The Labor of the Bloom
When your Work is your Soul and your Soul is your Work
This newsletter is too long for email; I encourage you to read it on the website or app!
I was so hesitant to write a newsletter about work.
But I look back at my January, and goodness gracious, it seems like work in concept and action is all I’ve been thinking about.
Work in its rawest essence is not a bad thing. Work is kinetic energy. It is a flexible modality.
It also carries hundreds of years of violence and oppression in its conceptual history. It’s possessed by capitalism. It has mutated over and over through slavery.
What do you do if you have melded your most intimate being to how you survive?
Let’s talk about it.
Table of Offerings
Love Mart - 2/11
Tarot Reading on Work - Courage to be Satisfied
Queer Material Lab(Rat) - Residency Journey
First, it is an opportunity to support and buy some of my work!
If you’re in Philly, join us for Love Market! at 403 N. 40th st on 2/11 from 12-7! The event is free!
I’ll be vending as Kai + Chi! This collaboration is with my friend Kai (@cowthem), an incredibly talented potter and jeweler. Kai and MalaCHI, get it? We’re cute.
Debuting my Anti/Valentine line! Cutsy, sapphic, bloody pink, red, and white clothing contrasted with freaky, haunting, macabre black and white clothing of many sizes!
After the market, I will put the items on my Depop and shop! (Due to laziness, I have more on my Depop than in my shop.)
Read
Courage to be Satisfied
Here
Enochian Tarot Reading about Work
Learn what Enochian cards are here.
The Tools of the Trade
“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
This is a familiar quote by self-identified “black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet” Audre Lorde. I bring it out not to analyze the quote but to recontextualize it with a quote by a classmate of mine in my Black Reconstructionist School class.
I’m attending this six-week “school” that Anima Adjepong and Adwoa Agyepong started through Forward Together. The group comprises black organizers from all different strategies, forms, and experiences. It’s beautiful.
We have been reading and discussing Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880 by W.E.B. Du Bois to learn from this time of turmoil, suppression, and rebuilding to influence our present-day organization. I’m one of those contradictory writers for whom my ADHD makes it very difficult to read, so I appreciate the multifaceted way we approach the text with videos, discussions, and nonlinear readings. It’s a gentle massage on my school trauma.
Our last class was about reparations, and inevitably, the conversation turned to whether or not advocating for government reparations continues to uphold the existence of oppression in the form of the U.S. government.
Tiny Rant: This is precisely why the strategy of collective redistribution is so essential. White individuals and families need to catalyze reparations. There should be no billionaires, millionaires, trust funds, etc. We can’t rely on a government designed to enslave us to care, nor can we ignore that it is the capitalists, regardless of governmental structures, that control the hoarding that is killing us.
All funds must be redistributed.
Black Visioning Group is trying to raise 80k by May 1.
These reparations will support the bare minimum of BVG member’s needs. It’s a start.
You can redistribute to our goal here.
You can contribute to our goal if you have your basic needs met. Redistribution is not limited to the exceptionally wealthy. All white people benefit from white supremacy.
I digress.
Audre Lorde’s quote was mentioned to underline that desiring the continued existence of the U.S. government is a continuation of the masters’ tools, even IF that government supplies reparations. It will not be enough for the past and continued violence, nor can it be a balm of absolution. Yet, people’s basic needs are not being met today.
The conversation was turning to frustration and discouragement until my classmate said this:
“Organization is not their tool. Housing is not their tool. Governance is not their tool. Currency is not their tool…”
Her statement went on to list many more things I failed to dictate. In this statement, she highlights that what we associate with oppression does not even belong to the oppressor. They are using it, but it is not theirs. This means it can become ours, as it was, so that it will be reclaimed, reimagined, and relearned.
Anima brought up the book African Market Women: Seven Stories from Ghana as an example of a different relationship to commerce and markets outside capitalist structures and patriarchy. I also think of many global indigenous practices of councils, governments, and leadership that worked with community and land for sustainable existences. Work can be children learning cultural trades from the moment they can move their fingers or daily tending to riverbeds and forest groves to increase biodiversity.
