Unfolded

Stargazing

2025-03-03

I took a little time Saturday night to look at the stars. It was cold and I was just getting home from dinner with my mom, aunt, and some of their friends. My mom drove us home and along the way we noticed the sky was clear and the stars were bright. So we stood in the backyard for five minutes and looked up. We have been doing that all my life - waiting for a clear sky to gaze up at and feel a little awe.

A few weeks back I was waiting on a street corner in Tribeca. I looked up and saw Venus bright in the sky. Living around New York means that the night sky is dominated by human light, so it’s fun to notice a little piece of the cosmos peeking through. I leaned up against a building, face to the sky, and watched as a few other stars popped into the dark.

Fractured Realities

2024-11-07

Yesterday Ify Nwadiwe posted a video on TikTok that touched on my thoughts around social media and the lack of a shared reality💬 See my post yesterday on social media and newspapers :

We live in a time where information isn’t accessible in the same way across the board. We live in a time where it’s been proven that different people click on comments on an Instagram post, reel, or video and see different comments because the algorithm is operating there. So I say all this to say is what if we got so caught up in the very obvious nature of the votes, that the information about why people should be voting for who is not there….But I think that for the people who are just inundated with just false information, misinformation, all the podcasts by You Know Who, all the Fox News, it’s not going to be a simple tweet video that’s going to change their mind. It’s just not…What I’m saying is that we’re turning inwards, and I think we need to be strategizing. I think that we need to be finding ways to connect with those who are willing to get the information. I’ve been calling and talking to a lot of people. There are people who are saying that they’ve spoken to people and they’re like, well, I don’t know anything about Kamala, which I know. I feel like it feels wild because when your algorithm is built a certain way, you’re like, how could you not know that? How could you not have seen that? And I guess that’s the point of this video, is that people aren’t getting the same information. They’re getting the information that is dealed to them. And the person, one of the people who controls how that information is dealt with to people was waiting for election results with Donald Trump last night.

The algorithms amplify our divisions. They take small cracks and make them chasms. People with similar ideals, when fed radically different information diets, turn into radically different people. Now, with each of us subject to these individualized, personalized, and finely tuned feeds, we live in separate realities. We are fractured, each occupying our own holographic world curated by a handful of megacorporations. How very cyberpunk of us.

Once More Into the Breach

2024-11-06

Donald Trump will be the 47th president. I’m feeling numb, disconnected.

Last night and this morning, I’ve been talking with friends, trying to make sense of this, wondering what we should do next. I’m still not sure what that is. So, here’s just a rough stream of thoughts.

The Harris campaign raised more than a billion dollars, and yet the map still swung red in so many places.. It’s clear that money in elections doesn’t mean what it did even a decade ago. What actually seems to matter now is how effectively candidates can command social media—the skill of fostering engagement and riding the algorithm. Trump, for all his faults, knows how to do this better than anyone. He’s able to control the narrative.

Then there’s the filter bubble. It’s hard to ignore how these platforms curate everything we see. We scroll, thinking we’re getting informed, but what we’re actually seeing is so finely filtered by algorithms that it feels less like reality and more like entertainment tailored to keep us glued to our screens.

It’s a strange shift from newspapers, which used to serve us a range of stories in a single package. Sure, there was bias, but there was also a balance—like a balanced meal delivered to your doorstep. You’d get the main stories, the editorials, maybe even some fluff at the end. There was an editorial voice choosing what was published. And that set a common floor of understanding. Now, every story floats on its own, a buffet of options where we’re free to consume only what confirms our existing worldview or enrages us enough to keep clicking. And I think most people feel like they’re getting more news, a wider array of voices and topics.

A few weeks back, I deleted social media from my phone. I wanted to reclaim a bit of quiet, to step back from the endless scroll. But this morning, I reinstalled, opened, scrolled, and deleted Instagram, Threads, Reddit, and even Twitter X more than once. I was reaching for something, anything, to help explain what’s happening. Now they’re all gone from my phone again, but the pull is still there. Social media promises instant clarity, but it rarely delivers anything beyond temporary relief, and then the questions come right back.

I’m going focus on stepping away from filters and algorithms. I’m not sure if that’s just me trying to exert a modicum of control in a situation where I feel powerless in my country, but it’s what I can do this week.

I’m going to make art. I’m going to write. I’m going to focus on fostering my local community. Take care of the people around me, and hope they can take care of me.

🎵 Listening to MJ Lenderman

The Building

The                    Building

I    stood    in    the    sand
In    my    city    of    ruins
Music      in      the      air

The    blues     and    yellows
Of   a   late   summers  sunset
Blocked   by    that   building

Like     unfinished      dreams
Burnt  orange  against  the sky
Just      public        housing

Twenty       five       stories
Of     love     and   community
Built      to     be     apart-

-ment       to      be     ugly
In    my    city    of    ruins
It      is     anything     but

A        skyscraper        here
Towering    above   the   shore
A        giant            alone

Hatchery Creek

Through tall trees
Sunlight streams
Speckling Sunday scaries
Into serene moments

Wind and water conspire
to erode anxiety
Away leaving space 
for empty thoughts and birdsong

A spider weaves webs
Welcoming the new week
As catfish nap nestled
Under the cool cascades

Of a burbling brook
Bounding over boulders
Atop bullfrogs bask 
And bake

Ferns and grass 
Frolic and grow
Birch and pine
Bend and twist

So moved by athereal currents 
Time is slow here
Away from the sound
Of people

Hand in Hand

I saw you there across the room,
Your face lit up, giving me that look--
A flicker of mischief, a silent invitation
Letting me know you held a secret
Just for me.

Give me a moment, I thought,
I just need to finish this.
But then you were there

Hand in hand, face to face.
My world collapses into sound and color,
Everything I could ever dream of laid out before me

In these moments, I'll give you anything,
And in these moments, you take it all--
My time and money, my hopes and fears,
My rage and my love.

But I will get away,
And my life will inflate,
Leaving behind only an itch on my back
That you will be able to scratch.

Until you are forgotten and alone,
Sitting across the room,
Waiting to hear another secret,
And catch my eye
again.

Storm King

The storm king exhales
Petrichor and restful nights
So long may he rain

Less Trash

2024-07-01

My summer’s theme(1) (1)Taking themes from the excellent Cortex podcast. CGPGrey has a good quick intro to themes on his Youtube Channel. is Less Trash. When doing, eating, buying, thinking about, watching, reading, listening to something I should be asking myself “Is this trash?” and if it is I should then ask “Can I do/have less of it?”

That’s it. A little less trash.

Palisades

I feel closest to a god
when I stand above the Pallisades
and look out at that skyline.
With the dazzling lights
and moving cars.

A diorama.

The sheer mass of it
threatening to crush me

Specters and Shades

the worlds coalesce
out of the gray mists
of time

spirits bodiless
with clenched jaws and fists
do climb

from the long ago
and into the now
forward

the rainbowlands know
how the men and cow
slaughtered

the past to preserve
what remains of us
vampire

wine coffee frayed nerves
calm wailing and fuss
on fire

the future holds them
accountable to
no one

burning coughing phlegm
like frogs in the stew
all done

with the now it fades
into those gray mists
before

the specters and shades
find their cities and enlists
once more