kī anthony

fuck daylight savings. i’m exhausted.

i’d be exhausted anyway, i think! this season has been one of ten-year anniversaries, some joyful, all a marker of a life once far more circumscribed than it is now.

my wife and i recently had our tenth anniversary! we had a shoestring wedding as students, so we’re taking a very belated honeymoon (well, really, just our first trip overseas) next month.

but 2014 was… quite a year. on october 15, it’ll have been ten years since my parents found out i was dating a woman (the one who is now my wife!), and i found myself leaving home, unwilling/unable to return. it was some months later, in 2015, that we finally found a place to rent. 2015 was… plagued by new and different problems, many of which in hindsight were made much worse by learning to be an adult at the same time i was learning to be a person at all outside the confines of the fundamentalist christian environment.

and, as we know, anniversaries can be pretty rough for PTSD! it feels weird to be here, to have spent over a third of my life free. to know that my formative years have indelibly marked me, but to look back and have almost forgotten some of the ways my life then was so, so small.

i’m busy. content, stressed, exhausted, joyful. there are opportunities open to me to push myself to the brink, to say yes to too many things. but there are also opportunities for me to go outside, and connect with people, and see what happens next. i’m still figuring out where my ever-shifting boundaries and limitations lie, especially in the slowly-remapping world of my now-less-new job.

on which note: if you’re here from the WordPress world, know that this blog is hosted by Automattic because i still have some store credit from working there. i don’t imagine it is a surprise that i don’t wholesale support what the CEO is currently up to, and also that my thoughts on venture capital are… not positive. i don’t want to get into any of that here, but for friends who move in FOSS circles or otherwise want to chat about this entire situation with people who aren’t hackernews technocapitalists, i’m around.

(more on bigger movements in the world, nz politics and otherwise, after this month’s poem at the end.)

what’s on my plate

too much! i’m constantly in awe of the bright stars i surround myself with who manage to parent or teach or work physical jobs or run organisations or maintain vibrant social lives or all of the above, who never fail to be attentive, kind and step up to the plate when they’re needed. i am so blessed to be around such energised young organisers, and such stalwart ones my age and up. but i am also trying to learn to rest, and i… haven’t really succeeded as well as i should. i have been learning to at least enjoy the things i do, and succeeding at that!

writing/drawing: i forgot to mention in the last post, but i read repping bad apple in Auckland Libraries’ Winter Poetry Festival! it was the first time i’ve read thumbprint out loud. more recently, i also had in jerusalem, next year published on bad apple as part of their MIXTAPE collection.

i might read thumbprint again at Yellow Lamp Poetry this month — if you’re in town next week, see you on thursday 17th :)

in a more literal sense, i’ve gotten… much more into fountain pens. i have four pens now — the two Jinhao 599s i already had, a Pilot Kakuno EF (which is absurdly fine), and a Majohn T1. no new ink purchases, but not for lack of window shopping!

in general, i’ve also been trying to carry a small notebook with me when leaving the house, so i can sketch moments here and there. not having access to perfectionism on a bumpy bus allows for some interesting practice for the eye and hand.

reading: a few things this couple of months!

• Everyone on This Train is a Suspect, a murder-mystery novel presented as truth, which i picked up having seen the cover at the library. a fun, reasonably self-aware read.
• The Gifts of Imperfection and A Life Less Punishing, self-help books by two very different people (Brene Brown and Matt Heath), aimed generally at people carrying a little less trauma than i am. i found both to be useful mirrors anyway, offering me insights into my own journey of growth as i observed the places where i agreed with them, or disagreed. generally, pretty reasonable advice on both fronts, though i wish Heath would stop quoting the Stoics! that’s some bloke shit, though, he’s allowed.

gaming: last post, i’d finally beat the Corrupt Heart in Slay the Spire. i’ve now completed Ascension 10 on Ironclad and Silent and am working on it on Defect, s that’s a pretty big skill jump! it’s still what i’m doing when resting in between tasks. i meant to get into DA2 and replay it, but haven’t yet set up my device and the game in a way that works.

i also got to play Wingspan with some friends recently, which was lovely! i’ve missed board games.

watching: i watched all of Dimension 20’s Mice and Murder in approximately 2.5 days while my wife was on a work trip. i’m definitely having a normal one. it was good, though! i really enjoyed it. Never Stop Blowing Up was also a fantastic season, which wrapped up recently.

music: something i forgot to mention in the last post: taking advantage of still being under 30 and getting a Philharmonia GO subscription, though unfortunately most of the concerts i’ve wanted to attend have clashed with my fortnightly D&D sessions.

