Time for the grand finale...

Descripción

May playlist is here! Go listen now .𖥔 ݁ ˖ᯓ ✈︎ [https://tidal.com/playlist/f25a41a0-2d2b-4a2b-9494-a3c697b67a36] Starting this month, paid subscribers can request a personal single card reading once a month. Learn more here. [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfEaE9CzceRqSoxwjb9Y7Xy6uTzGYyFEH_ojdwaKy0qNPxBjA/viewform?usp=header] The past few months have been filled with closing doors. If you are astrologically inclined, you’ve probably heard once a month that a once-in-a-lifetime transit is occurring, shifting us into a new era. If you’re pattern recognition inclined, you may have noticed that the spring has been a period of major shifting for you and/or many around you. Something is being rebooted, and a new season of life is gearing up to start. Funnily, this dialogue around chapters can at times feel misleading. It implies that anything in our lives is a clean break, which is simply not true. We are complicated beings that are constantly in motion. New chapters are beginning all the time in small ways. If you’re entering a seemingly new chapter of your life right now or in the near future, remember the things in your life that are remaining stagnant. Remember how those stable things were once new, exciting doors. Embrace the shake-up and the come-down that will follow. Enough future talk. Let’s see what the cards have to say about the month. BOTD: Ten of Wands A slow trudge to the finish line is among us. Have you been overbooking yourself? Maybe carrying baggage that’s no longer yours or was never yours to begin with? It’s time to set it down for good. Where we’re going, there won’t be room for dead weight. This month will be spent figuring out what this extra weight seems to be. This heaviness may not even be inherently awful but simply inefficient. Imagine having a work bag you carry around. You realize one day that you never read the book that’s always in there, and all the extra “just in case” items would work better sitting in your work locker. I spent a year carrying my lunch in my work bag and struggled with back issues all summer, only to realize this winter that my problems would be solved if I started carrying a lunch bag. My back has been much better since. Card 1: Queen of Cups My queen of the deck has returned to bring us into ourselves. This month starts day one with a full moon in Scorpio, which the Queen of Cups is associated with, so pay close attention to what emerges over the first weekend of May. Whatever hidden depths we’re holding, it is not a time for judgment. We’re approaching this with curiosity and care. About a year ago, I pulled this card during a single-card reading for Substack. During one part of the message, I said: “[The Queen of Cups is] not interested in your games, your stories, your lies and beliefs around what your feelings mean. She just wants your feelings. She wants to sit with them. She wants to hold them. She just wants to hear you. That is what the Queen of Cups is about.” Card 2: The World A portal closes shut. The last of what needed confronting has been confronted, and we are stepping through to the other side. We’ve gone through a long but necessary process of requiem to settle into this final hurrah. The World card not only appears at the end of a notable journey, but also when something fated is present. This is a point of closure that couldn’t be avoided. The World is a very reassuring card to receive. Whatever endings come this month will give a sense of closure. These endings may also not be cut-and-dry finishing points either. More often than not, we are completing cycles. As this ending occurs, a new chapter is on the horizon. When it comes, we will forget the feeling of this closure. Sit in this moment of a journey fulfilled. Try to sense where destiny wants to lead you. Card 3: The Hanged Man Last month, the Hanged Man ended the month after a period of frustration. We felt slowed down and had finally succumbed to our lack of control. By the end of this month, the Hanged Man is suspended in the liminal space between old and new. Thematically, the Hanged Man is quite similar to the Fool. They both embrace the unknown and trust a higher power to guide the way. The difference is in their approach—yin versus yang. The Fool is our yang, actively progressing down a new path. The Hanged Man is more yin because the only choice made is not to take further action until the divine intervenes. Instead of hurling ourselves to the other side, we wait for change to actualize in its own timing. Entering a state of trust that change will come can feel passive and slightly delusional. In fairness, much of the rhetoric around change has a “take the reins of