HERE AND NOW

Beautiful weather, today, in Monterey; perfect for walking. Nevertheless, this week has been rather sad and disorienting. Attending the funeral of a friend, recently, I also learned that another friend had passed away, just that morning; both died from cancer, and both were board members of the same nonprofit, of which I’m a member.

With that, you’d think I would be morbidly meditating on death, but instead I’m mostly intent on getting on with life. Aging continues as it always does, no matter how young or old you are. Life is continual change; as you gobble up life, it gobbles you. And so on . . .

Ouroboros. Copy of a 1478 drawing by Theodoros Pelecanos of an alchemical tract attributed to Synesius. Public domain image, Wikimedia Commons.

Speaking of “change” and endings, I recently shut down my art website and blog of ten years. I have been a WP (WordPress) aficionado for about fifteen years, but the platform is no longer working well for me. It has become too complicated, time-consuming, and too expensive to run. So, I switched over to HostGator Website Builder, and the build, in comparison to WP, has been ridiculously easy. The hard part is linking my domain over to HostGator, and I’m still working that out. The website isn’t linked to my domain yet, but I’ll let you know when it is.

I congratulate myself that I was actually able to save all ten years’ worth of blogposts, in readable condition (i.e., I won’t have to sift through a ton of code), to a file in my computer. It was interesting, and a little emotional, to encounter that past life again in blog posts. I’ll have more to say about that in the next issue of Eulipion Outpost.

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ART

Another “bedtime drawing.” But this time, it’s not to keep me from scrolling through Instagram—since I no longer have an Instagram account. Hah! Now, it’s just what I do to calm down at night before bed. The organic shapes I drew in the image below (influenced by the surface of the Lokta paper) remind me, just a little, of the okir (also okkil) motif of the Maranao and Sama people of Mindanao (southern Philippines).

Ink and watercolor on lokta paper. 8.5 x 11 in. by Jean Vengua.

LINKS

Art historian Sandhini Poddar interviews artist Pio Abad (nephew of the artist Pacita Abad). He calls his current art project “an extensive inventory of stuff…really a way of mapping [the Marcos dictatorship’s] delusion.” Much of his art is driven by his archival research into some areas that people would like to forget. I love his comment, “. . . we think about archives [as] where things get found, but it’s also where things can be purposefully lost”:

A 2009 film about artist Pacita Abad:

In her newsletter, The Unpublishable, Jessica Defino gives the beauty industry the middle finger. “Anti-aging is a Construct: It’s Not About Aging and it Never Was”:

The Unpublishable

Anti-Aging Is A Construct

The Unpublishable is a weekly(ish) newsletter covering what the beauty industry won’t tell you — from a reporter on a mission to reform it. Subscribe for free to support independent beauty reporting that isn’t beholden to brands, advertisers, algorithms, or affiliate sales…

a year ago · 28 likes · Jessica DeFino

Feminist Sex Writer Susie Bright gives us her take on “aging” (in Sari Botton’s recent “Oldster” newsletter:

Oldster Magazine

This is 64: Feminist Sex Writer Susie Bright Responds to The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire

From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.” Here, celebrated pioneering feminist sex writer Susie Bright…

2 months ago · 16 likes · 2 comments · Sari Botton

Dada Drummer Almanach says of his recently featured Substack newsletter: “I want to share sounds, thoughts about sounds, and thoughts about how we share sounds. Also vegetables.” For example, his most recent newsletter contemplates the idea of the [music] album. Sounds interesting . . .

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SOUNDINGS

All the sounds in this issue are coming from one place: YAKĀ.

“Sirens” by Shades of Native, a Philippine folk-rock group. Their lead singer, Wally Allegado, and his wife Elena run a very cool “resto-bar” and “beloved art hub” YAKĀ in Bukidnon:

Curseteen, with their vocalist Trisha, playing live at YAKĀ. I’m sorry to say that I don’t understand a word of what she’s singing, except ‘‘sapat!” (enough!) --but what a powerful voice!

Datu Waway Saway (a musician and visual artist from Bohol) and the Talaandig Republic, performing “Riverclouds” at YAKĀ:

I’m finishing this issue at four minutes till midnight. Good night!

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Eulipion Outpost

3/26/2022 #57