kī anthony

i keep saying it’s been a month, and then things escalate (enough that, clearly, it’s been two months)! if you’re in aotearoa, i’m sure you share at least some of my sentiment about the current government and the ways it’s not even being remotely competent as it demolishes our health, education, and welfare sectors and makes life much harder for poor, disabled and Māori. if you’re anywhere in the world, you know that Israel is continuing to up the ante even as acts of international solidarity move me to tears every other day. if you’re close to me, you know how much work i’ve been putting into all the things i can’t talk about here, while organising, working, and dealing with the hard work of chronic illness and trauma recovery.

i will say this much about that last one. in the last five or so years i’ve finally had a stable enough life to get into intense trauma therapy. the thing i’ve been working on lately is emotion — i’m very much one of those people who learned far too early that feeling anything was selfish and would not help me survive in the world i grew up in. i didn’t have time for it! while i’ve always been very competent at managing the ways my PTSD manifests, it’s been time for some of the hardest work of cracking myself open to that grief and hurt and fear. and… there’s a lot of it! it’s been draining, enough that especially with a comms job i’m often too tired to keep up with messages outside of the absolutely necessary. i spend time staring into space, or lose two hours doing the world’s least intentional yin yoga and lying in various positions that help unfuck the tension in my hypermobile hips. words come to me less easily, but that’s a good thing for once: i learned to write for myself as a young child because it was the easiest way to excise everything i was enduring and feeling so i didn’t have to carry it any more. and now i do, and there’s no words for that yet. not for now.

so that’s… a lot. and it’s often difficult in the depths of that old-new suffering to walk the line between sharing and oversharing, or between restraint and suppression! so i hope i’ve struck it here. and i hope i sleep enough to make up for the years i basically didn’t, one day.

what’s on my plate

drawing: i’m finally at a point with work where i think i can start reshuffling my schedule so i can make figure drawing at the art gallery once a fortnight or month. stay tuned!

writing: i wrote a couple of pieces for bad apple: a review of Amma in conversation with my younger sibling, and a quick introduction to global poetry writing month.

it’s been, funnily enough, my least generative glopowrimo since i started participating. my words are hibernating, and i’ll find them on the other side.

reading: Amma is really, truly phenomenal. you should read the review, then the book :)

i’m also making my way through All Who Live on Islands, which is trilingual, thoughtful, and articulate in ways which i’m finding very refreshing. i’ve really enjoyed the format of this collection of essays.

watching: currently waiting with bated breath for the next episode of Fantasy High. exploring more Dropout content while i’m at it. restarting Elementary.

gaming: my D&D group’s just finished a campaign, and it’s new DM time! i think i’d be terrible, but if nobody else wants to do it — it’s a new kind of writing, and the only way to improve is by trying!

i’ve played quite a lot of Slay the Spire this couple of months (i’m now ascension 4, but haven’t beat the true final act yet). i’ve also finished one XCOM: Chimera Squad run, and am considering whether i have the time/wherewithal to revisit XCOM 2. really, this is where most of my time has been going, when i’m not too exhausted from work or therapy. it’s how it is sometimes, i think, especially for my kind of ADHD — seasons and cycles of interests and hobbies that suit the current form of fatigue or hyperfocus i have.

crafting: i made some very, very scrappy undies from a very bright pink polka-dot clearance foldover elastic and the portion of a torn-up old merino/spandex undershirt from shoulder to bottom of armpit. the singlet had ripped in two right across the middle, so that was the smaller half! it worked out well enough that i’ll make another pair out of the other half soonish. they’re very comfortable, and fit well.

other underwear adventures: getting halfway through drafting and making short stays from scratch before realising that i… cannot sew precisely enough, at least not in that kind of exhausted energy burst, to complete that kind of project. we’ll see when i return to them!

i’ve also continued working on winter socks, and had a hilarious mishap felting slippers in my washing machine. turns out that front-loaders with broken temperature controls don’t make for good felting! the slippers i made turned out far, far too small. hopefully i’ll figure out making a second pair before winter proper.

next on the list: finishing at least one pair of warm winter footwear, casting on a sweater vest, making another pair of flannel pajama pants before it gets any colder, and cutting into a very well-loved vintage dress that has cap sleeves and a high back which no longer fit with my recent shoulder and bicep development. hopefully i can alter the neckline and sleeves (and maybe hem the skirt — it was very poorly overlocked whenever it was originally made) and keep it from falling apart when i do!

music: i’ve been back at the piano a little, or my guitar. march’s song is still the mountain goats — an unreleased song this time, that goes on loop after some therapy sessions, that i sing every time i tune my guitar.

april’s song is… well, i went to the Stardew Valley: Festival of Seasons concert with my siblings, and as ex-orchestra kids we all had Thoughts about the arrangement and the performers (at least one who just did not pay any attention to the conductor! we had a good time, though! some really lovely woodwinds.)

but after the concert, i went to look up the arranger who did the gorgeously-arranged Stardew Valley Piano Collections, to revisit them playing the winter pieces (just a little too hard for me to easily play):

…and found out via their new handle/profile picture that they’ve transitioned since i last looked! so hell yeah, congrats to meadow bridgham! that moment of surprise and delight is why this is here.

joyful things: my wonderful, terrible cat, who’s been extra cuddly as the weather turns cold. the people around me who’ve been so kind and loving during this period of strain. my wife, who has as always been my bulwark. japanese curry. the thoughtful, dedicated, clear-eyed american young adults who i have the honour of mentoring personally, and the ones i have the honour of witnessing as they step forward into a future forged with their own hands.

poem of the month (or two)

two, since it’s been two months! both super drafty, the kind of poem that goes into a newsletter and not into a pile to revise for publication.

first, one written for the first of this year’s napowrimo prompts:

Today, we’d like to challenge you to write – without consulting the book – a poem that recounts the plot, or some portion of the plot, of a novel that you remember having liked but that you haven’t read in a long time.

a girl—always a girl—
a teacher’s kindness. anchor in
sea of adult failures, pressure
gauges failing. anger salvation
in still life. girl-child meets
girl-grown. meets girl-rage meets
immovable object, unstoppable
force. implosion rerouted. 
matter listens to mind more than
her parents do. sea-bed 
exploration with no oxygen. 
they surface anyway.

and perhaps too on the nose, one of the few poems i’ve written during this last few weeks of wordlessness:

that’s where i’m at! but the joy of being snowed under by emotion is that i get to exist. i get to be here, still, well past any age i thought i’d survive to, and to undergo that painstaking work of growth. and i get to feel — to step into living, in its fullness.

as a prison abolitionist, that’s all i want for everyone, that gift. that revolutionary optimism: it hurts to be alive, and it hurts to get better, and we all deserve to get to do both. to build a better world, piece by piece, repairing our hearts along the way.