destiny” tone. However, trust is how we learn to get soft and move in ways that the tension of defensiveness would never allow. A state of trust brings ease to the process of moving through the unknown. Summary: This month is the last hurrah for a long procession toward the future. There is something that we’re still dragging along that needs to be released. The first part of the month asks us to confront this energy head-on with compassion and openness. This unraveling will be the final piece in closing a long-running cycle. We take a second to enjoy this moment of completion, settling into the space of the new. There is no rush to fill it with our ambitions. We’ve learned to trust that what is meant for us will come in its own timing. I feel a lot better about this month than I did when I saw that Hanged Man again. If you would like your own personal reading, you can book a session [https://catharaxia.com/#tarot-sessions] on my website or upgrade to a paid subscription for this newsletter and request a card reading [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfEaE9CzceRqSoxwjb9Y7Xy6uTzGYyFEH_ojdwaKy0qNPxBjA/viewform?usp=header]. I’m wishing you all the best as we continue to close out these cycles and prepare space for the new to emerge. Until next time! Wanna read last month’s forecast [https://catharaxia.substack.com/t/tarot-forecast]? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit catharaxia.substack.com/subscribe [https://catharaxia.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Phantasmagoria

In March of 2026, I decided to participate in a beta test of an app for tracking synchronicities. The idea of synchronicity is credited to Carl Jung. As I am not a Jungian Scholar and have little interest in becoming one for this report, take this knowledge as an invitation for your own deeper investigation into analytical psychology. While participating in this beta test, I entered a significant arc of my life that has reoriented my trajectory entirely. I am not the same person I was at the beginning of these logs. Realizing synchronicity is nothing more than living motifs, tracking these syncronicities drew me closer to the narratives I held around my life and what it was becoming. Angel numbers and universe winks shifted from being unbridled mysticism into an ongoing conversation with myself and the world around me, bridging the gap that has been fractured for most of my life. Enjoy these footnotes of a larger story. I will return to fill in the blanks soon. Part One: March 11 March 202612:35 Downtown Culver City, two pairs of similar likeness pass by. Type A: West LA zillennials wearing headscarves, tank tops, and wide-leg pants. Type B: The same age, the same outfits, the same characteristics, but homeless and pushing a cart through the dense traffic, laughing amongst themselves. 11 March 2026 16:36 Another spider in the bathtub, the same spot as the one the day before. I swipe it away without fear. 12 March 202614:15 A fourth viewing of I Saw the TV Glow, after watching three other movies in rapid succession. This viewing brings in deep revelation. 4 is associated with my life path. 15 March 202603:41 “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” by Cocteau Twins is mentioned in The Perks of Being a Wallflower. Investigation reveals that this song was on the Pink Opaque album (which inspired I Saw the TV Glow). As a bonus, Gregg Araki is a big Cocteau Twins fan (although, what alt person isn’t). 16 March 202618:30 These two posts appear in rapid succession. 17 March 202621:14 111 & 1111 emerge four times. 18 March 202607:47 Tarot pull: Three 6s—swords, wands, the Lovers. Meanings— transitions, celebration, major commitment/decision. Oracle card: koi fish, also about transformation. 23 March 202603:02 333s 23 March 202619:00 111 air quality. Not a consistent report, but generally higher than normal all around. 23 March 202619:00 The fool card spotted in the wild, from the same deck as a reading I had watched. The reading’s theme was manifesting, intention-setting, and reality-shifting. 23 March 202620:15 Set intentions and pulled the Fool card. 23 March 202620:16 A bigger spider spotted in the kitchen. I was able to catch and release it. 24 March 202615:04 House smelled like a Ghanaian kitchen (my ancestry) without explanation. 29 March 202601:08 Tears for Fears – Everybody Wants to Rule the World 31 March 202611:20 All month, Chaka Kahn’s “I’m Every Woman” had been stuck in my head. I listened to it and the album it comes from this morning. Another song on the album reminded me of “Sweet Thing” which I also played. As I left to go to work, a car sped by blasting “Sweet Thing”. Part Two: April 01 April 202601:23 Another round of many 111s. 03 April 202602:12 Another rewatch of I Saw the TV Glow. The movie ended at 11:11. 