Blossom: Full Moon Finale

TW: mentions of mental health, xenophobia, 

domestic/sexual violence, and grey suicidality

    I remember watching the Korean Drama series "Hwang Ji-Yi" (2006) back in Taiwan and being obsessed with the story that's based on 황진이 c. 1506 - c. 1560 ("Hwang Jini" or "Hwang Ji-Yi"), also known by her gisaeng name 명월 ("Myeongwol" meaning "bright moon"). She was one of the most famous gisaengs in the Joseon Dynasty, and gisaengs (or "kisaengs") were girls and women from socio-politically outcast, lower class, or even slave families who were trained to be courtesans, providing artistic entertainment and conversation to men of the upper class... And though there were different periods, laws, and discourses on the relationships to prostitution as well as sexual exploitations and violence, they were carefully trained and frequently accomplished in the fine arts, poetry, and prose, and although they were of low social class, they were respected as educated artists. Hwang Ji-Yi was one of the most influential gisaengs that have inspired many modern medias of storytelling... It was said that Hwang Ji-Yi refused to follow social norms for women to marry and chose the life of a gisaeng, giving her the freedoms and access to learn not only dance and music, but also art, literature, and poetry - topics that were not normally taught to young women during that time. Copied below is one of the only preserved example of her sijo (traditional Korean poems/verses):

冬至 섯달 기나긴 밤을 한 허리를 잘라 내어

春風 이불 아래 서리서리 넣었다가

어론님 오신 날 밤이여든 구뷔구뷔 펴리라.

in loose poetic translations to...

I will divide this long November night

and coil by coil

lay it under a warm spring blanket

and roll by roll

when my frozen love returns

I will unfold it to the night.

    And I remember the last episode of the 2006 Korean drama series, where Hwang Ji-Yi asks a man who was a teacher/academic/philosopher in the community for answers to being an artist in grief; The man sits down with her to have tea, referring to the dried flowers and tea leaves as the teacher he seeks when faced with existential doubts. Thus before they drank the tea to end the night, Ji-Yi watched a decayed and dried chrysanthemum flower opens and blossoms once more... She left a note in the morning for the man to thank him for his teachings of ego-death, and unpacked the lesson of relearning/embracing ordinary life as art before understanding, practicing, and aiming for extraordinary performances or artistic crafts. I was watching/taking this in at age 7-9, and I still come back to this 2006 series for this moment/teaching... Why do we create when we’ve not blossomed ourselves ? I ask this more and more, now especially in these moments after dropping out of University, like how the final episode started with Ji-Yi leaving the giseangs' corridors and fences to first find inspirations for art, but then she found aspirations to find herself instead. I know that deinstitutionalization will always be part of my journey forward and beyond, even if they were ways I had learnt to survive. I now understand that perhaps having potentials in academia was really just potentials of being a model immigrant with the violent bonuses of tokenization, and I don’t want to assimilate any longer. I’ve always been the most good at feeling even if people reject or repress theirs. I want to be good at feeling again, I want to play and care again, I want to feel my body to love and embrace again. With no dissection but just empathy; with no analysis and just practice. I remind myself each day, as I do the bare minimum to get by, while still making time for things like community events, friends, and family - that caring for and growing relationships is indeed my work and my current practice of art/craft, as I remember my high school art teacher saying that “art is about relationships”. Thus I say blossom not bloom because it refers to the whole process of blooming, even after it’s peak, as well as a reference to more than just one flower blooming, especially flowers on a tree or bush... Art has been a way for me to blossom for the world even as I decay, and I used to create for release but now I create for grief. I dream of creating for joy, but often I don’t know how when I don’t feel it long enough to hold. And yet, I still breathe softer each night trying to hold the sky...

