I started this project in 2022, two years into a pandemic that left us globally isolated and three years from the start of an immigration process that left me personally isolated. I created it because I had developed a consistent writing practice, which had slowly started to sound more and more coherent, and I wanted a place to honor it somehow. The nagging idea that folks could stumble upon that writing and find it somewhat comforting was at the center of it becoming a publicly vulnerable place rather than a private archive.

You’ve seen me through separations, career changes, moves, marriage, more immigration, friendship breakups, and have chosen to stick about. That’s wild to me.

Not only have you stuck around, but you’ve invited friends over, you’ve shared my stories, and have messaged me entry after entry to process your own grief and joy alongside mine. What a fucking gift. Thanks for letting me do that — you’re pretty cool.

Today I’d love to invite you somewhere with me, deeper into my most personal writing.

I am introducing this queer body, a paid, more frequent blog segment within my newsletter. It’s for folks who would like to keep me (and themselves) company in our journeys on being alive in these queer bodies.

For a while now, I’ve wanted to have a space to share my experiences as a butch, lesbian, immigrant with gender, body, and sexuality, to open up the part of my journal that’s stayed hidden throughout my life, the footnotes I edit out, and vulnerably unravel the questions that come along the way. This, here, shall be a home for deeply confessional writing that’s a little raw, consistently unfiltered, as it chronicles the day to day life of this body in constant change.

This queer body of mine refuses to settle for less, foolishly embarking in quests for more (and by more, I mean more truth, more joy, more aliveness, more curiosity, more questions.) There hasn’t been an idea I haven’t been asked to question in order to live, fully, as myself, and I plan to lay that all out here.

Yikes! It’s going to get personal in a way it hasn’t before. I’m teetering on the brink of change.

I’m thinking about it all day. About myself, that is. I’m thinking about how depressed I am, how the time is finite and I’ve wasted so much of it being silent, how idle I am in the face of inner restlessness. I’m thinking about how tired I am of feeling choked up against the edges of whatever hallucinated limits we’ve been asked to inherit and uphold. I’m thinking about shedding this dreaded double-weight off my chest, thinking about how hot I’ll feel, thinking about this thing that I can’t yet name that is sure to unfold before me if I only dare to step on the other side of what I am afraid of.

That other side seems nice and inviting - the dreadful part is going through it. Talking to family about it, fearing they might never see me as bravely as I see myself for choosing the pull of a wayward heart in all of this mess that is life, this mess that surely calls for certainty. But freedom has never been certain.

I can’t help but conjure up grandiose-mundane stories about my queer desires, metaphors that suggest something close to the meaning of life is hidden underneath what so far has stayed bound up.

We must all have something winged in our chests asking for permission to fly.

Queerness is a voice, insistent — an invitation to spread your wings and try.

join me in 'this queer body'

i find myself writing less and less about beauty, and more and more reaching for it in foolish ways. as if touch starved. as if never quite satisfied. my day to day life has become a disastrous pursuit for pleasure, without making space for the outpouring of beauty to occur. i’ve found this kills a person, slowly, like cavities. a saccharine life, devoid of any substance.

what is it that drives me? is it the need to fill a void? is it the void itself? is writing about wanting just another form of hedonism? i take a break. i ponder.

i wonder. who do i write for? i think i do it for myself, mostly.

is anything i do lately not in service of self-indulgence?

i pause.

you are here with me, reading these words. i’m aware of their weight, and i was fully conscious of this when i decided to involve you in my relationship with them. they may linger in your head for a bit. that is a responsibility i shouldn’t take lightly.

am i planting beautiful seeds in your life? am i leaving you slightly more relieved than i found you? if i’m not, then am i helping you turn inwards? am i a silent space amidst all the static? is this thought just as self-serving?

my writing is a conversation pit. a constant discussion between the beings within myself, all the big minds speaking loudly and thinking they have the final say. my spirit sits in the middle of this back-and-forth, observant. my work here is to sort through all the noise and let the threads come through in their simplicity, in their quiet tenderness.

one of the questions i hear the most within myself is:

who do you even think you are, to believe you must be heard at all?

now, this whiny voice helps no one. it is one of those beings i’m learning to appease with some big dramatic words, as i set it aside for truth to come through. it’s my daily task to ensure it doesn’t interfere with my creative process.

i want to become who i truly wish to be. to write words that ignite, to speak to the spaces that expand in silence, to make gardens of my thoughts and share this harvest with you. the truth is, i am scared, and i feel lonely. i have found that this loneliness seeks solitude. a simultaneous experience of complete and total submersion within myself, and total extraction of presence. this directly contradicts the actions that heal me: seeking vulnerable connection, and voicing my thoughts.

self-loathing misery breeds this self-absorption, keeps you isolated, untethered, and blinded to life beyond yourself. this is why i try my best to write about something other than my own pain, because i keep forgetting that it was never about me in the first place. but i can’t stop coming back to it.

look around, look at the rhythms of nature, my heart tells me. listen to the stories life likes to tell in silent devotion. it was never about you! and yet it is all shown through me, light refracting in water. try to practice listening. practice seeing with more than two eyes. practice being here, now. maybe then you’ll remember what the story was supposed to be about after all.

speak to the little version of you. what do they need? listen closely. feel free to hit reply and share it with me, if you want to.

we want progress
we want fortunetellers
we want a clear solution
for the unclear future
an answer to the grief and perhaps
an end to the uncertainty
we want feed for the hunger
the hunger for speed and we
want it automated
the less present
the better
we want to tap out soon, please
someone take care of this task
leave us more time to be elsewhere
because there must be somewhere else
far away from this despair
in the ruins of this world must lie the answer
give the robots power tools
let them knock down the walls and
be the architects of some future
finally end the pesky unions
they don’t drill into their
own fingers on accident
their wives do not die
they do not need
to mourn
or bask in the glee of a
baby’s first breath
they will never have to
put the family dog
down
we have solved it
i promise
this is a final solution to
the most trascendental
unanswerable
parable
believe us
there is no
time for
questions
it is crucial
we do
not 
stop.

keep reading my work

We sleep when we are tired. We meditate to rest our mind. But what do we do with a weary heart?

The thought came to me once we landed in Aruba. My dad would never go to Marshall’s again.

This stupid, single thought, was enough to drive me to indelible tears. I had just left my chosen home, my job, and all of my friends along with it, and the only thing I could cry about then was the franchises of overconsumption we’d lost access to.

So much of my existence in the US felt defined by what I owned and how it represented my values, where I spent my money and how it built the future I wanted to live. We knew we could run to Savers and acquire a new secondhand item that felt ours immediately, real, something tangible to tell us we existed here and did it well, intentionally. That we could foster someone else’s belongings until it became our time to pass them on as well in some sort of holy capitalist sacrament. It’s not just that I could do it, no, it’s that I began to need it.

I began to need material reciprocity in order to feel alive.

The desert gives me nothing in the way of material abundance. I cannot forage for sticks, there are no trees. I cannot go pick wildflowers— without rain, there is no such thing. There is no secondhand store stocked enough to venture into and acquire a new reassurance, a different sense of self, a reason to keep going. As I write and think about it, I realize couldn’t buy those things in the US either, but meeting a manufactured need felt just as fulfilling in the moment. A dopamine hit, as the kids would call it, to get me by.

Speaking of dopamine hits, I’ve started to track my phone usage more. I’ve lost countless hours to the machiavellian feature of endless scrolling, searching in the dumps of algorithmically-assigned content-crap for god-knows-what. In a fashion similar to a south American dad at Marshall’s, or heartbroken people knelt down in pews, I am a lost soul coming to the bright church within this device in search for answers. I’m not exaggerating— Every single time I open my phone to scroll, now met with a hard stop, I realize I am desperate for the breath of relief only an answer could give me. An answer to my fears, to whether I will get a job or not, to why my heart weighs as heavily as it does today, to whether my friends truly love me, and whether love alone can save me. An answer within the misinterpreted silence of an apparently indifferent universe, a clear next step to unbind me from the powerlessness I feel. But my phone cannot do that for me. And neither can Marshall’s.

I refuse to believe this behavior is knee-jerk. I call it an addiction because it is. It is an attempt at numbing out my life.

These days, I keep most of my phone locked behind a proxy that redirects me to freedom. I debated it for months, but after realizing every day I kept wasting stuck in a cycle of addiction was worth more than the cost and the chance to try something different, I gave in and bought a lifetime membership to this software called Freedom. Every time I attempt to open one of the now-banished apps it reminds me, with a reassuring green hue and a flat icon of a butterfly, that I am free to do something else. And now, more than I have the last few years of my life, I do.

I draw, I write, I call my mother or talk to a friend. What a different world it feels, to look back to the parts of me that thought I could find something inside this screen to replace the feeling of being alive.

That I’d even want to.

We sleep when we are tired. We meditate to rest our mind. But what do we do with a weary heart?

I found myself asking this question on Friday after E had left for class. I also found myself opening Google and, feeling like a bit of a dork, vulnerably typing it into the search bar. I felt I had no one else to talk to about it.

After digging and skimming through some blog posts, poetry seemed to be the leading answer, with allowing yourself the opportunity to love and tending to real connections being close behind. I settled on the most immediately digestible answer, and instinctively knew who to turn to for poems that would wring my heart out. In a new tab I typed out “poems about grief by Mary Oliver”, and went about my search.

Since blocking out social media, I’ve stopped landing on Reddit threads, which used to feel informative, now instead digging through blogs that remind me of the loving people who make up the internet outside of the weird social media monopoly we’ve found ourselves pinballing within. One poem led to another, and through blurry eyes, I spotted our dear A. Gibson in the sidebar wordcloud. This was the poem that did me in swiftly:

The Madness Vase

The nutritionist said I should eat root vegetables. Said if I could get down thirteen turnips a day I would be grounded, rooted. Said my head would not keep flying away to where the darkness lives.

The psychic told me my heart carries too much weight. Said for twenty dollars she’d tell me what to do. I handed her the twenty. She said, “Stop worrying, darling. You will find a good man soon.”

The first psycho therapist told me to spend three hours each day sitting in a dark closet with my eyes closed and ears plugged. I tried it once but couldn’t stop thinking about how gay it was to be sitting in the closet.

The yogi told me to stretch everything but the truth. Said to focus on the out breath. Said everyone finds happiness when they care more about what they give than what they get.

The pharmacist said, “Lexapro, Lamictal, Lithium, Xanax.”

The doctor said an anti-psychotic might help me forget what the trauma said.

The trauma said, “Don’t write these poems. Nobody wants to hear you cry about the grief inside your bones.”

But my bones said, “Tyler Clementi jumped from the George Washington Bridge into the Hudson River convinced he was entirely alone.”

My bones said, “Write the poems.”

Where would we be if A. Gibson had numbed out their bones as they rattled, hurt, called?

I was crying even harder now, but my chest felt lighter.

So. We sleep when we are tired. We can meditate to rest our mind. But, now, what do we do with a weary heart?

How do you soak it, wring it out, hang it out to dry? How do you fold it up neatly, how do you put it to rest? How do you release it from the pressure building up against it, an ancient dam about to burst?

You let it break.

It’s incredible how far the human brain will go to avoid pain. I try to remind myself that this is the human condition, that we have felt gut-wrenching dread at the uncertainty ahead for as long as we have been alive, and we have ran from it for just as long. We seek relief through capitalism and consumption, we scroll for hours, we reject the vulnerable and destroy the unexplainable, unconsciously behaving as if we could patch this stubborn bug by surrounding it with the right combination of items to determine our existence, eternally suppressing, seeking to exile the undefinable. It all just wells up behind the dam. It does not go away.

In opening apps, I am attempting to tend to this heaviness within my chest by connecting, but the “connection” offered by these services is a double-sided mirror. I’d rather give myself the opportunity to lean into more creative, human containers for my grief.

I am undistracted, grief-stricken, bored, and afraid. And I think I am meant to be.

get my field notes

—

Holis - es jess, he vuelto a tu inbox. Hice un template de Notion gratis para ayudarme a deshojar este año que vivimos, guardar las semillitas pal próximo, y empezar a planear el campo. Claramente lo tenía que compartir contigo. Duplícalo y sácale provecho!

suscríbete!