05 April 202622:13 Having a Dominic Fike resurgence. A photo of him I saved for a playlist cover matched the live set I watched while buying tickets for Montreal. Entirely accidental. Haven’t thought about Dom Fike much since before I started the job I’m leaving. 06 April 202612:54 The last weekend mirroring a year ago. 07 April 202620:21 Thought about receiving signs on the balcony. After giving up to go inside, I notice three spiders surrounding me. 08 April 202611:33 Animals on the walk to the bus stop, all very kind. I see a black bird while waiting for the bus. I had asked for a black bird yesterday while waiting for a sign. I dismiss this as a coincidence, and then another one appears. 09 April 202607:55 A favorite creator poses in overalls. They are the same kind I wore to her Halloween party. That weekend felt particularly synchronistic. 10 April 202609:45 Spiders, 1111, 111 everywhere. 10 April 202619:55 At work, coworkers keep sharing stories about spiders, seeing more spiders. The former boss tells me a joke. The punchline is Chaka Kahn. 10 April 202622:53 111s 12 April 202602:41 111 displayed during a scene in You, Me, & Tuscany. I had freaked out about solo traveling the night before, and the movie is about a solo trip led by nudges from the universe. 12 April 202614:21 For my roommate’s birthday, we went to Formosa Cafe, an Old Hollywood bar. After arriving, we realized that this was the bar we had randomly found during our first proper outing as a house. We weren’t able to find it again for the last two years and had assumed they had closed down. 15 April 202614:38 Wisdom tooth flare-up on the opposite side of the tooth than it was 2-3 years ago. The crisis played out the same way as last time, down to a useless dentist visit. 15 April 202614:40 Listening to a podcast, and the host mentions 111 while giving career advice (“just do the thing you enjoy doing”). 15 April 202614:41 When posting about the wisdom tooth story, the post glitches on the timeline, doubling itself. 15 April 202619:40 Seeing many dragonflies and finding them beautiful for the first time. When I was little, they terrified me. I’d run across the soccer field mid-game, assuming they were like big mosquitoes. 18 April 202616:38 The day I return from this trip will be the same day I returned from my trip to Ghana three years ago. 20 April 202602:33 Driving by an 1111 on a building in K-town. I’m catching up with a friend for the first time in almost a year. 21 April 202621:55 The past few days: My roommate wears a pin for the first time, one I’ve had a picture of on my home screen for years. While talking about one of her friends, a friend and I pass a street with her friend’s name. 24 April 202602:17 The *** Saga. Will write about this properly. 24 April 202602:23 Was thinking about the song Bailando by Enrique Iglesias today for no particular reason. Wasn’t able to play it this morning, but then it played on the speakers at the churro place we went to after the *** Saga that night. I was explaining to the group all the synchronicities I had been experiencing. 25 April 202621:01 111s. 28 April 202618:40 Realized that on my final day at my job, it will be a full moon in Scorpio. Full moons, associated with culminating moments in a sign associated with rebirth. 28 April 202618:40 111s remain everywhere. It’s become a running gag. Part Three: Montreal May I’m always thinking about the next thing when I travel. It’s really easy for me to dissociate and start thinking about how I can benefit from what’s around me. I feel numbed out. Just tired. I need to go and get water before the flight. Forgot while searching for food. Airports are liminal and best first thing in the morning. Everyone’s less annoying first thing in the morning. It’s nice. I’m in a cool kid fit, and the attendant at baggage check really liked my hair. She liked it so much that she felt very inclined to help me check in, which was nice because I had felt a little lonely this morning. My anxiety went down light-years. I accidentally got an extra checked bag. I’m only carrying my work bag, and it’s a luxury. My only hope is that I get both my bags back. No flubs, sweet universe. If I’m hyperaware of myself, I think of how I write like a fanfic author. It’s not my fault that my primary reading during my fundamental years was AO3. A lie — I wasn’t that refined. It was Wattpad and MJFiction dot com because I had it like that. You go to MJfiction now, and it’ll give you a virus probably. I try not to think about that period too much because it makes me feel a certain way about myself. It makes me feel wretched and rotten, a proper