. Alice Sparkly Kat's 2022 horoscopes mention this sentiment. IN OTHER NEWS I left team Tidal for team Spotify and started dabling in making playlists for mine and your enjoyment. is all songs of what I call "fast walking" tempo, music I play to walk my ass around on errands and get a little blood pumping and like, have faith in living. is all songs I truly used to bang back during my heaviest online days, 1997ish through 2003-04, I'd say. Musical accompaniment for long sessions in role playing chatrooms, for building your personal website, writing fanfic, and so on. Then I'm working on one called , so far it's 4 Rēs (reese) songs in a row. UPDATES SINCE SEPTEMBER I didn't get the Delany fellowship BIG SURPRISE THERE. [click this twitter jawn for the whole thread] Then I also didn't make it into an Odyssey special topics workshop that I applied to, which is what you're advised/encouraged to apply to when you get your rejection from their 6-week intensive. Wish you could see my face. I HAVE SPENT MYSELF my time & energy FOR YEARS NOW TRYING TO SORT OUT "EXTRA" INCOME AND "ARTIST OPPORTUNITY"S AND CAN YOU IMAGINE IF I JUST HAD THE RESOURCES ALREADY? Or if I just had kept to myself and made what was on my mind/heart all this time instead of the constant hijacking of my potential and attention trying to for recognition and legitimacy from a too-far-removed status quo?? But can I blame the gatekeepers for why my book isn't done? Allll this has me looking back over the shit I was on back in 2013 when tumblr was at its peak and I wrote minor essays on whiteness, dystopia, class, and other transexual anime scifi topics damn near every other post. My ALL THAT'S LEFT zines were full of images from my tumblr and I had a damn audio cassette that went with them. And those stories were just a working bitch's cyborg hookup stories set in a vague climate-disaster'd dystopia. Now it's 57º outside and … yeah. Me and have had more than a few conversations on what it means that things from our stories come true before we've actually published them. Anyway, here’s what I sent the fellowship for my lil statement jawn [I go in much more in detail in the audio]: You are meeting someone sitting on a wooden bench in their neighborhood park, writing in a notebook, wearing a fabric face mask because the air pollution is too taxing lately. It’s that person Monk, who writes as M. Téllez. They look like a tattooed young man, or maybe a handsome woman—a white person that certain people clock for being mixed with something—and their chestnut hair is military short and being overtaken by silver. The card case in the waterproof tote bag beside them (holding three B5 notebooks, a planner, a steel water bottle, overstuffed pencil case, and pack of cube-shaped chewing gum) contains a drab green calling card that says “SCI-FI MAGIC SMUT SURVIVOR MEMOIR”. Behind that is another, older card proclaiming “METROPOLARITY MINISTER OF CROSSROADS”. They pull an herbal cigarette out from their Dickies pocket. Monk looks worn out or in pain or both. They’re wearing stretched-out wristbands on their elbows and firmer straps around their wrists, and they hold the pen with a grip that has long been weakened by their workplace. When they return to their home computer, they check on the Discord server hosting their experimental fiction writing and storytelling workshop. They check if their grieving friend has eaten yet and do they want some food ordered to their house. On Twitter, someone has reposted their long thread analysis of 1995's Armitage III, a cyberpunk about gynoids and labor rights on Mars. An herbalist has emailed asking for the name of the story read around that bonfire last weekend. Monk—a born-and-raised Philadelphian, child of Irish-Italian and Mexican Catholics, raised in a mostly Black, Caribbean, Korean and Southeast Asian, mixed race part of town, once homeless, less and less a working class brokeass—has written story after story about desire, hope, and despair in the flooded-out future. Their old zines-on-tape carried the tagline “post-binary cyborg smut”, but anymore they think of what they write as fantasy, because projecting a capitalist dystopia into the future has become irresponsible. They have an online following older than social media, and have an underground popularity among hobbled psychics, genderfuck cyborgs, city kids, anarchists who read sci-fi, and art world types who pay attention to their local scene. Early in Obama’s second term, they linked up with Ras Cutlass, Alex Smith, and Rasheedah Phillips, to form METROPOLARITY, a sci-fi collective that ripped open spacetime and ushering in a zeitgeist of BIPOC-centered queer trans poor and working sci-fi fantastic thought. Astoundingly, there was no #queerscifi tag before Metropolarity started wielding it, and even more astounding is that all four have had to self-publish their work for all these years. Monk lights the cigarette and keeps on writing. Wowww what a freak! Welp there ya have it. That’s all the text loaded on this edition. Enjoy the audio. Tell your friends to get you a snail mail subscription, there’s zines back in print with new ones in the werx, annnd catch ya next time. Monk@}-}-;———- Get full access to CYBORG MEMOIRS at /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883068