ENG

Dear reader,

Happy Sunday. I hope you are taking this last one of the year to connect with yourself, your dreams, wants, hopes, and, why not - your fears, too. I hope the quilt of these past 24 moons has started to make more sense in front of you, that the pieces feel a little less disconnected - that they’ve started to become a blanket of memories and lessons to keep you warm.

This year has forced me to reckon with loss at an unpredictable scale. It’s opened my eyes to the, at best, ignorance and, at worst, hatred, that blinds people from connecting with what makes the experience of modern immigration so heartbreaking and crucial. They’re both a privileged shield from the inescapable consequences of increasingly violent policies: forced migration, displacement, and exile - a word my partner recently used to describe me, us, in this lonely experience we have chosen to face head on. This experience we share with millions, who face its consequences in varying degrees. This grief so deep the Earth cries along with us, and still, it goes unnamed.

In choosing to look it in the eyes, I am reminded that looking away is also a choice.

I’ve learned a great deal about myself. I’m in awe of the sorrow I held, the narratives I challenged and softened to meet, the doors I’ve opened, and the ones I’ve closed, too. I’m grateful for my family, and for having a home to come back to. I know I am incredibly lucky to be able to say that.

To the people that have held me softly this year while I uprooted my life and reinvented it all, while I took God into my hands and shaped Them, thank you. Your love means more to me than I could ever word, and you are a testament to my beliefs on this Earth. I hope to be more like each and every one of you.

To my sweet clients - God, you move me to bits! Your projects take me to the edges of myself and back. I am fed and curious and filled up to the brim after a year of creating by your side, and I can’t wait for all the delicious things I have in store for you (and me!) this year. I’m always working on listening better, communicating better, and collaborating better. Thank you for understanding my process, having space for my humanity, and believing in my results.

Reader, my wish for you this new year is rest, safety, the love of family and friends, community, warmth, and liberation. May you read hard books, and eat good food. May you find fun in every sunrise. May you believe that there’s good people everywhere - and may you find them. May you challenge your heart to break open one more inch - take in the things we’d normally look away from, and let them ache. Let them move you towards responsiveness and responsibility.

May you let life change you. May you change life, too.

Love,
jess.

Here’s all the books I read this year (or started, indicated with DNF). It’s the most I’ve read in a decade, and I am so so so happy I just had to share.

• Make Your Art no Matter What, Beth Pickens

• What it Takes to Heal, Prentiss Hemphill

• Last Night at the Telegraph Club, Malinda Lo

• Kindred, Octavia Butler

• Love Me Tender, Constance Debré

• What My Bones Know, Stephanie Foo

• Zami, Audre Lorde

• Cancer Journals, Audre Lorde

• Hijab Butch Blues, Lamya H

• Radical Healership, Laura Mae Northrup (just started, still reading it)

• Feel it All, Casey Tanner (just started, still reading it)

• Sunburn, Chloe Michelle Howarth

• Salvation, bell hooks

• Borderlands, Gloria Anzaldúa (DNF)

• Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson (DNF)

• Journal of a Solitude, May Sarton (DNF)

• Upstream, Mary Oliver (DNF)

• Emergence Strategy, adrienne maree brown (DNF)

• Pleasure Activism, adrienne maree brown (DNF)

• Parable of the Sower, Octavia Butler (DNF)

• Raising Hare, Chloe Dalton (DNF)

What were your fave reads this year? You can take a peek at my 2026 list in the Notion template.

ESP

Queride lector,

Feliz domingo. Espero que estés aprovechando este último del año para conectarte contigo misme, con tus sueños, deseos, esperanzas y, por qué no, con tus miedos también. Espero que el tejido de estas últimas 24 lunas haya empezado a tener más sentido frente a ti, que las piezas se sientan un poco menos desconectadas, que hayan comenzado a tejerse en una cobija de memorias y lecciones para brindarte abrigo.

Este año me ha obligado a enfrentarme con el duelo a una escala impredecible. Me ha abierto los ojos a la, en el mejor de los casos, ignorancia y, en el peor, odio, que ciega a la gente de conectar con lo que hace que la experiencia de la inmigración moderna sea tan desgarradora y crucial. Ambas son un escudo privilegiado ante las consecuencias inevitables de políticas cada vez más violentas: migración forzada, desplazamiento y exilio - una palabra que mi pareja usó recientemente para describirme a mí, a nosotres, en esta experiencia solitaria que hemos elegido enfrentar vulnerablemente. Esta experiencia que compartimos con millones, quienes viven con sus consecuencias, todas en distintos grados. Este dolor tan profundo que, por más que la Tierra llora con nosotros, permanece sin nombre.

Como escogí mirarlo a los ojos, me doy cuenta de que hacer la vista gorda también es una elección.

He aprendido mucho sobre mí misma. Me sorprende el dolor que cargué, las narrativas que desafié y que me suavicé para enfrentar, las puertas que he abierto, y las que he cerrado también. Estoy agradecida por mi familia, y por tener un hogar al cual regresar. Sé que tengo una suerte increíble de poder decir eso.

A las personas que me han sostenido con ternura este año mientras sacaba mi vida de raíz y la reinventaba toda, mientras tomaba a Dios en mis manos y le moldeaba, gracias. Su amor significa más para mí de lo que jamás podría expresar con palabras, y son un testimonio de mis creencias en esta Tierra. Espero ser cada día más como ustedes.

A mis clientes: lo que los quiero es verga. Sus proyectos me llevan hasta los límites de mí misma y de vuelta. Estoy saciada, curiosa, y a desbordar después de un año de crear a su lado, y no puedo esperar a compartir todas las cosas sabrosas que tengo preparadas para ustedes (y para mí!) este año. Siempre estoy trabajando en escuchar mejor, comunicarme mejor, y ser une mejor colaboradore. Gracias por entender mi proceso, tener espacio para mi humanidad, y creer siempre en mis resultados.

Queride lector, te deseo descanso, seguridad, el amor de familia y amigos, comunidad, calor, y liberación en este año nuevo. Que leas libros difíciles y comas buena comida. Que encuentres alegría en cada amanecer. Que creas en que hay gente buena en todos lados, y que te los encuentres. Que desafíes a tu corazón a abrirse un centímetro más para acoger las cosas que normalmente ignoraríamos, y que dejes que te duelan, que te muevan hacia la presencia y la responsabilidad.

Que dejes que la vida te cambie. Que cambies a la vida también.

Con amor,
jess.

Arriba compartí los libros que leí este 2025, junto a los que empecé pero no terminé (marcados con DNF.) Hace más de una década que no leo tantos libros en un año. Y tú, cuáles fueron tus libros favoritos?

Mi lista de lectura del 2026 está en el Notion template. Un abrazo.

Si esto te resuena, acompáñame.
—

Hi again! I’m Jess, a graphic designer from Venezuela, writing about everything from immigration to the ethics of design and my experience as a farmer. This bilingual space chronicles my journey through life and all the questions that come with it.

If this sounds like your thing, come along.

recibe mis cartitas de amor

ENG

I keep turning off the alarm and going back to sleep. The same alarm that I so gleefully and dutifully shot up with a week ago, marking the still pitch-black 6:30 with the flick of a match and the warm glow of a flame.

Over the course of last month, my sisters and I lit the same candle every day, each one of us in the coziness of our own homes - a quiet ritual of togetherness despite the distance. The candle is now over, and I’m thinking maybe it was this connection making me feel ready to brave the day; I’ve always been more motivated in community, and find it lackluster to always do things alone. Not sure we were meant to.

My body is tired, I keep telling my partner. Someone slamming a door, a stranger’s tone of voice bordering on anger, my grandmother’s angsty murmurs to herself after a fight with my grandfather, all of these quick to trigger immediate rage and anxiety within me. I take a deep breath and remember I am 25 and no longer need to fight or hide, but my shoulders remain tense, my breath shallow. I’m slow to calm down.

I have set up my desk in front of the full length mirror. My body, still exasperated, accompanies me in my attempts to get anything done today. I look up to meet it, an unexpected sight, and feel warmth wash over me - I really am doing the best I can at every given moment, and these feelings don’t mean I have failed.

The gym is an empowering constant. I climb the steps or get on the treadmill for 20 minutes, alternating between power-walking and a brisk jog to the tune of hyperpop or Little Simz. I’m not looking to run away from the voice inside my head; If anything I’m matching its pace, rising to meet it with the promise of endurance and possibility. I know it wants me to work harder - I’m going to do it right here, where I control the rhythm, where being breathless has a tangible reason, where I can learn to expand within the tightness on my chest without self-punishment. I stumble off and head towards the weights for an hour of strength training, and meet myself in different edges.

As I head home, and throughout the day, my sore legs remain a reminder of strength - the smell of iron on my hands making me feel like a god.

Last night, I woke from a shaky dream with one acute realization: My entire business is a challenge to the nature of CPTSD. A relationally-injured mind, pushing daily to believe in and rely on itself, to connect earnestly and believe itself trustworthy, to talk to people despite almost always feeling like an incompetent outsider. Most of life is a challenge, I guess, but it’s pretty funny to me that I built this safe space of my own accord.

The most rewarding part of my job is, unequivocally, this relational part. The places where both my clients and my ambition ask me to stretch to, the trust-building and the relationship-tending. I don’t always do it perfectly, so I also get to practice apologies and mending, but it’s not without an inner voice asking me to pull away.

This is where routines help me - I will get out of bed when the alarm goes off, I will go to the gym, I will come home and shower, I will eat, I’ll do something for extra fun, and I will sit down and work. No negotiating - the decision has been made, and now that choice is one less burden on my brain. I can’t deal with hustle culture, and I don’t see it this as such - I see it as scaffolding, as railings, as the food that deepens the well and allows me to keep building from a place of fulfillment. I need this sort of discipline, as well as the medicine of movement, when my job means it’s easy for me to lock myself in my room and spiral.

It’s pretty powerful to realize that I have solid evidence to counter this voice, the one that tells me I don’t try hard enough, that I am, quite simply, worthless. I have built a career with requirements that embody everything I should struggle with, given this complexly traumatized body I carry, and every day is living proof that I am still doing it. I am living this life of my own accord, and despite everything.

I also, then, have substantial reasons to shed some shame about how quickly I tend to burn out. I’m pushing upwards on an incline, full body leaning forward, heart pumping in my ears. I don’t quite yet understand my body and its propensity to collapse and to be in crisis, but I know its flexibility, and I know to name the circumstances that created it. I’d feel compassion if another body had taken my place then, so I have no option but to extend the kindness to myself as well.

I don’t know what else to say: It is Monday, December 1st. Yet another of many Mondays, but a special one nonetheless: One where I snoozed the alarm, woke up slowly, ate my breakfast, trained until failure, sat down to work, and in the hum of this routine, rose to greet the reflection waiting in front of me with something else, for a change: unwavering, quiet, persistent, relentless, mundane love.

ESP

No dejo de apagar la alarma y darme la vuelta para dormir. La misma alarma con la cual me despertaba alegremente hace una semana, marcando la negrura de las 6:30 con el chasquido de un fósforo y el brillo cálido de una llama.

A lo largo del último mes, mis hermanas y yo hemos encendido la misma vela todos los días, cada una desde la comodidad de su hogar - Un ritual de cercanía a pesar de vivir tan lejos. La vela se ha acabado, y tal vez era esto lo que me daba ganas de enfrentarme al día; Siempre me ha motivado más estar en comunidad, y me cuesta encontrarle la luz a siempre hacer cosas sola. No creo que sea natural.

Mi cuerpo está cansado, le digo a mi pareja. Alguien tira una puerta, el tono de voz de un extraño que suena a rabia, mi abuela remoliendo insultos en susurro después de una pelea con mi abuelo. Todas estas cosas se tornan detonantes, desatando ira y ansiedad en mí. Respiro profundo, recuerdo que tengo 25 y no tengo que pelear ni huir más, pero mis hombros permanecen tensos, mi respiración corta. Me ha costado calmarme hoy.

He puesto mi escritorio frente a nuestro espejo. Mi cuerpo, todavía exasperado, me acompaña mientras trato de hacer algo productivo hoy. Me encuentro en el espejo, y siento una calidez que se apodera de mi pecho - Realmente estoy haciendo lo mejor que puedo en todo momento. Aunque me sienta así, aunque todo sea una lucha, no significa que he fallado.

