May Is Here: Honoring Workers and the Mysteries Everyday

Amidst many things unraveling, many in various stages of being birthed these days, I cannot but notice how scholars who are doing work outside non-hegemonic norms in predominantly white academic spaces continue to need to counter assumptions and misreadings. They continue to need to state the case for why what they are doing is valid and relevant. (The higher ed landscape is certainly being affected also by broader political currents, navigating which asks not the least that we center ourselves in the vitality of source and creativity—clearing and releasing our fatigue and disenchantment.) Meanwhile, my own role is shifting—from someone who has in some ways been much more comfortable on the avant-garde of change in previous roles, now I am being asked to more intentionally play the role of a bridge person. “Tradition” and “vision.” Is it possible these can inform each other, not be pitted against each other? I have envisaged tradition before as a stream we receive not in an unconscious, unchanging way, but to dialogue with, co-create with, and bring forth for what is to come next. This to me is more key than ever.

How are you walking differently today than your past self was? What matters most to you right now?

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I recently spoke about “The Borderlands Epistemology of the Goddess in South Asia” at a conference presented by OPUS Archives and held at the Pacifica Graduate Institute. If this is of interest, you can view the recording here.

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The inaugural issue of Weavers Literary Review brings together South Asian American authors and friends—it includes five poems from me. You can get your copy here.

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In June, I will be in the Bay Area for two poetry events and would love to see you if you are in the area:

June 5, 2025: Weavers Literary Review Reading. Adobe Books, 3130 24th St, San Francisco. 5pm.

June 6, 2025. "Seismic Eye: Poetry As Resistance." Medicine For Nightmares, 3036 24th St, San Francisco. 5pm.

Later in the month, I will be speaking on "Technology and Being Human: Building Indigenous and Decolonial Epistemologies" at the International Study of Mythology. This is on June 17, and you can get a ticket here.

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Also this summer, I will be teaching a four-week online class called Rewriting the Myths of Time (July 16-Aug 6). Here is the class description (and registration link), in case you want to consider joining:

This course is designed to examine, liberate, and reconfigure the mythic and archetypal images and stories of time functioning in our lives. The time of modernity yokes together understandings of self and the other with colonial-technological narratives of progress. It has helped ordain the hegemony of the Eurowestern capitalist order. We will consider the politics of time and link to the lineages and tellings of time that draw us into repair and revitalization. In the process, we will reflect on and transform our relationships to work, rest, play—and, life and death.

You can register at Pacifica Extension here.