rotten girl. If I let it all go, I can find peace. Every airline moves differently; everyone’s on house rules. This Air Canada house lets you keep your shoes on. They don’t check your ID when you check in your bags. Air Canada’s house has limited seating and nice, expensive food. My prayer for this month is employment or very well-timed generosity. A baby walked up to me. I waved hello, my mask hiding a smile. He still smiled brightly back. I wonder if his mom got a photo. Maybe he thought we were related. Traveling always slows the world down. Each task is formulaic but steady. The goal is always to do it right and comfortably. Montreal is already a weird city to me. As we flew over, I kept thinking it looked so much like Kansas from overhead. Same kinds of trees, a stretch of suburbs across green. It’s a green city, unlike Los Angeles. Los Angeles is always gray/brown overhead. It’s beautiful and sparkly at night. The day has ended. I’m worried about my data plan, like it’s 2008 and TikTok was hammering about it being 2008 and 2020 at the same time. The new Abrão book is good, and I’m thinking about how I write, if I’m any good, if it’s worthwhile. I’ll fall asleep the same time I do every night. Montreal, I am in you, and you’re familiar. You feel like my home, like Kansas and LA at once. I feel we got off on a weird foot. I’m trying not to be too reliant on us working out. I think the world of you, Montréal. — 5.5.26 06 May 202615:29 Many angel numbers as I travel around Montreal. Very, very cold. Overwhelmed. Scared. I’m fixated on coffee shops. I want to live here, so I should go out. Now, usually I wouldn’t do this, but I realized that going to the event tonight times perfectly with Edna’s schedule. So I might as well do it all this way. So many ways to live a life. Montreal has all the pieces I’ve loved about where I’ve been, too. The metro feels like Paris but calmer, less overstimulating. The suburbs feel like Kansas, the trees and green Kansas, the main city like Chicago. Old North America, as my digi friend would call it. The traffic is bad, but at least people are mostly nice about it. The transport isn’t always reliable, but at least it usually is. There are seasons! Seasonsssss. And there’s the gentleness to it. I don’t think there will ever be a true wave here unless the crazy energy of all the big hot cities finds its way over. That’s Montreal’s only flaw. It’s very normal, settled, and sweet. It feels too familiar already. I can see myself falling asleep here, peacefully, never to be put on edge out and about again. It’s incredible. It’s making me a little docile. Bad things happen everywhere. People are similar. But like people, some people you feel safe with. That might be Montreal. But we’ve only spent one day together, so we’ll have to see. — 5.6.26 I feel shell-like. It happens when I’m on the move. Maybe I should’ve journaled this morning. I was busy enjoying the internet in all its lore-heavy weirdness. Running around the city. Falling in love but not really. I feel so safe here. — 5.7.26 08 May 202622:11 Montreal as a city feels like a fever dream. It’s a mesh of all my favorite parts of all the places I’ve been. 08 May 202622:12 At Jarry Park, someone was blasting a remix of Kid Cudi’s Day ‘N’ Nite. I used to be obsessed with it as a kid. It was the first song I found entirely from my own devices that I really liked. When I came home that night, a web series I’ve been watching for months used the original version of the song in the episode’s opening sequence. On the bus, shaking with cold. I almost didn’t leave the house. I could sit and watch YouTube all day, honestly, but it didn’t make sense to. I had no excuse not to leave. God is being very generous with me. I spent this morning watching Applehead videos like I was ten. There’s always something new with him, even fifteen-something years later. It makes me wonder if we can truly know someone so ubiquitous and hard to interpret. I don’t know if I’ll have an answer I can make peace with in this life. Maybe that’s okay. I made it to the movie and went to Jean Talon. It was much different than what I thought, reminded me of City Market in Kansas. The lady at the Syrian spot was very nice to me. I walked there from the cinema and then to the park. I tried to eat, and squirrels circled me, so I went for a walk and sat in a more desolate spot. It was nice. Montreal is every city I’ve lived in rolled into one. Being here is making me see how every city is honestly the same. Small idiosyncrasies to justify individuality, but not much else. Kids are kids, people are people. I like speaking French, and I feel horrible at how bad my French is and how much I try to avoid using it. I’m finding, unlike