NEWS - Cyborg Memoirs Fan Club is HERE. 09/27/2021

NEWS - Cyborg Memoirs Fan Club is HERE. "Sci-fi magic smut survivor memoir." "Desire Hope Despair." "Not everybody is good at their body." "You must forge yourself into a weapon." "There will be no new colony." Cyborg Memoirs first existed as the personal website of me, Magus Monk bka M. Téllez fka number18, back on the FREE BANDWIDTH days of the mid 90s dial-up internet. In 2003, I registered the official domain CYBORGMEMOIRS.COM and my longstanding URL was born. Over the years I've emerged from cyberspace to produce a slow burning litany of anti-imperial storytelling, from fiction writing and performing, to network organizing and space making, workshops, self-publishing, and merch slinging. Who can keep track of it all! Finally, we have for YOU to enjoy: * my latest releases of my writing & recording work * news of events I'm doing * special release printed matter ✨NEW✨ * earlybird offers on workshops & gear ✨NEW✨ * previews of my works in progress * receive writing & thinking prompts ✨NEW✨ * get snail mail! ✨NEW✨ * hang out in the virtual Clubhouse ✨NEW✨ * show a nerdy enthusiasm for one of your favorite living sci-fi writers by ~patronizing~ my ongoing practice of critical media production! WHO IS MAGUS MONK bka M. TÉLLEZ? I'm a storyteller, editor, network connector, and book designer. I'm a trans working class white-mixed-race person, born and raised in the once-British colony/post-industrial American city now called Philadelphia, on land originally known as Lenapehoking. I write and perform sci-fi fantasy tales and spellwork about desolation/intimacy, class/objectification, borders/land-based memory/media control, and the violence in relying on binaries to order the world. I'm a founding member of METROPOLARITY, a corner store sci-fi & thought collective that's been using speculative thinking as a shield and wand against standing empire since the imperial linear year 2012. Those who have seen me or my crew perform know—the work we do can't be duplicated. People tell us its necessary work, and we make it out of necessity, but in pandemic-wrecked 2021 we can no longer wait on big money institutions to throw us some bones (or spend all our precious energy applying to rigorous once-a-year opportunities for funding)—we need patrons! The is my subscription service for better connecting to supporters of my work & practice. As I continue to struggle with increasingly disabling chronic pain while working full time, I'm looking for this kind of direct fan support so I can work towards my goal of completing the novel manuscript and audiobook of my All That’s Left series, about disabled cyborg workers living and fucking in a flooded out near future. The CMFC is just the latest iteration of my cyber-presence in this current age of social media slop. Years ago, if there was a "number18" on an anime forum or chatroom, it was very likely me. When Twitter usurped LiveJournal in the mid 2000s, and Tumblr succeeded LJ by the mid 2010s, I started going by "cyborgmemoirs" instead. (The username as concept rather than a specific character had emerged.) This was in the time before we noticed social media decimating vast swaths of cyberspace, when Instagram was yet fledgling and we all couldn't wait to get it on Android because it had the best toy camera filters. And now we are in a full-tilt hurtling cyberpunk reality. Post-SESTA/FOSTA. Biden's "I will not defund the police!" America. I hear cool teens don't even fuck with social media. The behavior modifying 24/7 data-gathering shopping mall Internet fries the nerves. Cyberspace is a memory occurrence from another spacetime, and now I'm offering my wares in the marketplace Internet. Join the for the next phase of …whatever it is we're all living through—and the art, offerings, and services I'll render out of it. I'm nervous ~and~ excited to see what can be accomplished with YOUR support. Membership starts are just 2 dollars a month. Shout out to my many friends and fans, neighbors and internet mutuals, who have made sure to encourage and interact with me and what I make over all these years. Watch me now and be sure… to Some Reminders: My is still accepting applications, due October 1st. Be sure to check out the also newly launched Patreon of the inimitable . Get full access to CYBORG MEMOIRS at /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883073

