How are we all doing, everyone?
I’m taking a long slow look around.
The ground is full of water and the humidity is high.
There’s a feeling of unstable ground, treading lightly in places well worn, sensing that something about them is soon to alter. Or already has and every day finding yourself trying to comprehend it, or not.
I’ve been charging bills to credit and moving through Saturnian setbacks all spring and summer long, riding the wave with the grace of a slow melting candle.
In my headphones bangs the same Cyber TRANCE presents ayu trance 2 album I’ve been listening to since the turn of the century.
I lost all motivation to proceed with certain plans once the setbacks piled up in such a way, that I had to question my methods and the yet-sensed phantom motives driving them. I had turned away from the smoke and was back with the smoke. Heavy. Swimming. Wondering if the heat in my upstairs made my everyday meds less effective, or if the summers have become difficult seasons for me now. It’s certainly when all my big bills are due, I tell you that much.
For my astro heads, this June I entered an 8th house profection year.
In the world of astrology techniques (can you believe I’ve begun year three over at Austin Coppock’s Fundamentals of Astrology dojo?), so far Annual Profections continue to be my favorite. Since starting to read charts for friends and clients, I’ve been surprised how many astro-aware ppl don’t know this technique. Let me summarize quick n dirty: On your solar return aka birthday every year, a new house in your natal chart becomes more activated. The traditional planetary ruler of that house’s zodiac sign becomes significant. Any transiting planets currently moving through that sign in the sky will have a more pronounced influence. Any natal planets in the house will also have a more pronounced influence. It’s a very useful way to get to understand themes of your life through the houses, and to prepare for what is before and ahead of you, above and below.
From my own studies and my teachers, lemme freestyle my 8th house understanding: an area of the life dealing with other people’s stuff, inheritances, debts, what you get from the turnover of death and everything involved with the changing of hands on what’s left over in this world—hence, transformation.
Let’s observe my 8th house for a moment. The zodiac territory is Aries. My fiery, ever-tethered-to-comfort-in-the-Other (oof) Moon lives there at 17°. In the sky, Saturn and Neptune transit Aries with their leaden and untethering influences. In the week of my birthday, I submitted an application for a grant that will change my life, I began to experience what I’ll now call the depressive drag of Saturn and started smoking la mota heavy (neptune), and I began to exercise rather suddenly and without plan (as in the motivation was there).
I continue to observe that I have a peculiar lack of fear around responsibilities that were once coiled thick around my core, and wonder if I’m fucking something up for myself by forgetting slacking ignoring??… or if I ought to keep letting go of what I thought I’d do and continue to follow that scent of conviction in the ether. It has no odor but I sense its capacity. Reach out and take hold, it shimmers.
the panel
In June, I took part in a panel at the Free Library Central Branch (in that beautiful skyline room on the 2nd floor) about alternative paths to publishing and had a damn good time. The other panelists were Christopher Rogers, Warren Basla, Josh Dale, and Anni Liu, who all represented (along w/myself) some particular slice of the smaller publishing whirled. I think I was perhaps singular in being a deliberate DIY self-publisher/distributor, and had a fair amount of observations to share that it seemed members of the audience took note of with the hmmms and mmms flitting about.
It felt like an appropriate place to talk my shit in the sense that I got to put some logistical matters on the table, like how serious distribution access to booksellers is, how publishing is very much a middle class person’s game and there’s so many storytellers who will never grace ‘publishing’ for the cultural disinterest and ignorance at play yet deserve recognition, and advice like go ahead and put your own work out, leave it where strangers can pick it up and see how that does you creatively.
Then there was a nice lil after-panel hangout where I got to talk to a handful of interesting people about the subject matter and snack on the charcuterie and stare out at the skyline from the floor to ceiling windows. Past versions of me would be prickly from overstimulation and anxious to retreat, so it was a very pleasant experience to ….be relaxed and present. ::long contemplative stare with visions of small white pharmaceuticals and meditation cushions::
the labor
So yes, transformation. It’s coming up on a year since I stopped working at my old job of so many many years, and I knew I would need a long time to deal with the aftermath of how I was severed. In the time since, I prepared an entire portfolio website showcasing years of my government-name work, but haven’t finalized or promoted it. I launched a separate site for astrology bookings & began gathering clients. I overhauled the Cyborg Memoirs distro and started the tedious work of designing planners and other stationery I’m still sitting on because of all the damn machinery setbacks on a fixed-to-zero income. It’s that first year trying to work for yourself shit, I feel, except I’ve tried working for myself a few times before and this time I feel…advanced. I look at the Time Will Tell tattoo on my forearm.
Having many names, it’s been paining me how to synthesize the corpus of a) my professional work with b) that of my pen name, the distro, the nascent divinatory services… I deliberately kept them at odds for years, to protect my privacy and to shield my creative efforts from being commodified for cheap (it happened anyway). After the severing, I found myself like damn, I really had a crazy influence and I know it and I can see it everywhere, but does anyone know my name over it enough to get me work now? To be determined.
the air (suli’s chapter)
Meanwhile I’ve spent my time fluttering between printers and paper cutters, a sewing machine, making fresh batches of zines and journals while thinking on Suli’s unfinished ALL THAT’S LEFT (ATL) chapter, which is one I’ve written multiple times over at this point and feel so close to completing. Then there’s Braga’s chapter which I already have going, and I will have finally introduced everyone to the degree they deserve and we can delve further into the world beyond the many preliminary interactions I captured in short stories prior.
