Media To Consume This Month Instead of Doomscrolling
Notes on dream states, being and/or longing, beyond the body, and much more.
P.S. if you are reading this on email, it might be cut off. You can head to the web version to make sure you see the full thing :) and make sure to have fun exploring the footnotes!
if you aren’t incredibly interested in my drawn-out emotional intro and want to skip to the resources, you can find the toc here. i promise my feelings won’t be hurt. ok maybe a little
Hello my lovelies and welcome back to the fresh and renewed segment of Media to Consume Instead of Doomscrolling!
ik it’s been a while but trust!!!! it was worth the wait (i say with my fingers crossed)
Throughout the evolution of IOD and the turmoil in my life lately, I realized this segment could no longer be just a list of media that I dropped every couple of weeks. It began to feel as if it somehow defeated the purpose of sharing these pieces in the first place—which is not just providing yet another distraction, but to intentionally engage with media as a transformative attentional and micro-political1 practice.
I have thoroughly reflected on how I can assure that I am aligned as possible with this purpose through the pieces that I share here. On one hand, moving forward, I will only include pieces from independent publications—and as many other independent spaces as I can. There are plenty of others sharing the latest pieces backed by large media conglomerates, so I want to support and highlight the ones you might not stumble upon too easily—the ones that are not corporately tethered to anyone’s agenda. On the other hand, I want to make sure I provide width as well as depth.
if you go back to the first few posts here (maybe don’t lol), you’ll realize there isn’t a common thread, it was fr just what i could get my hands on rather than being on tiktok to put my brain to work
Now, I have built this rhizome in my mind and in my research practice where there isn’t just one common thread, but multiple ones existing all at once. I think of them as clusters that are orbiting without a center, making up an ecology where they are all interconnected.
this sounds overcomplicated, and maybe it is—my brain is really chaotic—but i think i’m doing a good job at making it fun and dynamic to explore by structuring my work like my brain works2 instead of the most digestible and marketable way
Without further preamble, I’d rather leave you to explore on your own than keep explaining. This feels like a very beautiful full circle moment for me, so I really do hope you find even a fraction of the meaning that I did by engaging with and reflecting on this selection—and hopefully my words that go along with them.
NAVIGATION MAP
aka table of contents
You can find all of the links for the pieces included in this month’s roundup (and a lot more) on this Sublime collection—that way you can save them on your own library and find even more ideas :) 3
You can also find my entire Sublime library here—I’m still organizing it, but feel free to explore it in the meantime!
As a little plus, here’s one of the playlists I’ve been listening to the most lately, if you want to play it as you give some of these pieces a read <3
ik its basically summer but in my head it’s still spring lol so next month i’ll share my summer playlist (i’m living in Bogotá now so there aren’t any seasons anymore but i will ignore that)
I know I said no further preamble before, but now I mean it—enjoy!
DREAM STATES
listen to my narration:
I’ve been having—or may I say remembering—an exceedingly abnormal amount of dreams lately. I never feel satisfied once I wake up though; I’m either waking up from what felt like an eternal nightmare loop, or right in the middle of an eclectic adventure. It’s either way too much or never enough. Balance vanishes as soon as I reach to snatch it with my hands. These efforts are all futile, because it only exists in that nanosecond where I cross the liminal space between the waking and the sleeping state. Balance is discernible enough to see, but never tangible enough to have.
I do wonder if a state can ever be in balance? Perhaps that nanosecond could be stretched thin and taut enough for us to build our utopian dream states, if only we had that stable ground to build it up from—one where we are all on an even playing field. Though I’ve been told that time is money, and that entropy is the only state that allows us to move through time.4
Have you ever looked at yourself in the mirror while dreaming? Or at least in the one of an uncannily familiar bathroom to figure out if you’re in the state to have another drink? Either way, maybe that’s as close we’ll ever get to catching a glimpse of our reflections, our distorted facial features trying to arrange themselves into the flip side.
Though it’s weird to think that light bouncing off the mirror only allows us to see into the past, and that the farther it comes from, the longer it will take for us to realize that we’re staring at dead stars. I tell myself to live in the present so as not to lose myself in death in my search to feel alive.
Life maybe really is a miracle5—I think the magic of it lies in the force of facing the past head on—the one that propels us blindly into the future. A state of motion, a state of matter, a state of mind. Elements I’m learning to alchemize into what I’ve felt my dream state whisper into the back of my neck while I open my eyes to, yet again, wake up.
I want to be a part of the shift from the attention economy, to the connection economy—if you want to be a part of it as well, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber so I can keep supporting and sharing about other independent spaces myself, making this one sustainable <3
BEING AND/OR LONGING
listen to my narration:
I really like spirals. I used to hate spiders.
During fifth grade, the weight of my—then unexplainable—lifelong disconnection from everyone around me was dragging me down into some place I didn’t want to know. Twelve-year-old me stood in front of a forking path.
