Brenda Iijima : issue two : editorial

INTUITION, OMEN, PROPHECY, SOOTHSAYER CAPACITY, CORRESPONDENT, 1^st RESPONDENT

This coming together of voicings is an effort to recognize prismatically the provocations we bring to the table. Can we study social political artifacts like entrails to intuit and learn planetary reverberation? Look again for an alternative foregrounding of meanings, a change in indubitability’s paradoxical valence, an upsurge in reciprocity, a renewed appreciation of liability as a mode that recognizes active effects of one’s mutual being. Being awake is crucial—so is quiescence, sleeping, dozing, dreaming as these states are also conditions of awareness. A collective manuscript of spells. Incantations that foster sensitivities that provoke responsiveness. Polyvocally articulated in the never-ending, momentary now. The responsibility to and with all voices. Romanian philosopher Emil Cioran: “Be afraid of the enormity of the impossible.” To which I’d add… “Be abreast of the vastness of possibility outside the scope of logic and formal mediation.” Cosmology—reroutes adrenaline. Hormonal integration of cosmic news. A hormone (from the Greek participle “ὁρμῶ”, "to arouse") arouses our awareness of cosmic integrities. Expressions, transductions, messages, transcriptions—each cell, each nucleus, each star, quasar, galaxy, black hole. Who is the sun and why have they been neglected! All the varied interactions with sun’s energies and the sharing collaborations. Floral, faunal, mineral & sun exchanges: I absorb the sun’s light and convert it into mammalian flesh and consciousness, just one example…Polyphonies non-sovereign, rebellious timings out of horizons of lock-down futurisms. Re-equating with time that was-is plundered by history. Elegy born on premonitions and ultra-sensitive skin mirrors. Collective psychosis of humanisms and the interlocking exclusions that were borne of such philo-cultural prescriptions. Volatile proliferation on Turtle Island — throughout the cosmos. Other worlds, outer worlds, inner world, mental and spiritual dissonance. Cosmic betrayals. Aftermaths that mirror mirrors… Hypnotic rhythms, circadian rhythms. Reenvisioning a topless bottomless abyss or openness where voids become fecund.  A checklist of what no longer needs to be clung to. Helping each other un-cling. Paths to and away from origin. Disturbing complexities. Obscurity on a cosmic scale. Composite epics. Living textures. Heartbeats. Vibrations. All the persons and personhoods. How earth weeps, how trees moan, how flowers envision, how other than human animals strategize togetherness. “Endogamous set of cognatic kin” — Yanomami Shaman, Davi Kopenawa. The connoisseurship of caring.   

Brenda Iijima’s [photo credit: Melissa Buzzeo] involvements occur at the intersections and mutations of poetry, research movement, visual arts, floral and faunal consciousness and ecological sociology. Her current work focuses on missing persons and submerged histories, extinction and other-than-human modes of expression. A developing project involves choreography and vocalization centered on Fort Massachusetts, in her hometown of North Adams, Massachusetts. She is the author of seven full-length collections of poetry and numerous chapbooks and artist’s books. Her most recent book, Remembering Animals was published by Nightboat Books in 2016. She is also the editor of the eco language reader (Nightboat Books and PP@YYL). Iijima is the editor of Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, located in Brooklyn, NY (http://yoyolabs.com/).