Melancholy & Missing Lighters

I uploaded my first YouTube video yesterday! Making YouTube videos is something I've contemplated since I was a preteen (I think most of us who grew up with YT share that experience). I mean, I have made poetry videos in the past, but they appear to no longer exist (I don't even remember which email I used). I have attempted several times to make videos of just talking, but I struggle with stage fright. I can have conversations with myself lasting hours, but stick a camera in front of me and I freeze. I can freestyle dance smoothly and elegantly (for an amateur), but when a camera's thrown into the mix, I go stiff and forget most moves I know, automatically repeating the same moves over and over. I really want to connect more through YouTube. More dance videos, maybe some vlogs, essay and poetry readings, and hopefully I'll get up the nerve to make song recordings. Anyhow, after years of wanting to make a video of myself dancing, I finally managed to make a clip that I ...

  (Source) ((I know I specifically share poems on the full moon, and this is an excerpt from a novel. However, Seiler is a poet and that much is certainly reflected in his poetic prose.)) Mavin poured a small pile of seeds in his left hand. Each seed felt like a tiny vibrant city. He thought of Kep and thanked her for saving him. He thought of Lars and Trish and his mother. He thought of his grandfathers and his people. He thought of the whole wide world once full of ten billion souls. The soft damp earth smelled alive and sweet. He opened his eyes. The silky mist around them began to rise. As the seeds sifted through his fingertips, Mavin let go of his old view of the world. Facts and figures were cardboard. Existence was a burning, roiling, continuous funeral and birth--immeasurable. He walked in a spiraling circle feathering the living grains thru his fingers. Seiler, Mark Daniel. River's Child , Owl House Books, 2018, 144-145.

 It has come to my attention that I have made a mistake. I have been misidentifying Morus alba as Morus rubra. I had even made posts referring to them incorrectly multiple times (they have since been edited). Now, I've encountered mulberry trees all over the northeast out to Iowa. So, when I was first attempting to identify the species, I only really focused on finding trees that are native to North America. I found one: Morus rubra. The pictures I'd found of Morus rubra looked pretty similar to the mulberry trees I've seen and eaten berries from, excepting the berries themselves. More specifically, Morus rubra berries appeared to be longer. But you know what my dumbass did? I shrugged it off and figured the mulberries look like that when the trees are older. This mistake wasn't too bad. Morus alba is still edible, in fact, just about all the species of the genus Morus are edible (I'd made certain of that much at least). Yet, this mistake has been a nice little wake...

  We'd ended up getting to Niagara Falls later than expected and got caught up in a rain storm. After ducking under several business front awnings, we stumbled upon what Google Maps had marked as "The Turtle: Native American Center for the Living Arts", only, it was a vacant building. It was perfect due to it having an awning and lacking employees to tell us to "Fuck off and get soaked". Upon settling underneath, I did some internet research. Named after its exterior having been built in the form of a turtle, the building is an homage to the land it sits on, Turtle Island; from the Haudenosaunee creation story of Sky Woman. It was designed by Northern Arapahoe architect, Dennis Sun Rhodes. Apparently, the Turtle had been a center for the local Native community. It had been created with the idea of preseving and promoting traditional and modern Native American culture, specifically the arts. Native American Center for the Living Arts (NACLA) was an organization ...