"you broke the ocean in

half to be here

only to find nothing that wants you"

- Immigrant by Nayyirah Waheed

    I remember sitting in front of the TV playing Disney Channel to repeat lines after lines, trying hard to soften my accent after people at school making fun of it. I remember being asked to eat outside the portable classroom because someone complained about the smell of my homemade dumplings. I remember the ways I distanced myself from my family, from food to language to spaces. I would do anything to rewind time to hug myself and them, to remind myself of how beautiful it is to be an immigrant, how humbling it is to be a guest, and how honouring it is to offer anew... Now like a seed dropped by a bird that flew across seas, I still sit in solitude with the ways my family are moving back to Taiwan for good during this pandemic. Not that I was ever close with my blood family, especially after I came out and moved to the city, but now I feel the need to hold onto my roots more than ever with being the only one here. I have been slowly trying to reroot and connect, but now it seems impossible stranded alone continents away... So I grieve, and I reroot here on stolen lands with many of my friends and chosen family still not knowing much about Taiwan, nor the original caretakers of this land. Thus we continue to un- and relearn in and from Tkaronto, I honour my mermaid journey from the island of Taiwan to Turtle Island, and I embrace the blossom of my time here even in grief. It's like after 10 years in Canada that people start to forget that I'm not from here, even if I belong, even if I start to learn the media and cultural references that I wasn't here to witness, even if I start to understand the meanings of slangs and local sayings, I still wonder if the same curiosity and understandings are offered to me... I remember during a drive back in high school with my mother that she asked me if I ever felt truly accepted by our white neighbours and peers, even my friends, and I understood why she would only make friends with other immigrant aunties and perhaps why she's deciding to move back home just a little bit more. I say my family love but don't like each other, it becomes bittersweet for me to accept the ways my family care for me without ever understanding, agreeing, nor aligning with me. And over the years I have learnt to celebrate and embrace our differences, as who better than immigrants, to identify and practice the love in-between the gaps of knowledge, the distance of borders, as well as the silences that come with a traveled and tired body... Thus I often lay my body to rest, for many would not understand the aches and longing I embody; I lay my body to rest on this sick and stolen land as I cry, hoping to water the cracks between concretes I still miss playing in the rivers back home. I say home is wherever water flows, but here I am with water as still as a mirror for me to only remember. So I will continue to weep, and remember...

"Immigrants came to these shores bearing a legacy of languages, all to be cherished. 

But to become native to this place, if we are to survive here, and our neighbours too, 

our work is to learn to speak the grammar of animacy, so that we truly be at home..."

- Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

    Animacy meaning alive, and to call this living place my home is a generous and comforting offer but also a violent one while Indigenous people still don't have sovereignty... As the moon softly fills that I shift my agency to gratitude, because it was Black/Indigenous, queer, and trans folks who have held me when I needed solidarity and chosen family the most. It is my responsibility to work towards contributing reparations as long as I occupy and breathe on Turtle Island. However it is not just gratitude but also still grief, as I feel my language, memories, and cultural knowledge slip out of my finger tips each day, I hope to make myself ideally helpful, but at least aware of the justice that's needed for Tkaronto and its first peoples. As Indigenous people have taught me love and elders have been ever more gracious in embracing newcomers, it is our duty to show up and give back, as reconciliation is dead without land back... So I grieve and give thanks, under this full blood moon in Taurus just after the lunar eclipse, I write this final blossom for this blog after 8 years. It has been the most humbling, messy, and honouring journey of storytelling. I look back and witness myself outgrowing myself: word after word and moons after moons; I remember the times I searched for myself through softer words and in hopes softening this world. Now like a dehydrated flower reblossoming in the waters of Scorpio sun, and under the full blood moon in Taurus, I grieve and I give thanks to the trees and land protectors, the wind and water walkers, the fire keepers, and the hearts in solidarity across all seas. And as we blossom again, we take soft care and rest, so we sustain, together beyond timelines of violence and uncertainties... We will blossom, again.

    I remember arriving in "Canada" on August 18th 2011, shivering and unused to the colder chills of a summer ending. I remember the 4 of us living in a motel room for 2 months, I remember not having an address to write down on the first day of school when they asked for my home. I remember this house for 10 years now, even though I moved to the city in August/September 2017 for university; I remember not being able to wake up from this bed, tears wetting my sheets every morning, I remember wanting to die. I remember not knowing myself, nor the world. I remember screams and shattered glass, I remember punched holes in my walls and steps on my chest, I remember crying myself to sleep every night... I remember the violence around and within this house, now almost empty, but I can still hear the walls weep. I remember leaving in the nights only to come back bruised and used, I remember my virginity lost somewhere along the suburban curbs, I remember surviving violence in cars after cars, moons after moons... I remember surviving violence in this house, within myself, and out in this world. Yet still I remember an abundance of unconditional love, community care, and mutual-aid. I hope we don't just remember, but continue to dream of the possibilities that we deserve, because that's how I've lived beyond survival. And even if I still cry, I don't want to cry alone anymore... I want to grow and blossom with the world once more, again and again, moons after moons. And tonight with this full moon finale, I dream for us to stay soft, as "love is a moontime teaching" (Billy Ray-Belcourt). 