"serious measures to protect" 08/28/2021

"serious measures to protect" DIGEST * DISABLING INFLAMMATION * COMMUNITY FUTURES ZINE BRUNCH * RECAP ON A MERCURY MONASTERY * AUDIO-ONLY (at 15min mark on the track): ☿ INTENSIVE STORY SNIPPETS * TEXT-ONLY: ☿ INTENSIVE FEEDBACK * audio note: if any audiophiles want to properly balance/screenshare/show me how to mix down my vocal trax, hmu cause i’m tired and would appreciate that ;-; Greetings dear reader, I sit here speaking into my computer, staring at the screen, watching my words populate into text. A scene from that mainstay of 90s Sci-Fi Channel’s Saturday night anime, Armitage the III comes into my mind, where one of the 3rd type androids, a novelist, is sitting down to dictate the current chapter of her in progress novel to her beautiful computer. My hands are in terrible state. My chronically inflamed tendons have reached a stopping point. After so many weeks of working or writing, or intending to work or write, and not doing so because I need to rest, I realized in the past two weeks that I need to take serious measures to protect what ability I have left in my precious hands. The other day I tweeted: And, with the sorry and miserable state of the rest of the world as my backdrop, I present my meager messenger’s bounty to you tonight (or whenever you're reading this). COMMUNITY FUTURES ZINE BRUNCH This Saturday, August 28th I’ll be reading and tabling wares at Black Quantum Futurism’s zine brunch & performance event, on the lawn of The Hatfield House as part of their Ancestors returning again/ exhibition Time & LocationAug 28, 1:00 PM – 4:00 PM EDTPhiladelphia, N 33rd St, Philadelphia, PA 19130, USA Join us on the lawn of the Hatfield House for a light brunch, zines, performances, and an open mic to close out summer and welcome autumn! Come explore time capsules, time travel, and time shifts with performances by Black Quantum Futurism and Marcelline, and short sci-fi readings. Create, trade, read, or buy zines from local sci-fi writers and zinesters M. TÉLLEZ, Joe Hatton, and Alex Smith, youth arts collective Young Artist Program (YAP), mental health collective DeepSpaceMind 215, connect with local vendors SheenasMagickButters, get info on housing rights from TURN and Philly Rent Control Coalition and more. Masks are required to visit the exhibition indoors and social distancing protocols will be in place. RECAP ON A MERCURY MONASTERY By all expressed accounts, the Mercury Intensive, my free, impromptu, experimental June-long writing and storytelling workshop, went well. If you recall, I decided I would run my own workshop after getting yet another rejection from a genre writing workshop I had been hoping to attend. (Admittedly, I don’t apply to a terrible amount of workshops or residencies, but that is in part because I often lack the capacity to spend my free time applying to these things, let alone plan for how the hell I will be able to afford them.) The intensive met four times a week from 7 to 9 PM for four weeks in a row. I put out for applicants and received 28 submissions. I wound up accepting every single one and split them into what ended up being roughly 2 equal sized groups: a focused group and the general group. The focus group was comprised of people born and raised in Philadelphia, people who already had some sort of longform writing or creative storytelling practice, and people who did not have much previous experience or access with institutional creative writing or art education. The general group was more transplants, people who did have experience with creative writing or art or whatever in college, and people who had less disciplined writing practices (many of whom expressed they were more looking for accountability or community around writing). I decided we would use Discord as our meeting place, and set about creating a cyberspace modeled on a monastery, a place of disciplined practice and learning. Discord is handy because it allows you to create chat rooms as well as voice rooms and streaming capabilities, and to create user roles that allows you to assign permission to certain areas. Hence, apart from the common rooms, I set up the monastery so that the focus group would have a priority ability to interact and speak, while the general group could watch and input without intruding on focus group activities. But in the end many people from both groups attended when they could, meaning several had to drop out or only attended a few times, leaving a core group of 10 or so individuals. I think every session we had a minimum of three or four people, averaging five to eight on most days, not including myself. For the first two-thirds of the intensive we mostly did a brief discussion topic for anywhere from 20 to 40 minutes, before moving into 40 minutes of writing time, followed by an hour or so of sharing what we wrote and discussion. Then we moved into doing longform critiques for the remainder of the intensive, assigning each other readings beforehand, and finally gently petered out in the very last week of June by discussing some topics that we’ve weren’t able to cover earlier. I made sure to collect anonymous feedback after every session, and by the middle of the first week I also made sure to post our daily agenda as far in advance as I could manage because it seemed to benefit the attendees. I was also totally grieving the death of my father, thrown for an extra loop after a surprise connection with estranged family members, so even though I dramatically reduced my pay-job workload during the intensive and had planned to have a lot of “time to myself” and even fantasized that I would make progress on the all that’s left manuscript, what really happened is that I prepped & showed up for the intensive and then spent the rest of the time in a mournful stupor. From my perspective as the intensive’s inceptor and facilitator, I was really glad that people showed up and continued to show up, and that my efforts were not in vain. I liked what I wrote and I liked the structure that I tempered, as someone who, at the time, never participated in a “real” writing or critique workshop (or any tbh). This was definitely on some ‘if you build it, they will come shit’, and I give my thanks and gratitude to everyone who came or wanted to come, to the saints and spirits, and to the gods of communication and writing themselves. I definitely need real material support to keep going, and I am starting to call that to me. We are all figuring out how to do that. Weave it all together. Isn’t that always what we have to do? Is this living? Ask yourself. It is thanks to the and the Philly (for their Illuminate the Arts Grant) that I was able to pay my rent & cover my necessities, so I could work fewer hours and be able to do this workshop. Philly doers and dreamers, I recommend subscribing to the newsletters of both these groups, as they frequently advertise grant & open call information. If you do creative shit that connects with people, and you document it in some public digital way, you should check out grant applications that you hear about, just to see if what you do fits. Now. If you’re listening to this dispatch [via my ], you’ll hear me read some of what I came up with during several of the workshop’s 40 minute writing prompts. Please write me if you’d like the text for any of these pieces. I may host them on Cyborg Memoirs, although for fun things like this, I’m considering starting up a printed mail-order version of this newsletter as something for paying subscribers (and everyone can get the PDF without paying). If you’re reading the text version, then you’ll see three random participant’s feedback from the final 10-question workshop survey questions. ☿ INTENSIVE Feedback 1) What were your expectations heading in to the intensive? Hopes? Fears? Aspirations? I was super afraid that everyone would be cooler and a better writer than me. Turns out I was correct but the vibe was nice and everyone was extremely encouraging so it didn’t matter. I was hoping to really launch my fiction writing and I really did despite getting sick in the middle of the workshop and also moving across country. I expected a pretty strict structure, and to mostly hang back during sessions. I hoped to find people to share work with, who would inspire me and whose feedback I trusted. I definitely found this. I really hoped to finish one longer piece, and while I didn’t quite make that goal, I did make some good headway. excited to write a lot more/build up more work, meet other writers and share mutual support of our endeavours, inferiority worries 2) What went well? i got a lot of new writing done with both old and new projects, gained anew little writing community. it was reflexive to the needs of the group. writing exercises were really great and i really enjoyed the critique sessions. oneof the most valuable things to me was the dedicated writing time Reading other people’s work and hearing what worked and didn’t work was really helpful. I also found the supplementary reading material that people suggested really great. Reading ’s work changed my life. i made it to almost every one! it was awesmoe that there was a core group showing up it was a real thing, not like ‘whose gonna show up this week will anyone show up this week’ really speaks to the power of the structure and leadership and how people wanted to be there 3) What could’ve gone better? I feel like a month was a little short and I think as soon as everyone was hitting their strides and getting more comfortable with the aspect of critiquing and socially workshopping each other’s work it ended. I think that there were a few hiccups with workshop formatting. It’s tough with an intensive, because there really isn’t all that much time to read people’s work before class, but once we got over that hurdle (who’s going, are we giving written feedback, are we reading in session etc etc), I think we got into a good rhythm. hm. well i think we were figuring some things out on the fly, like overall structure for the intensive, which is understandable. i think moving towards doing longer drafts at the end was the right move, but kinda sudden so i remember not feeling like i had a piece ready for that, and i think it would’ve been cool to spread that out over more sessions. 