[Show Intro] Jala Hey, thanks for coming! I'm glad you're here. Come on in! Everyone's out on the patio right now. Looks like a couple of people are in the garden. I can't wait to introduce you! Can I get you anything? [turned away] Hey folks, our new guest is here! [Intro music] 00:00.37 Jala Hello world and welcome to Jala-chan's Place! I'm your host Jala Prendes (she/her) and today I am joined by Briar (they/them). How are you doing today Briar. You can be honest, it's fine. 00:10.63 Briar Do doing fantastic if you asked to be 6 hours ago different story but we're here and we're now and that's what matters. 00:21.48 Jala Oh yeah, because like we were talking in the green room a little bit and um for me this entire week since Tuesday has felt like it's Friday but it hasn't been Friday so you can just imagine just how that's been. Just for days and days of just boredom and also shrieking and trying to claw my way out of work. Yeah at the same time but being too busy to actually you know faff around. So unfortunately you know that kind of a situation and then today we ran out of food that we had prepped for the week for for eating stuff and I had basically had like toast for breakfast and then like some celery with PV two for lunch and so I was like let's order some food and so we tried Uber One and got free delivery that but Uber One is only for like certain places so we had to try a different pizza place than we usually go to and let me tell you that pizza tasted like pizza sauce and disappointment. It was bad. 01:27.87 Jala Was bad and so like that was my my meal today was disappointment and it was it was just not great. So um, but that's okay because now I'm here and I'm with Briar. 01:42.60 Jala And we're going to be talking about some really awesome stuff. So I am very excited to talk about ALOK and a little bit about who they are and then talk about their poetry because all of it is just amazing and ever since I came across Alok thanks to. Ah, Jonathan Van Ness's Getting Curious podcast I have just been completely thrilled and love seeing any media that they come out with and following them on Instagram that kind of a thing and I'm lucky enough to be friends with someone who. Also got into ALOK because I got into ALOK. Ah who then. 02:22.56 Briar I was going to say that was um, like such a cold shot is I think the day you listened to that podcast you were like so Briar. Um, you like this person you don't know it yet. But you like this person. 02:32.20 Jala Oh yeah, yeah, and somebody else that I knew um, liked them so much that they ended up going to see them live for a performance and of course um, ALOK did not come to Texas where I live um, understandably so. 02:50.31 Jala Ah, so unfortunately I have not been able to see them live but this friend of mine did and shout out to him for giving me like getting yeah being my dealer going and getting like copies of the books but having them signed by ALOK. So that was very cool and apparently ah, they actually. Sat and greeted everybody that came to the show which is very cool I know I know if that's just so freaking. Great. So anyway, Ah, if people listening have never heard of ALOK. Let me tell you a little bit about them. 03:13.67 Briar Ah, sweeties all around, sweeties for the merchant, sweeties for the signing. 03:29.43 Jala They are an author performer and media personality. They are only 31 years old originally from College Station; gender-nonconforming and transfeminine as you've heard they use they/them pronouns. But um, they are a performance artist. A writer and all-round like um fashion icon and just so much they are just amazing. They fill the world with a light in my opinion. So Briar. What do you think? Ah, how would you summarize ALOK. As a person. 04:08.66 Briar Oh so I mostly have just been coming to them through interview and through their poetry books now. Um, so your introductions actually learning me a little bit. Um, but I think they're like incredibly eloquent. And they are um now when I say relatable I they're relatable to me on and like a noninary level. But I think like they are I imagine myself being Cis which I haven't done in a while. And I'm like I see where this person is coming from I think they're very just there's something primal and fundamental about the way that Alok thinks. Um and there's something elegant and eloquent about the way they express it. Um, it just it makes me hungry. It makes me come back for more. 05:01.30 Jala Absolutely and I will say the moment that I finished that JVN podcast immediately because they had mentioned oh there's follow-ups ah interviews that were done like as Instagram lives I found those and I watched those and then I was like. Oh I got to find more so then I looked at ah their ted talk and then I started looking at other podcast appearances and all this other stuff like performances of their poetry and then I was like oh I need to get those books but when I first looked they were sold out. But. They replenished their stock right before they did that tour and like I said I had a friend who happened to go as a result of me just gushing about ALOK and so that's how I ended up with some actual sign copies. But I also bought the Pdf version like I was so. 05:50.81 Jala It's like I I just ah can't get enough and I definitely um, have been very happy with everything that I've come across from them because they are not just very very eloquent about their situation and about what they feel. You know, like ah, a better vision of the world should be. They are also so compassionate and so full of light and love that it's just mind blowing because they were bullied growing up for their gender expression and they developed their poetry as a way. Of interrupting people's assumptions challenging shame and declaring themselves on their own terms so they said making art gave me the permission to live I needed somewhere to put the pain they have degrees from Stanford University and feminist gender and sexuality studies comparative studies in race and ethnicity and sociology and they have written 3 books to date the 2 poetry books that we're going to be discussing as well as another book called beyond the gender binary which is actually the first one I read which. Is written actually for a young adult audience and the way that that book is structured is breaking down like where did the concept of gender come from in the first place and why do we ascribe to that in our society as a society. Why do we have it? um. 07:25.91 Jala You know we kind of inherited it but it is an assumption people make about other people that isn't actually based in anything scientific and you know it breaks down like you know, ah all of this different stuff and then it basically Alok wanted it to be. 07:44.43 Jala According to 1 of the various places that I I read you know listen to an interview or something um and they wanted it to be more or less here is the argument and here is a way for a gender nonconforming person to refute that as basically a way of giving young adults. Kind of like the educated ammo that they need to fire bullets of compassion back at the people who are trying to be horrible to them because again they were bullied when they were young. 08:21.11 Briar I Don't mean to back up too much and I can't remember exactly what page I wrote this on but I remember and I'm jumping way ahead and way back already. But when you talked about understanding the gender binary and where gender came From. Ah. Just had this thought occur to me that was like our bodies are like what if we took a computer and we showed it to the progenitor of the wheel and we were like understand this learn about this every day like their their conception of that is going to change and grow every day. But it'll be years if not decades before they fully understand the cohesive whole of what they're looking at and they just gave me big gender feelings ah of like ah there's so much about our bodies that Is. Complex refined and interactive that um I feel like our bodies are a technology we are centuries from understanding in full. 09:23.66 Jala Right? And you know there's a lot of talk about you know at least at least right now when it comes to politics and stuff the people who are just super no. There's man god made man and woman and that's like their thing. They are going on external genitalia but what about intersex people. What about the fact that the chromosomes aren't necessarily. You know what? you're thinking they are um you know like I follow um a person on the internet who. Is a politician here in Texas um, believe their name is Alicia I I forget I'm going to have to double check I will I will get a link and I will put it in the show notes. But either way they have x y chromosomes but physically. On the exterior they look like you know a a female sexed person. You know they have the external gentalia of a female but the problem is their body isn't producing the estrogen they have testosterone being for. 10:31.36 Jala So like you know there's a whole bunch of medical care that was just overlooked because they were assumed to be female. You know and there's just like that's just like 1 instance of a physical intersex situation and like how complex that is and the whole point and. Purpose of me mentioning that is because even when it comes to just the physical appearance of a person their body that does not necessarily equate anything you know like would you consider. This person who has x y chromosomes but looks physically like a woman to be a woman or a man technically they would be a man because of those chromosomes but the exterior is not that you know so how do you identify this? You know like it's. 11:25.50 Jala It's nonsense is is what it kind of boils down to you and like the more you learn about that kind of science. Um, you know like the the kind of situations that a lot of people end up coming across the more you see how much nonsense it is from just every angle you know. 11:39.86 Briar I listen to a not to be person who repeats what they see on the internet but I listened to a biologist earlier this week talk about how? um, ah even chromosonal compositions does't like. Fully dictate how hormonal expression goes. Um and they also talked about um, ah well they got me thinking about how like we use a lot of description in of the science fields and it really only becomes an issue. 12:14.59 Briar In regards to gender, especially when you start talking prescriptively from observed descriptions. Um, and what I'm driving at is like um ah you can observe. 12:30.27 Briar Any fact and be like I saw that my anecdotal evidence I've seen this? um but the moment you start saying I have observed this and I hold this truth to be self-evident and it becomes a belief. Um. 12:45.18 Briar You You start losing some of the nuance that I think we're going to get more into it in your wound my garden. There's a lot of talk about individualism in that book and um, once you become prescriptive you start tearing away. People's individuality and I think um, ah you know I'm going to call my shot early in the show. But I think that's a thesis as we talk about that is going to bear out. 13:16.75 Jala Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree with that. So um, I've talked about elok previously on I don't know probably most of the episodes that I've done about gender I mean um I just I refer back to different things that Alok has said. 13:34.25 Jala Themselves as well as things that they have read about and kind of done book reports on because that's something else that they do aside from um, trying to degender fashion and aside from performing you know their soul to everyone in their poetry. And aside from you know, just their presence as a compassionate being on this planet and they also actively are constantly studying and you know, kind of disseminating that information you can follow them on Goodreads I think there's even a link on their website. To their good reads account because they write in-depth reviews and they post these on Instagram and they talk about some major takeaways from these different texts that they read including lots of um, you know, kind of heavy textbook type materials. So um, they are really great for just getting. Information out there for folks. 14:31.84 Briar I think ah that reminds me of a creator I really like um, like for instance, she really loves cyberpunk twentyseventyseven and that's just something I cannot like it. It does not even move the meter in my interest to play. And I loved watching her hour long essay about it because what I was consuming was not just cyberpunk. Twenty seventy seven I was consuming her viewpoint of that at so one that affirmed my choice I'm like if if this creator can't make me like this then obviously don't buy it. But. But also like I was so there for her perspective because I was just like yeah okay I am entertained and I think eloke strength for me in particular is you know my hobbies are video games models things like that I want to consume. 15:27.97 Briar ALOK per ah perception I Want to consume their lens for things that are outside of my comfort zone. 15:35.88 Jala Yeah, and that's like um, everybody who listens to the show already knows that I'm like actively always studying and trying to learn and grow as a person and so I feel like since I have started following Alok on various. And places. Um I have been very very enriched It's definitely been a productive on my side kind of parasocial situation. You know, um, which I didn't even know the word parasocial until somebody referred to. Oh well I don't I don't want to have like a weird parasocial thing and I'm like no, we're friends like there is no pair of social here just because I happen to be on a podcast you know like that is that is farba from how I am as a person I just I don't do that I I don't that's not how I roll you know. 16:29.28 Jala Um, and so either way, um, Alok's performance is such and Alok's perspective is such that I feel like they really do a lot in terms of. Trying to meet people where they are like I'm going to put it in the show notes they did a podcast interview on the Man Enough podcast which the name makes me want to crawl up a wall and scream but like the the the guys and the girl who are on that show and do that show on Youtube. 17:06.85 Jala Um, are actually like okay they are. They are really they they are unfamiliar with the kind of world that Alok comes from you know like they are in a very let's just say a very cis space right? And um, they don't there's a lot of things that they don't understand and. When they said something that was potentially hurtful Alok just took what they said and broke it down and reframed it for them and by the end of the show. The hosts were like crying and saying thank you and like Alok has this way of being able to take. These these you know, kind of hurtful things that people say out of ignorance right? and um, turn it around make it a teaching moment but make it a teaching moment in such a gentle way that even though they're schooling that person you know. 18:04.60 Jala Um, it's the nicest possible way and you know and those people end up like thanking thanking them for doing that. Um, and that's that's something that I would love to be like to emulate myself I would love to be that way towards other people to be able to help. Folks grow. Also that's kind of the whole point of and purpose of my podcast. So. 18:32.70 Briar I Think that reminds me too of another essayist I like is ah he was talking about our ability to afford each other grace and he's not talking about forgiveness especially for heinous things. Um, but what he is saying is like. There's room to understand Nuance and he reminded me of a moment where my grandpa used to say a lot of people talk like a kid's swinging their fists and they don't realize that they hit anything sometimes and ah. 19:03.46 Briar You you know by not affording Grace You don't enter a space where you can't where you can challenge them and say are you really advocating for this because this is the road that that advocates for um, you know you may be at this stop. But I'm telling you where the end of the road goes and I think Yoke has ah perspective. Ah very well observed of present and future tense and ah generated off of their perspective on past tense. 19:33.89 Jala Yeah, yeah, that's a very good way to phrase it and I do love that Ah, way of mentioning like how people talk because that that really is um, an effective visual metaphor. 19:51.66 Briar I Mean heck I try I I tried to put on my little fancy hat and corn cob pipe and pretend I'm an intellectual but you know when I look at my own speech patterns I'm like yes sometimes I am just flailing out here. 20:10.28 Jala Well, that's everybody doesn't matter who you are I'm sure there are places and times where ALOK is the same way. Um, you know I'm not going to assume that I know them from everything that I've seen of them because that's that's ah again, a pairsocial I'm overhear kind of thing. 20:27.78 Jala But um I think it's more a human condition you know, ah the the aspiration is to reduce instances of that kind of a thing happening with this kind of blind eye. You know so but. 20:40.10 Briar Yeah, and the reduction of harm that accompanies that too. 20:46.72 Jala Yeah, yeah, so circling back to Alok and their performance. Their performance style is known for its stream of consciousness soundscapes political comment commentary and emotional range. And they remark that their style like their identity is in constant flux and refuses easy categorization and that speaks to me performance is about world-making where the audience can relate to 1 another with a commitment to vulnerability play interdependence and magic. They use performance as a mode of pedagogy to teach theories and histories that have been submerged and I've already kind of touched on that so there are some reoccurring themes in their work. Of course they unpack the dynamics of trans misogyny and reflect on the continued attack on trans and gender nonconforming people. And the shift and they they try to shift the representation of trans feminine gender nonconforming people in vice. They wrote an article and in it. They said the majority of people still believe that trans is what we look like and not who we are we are reduced to the spectacle of our appearance and again that kind of goes back to what we were saying earlier about um gender so often just being chalked up to all your chromosomes. Oh your external genitalia or whatever and that's. 22:20.75 Jala Ah, far too simplistic of a view. Yes. 22:22.28 Briar Can I posit a question that that just made me think um, do you think this has any relation to ah the the bigotry we see in western nations. Especially America is something that can be. Externalize something that can be observed ah a you know like so a lot of queer people have trouble understanding their privilege if they don't belong to a visibly marginalized group. Um. Do you think that like we've just our culture is so inundated with being able to observe a bigotry that when we think of the fundament of the trans experience. Um, we are applying a faulty framework. Based on our cultural. History. 