Suicidal in Solitude: How To Be Alone

 

(by Nayyirah Waheed)

TW: mental health, grey-suicidality, and mentions of trauma-specific memories...etc.

    6 days after the Full Moon in Virgo I left the city for a break, desperate for rest and a peace of mind I prepare to return after 6 nights for the New Moon in Pisces. Feeling suicidal in solitude I tried escaping, but no where to run from my own mind I thought a change of scenery would save me; I tried dreaming but fell restless with the moon still changing... I tried crying my loneliness away as I confront my lack of loveliness - how to be alone when my head and my heart tire and tear each other apart.

"even if you are a small forest surviving off of moon alone,

your light is extraordinary." - reminder by Nayyirah Waheed

    Fishes swimming in circular conjunctions as I search for balance in the dark, the yin and yangs of memories I remember and feel at the intersections of trauma, growth, and grief... I remember wanting and planning to die at 18 and how it is community work that helped stop me. Ever since, I've been feeling grey-suicidal while often having anxiety/panic attacks or depressive episodes about visualizing death of loved ones and myself. My mind has always had a good imagination as the moon influences my creatives, but when it comes to the deaths of both myself and those I care for - I find myself more and more dissociating from life as death becomes dreams... Thus I ask how to be alone when I dissociate from my own breath ?

"tonight, under the moon:

choose you." - Nayyirah Waheed

    No matter how lonely and no matter the loss, I choose myself. I still wonder of love and if anyone would love a sad girl searching for softness like this, but I realize that I must be the world's teacher and peer to keep loving by example, despite such grief. How to be alone is exploring what beauty comes when embracing solitude. Thus no matter the breath, we are full - unlearning how to be alone through refilling ourselves... If only I could feel satisfied of worth by being instead of becoming while reminding myself to embody love. In life I've learned to grieve but through love I'm ready to heal. I still cry myself to sleep dancing with sunsets' dying rays of gold, and I still stay up with the moon whispering in stardust... Maybe the peace of being alone is the pace of becoming - slowing down a breath for a break thus becoming alone in growth and grace. I don't know how to be alone in solitude because I have allowed shame to consume space, and I come to practice embracing solitude as forgiving myself in full humanity. I need to forgive myself for hurting even in ways I thought I had healed, I must forgive myself for the ways that my body, soul, and mind feel... Thus how to be alone while suicidal in solitude, is to become softer.

    6 days/nights for a break from the city, with lessons of flighting from crisis is me becoming crisis itself after the family home triggers my fights within. So under the moon I meditate - in hopes for higher vibrations of emotional stability and maturity. Thus living grief and loving solitude we ask how to be alone, even when we are free to take another breath, despite it all. 

Love & Grief: How To Be Single

 

(by Nayyirah Waheed)

    Passing the Full Moon in Virgo I loved in freedom. Drowning in tears I bathed in my own blood for rebirth, like daughters of the moon I grieve in love as I give birth to myself once more. Belly-button bleeding with femininity transcending a mother and newborn in one - holding a breath and waiting to cry. I give thanks to honour the grandmother moon, as "love is moontime teaching" (Billy-Ray Belcourt).

"I'm trying to remember you and

let you go at the same time."

- the mourn by Nayyirah Waheed

    How does one grieve over love ? Especially in such isolations during the pandemic... I was supposed to let go last Spring but since quarantine and city lockdowns I found myself holding on, still reaching out and texting back, afraid of loneliness when it already feels like my depression is killing me slowly. Throughout 2020, we went through another year of what it seems of us versus the world, which is a clear red flag of co-independence that I've trying to change in connection from romance to friendship. Yet sometimes, what's meant to end will change its course accordingly, unbothered by my own logical timeline of closure attempts... Let's not pretend that softness survives in concrete wastelands like these, as its not the substance of my love changed but the softness of my love disappointed. I become angry but so helpless to witness a loved one being chased by anti-Black violence and capitalism to the point of no peace - in spirals of social paranoia/distrust/isolation and mental/emotional restlessness. It's extra difficult when I believe in, work with, and have survived through anti-capitalist ideals of community grassroots and mutual-aid practices/politics/poetics... I ask again and again of how to breathe softer so we don't break yet the truth is, some can not afford to breathe deep, or to rest without stress and plan without panic. So how does one love through grief ? How does one really let go when becoming so good at understanding/empathizing ? How does one still believe in the healing of love ?

