[tldr i made a zine - pre-order nasty notes and bankrupt an arts institution today!]

late in the summer, no one was ready to see dance again despite us all preparing to return to the stage (including yours truly!)

a few weeks ago, i threw myself back in. i’ve seen so much in the last few weeks. what’s made the performances memorable besides the work itself lol, have been the physical sensations of coming and going to the "theater."

from fresh air to filtered staleness and the flush of old friends back to tugging elastic loops off my ears so i can taste which stage of winter/summer nyc's tropical climate has chosen this week, the blur of apocalyptic time slows as i gulp in the night. the particular trials and triumphs of another cinematic week of everyone's main character energy blur blur blurs away. sigh

this is ur 2nd slushee of this 2022 gemini szn—what pleasure! lol

as i wrote that last 3rd quarter moon, I've been thinking about

• effortless exertion

• effortful emptiness

it's gemini szn so that's not a binary, but a ~duality~

nooooo I didn't forget, i never mess up*, this is a third quarter moon special:

*except when at the gym, where I've been finding new ways to flop, new configurations that elicit a fall, a gentle failure.

in this era of my bod, my pelvis is less interested in the obviousness of the big muscle group exercises.

instead, I've been playing with counterbalancing exercises to stack my pelvis and my spine in new orientations.

dearest slushee sleuths!

on sounds and sound discourse #subcrit

this afternoon, I was listening to that recent album's 4hr44min closing track. coincidentally I started drafting this slushee after listening to the first 44min of it and realizing the drawn out violin (?) note was still playing in my earphones lolol s/o to the mediocre ambient music and ambient coffee shop noise that I don't like but like to send emails to smdh!

last wk, I was listening to another recent album with a friend—one of my faves of the year so far! I had taken one of the spoken word interludes about astrology and the artist's planet placements as glib but bestie insisted it was included earnestly. happy first quarter moon in gemini!! frankly, I refuse to believe them. it does not work if the artist means it like that!

my fellow content consumers,

we must discuss two of Netflix' latest releases: cheer and hype house. plus a bonus reality tv sub-crit below. nobody (ok fine, two of you) asked for this content and you can bet I'm here to deliver, jus 4 u xoxo

I bolded my tldr's below. but let's start with cheer,

hey you slush-star,

i have little sense of the days lately but the day after it just snowed here in NYC, i remembered last winter's slushee reveling in snow walking. my body's been heavy and lethargic but i dragged her outdoors with the hopes of feeling the crunch beneath my boots. still the best feeling! even tho my footsies froze in my boots in the barely 2 inches of snow within minutes. i step stepped for a short while and then went back indoors

hello inbox trolls!

this slushee's title comes from the astrology meme graphic below—one of the best of the year! last Friday's first quarter moon was in pisces and the sun was obvi in sag szn. the rising? up to ur geography bestie!!

https://twitter.com/elden1000000/status/1468641618966188032

I plugged in my and everyone whose big 3 placements I know and didn't get a single incorrect statement. cancers are little spoons! pisces risings are little cry babies! someone challenge me!!

everyone, the ads are especially bad lately

just a sm0l observational rant, b/c the analysis is too obvious:

we've reached the stage of startup-late-capitalism where they're not selling goods or even services but instead: implements or "financial services" to pay for goods and services. it's not credit cards anymore; who's pushed a national credit card ad campaign lately? too direct, its reach/ROI already plateaued. nah, instead, the predatory lending industrial complex has spawned a new demon and it's zipping awful! marx wasn't supposed to be this literal but/and/yet....

i don't even watch much content but all i'm seeing are these "buy now pay later" ads. the way they're not even trying to sell me a new pair of boots (which, plz, someone, this szn calls for a new pair) but instead, they're selling this distended ~process~ of buying shit. makes me ill. these little clips of people shopping, these low-budget animations of goods moving my screen... "Can't afford those boots now? Don't worry! Just slowly inch towards financial ruin in a shiny pair of new boots."

ugh, hello there!! <3

we're really not gonna be able to virgo girlboss* our way out of this one, huh? 🥲

happy first quarter moon in Sagittarius! happy virgoszn!

do u have ~functioning systems~ in place? 🥰

me neither!! 🥲

hi slusher,

welcome to the first slushee written on the occasion of a full moon - last Friday's in aquarius. linear time is fake, etc. etc.