otherwise — you know what? here’s this month’s lastfm collage.

song of the month is a better son/daughter by rilo kiley, which i had on loop for hours as a teenager, and is still special to me on those stressful days.

crafting: i love libraries. Local Making still has a fair few events in their low-waste sustainable textile/sewing events at Avondale library, and i was at a couple this month:

first, the sashiko/boro one! i still need to finish mending these extremely worn (and cat hair covered) wool trousers, but i love the way the boro looks. the texture is just so nice.

then, there was a drawstring bag workshop. delightfully, i ended up with a bag that stands up on its own, made from yet more offcuts from The Fabric Store (like the zip bag from February). i haven’t hand-sewn anything in a long while, and i think it’s reasonably neat with that and my complete lack of measuring in mind! now i have a lightweight, portable yarn cup to take with me to tabletop gaming and PAPA meetings.

i also made this extremely modified Ranunculus! i bought mohair/merino laceweight yarn off fb marketplace, as one does, from a man whose family owns a farm. it’s beautiful stuff, if brittle in places (which is fine, it spit splices back together well), soft and warm.

my first bindoff was a first attempt at an icelandic bindoff. it did not fit over my shoulders or chest, so i cut it off with scissors (!), picked up a few rows down, and redid it with jeny’s surprisingly stretchy bindoff instead.

i also tried my hand at my first beaded knitted item, a single glove from a pair following this lovely free pattern. i knit it in one day, largely during the course of the aforementioned game of Wingspan! beading for the first time on a table covered in board game pieces was certainly a choice, but it worked out well.

joyful things: friends who open their homes to me, even if they have to pick me up and drop me home. train stations. the very idea of the one-day-hopefully-functional City Rail Link. the courage and honesty of all the people i organise with in my day job and with PAPA. my medical marijuana prescription. pawpaw ointment. my wonderful wife and our adorable, bothersome cat. japanese sunblock. wong bok. my guitar. my voice, slowly settling into the place it belongs.

poem of the month

this one brought to you by our dilapidated house and the hours i’ve spent squinting at my phone screen in the dark.

every single night the 
Trade Me app crashes on me like it's
           as tired as i am // i've never

bothered to save the search it's 
               top of my recent history
proliferating like nightmares into my
    email inbox
                  Could This Be Your Next
Rental? // K, browse 4,223 properties
under $800,000! // as if i 
         can afford window-shopping, 
     minutes snatched from pomodoro apps &
timesheets & life coloured by 

small worries: single-glazed windows on
         warm days & my cat is
too old for pet insurance too white for

     that hole in the ozone layer // we
place dreams like it's jenga slide
          the rotting floorboards delicately
out from under us // maybe next time the
wind won't slide through shut 
     windows & knock things off shelves
           the world's worst ghost maybe

next time it'll be drier & warmer &
cooler & 
            maybe we'll have double-glazing
& 
      proliferate like dandelions

if you somehow happen to know of a house on the western train line that will accommodate two remote worker t4t dykes and an unbelievably photogenic cat and actually be well ventilated and insulated, you know where to find me! but i suspect many of us are in the same boat, struggling in uncertain waters of our own while watching a war unfold and feeling fury, impotence, despair, heartbreak, inadequacy, guilt.

i have it so much better than many, i think often, even in this country. i have been given — and this does not discount how hard i have worked for it — room to recover, to find the space i have needed to become a whole person, work-in-progress though that is. i hold what little i can hold, give what i can give.

if you have five dollars a week to spare, i’d encourage you to make a routine of opening gazafunds.com and donating to the fundraiser you see on the main page. i received an update from one of the ones i’ve donated to, photographs of six or so children having made safe passage to germany. i wept, then wept more about the dozens of others i haven’t heard from, then wept about having tears left to weep and being healed enough to shed them.

fucking hell, you know? our pain turns us inward, makes us selfish by necessity. but there is so much pain in the world, and finding the joy in the world so that we can struggle on is not selfish. resilience comes back to this: community, both mundane and meaningful. joy and laughter, separately and together. connection to the earth and to time — things to look forward to, spaces to occupy or move our bodies in. things we can eke out, in the small ways we can afford, to bolster ourselves in our fight to ensure everyone has them too.

then we fight. then we fight, for one life, or a million. we do what we can. we believe in that better future and we take the small actions available to us because the alternative is deciding nothing good is possible. and that’s untenable, unacceptable.

if you have time on Saturday night and can make it to Mt Eden Prison, we’re holding a vigil for Andrew Chan Chui, who was killed while double-bunked late last week. join us and his family to grieve, and to demand better. to share in that belief that his life is one worth fighting for, too.