Him: "sometimes I feel like being a Black man in Canada,

you gotta be a superhero you know ? you have to dodge all the bullets, 

even the invisible ones, and those are the worst ones too 

- they get into your head and makes you think its you.,,"

    Loving has taught me so much, maybe too much that it feels heavy in the heart but I have to believe that its worth the grief to love better, even at times when I forget how to dream with tears flooding my bedsheets. I try to ease my heartache by looking to the Black/Indigenous/trans women/femmes that have came and loved before, as grieving/loving masculinity and healing/rehabilitating colonial-patriarchal violences have been such transcendent teachings of us femmes surviving/navigating relations... Thus I must not give up on love, and I shall prepare and work harder to love ever softer. I need to un/relearn more, and to contribute this energy back into my community efforts. As I've learnt that my love is not a haven for the hurt but can be such raw materials to build and cultivate safer spaces. Perhaps the most honourable and humbling lesson of love is to know its shifting power of being everything and nothing at the same times... When I say I love him but his stomach growls back in answer. When I can't love or pray someone out of police custody, when I can't convince him to stop working and sleep more, when I can't love him out of debts or the demons in his head... How does one keep loving without crying myself out of breath ?

Him: "one day you're gonna find someone soft and relaxed,

not pressured like an animal towards their goals..."

    Sometimes we don't even know of our own softness/magic. As I remembered one night he asked why I say that I'm searching for softness when it's already in me, I come to understand bell hook's notions of "soul-murder" being similar to the violent disconnections from our softness within. I hope he can slow down and listen to the softer voices - a sound I wish to continue amplify so we no longer come to conversations with ourselves in desperation of worth or validation. I wish him a break to breathe without rushing air or swallowing regrets... I hope him well, and over the Full Moon first I hold him in memories of gratitude. He is my first love and by far one of the greatest lessons of my life, one that will continue in my life in different ways/forms. He has taught me to be loved and I only wish that I have shared my softness enough and well. I love him, and I know that I will always love him til the ends of space/time as he has embodied a safe space for me also. He doesn't know how special and capable of love he is with the possibilities/seeds of love and change already in him just waiting for him to water/grow... We have loved, and that’s the most beautiful thing a human can ever do. It breaks my heart and shatters my heart at times when I won’t be able to save him from systematic violence, when I don’t know how to help other than easing stresses by some contributions here and there, and I just hope that someday he can really dream and imagine beyond survival... I believe that we can return in the future with deeper loving relations but for our growing pains now I'm thankful for being so loved and held softly through. Thank you my love, for holding space for my moon even if I'm filled with sadness and when I feel less than full.

    Thus how to be single is learning to breathe when heartbreak. Perhaps soul shattering but beautiful in ways we fall, deep, then finally back to ourselves. As empty and lonely I feel, I am hopeful as I have been loved and I will continue to love, fuller... How to be single is a lesson in-between love poems; How to love and grief is to embrace myself fully once again holding the moon. 

Full Moon Fatigues: How To Be Human

(by Nayyirah Waheed)

    Under the Full Moon in Virgo I meditate on humanity, I pray for softness, and I dream of community... Every time I go out on walks I feel as if I'm learning how to walk again - unlearning stillness and relearning a breath in motion: I look to the trees for teachings on how to be human, I listen to the wind and how the moon whispers as we come to the waters for life while wandering in love - I replant and water my seeds in wishes of blossoming again.

"sometimes the night wakes in the middle of me,

and I can do nothing but

become the moon." - Nayyirah Waheed

    How to be human as how to be myself when I love hating myself, when I amplify others humanities through empathy but dehumanize my own self ? How to be human when I have yet to embrace all that makes me human ? How to be myself in full when humanities are stripped away from the people who live/feel/look like me ? How to be human, when being tires and becoming hurts ? I look to the sky's changing colours as encouragement, I look to the trees changing seasons for lessons of letting go then to the waters for returning back... Home, is of the waves and wherever they flow; Home becomes not the where or what but the how and who we are... How to be human and to be home, to be at home, to be a house they call home but in a house becoming human, while being swallowed and becoming still, I still ask of how to be human... 