El gimnasio es una constante que me llena de poder. Uso la máquina de escaleras, o me subo en la caminadora por 20 minutos, alternando entre power-walks y trotes mientras escucho hyperpop o Little Simz. No busco huir de la voz en mi cabeza; Si tal, busco caminar a su ritmo, presentándole promesas de posibilidad. Sé que, para ella, nada de lo que haga es suficiente. Sé que quiere que trabaje más, me esfuerce más - Lo haré aquí, donde controlo la velocidad, donde perder el aire tiene sentido, donde puedo aprender qué es expandirme ante la presión en mi pecho sin castigarme. Me bajo de las máquinas, y me dirijo hacia las mancuernas para entrenar por 1 hora más, encontrando nuevos límites.

Caminando de vuelta a casa, el dolor en mis piernas simboliza fuerza, y el olor de hierro en mis manos me hace sentir imparable.

Anoche me despertó una revelación naciente de un sueño estresante: Mi negocio es un reto a la naturaleza del CPTSD, o estrés post-traumático complejo. Una mente con heridas relacionales, luchando a diario para creer en y contar consigo misma, para conectar con otros desde la sinceridad y sentirse como una persona confiable, hablando con otros a pesar de sentirse incompetente. Casi todo en la vida es un reto cuando tienes una voz llamándote impostora todos los días, pero me causa mucha gracia que ésta fue la carrera que decidí construir para mí.

Lo más valioso y reconfortante de mi trabajo es, sin duda, la parte relacional, a pesar de ser la más retadora. Los lugares donde mis clientes y mi ambición me piden alcanzar más, atendiendo nuestra relación y creando vínculos de confianza verdadera. No siempre lo hago bien, y claramente cometo errores, así que también me permite practicar pedir disculpas y practicar reparo; Todo esto mientras escucho una voz interior que me pide rendirme.

Es allí donde las rutinas me ayudan - Me levantaré con la alarma, iré al gimnasio, vendré a casa a bañarme y a comer, haré algo por diversión, y me sentaré a trabajar. No hay disputa - la decisión ha sido tomada, y ahora es una carga menos en mi psique. No me gusta la mentalidad machona de ir ir ir sin frenos, así que espero que entiendas que no hablo de eso. No es lo que estoy construyendo en mi vida - Esta rutina es mi andamio, los rieles que me permiten seguir encaminada, l que alimenta la profundidad de mis recursos y me ayuda a construir desde un lugar de autorrealización. Necesito esta clase de disciplina gentil, y el movimiento como medicina, cuando mi trabajo se presta a encerrarme en el cuarto y perderme en un espiral.

Me parece súper poderoso el haberme dado cuenta de que tengo evidencia física para contrarrestar esta voz, la que me dice que no me esfuerzo suficiente, que soy, sin más, indigna. Mi carrera, y sus requisitos, reta los límites de mi cuerpo y su trauma complejo; todos los días son prueba viviente de que lo hago de todos modos. Estoy viviendo esta vida bajo mis términos, y a pesar de todo.

Entonces tendré, también, razones para dejar ir culpa y vergüenza acerca de lo fácil que se me hace llegar al burnout. Voy empujando cuesta arriba con todo mi cuerpo, sintiendo en mis oídos el retumbar de mi corazón. No entiendo a mi cuerpo del todo, mucho menos a su propensión al colapso y la crisis, pero conozco su flexibilidad, y conozco nombrar las circunstancias que lo crearon. Si fuera cualquier otra persona en mi lugar, cualquier otro cuerpo, sentiría compasión, así que realmente no me queda de otra más que extender esa misma gracia a mí misma.

No sé qué más decirte: Es Lunes, primero de Diciembre. Otro más entre tantos Lunes, pero es, sin embargo, especial: Hoy apagué la alarma, despertándome poco a poco, desayuné, entrené hasta no poder más, me senté a trabajar, y entre el murmullo de la rutina, subí la mirada para entregarle al reflejo que yace ante mí algo diferente: amor inquebrantable, tranquilo, persistente, implacable, y mundano.

Si vienes de Instagram, gracias por hacerme compañía en este viaje.

Este año tomé una decisión importante que ha tocado cada aspecto de mi vida: elegí emigrar de nuevo, dejando Estados Unidos atrás. Esta pieza es parte de este ciclo en mi vida y se refleja en mi newsletter, donde estoy examinando todos los factores (tanto internos como externos) que me hicieron quedarme en primer lugar, y examinando cómo llegué al punto de irme. Será filosófico, messy, lo cuestionaré todo, y me sentaré con este duelo para encontrar la esperanza que esconde.

Si esto te resuena, acompáñame.

recibe mis cartitas de amor

Hi again! I’m Jess, a graphic designer from Venezuela, writing about everything from immigration to the ethics of design and my experience as a farmer. This bilingual space chronicles my journey through life and all the questions that come with it.

If you’re here from Instagram, thank you for coming deeper into this with me.

This year I made a major decision that has touched every aspect of my life: I chose to emigrate again, leaving the US behind for a long time. This piece is part of this larger arc in my life, where I’m examining all the factors (both internal and external) that made me stay in the first place and understanding how I got to the point of leaving. I’ll get philosophical, question it all, and reckon with grief to find the hope on the other side of this.

If this sounds like your thing, come along.

get my love letters

ESPAÑOL

DOCUMENTO NACIONAL DE IDENTIDAD

3 de febrero de 2025. Es la 1am en Massachusetts. Todos se han ido de casa. Quedan las luces del baño, cuatro maletas y dos bolsas de aseo llenas de restos del día, pedazos de langosta, velas de cumpleaños, y tal vez algún trozo de la última tarta que hice en nuestro apartamento. Estoy sentada en el piso y, sólo horas antes de irnos, he decidido revisar mis documentos para ver qué necesito llevarme, realmente, buscando aligerar un poco más el peso. Entre tanto, destrocé las copias de mis documentos, y las tomé para botarlas. Con la realidad en mis manos, caí en cuenta del peso de que lo que sostenía, y lo puse de vuelta en mi equipaje.

Abril 2025. Son las 2pm en las Islas. Mientras espero a mi cita con mi psicólogx, recuerdo los trozos de papel, y los organizo en mi cama. Pedazo por pedazo comienzo a juntar los fragmentos de mi historia. En silencio, devota, como si estuviese tejiendo, empieza a tomar forma algo para lo que todavía no tengo palabras. Hoy pesan más que esa noche en el apartamento.

Publiqué este texto y esta imagen - ambos hechos por mí - en mi Instagram el 29 de septiembre. Este arte, nacido del duelo de mi partida de Estados Unidos y del deseo de juntar mis fragmentos, es uno de las más vulnerables que he hecho. Me lo guardé por meses, sin saber cómo compartirlo o hablar de ello. Era un momento íntimo, algo que no esperaba que nadie más entendiera, pero estaba consciente de que resonaba con la experiencia venezolana moderna - Nacer aquí, haber crecido allá, existir en otro lado, sin saber dónde es que realmente perteneces. El relato narra unos momentos de la última noche en mi apartamento, que coincidió con ser mi cumpleaños.

Tiendo a pensar de más antes de hablar. Busco ser lo más sincera posible, buscando inconscientemente el entenderme bien. Realmente, lo que no quiero es que me malinterpreten, lo cual es una tarea imposible que tiende a censurarme en vez de ayudarme. Esta vez, sin embargo, escribí exactamente lo que pasó y lo que sentí; lo envolví con cuidado y lo lancé al océano del internet con un beso y un adiós.

Durante esta última semana, he visto los números de esta publicación subir consistentemente a un punto que ninguna de mis otras piezas había alcanzado antes. Parece que el mensaje llegó.

Hablar de inmigración es hablar de pérdida. Quieras o no, dejas una parte de ti atrás cuando decides embarcar en este viaje. Dejas atrás cumpleaños, navidades, nacimientos, muertes, pérdidas, logros, batallas, triunfos. Puede tomar meses, años, décadas, el permitirse sentir el duelo de siempre extrañarse a si mismo, sabiendo que existes en muchos lugares y en ninguno al mismo tiempo. Sabiendo que cada mañana que te despiertas es como un borrón y cuenta nueva, empezando desde cero otra vez.

El día que tomé la decisión de irme de Estados Unidos me volteé hacia mi pareja y, con un corazón pesado y una certeza que me sorprendió, le dije lo siguiente:

“Lo más difícil que un inmigrante puede hacer es emigrar de nuevo”.

Mis abuelos, ambos españoles, se arrancaron la mitad de sus corazones y los dejaron guardados en las Canarias, zarpando hacia Suramérica bajo la promesa de un mañana mejor. Durante 60 años, Venezuela, en su momento próspera y llena de vida, se convirtió en su hogar en una manera que España nunca pudo. Empezaron una familia, echaron sus raíces, y encontraron nuevos horizontes, pensando que finalmente lo habían logrado - que nunca tendrían que irse otra vez. Como todos sabemos, las cosas cambiaron. Ahora en su vejez, y sin ningún respaldo, no tuvieron opción más que deshilachar lo que les quedaba de sus corazones y dejarlos en las aguas de Venezuela.

Ahora de vuelta en España, un país que los vio nacer pero que no los ha sostenido en más de 6 décadas, no están realmente en casa. Me pregunto cómo se siente ser un extraño en tu propia tierra. No les he preguntado qué queda en lugar de sus corazones, ahora que lo han dejado todo.

Mi propio corazón fue dividido en dos el día que nací: Coronada venezolana y española y sin saber a cuál de las dos podía llamar hogar, con una Venezuela hostil y una España lejana, la cual siempre me vería extranjera. Irme de Venezuela significó dejar una parte de mí atrás junto con casi toda mi familia, una versión de mí que a veces sale cuando hablo en español con mis amigos de casa. Es una herida que nunca cierra, una tristeza que burbujea como agua en una greca y se derrama por toda la cocina.

Vivir en Estados Unidos me permitió ver el nacimiento de un nuevo yo. Fuerte, capaz, y apoyada - lentamente construí una vida pequeñita junto a mi pareja, amigos, y compañeros de trabajo. Nunca había estado tan cerca de sentir que pertenecía en un sitio, pese a los sistemas que buscaban asegurarse de que nunca, nunca me sintiera bienvenida en lo que llaman su tierra, aunque tampoco les pertenece a ellos. Siempre me costó echar raíces - no sabía cuánto tiempo me podría quedar aquí.

El día que la silueta de Massachusetts fue remplazada por el océano Atlántico sentí un desgarre ensordecedor, desconcertante, y presencié cómo otra parte de mí se desvanecía entre sus costas.

Ahora en España, en un hogar en el que nunca he vivido antes, me encuentro tratando de juntar las piezas de nuevo.

Cada vez que me piden identificación en algún sitio, aunque es una pregunta que tiene sentido en su contexto, hay una parte de mí que duele con una punzada aguda y una pregunta. Cuál debería mostrarte? Te muestro mi work permit? Tal vez mi cédula? Quizás mi driver’s license. O mi DNI, o el pasaporte venezolano, o el español.

De dónde coño soy? Supongo que depende bajo qué jurisdicción me encuentre, y quién me lo pregunte, pero mi acento lo delata todo. Soy una venezolana desplazada, buscando, nuevamente, un hogar.

Juntar los pedazos de mis documentos para formar esta pieza significó detenerme y presenciar mi realidad. Significó puntuarlo bien: Soy todo esto a la vez, tan contradictorio y confuso como parece. Esta es nuestra circunstancia y nuestra historia. Nunca perteneceré sólo a un lugar, y perdonar ese hecho, aceptarlo, es liberarme de la vergüenza de encontrarme un poco perdida en todo esto.

ENGLISH

NATIONAL IDENTITY DOCUMENT

February 3rd 2025. It’s 1am in Massachusetts. Everyone’s left the house. Only the bathroom string lights remain, alongside four suitcases and two trash bags full of scraps of the day — lobster shells, birthday candles, perhaps a sliver of the last tart I baked in our apartment. I am sitting on the floor and, just hours before leaving, sorting my documents in hopes I could make the bags lighter. In the midst of it all, I ripped apart all the copies of my documents, and took them on my way to the trash. Bearing reality between my hands, I realized the weight of what I was holding, and placed it back in my file.

April 2025. It’s 2pm in the Islands. As I wait for my therapist appointment, I remember the paper scraps and place them on the bed. Piece by piece I begin to put together the fragments of my history. In silence, devout, as if weaving, something I still lack the words for begins to take shape. Today, this paper weighs more than that night in the apartment.