other cities I’ve been to, I feel less alien. Maybe it is my new self having a test run. Maybe I’ve learned to love what I am, regardless of the outside. Montreal isn’t a tourist city either, which helps too. It’s not an amusement park of a city, so the residents don’t mirror an amusement park vibe. It’s chill. I like chill. My main qualm is how cold it is. I am cold all the time, but I am the least cold when I’ve eaten and when I’m on the move. It makes me want to move around this city. — 5.8.26 I spent today watching Efya. I could’ve spent it in the gorgeous sun, enjoying coffee, a bagel, and a gummy. I guess it’s all the same. I’m disappointed because I just want to go out. I did learn I’d like to use Touch Designer and that I’ve gotten soft in my years since child-rearing. After a while, I had fun again. Efya reminds me of Sophia, and both likely remind me of my younger self. I don’t remember being full of spark like that, but who tends to? Crazy kids grow into good adults. Quiet kids spend their later years attempting to take up space. Efya will likely not have that issue, good for her. Playing with her reminds me that I am soft. She’s bright and demanding, curious and immature. She’s perfectly what she should be right now and will grow into a fine person in no time. I never really let myself sink into kid level when I was still close to it. Adulthood is giving me an appreciation for my kid self. It’s good to remember over and over again. Public transit here is weirdly cozy. Against your will, you have to get cozy with folks. It’s very funny. Right now I’m in a pretzel because I was shaking. Part of me is set off by this. Another part doesn’t care. People smell all kinds of ways, and you get where you need to eventually. — 5.9.26 10 May 202623:45 Driving around Montreal, I realize the meshed-together feeling is dreamlike. We drive through an area that reminds me of LA but is more visually similar to Kansas, like my dream brain is trying to pull together a place from my subconscious. As I’m thinking this, we pass a sign that says Metcalf, the same name as a prominent road in the area of Kansas that I’m from. It’s strange to see here where so many things have French names. 10 May 202623:48 While listening to Day ‘N’ Nite, I see an Instagram story about 2009 and know in my gut the song was released that year. I checked later and saw I was right. Today I consider how. How will it all form? I got a random healthy edible intended for sleep entirely by accident. It’s for the best, I suppose. I don’t know what I’ll use it for. I’ll leave the last of it with Edna. Navigating the world a little high is my specialty. So is climbing up and down and up Mont Royal a little high, I suppose. It was beautiful. I made a subpar meme of it. My cousin and I have many similar experiences. I’m hoping she’s able to live the life she wants. — 5.10.26 11 May 202612:38 While watching Big Mistakes on Netflix, I search to see who the actress playing the mom is. Her name is Laurie Metcalf. I feel like I’ve been getting tricked into doing things today. I wanted a watch day but thought I needed to go with Edna to work, so I got up early enough and fit in TV time before meeting her. I arrive, I hang out on McGill campus, and then we walk to the port. I learn a little more about how similar and different we are. We walk for so long to get here (we’ve been walking for two and a half hours, about the length of a tour). And then she leaves me to eat alone. Classic solo travel. I’m tempted to put on headphones like an iPad kid, but I’m trying to exercise restraint. No one would care. No one would care. Around me, I hear conversations mainly in French. Maybe one or two in English. I wonder if I could live here, or would I hate it because every city is detestable. From one suburb city to another. I haven’t decided yet, and I don’t need to. I can wait a week or a month. I can slow myself a bit. Today has been a big phone-writing day. It’s nice. I’m surprised I don’t write on my phone more often. It’s so so nice. I keep thinking, ‘This is what I’ll do when I return to LA from Kansas. I’ll do this on the way to work.’ I have no idea what my life looks like now. I’m terrified of the other side, but this trip is occupying me enough for the transition not to sink in. How will I rebuild this life? I should just up and move. I should I should I should. Starting from scratch feels romantic and a bit indulgent. Like, who do I think I am? I’d love to bring something back for Edna. I’ll ask for fried dumplings to go. — 5.11.26 12 May 202614:01 In Cafe Olimpico, “Fall In Love” by Phantogram is on full blast. An old song unlikely to be played that I had a significant attachment to early this year. Last day! I’m f*****g exhausted. I didn’t want to go anywhere, but I was too cold at home. I couldn’t get myself to relax fully. I got to see a friend one last time, peruse around a very well-curated bookstore, get some recommendations, and then walk to the second cafe of the day to write. Luxury living. This trip has been strange. The signals won’t stop. I no longer know what to make of them. I just sit back and watch myself. My friend asked if I felt Montreal would be the next destination now that I’ve visited, if it was at all what I expected. In my head, Montreal was this big, bustling, overwhelming French-Canadian city. I imagined it was Canadian Paris in all honesty. Turned down but still flighty. Montreal feels like home. That, however, gives me no sense of solace. The issue, or resistance, I feel comes from that part of myself obsessed with friction. I like chewing my way through the other side. I like having to fight for my right to peace. Maybe it’s the American eldest daughter with first-gen lore in me. Maybe it’s none of that stuff, but something programmed into me. Maybe I carry it from my last life on earth. Or whatever outer planet I come from. I like it here. Truly, I do. It’s easy to exist here. Not relative to other large cities. Just relative to me and what I can tolerate. I can see how it could get hard for me. Moving would be an uphill battle. I guess the real question is, will it all be worth it? Can I justify the pressure that moving here would take? The severing of my old life. I don’t know if I can. I don’t know yet if I’ve found enough justification. Tiny iced coffee in a tiny glass. Very Euro. Anyhow. I guess there’s this part of me that wants to drip in gold, that wants to feel intoxicated by a city. But nothing is truly golden. Everything collects dust and dirt and needs care to shimmer. Hedonistic cities are balanced by lower lows. So this balance creates stability. It’s not a bad thing to feel slow and settled. I know if I move here, I’m likely not looking back until I’m older. That this would be the adult chapter of my life. This would become who I am, why I am. After I’m done writing for this afternoon, I’m going to go grab a bagel and go home. And that will be it for a while. And then I’ll have to go back to my long-term partner, LA, knowing life could be easier for me, and figure out how to sustainably separate. These songs feel very dated. Not a bad thing. I did learn I can’t watch SNL in Canada. That might drive me mad. Today was the best one yet. I found myself in lovely company. I returned to the bookstore to talk to the keeper a little more, which primed me to talk with another bookstore owner. He made a single comment that tipped me into buying yet another book (I leave Montreal with four). “I would always leave places with books and wine.” A series of opportunities led him to create a wine bookstore, doubling as an office for selling wine. It was a genius setup and felt natural. I felt excited about the possibility for the future of my life while talking to him. Anything is possible if you open your heart to it just enough. I’m searching for my life. It’s opening for me. I’m playing Jenga with her, tapping to see what doors are loose. I’m wiggling in with ease. It feels good and easy. It was no accident, that’s for sure, and I feel oh so lucky. — 5.13.26 A little bit high at the airport waiting for my flight. The guy at TSA started speaking to me in French. I felt accomplished. I’m going to miss Montreal. It’s very cozy here. I could set up shop, maybe. I really love all the French fusion. It genuinely calms my brain down. The inside of their airport is a little insane. I think they’re leaning into the Paris airport vibe with the array of stuff to choose from. I didn’t get food, only vitamin water. I couldn’t convince myself to buy anything to eat. I’ll miss it here. I wouldn’t mind this being a home base, but a part of me resists. Therapy fodder. — 5.14.26 16 May 202600:30 Many 111s & 1111s still. 17 May 202619:25Confirmation email for a job application I almost didn’t try applying for was timestamped for 11:11 AM. 19 May 202604:45 Each flight I took during the trip was during a rainstorm, despite none of the days of my trip being rainy. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit catharaxia.substack.com/subscribe [https://catharaxia.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

27 de may de 202627 min

Apocalypse

