i emailed out to a few lists “selling” my sailboat for the cost of a poem. The sailboat found a happy new home with Alex H, a MITERS member & Hannah & their baby. I did get another poem though, by someone who enjoyed the prompt, and found it again in my inbox just now:

J. Seale
On Impurity

True voyages are never maiden nor the hands that helm them
Fearful of falling afoul of that form.
Sometimes joyful but always impure the sea is impervious,
Gently hugging the shores it meets,
Lying spread betwixt them and a comingled firmament,
Then mounting and roaring in the face of rocks and spitting gods
in the same unconcerned coupling that brought about the first cell’s split.

In a permanent embrace that stays true only to its indifference,
disrespected creed, code, race, gender are all ignored in favor of
the same militaristic contract known to voyagers across millennia
with its blue-black ink of clicks and luffs
as a pledge to the unknown,
possibly beautiful and possibly vile,
signed each day in whatever bodily issue
might be demanded as partial payment
with trembling hand lashed to the tiller if so bidden.

On pain of death all who greet the cold wind from the rail
with digits raised on both hands
in so doing leave innocence on the dock
and instead thereby pledge to sport this same death as needed
while waking and dreaming, on hand and on brow:
As her breed I will respect the intricacies of the sea.

– For Nancy Ouyang, September 2017

watching battlebots just makes me sad.

i don’t how to express it–

as one of my friends put it, he got into battlebots and decided to become an engineer because he watched battlebots 10 years ago.  now battlebots is on the TV again, inspiring more young boys to become engineers.

people participating in battles are overwhelmingly male-dominated. it’s all about competition and destruction.

robotics to me is something that brings me joy, and happiness, and a feeling that i am competent and skillful, a medium for me to express my creative muse.

i want everyone to enjoy building robots. but where’s the TV show that exposes the funny robots, the creative robots, the helping robots and wondrous robots that people build?

where’s the show that will get more girls interested in robotics than boys?

i am sad because i see a future ahead of me where i am always abnormal.

sure, i can be dedicated to my craft and ignore all this and just be badass and build robots so amazing that i inspire all the girls to be roboticists without even having to pay attention to these issues. that’s probably the only way to do it, to have a single-minded dedications and hone my skills in robotics until i’m near or at the top of the field. that’s how all the people interviewed on MAKERS Women in Space seem to have done it. but some part me is just —

watching battlebots — i should enjoy it, because my friends participate in it and find a lot of joy in it. but where are the grassroots competitions and friends for me to enjoy making dancing and drawing robots and educational robots with?

for whatever reason;

watching battlebots just makes me incredibly sad.