Path 1: being
Path 2: longing
I thought I chose the latter. In reality though, over the years, I made my own: the desire path.6
Unbeknownst to me, I had been walking through it repeatedly throughout the years. Once it started becoming evident through the barren trail of ground, I was too scared to walk through it, what if there were spiders? Déjà vu hit me all at once then, and I knew for a fact that there were a few spiders waiting for me.
The day my fear of spiders was first challenged was during an ordinary day in my fifth-grade homeroom. The teacher was a creep so no one respected him—it was a Lord of the Flies-esque scene—everyone was left to their own devices.
I was sitting in front of my desk and a little spider climbed its way onto it. My panic was loudly expressed and a classmate came over with a plastic cup to rescue me from my disarray. Except, in her attempt to do so, she ended up catching one of the spider's legs. I felt like I had just witnessed an amputation. My fear was mostly gone, replaced by guilt and…what was that?
I refused to let that poor spider out into the wild when it was clearly disabled and at a disadvantage against the odds of survival. So I did what I thought was the most obvious thing at the moment; I adopted it as a class pet and I named them Gato Pato (it translates to Cat Duck in English).
Looking back, I saw myself in Gato Pato. I realized that this odd sense of connection emerged from the realization that we were both different and on our own. Nevertheless, we felt united by something larger than myself—yet as large as this itty bitty spider. We were both made from the same infinitely cycling star-dust, just like you and I are.
I think we kept Gato Pato in one of the lockers overnight until I brought a fish tank that belonged to my late goldfish, Gato, to make them a home out of it. For context, I really wanted a cat7. I could never touch Gato Pato, I was still not there yet, so the entire class got together to take care of them.
Even though we probably did more damage than good, I’d like to think they had a good life with us. All of the girls that had been mean to me for years seemed to get past their old grudges in order to care for this tiny disabled spider. They caught live bugs to let our spider catch on their own, and we started building a system so that we could collectively ensure the well-being of Gato Pato—they were building a spider web and we were building a safety net. I felt connected to them for the first time ever, and despite our history and differences, we felt like a community.
Our utopian, socially democratic fantasy came to an abrupt and bitter end once the powerful authorities got involved: the evil primary school director and my creepy teacher bending at her will. She walked in to overlook the class and, of course, Gato Pato’s house caught her eye. We attempted to explain the situation, but it wasn’t enough to prevent the teacher from grabbing the fish tank, and throwing our beloved class pet right out the window. Screaming and crying lasted as long as the lesson did, because by lunch break, everyone seemed to get back to categorizing each other under the ever-lasting hierarchies that had been placed long before I ever learned what social currencies even meant.
When I got the news that my dad’s cancer had spread even further, and that he needed to start chemo and radiation as soon as possible, my entire world shifted. I decided to ditch the life I had built and the future I had planned in Italy—mere months away from graduation—in a matter of days. I chose to leave the home I had thought I’d finally found. I felt displaced. I wonder if that’s how Gato Pato felt as well.
I went up to the Rose Garden in Florence8 to have some type of closure—it’s my favorite place in the world—and I wrote and cried my soul out as I watched the sun fall behind the charming yellow buildings one last time.
Here’s an excerpt from the journal entry I wrote:
Is home where you start seeing yourself rather than the streets and buildings? Probably not.
This time around, I’m not quite looking at what’s ahead. My attention has taken on a different shape. It looks like the roses that envelop this moment—soon to wilt and bare themselves of their show of color and allure, remaining rooted, just stems and thorns beyond the here and now to remain.
It also looks like the void I thought I would have filled by now. So much connection between friends and lovers, clusters of people, clusters of roses, and I, untethered and as amorphous as the city that taught me how to build a home, remain.
Gato Pato’s memory slowly faded to the background as did the memories of the years I compartmentalized before I left the place I used to call home. I tried to make enough memories away from Colombia so that maybe the weight of the new ones would bury the old ones deep enough to not be able to dig up again. One of the heaviest ones from these years, ended up unearthing the old ones, instead.
A couple of years back, I went on a solo date to Museo Novecento the second I found out that they had a Louise Bourgeois exhibition on display. I have loved her work for years—especially her exploration of spirals9 as you may notice if you look closely. I knew of her spiders, but I was not prepared for a giant one to be the first thing I stumbled upon as soon as I entered the building.
Memories of Gato Pato came flooding in along with everything that old version of myself had lived through, and most importantly, all of the ways in which I was and wasn't her10. The space was essentially empty and I allowed myself to feel it all, to let go of this fear of the past, this fear of myself, this fear of spiders11.
After that day, I was no longer afraid of spiders like I used to be. I now felt respect, reverence, and weirdly enough, a sense of safety and care. Since then, every time I see one, I feel protected and protective simultaneously—they have become a sign from the universe that lets me know I’m not alone. They now show up whenever life feels too heavy, when I feel like my guard is not enough to keep the bad feelings out. I now know that they have been showing me the way through my spiral-shaped desire path, I just had to face my fears to finally see it.