This is a spoiler free zone. There’s a themed playlist to enjoy if you’d like 𓇢𓆸 ˙•˚☘︎ [https://tidal.com/playlist/dc05cb39-8f65-435c-8d8a-bd3d52215423] If I could explain myself in easy colors, I would. Instead, my interior is made of butterfly hues that my human eyes fail to see, and my spirit eyes can hold between fingertips. Whatever darkness lives in me has no name, intention, or direction. All I can do is sit with the shadow and know that the shadow is dark in the way outerspace is dark, silent in the way outerspace is silent. My mind is an old camcorder unable to capture 4K living. How do I interpret myself for you when I can only find half-phrases? Instead, follow my mystic footing. It took four viewings for I Saw the TV Glow to break me. This shouldn’t have been surprising. I’m in a period of numerological domination—1111, 222, over and over until my psyche is dizzy—and I am a life path number 4. 4 has become the number of destiny. When 4 enters the picture, I know whatever message revealed is truly serious, not a playful wink from the universe that the veil is thin, and life is not as flat as it seems. The first time I watched Jane Schoenbrun’s 2024 flick, I Saw the TV Glow, was the Tuesday morning after it had been released. I needed an excuse to leave the house, and a movie before lunch always felt like an accomplishment. It was the perfect adventure; the theater was spotty in attendance, leaving space for me to energetically sprawl. I had spoiled the movie to hell for myself, saving my sensitivity to modern horror movies with their jump scares and flashy, grotesque violence. It did not keep me from being unmoored and stirred as I left the theater. The next time I brought friends along, delighted to pull them through the phantasmagoric portal. We went to the downtown Alamo Drafthouse, known for its labyrinthine parking structure. The ride home was a tangle of red strings, Marina’s “Ancient Dreams in a Modern Land” playing through the car speakers with eerie relevance. I am here to take a look insidе myself [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V17JN76uxc]Recognize that I could bе the eye, the eye of the storm [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_V17JN76uxc] By the third time, the film was a comfort. I watched it on a plane, its brilliance a pillow for my sleep-deprived brain. I felt understood by it, and that was enough. Two years since then, many things have shifted in my life in rapid succession, enough to forget the pieces that once mattered the most. Sometime last week, after a few days of floating in the universe of Gregg Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, I decided I needed to return home. My body was at war with itself, and I had sedated it with every painkiller in my arsenal. Sprawled on my bed, I clicked open the movie and let its first line hit me like a wave. It was raining last night, and I couldn’t sleep. So I put on my favorite TV show again. There’s something that happens when you stop being yourself. You become two, the mask growing arms, legs, and a torso that looks like you, but not quite. When the mask cracks—which it will—the waves of subconscious and conscious brain flow into each other. A new split reality is created, similar to the reality of dreams. Truth loses objectivity, and all that is left to ground you is feeling. Otherwise, the projected self walks while you watch, yourself floating above it or thrashing around inside of it, the skin itchy. The worlds of Schoenbrun’s I Saw the TV Glow and Araki’s Teen Apocalypse Trilogy live in this midnight realm. Reality is vaguely suggested, but the rules, aesthetics, and engineering of their worlds operate around the inner worlds of our main characters. For Araki, this is most obvious in Nowhere and The Doom Generation, both famed for their stylized execution. Even the bedrooms in Nowhere embody this dream-adjacent quality, purposely curated to reflect the inner lives of the characters they belong to. The films are edgy and bare their teeth at the system without flinching. It’s less rage against the machine and more straight-up f**k the machine. F**k it long and hard and with way too much eye contact. While Nowhere was the movie that led me down the Araki wormhole, The Doom Generation was the one to dial up my fixation around it. I’d like to pause and say that I cannot in good faith recommend this movie, but of the three, it is my favorite in execution. Without it, I wouldn’t have rewatched I Saw the TV Glow. The last ten minutes were so intense that I needed its softer kindred spirit. The trio of Araki movies themed around queerness, nihilism, and youth culture felt eerily familiar, despite being very different in tone. I soon learned Schoenbrun was also an Araki fan, and Araki a fan of Schoenbrun’s work, so naturally I had to put my sixth sense to the test and compare the two. Neither Araki nor Schoenbrun tends to make feel-good films. Typically, I avoid this kind of work like the plague. My general barometer for what media