Work is not the master’s tool unless the master picks it up.
It is just a tool. Tools can build many things.
Tools can also dismantle.
Stars Align
I am a person for whom my work/my art is my whole soul. I have melded my being to what helps me survive. I’m in an intimate and precarious relationship with work. I often debate this decision’s validity, but I always return to little Malachi—to knowing that I only want to be what I am, the pure essence of myself. It is a privilege that I can even DECIDE to sacrifice to follow that conviction.
The personal bond to my work makes my lack of resources and this particularly dry year of freelance work feel like my failure directly reflects who I am. That’s not fair to me or my craft.
I’ve spent this entire month exploring other avenues of currency. I’ve been planting seeds and realizing how much soil is not ripe for my gestation. I’ve also been peeking over garden walls at those who have chosen very different paths from mine.
The peeking has come in the form of LinkedIn. Want to connect? I know…very square. The sun, moon, Mars, and Pluto converged in Capricorn, and I made a LinkedIn for the first time in my life after seven years as a professional freelancer! Coincidence? Ha! I’ll admit I got a little fixated initially, but the shiny dopamine waned, and I turned off notifications.
LinkedIn is a funny little ecosystem, one I’m very grateful I didn’t join fresh out of college. I was too impressionable and worried too much about other people finding me successful, and I would’ve shapeshifted myself to meet their concept of success.
Instead, I am displaying what it is. I can confidently say that every entry resulted from my passion and care. It has not been a stable career path, and it still isn’t, but it is my heart. My heart is steadfast and committed….to the nine projects I’m working on.
I have recently lost the stability that allowed for this sacrifice in my life, and it’s made me fear that following my heart puts my family at risk. I’ve talked a lot about feeling like I wasted my early 20s. That feeling still haunts. I wave away that smog and move into the clarity that I’ve come this far. The only thing I can do is continue to commit to myself in the hopes that my commitment becomes sustainable support for my family and me.
Damnit, it will! Starting this year! I am claiming it!
2024 is a lifepath eight year, and you know what lifepath I am, hm?
I’m an eight!
Eight is the lifepath of abundance! We have moved out of the hermitage of 2023’s lifepath seven year of creative stockpiling, and we are ready to flourish in the abundance of our reserves and the reward of our perseverance!
We move into an abundance of all we want and need starting now!
Consider the Lilies
As an undiagnosed ADHD, high-anxiety, PTSD-riddled, type-A, failure-sensitive broke Christian teenager, I would quote this Bible verse to myself to self-soothe:
“Look at the lilies and how they grow. They don’t work or make their clothing, yet Solomon, in all his glory, was not dressed as beautifully as they are. And if God cares so wonderfully for flowers here today and thrown into the fire tomorrow, he will certainly care for you.” Luke 12:27-28
Boy, it feels weird fully quoting Bible verses to y’all *shivers*
There is this lovely song by Connie Converse (she mysteriously went missing but I think she was a gay anarchist who left society) inspired by that verse.
“I’m gonna take my working papers/ And turn them in//I’m handing over my pencil and pen/I won’t be needing my broom again/I’ll bloom by day/I’ll bloom by night/And blooming will be my delight!//”
It’s a delightful anti-work song. However, the Bible verse, and subsequently this song, discount the labor of lilies. The cellular structure of the lilies works tirelessly to turn sunlight, water, nitrogen, and carbon dioxide into sugars and, thankfully, oxygen.
I was reminded of this verse recently because of an entirely different quote in a book I will reference religiously: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I’ve been reading (listening) to it for research for developing harmoniously natural technologies for my novel about my planet, Mother Kow.
“I wish I could do the work of the world while standing quietly in the sun.”
Kimmerer reflects on her desire to be a plant in a meadow that takes care of the world around it through photosynthesizing. God does not dress the lily; it dresses itself thanks to a collaborative ecosystem of elements, bacteria, fungi, pollinators, and more.