23:14.62 Jala Yeah, because even when it comes to scientific method and things like that. There are so many instances in history where scientists have gotten things wrong and the reason for that is because they have their own framework through which they are working and thus their assumptions. Are automatically from a particular colored view and that's not something that they can easily change. They have a bias and it's an internal bias that they cannot alter. It's kind of like in all of the recent studies I've been doing about things like autism adhd. And other mental health stuff and neurodiversity. Ah Spoiler we're going to have an episode on that at some point. Um, either way when I've been studying that something for example, like when they were studying autism really most of the studies on autism were done by a nazi scientist. 24:12.78 Jala And it's from like a white person's perspective. It's from like ah a you know Nazi scientist looking at white boys and that doesn't speak to the experiences of other people who are not male or other people who are from other cultures and how things manifest for them. With autism versus a white male with autism. So. 24:35.71 Briar That That's such a great point too and I hope this is an additive anecdote. But I've been observing conversations recently about the reckoning that ah women experience Autism Differently Their their signs are different. Um, and also Cisness and transness experience Autism differently and how like such our our fundamental knowledge does have that Framework does have that bias you mentioned where it was such a minute a small group of the human experience that like we're learning. Oh yeah, a lot of women a lot more than we thought were autistic ah and a lot more system ah system Trans people experience it differently. 25:20.36 Jala There are a lot of people who have been mis ah misdiagnosed as a result of these biases just being assumed as correct in our scientific Community. So. You know, ah that is like a pervasive problem. It's not just when it comes to Gender. It's about so much else because everybody's viewpoint is colored in some way by whatever events shaped them in their life and they have a perspective you know I have a perspective you have a perspective. Everybody has their own perspective. And you know that's going to alter the way that we see things and y'all already know this because whenever I'm on an episode of any podcast I'm almost always like diametrically opposite whoever I'm on the show with right? like I mean not in this particular case. 26:10.66 Jala And not about a lot of things on Jola John's place because like I'm having these conversations about these topics like at least on the topical episodes I'm not because I'm having these discussions with people who share like a certain amount of a worldview I mean there's differences but you know there's a lot of touch points that we meet at right. So um, but like if I'm on a show about video games like my experiences are so different that my approach to this video game and how things come off to me is very different. You know. So so yeah, like this is the long long way around the conversation. 26:49.31 Jala Loop back to your point. Yes I feel that um the lens through which we view any of this stuff is going to be like ah ah something that is affected by what our environment what are growing up what our society like what our culture all of these different elements. All of that comes into play because even when it comes to other cultures. There are other cultures where gender isn't viewed the same way where you know, but someone's neurodiversity isn't viewed the same way that it is here. You know it's It's broadly. Just. The thing is is that Western nations have been kind of you know because of colonization. They've been going around and kind of forcing their viewpoint on the rest of the world for so long that the Western view is very pervasive. You know in a lot of. 27:45.37 Briar Oh yeah I wrote somewhere during your room. My garden I wrote about how Western Nation's biggest import Export is our cultural signifiers and through that extension our bigotries. 28:03.80 Jala Yeah, so um, looping back to ALOK and trying to get through a little bit more about them before because I really want to dig into this actual work. So ALOK advocates for trans feminine people to be regarded in their full personhood There is a long history of Transfem bodies being reduced to metaphor and to symbol and seen as stand-ins for ideas fantasies and nightmares I feel like that needs to be like underlined so much because really trans fem folks. Are super objectified. 28:40.72 Briar Even within our own spaces. 28:42.56 Jala Yeah, yeah, Alok draws attention to the fact that even though not gender nonconforming people are the most visible in public they remain the most neglected by the mainstream lgbt movement. So. Sit with that for a minute I mean like and again I feel like the reason for that is because there isn't an easy label for somebody who isn't conforming. They're not conforming by the nature of that they are not. You know, assigning themselves a simple label. And that doesn't sit well with people who like simplification and that's most people most people prefer a simple identifier. 29:32.90 Briar I Think that speaks to my personal experience quite well because a lot of it is am I outside the binary am I inside the binary does that even matter well well does it does it matter to me I think ah you know. 29:40.16 Jala No I mean like it it? Okay, Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah I was well. That's why I started I said no and then I was like wait wait wait. Let me backtrack a little bit. So. 29:51.30 Briar Oh oh no I think you're exactly right too because I've also come down on the side of it should not matter to the world. Um, and that if it does matter to me or doesn't matter to me. Ah, that's between me and me you know. 30:02.80 Jala Yeah, absolutely. 30:07.57 Briar So I think you got right exactly on my light of thought where I was with that. 30:13.11 Jala Yeah, yeah, so Alok is committed to challenging what they call the international crisis of loneliness that is a big thing and that that also actually relates to um. Eventual episode that we're going to have about internet and identity and like how how people negotiate the space of the internet because you know it's really the millennials that really started the jacket around with that you know I mean like I know there's gen xers that also do but um, you know it was my generation. When I was a preteen that we got Aol you know and chat rooms and talking to people all over the place that you had never seen in your life really became a thing so that is something we will eventually have another episode about spoiler. Um. But they combat this international crisis of loneliness by creating public spaces for processing pain and establishing meaningful connection. This work includes reimagining and deploying technology as a conduit for intimacy. They went through an artist in residence program at the invisible dog art center where they performed a piece entitled strangers are potential friends and hosted a valentine's cry in to create a space for public grief and explore alternative forms of intimacy and interdependence. 31:43.75 Jala Alok facilitates feelings workshops across the world to develop transformative ways of interacting with ourselves one another and as a way of promoting emotional justice and wellness they challenge western rationalism and. And emphasis on reductive categories and instead insist on the complexity and enormity of everyone and everything they want to create work and ways of relating to each other that are less about being understood. And more about being felt. I left a lot of pauses in there for full folks to process that if you so just tuned out for a second back track it by 30 seconds and listen to that again. Okay, like that's big and important right? there? yes. 32:34.53 Briar The yeah that is a huge mission statement I almost was like do I jump in for this pause and I'm like no process you know, even though this is something I've I've already read the show notes I already know what we're going to say. Ah. 32:41.99 Jala Yeah. But now you can talk okay like it I've I've finished reading it now you can say what you'd like to say before we talk about the work. 32:51.17 Briar Yeah, well, it's such a. It's such a lofty goal too that it's just like hearing it out loud stuns me just as much as the first time I read it you know, ah, there's something there go back and listen to it people. 33:03.30 Jala Yeah, yeah, yeah, because this gets at the heart of a lot of what's wrong with a lot of folks right now like so many people just need a hug. 33:22.78 Jala They need to be they need to be heard and they need to have a place to grieve for all of these different things that are going on in our world that are so heavy and for all of the changes because ah you know our again. Our generation was party to so many different radical changes in the way things work. That we're still trying to figure out how to you know, mediate everything. So and the fact that everybody is complex. Everything is complex. It's not so simple and you don't have to understand someone to be able to relate. Them that rate there needs to be underlined like 7000 times because ah I know for a fact from our talks together Briar back in the day when I first was talking to you that I was trying desperately to understand. 34:20.67 Jala Your perspectives your views your everything and like you know I respected you and I cared about you and you know we definitely had the feeling connection. But I also was furiously trying to understand as well and like I was doing a lot more legwork that if I just let go and unclenched my butt for a little while. 34:40.54 Jala And just like existed around you I would just like have it by osmosis right? and I think that there's just because of the way that the west approaches Everything we all kind of in the west feel that urge to understand everything and kind of feel. In some ways I think ah, some folks and in some situations we feel entitled to understanding and that's something that I've been trying to actively unlearn and I think that's something that other people need to think about as Well. Do you feel entitled to Understand. Do you need to understand something in order to accept it. No, you don't do you need to understand something in order to feel compassion. No, you don't. 35:30.50 Briar That's often the last step to accepting something is relinquishing your your stake to understanding. So yeah I think that that's good. There's some profundity there. 35:44.76 Jala Yeah, yeah, I feel like this episode like when we're reading um the poems as well. There's's going to be some pauses with that. We're just going to leave there for people to sit with it. You know because it really this is this kind of ah medium and this kind of topic. With as much depth as it's got requires some processing time. So do you want to get into it or do you have any further thoughts about Alok in general or any of the concepts. We've talked about so far. 36:15.15 Briar Um, ah you know I So you're the host and I'm not going to try to steal your show from you but I do want to say like um as someone who tries to be empathetic just like the broad blanket content warning for a lot of things. Like if you find yourself rounding up to your trauma when you're left room to breathe just be aware that um you you might feel some things. 36:41.65 Jala Yeah, absolutely and by the way this is not stealing my show I invited you on my show we are partners in this endeavor. So you're not stealing anything friend. 36:50.10 Briar Oh I Just I just use like we usually leave content warnings for the people who are on on the whose names are on the place. It. 37:02.81 Jala I it's all fine then my name might be on there but it's an open house. Okay, okay, so without further ado let us talk about Alok's books starting with them in public which is 2017 37:22.75 Jala And it's a book of poetry it functions as a meditation on the harassment of trans feminine people. It also addresses childhood family and hometown drama. The poems are compiled from 2014 to 2017 and for me at least I don't know how you feel about this Briar. Ah, they are very poignant and thoughtful. But overall I don't feel they are as strong as allok's later work in your wound my garden like I feel like they found a stronger voice by the time they wrote your wound my garden this is an important book. Either way. And you know it's it's a kind of foundational text you know about Alok's viewpoint and Alok's mission but I also feel like there's been some refinement over time. So. 38:14.14 Briar So I I definitely think from like a skill and craft standpoint a thousand percent correct you are you are right on that. Um I also feel like the purpose of each collection lends itself to. Um, and I gleaned this before I read it while we were talking about something you said triggered a thought in my brain that was the twenty Seventeen book feine public is a response and the ah your wound my garden the Twenty Twenty one book 38:48.69 Briar 2021 That was a um that is a call and it made me think about my creative process especially as someone who is attempting to be a writer How I'm working on book 2 and book one that I'm working on. Ah, going through the publishing industry and navigating that ah book one is a response. It's a book about labor and things like that which is something that I was very down about when I wrote it and I created a whole world and now I'm in the sequel. And now that I've already given my response to my experience in my world. Um, now I'm just calling I'm I am reaching back out into the world I am creating for creation's sake. 39:38.27 Jala And I feel like that is a really natural flow and by the way you are not attempting to write. You are a writer. Um, whether or not someone has published that does not change that fact. So ah, let's let's think about it in in a you know. 39:56.00 Jala More productive light there you you have been actively writing you are a writer. Um, either way. So I think that that is something that is a natural creative flow I kind of feel the same thing has happened to me in the times that I have been writing things and also making artwork that I kind of. 40:15.27 Jala Follow a similar track so it seems natural and maybe that's just anecdotal to my experience. What appears to be happening with ALOK and then what you are telling me Briar. Um other writers feel free to shoot me a message and tell me what you think. You know our other creatives I guess is a better way to say that. 40:33.17 Briar Yeah I was going to say I feel this is my illustration work a lot too. 40:39.90 Jala Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So um I will say when I was reading both of these books because I've seen so much of ALOK like on Youtube reading their work I just can't read this poem without hearing ALOK in my head with the pauses and that the. 40:57.49 Jala The way that they enunciate everything I cannot mimic that to save my soul So it's going to be like I'm going to feel sad reading it aloud just because I can't sound like ALOK. So. 41:11.56 Briar Yeah I think if you like any of what we're putting out today. It's definitely worth investing some time to understand elos um ah, metaphorical voice and their physical voice has that performance has. 41:29.95 Briar Artistry to it I think it's worth understanding both those voices. 41:33.49 Jala Yeah, and there will be links in the show notes and and both on the public release of the podcast as well as on the coffee with all the more detailed notes as well. So um, folks can check that out. It'll be right there in your show notes. So. All right? Ah Briar. Do you want to read the first one or do you want me to read it. 41:49.00 Briar Peep ah sure I'll read the first one and um as I ah sorry my list just disappeared you want. Do you want us to read the first poem straight tax 1 through 5 42:01.67 Jala Ah, Street talks. 42:06.71 Briar Pages 4 and so okay, so as I queue up to read this I just want to say like I had a unique experience with these 2 books. They're only about 50 pages long a piece. Um. I knew from my first couple stanzas from the foreword I wanted a physical copy of this book and then I did something that I'd never do because I used to think like you know, books are holy let them get Musty Dusty let their spines crack. Ah, let them be loved but respected I started writing in these books and that's because this is this is my femin public. This is my experience. So. 42:54.52 Briar My notes are actually written exactly on the page the ah moments after I had a thought. 42:58.13 Jala Yeah,, that's that's awesome because I had a teacher back in high school who kept on telling me because I was the same way for years and years and she was like no, it's when you write in the book that that book becomes your book and that is your story. At that point when you were writing your notes in it and so oh no, no, no, no, Um, yeah. 43:18.19 Briar Yep, and I'm not talking down about the ritual of preserving books or things like that like that's important to me too. It was just particularly important for me to have to create a new ritual for myself. 