I posted this text to my Instagram on September 29th, along with its accompanying artwork. This piece, born from pure grief and a desire to pierce myself back together, is one of my most vulnerable ones. I sat on it for months, not knowing how to share it or speak to it. It was an intimate moment, something I didn’t expect anyone else to understand, but that I knew spoke to a solid undercurrent of the Venezuelan experience - Being born here, having grown up there, existing somewhere else. In the meantime, unsure of where it is you truly belong.

My inclination is always to overthink before I speak. I mean to be as truthful as possible, unconsciously seeking to make myself understood. Which is to say I don’t want to be misunderstood, an impossible ordeal that tends to censor me more often than not. This time, however, I wrote exactly what happened and what I felt; I wrapped it up softly and sent it out into the vast ocean of the internet with a kiss and a wave.

Over the course of this last week, I’ve watched the numbers on this post consistently soar to a point none of my pieces had before. It seems the message went through.

To speak of immigration is to speak of loss. Whether you intend to or not, you leave a part of yourself behind the second you embark on this journey. It can take months, years, decades, to catch up to the grief of always missing half of you, knowing you exist in many places and nowhere all at once. Knowing every morning you wake up feels like starting all over again.

The day I made the decision to leave the US I turned to my partner and, with a heavy gloom and a certainty that shocked me, said the following:

“The hardest thing an immigrant can do is to leave again”.

My grandparents, both of them Spanish, left half of their hearts tucked away in the Canaries and set sail for South America under the promise of a better tomorrow. Over the course of 60 years, Venezuela, once booming and full of life, became their home in a way Spain never could. They raised a family, laid down foundations, and found new horizons for themselves, thinking this was finally it - they’d never have to leave again. As the story goes, it all soured. Elderly, now, and without a backup plan, they found themselves with no choice but to tear off the remainder of their hearts and leave them along the waters of Venezuela.

Now back in Spain, a country that should be home but that hasn’t held them in over 6 decades, I wonder what it feels like to be a stranger in your own land. I haven’t asked them what lives inside their chest now that all of it is gone.

My own heart split into two the day I was born, crowned Venezuelan and Spanish and unsure of which one of those I got to call home. Leaving Venezuela meant I left a part of myself behind with half of my family, a version of me that sometimes comes out when I speak Spanish with my friends again. It’s a wound that never closes, a sadness that bubbles up like water in a moka pot and sputters everywhere in the kitchen.

Living in the States allowed me to witness a new self emerge. Strong, capable, supported - I slowly built a small thing for myself alongside my partner, friends, and coworkers. I had never come so close to feeling I belonged, despite the growing screams and systems around me that sought to make sure I never, ever felt welcome in their stolen land. I always hesitated to fully settle in - I didn’t know how long this life would last.

The day I saw Massachusetts become the Atlantic ocean I heard a deafening, gut-wrenching tear, and witnessed another part of myself fade away as it disappeared onto its shores.

Now in Spain, a home that I’ve never lived in before, I’m trying to put the pieces back together.

Every time I’m asked for my ID, though this is a question understood in its context, there is a part of me that cries out with a dull pang and a question. Which one should I show you? Would you like to see my work permit? Or my cédula? Maybe my driver’s license. Or my DNI. Or the Venezuelan passport. Or the Spanish one.

Where the fuck am I from? I guess it depends under what jurisdiction I’m in, and on who’s asking, but my accent gives it all away. I am a displaced Venezuelan, looking for home all over again.

Building this artwork piece by piece meant witnessing my reality. I am all of those things at once, as contradictory and confusing as it seems, and that is the reality of the modern Venezuelan experience. I won’t ever belong to just one place, and to forgive that, to accept it, is to free myself from the shame of being a little bit lost in all of it.

• This will be a bilingual publication moving forward! Tell me: Should I send two emails, one in Spanish and one in English, or should I keep at it with this split system? What worked well for you here? What didn’t? One thing I like about the split one is that it works well to reflect the reality of living in this dual way; one foot here and one foot there. Thank you for your patience with this work in progress! Maybe one day I’ll be able to funnel people through their own choice of a language.

• Esta publicación ahora es bilingüe! No sé bien cuál es la mejor manera de enviar estos correos ahora, pero valoro tu opinión. Qué tal les parece tener ambos en un solo correo? Tal vez algún día podré brindar la opción de seleccionar cuál correo quieres recibir, si el ESP o el ENG.

• Nada, un abrazo. Gracias a todos los nuevos suscriptores. Se les quiere.

• Big hug for y’all, and a fat thank you to all new subscribers - luv ya lots.

It’s probably not news: I moved across the world, and left most of my friends in the US, locked away (to me) behind a border I can’t cross.

Long-distance friendships aren’t anything new to me — I’ve got the consequences of modern-age political displacement and an 11th house Venus to thank for that. This time feels new, though. I’d never had a physical community I felt so connected with, groups of friends I shared not only values and memories with, but also places and routines. Friends that had become warm habits, people I find myself reaching for now, only to feel a cold phone staring back at me.

We still talk often, of course, but I’m on a quest to help these friendships to feel as alive as they did before.

I always joked that I knew I’d found home in Massachusetts because driving the same streets every day never bored me— it, instead, filled me with a joyful playback of memories. Snippets of time that lived within this land that isn’t mine but welcomed me without hesitation, without any regard for politics or borders. The water didn’t care who I was, where I’d been, how I got here. Neither did the woods. Or the snow as it piled on my windshield. It rained for all of us, I felt safe there. I felt loved, and I was well fed. I was lucky. I was never alone.

Our community was widespread and intentional, picking up minutes here and there to spend together whenever possible, staying active and intertwined.

How do you keep friendships alive when connection suddenly drops from hosting dinners, driving over to provide food when sick, stopping by if you found yourself in the neighborhood, and taking care of each others’ pets— to watching each others’ stories from far away? How do you stand in that sudden chasm with just as much love and care? How do you bring the warmth back?

The feat seemed to become even tougher when I deleted Instagram, which is something I decided to do when I first got here. Not being on my phone so much felt great, until I realized I had gone a while without seeing my friends’ faces, or knowing what they were up to.

How do you even stay in touch without social media?

I try to use the internet earnestly, for the most part, but the reality is that social media is alienating and numbing. However insidious this attention-sucking portal is, it creates a feeling of being there, catching glimpses from across the world and what people are up to. Not that it generally nurtures actual human connection, but you do start to feel out of the loop when you’re not scrolling daily, witnessing everyone’s lives unfold.

As a designer and 00’s computer baby, I have met way more people online than I have in person, and so many of those connections have eventually turned into travel buddies, sometimes business or work partners (hi Linds!), and tons of hopefully lifelong friendships. The problem being: we always stayed in touch through socials.

That’s all to say I feel like I deleted myself off the map, both literally and figuratively, and now I’ve chosen to also disappear on the number one place where I’ve found, established, and maintained international connections. What the hell, jess?

With more and more of my friends deciding to stay off social apps for many reasons, and at a time where choosing to engage in Things Humans Have Always Done feels like the only way to stay alive and hopeful, I’ve compiled a list of activities I’ve been doing or would like to do to stay in touch with friends across land-time-borders-oceans.

…And away from my phone, for the most part. Here goes:

• Sending letters or postcards

• Writing newsletters, both for friends and strangers. Write stories about your life, share with loved ones.

• Trading emails back and forth (the longer the better, make me read an essay)

• Buying gifts and having them sent to your friend (or set up for pickup at a store nearby, have them go on a little hunt if they can)

• Get your friend a coffee (I am so grateful for Venmo these days)

• Burning CD mixtapes and shipping them with a little love note. I know, inconvenient, right? Try it. Get a CD player for your laptop. Fuck streaming services, while we’re at it.

• Alternatively, writing a playlist on paper and mailing it over

• Texting weekly catch-up videos (My friend Rachel does this regularly and it’s honestly the best part of my week. Like a little podcast just for me.)

• Walking outside at night, and sending messages on the moon. Extra special if there is a time difference — Try sending your friend a goodnight wish, or a dream.

• Texting a pic of something you think they’d like with a “Thought of you!”

• Finding the direction your friend lives in, facing it, and waving hi! (My friend Vee started doing this, and I swear I can feel the thread between us)

• Have an art-making or crafting date on video call

• Mailing each other books (Maybe sign the cover if you can?)

• Deciding a time to look at the sun/moon/sky together, no matter where you are

• Naming a plant after your friend, sending them good wishes every time you take care of it.

• If you live nearby, plan for regular weeknight dinners at each other’s places. Everyone needs to eat, anyways, so why not do it together? It doesn’t have to be an event — it can be something quick, but eaten with company, it goes down sweeter.

• Alternatively, if you live far away, pick the same recipe and cook it. Eat it together over video call. :)

• Mail photographs you took, attach a story. My friend Erin sent me a picture her grandfather took at a dog show in the 60s along with one of his wooden fishing baits many years ago now and I still have both.

• Send a small journal to each other, fill it with stories. You can swap it every so often or mail it back when it’s full.

• Trade collage supplies back and forth, and collab on a piece together! Or a small paint by numbers! Or a coloring book!

• If financially possible, send a care package for a hard day. An old friend used to send me fruits and other gentle treats when she knew I was having a difficult time.

• Call during idle time— commuting back from work, cleaning the house, doing laundry. Even if you just catch 5 minutes, it’s worth it.

I realized halfway through this list that staying in touch when you live nearby isn’t necessarily easier. Everyone is busy living their own lives, and time gets away easily, so I also included things that helped me stay connected to those I loved and shared zipcodes with.

What are ways you like staying in touch with people no matter the distance? How do you keep people feeling close to you even when they’re far away?

If this made you wish you did these things more, then today is the perfect day to start. You never know what your friends will cherish from these little moments of connection years down the line.

• I updated my website! Check it out here. :)

• I’ve been having a lot of fun building websites for fellow artists and working on projects that nourish me. Slowly learning about what it means to balance work and life, and what it takes for my life to nourish my creative pursuits— and vice versa.

• E was especially in love with me today. We bought lilies a few days ago and they bloomed today. The day is warm but the breeze is light and comfortable. It’s quiet outside save for the voices of kids and random cars passing by.

• Have been stuck on week 5 of the Artist’s Way for about 4 weeks now. Morning pages are slowly becoming more of a reality again as I start to wake up early and stop rushing into mornings.

• Not much else to share. Still figuring out how to screenprint in this small bedroom and without supplies.

See ya! Send snail mail!

We’ve built pipes and wrenches and spigots and pumps to bring water from one point to another. We know how to make things work in the face of absence, shortage, environmental neglect. We make life happen despite feeling empty. I’ve hesitantly accepted calling this human tendency towards creative adaptation resilience. I used to cringe at this word, knowing it was wielded against those of us that learned to work with manufactured deficits — oppression likes to make itself sound inevitable, and resilience as an ideal makes for the perfect argument around “natural” survival of the fittest and bootstrap success stories (always amongst the most tyrannized of folks, of course).

Surviving isn’t living, clearly, but it’s better than death. We know this.

The right to water is, for places that can afford it, granted to us by manufactured means through which we attempt to care for each other. This forced redirection of resources makes a drink no less quenching. If anything, I’d like to think it could make us more caring, if we’d let it change us in that way.

Our bodies push towards staying here. Our minds do too, for the most part, save for the self-destructive voices that creep up around particularly blind corners. My relationship with resilience was one of defiance. What if letting myself hate the reality of abuse, fighting tooth and nail to keep from adapting to thriving within it, was rebellion after all? If resisting forward movement for long enough would signal to someone that things were deeply wrong and change must happen. Thinking of resilience for most of my life made me think I should be honored to learn a lesson from being hurt. Maybe if I stopped the world, I’d get someone to listen to my quiet wailing.

Instead, I got myself a mind that exists inside an empty room, that questions every urge to speak. A body that knows not how to love or be loved, can’t trust any movement at all, refusing the way blood flows circularly within me. I defied, alright. I defied forward motion, I challenged suggestions to turn grief into art. I scrubbed the walls clean of me after every accidental graze rendered a bright red streak. I fought the idea that I had to make beauty out of this, because then it felt like the pain would go unheard. That moving forward meant no one would face any repercussion for the reckless swinging after all. That felt like betrayal.