4) Was there anything else that you found difficult and confusing? Enjoyed and found helpful? making time multiple times a week was difficult, but i appreciate it because it forced me to make time for craft. i think one thing that was confusing at times during discussions was answering multiple prompts at once versus going through each prompt or discussion question one by one and giving time to each. i think sometimes it made it hard for me to know which question to address first encouragement and strategizing on everything from ergonomics to story structure was really helpful. I had never used discord before, and I was surprised by how enjoyable it was. I did struggle a bit to keep up with the chat and video. However, by the end of the month I found i was more fluent, which was fun, and it felt like play. I do find structuring a narrative difficult, and was often intimidated by all the novelists / longer form folks in the room, so having space to share resources and thoughts on this was super helpful. 5) What was something unexpected that happened for you? I actually am writing a story that I really, really like. I read my work out loud without wanting to shrivel up and disappear Surprised that people critiqued my work as ‘wanting to know about the intention of the author’. I’ve never had my personal designs raised against my stories before. I think this was a good thing. making friends! liking the things i wrote. thinking about the group all the time & scheming on stories 6) What is something that you would have liked to focus on, that we didn’t or rushed over? world building, especially designing systems of magic or mythology & the way that reflects/affects power structures and society in the story & how it reflects the underlying values of the storyteller I think I would have been interested in learning more about navigating career stuff for writers outside the traditional publishing structure? That’s not exactly writing workshop stuff and more just writer’s stuff in general. i’m generally into the idea of helping people grow into the kind of writers they are at that very moment, and encouraging people to get more comfortable in cultivating whatever their own practice of writing is. more of that and i think less discussions around what we think writing should be, or what we think we’re doing with our writing. i think those discussions were really good in this session, valuable, and eye opening. but. maybe a bit more of that than i needed. 7) How did you wind up participating vs how you thought you would? [[e.g. attend every session, write every day, only got to a few sessions, only came one time, showed up but didn’t speak (and wanted to/and was fine), wrote on your own time, etc]] i was in the general group so i thought i was going to be mostly observing; i didn’t anticipate sharing my writing, or speaking up in group, or anything like that. i was happy and surprised that i was able to make it to as many sessions as i managed. Ugh, I definitely participated less than I hoped I would originally. I think I came about 2x a week, which was actually a lot to commit to with all the other stuff I had going on that month. But I got a lot out of the twice a week. It took me a while to warm up to be an active participant and even turn on my camera. I really appreciated Monk’s active encouragement to speak up sometimes! <3 I wound up coming to most sessions, and shared more than I was expecting (recently I sort of freeze when asked to share work). I thought I would mostly hang back and listen, but I ended up participating more. I still felt nervous, and wish I had given more feedback. 8) So that said, how did the intensive structure work for you? How could it have been more supportive of your goals? The intensive structure worked well for me! I think it could have been helpful to have more free writing sprinkled in at the end of the intensive during the workshop weeks, just because this concentrated time was so generative for me and helped shake up thought patterns. In the future I’d be eager to hear about people’s longer-term process (as in: how do I not just drop this draft once workshop is over and the rejection emails start rolling in again. how do I return to an old story). In this vein, I’d also like to hear more about sharing work. Publishing is………disheartening. Self publishing and collaborating to get work out there is exciting, but sometimes I feel like I’m spinning wheels in place when I think about actually following through, so I would have loved to linger on this section of the intensive longer (maybe just a channel for this discussion?). I think the 4 meetings a week was a lot without it being a residency thing, and made me feel some FOMO that I couldn’t be as involved as others/as I wanted to. I guess I could have if I had put some more of my other life on pause but I was originally in the General group which made me feel like I was going to have more of a peripheral presence. It also created a bit of the feeling that some people were more inner circle because they could attend more, even though the focused group and general group distinctions were removed after two weeks or so. AND I think it makes sense that people who attend every session ARE the inner circle, because they’re demonstrating that they’re truly committed, but it did make me question myself and my role a lot. It took me a while to figure out the participation norms and to realize that actually the space was really warm and welcoming and understanding and supportive. All that’s still kinda about my expectations and my own head shit and learning what the intensive actually was. I really appreciated the feedback form at the end of each session and knew that you took care to read them and change gears, and I felt really glad that we pivoted to doing crits in week 3 cause I think it really helped us get to know each other as writers and readers better. THANK YOU! I didn’t know what to expect and was a little nervous that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with it but for the most part it was low-stakes but in a positive way, I liked the casual atmosphere and being able to drop-in and see work and word count increase over the duration of the intensive, again I just feel like it ended abruptly just as things were starting to pick up. 9) What can I improve or change about my facilitation for next time? i wasn’t always clear on what the expectations were for each session in terms of assignments (moreso in the early weeks and then i think it got more explicit, or maybe i just got better at using discord). also sessions sometimes went a lot longer than planned, which was always optional and fun but then i felt like i was overextending my physical needs to be there (or going to bed n having fomo) have only one discussion question, or leave time to dedicate to each question separately,, give time for people to think about their answer Honestly I think that your facilitation was wonderful. And so helpful. For next time, it would probably be helpful to have more structured facilitation during workshop, but even then I think that you got into a very smooth groove by the end. 10) TESTIMONIAL?? This intensive was $$ free because it was an experiment and a group effort. A bunch of people in my circle thought I already was or said I should charge for something like this, but I’m not ready for that kinda life yet, and anyway some things should just be done because they need to be done. However! I would like a testimonial, if you liked this workshop so much that you’d recommend it to a friend, or would take it another time, or wanna gas me up in general. The Mercury Intensive was a really supportive neighborly kind of writing community that cut the shit in a lot of ways and helped me break through a lot of bitterness and cynicism i have had towards my writing for a while. Prompts, readings, and discussions all pushed us continuously to decenter tired colonizing literary tropes and structures, and to take the responsibility storytelling and worldbuilding seriously . Feedback sessions were very useful, especially after building rapport through co-writing and facilitated discussion, it was a really good environment to be challenged, supported, and pushed to be better. Definitely a month well spent. This workshop was one of the best things that I’ve done for both my writing and myself. The facilitator worked hard to create an atmosphere of mutual respect and intellectual growth. I learned more in a couple weeks about writing than I have in years. My writing practice and sense of myself as a writer have grown immeasurably as a consequence. The intensive was well structured and consistent, while remaining flexible and responsive to participants desires. Monk was a wonderful leader and facilitator, making the decisions that had to be made and keeping everyone on track, but the intensive also had a distinct collaborative feeling to it, like we were all creating it amongst ourselves as we went. […] As for the transformation this workshop facilitated for me–this intensive gave me the time and support I needed to explore an inner landscape i had the scent of, but too much timidity to follow. The exercises allowed me to experience glimpses of it in a way that felt pleasurable, joyful, and not pressured. And as I built on glimpses I felt I might have something here. The intensive gave me structure I needed to gain more comfort and familiarity with my own adult writing practice. It also gave me access to adult... /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883078