"even if you are a small forest surviving off of moon alone,

your light is extraordinary." - reminder by Nayyirah Waheed

    I give thanks to the grandmother moon, as we are full no matter the phase. I honour the full moon in hopes of community reflection and compassion. I witness love as moon ceremony and wish for softness across skies and seas. I have faith in the light but I dare to lean into the shadows, to reseed and reroot intimately within. I explore the depths of my humanity in hopes of humility despite uncertainty, as being human becomes a breath to a word, then finally a feeling we can hold... How to be human is to be love and loved, deep, to be held by yourself and those that came before, to be human is to hold those after you and beyond.

New Year New Moon

TW/CW: future-fatigues, mental health,

eating disorder, and grey-suicidality 

    Sometimes, i don't know how to feel alive: I try holding on to the moments of love, yet still I forget how to feel a breath... Days blending with purpose blurring - tears brewing on sheets with body aching in my sleep. Exhausted; suicidal unrest in house arrest, i try walking to the waters to stay alive... to remember that at last and least there's still the moon, no matter if my heart is far from full: the moon reminds us that we are whole...

"That's all anybody can do right now. Live. Hold out. Survive. 

I don't know whether good times are coming back again... 

But I know that won't matter if we don't survive these times."

- Octavia E. Butler

    Future-fatigue is a term I've been using a lot in my writings both academically and poetically, as in times like these I still search for the softness within to reimagine and dream. Such worldly violences and instabilities urge for re-imagination and organization, first with rest and recovery of course but where do we begin ? It is time that we move forward while re-examining the ways we exploit and claim justice and healing without actually committing. I believe that it must start with brutal reflections thus reseeding empathies in our humanities. And if only I could believe that I'll be here to witness it all too, but I'm tired, and my hope within has been so burnt out that I can not believe in anything but this moment of a breath. I don't know how to believe in a freedom that I often can not feel; I can only dream that those beyond will bask in the glory that my mothers and sisters before had birthed... Thus this breath is for all of those after. Perhaps not living for myself is just another dance with my imposter syndromes, as it still contributes to the self-loathing narratives of not feeling/being enough, thus again neglecting my own needs of survival justice and healing... This pandemic has really forced my psyche into shadow work, into ruthless reflections and analysis of myself as well as my relations with the world. I miss the sun, as at times I feel so intensely and internally that I don't know how to feel light anymore. I couldn't help but wonder of ways to love the moon without being the moon...

    I cry and try to write, trying to feel alive. Yet it's different now than before when I wanted to die, where I was grieving again and again. Now I feel more numb but anxious, maybe more hopeful, but still unsure, like walking through a tunnel I feel as if I'm close to something but I don't know what is. It feels like a moment of decisions, of planning and preparing, even if I'm uncertain of what for. I've been reading more, which on one hand fills me with resonance and empathy, especially when I'm reading other trans Black, Indigenous, and people of colour's words through survival and healing, but on the other hand I feel overwhelmed with thoughts/triggers and often discouraged to write my own words/stories/response down. Perhaps my story isn't needed/wanted when there's already so many out there, and maybe I'm not needed/wanted to be a storyteller... Yet I must try to remind myself that there must be a space for all of us, and that hierarchal or exclusive ideals/structures are violent legacies of the colonial-patriarchy and capitalism in which interrupts/disrupts our social-empathies to rise up together as a community/collective. I am a storyteller through softness, and no matter if I drown or breathe, may my words be the evidence of my growth, my fight, and my love... 

    There are days when I cannot eat, and nights where I cannot sleep. It's times like these that I feel like I am indeed alive but not living. My thoughts start consuming me as I lose appetite and sleep; force-feeding myself and smoking til I pass out, I have impulses of deleting traces and data to just disappear, to erase all my writings and offerings for the public, to just finally sleep and start over. That's it. Maybe I'm not trying to actively die anymore - I'm trying to start over. I want to feel better, I want to love better, I want us to breathe better, and softer... Thus I meditate and pray for us to breathe softer and softer so we don't break. As newness requires softer practices with harder commitments, perhaps it all begins like planting a seed. Even in 2021 I still am a flower asking why I deserve to bloom, and when unanswered by the world now I must search for purpose within. First by seeding then watering, softly waiting through each phase of rebirth and regrowth as we re/unlearn again through circumstances that call for greater love and care for each other.