I wept through the ending of Light From Uncommon Stars. WEPT. Because it's so damn beautiful.

And it makes me want to get out my clarinet. To try playing it again, even though my mouth will scream for mercy until I adjust to it again.

I keep trying all these other instruments, trying to write music, but the first music I ever wrote. The first song I ever played, the first melody I attempted...

... was a clarinet. A wooden clarinet.

It sits under my keyboard. A little dusty. I have tried to keep it clean. To preserve it. It is the first thing I pack. The first thing I unpack. I keep saying I'll play it again.

That clarinet was handpicked by me when I was in junior high. Dad took me to Reiman's music. I played all these different clarinets. I listened to how they sounded. There was a brand new one the employee tried so hard to convince us to buy.

But I didn't care about those. It was the used one. The one that had been loved and cared for by a clarinetist in the Des Moines Symphony. An older wooden clarinet. It's tone was velvety, dark, beautiful. It called out to be heard, and so I played and said, "This is the one." No one could convince me otherwise. So Dad bought it - relieved he was since it was way cheaper in price -- but not in quality. I played that clarinet daily. I played it knowing I'd never be a top star. Or first chair, but I didn't want that. I wanted to write music, to share stories through song and written word.

Only for U of I's music department to break me to pieces, to destroy my music in a well of shame. Only for the conversion therapy to strangle my soul and threaten to kill me at least three times over. Only for the Christian community to shame me for being trans, of being queer, of the fact I no longer fit in any Christian community and so many scorned and belittled me for existing at all. Only for being disabled, being a freak, being unable to fit in anywhere, because the world is not made for people like us.

Then at UNI, the therapist I had found out that I liked to write music in secret on my keyboard. An old clunky one I had since 8th grade that had been bought at a garage sale. I couldn't play my clarinet because I kept crying.

So I played that.

And she introduced me to her friend. A music professor. Who listened to my music. And took me under his wing.

I wrote songs about particles, schrondinger's equation, about the planetary system. And about the madness of someone who had a dream only for it to be so thoroughly shattered by life. And he had it all debuted with performers from the music department at the New Composer's concerts. I graduated, was homeless, struggled to find a job, got so ill that I lost the best paying job I ever had, and still I struggled to play and write still.

... and so improvised on that keyboard. I wrote stories. Wrote fanfiction. Tried to dig into the details to explore other worlds because the one in which I live is the essence of pain and sorrow. But even in sorrow there is still hidden joy.

It's the clarinet that is the soul that started it all. And it is the one thing that I wish I could play again. But my mouth muscles need to be so tight to be in tune, and my health is so, so poor.

... and I fear that in the end. I will only let everyone down.

That no matter what I write, no matter what I play, no matter how hard I fight, the world won't ever hear it. That the people who need that hope will only be lost yet again. That more of us will fall through the cracks, fading into despair and neglect.

And then I read that book, and this line here hit so hard:

"With no need for a beginning, nor any reason to end, the music continues. And so, no matter who you are, where you came from, what sins you have committed or hurt you have endured.... when you are alone and there is no universe left to remember you. You can always, always rewrite your song."-- Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki

And I weep. For in the end, what we create, what we pour our hearts into? No matter what it is?

It is beautiful. And we are beautiful.

And no matter what this world throws at us, that glorious core of us will always shine. For we are made of stardust. We are the universe made manifest to know itself. And we are worth it.

thanks for reading.

#BookReview #LGBT #LGBTQIA #Music #Bookadon

I'm reading:

Health Communism: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/a6919afc-35a3-4256-91e7-809c0a9ed086

A Participatory Economy: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/e71e572e-d64a-4ee3-821d-33cee523215c

An Actual Star: https://app.thestorygraph.com/books/2c609329-3354-4eb8-af37-f8b12e0f0fe1

I've been exploring, in nonfiction, various alternate ways of building an anti-capitalist/post-capitalist society: Health Communism deconstructs Health in Capitalism and posits a community-centric approach to health, while A Participatory Economy digs through the nitty details on how to create a society/economy that is very anti-capitalist and places the power in the hands of workers and their communities.

An Actual Star is a fictional story that explores an anarchist future where capitalism has died out entirely. Through Mayan mythological and climate change themes, three characters in three different time periods (all connected in crucial ways) navigate changes to their societies, relationships, and world.

What are y'all reading right now?

#Books #Bookadon #LeftistReading #ClimateChangeFiction #SciFi #Anarchism #Communism #Socialism

Fiction books I read this year is a shorter list due to how ill I was and how hard it was to focus on the story. I'd lose track of the where and why the characters were doing what they're doing, so I had to restart a few after I had recovered from the worst of the flareups of #LongCovid.

Servant of the Underworld by Aliette de Bodard is a mystery set in the Aztec empire before the Spanish Conquest and genocide. It was fascinating if not creepy too.

The Priory of the Orange Tree by Samantha Shannon. An amazing epic that has a plethora of LGBTQIA characters and people of color. I loved the world and the characters. It's a very long read though.

Legendborn by Tracy Deonn was one of the best young adult fantasy books I've read to date. It's about a young woman who goes off to college but is still grieving her mother's death. Except she discovers magic exists, a secret group of King Arthur's court, and rediscovers her family's own heritage. The twist at the end was one of the best I'd read yet in fiction. Highly recommend.