43:31.91 Jala Well and then to um, the reason I have you on the show is because I really really wanted you to read these books. So um, do you have it open. Do you have it ready street tax. 43:43.86 Briar Yep, ah so a yolk has an anecdote that was I wrote these poems as an offering to all the people who harass me on the street and I think we've got a very juicy one coming up near like number 5 that's. Ah, ah, that's queued up. So just be waiting today a man on the street pointed to me and said what the hell is that I wanted to turn around tell him that I got this stress on sale and that I got this body for free. But. 44:20.28 Briar You have been making me pay for both ever since. Ah, sure. 44:21.89 Jala Do you want to read the whole thing and then we'll like the the whole the first 5 stanzas and then we'll so talk about it at the end. 44:31.49 Briar When cis women tell me to shave if I want to look like a real woman I remember that men are so lazy that they make women do the work of a patriarchy for them I smile back say no thank you by which I mean. What could be more real than this to the man who said you better, get the fuck away from me or else today on w 15 street. Wow west fifteenth street I wonder if your request for space was to make it explicit the distance between who you pretend to be and who you actually are. Worry about the toll of the disconnected the toll that the disconnect is having on you is hard to live in a world where our most intimate desires are the ones we are told to repress I spent the rest of the day filling in the sentence for you or else I will kiss you or else I'll cry on your shoulder or else I will have to stop lying. Myself I'm sorry that you have been made to fear something as simple as want I too. Ah I am afraid of the things I want to ah to the point of need the truth is I needed you to finish that sentence I needed to know I need you to understand you were a stranger on the street. But in that moment you were every person in my life who wanted to love me but ended up hurting me instead I ah yeah that that that that last line gets me good. Ah. 45:53.68 Jala I'm getting chills. Okay sorry. 46:00.67 Jala Yeah, and this is this is only the third third section out of 5 that we're reading. There's more poem than what we are reading for this one. 46:10.28 Briar Stanza 4 to the 2 men who yelled that's a man in address. Hey everyone. That's a man in a dress while pointing at me on sixth avenue I wanted to turn around and point back shout. Hey everyone. That's an insecure man that's an insecure man that's an insecure man. But then I realized how redundant is sounded like describing a color as bluish bluish or a fight as a violent conflict. 46:42.48 Briar What is a man but a private repression made public made a profit made policy. What is a man but a question to Mark so Lonely ah, but a question Mark so lonely it wrapped around itself so many times it began to resemble a body. 47:00.34 Briar Spent the last twenty five years trying to figure out where man begins and where man ends and what I have discovered is that man begins only where I end let me be more explicit man begins when I end or rather man begins because I am ended which is to say in order for man to exist I cannot. Which goes to say one day I got so confident in myself I was no longer a man which goes to say I have people come out to me as men every day by leaving me behind. It's hard to have your abundance mistaken for absence. 47:39.55 Briar Stands a 5 when the seventeenth person takes my ah photo of me without my consent today I begin to wonder if I have a body anymore I equals a recognition at some point so many hands and eyes and have consumed me. That there was simply nothing left for myself. This is what happens when private parts become public domain and I say the instead of my because I looked in between my legs and saw the chat forum happening there I tried to chime in but I got blocked have. Equals how naive it would be to believe I could own something that the others ah excuse me have equals. It would be ah, be to believe I could own something that others hold on to so dearly. The other day. My doctor asked me to breathe and I tried but I forgot how there's no frame of reference for all the images I remember of myself involving me doing everything but breathing. There's no animated gif for that. Ah Jeff jafe. 48:45.78 Jala I say Gif other people say Jeff I don't know. 48:50.90 Briar A there are hundreds of photos of me circulating in text threads and the web forums across the world look at the souvenir I found here in New York look at this thing I saw today in the mall Hashtag me hashtag same hashtag my bf. Hashtag tier emoji hashtag what wwf hashtag goals what I have learned ah learned is that the only socially permissible. It is only socially permissible to identify with me online. There's a type of loneliness that comes from everyone. Staring at you but no one see you every time someone takes a photo of me I want to give them a hug and remind them that I am real but the moment the mean becomes a person the screen cracks and there's violence body equals I have some have come to the conclusion then. That the only place I am allowed to exist is a photograph exhibit a costume for play exhibit b how inspirational read I would never a transgressive model breaking down gender norms exhibit c, an art installation exhibit d a social media selfie that inspires you. Only like the photo not stop the violence exhibit e share this lamo ah laughing my ass off a monkey wears a dress and calls himself a woman exhibit me exhibit me to prohibit me. 50:19.25 Jala Yeah, it's it the the poem goes on this is like half of the poem. It's a pretty long one especially in the first book. But this gives you a pretty good idea of the kinds of things that Aloca is writing about and. I'm excited to talk about them as much as like I'm going through so many emotions listening and reading along with you I'm like I'm I'm you know feeling stress and I'm feeling sad and I'm like tearing up a little bit and all different kinds of things just feeling feeling the poem as it goes. 50:57.56 Jala So Let's just start with the title. The title is street tax and has an asterisk I wrote these poems as an offering to all of the people who harass me on the street because Trans fem folks, not gender nonconforming folks. They don't have the capacity to walk down the street without getting harassed by everybody. Um I don't laugh because I think it's funny I think I'm laughing because it's sad. Yeah, yeah, it's It's the it's just trying not to cry. Ah so. 51:25.32 Briar The prevention of crying. Yeah. 51:33.60 Jala That's a powerful like paying the street tax in order to actually just exist on the street I have to pay this tax. So I'll reread the huh. 51:44.18 Briar Ah I I think we Also we we just forget that being allowed to exist within the social contract Exist Publicly is a privilege and. I Think every one of these passages gets at something that drives that home for me. 52:05.64 Jala Yeah, so I will reread the first one and then we'll talk about it one to-day a man on the street pointed to me and said what the hell is that I wanted to turn around tell him I got this dress on sale. And I got this body for free but you have been making me paid for both ever since So you've got the immediate dehumanizing pointing at what the hell is that. 52:37.63 Briar I was my ah first note says there goes my personhood. 52:43.68 Jala Yeah, yeah, exactly and Alok's response is is great. You know like it's I got this dress on sale and I got this body for free. You know like that's that's good stats right? there right. But you have been making me pay for both ever since you know just the endless suffering that they have to go through. 53:11.84 Briar This is um, probably my platonic ideal of when someone says I use dark comedy to cope. Um, it tried to aspire to get to this level for dark comedy. Um I snorted out loud when I read this. 53:27.70 Jala Well and at the same time It's like the way that they say it is such that it's still not aggressive in the way that the response is like they aren't. Aggressing back. You know they aren't dehumanizing the other person they are bringing home to that person and underlining what that person's ah, effects are on their life by acting the way that they are. And that is kind of like a refrain of how Alok deals with these things they deconstruct these kinds of hurtful hateful things that people say and do and then they break it down and they reflect it in such a way that. Again, like to me it just it's such a way that just kind of provides light sheds light on something and maybe that person will be a little contrite later. Maybe not at the moment but maybe they'll think back on that later and go oh shit, you know. And that's the hope. That's the aspiration but you know it it takes some getting to get there. You know so 2 when cis women tell me to shave if I want to look like a real woman I remember that men are so lazy. 54:57.89 Jala They make women do the work of patriarchy for them I smile back say no thank you by which I mean what could be more real than this as someone who is assigned female at birth this whole. I remember that the men are so lazy they make women do the work of the patriarchy for them. I mean like that's part of the rhetoric that women have when it comes to I don't need to shave you know like I don't need to shave you don't shave. Why do I need to shave and things like that I don't need to wear Makeup. You don't wear Makeup. You know that kind of um. Response that a lot of feminists have to the patriarchy is you know, pointing out. Yeah, like the patriarchy makes women want to do these things you know makes them think they want this and they don't question. It. They don't bucket. 55:52.40 Briar I Think to we we talked about the maintenance that we Foistd upon women the maintenance that we forcedd upon femmes that um feminidity is an opt in experience. Ah. 56:08.30 Briar We've talked about that in the past sometimes on the show sometimes behind the scenes. Um that the passive act the natural state of a woman allowing her body hair to grow by doing nothing. She has opted out of something which is. 56:27.30 Briar Just this logical loop that kind of fries my brain a little bit. 56:29.27 Jala And yep, yep, absolutely. 56:35.55 Briar I Just wanted to also say that this harkens back to when you had your episode with Zombie about masculinity with nonbinary people. Um, you allowed me to write a piece that you posted and I talked about ah. 56:53.40 Briar How part of the panopticon set up requires not just knowing when and where your watch but also deputizes and turns everyone around you into one of your jailers. Um, and I think this is poignant talking about. It's not just Cis women. 57:12.46 Briar And 1 of the passages we haven't read yet. Ah is ah stanza 6 is actually about trans women doing something very similar to this. Um, anyone. 57:22.77 Jala Well once we yeah once we get past 5 if you want to go ahead and read 6 so you can talk about that too. That's fine. Um, yeah, some. 57:29.30 Briar Okay, um, yeah and it does this this all I thought I had relates forward to is um I wrote that it's a 1 oh 2 version of transness. Ah well like there is ah just. 1 on 1 understanding transness like understanding dysphoria understanding why to change your gender things like that is you know fine and that's where some people stop but a yoke is very um on that one. Oh 2 shit as I like to say where i. 58:03.49 Briar They they don't need to medicalize or rationalize anything and they realize like they don't owe Cissness comfortability. They don't owe Cissness passing. They don't owe Cisness cisness. 58:19.90 Briar So that's that's why I came down on that passage. 58:20.91 Jala And I love the fact that the last line of that section is what could be more real than this because Alok is just being genuinely themselves. There is nothing that they are trying to do to shape themselves to someone else's expectation. 58:40.18 Jala But a Cis woman who is telling them that they need to shave to quote unquote look like a real woman they are participating in the patriarchy and reinforcing that patriarchy and that's that was something that I brought up on some episode or another or maybe more than one I don't remember but that's definitely a. 58:59.13 Jala Ah, like an ongoing theme. That's a ah you know, big thing like Patriarchy is not just reinforced by men. 59:03.25 Briar Yeah, and it's that participation. Also they're participating in their own oppression if they if they follow that and that's that's like we and I talked about giving people grace to see where that turn they took leads out. 59:07.62 Jala Yes, yeah. 59:21.11 Jala Section 3 to the man who said you better, get the fuck away from me or else today on West Fifteenth street I wonder if your request for space was to make explicit the difference or distance between who you pretend to be and who you actually are. I worry about the toll this disconnect is having on you. It is hard to live in a world where our most intimate desires are the ones we are told to repress I spend the rest of the day filling in the sentence for you or else I will kiss kiss you or else I will cry on your shoulder. Or else I will have to stop lying to myself I am sorry that you have been made to fear something as simple as want I too am afraid of things I want to the point of need the truth is I needed you to finish the sentence. I needed to know I need you to understand you were a stranger on the street but in that moment you were every person in my life who wanted to love me but ended up hurting me instead. 01:00:34.41 Jala So the distance between who you pretend to be and who you actually are I think this really starts in on kind of like another one of Alok's refrains you know ah what could be more real than this alok isn't pretending to be something alokca' is just being who they are these other people they're pantommiming. They're playing a part. They have a role and they are sticking to it. You know they're acting. 01:01:08.70 Briar So um, this might actually and not to be confrontational or spicy or anything but I was responding to this in my head line by line and this is one that I actually had a little bit of pushback towards. Ah, towards the oak. Um, mostly because I was like oh this feels like you're just coping that you're just applying yourself trying to put them on your level. You're trying to elevate them to avoid the hurt they wanted to cause you but I think. I was wrong. Um I think once you get past about the halfway point you realize that um a yolk is very cognizant of the projection they are putting on this individual but they also think. That that this person deserves that projection that this person deserves that Grace. Um, and then they also do acknowledge that it does hurt by the end of it and um. 01:02:19.71 Briar I Need you to understand you were a stranger on that street. But in that moment you were every person in my life who wanted to love me but ended up hurting me instead I think they're cutting to the quick of the human experience is I don't wake up and say I want to say fuck this person. 01:02:37.48 Briar I Don't wake up choosing violence. Um I mean reportedly there are people who do feel that sometimes as a joke sometimes as true the very truth but I think at the end of the day. Um. 01:02:52.69 Briar We are not choosing violence for the sake of violence and that it is informed by our experiences. 01:02:58.70 Jala Yeah, and I think it's a very good point that you put up here where you are mentioning that Alok is projecting right? because they say I spent the rest of the day filling in the sentence for you and those endings of that sentence. Are all the things that ALOK is thinking from their perspective and. 01:03:19.57 Briar Yeah I think that's exactly where I turned around and was like oh you, you are very aware of what you're doing you are coping you went from coping parentheses negative to coping parentheses healing. 01:03:34.97 Jala Yeah, the truth is I needed you to finish the sentence I needed to know they needed to know what? what or else? What what was it in your worldview. What was it? What was the ending there to you. Because I don't know what that ending is and then it shifts right? there I need you to understand you were a stranger on that street. But in that moment you were every person in my life and so. There's another pivot. There's several pivots in that particular stanza that happen. So yeah. 01:04:13.84 Briar Yeah, just well crafted night. Nice to go on an emotional roller coastaster across what like 8 stanzas or 8 lines here. 01:04:22.83 Jala Oh I know because like um I'm like checking my heart like my heart is like beating more and then it calms down and then it beats more and then it calms down. So like I'm I'm definitely like responding to everything as I'm reading it so 4 to the 2 men who yelled. That's a man in a dress hey everyone that's a man in a dress while pointing at me on sixth avenue I wanted to turn around and point back shout hey everyone that's an insecure man that's an insecure man that is an insecure man. But then I realized how redundant it sounded. Like describing a color as bluish blue or a fight as violent conflict. What is a man but a private repression made public made profit made policy. What is a man but a question Mark so lonely it wrapped around itself. So many times it began to resemble a body I have spent the fast past 25 years trying to figure out where man begins and where man ends and what I have discovered is that man begins only where I end let me be more explicit man begins. When I end or rather man begins because I am ended which is to say in order for man to exist I cannot which goes to say one day I got so confident in myself I was no longer a man which goes to say I have people come out to me as men every day. 01:05:53.22 Jala By leaving me behind. It is hard to have your abundance mistaken as absence so much going on there. So. 01:06:04.36 Briar Yeah, yeah, ah, a special shout out just a highlight to 1 line ah calling a fight of violent conflict I think is just such an as dote way of wording things. Because that is every newspaper you have every read boiled down into ah into euphemism how they talk about things like we we have heard violent conflict from every newspaper we've ever read I guarantee it. 01:06:31.78 Jala Yeah, well and the thing is is that there's a lot of there's several pivots again that go on here so I will say when it came to that point where they're saying I wanted to turn around and point back and shout. 