Process Notes

Ritualized writing in this space more closely approximates knitting than the writing I do for work. This is why it becomes devotional, meditative. While I may sometimes present more theory-fueled texts, such as the recent “Sutras… Effie White” visual analysis, they’re written through an entirely different process than my academic-facing texts are. Here are the general parameters/guidelines I’m using to develop the writing for the specific space of this blog: 

UNEDITED, IMPERFECT, IN-MOTION: If you’ve read several posts, you may have noticed a few small typos, missing words, or extra words. This is because I’m writing in a ritualized way, within a temporal frame (usually not more than 45-60 min per session) and spiritual/intellectual vibration where I’m fully present and following the rhythms of the text. Then I post, exit, and pause for at least an hour or two before lighting another candle and beginning another session. I think this space is best described as a living archive of thinking-in-motion: it’s not meant to be polished or performative, or fully resolved in terms of its meanings/implications. Writing has a more dialogical feel, more polyphonic, sometimes fragmentary, time-stamped and time-bound, which I think works well in this particular medium. (When I knit, I never pull out a row, even if I've fucked it up. Even if it's a pattern, and I've fucked it up! Even if there's a hole. Why? Because the point isn't perfection, it's giving my hands something to do, and giving my body a rhythm, while I'm thinking without translating.)

CONTINUITY + EXPERIMENTATION: As the blog has developed in the past week, I’ve felt two different strains emerge, each feeling equally important to the project’s overall aims. There’s one long-term, monastic project to maintain continuity, and to practice scholarly and spiritual discipline: the Old Path White Clouds journey (“OPWC”). And then, there are the more variable posts, the mini-series such as “The Sutras”: more theory-inflected, mythopoetics, visual or literary analyses, with a range of objects, often pop culture-based. Or, hybrid reflections about grief, memories with Drew, what happened to him and its lasting impact on me. There might be the occasional parody post; tangent about a literary figure or new film… we’ll see what emerges. But it’s important to me that this space reflect the many registers I engage to process a loss of this magnitude. Form should also be expressive; not just content. (I knit the same parallelogram stitch, which itself is composed of 2 basic stitches, knit and purl, across 16 rows with one project, all winter long; then, I maintain one other working project where I attempt a new pattern, which is also some more elegant/elaborate combination of knit and purl stitches. Continuity, experimentation: differential, rhythmic (re)turns).

More soon. 

– December 19, 2025 from 4:25 to 4:47 pm 

additions made, in italics and parentheses, to tie back to knitting, until 4:53 pm, time of posting.