"Cursing, red meat, fluid exchange is illegal." 02/02/2021

"Cursing, red meat, fluid exchange is illegal." Greetings from the midst of a snowstorm in Philadelphia. It’s February according to the imperial linear calendar. What a depressing fucking slog. I have sensed that some of you are waiting for me to wax poetic about politics, big tech, and so on. Loathsome topics. The forecast from my perch in the matrix is woeful. I don't like it. Cyberpunk dystopia is perpetually a form of disaster tourism, a fictional future for privileged and indoctrinated citizens of empire, who don't realize that the dystopia is and has been reality for our exploited, for generations. In high school I read 1984, Brave New World, a novel about a Russian Jew who is imprisoned for being Jewish and who dies in prison, The Stranger, Canterbury Tales, etc. I think, too about Roadside Picnic, and films about underground resistances that are in the end captured and murdered by fascists. I think of The Stand. I think of my own story world, where the landscape is environmentally devastated and dumbassed private incorporated city enclaves hire out exiled and forlorn trans people as experimental land surveyors. This godforsaken pandemic and the world of possibilities that spiral out from its locus make me think about what it was really like to live during the long fall of the Roman Empire (or maybe even its approach), the destruction of the Reconquista, the widely and willfully forgotten barbarism of white supremacists during Reconstruction. I went on a bike ride across town to pick up the new bookmarks I designed for and 's books. Death is everywhere. New developments are under construction block after block, and 1br apartments across the entire city are starting to go for $1200 with NO utilities. It's nauseating. Anger is eating me up again, and this time there seems to be no where to let it loose. When Metropolarity formed in 2012, I began to pen short performance-type pieces for our public readings, when a short story was too long and many assumed we were poets whose work could adequately be expressed in under 5 minutes. about a disappearing Philadelphia, succumbing to the choke-tight hold of capital as it does every generation, where long-time residents are displaced and newcomers arrive to speak in familiar ways about a place they are not familiar with—an example of my generation, transplants calling Fishtown North Philly, calling North Philly “Brewerytown”, and other sad and laughable discrepancies of experience and memory. Do you ever conceive of the world in generational terms? Eras? When I was a plucky twenty-something I was wooed by a Silicon Valley techno-future of cybernetic prosthesis and personal devices and novel retail environments. I was into that, I thought it was good. A bitch was living out of a car, working minimum wage, and thinking yes I can't wait for my capsule apartment with shiny Sony appliances and derivative Orientalist decor uwu. One day, one day. Now the day beckons. On my holodeck resort discord, we had a movie night to watch , a portrait of one Biden-Harris techno-future where criminals are housed in a reform prison system that cryofreezes and then rehabilitates its “criminals” with subliminal programming to be calmer, gentler people. Cursing, red meat, fluid exchange is illegal. Taco Bell is the only restaurant left from the Franchise Wars. Schwarzenegger is President. 1950s commercial jingles replace popular music. Brown people live underground and straight up eat grilled rat meat, and are inexplicably led by a liberatarian everyman who just wants the right to choose to live an unhealthy lifestyle, man! Hollywood can fucking implode for all I care. Yes, it's going to be really something to live through this. As so many generations have done before us. What will we do when the next pandemic comes? When the floods or the fires come? When the power goes out and does not come back? Last week my housemate had us watch a trio of Frontline specials about white supremacists, and the night after that we watched Fury Road, finishing off the the Mad Max series—another white fantasy dystopia. There's a line in my piece, : IS IT GONNA BE THE PURGE IF EVERYONE’S JUST MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS? has been fucking grueling to write because I still don't know how it ends. I know how I want it to end, but my self-esteem and depression and anger and grief are making it hard for me to realize. Yeah it started out as an interesting transy smut series set in a dystopian world. That shit was easy to write. I had a real live audience to listen to its latest episodes. It was purposefully non-linear. But as a book? Well, what kind of wicked form IS a book, let me ask you that much. Delany's line from his book About Writing—"the false memory is what the story is"—lingers perpetually. I'm rendering a false memory. I don't even remember most of my fucking dreams, and the ones that I do tend to be nightmares. I started a draft of this talking about my habits of smoking weed and how they changed since the pandemic. I told an anecdote my 80-year-old dad shared with me from his father, a solider in the Mexican Revolution, that they used to give the soldiers marijuana to calm down. Donna Haraway's academic ass makes the point that cyborgs emerge from the technologies of the military industrial complex, and I believe that. Motherfuckers wanna talk about unity and society, god and country, but they don't bat an eye at the legacies of generations and generations of war and pestilence. No imagination and no accountability. Lately I contemplate, like the traitor in the Matrix, what it would be like to go back to some form of ignorant complacency. I contemplate what it's like to be who sits back and sells off millions of vaccines, to be making money off selling people's information in a non-profit turned for-profit, to be a city councilperson sitting pretty and cutting deals, to be looking for a meaningful existence by joining a radical militant homoerotic Nazi crew. These are all things that ARE. I ask myself to think about what CAN BE. And it goes alllll the way deep into the heart of myself, what's possible for me to experience in this life of mine. I have not being doing well. In my journal I asked, "WHERE DO YOU GO WHEN YOU HATE YOURSELF?" Maybe the answer is, annoyingly, to yourself. My mom told me that she is pretty sure my nana was anti-abortion and conservative because her mom used to let people get abortions where they lived in . This same woman, my great grandmother, also apparently read tea leaves during the Great Depression to make money. One of her tea reading cup and saucer sets sits on the lower level of my main altar. Did you know that the author of Hagakure, whose passages are quoted in the great movie Ghost Dog, was the absolute last son of a shitty samurai father, who was sired when the man was in his seventies and was almost given away to a salt vendor before someone intervened? Hagakure was written well-removed from the height of ~real samurai times~ yet still close enough to be a fond recollection. The book’s introduction offers context: "But peace and prosperity also brought problems for the samurai class. Without constant warfare, the warrior in a sense found himself without real employment, and the Spartan ideal so long associated with his class began to lose its sense of immediacy." It's an incredible collection of what ought to be and what is. I love this book. There is a lot of silly bullshit in it. There is also this passage: "Everyone says that no masters of the arts will appear as the world comes to an end. This is something that I cannot claim to understand. Plants such as peonies, azaleas and camellias will be able to produce beautiful flowers, end of the world or not. If [people] would give some thought to this fact, they would understand. And if people took notice of the masters of even these times, they would be able to say that there are masters in the various arts. But people become imbued with the idea that the world has come to an end and no longer put forth any effort. This is a shame. There is no fault in the times." Till next time, my loves. Monk@}-}-;----- (Audio tracks in this episode come from 1999’s Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai OST) — Post Script: The price on my short story collection, , will go up starting February 15th, from $8 a copy to $10 a copy. They will also come with this sexy bookmark, for all my paper nerds. Get full access to CYBORG MEMOIRS at /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883083