01:06:45.80 Jala Hey everyone that's an insecure man that part I was grinning so big you know because Insecurity is so much of what causes a lot of this aggression right? so. 01:06:58.30 Briar I Think what I liked about that too is the subtext that we didn't turn around and didn't didn't shout that was ah like an acknowledgment of like what is the it wasn't going to change anything. 01:07:13.77 Briar It's like ah something I remember hearing on the duck duck Fee Network a lot is being right is not always enough and I think that um. 01:07:30.40 Briar The look. It's an insecure man is one of those things that definitely informs being right is not always enough. 01:07:39.11 Jala Yeah, so that part that you mentioned the fight as a violent conflict that kind of actually sets it up for the next part of the um section because the next section right? after violent conflict is what is a man but a private repression made public. 01:07:57.70 Jala Made Profit made policy Now we're shifting it over to ah the social sphere the religious sphere and also the political sphere like it's it's broadening out. 01:08:10.69 Briar Yeah, and I think that. 01:08:12.82 Jala It's not just that guy on the street anymore. It's literally all of these people. It's every man you know. 01:08:17.97 Briar I I think that explicitly alludes to the violence that men allow patriarchy to do to them. Ah, for instance, like why their suicide rates are so high Why they're so lonely. Um, it is repression made public. It is the act of being repressed. That I am advertising you know? Um, yeah that that I'm stealing part of that from them. But yeah that that's just like um from talking to people in my life masculine people and men who. 01:08:35.55 Jala Yeah, that's a very good way to phrase it. 01:08:54.40 Briar Feel things and feel things that they feel they are deeper than they should be um, they almost take pride in that repression and then years later they realized that they weren't they weren't leaving themselves with scars. They were leaving themselves with open wounds. 01:09:13.53 Briar And so yeah I think that is explicit to me when we get to that line. 01:09:17.34 Jala Well and then the next line after that What is a man but a question marks so lonely it wrapped around itself So many times it began to resemble a body these people these men are lonely and trapped within themselves. With this repression right? and all of these these questions and these these things they're not allowed to have you know like it's tying them up. 01:09:47.73 Briar And yeah, the the only comfort they have is the self. Yeah I think you could almost animate a question Mark curling around the the period that makes up the bottom half of that like ah, beautiful, beautiful imagery to me. 01:10:03.36 Jala Yeah, and all the remaining stanzas in this section just kind of ah sums up to the last line. It is hard to have your abundance mistaken as absence and that line is referring to this ah guy on the street. Basically pointing at ALOK and saying Alok isn't enough ALOKke is missing the essential qualities of a man and then ALOK is like no I am full you are empty. Actually you know, um, you know like there's. 01:10:33.52 Briar Yeah, ah that that's that heart comess back to the journey that you've been purvy to with me is I went from I don't have a gender to New Gender plus. 01:10:45.58 Briar Retain The gender you had along with starting a new gender journey. Um, and this reminded me of a joke I texted you a while ago. Um I Also ah the the line just before that which goes to say I have people come out to me as men every day by leaving me behind. Ah. 01:11:04.69 Briar Ah, the joke I remember is round here. Camo is gender affirming care. Ah, that wouldn't be an issue but also that's accompanied with tautological bigotry which is also gender affirming to them. Um, and it's it's that rejection. It's that hate. 01:11:24.20 Briar That is also a sign of masculinity. Um, and that I've just come to associate with camo. 01:11:30.13 Jala Yeah, for sure so moving right? along to stanza five because I realize we have so many more poems to read. Um, okay so when the seventeenth person takes a photo of me without my consent today I begin to wonder if I have. 01:11:47.58 Jala A body anymore I a recognition that at some point so many hands and eyes consumed me that there was simply nothing left for myself. This is what happens when the private parts become public domain. And I say the instead of my because I looked in between my legs and saw a chat forum happening there I tried to chime in but got blocked that is powerful anyway have how naive it would be to believe I could own something that others hold onto so dearly. 01:12:20.44 Jala The other day. My doctor asked me to breathe and I tried but I forgot how there was no frame of reference all the images I remember of myself involve me doing everything but breathing there is no animated gif for that hey there are hundreds of photos of me circulating in text threads and web forums across the world. Look at this souvenir I found in New York look at this thing today I saw at the mall Hashtag me hashtags seem hashtag mybf hashtag tiempoji hashtag wtf Hashtag goals. What I have learned is that it is only socially permissible to identify with me online. There is a type of loneliness that comes from everyone staring at you but no one seeing you every time someone takes a photo of me I want to give them a hug and remind them that I am real but the moment a meme becomes a person the screen cracks and there is violence body. I have come to the conclusion then that the only place I am allowed to exist is a photograph exhibit a a costume for a play exhibit b how inspirational read I would never a transgressive model breaking down gender norms exhibit c and art installation. Exhibit d a social media selfie that inspires you to only like the photo not stop the violence exhibit e share this lmao a monkey wears a dress and calls himself a woman exhibit me exhibit me. 01:13:51.56 Jala To prohibit me. So in just so many words Alok says you know this is what happens when the private parts become public domain and I say the instead of my because I looked in between my legs and saw a chat forum happening there. I tried to chime in but got blocked. That's like every gender reveal party. That's everybody discussing like again breaking down somebody's gender identity or rather like their perception of someone's gender identity. By their external genitalia. 01:14:31.97 Briar Yeah, it's it's the one two punch of objectifying someone and also removing their personhood. Ah, just as like a little cherry on top of that. Um. 01:14:48.16 Briar I Really liked in the ah paragraph a paragraph. Ah, ah the thought I had was the closet comes for us even when we're out of it and I was just thinking about how that's like a type of violence that like um, we do within our own. 01:15:06.44 Briar Community A lot of queer people is um, there is Envy and Envy is perfectly valid feel envy. All you want but sometimes like if you you can inflict your envy on another person and and. 01:15:24.43 Briar Ruin their day. Um, so even even though ALOK has to live their life outside of the closet now it still is coming for them. 01:15:33.18 Jala Trying to take them back into the closet and they're like no I exist out here I am real so there is a type of loneliness that comes from everyone staring at you but no one seeing you. 01:15:47.35 Jala And whenever there's kind of conflict or anything like okay, my Discord is a wonderful, beautiful place and I love everybody who is in there every once in a while folks get into a discussion and there's differing viewpoints and every once in a while folks get so into the act of debating that they forget who they're talking to and so i've. Said to them on these occasions. hey hey, hey folks just stop for a minute and see each other please see each other remember who you're talking to and remember their situation and remember that they have feelings and everybody in there is wonderful and they they understand and they. You know, go on and and do whatever and then everything's fine, but like you know that's a natural human situation right? like people get into conflict because of ah various things. Um, and if people have different viewpoints and they want to discuss them if emotions start to run high. There's going to be some hurt involved there. Even if it's not intentional. So it's always important to remember to see whoever it is that you're communicating with and I say that so often that I beg that speaks to me right there every time someone takes a photo of me I want to give them a hug and remind them that I am real like I want everybody to. 01:17:04.26 Jala Like listen to those 2 lines right. 01:17:04.91 Briar So forgive me for using the langua franca of the duck feed network but I came to duck feed pretty early in their watch out for fireballs run and. I wanted to fight them like Pokemon where Cole was the nice boy and Gary was the negative Nancy um, and then I like something gary just said and something about how like their partners really made it click that like yeah, they're they're people and. Gary's opinion is limited to him and his perspective on media. Ah, media is not a person media can't defend itself. Um, and now we're here years later of how I think and how that informs my personhood. But yeah I just think that's a really sharp. And just do observation. 01:17:55.51 Jala Yeah, yeah, and the ending part of the stanza where it's like I am only allowed to exist in a photograph exhibit me to prohibit me. Everybody's judging everybody's sharing but nobody is stopping the violence. Ah, social media Selfie that inspires you to only like the photo not stop the violence people aren't you know behind the message behind the truth of the person they are behind Oh. That's cool, how empowering and then they move on and they don't take action. They don't become an advocate or ally. 01:18:31.95 Briar Yep, and the picture is a picture is a perfect thing to project ourselves onto and not reflect ourselves off of um. 01:18:39.73 Jala Yeah, that's a good way to put it. So did you want to read the 6 stanza or did you have something else to say about the fifth one 01:18:47.95 Briar Sure I Just also want to say that the the body part of the ah chapter or the the body line um the how inspirational thing just like I immediately felt my dandder rise because. 01:19:04.91 Briar Ah, the exact thought I have is I don't want to inspire by existing I want to inspire through my works I would rather do that or languish and obscurity. Um, and yeah, like like it is who if someone told me you're You're so inspirational. 01:19:12.69 Jala Well yeah, it. 01:19:22.87 Briar Just for being a little femin public I that would cry my gears. 01:19:26.44 Jala Well, it's kind of like and we've recently the last episode topical episode that came out was about accessibility so we were talking about disability part 2 and of course inspiration porn for disabled folks. Oh look at these. Folks who overcame this stuff overcame their disability. Well you know, ah we pointed out Andy pointed out in that episode. He was like well what people are seeing is they're like oh look they overcame this oppression but they are not looking at the oppression which is the problem. 01:19:56.72 Briar Yeah, and the the the oppression is gone. It's solved. Yeah. 01:20:02.40 Jala They're not fixing the yeah, they're not even looking. They're not even looking at the oppression. They're not looking at the larger social issue here. They are just looking at the thing and going Oh that's cool I feel better looking at this thing and then you know like they don't fight for you know they're again. They're not being advocates for disabled folks. They're not. 01:20:21.34 Jala You know, helping any of the situation that is causing the disabled folks to struggle in the first place like you know the social model of disability is such that you know people are disabled because society limits their accessible. You know accessibility to you know things they they that society puts boundaries up puts barriers up that make it harder for disabled people to do their thing. 01:20:49.90 Briar Yep, and in my ideal world. They shouldn't even have to overcome the bare minimum to just exist on the same plane. Everyone else exists. 01:20:55.43 Jala Exactly and that's for everybody that that's also going into like the gender identity stuff here. Nobody should have to have to fight this battle of just existing in the world. But here we are in. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. 01:21:06.98 Briar We're gonna We're gonna hit our watchword of intersectionality again. Yeah, the. 01:21:12.68 Jala I mean like that's that's what it's all about I mean people are complicated where we're taking these themes that alo has laid out for us right? So ah, do you want to read the 6 stanza so we can move on to the next poem. 01:21:23.26 Briar Ah, so the sixth Santa starts ah to the four trans woman who pointed and laughed at me shouting what the fuck do you think you're doing is this what we are fighting for to be on the other side of the joke I wonder when they see us see ourselves like this. Who gets the last laugh. Um and that that ah entire stanza just made me say wow those women really said fuck you got mine and this this is this calls back to when I mentioned 1 oh two trans this how. 01:22:02.13 Briar Pat. Ah if you want to pass go for it more power to you I will give you every resource and emotional support I can afford. Ah, but also like that can be 1 ah 1 transness. Ah and you should understand that people who don't pass. Are not always looking to pass. 01:22:21.77 Jala Yeah, and also not 1 damn person owes anyone else passing owes anyone else a simple identifier that's not. 01:22:30.38 Briar Yeah, ah and we talked about how even after we're out of the closet. It can still haunt you even if it's not going back in the closet itself. It can still haunt you with pain. Um, and I said. Ah, people who act like this are probably responsible for people like me who don't come out until they're adults and their second Puberty has to be a lot harder if they decide to go through it and things like that. 01:22:57.97 Jala Yeah, absolutely so are we ready to move on to the next poem. Okay, so I'll read this one. 01:23:06.70 Briar Um, yeah, so sorry I will ah also start ah ah, becoming a little more not not reticent um, upper level. 01:23:19.88 Jala Okay, so I just want to make sure that we can cover as much as we can and I really want to talk about your wound my garden and we're already at an hour so oh I I know right? and that's there's just. 01:23:29.93 Briar Ah, yeah I joked this would be your first three part podcast across a hundred pages and the gift of prophecy is with me tonight. 01:23:38.59 Jala Ah, well, there's just so much material here to talk about and I definitely encourage listeners to go buy these books and read them and if you want to talk about them. Please hit us up and talk about them. So ah. 01:23:46.00 Briar Yeah, if you have the ability thirty bucks both books wonderful little books. Beautiful little books to the photography is worth it. 01:23:55.20 Jala Absolutely so next poem where do all the sad girls go when the sun is shining when the people are partying when the country is celebrating tell me where do all of the sad girls. Go tried to love myself. But went outside and they punished me for it. Tried to heal myself but went inside and I punished me for it where do all of the sad girls go in this World. We call people depressed and not disposable as if trauma is something we'd Choose. Or chose and not the other way around where do all of the sad girls go when they told us it would get better but it didn't when they told us to try harder but we couldn't where do all of the sad girls. Go. And this world that requires us to write poems about the people who have their hands wrapped around our necks for the very people who have their hands wrapped around our necks to recognize that they indeed have their hands wrapped around our necks in this world where resistance is a requirement for survival. Progress Fairytale to keep us sleeping hope the drug they won't stop prescribing where the only way to heal is to hurt where the only way to heal is to hurt won't you tell me. 01:25:26.78 Jala Where do all the sad girls go when the only way to heal is to hurt another sad girl with a story about her world War of a body that we cannot hear because of our own world War of a body won't you tell me. Where do all the sad girls. Go. 01:25:51.26 Jala So there's just there's so so much going on here so you know like this poem is mostly about just of course recognizing the hurt and the the pain and the fact that there isn't a place for us to grieve where. 01:26:09.91 Jala Where do you grieve You can't be outside. They punished me for it. You can't be inside I punished me for it. You know. 01:26:18.27 Briar Yeah, some ah some of the greatest violence I have done has been to myself behind closed doors. Ah and and that could be emotionally and physically for some or physical for some people you know? Um, yeah, and. 01:26:34.97 Briar Grieving in public. It's that kind of intimacy Yoke is advertising for not advertising for advocating for with things like their valentine's cry in and things like that. So. 01:26:50.00 Briar Just want to say like money where your mouth is This is a person delivering. 