Was I punishing myself for someone else’s neglect of me? Was I listening to their ideas of me as if they were my truth? Did their fears find their way into my throat, lodging in my airway like a small object that refuses to budge so I can breathe?

I’m pulling away from the edges, shrinking smaller and smaller until my roots shrivel up and leaves drop all around me. I can make it through one more day without rain.

Writing this feels like drowning. I can feel my heart racing, ideas going through my mind at a speed so sudden it’s almost completely silent. My chest sinks, I feel deeply aware of the frequency of my breath, and my mouth is full of gauze. This is where the adult comes in— We’re home, you’re alive, it’s okay to be scared. Maybe I’ll close this computer and lay down in silence for a little bit. When the truth isn’t safe, speaking becomes a noose around your neck, every word dropping you another inch. My neck hurts.

Resilience. I’ve learned to lay down and breathe. I’ve learned to pick the computer back up and write again, because I have found it a deep betrayal to let myself forget that my hands hurt from holding this grief, to deny myself trying over the pain. To deprive the world of a story where someone’s once white-knuckled heart learned to soften. One more story amongst many already written, an idea that might have kept me from writing not too long ago. A sabotage tactic almost too perfect — too harmed to feel deserving of life, not harmed enough to speak up about attempting anyways. Either way you suffocate.

I woke one winter day with the loud conviction to stay alive. Only because I woke many spring, summer, autumn days quietly willing to stay alive. This winter the urge felt unshakeable. Sharp-sighted I rode the stream, surrendered to where it would take me. I washed ashore in Spain, soaked in salt water, singing of summer, mind buzzing with ideas of freedom and questions of what it would mean to live a life where I love myself. My sweet name written over everything I dare touch.

I write, for I must get it out.

Honesty feels luxurious to me. It felt so when, at some point yesterday, the words I was most afraid of bringing to life left my mouth. It was strangely satisfying, maybe even indulgent, when I asked my therapist to wait a second while I ran to the bathroom and puked, truth clinging to my throat in the way only the sourness of bile can. The outpouring of truth that has taken place from inside my body and into the outside world is, needless to say, shocking, and I’m being lovingly changed by it.

subscribe and follow my curiosity

Last night, before bed, I wrote down a question in my journal. I thought I might get an answer this morning but I bumped into grief instead, so I got up and went for a run. It could’ve been harder to convince myself to go, as I usually wrestle between my thoughts and a body too stiff to react, but I’d set my clothes out for myself and I wanted to be responsive to the part of me that cared enough to do that. My partner also excitedly hovered over me, still in bed, with a sweet invitation to jump in. How could I say no to either one?

We ran along the ocean, tuning ourselves to the quiet hum of each other’s bodies. We’re farmers, not runners, so our jogs are intermittent and something we’re still learning to play with. E mentioned that running can trigger the same sensations that a panic attack does, and this confirmed whatever hesitance I felt to dive head first into a deeper, faster rhythm. I go slowly and try to breathe through it all, pacing my steps and trying not to think about the tightness in my chest.

I stumbled back home, head pounding with hot blood, and promptly landed in the kitchen in search for sustenance. Everything in me felt wrong— I was lightheaded, unable to focus, and suddenly realized I could no longer stand on my feet. Reaching for a chair as calmly as I could, I sat down in my dizziness. Everything felt sharp, hot, cold, tight, sweating, shivering all at the same time. My movements were uncoordinated and my hands were shaking. A small breakfast of yogurt, nuts, and kiwi fruit helped. My sugar must have dropped too low, since we skipped food and went straight to running, something we never do.

We didn’t have coffee today, choosing instead some water, lime, sugar, and salt. After I felt a little better, I hopped in the shower and pondered the weight I felt still sitting on my heart.

What can I do with the panic of a one-way flight? One I’ve decided could have the power to permanently alter the course of my life, one that severed some friendships I thought were forever and cut short the experience of a career I so deeply loved. Forgiveness comes to mind. The past few weeks, I’ve found myself turning instead towards ruthlessness, sharply aiming for the parts that thought any good could come from intentionally letting go of what I knew I would always love. The once-so-dear parts of me that have always leapt willfully, full of care, towards change. The parts I’m most proud of.

I’ve been thinking that so much of life is fantasy. What we think of ourselves and the things we do, the stories we tell ourselves to keep going, the tint washing over memories and coloring the soundtrack of our lives to make it sound sweeter or gloomier, depending on the day. We seem smarter to ourselves. We like our choices, but only some of them. The nostalgic ones, the ones that shaped something tender, a story with a longer thread than we expected, connecting the innocence of our past selves to the fresh wisdom of present hindsight. The others, it depends.

We tend to be alarmingly more cruel to the choices we’ve decided to dislike, but sometimes we try to forget the pain they’ve caused us and instead opt for one more illusion to get through our days. I’m very cautious at the language I use to describe myself to others, lest I lie to myself to make a bitter truth something more palatable, this sharpness seeming more honest than whatever softness I could feign or muster. I often forget my own nuance in this search for objectiveness.

E and I sat across the water in a park by the house. When I say park, you might think of green, rolling hills, or even a small patch of grass. This park we sat in is entirely man-made, as I suppose all others are, concrete benches and astroturf included. The pond in front of us flowed from a visible pipe, placed sort of deliberately to look like a small waterfall. What a small indulgence, to allow this stream of water to flow in such a dry place, I thought. What relief it brought.

I was crying, as has become a daily habit, but these tears felt different. There was a solidness behind them. I had hit a wall - There was nothing else to wonder. I found words I couldn’t bear to hold anymore, so I said them. “I regret this. I regret moving here.” A flock of seagulls landed in front of us to have a drink. One of them obstinately attacked any that went near it, lurching harshly at them, even knocking one into the water. The other seagulls didn’t seem to mind and kept trying to have a drink next to their angry pal.

After a while of this back and forth, the lone seagull started pecking at the deck below its tiny feet, and we watched in confused horror as what we thought was foolishness turned into puking. A rock, small for us but sizeable for this weird bird, hurled out of its mouth and onto the ground. Nothing else came out, and we stared at each other in disbelief.

We watched the seagull eat the rock back up again.

My cries echoed other people’s fears around self-sabotage, stupidity, or short-sightedness. People who I don’t think know me very well, but hold very strong opinions around what this choice says about me and who I was raised to be. E tells me I must be kinder to myself than that.

This fantasy I seem to be so afraid of isn’t all bad. It looks like welcoming hope, or allowing ourselves to look lovingly upon the past, have some compassion for the always-younger version of self we have gotten so used to punishing. It’s easy to beat down this younger one. It’s ruthless behavior - the kid of the past can’t fight back, but they’re watching us judge their choices, the trust they had in us betrayed sharply by the voice of an elder who pretends to know more, be wiser, better.

My past self, my present self, we live in the same body. I am the steward of the path they chose to walk on, hold the responsibility to care for their dreams as they unfold. It’s unkind of me to hurt such a loving being, and choosing to believe in regret is only a rock I puke up to swallow right back. Convincing myself that holding this much grief implies I’ve made a mistake is just as much illusion as a straight-up lie. There’s manufactured scarcity surrounding the idea that we shouldn’t have moved out of the beautiful space we crafted with so much care, that a good thing like that can only happen once.

What would actually constitute self-sabotage in this scenario would be to keep myself from continuing to live through what I’ve learned. To reject change out of fear so that life could stay the same, to convince myself I can’t love my way into building another beautiful life. Abandonment would be to punish myself by forgetting what I know I’m capable of now, and not doing it again. This time, bigger. This time, free.

• I learned to work a risograph printer in Madrid with Carlota from Arrre, a very sweet person in pursuit of a very sweet dream and doing beautiful work while at it. There’s a handful of prints from our time together that I’d love to get across the pond and into the hands of lovely people in the US. I’ll share more about that once I’ve brainstormed enough about it. I am not known for avoiding anything that involves selling my art.

• Not really news, per se, but Audre Lorde’s The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action has been taped to my walls since I first moved here, and I read it every night or whenever I’m stuck and crying and thinking I’d be better off if I just shunned my authenticity in favor of acceptance. It’s the reason this writing exists, and why I’ve found the courage to write and love more openly. I’m learning to name the small, everyday tyrannies, and the bigger ones too. If you haven’t read it, I invite you to, for her questions have breathed new life into me, my healing, and my writing. A picture of her, smiling, in a sun hat, also glows every night right above my head.

• I just finished reading Prentis Hemphill’s What it Takes to Heal and I found it a beautiful companion to my life as I navigate my understanding of what it means to love and face insurmountable grief at the same time, all without closing off my heart to our ability to change.

• Putting it out into the world that I want to end this year with a film camera in my hands, so I can picture our life as miraculously as it always seems to unfold around us.

• Maybe shoot me an email with your answers to Audre’s questions, if you’d like.

This very long playlist I made for my partner before they left the US again.

And you, what are the places where your love knows no limit?

The grocery store is my least favorite place on earth right now. Strikingly unfamiliar packaging at every turn, the constant hum of a mother tongue that feels foreign now, all bitter reminders that nothing is the same anymore. Bob Dylan’s harmonica annoyingly blaring through the speakers. Bright, blinding fluorescent lighting. My grandfather explaining to a stranger that this variety of potato might be larger and unappealing, but still so tender. The soundtrack to a really odd movie that makes me want to barf inside my sweatshirt and disappear.

“How does it feel?”

Oh god no.

“To be without a home.”

Fuck me.

I looked up from the lemons to find myself crying, cursing at the universe’s tasteless irony and my pitiful lack of humor. This is ridiculous, I thought, and perused expensive olives. I know I’m being miserable and that I’m just letting it happen. I haven’t been too hungry lately, and I can’t remember what was it about food that seemed so joyful to me a couple months ago. Except that’s not entirely true — it was the laughter, flour flying across the table as too many hands try to mix a dough, family-style setups with a web of arms reaching across the table for the next bite of something, the cleanup, the settling down together with a cup of anything. An excuse to invite people over, to share our spiritual bounty over a bowl of butter beans and polenta.

Cooking for myself is unappealing at the moment. This kitchen isn’t mine. It doesn’t have a fire. I can’t char eggplant for baba ganoush. I’ve no flour to attempt a quick flatbread for breakfast. Nor do I have the silence, the space that would invite the creativity that would stoke the hunger. Kitchens, food, grocery stores, are all a reminder of loneliness. What once was a sacred space for me, is now the very thing I avoid looking in the eye.

I picked up a protein shake to find myself fed even on the days I can’t muster up the strength to face the stove, its shiny black surface more akin to a scrying mirror than a hearth. My dad offers to pay, and I plead him, let me pay for these strawberries as I am wedged underneath your roof and nothing here feels mine. He shrugs to respond, and I place my groceries on the belt. The fluorescent lights follow me as I head back to the house and I feel like I can’t breathe.

We lovingly called our home Juniper, after Juno, the goddess of marriage, family, love. Mother of Mars and daughter of Saturn, sister to Jupiter and Pluto. She held our most beloved items, the hardest moments we shared, some of our sweetest memories together, their first “I love you”, and many a beautiful dinner full of laughter and good food. And our kitchen. Oh, our kitchen.

The first thing I ever wrote about my partner was the following:

This is the life I wish for us.

You’re in the kitchen. We’re taking turns with the pancakes.

I guess I can’t put into words how much I need you.

Please don’t ask how long it took me to feel that way about them. It was quick.

From the very beginning I knew I wanted us to spend most of our lives in the kitchen, together. It happened naturally — we each found our place without thinking too much about it, dancing around each other seamlessly, like we’d practiced it a million times before. Quietly, singing, or talking about what was on our minds, our time in the kitchen was always playful, peaceful, one that was spent recharging and finding resonance in each other. Nurturing each other and our loved ones came naturally; we’d take turns sitting on the couch with friends and flipping whatever was on the stove. It never felt like a chore.

We reshuffled things around quite often, putting everything on display in the shelves and then putting it all away, always unsure about where the bananas should go because we kept forgetting to use them. At one point, my partner’s beautiful butch tapestry rested on display in the kitchen wall. We would dry herbs on the ceiling, hanging from the small wool string they once strung there. This space was theirs before it was mine but, unlike the rest of the house, finding my place in it was easy. At first, I was hesitant to put my newly-acquired and quickly-beloved olive wood spoon next to their own wooden one, but it became clear this kitchen was a world I could take up space in shamelessly.