earlier that day i was on my usual walk/dance/jaunt and a song came on shuffle that i hadn't heard in months. this tune undoubtedly had the Best Bridge in a Pop Song in 2020 and icymi, this is a big deal, i will die on this hill

https://twitter.com/xbennyboo/status/1323326609655500800?s=20

happy cancer szn + mercury retrograde shadow timez!

i wrote this a while back so i promise this was actually ahead of schedule ºenergeticallyº and ºdraftinglyº if not ºpublishinglyº

you can read the june 17 slushee here:

stylish muscling

hi slushee stans!

did we make it to buttondown okay? welcome!

the first quarter moon entered virgo – we’re feeling calmly systematic, in control but not too self-critical over the assessment. yes, we!

update: i’m leaving substack! how disappointing they are :(
this will be my last missive from here - in may, stay tuned for a msg from buttondown :) feel free to add <postmaster@mg.buttondown.email> to your address book if ur worried ab spam filtration!

i can’t believe ‘first quarter moon slush’ (ur fave monthly missive) and ‘soft bodies in hard places’ (my petit curatorial platform) have existed since 2018 and it took til mar 2021 for me to go ice skating

get ready for the most m*ta slushee u’ve ever read 🥰

feb 19 was my birthday! haha

[feb 18]

it is snowing as i edit this. what a delight! i think about compiling another love letter about my snow embodiment because my state’s infrastructure, for all its other failures, can manage a snowfall somewhat okay, while in TX… *screams* who is surprised that this google doc offers more than the state is

dear slushee fans,

one recent day, i biked a breezy 4ish miles to the botanical garden to see a dear one i haven’t been with in physical space since before. my last few bike rides, i began listening to music at low volume (shh) and honestly, the blend of outdoor noises and scenic views (we love the open sky up here) passing by at bike speeds, and listening to an album all the way thru is 🥺🥺. the thrilling release [obvious metaphor forthcoming, don’t @ me] of driving in a car to loud music but slower, quieter, and less carsick.

at the garden, i stayed in the cool outdoors for few hours and then somehow my chilled body had to make it back home. my muscles brittle from passive, mild shivering, i made up my (probably longer) route as i went. i reclaimed a mostly empty stretch of red bus lane, downshifted to make it up the steepest hill (honestly, would’ve been faster walking le vélo up), and floated down the slightest incline the rest of the way. once home, i dizzily crumpled on the floor and luckily got up to re-hydrate before i got stuck there, my mouth hanging open to release the comforting pulse still lingering in my silly body.

there is so much astrology to process this wk - which ofc, is to say, there’s so much to process and astrology’s framework provides some guiding questions to consider

here’s a handy summary i compiled just for u, dear reader:
[fr, don’t @ me, take me a little bit facetiously here, thanks!]

dear reader,

my brain is a scatterplot, no line of best fit

i’ve thought of everything i could say and everything I should say and you’re getting the edited version

“is subtweeting productive?” for processing and/or internet content?

dear slushee pals,

I just couldn’t last month cause, you know, fall hustling, free falling, falling apart, falling over myself, "falling” as a somatic exercise, but not the kind you have to or even can do slowly, fall breathing and leave crunching, practicing how deep I can “dance fall” before catching myself at the last minute, falling in and out of small feelings, big feelings, falling into my bed—you know, the things.

among everything people have been saying, rather vaguely but not uninspiringly, about this pandemic necessitating a new world order (huh, let’s see about that…), being a portal (Arundhati Roy), etc. one of the most tangible things for me to “track change” (I kno I kno, don’t) is how I deal with being in my body all day and then trying, usually unsuccessfully, to sleep before having to wake up and be in my body all over again.

dear reader!

long time no see! can’t believe it’s been months!

i've missed you!

hope for my IRL fans, we can have some version of this conversation IRL sometime!

as semi-alluded to last time, here’s a slightly edited thing that I wrote for the April 1 slushee ! today’s first quarter moon moved into Leo this morning so I guess the energy is right!