01:26:52.10 Jala Yeah, absolutely and you know like I really feel that they're getting at the heart of you know again, something that is really crucial that is missing from our society is like allowing people. The time and the space and the grace to really feel their feels. You know like everybody just talks about get over it and you know and tying the boot straps tighter. You know, pulling yourself up. Whatever whatever, kind of nonsense people talk about you know because that's the American way or whatever on. 01:27:26.69 Jala You know our particular culture you know, but um, that just leads to some super unhealthy and perpetuated situations where people are just suffering and isolated in a lot of ways. So. You know. 01:27:44.93 Briar And I want to talk about some of the technical skill too is ah near the end of the poem we use the word progress. Um, which is very pointed because I I Think. We are to understand just how nebulous the word progress is how it has no defined features and how it's actually progress is easy. Progress is achievable because progress is a process um but like lives depend. 01:28:18.93 Briar On ah that process continuing and not incrementally. 01:28:23.36 Jala And and also something that I'm thinking about too the word hope so hope is it's not an active verb if you hope you're not actively doing anything about anything. The drug. They won't stop prescribing hope and no, it's not even that good of a thing and and just to hope just hang on to hope you do then a hope hope and pray my thoughts and Prayers. You know like it just kind of. 01:28:41.43 Briar Yeah, as a drug. It's not even that good doesn't it doesn't kill the pain. It doesn't mute the pain. 01:28:57.93 Jala Brings all of that full circle and has some really serious commentary going on right there and those 2 words. 01:29:02.51 Briar Yep, and another part is the accurate language of the requirement for survival is resistance and how ah the moment I came out to the selected group I did and started online being truthful. Um, I've been called an activist. Um, just for advocating for my next breath. Um within my own truth you know, Um, like we all like what what someone. Derisively calls another person an activist when a newspaper calls us Trans activists things like that. Um, they're painting that brush across the entire Trans community because a majority of the Trans Community has to be an activist. 01:29:48.18 Jala Yeah, and when you just said right there when you were talking about I have to do that in order to have my next breath that reminds me of the last poem we just talked about where a locust saying the doctor told me to breathe and I couldn't remember how there wasn't a frame of reference. 01:30:06.88 Briar You know that's actually I I I love that metaphor and sorry I didn't camp out on it while we were there. Um I have to take respiratory fitness tests every three years to work with Silica and you don't realize how out of practice you are breathing. 01:30:07.80 Jala No, you just hit it. You just hit it right there. 01:30:23.92 Briar Until someone says you have to do it for a test. So um, just remember breathing is a way harder than we make it out to be and that that's a good metaphor that just hit me personally because of ah my safety profile. Um, also forgive me for waxing poetic. 01:30:43.92 Briar But I feel like this is the avenue for it after reading this poem I wrote I feel like every one of us is a pile of wounds The lucky get to become scarred but I still bleed which is I think a process a a lot of people feel. And um, yeah, you, you know I think of people in my life who you know we joke about like the standard human the the straight white man at at joke like it's a factory setting but the straight white men in my life. They still are wounded from navigating society and ah some of them are lucky some of them have scarred you know and I look at them and I am envious that um, those wounds have healed and I just. Want that feeling myself you know. 01:31:41.26 Jala Yeah, and it's another spoiler for another episode sometime pretty soon. We're going to have an episode about toxic masculinity and sit with that and Briar will be on that episode to talk in more ind depth about that topic. So. 01:31:58.42 Briar Um I need to start writing down stories between. 01:31:59.70 Jala You need to start writing down your stuff I mean like I know between you and Lance who I won't even need to talk like I'm just going to sit there and just be like go go forth children. 01:32:07.94 Briar But between Tech Farms and factories I got stories. 01:32:13.21 Jala Who So yeah I don't have anything further to say about ah where the all where do all the sad girls go. It's a very profound poem and it hits some really important topics on the head And yeah I mean like I just wanted to read it out so that listeners can get kind of like more of a feel of. 01:32:25.82 Briar I'm good rapping with it too. 01:32:32.14 Jala The Breadth of the types of things that a loca is writing about. So if. 01:32:34.63 Briar And as we start picking up speed and things like that just for the listeners. A lot of good media teaches you how to read it and so I hope you are able to gain speed with us and understand that across these books. Ah yoke Ah ALOK is teaching us how to read his writing or their writing. Thank you so much could we could We put a marker could we have a dave hit that one. Yeah and as a clean line read I think. 01:32:58.54 Jala They're yeah they're writing a yeah, let me put a little marker right there? Yeah there we go. 01:33:09.60 Briar ALOK is teaching us to read the writing. 01:33:12.68 Jala Yeah, absolutely and you do get a feel for it and you get a flow for it and especially if you watch any of the Youtube videos of them doing their thing. Um, you absolutely will hear them in your head and will know the cadence will know how they would say this. You know and I know that that changes they have said as much themselves. Ah that their their selfhood is always in flux and thus their performance and their expression is always in in flux but there's still I feel like a core truth to it that you can kind of come away with so. Moving right? along the next ah poem confessional one I am still in love with all of my axis I often wonder how it is possible to break something that was never complete to begin with anyways. Damn. 01:34:08.66 Jala Okay, 2 the other day a woman on the subway was reading a book called the opposite of loneliness. So I started crying I couldn't tell if I was more touched by the title or her honesty. Why are there so many movies about the end of the world this curious habit we developed for. Aestheticizing armageddon instead of stopping it hint watch the news instead four I am too cynical to have a therapist I am too jealous to have closure I am too stubborn to grow up I am too anxious to have stability I am too jaded. To believe in anything else 5 I wish I could love myself out of symptomic oppression trauma is a structure not a feeling 6 how many big words have we developed to keep us from saying I am scared. 7. 01:35:05.22 Briar Ah, that makes me apprehensive. 01:35:07.23 Jala 7 I have written the same poem my entire life. It begins with body and ends with I'm sorry 8 which came first the boy or the poem about the boy. Love. Or the story of it 9 I write theory to make my feelings seem more legitimate ten I do not believe we will win I do not believe hope should be a prerequisite for trying anyway. 01:35:44.29 Jala Poop. There's a lot of different thoughts in there and they're all pretty good and just just to sit with who. 01:35:52.69 Briar Like we talked about I think that does funnel to that worldview. We alluded to earlier. Um definitely disparate thoughts that when you start pulling threads. You see how they're connected. 01:35:56.34 Jala Yeah, yeah, it definitely does. 01:36:06.77 Jala Yeah, trauma is a structure not a feeling that is really really like that's ah, a core theme right? there and it's a thing that I think a lot of people that a lot of people don't frame trauma that way but they should but. 01:36:24.40 Briar 1 thing that that number 4 made me feel about is ah it made me reflect on how I always love harder than I can be loved and the only 1 truly preventing myself from being loved in that way is myself. Um, yeah, it's it's to say not like pointing a finger aggressively at myself. But it is my fault you know and um I think that's one of the barriers a lot of people, especially that feels similar to me. Erect for themselves is they always have higher expectations for themselves than others. 01:37:02.90 Jala Yeah I mean Ah, there are so many different ways in which people can be their own self limiter. Ah, for example, a lot of my personal training slash wellness person you know stuff like when I have wellness clients or training clients or what have you. A lot of what I have to teach them is to kind of like unlearn their limiter box because they think I can't do this thing because I've not done it before. How do you know until you've actually tried the thing and also nobody when they first start a thing that is Difficult. Can do it on the first try without some degree of luck or innate you know translatable skill from some other department. You know like there's practice involved with this.. There's working up to that. There's There's all this but that doesn't mean you can't you know take the. 01:37:52.42 Briar I'm really glad you use the word limiter because that that that's making my thought on that a little more cohesive is is it feels like ah the Dragon Ball Z training waits. 01:38:02.60 Jala Yeah, yeah, it is and and really like in my own experiences when say. For example I had my spinal nerve injury and I could not do like I couldn't look down I couldn't turn to the side I lost feeling and movement in my arm and all these other things. There were a lot of things that I was told that I probably would not be able to do again and you know I worked up to it I ended up running Ultra Marathons becoming a bodybuilder doing all kinds of stuff you know going back to doing all my painting and becoming a you know gallery artist and commission artist and comic artist and all this other stuff. 01:38:40.34 Jala And it's like yeah yeah, you think I can't I will show you that I can actually. 01:38:47.33 Briar And that's a lot like my back injury last year as I went from a spot of literally I could not walk or exist. Um, and there's there's dirty grim details about what existing with a busted up back feels like. Ah, but then ah that transition as I started to heal like when I could walk again and just like the fear of something so simple something so basic. Um, it really took I had to take my own limiter off. For that to walk. 01:39:19.54 Jala Yeah, and you know there is a significant difference between something like a physical limitation like recovering from an injury for example versus and and not not to trivialize that experience mind you but like that is a very different thing than. The kind of mental emotional block that we can put on our own soul and you know like ah I've I've kind of touched on it before but like when it comes to my own gender identity and everything like for a long time because of the situation that I was in growing up in the kind of ah way that. I was taught to be you know I basically thought there was something really wrong with me and you know I didn't know like I felt like I I didn't fit anywhere because. You know there wasn't anybody that was like me you know like I'm supposedly a girl but also there's so many ways in which I don't have any you know? Um, Yeah I can't relate with that experience at the same time even though I was yeah. 01:40:19.70 Briar That limiter had to go. 01:40:23.65 Jala Although I was assigned female at Birth like there's a lot of ways in which I don't identify with that experience and there's so many ways in which is like no actually this is more my identity and like you know there's There's a whole thing but like I had a limiter put on me for a long time and it took me you know. Stepping outside the box and studying enough and learning enough and talking to enough people and seeing a bunch of different people's ways of being to get me to the point that I opened up and said oh shit What? what? the? What was I doing What is this This was nonsense actually and. 01:41:02.60 Jala And you know like because then too it's like um for a while I was like well am I Trans and then I was like no I'm not Trans I I don't feel like I'm just a trans person. So then I'm like well then I must be the gender that I was given at Birth you know or the the sex that I was at Birth you know I've been told that I've been I'm a. 01:41:21.55 Jala Woman I must be a woman because I'm not a you know a trans person and so that was my my negation for a long time before I like opened up morems like no, there's more than that like there's there's the complexity right? that a loca is talking about. 01:41:38.59 Jala You know and and no, there's not like necessarily an easy label. You know. 01:41:43.49 Briar That's ah like we you and I have talked about too How much I Love gender nonconforming men because I'm like Wow yeah men really can paint their nails and be fricking pretty but also it ain't me. 01:41:57.29 Briar Yeah, it's funny how the the negation can provide validation. 01:42:00.64 Jala Oh my goodness and that actually kind of leads into the next poem. So are we done with confessional. Can we move on to the next one 01:42:08.50 Briar Yeah, ah my wrap up thought on is line number Nine I felt like it reached out and slapped me across the face. Um in a good way and I hope our listeners can see why it felt like that I write theory to make my feelings seem more legitimate. 01:42:17.55 Jala Can you reread that line for them. They don't have the book who yeah, that's such a good line. 01:42:25.70 Briar Ah, oh I felt so called out I felt laser needled you name it just like but I also felt it as an aforemention it the the way it's written just comes from such a loving space. 01:42:38.90 Jala Yeah, yeah, so the next poem is identity blues today I realized how similar Diaspora and dysphoriALOK on a page. We have always been made to feel foreign in our own bodies a guest overstaying welcome. A resident of a place. We are constantly reminded. We don't belong to isn't diaspora its own form of dysphoria asking for gender is another way of asking where did you come from sometimes when I answer water comes out. 01:43:16.45 Briar I'm gonna be brief I I cannot be additive in this this poem is so self- evidentident press the reverse button 3 times. Go back 30 seconds and listen to Jolla read it again. 01:43:29.83 Jala Yeah I don't think I need to reread the whole thing again. Ah like just as ah to force people to do it but definitely go back and listen to that again because that is a good poem and I kind of feel the same way I'm like oh underline that I definitely want to share that. Yeah. 01:43:41.13 Briar 1 of the few blank pages I have in my book. 01:43:47.99 Jala So let me see okay I must have written down the oh yeah, actually the whole the whole thing. Okay, ah this is a long poem. Um massage but I actually kept the whole I wanted to read the whole thing. So I'm just going to do my best to read through as much as possible as fast as possible on this while still giving it. You know it's it's Cadence so a content warning on this. There is assault that's actually written on the page for this so just content warning the poem is called massage I spent my evening in a cramped apartment on the lower east side with an old white woman in her cat. Susan has a reputation in town for being one of the only massage therapists who does not hold back I do not fully comprehend what this means until our first session she walks on top of you. She spends copious amounts of time piercing your butt cheeks. She can tort you into positions that you still aren't sure are possible. She sticks a glove in your mouth to massage your jaw she is honest with you that she fully intends to hurt you I am honest with her that I keep coming back precisely because she makes me hurt. There is something beautiful. Sacred even about our honesty about her strange hands and her familiar touch about the way we admit our pain so candidly I have never met anyone so upfront about their desire to hurt me I wish Susan could have taught my exes a thing or 2 about naming one's intentions up front. 01:45:20.14 Jala Um, these evenings I am tasked with the effort of making small talk with Susan for the entire 2 hours session she is chatty. She has lots of questions about my generation and the internet and what is it? you do again. The trick is to keep asking her questions so she keeps talking and you don't have to attempt to speak as she drives her elbow into you over and over again tonight I asked Susan how she started doing massage. She tells me that she has always been fascinated by human pain me too. She tells me that she has devoted her life to understanding how people experience pain and what they can do to cope with it me too. What can we do to cope with it. Susan I think we have different its that haunt us when we both go to our beds alone after the session but tonight. The specifics feel inconsequential. She tells me a story one evening a woman came by with some bad knots in her leg. She had no idea what was going on when Susan started to work on her. This woman started weeping uncontrollably Susan asked if she should stop. But the woman said no go deeper. So Susan kept digging and digging deep into the night and suddenly that woman sat up and had a flashback to a memory from long ago she remembered that more than twenty years ago she was assaulted on the way home from school her assailant broke her leg so she couldn't get away. 01:46:41.74 Jala When she got home. Her mother didn't believe her and scolded her for being late susan sat there with that manager im or with that stranger and I'm pretty sure they w breathed the same air and I'm sure her cat meowed and her clock on the wall ticked as she wrote I believe you with her elbow. On that woman's back Susan tells me that her job as a massouuse is not necessarily to get rid of the pain but rather to bear witness to it to recognize it to affirm it she says that we live in a country a world that teaches us at every level that our hurt is a story. We made up. And we internalize that to our core and write it into every muscle in our body I am wrong I am wrong I am wrong. She says that sometimes people just need to hear that what happened to them was not their fault that people tend to know what is best for themselves. They've just been. Told over and over again that they don't sometimes I just need to hear that what happens to me is not my fault so every month I climb up the stairs to a cramped apartment in the lower east side with an old white woman and her cat and she massages me I mean she performs her own form of poetry. And both of us are searching for a way to survive to find meeting and substance in the intangible to delve and dig and prod and jab and yank and pull on all of those parts of ourselves still stuck deep in there. So sometimes I forget my own power. So sometimes I need to be hurt in order to heal. 01:48:14.59 Jala So sometimes I need to be reminded that my body is mine. So sometimes I need to be reminded I have a body so sometimes I want to cry on the street when I am surrounded by hundreds of people wondering all about all of the its that they are going home with that night. So sometimes. There is something refreshing about the intimacy between strangers. Its unfamiliar familiar honesty its piercing candidness. So sometimes Susan does not get my politics or my life but she touches my body and she understands that there are things in the world that cause me a great deal of pain and sometimes. That feels like enough. 