Akata Woman by Nnedi Okorafor. YES. The third book in my most favorite series of all time! This time the four friends embark on their most daring adventure yet -- passing into another reality in order to find lost artifacts to stop a god from destroying humanity. Absolutely breathless worldbuilding and character development. I honest wish I was a Leopard person lol.

Revenger by Alastair Reynolds is about two sisters who end up separated by a pirate attack. The first book is told from point of view of the younger sister in her quest to save her older sister.

Shadow Captain by Alastair Reynolds is the sequel to Revenger and is told from the older sister's point of view. This details what happens after the younger sister achieves her goals. It chronicles the aftermath. The setting is amazing honestly - the spaceships run on solar sails and fly to "baubles" which are worlds with ancient tech shields that open up at certain intervals. People then explore and raid the ancient tech they find.

That's all I read for fiction. Next year, my goal is to balance reading more fiction with nonfiction.

I find reading nonfiction easier when I'm really, really ill because I can start and stop the book without getting too confused as to what is happening. Nonfiction sticks to a topic for the majority of book and each chapter tends to recount what is known or been discussed. So for heavy brain fog days, that helps me remember what was covered.

Fiction can't really recount what happened each chapter as that disrupts the flow of the story. So if you have to take a break and come back later, brain fog and illness may have misplaced my memory of the story, so then I have to reread prior chapters to reorient myself. This takes me longer to finish. It's a sad new reality I have had to come to accept because #LongCovid doesn't seem to be going away. So I try to work around this limitation when I read fiction.

#Fiction #Reading #Books #Bookadon #Liberation #ScienceFiction #Fantasy #YoungAdult #Disabled

Inspired by @theneurotrust thread about favorite books for the year:

Nonfiction:

#PedagogyOfTheOppressed by Paulo Freire. I wrote an essay based on it here: https://reshapingreality.org/2022/09/06/ways-of-learning/

Anarcho-Blackness: Notes Toward a Black Anarchism by Marquis Bey digs into the intersection of race and Anarchism. It diagnoses the problems we face and ways to combat injustice as well as supporting Black folks and making sure no one is left behind in our fight for justice.

The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by @chanda is by far one of the best science books I've read to date! Explores the beauty of the universe and the science of understanding it, while also digging into identity, race, and the how the current way of doing science is rooted in racism. It spells out a different way we can explore and do science that is based more in equity and justice.

How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm discusses how the current actions to fight climate change are ineffective and offers alternatives.

Raising Free People: Unschooling as Liberation and Healing Work by Akilah S. Richards and Adebayo C. Akomolafe. This digs into the oppressive ways learning is done in modern culture and explores alternatives (much of the book parallels Freire and have great overlap in ideas and more just ways of being).

The Sea is Rising and So Are We: A #ClimateJustice Handbook by Cynthia Kaufman. This book covers various ways to get involved in the Climate Justice fight. It has overlapping ideas with Malm's book, though it doesn't push as far as Malm does.

Overcoming Burnout by Nicole Rose is one of the best books I've read about Burnout from the point of view of a marginalized person doing activism and mutual aid work. Excellent advice.

The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence by The Care Collective. Absolutely crucial for our time right now - discusses ways to build a culture and community of care to fight against the uncaring and eugenics policies being thrust on us in present times.

Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds by Arturo Escobar. His writing heavily influences me as it unravels and rebuts the idea of a "one world" and how the only way forward is to live in a world in which "Many Worlds are Possible" a.k.a. the pluriverse. It is heavy on theory, but there's a whole chapter devoted to a case study of a valley in Colombia that re-imagines a new way of building community and relationship to the land - how one would go about reversing capitalism's harm to the landscape and people's imagination and how to re-introduce a pluriverse where many worlds are possible.

Red Nation Rising: From Bordertown Violence to Native Liberation by Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Radmilla Cody, David Correia, Melanie K. Yazzi, Nick Estes, Brandon Benallie. Absolutely fantastic critique of America's violent colonialist capitalist systems, how they harm Native populations, and ways to fight them.

Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene by Donna J. Haraway. Beautiful read that explores Climate Change, how we need to restore relations with one another and our planet, and ways to go about doing that. It's full of gorgeous prose, and some interesting re-imagining of humanity near the end of the book.

Dancing on Our Turtle's Back: Stories of Nishnaabeg Re-Creation, Resurgence, and a New Emergence by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson. One of the most beautiful and engrossing books I read this year. It digs into Nishnaabeg cultural ways and how they are fighting to dismantle colonialism's hold on their way of live and being.

The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Wengrow and David Graeber digs into how the way we discuss history as this linear line of growth is wrong and doesn't actually match the data. Humanity is full of creativity and has experimented with many different ways of being in society throughout history. To try to trace this development line from hunter/gatherer to capitalism is to ignore vast stretches of history and evidence of multiple different ways of being in community.

Followups that I read this year which are okay but not as easy to read or get into:

Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx's Lost Theory by Mike Davis

Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism by Ellen Meiksins Wood

So that's it for nonfiction this year! I read a lot more than I realized. Good thing I kept track with storygraph app. lol

#Books #Bookadon #Reading #Justice #Liberation

#mmromance #westernromance #Bookadon

Five things in my WIP:

1. A bull rider who shifts into a Chihuahua
2. A chimera
3. Christmas chili
4. A turquoise ring
5. Crotched chaps