1/28/26 - Forty Five

I am trying not to let this week consume me. I haven't gotten any sleep. All I do is work. All I do is serve, and I'm not getting anything from it but the grace of another day. I am fully equipped to weather the atmosphere of the working class nightmare. I just wish I had something I could touch to bring me respite.

Music is what has saved me in this trying time. I was listening to 45 by Kino. I believe this is my favorite of Tsoi's work. As much as I love the later stuff, there is a genius in these tracks that is undeniable.

I am trying so hard to weather this cold, but my life has been prohibitive of leisure lately. My sister has problems with their blasted shitbox, so I have to drive them everywhere... again. This is just like in College and High School, and that was the worst. Mom was expressing to me how she thinks I sound like her back then, and I agreed. All I did the last 3 days was drive. Drive, drive, drive. I sleep three hours because the world doesnt not want to give me a chance to get ready and do my routine as its supposed to happen. I am supposed to have decent time to shower and clean and shave and do my skincare the night before, but I have been having to run back and forth on errand duty into the wee hours. Sometimes I fall asleep in the bathroom forgetting I was meant to be in bed.

I laid down midi for all the next batch of songs, but only The Man has the lead vocal laid down.

Yesterday was a good day, despite the fact that it wasn't. On Monday I saw a Coyote in the snow when driving back to the apartment, and it made my day more bearable. I love animals, you know.

A lot of my spirit tells me that I must find a way out of America. Not just the working class grind, out of America. I must go somewhere else... anywhere else. I don't want to leave my sister behind. I just want to get out of this blasted hellhole country. I love Detroit, but the ICE Agents are here, and they are taking people in the southwest neighborhoods to the concentration camps. This is not the city I love. We cannot let this happen to our people.

If they plan a full invasion, I will not flee. I will have to join the fight, and I expect I will get hurt. I'm used to being injured and bruised, that's nothing new.

I believe everyone affected and hurt and killed by the fascists are my brothers and sisters, and their fight is mine. I only specify an attention to my city because I cannot travel. If I could join the fight in Minneapolis without losing my job and getting evicted, I would. I want to find a way how. I truly, truly mean this.

I need to get more sleep... I am not able to write as freely and as eloquently when I am so fatigued. My face, even, is appearing more and more weary by the day.

I am still thinking of all of my friends, all of my family. I am still wanting to know they're alright. I am still wanting of a chance to see them, to have a hug one again. I feel like I am losing it, and the only thing that helps is being able to see a smiling face. At work I helped the Detroit City FC people bring in their stuff just to see them smile. 

I just can't take any more cynicism, or posturing. I need to have a laugh with someone who sees me as a real person, as an equal. My parents like me, and they see me as an equal, despite their reservations about my transgender identity. My sister does not view me as competent person. I try not to make it a habit to winge and complain too much in these entries anymore, even given my right to express my feelings, so I won't go into detail. I respect my sister, I love my sister, but they are not always kind to me. Not at all. That's all I will say about it.

I love the winter, and I love the snow. I just wish life was easier to me in these months, y'know. In my seasonal cycle, Winter and Spring are the easiest to get through. Life is still hard, but in these months I am fully capable of persevering. I see the beauty of it all in these months 

This is not the case for the Summer. I wish it was not the case, but... I loathe my summertime depression. I do experience difficulty in the fall, but the occupation of that quarter helps supplement the pain. The summer is always a time of suffering for me. I live in fear of those days. In my life, these seasons are always the worst. Always the harshest, most brutal. Everything sort of comes out in those days, I guess. It's a shame, because it is a most beautiful season, and yet I learned when texting Remas that I have never had the summer "off" before, not in my life. My summer is characterized by isolation, labor, assault, and a loss of agency. I can remember the physical element of the stress and pain of all those years.

I'd have panic attacks every other day. I'd get migraines so bad I couldn't move. Just trying to breathe felt like being stepped on by an elephant. It was usually during these times I would starve myself and attempt. I guess that's the real reason I need my life to change. I have a feeling that if people do not like this project... if I cannot at least get a better job to supplement the lack of attention... I might attempt again.

I'm choosing to live above my heart at the moment. We'll see if I can do this. I am the most capable person alive, I can survive anything. I'm not sure if I want to, though.

1/27/26 - Vanessa Redgrave

No matter what words I use I am not angry enough. In my heart I want to reject what I know. I want to reject the truth that violence is power as much as community. In Minneapolis I choose to see hope. In myself I choose to see unease, restless hatred. In my heart I choose to see sadness.