01:48:57.15 Jala Damn, there's just me after every poem. So. 01:49:01.77 Briar Um, oh about that last line is that the catcher to the tear Jerker like that last slide is very good. 01:49:14.37 Jala Yeah, it is. It's just ah, it's pretty breathtaking, especially since I'm somebody who has an lmt Stephen shout out to Stephen at Sage Wellness anybody in Texas or Houston should go ah go over and see Stephen. Um, so anyway. 01:49:30.18 Jala As somebody who goes and gets massaged like I can relate to a lot of the things that are said about all of this and you know even just the fact that pain is held in the body. That's that's science. Actually there's science behind that that actually is a thing that happens and you know, just. 01:49:48.12 Jala Wow the intentionality behind this and the kind of like release of of this pent up pain and in loneliness and and everything and the fact that Susan doesn't have to understand aloke you know. 01:50:00.23 Briar Well and that's what I particularly love about using massage both metaphorically and literally is like massage as an art as a labor is something you are literally a lot of the times you have to go through the muscle you have to go through the the hurt. To heal. It. 01:50:21.56 Jala And absolutely and so yeah that that I that's the last poem that I was going to read out of that book it. 01:50:29.80 Briar I Really like the kindred spirit and the relation across loves and labors that they have. 01:50:35.66 Jala John the fact that each person's it that they are dealing with is a different it and recognizing that. 01:50:44.95 Briar That ah, that actually gave me a flash of insight to 1 of the previous poems. We read the where did the sad girls. Go um, there's a lot of repetition in that poem and if you get the chance to read it to yourself. If you read every repetition with different intonation. They mean vastly different things. So yeah I just ah a moment of technical admiration that that that that reminded me of. 01:51:15.16 Jala I Would love to see ALOK perform this poem. 01:51:24.70 Briar Yeah I think massage definitely shows to the intersection of their education and observation. Um, very just a very sharp one especially um when you come from. The beginning where a poem is about a page and by the end of the book. It feels like you're watching a knife being sharpened as you go through these 50 some page these 49 pages. 01:51:48.40 Jala Yeah, and then oh my then we come to your wound my garden from 2021 which compiles a bunch of stuff that ah loke wrote from you know pandemic times and who oh my goodness I'm so I'm looking forward to this and we're almost at 2 hours oh my gosh and here I was. 01:52:03.51 Briar Yeah, um, oh you, you got me here I will I don't know world class that there's so much nuance and depth across. 01:52:05.78 Jala Like oh it's going to be a quick episode. It's going to be no, never listen. Well. Problem Well and the problem is that that these poems are so good. Okay, so. 01:52:21.50 Briar Each passage like I said just read read repetition with different intonation and you come away with a whole new meaning. Um I just want to summarize funeral real quick as the last one in this ah funeral to me. 01:52:36.84 Briar Very much about being a corpse witnessing other corpses and how there is beauty in that and there is sadness in that. But I think why I specifically camp out on that metaphor. 01:52:53.30 Briar Is I think that leads into your wound My garden. 01:52:56.80 Jala It does it does So that's the poem where I believe a locat talking about their grandfather correct ah being. 01:53:04.95 Briar Ah, yeah, and it goes across. Ah it starts to talk about strangers as well. Ah, and we are about to witness ah the intense and deep well that Aloke has for. 01:53:22.92 Briar Ah, all of humanity. Ah, especially I think anonymity um, the love that Alok can have anonymously is profound. 01:53:36.35 Jala Yes, absolutely so ah without further ado let us move on to your wound my garden because we got so many poems to read. Okay, so the first one what lives in death so that set's the tone for this. This is a. 01:53:51.45 Jala Is this the first poem in this book I think it is it is okay so everything is made of something even silence dust is composed of sloth off skin cells hair clothing fiber bacteria bits of dead bugs airs nitrogen oxygen carbon dioxide neon hydrogen me. 01:54:11.34 Jala I'm all the packages. No 1 claimed at the post office I'm all the sounds you make when you can't remember the lyrics garbled. But oh so sincere 1 year into the pandemic I find myself finding myself. There are it seems things that I never allowed myself to feel though. They are so present with me now that isolation sounds like a misnomer I'm in a dialogue with my past selves we order takeout. We stay up all night telling secrets we make promises. We won't keep grief has no expiration date like bad breath it lingers. That is until you listen to the smell of it think of it this way every word that we speak every move that we make eventually becomes dust somewhere if you want to know how people live spend some quality time with their trash. The negation of a thing is still a thing. The discarded do not die. They go somewhere else once upon a time I did not cry no matter what the calendars say that is an event the task becomes what nook what? alcove what? muscle do we go to discover the aftermath of the things we could not say. But felt where do we go to find the feelings that could not be elegantly carved into words that which had to be sacrificed to make sense poets have many jobs we are archaeologists of silence. We use tongues like fishhooks. 01:55:48.28 Jala In reverse we carbon date the loneliness convene with the detritus we fling ourselves into ourselves dig deeper than a stethoscope this pain. Even it is made of something. I'm just trying to figure out what what happened to me what happened to make me what lives in death. 01:56:25.52 Briar So um, one I just want to appreciate the um spiritual themes of this just they the Yin and yang the emptiness and fullness the push and pull. Um, I just think that is ah used to good effect in this poem I really like um without directly saying saying things like I have no politics is a political stance. It's ah you know. You know if I were to get um if I were to do your a ts and say silence is to politics you know? Ah, it's a good one to one map that the absence of something in itself is something um and that's because. 01:57:19.15 Briar Everything doesn't exist in a vacuum especially human experience. 01:57:22.37 Jala Yeah, I'm all the packages. No 1 claimed at the post office I'm the sounds you make when you can't remember the lyrics garbled. But oh so sincere grief has no expiration date and also when they're talking about poems. And poets we use tongues like fishing hooks in reverse so instead of taking instead of taking a fish out of the water putting the fish back into the water with their words. 01:57:58.56 Briar They're doing something additive. Um, one of the things that I particularly love with that is as a opening poem for this book. You talked about be technical skill increasing across 4 years 01:58:15.92 Briar And by the time we get to there I had a big goofy smile on my face because I was like oh yeah, they're stunting on us right now they are just beautifully crafting metaphor allowing us to find our own depth in it just perceptive and proficient. 01:58:30.62 Jala Yeah, and I also really like the fact that in this poem even though they are kind of like reflecting on themselves. They are tying it into everybody and everything and every every time place. And so on just by you know talking about it like nothing comes out of you know like there there is not any thing in the world that is isolated. There isn't really isolation and what a profound idea to drop as the first. Tone of this pandemic book. You know like when everybody was suffering with this isolation but then too you know the whole stanza where they're talking about ah 1 year into pandemic I find myself finding myself. We order takeout. We stay up all night telling secrets like. 01:59:25.54 Jala They are getting to know themselves in a way that they didn't before because of so many distractions and so many different things externally right? so. 01:59:33.69 Briar Um, and I I think that relates to I feel and this might be my projection but I feel like this book has a lot of fury a lot of wrath that is ah speaks for itself and is justified. But it's also simmering and it's also valid like um, it's entirely relatable in my opinion. 01:59:58.17 Jala Yeah, yeah, so actually that kind of shifts us into the second poem that we're going to read what if I miss everyone even the people I haven't met yet precisely them I spend so much time people watching just trying to figure out where they put the pain. Where did all the pain go did we hide it inside or did we deport it detain it did we dispossess it of grammar itself such that it speaks but we hear nothing which is already always something like a siren. We take to like a daily. Multivitamin so repetitive it feels like air like emergency is a breath. We keep inhaling like America is an asthma attack wheezing what if instead of saying how are you? we ask? what hurts what? if we committed to the wound. What if we were honest, what if we asked all the politicians about their proposals to end loneliness. What if this is my policy agenda. What if I take the stage at the debate and just scream for my allotted time. What if the artists. They were our candidates what if democracy felt like friendship not fascism I called the credit card companies I submitted a request to change my id my new address is what if meet me there by o b. 02:01:30.52 Jala Everyone is invited. Here? Yeah it. It's got. 02:01:36.61 Briar I Really like this one um the mission. It's really funny that I read ALOK's mission statement after reading this passage. Um because I came to it a while ago and it was anonymous I didn't know it was them until I picked up this book. 02:01:53.76 Briar Um, but 1 thing I wrote is ah what of instead of saying how are you? we asked what hurts? Um, my response was I I love this and I wish we were ready culturally for this intimacy and so after reading their mission statements about. 02:02:14.13 Briar Intimacy I was like Yay validation. 02:02:14.89 Jala Yeah, yeah, absolutely because like this this is again. This is kind of like a reprisal but this is this Book. It's already starting in with talking about policy stuff and the fury that they feel towards everything I mean like come on how many people. When I read that line What if I take to the stage at the debate and just scream for my allotted time like you know how many people are like nodding their head like yes that because that's how I feel and that's how I felt during pandemic like yeah Wow and. 02:02:49.10 Briar And then what do we? What we pull on up to what if democracy felt like friendship not fascism just it. It reminds me of my conversations with my dad who is a marine and was like. 02:03:05.65 Briar He's incredibly bought in in some ways and it still colors his perspective. Um and how even he sees that democracy can have its flaws because ah you could vote yourself into fascism. You can't vote yourself out of it and the. Healthiest democracy requires infinite good faith engagement. Um, and also why it works so well on paper and why we're where we're at today is ah, not even myself and you and our friends and our acquaintances and. 02:03:44.48 Briar Strangers we're all not immune to propaganda. Um, what this poem left me with is 1 question. Ah what would I would love to dream of policy that leads to the world. Ah. 02:04:03.60 Briar ALOK calls what if and so I just it. It could be a personal exercise but I want everyone tonight to look in their heart and ask what policy would they invent to get to what if. 02:04:18.28 Jala And in this poem too because this is during pandemic talking about America wheezing you know, an emergency is like a breath. We keep inhaling. 02:04:29.84 Briar Yeah, that's a very visceral image. 02:04:32.64 Jala Yeah, so for sure and actually like when I the first book that I read was actually your wound my garden and I read the first poem and I'm like wow I read what if and I was like I'm doing an episode on this and I think that was like. 02:04:49.81 Jala Right? about the time that I was like ok I've got to absolutely tell Briar that they are going to be getting we can ah do an episode on this because we have to that's it so all right moving right? along Anatomy lessons. 02:05:06.38 Jala In Fifth grade. We learned about the different systems of the body. They gave us illustrations of anatomy we took home and memorized like maps I take my finger and trace food through the digestive system trace breath through the respiratory system blood through the cardiovascular once I tried to find where the sadness went it was too hard. Hard being alive is hard. What I like about that word is that it names the materiality of feeling admits that sadness can accumulate over time like plaque on a tooth in a world that continually stages a distinction between what is real and what is not. Hardness is a concession to the reality that just because something happens in our head doesn't mean it stops there how we feel matters meaning it creates matter it assumes form pain has the potential to change the very physicality of the brain. Culture society media language tradition. They are physical processes biological even etymology is not the full story is not just where words come from. It's where they end up the end of a sentence requires punctuation for coherence I say for show. It gives the false impression that the meaning ends there on the page. But if you look deeper words keep going our bodies are the evidence maybe pain is where language becomes physical the intergumentary system the musculokeletal. The lymphatic the endocrine. 02:06:41.16 Jala If I could go back I'd include more to list the economic system the racial the gender say this world is made up of systems that manage all the essential body functions they determine what lives what dies show the transcripts from legislative sessions. The comment sections. The dinner tables say these are anatomy lessons they determine who lives who dies one day when I die rewind the heart attack what power precipitated it unfurl the tumor what policy prescribed it dissect the culture. Not just my car. Corpse diagnose the world hold 1 big stethoscope to its heart listen is it breathing or is it weeping. 02:07:32.58 Briar I Think these are great words about how any experience we have will never exist in a vacuum I think calling it cause and effect is too simple, but ah, it's funny because I was as I was writing my notes. I I started getting my hands blackened from all the ink and ah I said I said cause and effect is too simple but I don't get ink on my fingers when I don't ah ah when I don't open a pen you know like. 02:08:08.35 Briar That there is cause and effect within that statement but the act of writing is what is causing causing me to dirty my skin. You know? Um, so yeah I Just love how that like leads to nuance and it leads to affection. Um. 02:08:27.60 Briar 1 thing that I particularly like as we medicalize things by the end of the poem when we talk about tumors and heart attacks and once again, how it relates to covid is a word. We never talk about enough is morbidity and just long-term effects of things long. 02:08:45.85 Briar Ah, long terms of trauma the way we medicalize trauma is like oh yeah, it'll it'll rear its head like this. Yeah, but what if it did rear its head as a tumor eventual yet yet you know what when ALOK says Unravel Unfur all that tumor. Ah that just clicked with me as. As like um, every every action has a reaction. You know. 02:09:10.17 Jala Well, and also when they're listing all the different systems of the body and then they say if I could go back I'd include more to the list. The economic system the racial the gender This world is made up of systems that manage all the essential body functions they determine what lives and what dies. And talking about legislative sessions comment sessions, dinner tables. All of this These are anatomy lessons they determine who lives and who dies that is right there they are getting to again that larger societal issue. And how that connects to the Individual. It's talking. 