I can ingest is how soothing it is on my nervous system. Most action films are too much for me, the fast-paced exhilaration sending my brain into hyperdrive. Dramas tear into the soft tissue of my heart with the ease of a steak knife. There are very few intense movies or shows that I’ve welcomed with even remotely open arms. What draws me to work like The Doom Generation and I Saw the TV Glow is how they mirror the latent intensity that rests inside of me. I try to avoid overindulging the way I did as a teenager, but the comfort in seeing your anxieties about existing in the world be portrayed and then heightened to mirror the feeling of experiencing it cannot be understated. The hyperbolic nature of Araki’s work is often read as pure camp and style, but this approach is the most adept at capturing the realities of how we experience our lives. Living through this current era of tedious realism only makes this distinction in filmmaking more obvious. Media that looks like my life doesn’t speak to me. I need movies that feel like my life, that feel like the insides of myself have been disemboweled and displayed for a gallery exhibition. That feeling was shaken up in me as I finished The Doom Generation; its ending was famously intense and hit something in my subconscious that I wasn’t privy to. Returning to I Saw the TV Glow seemed to dislodge the disturbed part. Both The Doom Generation and I Saw the TV Glow bring into question how we cope with a world that is actively trying to destroy us. The Doom Generation handles this idea very literally, with our protagonists facing off a series of foes in increasingly gratuitous ways. Our trio escapes their horror through violence and sex, a proxy for the bond that forms between the three of them. However, the effectiveness of this strategy is limited. This makes all escape futile, resulting in their inevitable doom. I Saw the TV Glow adds more complexity to this cannibalistic space our characters inhabit. External forces still actively terrorize and constrain our protagonists. However, their escape entirely depends on their willingness not only to combat those forces head-on, but to combat them by facing themselves first. Self-sacrifice—or more accurately, sacrificing the idea of who we are—is required to be free. This process is hard and scary and entirely in our hands and no one else’s. Our world has always been totally fucked and continues to be so. The question becomes, how do we face it? Are we willing to face it? And do we understand that to fight back against the world, we will also have to destroy the version of this world that exists within ourselves? Queer media lives in this existential space because that is the resounding weight of why queerness is so terrifying to people. To have an entire faction of people who have looked inside of themselves, realized they were something deviant, and decided to exist as such anyway. Sacrifices be damned. The proposed reality wobbles, disintegrating into phantasmagoria. I cannot be myself for the life of me, and I cannot keep up the dance either. One part of me clings to this so-called good life with every fiber of energy I still have left. It’s my glass sculpture I’ve been perfecting for years. How dare I threaten to smash it just to start something new? The other side of me is dying. She is dying and unmotivated at the thought. There is no future and no hope, so I might as well stop trying. Then there is this third side of me toiling in the background. The fire to keep going and to change. She denies these two separate selves their desire to be still and stay steady. She knows when a lie is being told. She’s strong and sexy and hopeful. I’ve lost sight of her for a moment, but she continues to speak. I can follow her voice until we reunite again. My mother faced a similar bout of depression when she was my age, not long before having me. I hug my insides with that connection, not of generational wounding but this larger human phenomenon of figuring out how to keep trying to live our lives, even while the world wants to burn or wants to kill you or wants you to help kill yourself. I must find it in me to refuse to die. I must find it in me to refuse to take this lying still. I must find it in me to live. Added March 22, 2025 Naturally, writing and publishing this didn’t shake this movie out of my bones, so I made an old-school fan edit. This does spoil the movie a little, but I love it with my whole heart. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit catharaxia.substack.com/subscribe [https://catharaxia.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

20 de mar de 202612 min

Time for the grand finale...

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