Spirals Spiders Spinning me into the one big web.
a brief intermission to share some of my latest recommendations over on Perfectly Imperfect! i have essentially ditched regular social media like tiktok and instagram (boooo!!! jk but my mental health is so much better since mostly removing myself from them) and have been really active on PI instead :)
if you’d like to, you can check these recs out and more over on my profile <3
BEYOND THE BODY
listen to my narration:
seen through my out of body personal archetypes
The Depersonalized (a?)Romantic: She has spent too long searching for herself in others, yearning for the missing piece that might make her whole. Magnetic enough to draw some attention, though deterring as if all poles were alike. Once they get close enough, they pull away as they realize there’s no one behind those eyes. She shouldn’t expect to find unity in another before she finds it between her body and her mind.
The Daydreaming Alien: She has been told she has an overactive imagination, often described as quiet and shy by those who she dislikes—the ones who make her feel alienated. She builds worlds in her mind so that she doesn’t have to exist in this one, in fact, she often imagines leaving it when she doesn’t feel human enough to belong. She could use that powerful imagination of hers to connect rather than disconnect with her humanity by channeling it into her art.
The Scrolling Addict: She attempts to escape the notions of space and time through the disembodied act of scrolling through an endless feed. If she spends too long perceiving the world through her body, she becomes aware of everything she is evading to be left with nothing but an impending sense of doom, spreading through her chest. She should know by now that nothing lasts, so if she waits long enough to make it through withdrawals, she could choose embodiment12 for once.
The Vessel: She doesn’t believe in their god, but she does believe in art. Her faith wavered plenty throughout her life, though its flame was kept alive by the rare moments she felt called to writing. She now understands that she just needs that very spark to light the fire that unites her to the divine. Fostered correctly, she can reach a state of such intense connection, she can channel the whole universe through the pen in her hand.13
The Insomniac: She is tired of people asking if she has tried melatonin yet, her chronic sleeplessness cannot be fixed by any amount of gummies—or even by an array of prescription sleeping pills. When she was a kid, sleep came easily, she could leave her body and control her dreams at her will. She wasn’t trying to escape just yet. Whenever she tries to sleep now, she does so with the intention to run from everything for a while. Instead of astral projections or lucid dreams, she is often met with the stretched nanosecond between the dream and the waking states. She will realize that balance can be easily mistaken for lack of movement when her paralyzed body forces her to face her demons instead.
i included the pieces that felt the most relevant and impactful to me and my life at the moment, but if you want to see the full list of everything i read/watched/listened to this past month, you can find a collection with 31 pieces over on this collection of my Sublime library :)
END NOTES <3
the day i’m writing this, was supposed to be my graduation day. these months have been infinitely challenging, and as today approached, the knot in my gut had been getting tighter and tighter by the minute. i know i’m exactly where i’m supposed to be, but the grief of not achieving what i had worked toward for so many years still feels overbearing. i’ve done my best to keep a sense of normalcy given that everything in my life has taken such an abrupt hit, but writing and working has become more challenging than it usually is—especially as my chronic health issues become increasingly unmanageable.
today i was supposed to walk the stage with both of my parents in the crowd, to then go out and celebrate with the friends i thought were family. i know it was wishful thinking—my dad would never have been able to travel all the way there, those alleged friends left the picture the second i got the news about my dad, and my chronic illnesses would not have allowed me to keep going under these conditions. i hold myself to such high standards, so today, i feel like a complete and utter failure, even if i know it’s somewhat irrational. i’ve been frustratingly trying to write this piece and others for a while now, but it became apparent today that i needed to reach a breaking point—for this knot to snap—to finally be able to pour all of this pent-up tension back into the cathartic act of creating.
expect an unexpected schedule for a while as i get my health together, but i’m really looking forward to sharing everything i’ve been working on with you :)
thank you for your attention,
“Micropolitics refers to small-scale interventions that are used for governing the behavior of large populations of people. Recent definitions of micropolitics, given by thinkers such as Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, argue that micropolitics is a type of political regulation involved in shaping the preferences, attitudes, and perceptions of individual subjects. Micropolitics contributes to the formation of desire, belief, inclination, and judgment in political subjects.”
here are a couple recent pieces where i’ve been having a LOT of fun playing with formats, graphics, ideas and more :)) and ofc, overusing these damn footnotes
a lot of people ask me where i find and save all of the media that i find and i’ve been using Sublime for a while now and i fr do not know how the hell i managed before having it. i won’t get into too many details here but i really do encourage you to explore :)))
“The pictures were painted directly through me, without any preliminary drawings and with great force. I had no idea what the paintings were supposed to depict; nevertheless, I worked swiftly and surely, without changing a single brushstroke.”
this is so thoughtful of you honestly. i’m inspired to make my own topics of things to explore within this frame. THANK YOU 🥰
Damn this like my brain but on actual format. Chaotic like me lmao I LOVEEEE it. I think I found my favorite channel here now. Ty for putting the time in effort in this