"And all this time…" 01/11/2021

"And all this time…" A christening for the thresholds we have now crossed. Greetings dear reader. It’s Monk, your guide, storyteller, 3-of-Hearts/Piccolo Daimou raising kid Gohan, stoic Philadelphia cyborg. How you doin?? Please enjoy this audio edition of the newsletter. It’s different from the ones before, in that it’s not a transcription of what you are reading here now. You can find the accompanying text for this edition . I haven’t been gathering lately, and I don’t want to synthesize reality. I’ve already done a lot of that, to the extent that I created the surrogate experience that awaits you in this audio newsletter. So many things have happened, as we all can surely agree on. I hope everyone is well underway in tempering their abilities to discern the messages being delivered all around us. There are no neutral messages. Remember—people create messages, for a purpose, and how and why is it that they find their way to you? a few things I was published in natbrut’s this past autumn. Shout out to and editing crew for inviting/making space for this work of mine. I went back to my old job and that is sort of why you didn’t hear from me till now. I updated the typography on my teenaged URL, cyborg memoirs. Do you like it? What do you think? There is an ~incrediblee~ online typography guidebook, , designed for the browser, by a very fastidious typographer and programmer. The book includes valuable info like which keyboard shortcuts can generate characters that exist but don’t have dedicated keys (like ellipses […] and em-dashes [—]), and other shit like some old-fashioned steadfast rules on laying out type, and just even what typography is for as a tool. I love it. A Gemini/Mercury dominant bitch loves it. . Shout out to for linking me. A friend is , which for many incarcerated people is their only source of health information right now. Algorithms from get-rich-quick venture capitalists and grifter start-ups are—surprise—making struggling people’s lives worse, and Cutty sent me on just some of how this is happening. This article in particular hits bc it made me go ohh yeah wow that random -66 point hit on my credit score, that was some algorithm shit. Not until they were standing in the courtroom in the middle of a hearing did the witness representing the state reveal that the government had just adopted a new algorithm. The witness, a nurse, couldn’t explain anything about it. “Of course not—they bought it off the shelf,” Gilman says. “She’s a nurse, not a computer scientist. She couldn’t answer what factors go into it. How is it weighted? What are the outcomes that you’re looking for? So there I am with my student attorney, who’s in my clinic with me, and it’s like, ‘Oh, am I going to cross-examine an algorithm?’” This may seem like “more bad news” but baby… It’s time to get real. Love you. Now, when you’re done with my audio, put on this incredible covers edition of , one of the many nice radio shows on NTS. The show has a mind-blowingly good 80s bossa Brazilian cover of Human Nature, and I guess…with the way the world is turning, I have a better appreciation of pure 80s vibes. So. Thanks for being here still. It’s almost 5am and I have been up for hours working on getting this damn audio finished, and omg I have work in the morning. ~~~~ If you want to be put on to mutual aid & reparation efforts in Philly, healers of different modalities, and maybe see my face from time to time, you can follow my stories on IG @cyborgmemoirs. If you also want a taste of half the wild shit I’m reading about, follow me on Twitter @cyborgmemoirs If you want to hang out on a Holodeck Resort discord server I tend, drop me a line. ~~~~ Please take care of yourself. Till next time, Monk@}-}-;——- Get full access to CYBORG MEMOIRS at /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883088