Above the stove lived the aptly named salt pig, a sake glass repurposed to hold our favorite flaky salt (no Diamond Crystal in this house). There was also a pepper pig, but it was never full; we ground our pepper by hand as we went, using a huge stone molcajete they found on the side of the road in Topsfield, MA. Our spoons, together in a small brown vase, along with a pair of scissors that often went on aimless walks seemingly on their own. There was also frog on a block, a sweet little gift they once brought back to me from Warner, NH, who would catch the rainbows from our prisms perfectly at 3:30 p.m. during the summer. Our huge assortment of teas and herbs lived next to our stove, along with fresh honey I harvested from the farm, and a small lineup of snail shells they collected during their roadtrip. My speaker lived on the table and soundtracked many a party, many a solitary evening. All happy mementos we loved looking at daily.

So many nights, we got home, dumped all our belongings on the table, and stood at the doorway of our bathroom to brush our teeth together. Their head resting on my shoulder, finding a minute of silence from the incessant humming of the outside world, staring out into the kitchen. Other nights we stumbled in, kissing against the tapestry, feeling like we must have been blessed by a God to be living a life this beautiful. And all the times we collapsed on the floor, one of us still standing over the stove to make soup for the other. No matter how sad, how tired we were, this kitchen held our light, our love, our illusion, our dreams, our longing. I still have a video of them from when we were just friends: I had innocently asked them if I could record them as they peeled a pomegranate on their kitchen table for us, and they happily accepted.

Cooking in our home was a gift, both to the people being fed and the person doing the cooking. It’s always been our love language, and a place to land when words just don’t cut it. Back when we lived apart, I was coming over to visit them on a whim, and had just made a big batch of my balsamic fig chicken with crispy rosemary potatoes. I asked them if they wanted it for lunch — “Uh, yeah?!” they exclaimed, clearly excited. Upon the first bite, they let out a happy groan: “Fuck, we’re going to eat so good”.

They were right.

I need a hand that writes faster than my heart can feel.

Maybe once upon a time I would’ve ended that sentence there, but today, my pen still hasn’t run dry. I don’t really like that song, Our House. I always found it annoying, until the night I stumbled upon it playing quietly in the bedroom as I stepped out of the bath. It was the first night after you left. The first one I sat alone with myself in this house that isn’t yours or mine either. A long sigh followed a quiet thud as I dropped my hands to the side and let go of my towel. My head followed a sound coming from the hallway — a wet tapping, following seemingly no rhythm, echoing the shower I just stepped out of. I got dressed in the thought and question of you, wondering if you somehow snuck in and decided to wash the day off, and found myself standing in the kitchen, staring a puddle in the eyes. Someone had left the door open, and the rain found its way in. I guess not uninvited.

We looked long and hard at each other, my body frozen in place, water pouring further. All I could think of was your towel. How it would be the perfect size to clean up this mess. I turned, instead, and headed for the bathmat. Back in the kitchen I dropped to my knees. I didn’t even realize I’d landed in the middle of what I was claiming to clean up. I thought of my dad. I thought of the dog. I thought of us as I wiped back and forth. I stood up and felt the water on my knees drip down, drenched in devotion. I was quiet the whole time.

My eyes kept landing new places and finding water droplets splattered on walls, the stove, somewhere inconspicuous by the fridge, too close to the spider in the corner. I knelt down to clean and left a small pool right under her, lest I disturb her peace any more. I gathered myself in silence, refilled the pitcher, put it back where it belongs, and closed the door behind me. In another moment of blatant self awareness, I came back to find Karen Dalton singing about a little bit of rain. Nothing feels like a metaphor anymore; it all just is what it is, and the expectation remains that I must mold myself to meet it.

I feel like I’m going crazy. Like I somehow just stepped out of a reality that no one else can see, that no one else can understand, and I can’t think about anything else. It’s akin to being a teenager, feeling things everyone else has already forgotten about, so they just stand and stare like you’re an alien. I must remind myself we did this for a reason, and that it will take time to land somewhere else; that I’m exactly where I once wished I was, looking for a new kind of safety. I must do my best to keep alive the memory of what we left behind. No one believes me when I try to tell them that there was once more to life than this unfamiliar grocery store, these white walls, this now empty kitchen.

Instead, we soared over the lake for what felt like hours. The bridge seemed longer today than it did when I left. From my innermost being, a hacking started: tears and disbelief choked my chest and I felt a shifting, the faint sound of a piece clicking, one I left behind in my living room sometime in June 2018. I stood in awe of this gift I was given, the sight of streets I could point to even from thousands of feet up in the air, the memories and the sounds that echoed 18 years of life in Venezuelan soil.

I, then, remembered a name I often call upon but don’t always get to feel. Venezuela. The way it dances off my tongue in Spanish, bouncing back and forth between my teeth and the roof of my mouth, echoing a song those who gave me life sang. Rumbling drums took over and I heard it again: the deserts, the jungles, the snow, the volcanoes. The beaches I played in. Macaws and their life-honoring vibrancy. Tender fruits dribbling down my chin, windows down, and tangled salty hair flapping in the wind. The ocean air on my face and the first bite into conservas de leche. I never liked those too much but I grew to love them. She never felt like home too much either, but I grew to need her. The sound of her name swirls inside me like a spell long after it’s spoken. A cave by the coast, swelling up with water, rush after rush after rush; rocky coves softly shaped by relentless passion and the ancestral, inescapable desire to return. I am the water and I am the cave. My body leaves and my heart rushes back.

This spell is a seed, kept alive with memory, sweetness, and saudade. I humbly borrow this word from our southernmost neighbors, the ones we share an Amazon with, to invoke the heartache and the irrefutable, stubborn pull of belonging. Undeniable, ever inspiring, ever constant. What does it take to love a place like this? To learn to love the life in you that lights up sweetly, time and time again, at the mere sight of the place you call homeland.

I haven’t been this close to finding out in 6 years.

I am sending this to you as a loving postcard from Bogotá, Colombia. I wrote this as we flew over Venezuela for the first time since 2018, with a mixture of heartbreak, longing, and relief. I guess parts of me feared she had disappeared from Earth. I was glad to see her coasts, remember everything, know this land is real. It’s been so long since I last saw her. She looked lonely, quiet, separate from political ideas of her and her people. Free, as I knew her once. Free, as I knew myself once. As I aim to be today.

I’m sure the writing about leaving, staying, making my way through will find its place here eventually. For now, please take my heartfelt song, as I strum on my heartstrings gently.

See you on the other side!

She told me about her son, about her daughter, about herself. She painted pictures of her past, picturesque and colored-in, an essay in relentless curiosity. Conversation unfolds effortlessly when coming from this place, I’d like to think— when questions are gentle, hands open wide, expectant for what the other has to say. When meaning is the place where we meet.

When I asked her for advice on making big decisions, she invited me inside again. We sat on her floor, and we played with her cat, as she spoke solidly, with love:

When you’re standing here, you can’t see too far ahead. As if you were driving at night, uncertain of what comes beyond a few hundred feet ahead, you must keep on moving. One day, when you look back, you’ll see it all, connected: what you chose brought you here. So follow things you love, follow things you want. Hold people close to you, those who believe in building things together, and invite them over frequently. Paint their walls and they’ll come strip your floors. Own shared party plates, jam jars, cutlery, a lawnmower. Build the life you didn’t have, but always wanted.

…and always move forward with more love than you once had.

Her voice lands gently on my chest, with the kindness of wisdom and the sort of compassion that can only come of experience. I bring the cup to my lips, and I close my eyes.

Around a week ago, E asked me about my values.

I’ve been having strong responses to people, things, and circumstances around me. Behaviors, patterns I don’t like, but felt powerless to change. I also realized, around the same time, that a strange sadness was beginning to brew in my chest.

I didn’t like the way I was living life. I don’t like it, still, but I’m learning to be gentle with myself as this slowly changes.

They suggested I sit with myself to talk about my values. To see which ones I wasn’t aligning with, offering that maybe it was this disconnection bringing me sadness and discomfort.

I have a hard time bridging past and present when life feels black and white, so imposing and unforgiving. This means I forget where I’ve been, and, to me, the question of tomorrow feels uncertain without the surefootedness of past. This means I stay stuck. I realized I lacked the language around what I believe in, even if I feel it in my chest, and it made me want to write it all out for my future self to look back on. In no particular order:

• Freedom

• Experience

• Discipline

• Truth

• Honesty

• Curiosity

• Patience

• Self-awareness/Self-regulation

• Self-exploration

• Self-development

• Joy

• Dialogue

• Communication

• Interdependence

  • A sturdy baseline that counts on others for self-development while building a strong sense of self. This sense of self informs the way you act in community and provides value for the group you are in. Thus, mutually-caring relationships are long-term investments everyone cashes in on. We win over time, when others get lifted up too.

• Dependability

• Personal responsibility

  • If I am not caring for this, who am I passing this task on to? Future self? Someone else? Is that a conscious choice being made, or is it made passively in order to detach from its consequence? Is it fair?

• Adaptability

• Flexibility

• Patience

• Humility

• Respect for time

• Care

• Community care

• Creativity

• Diversity

• Movement

• Change

• Love

• Resourcefulness

• Learning

• Beauty

• Mystery

And some truisms I’ve found inside me:

• Tending to community is timekeeping. Timekeeping is life-honoring work.

  • Context that extends beyond time and personal bias allows your Self to be reflected back to you from many different angles. A community that loves you will see through changes and into your core, welcoming them and raising questions when actions seem misaligned with collective values, as well as values that have historically been noted in you. This isn’t possible when time, its effects, and its past presence, aren’t acknowledged, tended to, and held, especially within communities.

• Build bridges you intend to tend to.

• Honesty opens and closes all the right doors.

• Incompatibility is a gift. Honor it.

• All we have is each other.

  • Do not lose presence over a false sense of security.

• Curiosity, intention, and life-affirming action.

• Connection is the purpose of communication. Curiosity is the pathway.

  • Tear down walls, gently. Forego certainty, embrace vulnerability.

• Respect is active, alive, and engaged.

  • For respect to exist, there must be presence, and mutual tending.

• If not now, when?

• If not now, someday. Forgive it, and plan for it.

• Food is an offering. A table is an altar. Friends are the gods.

• You never know more than anyone else.

  • Be humble in your curiosity; use inquisitiveness to connect, not to distance and objectify.

• Ask, and you shall receive.

  • Speak up, believe it is somehow being heard. Therefore, do speak love. Do, speak, love.

• Meaningful work bears sweet fruit.

  • Discipline is intentional ripening.

• Grant everyone a past and a future.

• Magnetism is a dance between mystery and vulnerability.

• Friendship is the first love.

• Trying is life-affirming action.

• Change is our nature. The saddest death is stagnation.

I don’t want to use big words, I want to use the smallest words I can. I want them bite-sized, tender, so inconspicuous they could fit in the palm of your hand. I want them to love you. I want you to love them.

• I have been working with Jessa and Dorothy of J. Graves to design some graphics for their newest re-release, Leap Year. Head on over to their Instagram to see more, and peep my art on the cover of the single :) They’re passionate, loving people making awesome music.

  This has been an absolute dream and I’m excited to design more for bands this coming year.

• I’ve, also, been horribly depressed for a little while now. This writing is actually from September, but oddly relevant, still. I haven’t written in so long. I’ll get there again. E keeps reminding me I can’t write while everything is happening, so I guess you’ll hear about it when it gets better. Because it will.

Great for dancing along to while painting your kitchen the perfect gay shade of green.

Sometimes, all I want is to reach out to you all, into the void, and say what’s on my mind. Quickly, briefly, small. This is why I started this newsletter, after all— to leave a public record of my mind, to initiate a conversation, to invite someone in. I’m honored to communicate in this way.

So, then, why do I keep placing hurdles between me and doing what I love? I keep saying I’ll send out a note, a small message, and then stop myself. I stop myself because I haven’t designed anything to go along with it, because my screens are sitting in the dark, undeveloped, because I haven’t printed on a single shirt, because I don’t feel ready, because because because.