For those of you who were/n’t around when I was releasing those early prototype ATL short stories damn near 15 years ago, Suli was often depicted as an annoying, self-absorbed pain in the ass within the larger crew of far more dispossessed surveyor cyborgs, and a fair amount of people told me how much he got under their skin. But I’ve had a soft spot for Suli all these years, because even though he’s from the oblivious and offensive Homestead citadel ‘city’ and caught up in its culture, things have never been good for him, and I need y’all to see what he deals with for this world to be all the richer.
In the early pandemic years I started rewriting ATL and put out Kay’s chapter, The Rain, and Rahl’s chapter, The Lighter (I released recordings of them, and u can buy zines of them, but I haven’t published the text online). In Kay’s chapter, you meet somebody akin to a teen runaway well used to living on the move and having dangerous feelings about all the loss and flooding going on. In Rahl’s chapter, you meet somebody high on the job at the live-in farm and looking for a sign its time to get out when horny trade appears. In Suli’s chapter, you’ll meet a fool coming back to Homestead from the jobsite, getting ready for a sexy night out with his so-called boys in the satellite club district.
Thank you to the various people out there who have left me checkout notes at the e-distro or shared their thoughts n feelings about my writing IRL ~ I’m ddddddeffo compelled to write this stuff but having an audience makes everything so much moreee……… magical. Otra vez, muchas gracias y bendiciones a ti~
I used to be embarrassed at how long its taken me to permutate and release this story. I’ve gone through a few phases of balking at how details and aspects and contributing factors to the state of the ATL story world materialize in the ~real world~, and what am I doing writing this still… but these days I have stopped caring. It seems I’m here to refuse releasing work quickly, to do things slow erratic and steady, and that if I force urgency I only undermine the work.
By the way, I attended a very good workshop the other day (which you can now rent), called Chisel In Hand: Revision Strategies for Fiction with N.K. Jemisin, via Philly’s BlueStoop lit org always doing interesting things. Once again, thank the saints stars and ancestors for the experienced who teach their trade to the willing in straightforward methods. I don’t listen to a ton of authors talking about craft etc, but I love to hear N.K. Jemisin talk about (writing fanfiction!!! and) all their experimental writing structures they try out in stories—it gives me energy and motivation to keep it moving.
comms in the splinter times
Years ago I had a character say a line about how having a tricked out profile with all your stats used to be elite shit but now having no profile at all was the move. These days I witness more and more people make decisions about what they are and aren’t gonna post online. What IS the cost of the reaction machine with its hooks sunk deep into your nervous system? Do you want your information to be free like that? Did we ever need to know so much about so many people in so many places? What is the mental cost going to be…
At the publishing panel, I had a good nerdy chat with one of the attendees about a shared feeling that I couldn’t shake, from being extremely online in the 1990s early 2000s internet, which is that a lot of the wild behavior we witness online today comes from a whole bunch of people doing in public social media surveillance view what many of us did back in the day in closed groups as preteens… That the emotional intensity of having a body online is something no one prepares you for, and that we early onliners are a group that has not been looked for, through all these stages of ubiquitous telecom development and technological social transformation. And probably, we should talk about it.
Whew, I have a lot more to pull at with this topic, but my gears are winding down. So let me freestyle a bit more before I go. Everyday I feel like I witness the further materialization of a gross cyberpunk reality: there’s the absurdity of the news, and the horror of technocrat-jockeying for finite geopolitical resources, and also the freakish, Frankenstein-adjacent-seeming, cyborg juicer reality of young influencers shooting up peptides and other callous cocktails of isolated pharmaceutical substances as an income stream. The GLP-1s and wellness influencer peptide regimens and blood testing and TRT is better than SSRIs in some cases and my god jesus christ have you SEEN the 1985 film Brazil or NOT yet?! the arguments against trans HRT medicine are so laughable at this point!
Hollywood has made many think that cyborgs involves electronics, machinery, robotic parts. But to me, they’ve always always been about the drugs. Related to the war machine.
In 2026 there’s a new Ghost in the Shell series out, taking its cues from Masamune Shirow’s original 1989 manga, and I fucking love it. But I bring up GITS because of war and cyborgs and that franchise’s dedication to one, exploring the interiority of life in a cyborg body, juiced up and maxed out, optimized for and belonging to the state, and two, its dedication to depicting subterfuge and narrative control by those in power.
I don’t know if you want to hear this or not, but we’re caught up in a war. Take good note of your surroundings, as always.
And with my fool Suli on the mind I ask, where have I been fooling myself…
A meditation.
NEW at CYBORG MEMOIRS DISTRO
It’s back to school time and I’ve got exceptionally detailed, useful and approachable, sexy planners 4 U. It’s the same C U Next Tuesday series I’ve been promoting except now they include covers and they’re…
50~60% OFF ~!
Monthly or Weekly Formats !
Zodiacal or Gregorian Calendar Styles!
A5 or A5 Narrow Sizes !
If you were interested in getting this zodiacal year’s astro planner but weren’t willing to wait for the March start-date, consider picking up the discounted zodiacal planner today, which will run you all the way till Mar 19, 2027 (end of Pisces season). Because the Week+Note style is in two books, the second book starts for Libra season, so there’s less unused paper to carry around.
I invite you to indulge your curiosity, tell your friends, follow the nascent youtube channel, send a gift to a homie, et cetera et cetera.
Happy Virgo Season, Everyone.
^_~/
Shout Out To All My Strong Virgo Placements Out There
&
All The Virgo Lovers Who Love 2 Please
@}-}-;——–
Thank You For Your Service!!!!!!!!!
– Monk in “Philly”
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