If you’ve ever been a performance date/pal with me, you might remember that I usually like to sit in the back, as a default. This isn’t true all the time. sometimes I like to be right in the middle of it all, with the most logical choice there to just follow my senses—whatever’s moving right in front of me, whatever gape in the ceiling to tune out. One idea of experiencing something live is that one gets to choose—where to look, listen, smell. No adventure chosen is the same or wrong. If I miss something, I’ll have to ask someone else about it later and let time keep passing. But to watch something from the front row is a performance too, especially in a field where I can no longer claim anonymity as easily as I could’ve a few years ago. This essay is not about the challenges of fame, I promise ;)

today’s third quarter capricorn moon special post is brought to u by Aries season and ur fellow readers (mostly off twitter) who appreciated these quick takes and fun vids
so wanted to share more! so scroll for quality internet-age content or move on
regular content as regularly scheduled (if that even applies to me) coming next time maybe xoxo

a few days ago, I started writing this slushee and it somehow turned into something cogent again, something with complete sentences and logically divided paragraphs. guess i’m on a roll or something

still, I don’t trust my sense of judgement right now. I saved those thoughts for another time, another context - maybe the next slushee i’m scheduled to send at the end of the month. maybe my essay on experiencing time online will feel cute and dated. I suspect it’s more likely it’ll still be apt, though not improbable that someone will have articulated some of the same ‘points’ I was exploring, that is, if they haven’t been already (i’m sure they have) don’t already feel redundant.

I then thought about compiling some favorite tweets and memes, which is also redundant ofc, but you can move on and i’ll never know. or u can scroll down if ur curious 🤪

dear readers,

there’s a vein of (not necessarily untrue) thought that explains the outsized popularity of superhero movies through their propagation of narratives on the discovery of one’s exceptional power, to be used for vigilantism (ofc!) in ~dark political times.~ or the recent resurgence of rom-coms, romance, or romanticism for the lightness, the potential, and real-time escape they offer in ~dark political times.~ sure !

dear reader,

i come to you from a previous decade, one you might have been in since people started frantically anticipating its arrival with the countdown’s and best of 2019’s and best of the decade lists whose integrity i questioned. how many spots were earnestly chosen? how many spots were paid for by sponsors? but ofc, most Mainstream Content has already been filtered by the Patrons - i saw that movie because everyone was talking about it, but only because the media was hyping it, but mainly because the marketing dollars got behind that film and dumped CATS (lol), which still got reverse hype notoriety, if not as many of the dollars that things/people get for being BAD (see; NYT columnists, US politicians, etc.). i was also here before this panic about the gregorian calendar moving and have already left and will be back soon ~

i’ve also been thinking about my last slushee and how those pieces of content crossed my consciousness with the right kind of relevance. here’s another succession mash up that’s very ‘on the nose’ - delusions of homoerotic american grandeur. but what fantasies and rhythms (i see you 2012 LDR) and erasures are these expressions of self-knowing white nostalgia predicated on?

to Jupiter in Capricorn, to #sagittariusszn, to December, to this horrific year slowly ending for more horror

a cliché: write what you know

I have usually considered myself among the dancer folks who don’t retain new choreography well. i’d nearly black out in auditions and not remember learning something or attempting to recreate it in front of judgmental people around me and looking down on me from behind the gates they kept

‘first quarter moon slush’ (yes, always linking to myself) celebrated its 1-yr anniversary / solar return last week on oct 16 - check the inaugural post here (yes, I did it again!)

before I even started drafting this slushee, I was thinking about many of the things I was thinking about a year ago and maybe my oct 16 2018 post’s musing’s of its own existence have twirled in deeper spirals around themselves into this oct 21 2019 post and I’ve mentioned that I can self-absorbed right?

I can’t help this is where I am the; repetitions and obvious statements are a revelation in themselves and yes, this is me being generous to myself and it feels okay :::

I definitely knew this slushy was coming but couldn’t extract a framework for it. I have many so many thoughts about many things, some of them are in word-form, and I realized most of them aren’t ready for you to read so i’ll invite myself to write about this moment of gratitude for the abundance of discourse circulating inside my skull, even though this wealth of thought is exhausting

and I leave it there because I think a semi-specific list of topics would be more annoying than the wordy truism (what I basically meant was: can you believe people have multiple thoughts! at the same time! omg!) but we know I can’t not write the latter so…

happy 3rd quarter moon in gemini y’all

hi, um,

today, the moon is in a first quarter and transitions from scorpio to sagittarius tho it feels like the new moon in virgo was like yesterday. normally it feels like there’s more time between these quarter moons but we know cycles are uneven and that’s nice to think about for me

today also snuck up on me because there was a long period where I had reminders scheduled for myself on that horrific app that is no longer a functioning system for me* (lol New Years embarrassments, how relatable I am!) and yes, i’m still feeling something that people call burnout and i’m still working through it and we know cycles are uneven

spoiler alert: #semisolovacay2019 did not fix my burnout

y’all, i’ve had some very groggy and sloppy moments lately and I apologize if my oversights has affected you.