I felt this quote in my bones. If you know me, you know I’m a lizard and a heliophile. I can spend hours sitting joyfully in the sun without overheating.
Many ideas have come through me while sitting quietly in the sun. Now, is it the work of the world? That seems rather presumptuous, but I don’t think it’s entirely untrue. This quote and the labor of lilies show us that vital work can look very different from our expectations.
We have been trained to conceptualize work in limited ways that align with capitalism’s needs. We even get snared by this thinking regarding transformative justice and revolutionary labor when we’re more than ready to chastise another when their labor is not hypervisible (on social media or in person) or does not look exactly like ours.
Transformation requires a multifaceted approach, and some aspects seem like standing still in the sun to the untrained eye.
Queer Materials Lab(Rat)
Behold! My Box:
This is my temporary newsletter segment, where I share my progress at my first residency of 2024 at Tyler School of Art’s Queer Materials Lab. This is the closest I’ll get to returning to school, and it’s a bit triggering to be in an art school. Thankfully, I’m not a student, even though I look younger than I did in college (brutal). My friends Kai Cho and Soso Capaldi are also this year’s residents. Deep gratitude to Feather Chiaverini, who invited me to this residency and is letting me double-dip residencies (more on that in April).
I lovingly consider myself a labrat because this residency is all about experimentation! I feel particularly labrat-like because I feel a bit out of my depth and unprepared. This is a fibers-focused residency; while I have been painting clothes for a while, I’m hardly a fibers artist. I’ve been assured that this residency is not about perfection but failure, mess, and play. Ok, ok, I can do that.
A residency defined by experimentation is too broad for my expansive imagination, which takes me in infinite directions at once. Naturally, I turned to divination for some specifications:
I won’t go into full detail about this message, but it was so uplifting! To me, Rider-Waite cards tend to reflect the self/personality, whereas Enochian Tarot has a more conceptual/metaphysical vibe. Rider-Waite cards desire to show you, you. That’s what they’re best at. The Queen of Cups reflected my ability to hold emotional space for others and my strong intuition practice. This was highlighted to emphasize that I should trust intuition and that I deserve to play, too. The Rider-Waite deck was first, and the Enochian card underlined that message. ARZINOR is similar to the Queen of Cups, representing generosity, altruism, new beginnings, and memory. They’re even both holding cups! The energies emphasize you do a lot for others (my dedication to people and my serious projects), so this project is about fun. They emphasize that I should trust my judgment and feel my intuition, and this project will be what it is supposed to be. Then, I evoked an angel to see who presided over my project. IERATHEL, the Preventing God, is protection. It’s also connected to the Page of Wands, a card of starting projects, something out of nothing.
The repetition of cups and protection set my direction: clothing as vessels.
Select transcription of my scribbled notes: Two figures holding cups. Clothes as vessels for energy/spirits/material (ancestral)// Natural becomes artificial yet all terrestrial// Each item an egg you slip inside// Vessel that protects, flashes poison or camouflages// Must decide what each piece is a vessel of// Vessels for transmuting/What’s inside?: egg, seed, womb, digestion// What happens when we think of objects as sacred and not disposable? Animism of objects. Does a material want to be stripped and changed? Do the byproducts wish to be created? Do they serve the ecosystem or themselves?// I will ask each garment: What are you a vessel of? What transformation do you support? What do you protect?//
And so, my project: I will ask my salvaged/thrifted garments questions and honor them as vessels for energy through intentional play. It’s simple (I think?), and that’s good for me.
I wanted to explore fibers for Mother Kow, but I think no human machine or technique can imitate my planet’s alien technology. I will be studying all the tools offered to me for research! Perhaps the vessel concept and Mother Kow will converge.
I will keep you up to date with my project and how I am splitting my time within this residency. I will be in Florida for half of February and Tennessee for all of April, so my fibers residency is half making and half writing. Thanks for following this journey with me.
May your sun give way to the calm of the night, and your spinning give way to silence, and in that darkness and silence, may you find yourself.