02:09:49.80 Briar Yeah, they they they've literally turned society into a body. 02:09:54.61 Jala Yeah, yeah, and it's kind of like you know again when we go back to talking about like inspiration porn. So oh this person has overcome so much adversity. Well, you're looking at the wrong thing here. I mean you know missing the forest for the trees you're missing the fact that these society the larger society has this. Um, you know this unwieldy huge massive problem that is causing the trauma you know like causing the issue in the first place for this person to have to overcome it. Why don't we address that and this poem is you know, scaling from the. 02:10:32.75 Jala Interpersonal from just the 1 on 1 the looking at the body. The simple thing and you know directly saying no all of these other factors that are going on in these people's lives affect directly who lives and who dies what caused the heart attack What caused. The tumor dissect the culture. Not just my corpse diagnose the world. 02:10:53.49 Briar Yeah, and I think that's great too because 1 thing I learned early on was you can predict someone's life trajectory by their area code and tax bracket and I've seen this in practice myself. Ah, because. And sorry to talk sugar about my family but my brother I genuinely believe is a genius. Um, there is no hyperbole in that word for him I am in awe of how smart he is and like to. 02:11:30.47 Briar See the marketing that the geniuses we've created via marketing and legend and history and to be graced with having the real thing in my life and the fact that he's not celebrated on that level. Is just like its area code and tax bracket Baby. He was never going to be in the public eye that way even though he's the real deal. 02:11:51.68 Jala Yeah, and also never apologize for talking sugar about people that you love who are worth that again. Like awesome I Look forward to the day So I don't have anything else to add on that one. 02:12:01.11 Briar He's real cool. You should meet him sometime. You'll love him. 02:12:08.70 Briar Yeah I think I'm ready to wrap on that. No if you're good with it. 02:12:10.20 Jala Ah, can we move cool all right? So I'm going to be reading excerpts from my body and american horror story this is a longer poem I don't want to read the whole thing for time reasons and such so we're just going to highlight some certain spots. So. My body an american horror story to have pain is to have certainty to hear about pain is to have doubt Elaine scary or scary I have no idea how to pronounce that it's got to it looks like scary but it's got to ours. So that's just a quote at the beginning. 02:12:45.92 Jala For the first 20 enty-three years of my life I forgot I had a body the same way people forget their keys at home or their own phone number. It was that unremarkable. There was not. There was no one moment. It just came to be like a change in season yours truly a living ghost. I only discovered I had one when a doctor asked me where it hurt I drew an outline of my pain in chalk on the floor of that office and on the other side. There was a body she told me it was mine. We can sit with that. But then we'll read the other excerpt. 02:13:18.10 Briar I Like that just kid because it evoked some personal feelings about how that's how I used to live my life I treated my body as not a vessel for myself but a conduit for my experience. And ah, that led to some self-destructive behaviors like my eating disorder and things like that. Um, like yeah, um, it's very relatable and I hope we all can cross that rubicon and see the the chalk line on the wall. 02:13:51.22 Jala So The next little excerpt is every time they tell me to relax more. All I can hear is stop being Trans all I hear is stop being modern Anatomy was derived from a corpse. And you only believe our pain after we die. 02:14:16.59 Jala That is so powerful I mean like I don't I don't have a lot to say about that I just wanted to read that out loud for people to listen to. 02:14:24.42 Briar Oh I Just love it too because you know I talked about repetition earlier and it's funny because this is thematic repetition because those those 2 lines are those are exactly synonyms to me and I think you can ask a lot of Trans people that. If. That's how they feel. 02:14:46.40 Jala And yeah, and I was actually kind of curious about um you know like because since you identify as trance like you know how your feelings were about that particular set of lines to me. It's very very powerful and from what I know from folks that I know who are trans. Um, that does speak to their experience. 02:15:08.65 Briar Yep, just an after observation. 02:15:09.67 Jala Yeah, okay, well then let's move on to the next poem. Do you want to read this one or you want me to read it. Sure. 02:15:19.24 Briar Ah, could you read it for me to thank you for giving me a chance earlier but I have this thing where my brain moves faster than my lips can just like the anecdote is they thought I read at like a first grade reading level even though I was reading Lord of the rings when I was like 6 and. 02:15:37.80 Briar They thought I read at like a first grade reading level because I could never do the test where you read out loud. 02:15:41.57 Jala Ah, yeah, like I I have a long long history. My sister and I used to read stories to each other and so like I've been reading out loud for a very long time. So I mean I know I stumble still but like at least I can you know, kind of do a decent ish job. 02:15:57.17 Briar Oh you've definitely gotten there with practice. You do a good job. 02:15:59.20 Jala So Ah well I try at least the next poem is called here Slash there. My grandfather does not talk much never has he drinks he curses he paces in other words, the fist the throat the foot. These are the places we go when we want to avoid the tongue when I am home with him by which I mean when I am with him home. We go for walks. Maybe it's the reflective eyes of strangers lighthouses for light lost ships navigating the street or the road with no ending or beginning. 02:16:37.16 Jala Or the wind whose sole purpose. It is to make us move. But for whatever reason walking next to each other invites speech in a way that a table never could this is a pose I have come to recognize as love separate but together the west is enamored with eye contact isn't it. Face your fears love at first sight. But what I do not see I still feel but what I do not see I still feel when mom calls me to be there I take a subway plane car come home to her home or come to her home. And we both sit in different rooms and I feel here there almost like I never left car. Plane subway home I am walking with my grandfather and his broken heart. We carry between us like a stubborn dog on a leash. He tells me. That more than anything he just wants to die at first I do not say anything but then I remember what we are doing. That's okay I wonder if part of the intimacy of walking next not facing forward. Is that you don't have to see each other cry I wonder if love is not just being just about being seen but also about withholding sight I wonder when he dies if I will cry or if I will go outside take a walk instead. 02:18:09.75 Jala So lots of powerful words the the whole idea of just being there home. You know, um what I do not see I still feel Why is the west so enamored of this looking at each other. Maybe. 02:18:26.49 Jala Part of love is not just about being seen but also withholding sight. 02:18:30.96 Briar I Talked about this a little earlier about how and specifically he named it. Ah, specifically they named it the west in this passage and ah the west. For me I actually giving it This name was important and I I thought about how much we love turning our descriptive Behavior descriptive behavior into Prescriptive Behavior and. How when we create that code socially and contractually it. So It steals the nuance from the conversation and that's really solidified by the time I got to. But what? what? I do not see I still feel and yeah I think that's a good and observation. 02:19:37.46 Jala Yeah, absolutely and this is ah one of the first places where they mentioned their grandfather and ah during the course of this book and the writing of all of these poems their grandfather did pass away and there is a. Another poem called dying is the longest verb I know and we're not going to read the whole thing but there is just a small section that I wanted to read because it was very poignant and kind of highlights. Um, their thesis for this poem. 02:20:04.42 Briar I think too if we combine the works that proceed dying is the longest spurb I know um, part of that informed perspective is ah we are dying from the moment we're born. And there's nothing we can do to change that but that's also what makes it special and beautiful. 02:20:26.00 Jala Yeah, so trauma means the living die many deaths does that make sense. No, it doesn't because these things don't make sense like how one day he would say that he was ready to go and the next he would scream in my face. I am dying do something I am dying and I the liar who loved him said? no you're not told him to get back to eating his lunch and these ah this this phrase like I'm tearing up reading it and thinking about it. Um, folks know that my parents are disabled and they have been in and out of the hospital in the last few years and so um, you know we had some pretty bad scares last year with my mom and so anyway. Ah. 02:21:21.18 Jala This is a familiar feeling for me unfortunately and the problem is is that this is about the only way that you can deal with this, you know, ah to a certain extent when someone that you know is older. And close to the end of their life. You know one day they seem like they're fine the next day they don't and you know the fact that in this poem aloke says the next day he would scream in my face I am dying do something I am dying. You know you know that that's a metaphorical thing. That's not a thing that necessarily well maybe it might have happened but I mean it's not likely to have actually been the words that their grandfather used you know, but at the same time. That's the sentiment. That's the feeling that's the heart of what's going on there. That's the pain. That's the origin of that pain. And I the liar who loved him said? no you're not told him to get back to eating his lunch. That's so poignant and so bittersweet and yet at the same time. That's the exact dynamic. That's the exact way that we show love to the folks who are. At the end of their life. Trauma means the living die many deaths. 02:22:40.22 Briar This. Ah. 02:22:45.60 Briar This reminds me ah a lot about how my grandma who passed away almost a decade ago now at this point um she had Dementia really really bad. Um, and by the end of it when we were alone and. A lot of the times it was a ritual between her and me specifically um I thought about all of the lies. We told each other because we loved each other so much and um, just. How so much of that was rooted in the reduction of her pain that we we had a tacit understanding of the truth I'm a poor liar even to someone who who can't who who is not at full capacity anymore. Um, she could see that from a mile away. But. Our lies were the loving act to each other and my job as her survivor was to feel that pain and not have it inflicted on her. 02:23:52.28 Jala Yeah, and also it just kind of reminds me again of the line earlier where ah before their grandfather passed away where al locust saying. You know, maybe part of that Love is not just looking and being seen but also withholding sight. 02:24:14.76 Briar I Think about how when they talked about walking with their grandfather. Um, how that act is something where they are not looking at each other and I think that I. 02:24:28.92 Briar I Extrapolated that to mean, truly non-judgmental. Love. 02:24:33.51 Jala Yeah, and the fact that in walking ambulatory movement. You are traveling together. Yeah, and you're traveling together forward. 02:24:40.57 Briar Yeah, you literally cannot judge if you do not see and cannot react. 02:24:51.93 Jala So that there's a lot going on there. There's so many different layers of things going on and that's yeah well I mean like that's that's again, that's why I wanted to read here slash there and then also that excerpt from dying is the longest spurb I know is because they. 02:24:54.42 Briar I was going to say now I now I need to coaggitate on that one. 02:25:10.92 Jala Are so interrelated with each other. So if we're ready to move on though. We've got 4 more poems. We got to read some bits about so ah, next one is actually 1 that's more pandemic focused so a new unit of measure I left my house for the first time in weeks to mail a package. At the post office. There were yellow pieces of tape on the floor to Mark where we should stand that distance between us felt occupied what became evident was that the new unit of measurement is no longer the foot. It is the casket maintain at least 1 casket distance from each other. Here are some other examples of what that could look like going forward. How many caskets does it take to get home. How many caskets fit in the living room. How many caskets to indict and an administration asteriks. My apologies, the department of justice has requested. The removal of that last example for further so from further circulation the male personnel they had a sort of plastic shield in front of them that seemed more impromp tube than anything I appreciated the effort. It was honest, the physical embodiment of we're figuring it out in these days. 02:26:27.56 Jala Honesty is not considered an essential good but denial is our prescription Medicine. It is both our health care and retirement plan. We know it better I think than we know Ourselves. We do not live in the present we live in the promise after all, this is a. Promised land where power is conferred not from the ability to deliver but rather from the ability to promise delivery. This distinction is both as vital and as scarce as a ventilator I suppose the better unit of measurement would be the promise. How many promises does it take. To turn a crisis into campaign strategy. How many promises does it take to make the coffin your fault not their misdoing. How many promises does it take to dig a coffin so deep We forget about it. How many promises does it take to prop up a coffin use it as a presidential lectern. Congratulate ourselves as we have no protective gear for the doctors. No tests for the people no money for the tenants. No benefits for the workers. No food for the hungry just promises just promises just promises for a population with the highest death toll and the most developed country in the world. There is no discrepancy here in the land of promise we measure the integrity of a sentence by how it makes us feel not what it varies beneath it. 02:27:51.93 Jala Every time I'm just like damn like. 02:27:55.86 Briar Yeah, yeah, this this is where I felt some of that fury. Ah that that was I think is well Deserved. Ah like I was getting on board. My my notes are saying like pathetic ah pathetic responses are a bipo ah Partisan Effort. It's only a football. Ah but with ah for for each party and ah the only impact we have is ah the stochastic response and then oh sorry. 02:28:23.49 Jala Yeah, and not go ahead. 02:28:31.32 Briar Then when we move from that to ah how we we talk about feeling is greater than any reality to ah to most people and um, it made me think about how we enjoy passive ah passive Death. We get the carthharsis of mourning and sadness the ability to cry about it. But at the end of the day. It requires nothing from us and allows us to compartmentalize it. 02:28:56.70 Jala Yeah, yeah, and I will say when I read the line that distance between us felt occupied that six feet different you know distance. I will say during pandemic especially when I was terrified that I was going to get covered not for me but I was terrified to bring it back to my parents who are both immunocompromised and disabled and elderly. You know like the the section of the population that is most affected by in the most dramatic way possible. 02:29:26.94 Jala You know, like ah that was enormous and so you know like that that was definitely like it. It was world shaking. You know it redefined a lot of you know. 02:29:43.11 Jala How I interact with folks I mean like to this day. Okay I I had covid last year I got really ill even with all of the boosters. All of the vaccines I got super ill for like two months straight and then it still was a long road to recovery after that I still have long covid symptoms. So. I don't want to get it again. Yeah I had a terrible terrible time with it and um I still wear a mask when I'm out in public and that's my choice you know, but like I still feel some of this I mean it's not as bad as it was before because you know my whole family got covid we all survived but like it's not. 02:30:21.77 Jala Fun and we just still don't know what the long-term effects are of multiple you know infections infections of this disease so you know look I don't I don't want to get that again. I still feel like um, the way that I am and the way that I interact in Society is very different now and it might not have been that way if I didn't. Still you know take care of my parents and worry for them. But that that added responsibility puts an extra weight on me that at times during Pandemic was just like asphyxiation. 02:30:55.21 Briar So there's two things I have to add that part one I think reinforces your point is my aforementioned brother. We used to play tabletop once a week and I was like almost there every day and less work permitting. Ah, sorry every week we're permitting. Um so chances are I saw him 55 times a year minimum and he's only 20 minutes away from me and I bet you I bet you I've seen him less than a handful of times. 02:31:32.73 Briar Across these last three years but and yeah, that's drastically limited limiting. It's because of you know, immunocomposition and care for each other which leads me into my second point of like why I think wearing a mask is good and. 02:31:51.48 Briar Why people who still Harass people about wearing masks really suck is it's like putting your shopping cart away. There is no material benefit from you especially the second you drive off the lot that shopping cart is no longer in your reality your your personal reality. Um. But guarantee you putting your card away has made someone else's life better. 