My last slushie, I just noticed I abbreviated ‘jun’ instead of ‘jul.’ I sent a broken link to an essay I wrote and one of you caught it, thank youuuu

A work email person had to tell me I made a typo. And then when I responded, I called the person the name of someone else in the email and I’m . Please don’t send me any of your copyediting gigs, my brain is not there right now

b/c it’s still june 24 on the west coast, where I leave for #semisolovacay2019 in just a few days :)

but delivered to you in reverse order!

today , the moon shifts into its first quarter phase in libra. I’mma choose to not say more cause it is what it is

when I first started compiling the tweets (yay, they’re back!) for this slushie, i sort of accidentally was formatting it as a #summergoalz listicle and am thankful that this has changed and u r welcome for the slightly improved content.

i was recently reminded that ‘pride’ is ‘this wknd’ — as opposed to any of the other days of the year that queer people have to exist ugh; or any of the other wknds this month where other NYC boroughs have celebrated Pride — and realized how my beach feels (which will probably be ruined by the maybe rain anyway) will be in conversation with my desire to hide from humanity this particular wknd.

I know gaymoney is in right now but i’m just bored by these shiny celebrations that feel too far removed from the violence queer people, esp , face all the time (or any of the other intersectional shit happening in this world) and if you haven’t already read this essay, read some longer/better/ and/or more specific versions of it

i don’t know if I know how to write one of these slushies without leaning on tweets, whining about sleep or burnout, but clearly i have my ~recurring themes~ and that’s ok. i will only take on the first challenge in this slushie, so if ur missing out on tweets, join me on [this plug doesn’t count!]. it’s very good; you can waste much time.

[plz believe me I sent this on may26 and it didn’t work and then again on may28 and clearly I need to double check b/c that didn’t work so ur welcome, get ready for another one tmw lol, what’s a technology]

enough people have talked about how efficient technology is bad or whatever (no need to cite because it’s casz) but that didn’t stop me from feeling lo-key pumped about saving 2 minutes by being my own mf assembly line 🙄

[someone make that cha cha slide remix, ty]

after over 3 weeks of seeming to go backwards (like why?!), mercury stations direct today!

and i’m probably in the minority when I say that, on the whole, it’s been good for me. it probably helped that mercury has been hanging out in pisces. (feel free to hate me for this): the trains had never been kinder to me and that’s just one light (but impt!) example of feeling in sync with the things.

but when the sun shifted to #ariesszn, this ease started to crumble a bit. all the bumps in the road became super present & annoying where they had faded into background noise easily in prior weeks.

i’m so behind on tv and have many questions for what this show centers but i do love it and also ^^^ damn, a mood.
exhibit b: i don’t even know what this song is about but also, the title was stuck in my head. it’s that blandly bleh mood that’s a little gratuitous and boppy-lite. makes me laugh because, really …. what? tf? ‘’

suggested soundtrack for this longer-than-usual read:

[this is not spon-con but] entering this ~new calendar year~ thinkin about my todoist ‘karma’ [don’t get me started] streak [currently at 12 days], which uses points to quantify and reward how productive i am. this screen grab means i’m doing very well.

[omg today's the 29th, not tmw lol]
dearest dear,

idk if i have many interesting thoughts lately — the tldr; includes tryna (unsuccessfully) to be productive (on my own projects and for work), weird family dynamics, weird NYE hype, and puppy vids and end-of-year best of lists.

the last two have probably been my favorite procrastination tools. i knew i was in deep-rut when I followed all the twitter puppy accounts. I won’t enable you but I will include the sloppiest * there ever was below ;)

dear darling in december,

this sagittarius season has also been so challenging (see a pattern with me?) and so, so fun. of the sun seasons to get my life together, i wouldn’t ever have thought sagittarius would be it and i’ve still been quite messy (sorry email, can’t with you), but i’ve some how tapped into this hyper-manic GTD energy that I haven’t had in a while. not sorry that i’m finding a mode to work thru the excesses of hyper capitalism lol but am sorry that my communication has received a C- clarity rating from myself and you know how kind I am to me, is this a complete sentence? idk

maybe i’m rambling because i’ve also been noticing a tendency to not speak when i shouldn’t, to feel a sagittarian kinda frustration with myself for seeing a situation unfold at work that I don’t think makes sense, have it go terribly, and then be like, to myself @ me: “you shoulda defended ur boundaries” or “you knew that ur boss was INCORRECT”

and like, yah, i tried and ‘picked my battles’ or whatever but also it’s a lesson for me. i can be strategic or considerate about dealing with things but I can also just speak up