ASMR Read-Along: "The burning of the building" 11/12/2020

"Something that you cannot do without the approval of the masses" 08/26/2020

"Something that you cannot do without the approval of the masses" This edition of the DHD newsletter features a casual audio overview of my educational pamphlet 'Key Concepts of Message Perception' and includes the ambient background sounds of summer in Philadelphia. Hello friend. There’s a whole world of thought I’m gonna hold on to for right now, cause for this time I’m sharing two teaching tools that I’ve made. I notice healers often use the word offerings for their wares and services. This is something of an offering. A tool I present to you for your use, if you so find it useful. To jump straight ahead, Search > Find “ITEM1” “ITEM2” and, bonus “VSS” Happy Virgo Season. you have to forge yourself into a weapon is something I wrote first as a personal spell, then , then we published it in Metropolarity’s (which is again down to the —would anyone miss it if we didn’t reprint? it can’t go out of print just yet can it?). Forging oneself into a weapon is for the purpose of wielding yourself, by your own hand. How are swords made? We may share a popular image of a man bent over a raw glowing blade, hammering away, tempering it through alchemical process. The material is combined, melted, cooled, heated, folded and then battered down in on itself, blow after cadenced blow. While you wield yourself, you are also the one who forges. The Wielder, the Forger, the Weapon. Or the Tool, if you prefer. (There’s a lil holy trinity for you to meditate on.) With the experience material in their body, the Forger full of discipline and dedication, tempers the amorphous into something clearly shaped, clearly defined. Shape Change, Olamina commanded. “[It] occurs to me that when something of great volume is forced through a small opening it generates great pressure—and that pressure creates force, and force is power. I’m reminded of the scene from DUNE where the Fremen learn the Weirding Way—that their focused voices have the power to shatter stone. I can understand why you would be filled with rage at this deplorable world. I hope that you can focus that anger through your powerful voice and shatter something as hard and seemingly impenetrable as stone. I’ll protect my eyes and laugh like a fool.” My man wrote this to me in 2013, in a letter made of 3.5x5.5 index cards contained with a binder clip. I thought it was so romantic. ITEM1: key concepts of message perception Some weeks ago I taught a workshop called PROP WERX: Learn to read between the lines, hear what's not said & more in this propaganda dissection workshop. We'll pick apart ads, movies, headlines, conversations, and other content with a simple repeatable technique. The audio here for this newsletter is solely a walk-through and discussion of the material in the zine. The audio is meant as a supplement to the pamphlet tool itself. You can view & download the pamphlet-zine via these Dropbox links below (dismiss any account creation prompts, no account required). DOWNLOAD READING PDFDOWNLOAD BOOKLET PDF (2 sheets of paper) ITEM2: futurism & languages of manipulation The other day Philly writer, beat maker, and area tweeted this to the timeline And I read through that whole thread and retweeted its morsels to my own timeline, and then I was like damn I need to read , a transcription of made at the Toward Tomorrow (renewable energy) Fair in Amherst, MA. And at the bottom of the whole article was a comment from a reader saying, the transcription was good but the original speech had a lot of interesting contextual points otherwise left out. So I listened to that next. And from there I decided I would transcribe the missing parts of the speech, combine it with , and make a free zine out of the whole thing cause I liked it so damn much. I fuck with this speech. Here is the printable. I added food for thought exercises at the end. DOWNLOAD READING PDFDOWNLOAD BOOKLET PDF (8 sheets of paper)orLISTEN TO What is futurism? Futurism is the present as it exists today, projected, one hundred years from now. That’s what futurism is. If you have a population of X billions of people, how are you going to have food, how are you going to do this… nothing has changed. All they do is they make everything either bigger, or they change the size—you’ll live in thirty story buildings, you’ll live in sixty-story buildings. Frank Lloyd Wright was going to build an office building that was one mile high. That was futurism. The simple fact is, I just don’t believe that we have to extend the present into the future. We have to change the present so that the future looks very, very different from what it is today. This is a terribly important notion to convey. So a lot of people are walking around today who sound very idealistic. And what do they want to do? They want multinational corporations to become multi-cosmic corporations [laughter from the audience]—literally! They want to bring them up in space, they want to colonize the Moon, they can’t wait to go to Jupiter, much less Mars. They’re all very busy, they’re coming around, they even have long hair and they even have beards, and they come around and they say ‘Oh, I can’t wait to get into my first space shuttle!’—that is the future. This is regarded as ecology and it’s not ecology. It’s futurism! It’s what Exxon wants to do. It’s what Chase Manhattan wants to do. It’s what all the corporations want to do. But it is not utopia, it is pure futurism. It is the present extended into the future. A mass society, and how do we keep in touch with each other? We don’t even have to look at each other. We’ll look at television screens. I’ll press a button, I’ll see you on the television screen, you’ll be on Mars, for all I know, and we’ll have a wonderful conversation with each other, and we’ll say ‘Gee whiz! We’ve got an alternate technology!’ The point is it isn’t a liberatory technology. bonus VSS: Venus Saturn Square This well received trans heavy collabo smut zine is now available free in PDF form. If for some reason you’ve missed all the hype and fanfare around this project till now, you can catch up on . DOWNLOAD READING PDFDOWNLOAD BOOKLET PDF (15 sheets of paper) Here is contributor aka with the ONLY picture I have from the zine’s sole reading release party, where we all read in silhouette to a darkly lit room. So there you have it. I’m on unemployment and redistributing most of it away while things are otherwise stable for me. I’m doing ok. I’m reading. I’m at the jawn. I’m zoned out on a cloud. I’m underworlding. I applied for a couple editing fellowships. My short story book is still , and all its stories are , and I’m struggling to imagine the reality where my book is finished and for what purpose. Push your limits. Hold on to your love. [message to self]I hope you find the teaching zines useful. Till next time@}-}-;———Monk Get full access to CYBORG MEMOIRS at /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883098

ASMR Read-Along: "The temporal threats that condition your body from another juncture in time." 08/25/2020

