The Rowdy Brotzman

Diné Weaver Venancio Aragón

"From researching historic twill patterns in museum collections to dyeing wool with Kool-Aid, Diné (Navajo) weaver and instructor Venancio Aragón interlocks research and experimentation to expand the visual and technical vocabularies of Diné weaving. Working on the Diné upright loom, Aragón is part of a generation of Diné weavers who reinterpret ancestral knowledge through experimentation, carrying the medium forward on their own terms. As he stated in our interview with him, “I am not a purist.”

Based in Farmington, New Mexico, Aragón is trained in cultural anthropology and Native American and Indigenous studies, currently teaching at Diné College, the Navajo Nation’s tribal college. Before transitioning to full-time weaving and teaching, Aragón worked as an interpretive park ranger at the Mesa Verde, Aztec Ruins, Bandelier, and Petroglyph National Monuments, where he led tours and developed public education initiatives. He was born to the Tó’aheedlíinii (The Water Flow Together People) clan and born for the Naakaii (Mexican people). His maternal grandfather is of the Tsénahabiłnii (Sleeping Rock) clan, and his paternal grandfather is of the Naakaii (Mexican people)."

And the link to the article above since the original one didn't work for me:

This is really exciting, linguistically speaking.

Because it’s not true that Tumblr never uses punctuation. But it is true that lack of punctuation has become, itself, a form of punctuation. On Tumblr the lack of punctuation in multisentence-long posts creates the function of rhetorical speech, or speech that is not intended to have an answer, usually in the form of a question. Consider the following two potential posts. Each individual line should be taken as a post:

ugh is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use like god put that back we have to pay for that stuff

Ugh. Is there any particular reason people at work have to take these massive handfuls of sauce packets they know they’re not going to use? Like god, put that back. We have to pay for that stuff.

In your head, those two potential posts sound totally different. In the first one I’m ranting about work, and this requires no answer. The second may actually engage you to give an answer about hoarding sauce packets. And if you answer the first post, you will likely do so in the same style. 

Here’s what makes this exciting: the English language has no actual punctuation for rhetorical speech–that is, there are no special marks that specifically indicate “this speech is in the abstract, and requires no answer.” Not only that, it never has. The first written record of English (actually proto-English, predating even Old English) dates to the 400s CE, so we’re talking about 1600 years of having absolutely no marker whatsoever for rhetorical speech.

A group of teens and young adults on a blogging website literally reshaped a deficit a millennium and a half old in our language to fit their language needs. More! This group has agreed on a more or less universal standard for these new rules, which fits the definition of “language.” Which is to say Tumblr English is its own actual, real, separate dialect of the English language, and because it is spoken by people worldwide who have introduced concepts from their own languages into it, it may qualify as a written form of pidgin. 

The tags are absolutely a factor. You want someone to take a breath in the middle of a sentence, you start a new tag. You want to have, as seen here, this removable piece between commas (does it have a name?) - you have 5 tags in this sentence alone. And sometimes you just

pause in the middle of a sentence…

and let your voice

language is this constantly evolving thing tbh, it doesn’t remain the same unless it’s dead and the people who used it gone so seeing the evolution of the language used on tumblr is literally so fucking amazing i want to cry with joy at it

because we also add in words from other languages, or make entirely new words up as additional terms to denote something (see ‘tol’ and ‘smol’ in relation to ‘tall’ and ‘small’) and this is constant. we are doing this daily without any sort of breathing space because there’s millions of us on this hellsite and we are constantly talking and so the language changes day-by-day until we have general, universal rules for what to do in a post, what to add in our tags, how to add it, why we add it, what we mean by it

we’ve created a language in the same way our ancestors all did: by building on the ones that came before and changing them to suit our needs and our system

and that’s fucking awesome okay

What?

What.

I wouldn't use an adblocker if ads were just banners on the side funding a website I enjoy using and want to support. Ads pop up invasively and fill my whole screen, I misclick and get warped away to another page just for trying to read an article or get a recipe.

Every app shouldn't be like every other app. Instagram didn't need reels and a shop. TikTok doesn't need a store. Instagram doesn't need to be connected to Facebook. I don't want my apps to do everything, I want a hub for a specific thing, and I'll go to that place accordingly.

I love discord, but so much information gets lost to it. I don't want to join to view things. I want to lurk on forums. I want to be a user who can log in and join a conversation by replying to a thread, even if that conversation was two days ago. I know discord has threads, it's not the same. I don't want to have to verify my account with a phone number. I understand safety and digital concerns, but I'm concerned about information like that with leaks everywhere, even with password managers.