I forget this is a labor of love. I forget I do this because I want to be alive. I forget I do this because I am alive. I forget this is what life is. Truth is, I see beautiful things everywhere. I see what things could become before they’ve even left my fingertips, and oftentimes, that’s overwhelming. I wonder if I’ll do it right, if I’m being a respectful steward, and if I even deserve to do it. It can be easy to hide behind tiny tasks, to disguise a fear of action and worthlessness in the excuse of rightful, justified delays.

Well, no longer. Here’s an unfinished, unpolished text. Here I am, writing about writing again.

Here’s a collection of short notes I wish I’d shared with someone when I wrote them. I hope you enjoy.

Tue, Jan 10

I thought coming out was supposed to be joyful.

It’s brought me so much destruction, and pain along with it. I had been doing well, but today I retreated to the version of myself that isn’t as eager to roll along with the changes as before. I made myself get out of the house. I’m restless. I had a coffee. That made it worse. I’m not scared of walking alone anymore. Why do I feel trapped? It feels as if I will never escape the things that limit me. But it cannot be. It cannot be.

Tue, Jan 17

Sometimes I feel such rush of life flowing through my veins I fear my skin may fall off the bone. I fear I may become someone else, someone only I recognize, someone no one will understand. Death has taught me how to see life in brighter colors, but I can’t live in Her darkness any longer. There is no gift in dulling my senses forever. No lesson in abject denial.

I vibrate with the frequency of whatever it is that I love. We become one. We blur lines and I lose myself in it. I gain so much from this experience of becoming, sometimes I forget i’ve yet to live it in the flesh. Then I spend too much time within myself, isolating the external.

For her, I would try living. Because I want to feel what happens when she looks through me. I want to see life from her eyes. I want someone to know the real me. Laughter and sobs and poems, and the crisp silence of experience. It is such a human need, to hold hands. I wonder if hers are cold too. I wonder if it would be okay.

Sat, Feb 4

I wake up to find I’m half the person I wish I were.

After years of rumination, I have found no merit in the endless exploration of my own brain— such a thing turns a heart sour. I’ve come to understand that a life lived actively, interwoven with the existence around me, ripens me with every passing day. This tree alone doesn’t bear sweet fruit.

It grows increasingly isolating, a life lived in self service. There is no end to the hunger of the mind. It is not this beast which we must feed— if we find ourselves hungry, it is in the bones, the ones who call forth the dawn and sow seeds in sunken soil. It is the bones who feed the land, the ones who call you forward into new death and life. It is the bones that carry the stories we are meant to sing. When we commit to the bare bones, it becomes a giving, rather than a taking. The shedding is the gift.

May I find light in the eye of Death. May she hold me, in silence, in the knowingness of meaning. May the songs she sings reverberate within the cage of my ribs, the shelter that is this transient vessel. May I know Change when she looks into me.

May I know a mercy killing when I see one.

I speak this language that is foreign. I was not raised by it. It did not make me. It is mine to shape. I can break its jaw open, dislodge the bird in its throat, set it free to pursue Meaning. I’ve come to realize I find no shame in a string of thoughts that makes no sense at all. I find myself instead, behind its convoluted words, shining its blazing light to project the shadows behind my eyes. It is all I can say, it is the only thing that reaches your ears. In this valley we communicate, between the distance of what is said and what is felt.

Sun, Feb 5

I’d recognize your back anywhere.

Fri, Mar 10

On questions, contradictions and expansion. And where I end and you begin.

I was having a conversation with my sister this morning. I asked her: Where lies the percentage of selfishness that is key to living a communal, interdependent, wholehearted life? 1

A few years ago I decided that rather than providing answers, I wanted to start asking questions. This both removes me from the subject, and helps me engage at a deeper level. In the Spanish language, we open inquiries with an inverted question mark (¿) and then close them out when we’re done (?). I like the idea of spaces, whether within words or within people, dedicated to containing curiosity. I wonder: ¿What if we shaped worlds where everything we said was held safely within the realm of (im)possibility? ¿Would we take ourselves less seriously? ¿Would we, instead, become more aware, feeling the weight of words falling softly as we speak them, learning to treat them with care? ¿Would we open ourselves to holding futures that embody everything we now consider unreachable?

That looks ridiculous, but my questions still stand.

Sat, Mar 11

i’ve decided i don’t want to remain untouched by life.

Tue, Mar 14

Jess Jess Jess. Attempting is the first step. The beauty of sand falling through your fingers. How does time feel on your hands? How does the graying hair feel on your head? Do you mourn every strand that drops off of you and onto the earth? So here we leave all that we were, and all that we may ever be. In the depth of your breath and in the blink of your eye. So it is here where we try, again and again, to become whole, to meet something as big as us. To connect in ways we never have connected before. To hopefully, one day, expand and break into louder reflections of us. Bolder. Brighter. Yours. Ours. Give in to the rumble as it makes way for newness. The biting gasp of fear at the mouth of your stomach is a knock at the door to see who’s awake. The creaking of the hinges somewhere in your heart, popping, and catching you off guard. An old friend walking through, unannounced.

Thu, Apr 20

I’ve gotten really good at pretending.

So good, in fact, that the lines between reality and fiction are blurred in my brain. I often mention feeling delusional, nebulous, confused. I could blame my Pisces rising, as usual, or own up to the rift within me, an inner distortion brought along by a denial of self.

Who I really am escapes me. The act has gone on for so long, I have lost track of all the beings I take on to avoid being attacked or hurt. I was called out on it this week. My closest friendships have reached a depth that ask honesty of me, a depth that is unreachable to that which is unreal. They’re asking me for more— more truthfulness, more presence, more of me. And I felt bad about it. I felt angry at them, I felt misunderstood. How dare you question something that I’ve become identified with at the core? It felt like rejection, it felt like isolation. And then I paused. Would I ever get to establish any real, deep connections with anyone if I kept going this way? Am I really angry at you, or am I baffled you pointed out the fact that I have never been honest to myself?

I was being treated how I treat myself. And it felt like shit.

Everything I thought I was suddenly revealed itself to be at odds with everything I want to be, and the love I want to hold in my life. I’m not my protectors. I’m not the ways I make myself small. I understand why these parts exist, I understand why I’m fragmented. I also understand that when I rise to my wholeness, the people around me are met with an invitation: Will they rise to meet me, or is this no longer aligned with them? Whatever the answer, the burden of proof doesn’t rely on me. All I’m being tasked with is presence and unshakeable honesty.

I could back out of this. It’s uncomfortable, and I could easily retreat into shame and submission. Or I can deepen. I can crack open and say okay, I fucked up. Now what? I am willing to take the next steps together, even when no one can show me the ropes. I’ll bring to you who I am, but only after sitting with whatever that means for a longer while than I expected. Lack of experience isn’t a cop-out for accountability, and still, patience breeds loving-expansive-disarming curiosity. Two truths I’ve found exist at once.

Sat, Apr 29

I talk a lot about mental systems. The way we process reality flies by undetected, at least until you find yourself a window out of it. You won’t even know that you’ve been thinking of things the way you have until you encounter something so conflicting with this very core belief that it tears everything apart. This is why becoming is unbecoming. This is why grief unfurls. I am questioning everything, down to the very eyes with which I see life. I was taught to live a certain way, and it now feels like a partial truth, if I can call it truth at all. I feel myself divided between that which I am and that which I am no longer, that which is unsustainable and is falling away. To hold on is to die. To let go is to die.

I am choosing to let go.

Thu, May 4

Love disarms me. I am not left defenseless— I merely find myself unthreatened.

Sat, Jun 3

It seems I can’t take myself seriously anymore. The minute I do, the walls start closing in, and everything stops moving. So, here’s to not making sense. Here’s to absurdity.

Here’s to beauty! Beauty in shared absurdity. Beauty in impossibility held in community. Held in hope. Held in possibility.

It’s not enough to love the unreal

I am inseparable from the impossible

Fri, Jun 9

It seems we keep looking for answers in the wrong places. The matter of wasteful (over)consumption is targeted by questioning waste at its end product, and not the indoctrinated performance of consumption, or the ways we relate to it and are shaped by it. Even I, as I write this, only take into account the impact of surplus consumption, as if if that noun implied anything that could ever be conscious in its reciprocity and interaction with its context. The word itself operates from the total destruction of its target - to consume is to bring things to an end.

Strange, isn’t it.

Wed, Sep 27

I’d like to say I remember everything, but I was pretty lax at keeping a record.

No, I did keep records. They are everywhere I look.

I may not have been ready to commit to the jump, but I dipped into the other side many times. With cautious determination I scooped out parts that called my name, and would soon become of me— a ring, a card, a word, a song; many an attempt, an evocation of beauty in a place where there was none.

And wasn’t that the reason we came? To see the space and fill it with us, to find our names on the wayside, on the way back home.

A fresher kind of tiredness, higher thresholds of pain, ever-expanding horizons of joy.

I have discovered resilience to the extent of the care I give myself. My body will only bounce back as long as I hold it, as long as I give it what it needs to thrive. And when it has all it could possibly want, it flies high.

My eyes are moving a little too fast to spot the poetry lately, it feels like. I love the busyness of my life, but it also means there are fewer, rarer pockets for reflection.

I still make art with my hands, and just as it looks different lately, it also speaks a new kind of love. Now it plants, harvests, weeds, peels leaves back, gently tips over, and slices swiftly. It washes, it cooks breakfast, it bins, it bags, it brings the smallest beets into my mouth for me to eat. It opens (portals, doors, phases, books, spigots, eggs) and closes (portals, doors, phases, cycles, cartons, hugs).

It rarely opens this laptop anymore. It rarely clicks this pen. It rarely cuts paper to form something else.

It misses some deadlines, and shows up early for others. It keeps not responding, and it double-texts. It is way too tired, way too alive, way too eager, way too detached.

Can I hold myself in love when my own tide rolls low against the ground? And should I be surprised when my fingers reach for something within myself, where magic should be, and come up with questions instead?

My love also keeps shifting, expanding. It mimics, it makes up, it makes up for, it builds, it cuts away.

It dreams.

It dreams free dreams. It dreams song. It dreams river. It dreams dinner. It dreams so big and it dreams so small. It dreams the dreams of an ant, the heart of the earth.

It dreams. Oh god, does it dream.

I’ve been plugging this on social media lately, and I will keep talking about it here and everywhere: The Venezuelan Adjustment Act.

This is a proposal that will allow all Venezuelan citizens who have been present on US territory by December 31, 2021, to obtain legal Permanent Residence.

I firmly believe no one should live in constant uncertainty based on entirely made-up colonial concepts of worthiness and belonging. Please consider signing, sending a letter to your representatives, and sharing. :)

Kairos refers to an opportune time, a "moment" or a "season" such as "harvest time", whereas Chronos refers to a specific amount of time, such as a day or an hour.

“Do you think worms feel?” she asked without looking up from the ground, as she pushed a metal staple through thick ground cover, prepping the ground for eggplant planting. I could barely hear her from where I was kneeling, wind brushing loudly against my ears, but I still managed to catch on. We had just pulled a huge, pink worm from between the folds of plastic tarp, and she had taken a picture of me smiling, holding the squirmy little guy next to my face.

Another voice rose, this time closer to me - “You know, my scientific mind says no, but I’ve been trying to become more spiritual, and that part of me says yes”. I pondered for a second, and asked him: How does his scientific side define ‘feeling’? He hesitated a bit, answering by telling us a story about a male bird placing a cover of sorts over his baby’s nest to keep him warm, and how he thought it hinted to some sort of love, or, his science brain said, perhaps just evolutionary behavior. She spoke again, said the story made her want to cry. I asked him if an innate response to care for something could be, in some way, defined as ‘love’.

He said maybe.

We kept stapling, and I kept thinking about birds, fat worms, and love.

How is the tendency to experience human life as absolute affecting the way we touch and are touched by this world?

Are we confined to define our understanding of life through the lens of human experience? Is it, then, exhaustive to measure the non-human world against the baseline of our lives? Would this be expansive, and allow us to take in the full spectrum of the world from a place of curiosity?

I found myself kicking staples in, my hands tired from pushing, cold nose dripping steadily onto the ground. We certainly can’t completely escape the reality of our own bias, but can we expand to hold future possibility instead of latching onto present definitions?