"CLOGGED DRAINS REVEAL BURIED CREEKS" 06/13/2020

"CLOGGED DRAINS REVEAL BURIED CREEKS" Greetings love. I have to keep it short. This one’s been on my mind to share for a minute now. Me and have been talking back and forth about the things from our stories that have been coming to pass. SOME PEOPLE THINK SCI-FI ONLY MEANS DYSTOPIA is a warning I put into one of ’s zines (officially known as The Journal of Speculative Vision and Critical Liberation Technologies). I wrote this piece Monk’s Dream for a July 4th reading that Cutty, , and I did with Kimya Dawson in 2018, scribbled in pencil in my notebook and transcribed a year later. Like most things I end up writing for performance line-ups, Philadelphia is a prominent character. As so graciously pointed out in their of my short story collection (in which this appears): “Even in consistently unstable futures, bonds are still formable, hope is still present.” Maybe this will do something for you. Talk soon. WHEN THE LIGHTS WON’T COME ONTHE ENDLESS STREAM STOPSTHE FEED ADDICTION—THERE WAS A SOLAR FLARE?YO THE ALEXA JAWN GOT CO-OPTED BY HACKERS AND THEN SELF-DESTRUCTED THE INTERNET!THE SERVER FARMS ARE BURNING!THE BACKUPS ARE FAILING!CASH WON’T EVEN COME OUT THE MACHINES RIGHT NOWEVERYONE’S STARING THEIR NEIGHBORS IN THE FACE LIKE OH SHITI STOPPED WRITING PEOPLE’S PHONE NUMBERS DOWN IN 2012HAH! WELL, HARDLY ANYONE HAS A DAMN LANDLINE PHONE ANYMORE ANYWAYIT’S A THUNDERSTORM COMINGMY ROOF’S GOT A LEAK IN ITDON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO ABOUT DINNER TONIGHT—CHARCOAL BRIQUETTES ALL SOLD OUT AND THE MEAT’S GOING BADSUBWAY NOT RUNNINGWHEELY CREWS AND CONCRETE COWBOYS AND BLACK BIKER CLUBS AND CRASHED CARS EVERYWHEREROADS CLOG FASTWATER PLUGS OPENARTISANAL GOURMET ICE CREAM BBQ MARSHMALLOW BOUTIQUE CHOCOLATES BANANA WHIPS COFFEE BEANSGONE!OWNERS LEFT THE CITY TO CLAIM INSURANCE.FIGHTS IN THE STREET BETWEEN THAT’S NOT YOUR PROPERTY!! GANGS AND KIDS WEARING ‘MAKE AMERICA AN ENDLESS EXPANSE OF OLD GROWTH FORESTS WITH NO CERTAIN BORDERS AGAIN’ SHIRTSSO THE EL’S REALLY NOT RUNNING, HUH?AND ALL OF THE SUDDENPRETZELS EVERYWHEREDUDES SELLING CHAIN STACKS OF THEM FROM GROCERY CARTS LIKE ITS 1993 ON PENNSLANDINGLIKE THE DEPRESSION LIKE NEW YEAR’S DAYAND WITH NOTHING RUNNING (EVERYTHING WITH A CHIP IN IT, MAN!) THE TURKEY VULTURES FROM THE BURBS MAKE IT INTO THE 215 CARRION SCENE, AND THE GRILLMASTERS REJOICECREWS OUT ROCKING GLOWSTICKSCRANK FLASHLIGHTS FRICTION HEADLIGHTS AND NOOOOOOOOPOPOPOLICEPIGS (AN INSULT TO PIGS, LET’S BE REAL)MILITARY NATIONAL GUARDBUT YOU DEFINITELY HEARING GUN SHOTS STILLIT’S BEEN A COUPLE DAYSAND YOUR ALWAYS-WEARING-OUTDOORS-BRANDS SOFT JAWED TRANSPLANT NEIGHBOR LIVING IN A WHOLE 3 STORY VICTORIAN WITH JUST HIS WIFE HAS PUT UP SIGNS ON THE TELEPHONE POLES ANNOUNCING AN OFFLINE THINKPIECE CIRCLE TO WRAP THEIR MINDS AROUND THE CURRENT STATE OF UNPRECEDENTED AFFAIRSWAS IT THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL OR SOME WHOLE OTHER BULLSHIT?WHAT TO KEEP & WHAT TO LEAVE BEHIND.YOU THINK SHIT MIGHT GET CRAZY REAL FAST BUT THAT’S CAUSE OF THE MEDIA, YOU REALIZE. IS IT GONNA BE THE PURGE IF EVERYONE’S JUST MINDING THEIR OWN BUSINESS?SOME PEOPLE ARE PRAYINGSOME PEOPLE ARE RIDINGSOME PEOPLE ARE TREKKING INTO THE WOODSWALKING TRAIN TRACKSSOME PEOPLE ARE IN THE PHARMACIES GETTING THEIR MEDS FOR FREESOME PEOPLE ARE EATING CHIPS AND STOCKPILED TOP RAMENSOME PEOPLE ARE IN DRUM CIRCLES WHILE ROLLER DISCO OLD HEADS AND UP & COMING QUEENS REJOICE TO THE BEATSOME PEOPLE KEEP PLUGGING THEIR PHONE CHARGER IN TO SEE IF ANYTHING COMES OUT YET.NO ONE COMES INTO THE CITY.THE COLONIZE MARS PLANS MUST BE ON PAUSE.DRUMS ARE IN COMPUTERS ARE OUTHOT WATER IS OUTSOME TEEN ENGINEERS BY WEST PHILLY HIGH WHIP TOGETHER THIS JAWN THAT CAN GENERATE PROFOUND ENERGY THROUGH MECHANICAL EXERTION? BY WALKING ON THE JAWNAND NEXT THING THEY’RE GETTING HAM RADIO TRANSMISSIONS LIKE IT’S LIKE THIS ALL OVERA MAGNIFICENT CREW OF LEATHER VEST WEARING NOT-MEN RIDING HORSEBACK START UP ROUNDS THAT PASS YOUR BLOCKONE OF THEM TELLS YOU IN A KIND VOICE TO TELL THEMIF ANY BULLSHIT BEYOND YOU CAN’T HANDLE STARTS GOIN DOWN, GIVE US A SHOUTTHE BACK OF THEIR VESTS ALL SAY ‘SO BE IT SEE TO IT’IT’S BEEN A FEW DAYSTHE POWER’S STILL OUTSIGNAL’S LOST—IT’S A STORM COMINGCLOGGED DRAINS REVEAL BURIED CREEKSRIVERS RUSHINGEVERYONE WHO MOVED HERE OR BEEN LIVING HERE COMPLAINING ABOUT LOUD MUSIC SCARY NEIGHBORS DIRTY STOOPS AND HOW THERE’S A HOMELESS WOMAN ASKING ME FOR MONEY OUTSIDE THE GROCERY STORESTART LEAVINGDISAPPEARINGWE FORGET THE NAME OF THE CITYWE FORGET THE NAME OF THE CITYTHE COLLEGE DORMSTHE CORPORATE CAMPUSESTHE COURTS THOSE CONDOSTOXIC SCHOOLSDETENTION CENTERSPRECINCTS AND PSYCH WARDSARE CRUMBLINGLIKE THEY BEEN EMPTY FOR DECADESLEAVING JUST US Get full access to CYBORG MEMOIRS at /episode/index/show/e696a285-2871-43d4-8de2-235033a85132/id/29883108

ASMR read-along: "Now with all the weight of disordered time as my container" 05/19/2020

ASMR read-along: "portal or threshold, we are crossing it" 04/16/2020

CYBORG MEMOIRS

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