I shouldn't have to pay subscriptions to use services and get locked out of old versions. My old disk copy of photoshop should work. I should want to upgrade eventually because I like photoshop and supporting the business. Adobe is a whole other can of worms here.

Streaming is so splintered across everything. Shows release so fast. Things don't get physical releases. I can't stream a movie I own digitally to friends because the share-screen blocks it, even though I own two digital copies, even though I own a physical copy.

I have an iPod, and I had to install a third party OS to easily put my music on it without having to tangle with iTunes. Spotify bricked hardware I purchased because they were unwillingly to upkeep it. They don't pay their artists. iTunes isn't even iTunes anymore and Apple struggles to upkeep it.

My TV shows me ads on the home screen. My dad lost access to eBook he purchased because they were digital and got revoked by the company distributing them. Hitman 1-3 only runs online most of the time. Flash died and is staying alive because people love it and made efforts to keep it up.

I have to click "not now" and can't click "no". I don't just get emails, they want to text me to purchase things online too. My windows start search bar searches online, not just my computer. Everything is blindly called an app now. Everything wants me to upload to the cloud. These are good tools! But why am I forced to use them! Why am I not allowed to own or control them?

Not a word of a lie, this happened to me too! And I promise I am not bullshitting you when I say that this is normal and expected and EXTREMELY common.

The thing is, you've been in Survival Mode for a while. Probably a long time. And now your itty bitty lizard brain- the part that's been been clocking in overtime hours to sense and predict danger and mitigate crisis scenarios and plan escape routes and secure resources and so on- is no longer single-handedly keeping everything running by itself.

That bit of your brain has been working non-freaking-stop every waking minute for however long you've been in whatever clusterfuck you got out of, and it is now miraculously on its first ever vacation.

It's burnt out. It's exhausted. And now that it isn't running the show, the rest of your brain is scrambling to figure out how to make things work.

You're not in active danger anymore, so lizard-brain CAN take a rest without everything burning down, but... what now?

Emotional Brain has been helping carry Lizard Brain's load, but now it has a shitload of paperwork to catch up on. Like, YEARS of mismanaged backlog that it's just been jamming out of order into filing cabinets and spare storage boxes to deal with later.

Desires Brain has been keeping up with "food" and "don't die", but.... it HAS those now. So... what else could it possibly want? Everything? Nothing? What even IS desirable beyond survival? Goals Brain needs an answer before it can generate motivation. Fear Brain, too. Also Action Brain, and Motivation Brain.

So you're not being piloted by Lizard Brain anymore. That's good! "Keep Human Functioning Constantly Forever" was NOT in Lizard Brain's job description. But now that it's let go of the reins, the rest of Team Brain is going to need some time to figure out how to do their actual jobs the way they're supposed to, and they are WAY behind.

So my best advice is to let them adjust. Rest. Keep things simple. Help them out by establishing a regular routine- home life, work life, regular meals, regular showers, regular sleep.

Once that routine is established, you can ease of the training wheels by trying new things, new foods, new places, new people.

Help Desires Brain by experimenting, figuring out what makes you happier and what doesn't. What kind of fabrics you like, what kind of tastes you enjoy, what kind of work is pleasant and what is merely tolerable. How you enjoy being treated and what boundaries you'd prefer to maintain.

Help Emotions Brain by taking your time with strong feelings as they happen. Pause, consider how you feel, where those feelings live in your body, what physical sensations come with them. When those sensations appear, do they correspond to feelings? When? Why? Are they rational? How do you want to handle them?

Develop goals and plans from these findings. Once "tomorrow" or "next week" aren't an incomprehensible void, let yourself imagine a "next month", a "next season", a "next year".

Make stuff for fun. Save up to buy things that improve your daily life. Decide what kind of places you like to visit and when. What relaxation looks like, what self-care looks like, what a good friend or partner or coworker is.

You probably feel pretty shitty right now. You're probably going to be detached, or numb, or low, or even depressed, panicked, scared, or empty.

But eventually- once Team Brain starts to get a handle on things- the Empty and Dead will be less. New stuff will appear, like Angry and Sad and Joyous.

You're gonna Want things again, and be Excited again, and Look Forwards To things again.

It's gonna take time, though, and work, and it's definitely gonna suck sometimes, especially on days where it seems like you've gone backwards, or like you haven't moved at all.

It's not forever, though. It may SEEM like it, or like nothing else is even possible, but it isn't. I've got no damn reason to lie about that. I've been there, too.

It sucks right now. Might suck tomorrow, too. But eventually it won't. You're going to be happy, and safe, and you're going to enjoy your life and feel all kinds of love and joy and wonder again.

You're going to be okay.