I don't know how much longer it will be. I am waiting for my strength to die. I fear I will hurt myself. That I will throw myself into the wandering eyes of the machine. In my heart I fear it is certain.

I my heart I take refuge in continuity. I take refuge in knowledge. We are that which was born from the fall before us. And humanity prevails every time.

How much longer until we lose that providence? If God is electrons and quarks, what does it mean to ignore material constants? Is there nothing she can tell us?

I gotta do an update to the GFM if she can't hit back soon.

Not her fault.

Pad Thai is good, but I question whether chestnuts are good enough to warrant roasting in the more festive capacity. I'll have to run it back on a brisk Christmas Eve someday.

I'm stepping out into the discovery phase again, I'm trying to expand my tastes some more, as I feel that Television Pirate needs to be informed by a wholly different cultural lexicon than what I feel has been afforded to us under the current Fascist regime. I've been listening to a lot of East Asian and Russian music alike, of course spurned by my attention being turned to Oidopuaa Vladimir, Kino (Viktor Tsoi was so fucking hot) and Molchat Doma by the online music community. The internet can still be a great way to connect people around the world! I'm also keeping some Lebanese and Egyptian contemporary on rotation. Yasmine Hamdan and Sherine are favorites, the former's ambient pop album from last year has really taken my heart.

I'm listening to some Fela Kuti again, and I've decided... I'm gonna let the Jazz demons take me again. I promise myself I'd resist, but breaking promises has been, for ages, an American pass time.

My conversation today with Remas... I believe I felt the providence and warmth of God for the first time in years. I told her I dream of surfing one day. I told her of my childhood stories of the cold winters in Michigan. We joked, we comforted each other. She spoke of checking on her daughter, of swimming at the beach... I told her of my friends in danger.

I was reminded of the meaning of life, I guess. It's other people. To be a friend, to talk, and comfort, and laugh. To love. Its sappy lame bullshit, but it's true. All of the other stuff... bullshit. Gets in the way.

I spent so many hours driving, today.

I spent hours listening to songs, listening through 6 (?) albums today.

Here is what I heard.

Blood Type/Gruppa Krovi by Kino

A Star called the Sun/Zevezda po imeni Solntse by Kino

بنسى وبتذكرI Remember I Forget by Yasmine Hamdan

Gone Again by Patti Smith

Divine Music from a Jail by Oidopuaa Vladimir Oiun

Singing With Echoes Through The Universe by Oidopuaa Vladimir Oiun

Oidopuaa's story was very compelling, his constant imprisonment as a result of (debatable???) racial profiling in the Soviet Union gave him the limitation that spurned his choice to master his unique style of Kargyraa throat singing and bayan playing.

But of course I was listening to Gone Again while reading Patti Smith's book about her relationship with Robert Maplethorpe, Just Kids.

I Remember I Forget was something I had been meaning to check out for a bit, but I didn't realize I already knew one of the songs from the project. I am glad to be now properly acquainted with the art of such a creative titan as Yasmine Hamdan. I wish to go to Beirut some day.

Viktor Tsoi is a figure I have become enraptured by. I had heard of him many years ago back in Middle School, but I didn't know too much about him, and I never actually listened to any of Kino's stuff. All I knew was that he was a big rockstar in the Soviet Union that meant a lot to Gen Xers over there.

I have now become gripped by the allure and inspiration of his character, what his words and image meant to the youth of the late-era Soviets. The moment of "opening" that spelled the end of the superpower, the time in which Kino acted as flag bearers for an entire generation... seriously motivating shit. To think a guy like that was ever real... and it scares me, too. Is the fact he died so tragically, so quickly, the reason he will forever be that youthful presence in our minds? He never got the chance to be a mentor to anyone. He never got the chance to grow old and see what had become of his brothers and sisters he inspired through his work.

In Gone Again, Patti wrote a song about her respects and honor for Kurt Cobain's time on earth. I think about how, at the time of releasing Divine Music from a Jail, 33 of Oidopuaa's 55 years of living had been stolen from him in prison. 

I believe it is a horrible thing, what our world does to its young.

ICE is murdering children and raping prisoners. I must remind myself, that the holocaust is happening in my lifetime, in front of my very eyes. And I must continue to speak, to act, to stay aware. I can feel the gaze of God on the back of my neck.

I will not look away. I have to remember love.

And I will not sit on the sidelines. I will invade the banal lens of the everyday evil. I will make sure that every single person I can muster is able to see the colors.