02:32:14.86 Jala Yeah, and you know there's also the fact that aside from worry for my parents I don't want to be someone who potentially is infecting people who are immunocompromised out in the world you know or you know somebody who's. The elderly Grandma or the disabled person or whatever who you know gets it and dies from it I don't want to be that person who causes that to happen because of I don't want to wear a mask you know like that's just my personal stance on that like I'm not going to be that one you know so. 02:32:53.49 Jala But yeah, like all all the rest of it though where it's ah talking directly about you know the politics of it and everything when it shouldn't have been. You know a casket for my presidential lectern that is such a good line. Um. 02:33:10.66 Briar Also we we have the gift of two more years on on when this was published versus. So. 02:33:12.21 Jala You know like I feel like the. 02:33:18.66 Jala Yeah, yeah, so but yeah, like if I had read this when it was first published who who yeah, um, either way so ah, moving right? along. We have a little bit more just couple couple more. Okay, so. 02:33:31.74 Briar Stay with us. 02:33:34.99 Jala All right? So The next portion is ah the very end of a poem called Bilingual. You see there is a distinctly American art form of taking a scream and stuffing it back in a mouth or sometimes mistaking the scream as song if you slow down the Anthem You can hear us there here. We have garbage disposals for throats they crush what we have to say even before we say it we are bilingual 2 tongues The things we say the things we don't We are all fluent in the things we won't say. 02:34:12.97 Jala And it's it's talking about more or less like ah our society as a whole has that tendency of just like not talking about these important things these fears these? um. 02:34:29.92 Jala These pains all of this other stuff you know and it's also talking about pandemic stuff I grieve to deaths the people they report and the people they were. You know it's It's talking about all this stuff that we're not talking about about Pandemic you know and just all of the associated. 02:34:43.98 Briar Yeah, how the moment we turn into a statistic it depersonalizes us in such a violent way in such a hypocritical way, especially when you where if we talk about indicting specifically the American response Americans our culture is. All about individualism to the point it hurts and um by turning thousands of people into a statistic. We have hip, hypocritically hypocritically ah revoked their. 02:35:20.34 Jala Yeah, and you know that swept under the rug. Oh it's not that bad. We haven't had that many deaths just trivializes The fact that all of these people were people and they died. So. 02:35:20.80 Briar Individuality from them. 02:35:37.40 Briar I listen to a show where if someone talks about the death count. They describe it in multiple multi multitudes of 119 and um, they're like oh yeah, it's Ben five nine eleven s now and it just. Every time that wound reopens for me. Um, because just like we we should grieve 9 11 I'm not coming out as a hardcore you know? Um, but I'm just saying like I want emotional consistency like. 02:36:14.75 Briar So stop? What what meter did we fill up where it stopped mattering now. What? what passive voice did we use what passive response did we take where it stopped mattering on something that fundamentally altered I mean I'm only thirty one so like my my. Rational thinking. It's pretty but much been there my entire changed my entire life. You know what I mean and so that that just like it threatens to break my brain when I think about why 1 matters and one doesn't still. 02:36:49.19 Jala Well, it's well and the thing is is that you know there's that quote when one person dies. It's a tragedy when a million people die. It's a statistic you know. 02:36:51.65 Briar And we're living in the one that doesn't seem to matter. 02:37:04.52 Briar Yep, that's a very true quote. 02:37:07.12 Jala Yeah, so the next poem is called absence when the virus came airlines began to fly ghost planes with no passengers I'm sure they knew that this was an awful idea wasting approximately thirty six thousand gallons of fuel. More than a thousand kilograms of carbon emissions. They say it was to maintain their spot in the air traffic schedule. But I think perhaps they did it just to avoid the emptiness of the sky. It's almost as if we can't endure to see it. How things keep going without us. How you keep going without me how our absence bears no mark and actually I would like to add I mean like. During pandemic when everybody shut down like nature started to come back to life and like the planet started to recover from all of the shit that we do to it so I mean actually you know, um, we have a really bad effect. So who. 02:38:04.92 Briar Um, it was so bizarre it was like ah so one I never there were people at the facility I work at that had like a month off or a month of of stay at home work. There are people who. Stayed at home for years. Um, you know like we were significantly reduced workforce but at the time I was working environmental including securing processes that were running 24 7 so I never had a single day where I didn't go to work. Um, during the pandemic and I remember the silence and it it. It felt perverted at the time to realize how happy that silence made me because I saw so much more of the world. And like you said nature was healing like there was a beauty in the lack of human presence and as I watch us approach the heat death of humanity due to our carbon emissions part of me is perversely hopeful that even 1 we are gone. Our planet will still remain and it will still be beautiful I and I as a species I have a desire to experience that as long as possible. 02:39:27.35 Jala Yeah, yeah for sure the last poem that we're going to read is the title poem for your wound my garden and then that's the last poem we're going to talk about. Um yes. 02:39:41.53 Briar This is a great spot to add on to because in the second edition printing of these books. Ah your wound my garden ends with a 2 picture set of a yolk. And I had to write on one of the pictures the but the contrast between the 2 of them the bottom one the charisma that they generate is just so profound that their smile in the contrasting bottom picture makes me feel pretty and it. 02:40:15.56 Briar Inanimate object depicting this person has made me feel pretty that is how charismatical ALOK is. 02:40:17.83 Jala Yeah, absolutely and that's why I encourage listeners again to go check out some of those links of the Youtube and go listen to everything you can read read these books. Everything. 02:40:32.69 Briar Get a copy look at page Forty Nine Do it for me. Do it, do it for you. You'll feel pretty. 02:40:36.91 Jala Ah, yeah, yeah, do it for Briar. Do it for Briar. Yeah, you will. You will absolutely feel pretty because that is definitely a pretty making photo right there. So all right? Your wound is my garden I am not interested in legitimacy. Legitimacy is a circus that requires me to convince others of what already is I have to pause for a minute I'm going to reread that legitimately is the circus that requires me to convince others of what really what already is I have more important things to do with my time. Does the ground have to authenticate itself to the feet does water have to substantiate itself to the tongue I have nothing to prove my dignity is not up for debate I accept myself and that is not only enough it is everything contrary to popular belief I am not a character in your novel. I'm not an actor in your tv show I am not a statue in your courtyard I belong firmly and irrevocably to myself. There is only the only opinion about my appearance that matters is my own I used to think that if I toned it down I would be taken more seriously. But then I realized. You will always find a way to discredit me. We both know this was never about what I looked like it was always about what you felt like you cannot bear to see it how I have made home here in your shame I regret to inform you that the house of mirrors you have erected. 02:42:11.54 Jala Is not a home you sculpt the world in your own image because you need proof that what you see in the mirror is real. You could not accept yourself so you made up history Science identity to disguise your own self-doubt I see behind the mask. Beneath every supremacy lives Insecurity. Each insult is an invitation to Quicksand and I refuse to take the bite. It is not my responsibility to rescue you from your self-imposed quarantine from Humanity You don't know who you are without me. I Know who I am without you This is why you hate me this is why I love you Your wound is my garden I have found life here in the places you have left for dead watch me bloom. 02:43:06.57 Jala It is. It is a good good thesis. 02:43:07.54 Briar What a good thesis it we we have just a couple more poems left in this book couple more pages in this book that we're not going to read but I think this is a great call back to the start of the book. Um, and if. I Take my thoughts from backwards to Forwards. Um I Love talking about contradiction and how as part of anti-racism Work. We've talked recently about dissecting whiteness understanding who gets a seat at that table. And how it gets revoked um and how it gets gifted as and as a tool to oppress other people and I think that that intersects with what we are saying about. Beneath every supremacy lives in security. Um, it's a force that exists only in opposition and the definition is murky enough to allow you to smudge those edges to fit your own needs and then moving further backwards. I Just want to I think it's a good escalation to get from where we just were to ah ah to where we just were um that what if I toned it down I would be taken more seriously this is the realization that respectability is a lie. 02:44:40.90 Briar Um, and respectability without fundamental. Ah humanity gift to to a person is pointless because if they you don't give them their fundamental humanity then the respect is not is conditional and can be revoked. 02:44:56.67 Jala You will always find a way to discredit me. We Both know that this was never about what I looked like it was always about what you felt Blank Legitimacy is a circus that requires me to convince others of what already is. I Have more important things to do with my time I'm just literally quoting the poem different little parts of the poem because yeah, absolutely yeah, it's so self-evident and it's so good. 02:45:18.23 Briar Um, I agree though it's good because it's self-evident. 02:45:30.60 Jala And I love the journey that we take between these 2 books where you know you start out with this kind of um, like response to all the pain and the trauma and trying to process all that pain and that trauma and everything from their past and then. Slowly but surely like then coming into their own power and risking like taking a stand now I was going to say responding to but it's really it's more than that. It's also a call to action about. The situation with the pandemic and you know the society and the enduring phobias that people have and just all of that mess and taking all of that and coming to grips with death and coming to grips with you know, different aspects of society and how we have to fight. 02:46:26.58 Briar I think too specifically this book talks a lot about how there's always inevitability with death. So let's not waste it. Let's turn it into something good. It's kind of like the way that Nihilism is often portrayed as a terminating philosophy. 02:46:46.29 Briar But recently there's been a school of thought that I become privy to where Nihilism is beauty because if nothing matters then it matters every second of how we spend that nothing um you know because that. That's what matters it justifies his existence it justifies our existence and turns us into ah self ah ah self-evident ah machines you know, um I Also specifically wanted to call out a paragraph ah part of ah. 02:47:20.82 Briar Your wound is my garden contrary to popular Belief I'm not a character in in your novel I'm not an actor in your Tv show I have not a statue in your courtyard I Belong Firmly and a rovocably to myself and I just wanted to say that this to me. Is ahoak um like inviting some hardcore academic scrutiny to their work. Ah they they are inviting us to drill down but they are also challenging us to understand that. Any version we are creating any line. We read between any Analysis. We apply any lens we look through is ours and not bears and they will not allow them. They will allow us a place to play. 02:48:13.52 Briar But they will not allow us to take them away from them and I think that is powerful. 02:48:17.39 Jala And what a way to end this book and then to end this book with like those again those 2 photos that you say that you know there's one that's very serious and and just kind of like looking off in the distance and one looking down and with like this very beautiful smile and you know, definitely. And then you know talking about I'm going to take all of this stuff. You know all this detritus all this this what lives in death. You know that's the first poem in the book and then take all of that and I will grow and flourish and bloom. 02:48:51.28 Briar And I even look as far back to the first line of your wound as my garden and that is a proclamation of I am doing this for me, you're welcome to come along if you want I enjoy the company I enjoy walking side by side. But I am doing this for me and that I think that's why this? Um, if it almost feels like a crescendo to this entire collection to me. 02:49:18.33 Jala It does and 2 this is in some ways you could say that this is one of Alok's acts of love. They have given us space to grieve and have given us words to use for that grief throughout these. 2 books. They've brought up like a whole journey like a whole mess of different subjects that are all very real experiences and feelings and let us ruminate on that. Let me finish that sentence for you right. 02:49:55.50 Jala You know like they were they were doing that themselves to that guy on the street. You know I needed you to finish that sentence So I just spent all day filling it in in my head. That's what we've been doing. We've been filling in those sentences and and adding in Backstory you know in our heads you know, imagining that. 02:50:13.43 Briar I'm glad you went back to that third stanza of the first poem we read because as a compilation I view these as thematically recursive and it's funny that you I read them in order you read them backwards. And it almost plays out the same because it's so recursive you could just read it again. Yeah I really like that we got there. 02:50:38.35 Jala Yeah, and definitely for listeners I know we've read a lot of these poems. This is by far, not all of them. There are a lot more There are so much more aloke content also out there in the universe Definitely definitely recommend that folks pick up these books and read them. Um. Read both of the poetry books and then spend some time reading it aloud too because that makes a difference that transforms the words on the page in such a way that it often just adds so much more power to it and also I definitely encourage folks to go and see Alok. Um. Live if you have the chance and if not go check out some of the recitals and other performances and stuff online. They exist in various places. Ah, they are also very active on Instagram not on Twitter but on Instagram so ah, check them out there check out their Goodreads check out their website. 02:51:33.96 Jala All of that will have links. 02:51:34.65 Briar I I procured their second edition printings off their website and it was here within like three days like that real sharp for something that was ah so personally ran so I would recommend that as an experience. If not for ALOK. Do it for yourself because I think think you learned it. 02:51:53.76 Jala Yeah, and there's definitely content here that is relatable and profound for folks regardless of what they identify as or who they are or whatever. There's something there for you in these books for sure. So. I don't have any wrap up thoughts about this other than I am glad that we got to talk about this I want more folks to read this, please read it, please hit me up. Please hit Briar up talk about these with us. We love it. 02:52:24.22 Briar Yeah, it's only about a hundred pages. It's really well paced. Um, and when I say it's only about a hundred pages. It is it also fills the room. 02:52:33.53 Jala Yeah, absolutely so it does diff definitely yeah, were rereads as well. So yeah, so on that note Briar where can folks find you on the internet if you are to be found. 02:52:48.89 Briar I am currently mostly disappeared but you can find me at @13Briars at Twitter it's been two weeks since I've logged in and nature is healing um same on Tiktok which is. 02:53:04.72 Briar Ah, mostly just browsing I'm more of a ah a passive engagement I think I've mostly in the in the last two years used these those platforms to talk to you and occasionally make a joke to Allison by proxy. Ah so. 02:53:24.57 Briar Ah, but ah, part of my Neurodivergence is I am like a vampire I need to be invited in. Um, so if you reach out to me, you will probably get some kind of response no guarantee on the content but I will make an effort. 02:53:42.47 Jala Yeah, yeah for sure and I am ah findable in the places that I may be found @jalachan in all the places including jalachan dot place where you found this episode! That is all for now folks. Until next time take care of yourself and remember to smile. [Show Outro] Jala Jala-chan's Place is brought to you by Fireheart Media. If you enjoyed the show, please share this and all of our episodes with friends and remember to rate and review us on your podcast platform of choice. Word of mouth is the only way we grow. If you like, you can also kick us a few bucks to help us keep the lights on at ko-fi.com/Jala. Check out our other show Monster Dear Monster: A Monster Exploration Podcast at monsterdear.monster. Music composed and produced by Jake Lionhart with additional guitars and mixed by Spencer Smith. Follow along with my adventures via jalachan.place or find me at jalachan in places on the net! [Outro Music]