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A little bit of A LOT and lots of love,
Ange
This is ALBOAL #5 - June Edition. It’s a little bit, a small taste, short notes, bullet points, a little something curated by moi. I collect things I feel are worth sharing. I hope that for the people who are subscribed to my newsletter that there is something for everyone.
I’m back from Italy, trying to get back into the swing of everyday life. Mundane life is a tough adjustment, but lucky for me; my partner is a hottie and such good company to pass the workday weeks with. I think we are both gearing up for a bigger life shift which has been ten years in the making. Seeds have been planted, and now plans need to be made.
Italy felt like freedom. It was busy, yet beautiful, in your face but in a good way. I ate everything without thinking about fucking food allergies and stomach issues. I drank wine (I rarely have a drink these days), but I drank red wine with my food. It hits differently in Italy. I walked a lot. I got to spend time with my mom and brother. The last time that happened was on my dads’ deathbed. This trip felt like a needed long exhale. Overall, Italy, although filled with too many tourists for my liking, was a portal to a cooler self, and I could have stayed WAY longer.
#1 ART THAT MAKES ME WANT TO LIVE
Let’s start here; I want to live in Angela McKay’s watercolour paintings and never come out. Is that so much to ask? These paintings transport me to my joy and the freedom I feel when I travel to new places. The times I can wear a bathing suit each day because I will be swimming, babes, DAILY. Angela is a surface pattern designer and illustrator based in Brooklyn, New York, Ohkii Studio.
#2 Percussive Dub, Spiritual Jazz & Psychedelic Grooves with Millie McKee
Thank my partner Ciaran for finding this Youtube channel during the peak of the Pandemi Moore.
#3 Equinox ‘75 by Ursula Le Guin
I am sick of men and women
but am not therefore going
sentimental and praising the wisdom of animals
(unlike us, they are wise without praise).
Nor in order to look at the stars
do I have to be snide about learn’d Astronomers,
who after all look
at the stars more often than I do.
In sickness I still sing, dogged,
the intellectual passion.
I will not even with Jeffers
turn to the rocks enduring
before us and after.
what good is a rock not looked at?
The landscape within me these days
is of stone: mountains,
stars, the open sky.
Not even trees. The beaches
empty in twilight.
A star
is a stone on fire.
A mind, an eye
is stone-dust, is star-stuff
and the light that fills it
is the light.
Are those grey coasts I walk on
the shores of the beginning
or the margins of the last chapter?
I do not know. I walk there
alone on the edges
angry, afraid, and uncertain
with my eyes wide open.
–1977
#4 Why are they acting like that? No matter what I say, they don’t seem to get it or me
Many humans can’t hear you, won’t hear you; these people are usually too busy defining your life for you, what is and isn’t ok for your life, and too uncomfortable with differences. We see and have seen it playing out in the ongoing culture wars. No matter what you have told someone about your lived experience, how your life differs from the person in front of you, some will not get that you live your own reality, which has nothing to do with theirs. It can stir up such discomfort in them that they demand you conform for their comfort. A need to control is a helluva of drug.
Ignorance says you need to live and be like me in order for me to be ok. Liberation says I see we are different, and I am ok no matter what, and I hope you are too.
Not hearing, not understanding or wanting to understand the “other” is at the root of many of our issues, personal and collective.
Refer to #8 to keep with theme.
#5 Piacere Ears
#6 Ange’s Reading Room
Currently Reading:
On Our Best Behavior: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Price Women Pay to Be Good By Elise Loehnen and Monsters: A Fan's Dilemma Claire Dederer
Why do women equate self-denial with being good?
Loehnen reveals how we’ve been programmed to obey the rules represented by the seven deadly sins and how doing so qualifies us as “good.” This probing analysis of contemporary culture and thoroughly researched history explains how women have internalized the patriarchy, and how they unwittingly reinforce it. By sharing her own story and the spiritual wisdom of other traditions, Loehnen shows how we can break free and discover the integrity and wholeness we seek.
Claire Dederer’s instantly viral Paris Review essay, "What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men?"ideas become expanded in Monsters.
Can we love the work of artists such as Hemingway, Sylvia Plath, Miles Davis, Polanski, or Picasso? Should we? Dederer explores the audience's relationship with artists from Michael Jackson to Virginia Woolf, asking: How do we balance our undeniable sense of moral outrage with our equally undeniable love of the work? Is male monstrosity the same as female monstrosity? And if an artist is also a mother, does one identity inexorably, and fatally, interrupt the other? In a more troubling vein, she wonders if an artist needs to be a monster in order to create something great. Does genius deserve special dispensation? Does art have a mandate to depict the darker elements of the psyche? And what happens if the artist stares too long into the abyss?
Re read Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell
What makes “cults” so intriguing and frightening? What makes them powerful? The reason why so many of us binge Manson documentaries by the dozen and fall down rabbit holes researching suburban moms gone QAnon is because we’re looking for a satisfying explanation for what causes people to join - and more importantly, stay in - extreme groups. We secretly want to know: could it happen to me? Amanda Montell’s argument is that, on some level, it already has....
Conspirituality: How New Age Conspiracy Theories Became a Public Health Threat By Derek Beres, Matthew Remski, Julian Walker
Conspirituality takes a deep dive into the troubling phenomenon of influencers who have curdled New Age spirituality and wellness with the politics of paranoia—peddling vaccine misinformation, tales of child trafficking, and wild conspiracy theories.
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, a disturbing social media trend emerged: a large number of yoga instructors and alt-health influencers were posting stories about a secretive global cabal bent on controlling the world’s population with a genocidal vaccine. Instagram feeds that had been serving up green smoothie recipes and Mary Oliver poems became firehoses of Fox News links, memes from 4chan, and prophecies of global transformation.
#7 Watermelon Salad with Feta
#8
Caption from IG post
Three cheers for those who can own, acknowledge, and wholeheartedly apologize. I see you and honor you. But that’s not everyone. I’m fairly certain you’ve come across someone in your life who defends, skirts responsibility, manipulates, or full on shuts down when you try to bring your hurt forward. There are countless reasons for that, but that’s not what this post is about.When your attempts are blocked, instead of trying over and over again, instead of bending over backwards, saying it thousands of different ways, go internal first. Go towards yourself. Hear, see, and acknowledge yourself. More than anything your system wants to be understood. Who does it is less important than that it’s done. You feel that?
Thanks for reading
This is great, juicy stuff! I love the art and the music and the books and the poem...all the things. Thanks.