A SPELL FOR MAY

What does the light want?
More of its kind?
Yes.
Yes and
a wish to disturb the dark.

   -- from Kimiko Hahn, Respledent Slug

A river is a strange thing. It invariably harbors a quality of menace that can make your hair stand on end. Even on clear days, when the water flowed smoothly and the sunlight glinted off the shallows and made the plants on the bank sparkle, I always felt that the river was somehow connected to something dark, deep, and frightening.

   -- from banana yoshimoto & Asa Yoneda, not warm at all

LINGERING WITH THE LIGHT

1. praise to spring which crosses the sea like a seam ripper; wherever its breath mists, the earth turns loose.
2. an apparition dressed in silk, cross-weaves the golden threads of dusk against the blue weft of night.
3. trees are good dancers. they dance to the music of the wind and light in different ways, according to different tempos. their foliage move according to their own arboreal rhythm. it is the same music that moves them differently.
4. i collect listings of vintage lanterns. hurricane lanterns, railroad lanterns, coalmine lanterns, nautical lanterns, you name it, i have a seller's listing bookmarked on eBay. i am not particular about a time-period either, a lantern only need be powered by a non-electric source and shaped with metal for it to grab my longing. i collect listings so far, as i do not yet have the means nor the space to purchase and display a collection. my collection remains purely aspirational.
5. i spent a majority of my childhood in relative dimness. one of the earliest smells i learnt to identify was the smell of kerosene as it was the cheapest source of fuel around. electricity happened to us about as often as lightening struck. we learnt to see in the dark, aided by dancing flame of a sole candle or a kerosene hurricane lantern. if we were economical enough, one full tank of keresene could last us one whole week. our hurricane lantern was hunter green once. it's coating had long since peeled to reveal the gunmetal steel frame beneath. the transparent glass globe that cradled its wicked flame had caramelised from years of reliable use.
6. when my cousin and i grew old enough to carry the lantern without glass shattering, we were given the dual task of cleaning and refilling the lantern. we were also old enough to compromise, so we took turns on the task we were responsible for each week. if i cleaned the lantern one week, she refilled the tank with kerosene. If she cleaned that week, then i refilled. cleaning the lantern was a delicate task that required both technical know-how and nimble handling. before taking a soapy rag to it, the lantern had to be dissembled down to it's smaller components. first, the metal knob sealing the kerosene tank was unscrewed, and the left over keresone was emptied out into a dedicated bowl. next, the latch on the metal hatch on top would be pulled up to release the glass globe from it's secured position. all of the pieces would be arranged in a line then cleaned one by one with the soapy rag before being left to dry in the sun. afterwards, with the same careful handling, we would put the dissembled pieces of the lantern in the right order, change out the wick and refill the tank with new kerosene.
7. i take good care not to find myself caught in the full glare of a light. it only leaves me in a foul mood. i can only behold it from the shade of a shore. when it is dressed dimly or clouded by fog. when it is dipped in amber or blotted with paper. or when it is dappled by leaves or planed by shadows. there are some things you can only understand when you escape its orbit.

CYBERSPACE CRUISIN'

space adventures during the great web implosion

M:USICAL DREAMS

fantasies of a music nerd

FULL-MOON MEDIA

shiny bits of visual flotsam bread-crumbing for our attention during our orbit

1. Yoko Tawada - Suggested in the Stars: i am sat for where-ever Tawada wants to take me in this second installation. love that we getting to meet new characters who have their own funky language and getting to know about the sinister von Trier hospital.
2. Saou Ichikawa & Polly Barton - Hunchback: hilarious and unsettling in equal measure. Shaka is hella messy and hella real. everyone including Shaka is dreaming up fantasies of themselves and other people. isolation makes monsters of us all.
3. Somatou - Shadow's House: so much grooming, drugging and isolating. our guess is that the shadow nobles orchestrated this macabre face experiment as a misguided attempt to secure their own futurity in a world where their existence is fragile at best.
4. Mona Fastvold - The Testament of Ann Lee: the music could have been better in some places but the performance of shaker religion brought out goosebumps. much ado about sex, indeed! we do not often see films show the tempestuous fissures that led to the different christian splinters.
5. Janice Hardlow - The Other Bennet Sister: it was cute and all but for a story written in 2020, it could have pushed hard for a life for our main girl that didn't have her doing the classic love triangle plot-line.
6. James Ivory - A Room with a View: Helena Bonham Carter is practically cherubic in this. the brits do dearly love their romantic (e)scapes peopled with savage other who both repel and save them from their stuffy lives. it ended up being inadvertently funny.
7. PieceWork - Summer 2026: this issue is all about the enduring relevance of indigo dye and blue fabrics across time and cultures. some american nationalism that is hard to stomach but oh well, we can't have it all.
8. Akinola Davis Jr. - My Father's Shadow: "Everything is sacrifice. One should just pray that you don't sacrifice the wrong thing." ugh, the line did something forr us. i wanna rewatch it in the company of older nigerians.
9. Kristoffer Borgli - The Drama: edgelord, sensationalist drivel created mostly to ragebait and stir up controversy. doesn't have anything real to say either about gun violence or anything it wants to have a conversation about, but every character is hollow enough for audience to slot themselves into. it's real crime is that for a comedy, it is NOT funny.
10. Gore Verbinski - Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die: Lorde, not another, transhumanist, AI singularity film conceived and executed so sloppily. white filmmakers either develop an actual materialist view of technlogy or redistribute resources to people who have actual things to say. this did not have any business going on for as long as it did. Zazie Beetz, what's going on girl?
11. Nicholas' Fantastic Summer: there is something so early 2000s about this cartoon series even though we think it was adapted recently. the format of the episodes and animation lines reminded me of the french cartoons we grew up watching.
12. Julia Pott - Summer Camp Island S3&4: i actually think these series perhaps more than any other inherited adventure time's wacky sense of humor and world-building. the animation style is so cozy and it has adorable characters: pepper the cloud-panda, the yetis and the aliens
13. Weather Hunters - learning about weather with a meteorologically-inclined black family in a black neighbourhood? inject it into my bloodstream.
14. Sabrina Imbler - How far the light reaches: only two chapters in so far but have come to realize this kinds of nature or science writing may be my least favorite kind. so much juxtaposition and parallels being drawn that feels overwrought and narrative serving. more a memoir than what we thought going in.
15. Banana Yoshimoto & Asa Yoneda - dead-end memories: Yoshimoto & Yoneda have a startling and gentle way of writing the essence of particular and fleeting moments of life. The notes on light from not warm at all keep looping our head.
16. Mayra Zarif & Andre Kadri - Dounia S1 & 2: beautiful animation, voice acting and heartwarming relevant story. neo-liberal in it's resolutions in the way things out of Canada can be
17. Caroline Adderson - Sunny Days Inside & other stories: this was a pleasant find from the Toronto public library about kids in an apartment complex during the lock down.
18. Olga Tokarczuk & Antonia Lloyd-Jones -Drive your plow over the bones of the dead: four chapters in and i adore the astrologer's signification of words and their meaning. her rogue use of capitalization and clever nesting of the chapter titles in the winding tangents she goes on.

                                                    in orbit,
                                                    eegunjobi