As we made our way to our next task, weeding carrots, some birds caught on that wherever we scuffled the ground, worms would come up. They followed us down garden beds as we treaded through them, diving behind us to score some early spring grub. I wonder if weeding days feel abundant to them. I wonder if they will, perhaps, fly by once more as they find us on our knees again, sometime next week. I wonder if we have fundamentally changed them, if in some evolutionary way, the memory of five people on their knees bringing them worms will remain in their bones for generations to come. Nothing exists alone. Nothing remains unchanged. And, I feel, nothing is meant to.

But I do know that one of the gifts of Kronos is precisely this challenge: to relate to each and every thing in our cosmos as alive and thrumming with the vitality of the body of Kronos Himself. -Kristin Mathis of Mysteria Mundi, on the Orphic Hymn to Saturn.

I’ve been thinking a lot about time these past couple of years, and the ways I am affected, changed, and held by it. I don’t think I’ve begun to comprehend the consequences of the dissociative state I was in and out of over the course of two years— I found myself running behind all the time, outside my body for most of everything, terrified of permanence and terrified of ephemeral presence. I took steps to remain closed off, hidden, anything to protect my heart. If you asked me to recall meaningful moments from this period, I could count them on one hand: I lived life in a way that allowed me to remain the same, swimming incessantly against the flow of time. Something in me rejected life, and what it meant to be touched by it. I closed my eyes and white-knuckled through, an unconscious decision to keep myself safe from feeling it all. Sometimes I still do.

After a conversation in the greenhouse about Saturn, love, and friendship, my friend brought me her copy of Saving Time by Jenny Odell for me to look at over lunch. It made sense— Jenny proposes that our understanding of time has been warped by the most prevalent capitalist and colonialist way of living: domination. In the book, Odell posits that we live to conquer, control, and beat time, and asks how we could maybe interact with it differently. I like these kinds of questions, and it seemed right up my alley, so I told her I liked the book. She said she’d bring it over again when she was done with it.

By the time I got home that day, I’d already forgotten about it.

A week or two later, I opened my email to a newsletter from Emergence Mag titled “Jenny Odell on Widening the Ways We Live in Time”. I thought it was a funny coincidence, and listened to the podcast episode as I walked through the grocery store later that week. Odell mentioned that she started counting her days through things gifted to her. As in, she now measures her time through the ways she interacts with her environment. I had been toying with this idea, too— naming my days after the seeds we’d sowed or crops we’d planted, my life a rainbow assortment of chard, basil, lettuce. This stance in direct opposition to the way I’d lived life until now, isolated from any meaningful, deepened, transformative presence, instead now relating to a multidimensional frame of reference.

I think that by acknowledging the mirror that nature holds up at me, letting life weave its parallels through my spine, I’ll begin to see time in a more benevolent context. Time as the seasons that shape us, as moments, as living-breathing-expansive existence. Time, reframed to hold possibility, expanded to hold another dimension of being: interconnectedness. Time, held as alive. Time, seen as gentle.

Now— how can I stay honest, open, present, when it all feels so loud? Can I surrender to the scope of what it means to live vulnerably, in every aspect of my life, in the face of fear? As we wave goodbye to this Mercury rx, I find I have no choice but to crack open if I am to live a rich life. I must let myself be changed, too.

Instead of closing off from it, immersing myself in absurd, radical love is the most tender way I’ve found to approach the aching, the longing. Everything around me now asks: will you take the leap first? Will you bring down your walls and melt into hopeful hands? Will you laugh loudly in the face of absurdity, and still dive in for more?

By opening to love without promise, love without an answer, I’m practicing the kind of openness that I wish to imbue into everything in life. Love as a mirror in which we surrender to portals both within and without, our souls schooled by the gentle hand of a spoken invitation, the question of an opening.

Maybe we are here, as friends, as lovers, to remind us to stay softened, stay curious, and to keep trying.

Maybe, like myth, our mutual surrender weaves larger webs of resonance, sneaking in when we’re not looking, chipping off at places that have hardened around inflexible words and frameworks of understanding. Can we understand that this commitment to change is somehow, in some way, not about us at all?

I am done baring my teeth to love, despite hesitant, low, slow growls growing in my throat. I can’t fight life any longer.

Instead of hiding from my longing, I am breaking open. I feel it all.

Okay, I’m not done making this playlist yet, but I’ve been hitting play and just letting the algorithm do the rest. So far, I like it. Maybe you’ll like it too.

three times for good measure, three times so you remember my voice. three times for this three-part series on change, the many roads we walk on, and all the skins we shed to get somewhere closer to home.

i’ve been away for a long time. away from home, away from myself, away from the people I love, away from my work. being the 12th houser that I am, I stepped away to sit with change, redirections, reclamations, big NOs, and otherworldly things that looked scary but held the bliss of divinity within their chest. lots of little-big initiations that shed and shed all that was untrue until I reached the bone, the memory, the story that had been itching to be sang with my scratchy sun-steeped voice during this period of my life. I don’t claim to say I’ve unearthed it all, but at least I feel inclined to embrace uncomfortable periods of transition with curiosity, welcoming portals as they expand to reveal potential (and the silhouette of some sort of prime material) underneath the surface of chaos.

the overwhelming surrender at the sanctity of decay is still fresh within certain parts of my being. some very willfully embracing change, others clumsily running into the same walls and asking for some sense of safety, please. even when running the gift of time’s ripening knowledge between my fingertips, carefully examining its seams, it appears that realizing that something is dying makes it no less arduous for my body to let go of. old boxes full of things that have now-dead names written in them, hiding in places I didn’t expect them to be, limbs moving towards old ways and no-longer-relevant cycles. it all catches me by surprise, it all triggers fearful disputes between my inner selves, it is all so heavy to throw away. but i’ve been called to do it.

it was hard for me to fully embody graceful surrender, with my silly human heart stuck on the now-faded promise of eternally youthful todays. I still find myself clinging to the person I used to be, sometimes, often tired from fighting against resistance to decay. jaw clenched, bone grinding against bone, head shaking wildly in disbelief. isn’t it tiring, to keep pretending to be someone you’re not? can I forgive myself for doubling down even as I tasted blood? can you forgive yourself when you, too, hold on so tight your whole body turns stone? can we let go now?

i’d like to think that as we accept the fear within ourselves for what it is, a part of our inner selves asking for our hand as we walk through change, we’ll surrender to a deeper, primal vision— eyes that allow us to look at something and realize it’s dead, or dying. we’ll bear old, sensible hands that have grown used to pruning away dried leaves, shaking trees awake and composting the fallout. maybe we will grow curious, quiet, tender. all the more human. all the more animal. tuned in to the calling that lulls our bodies into dust day after day, holding total compassion for the state of our being as it grows and shapeshifts under the spell of natural transformation. where would we be if we used this energy as momentum to embody total reverence at the altar of our lives?

i believe is how we were meant to be— turning over like the tides, never the same ocean twice. maybe, someday, our endings will be celebrated with the same joy we feel as we welcome beginnings.

as Saturn stewards my movement from within my 1st house, i have come to appreciate constraints, slowness, limits, and the blessing of time as it is felt in my body.

now more than ever, i see time as flexible and expansive. where some changes happen quickly, others take their time to take shape and need a little help from us to come alive. their gift to us lies in the opportunity we are presented with: to breathe deeply into these spaces of uncertainty, to expand our capacity for holding contradiction. they are a hidden invitation to embrace slowness, forgiving the very-human and very-otherworldly process within ourselves.

instead of acting as if the due process of life is taking time away from us when it slows down, or getting angry at our body when it shows resistance, why don’t we soften into giving it the time it needs? as an offering, a grace, a welcoming, inviting the mystery into our lives with every second we choose to give. what if we believed ourselves so rich, so grateful, so wealthy in time, that we felt no fear when gifting things all the time they need to unravel?

working with Saturn has been, to me, a softening. the embodiment of a heartfelt celebration for the uniqueness of what is standing in front of me, regardless of how heavy it might seem, without fooling myself into thinking it is anything other than what it says it is. holding compassion for the state of my being as it follows the ever-changing calling of nature.

resistance to this flow, giving into fear, has proven to be a different kind of death.

i think i thrive better in these in-betweens. in the threshold between realms. when I know something will end, when i know i’m actively transforming and changing. this shakeup, this movement, is what actually feeds my creative process. being in the elemental prime matter, right as everything dissolves, but before anything sprouts— this is where i’ve found my creativity and creation are ripe for the taking.

unmade but purposeful, like the substance inside of an egg.

• you can buy my art! since saturn began to slide into my 1st house for a new cycle, i’ve been thinking a lot about doing more of what i love in the public realm. so i’ve decided to sell shirts and prints with my new art on them! these little guys are a fun way to support me as i move into this new stage of my life. keep an eye out for a link to my website sometime this week. :)

• is the website itself newsworthy?

• tarot readings are open again :) i’m excited about email readings but also available for recorded + live text readings. send me a message on instagram or respond to this email to book.

• i moved! i shaved my head! it gets really freaking cold when nothing is there to trap the heat in your scalp! i love writing and laughing and dancing and making art and do not understand why i kept myself from doing the things i love!

  

i made this playlist to honor both this new season, the changes in my life, Saturn, and something that i can’t put my finger on just yet.

see ya sometime else this week. :) <3

what is it that drives me? is it the need to fill a void? is it the void itself? is writing about wanting just another form of hedonism? i take a break. i ponder.

i wonder. who do i write for? i think i do it for myself, mostly.

is anything i do lately not in service of self-indulgence?

i pause.

you are here with me, reading these words. i’m aware of their weight, and i was fully conscious of this when i decided to involve you in my relationship with them. they may linger in your head for a bit. that is a responsibility i shouldn’t take lightly.

am i planting beautiful seeds in your life? am i leaving you slightly more relieved than i found you? if i’m not, then am i helping you turn inwards? am i a silent space amidst all the static? is this thought just as self-serving?

as you may have noticed, my writing is a constant discussion between all the beings within myself. it’s a conversation pit, a creative studio, all the big minds speaking loudly and thinking they have the final say. my spirit sits in the middle of this back-and-forth, observant. my work here is to sort through all the noise and let spirit come through in its simplicity, in its quiet tenderness.

one of the questions i hear the most within myself is:

who do you even think you are, to believe you must be heard at all?

now, this whiny voice helps no one. it is one of those beings i’m learning to appease with some big dramatic words, as i set it aside for truth to come through. it’s my daily task to ensure it doesn’t interfere with my creative process. (thank you, Julia Cameron, for your morning pages)

i want to become who i truly wish to be. to write words that ignite, to speak to the spaces that expand in silence, to make gardens of my thoughts and share this harvest with you. the truth is, i am scared, and i feel lonely. i have found that this loneliness seeks solitude. a simultaneous experience of complete and total submersion within myself, and total extraction of presence. this directly contradicts the actions that heal me: seeking vulnerable connection, and voicing my thoughts.

self-loathing misery breeds this self-absorption, keeps you isolated, untethered, and blinded to life beyond yourself. this is why i try my best to write about something other than my own pain, because i keep forgetting that it was never about me in the first place.

look around, look at the rhythms of nature, the stories life likes to tell in silent devotion. it was never about me! i try to practice listening. practice seeing with more than two eyes. practice being here, now. maybe then i’ll remember what the story was supposed to be about after all.

A.N.: i’ll get to the graphic design + structure of this blog eventually. i get stuck trying to make everything perfect, and i don’t need to dig that hole for myself right now. all i want is to write. :)

listen to the Cranberries with me today. it’s September. rejoice.

speak to the little version of you. what do they need? listen closely. feel free to hit reply and share it with me, if you want to.

also, did you like the option to hear this piece instead of reading it? i need a better mic. hehe.

will it kill me to come undone here? probably not. have i fought it as if it would? that’s a different story, and one that will unfold here as we go. maybe it feels so daunting because i resist meeting myself, and i resist meeting others. even when this level of vulnerability burns, i find that it saves me from identifying with limitations, such as a false sense of identity and deeply ingrained ideas of who i can’t be. i still fight it, and sometimes i don’t even acknowledge that it’s her who i’m pushing against.

it’ll come disguised as needing to work harder, putting on concealer, and taking on more than i can. it hides behind avoiding an honest response to “how are you?”, and hopelessly searching for some kind of love that can’t be found anywhere but within myself.

let’s write songs together, grab some tea, and read what i have to say. only if you please, and only if you will. this space is wide open for whoever wants to take it.