Open Sorcery

Month: September 2025

  • My analysis of the Charlie Kirk assassination so far.

    As many of you may know, far right wing talking head Charlie Kirk was assassinated yesterday at Utah Valley University in Orem, Utah.

    I have as much empathy for this man as he publicly stated he had for others, but that isn’t the purpose of this post. I’m here today to break down what we know so far from my perspective.

    Here are a few things that you need to know about me before I begin: I was raised in Texas by a doomsday prepping, gun loving man who taught me to find my way around a gun from practically the time I could walk. I then spent my first marriage with a man who loved guns arguably even more than he did. We even discussed entering long distance shooting competitions together as a sniper-spotter pair at one point. After I left him, I spent years learning how to get in and out of places so swiftly I learned to essentially disappear into thin air in broad daylight. Once I mastered that skill, I taught it to other people.

    This shooter, whoever they are, is likely highly trained. They shot Kirk in the throat with a single, clean shot from a distance of approximately 200 yards at least from everything I’ve seen. No one else was hurt but Kirk, who was quite likely killed instantly.

    I couldn’t have made that shot. I doubt my ex husband could have made that shot. We are both well trained, but not that well trained. There’s a difference between well trained and highly trained. This shooter is highly trained.

    Additionally, police and the FBI did not catch the shooter at the event. They are still at large. Speaking from my experience getting in and out of places undetected, that is a skill set in and of itself, one that can be very difficult to master. So far, they have only caught “people of interest”. Statistically speaking, if they don’t have the actual shooter in their custody 24 hours after the shooting, they may never catch them, as most cases go cold 24 hours after the event if the perpetrator isn’t caught and is still in the wind by that time.

    Finally, there was a high powered bolt action rifle uncovered near the scene with anti fascist and transgender ideology engraved in the ammunition. I worry for my community because it’s a pretty safe bet that there will be significant blowback for this, even if the FBI never catches the actual shooter. Right wingers will likely be out for blood and vengeance. Kirk was shot in the middle of spewing hate about trans people and alleged gang violence. His followers will likely be galvanized even more than they were before.

    Please stay safe out there if you’re trans and a leftist.

    Update as of 9/11/2025 8:28 PM Central Time:

    It is now unclear whether or not there were any such engravings on the ammunition at all. The shooter appears to still be at large.

    -Allēna

  • With my back being fucky, it’s given me a lot of time to think.

    There isn’t a lot I can do at present except stay in bed most of the time even if I would otherwise have the energy to move around and do things. When I do attempt to get out of bed and do things, my spine and hips start to scream again and that isn’t a good time for anyone. So I’ve been laying in bed and watching a lot of Scandal on Netflix again, since we got our subscription renewed a bit ago.

    While I watch TV and sling memes and work on things online and around the house where I am able, it’s gotten me thinking a lot about the nature of rest as well as what it means to be reasonably able to do something. See, I am technically able to do a lot. I have the skills, knowledge, and in many cases, technical mastery necessary to perform many tasks. Whether I’m able to actually do these things, especially all at once or in a short amount of time without hurting or exhausting myself, is a completely different story, especially now. I think that’s how ability, in a compassionate world, should be defined: whether or not a person can accomplish a given task, without threat of significant harm to themselves and/or others around them.

    It’s a similar case with rest for me. I don’t rest typically. My mind requires near constant stimulation, either by means of something like watching TV that makes me think, daydreaming, researching, writing, building this website, or by external means involving trusted people when I’m able to participate and they are also able and willing, like fun conversations, adventures, or performing poetry. If I get bored, that’s ALSO not a good time for anyone. I wouldn’t find relaxing on a beach somewhere any sort of rejuvenating at all, unfortunately. My brain has to be engaged in something I’m passionate about for me to feel like I’m resting, ironically.

    Given the complicated intersections between my mental needs and physical disabilities, I find a lot of my community and stimulation online. I have since at least 2017. Hell, many of the people I know and love in person now I initially met online, because as I’ve worked through my agoraphobia and even worse physical pain and fatigue than this, it was one of the only ways I could meet people and keep in touch with them at all.

    I suppose all of this is to say thank fuck for the Internet. It’s given gremlins like me a voice and a community and opportunities to have some semblance of a life that we wouldn’t have had before it came about. The Internet isn’t perfect and a lot of things are shit about the state of the world today, but I love my people. Thank you to everyone who takes the time to read this. Y’all make my life a little brighter every day.

    How do y’all rest? How do you find community? What do you think it means to be reasonably able to do something?

    You don’t have to be disabled and/or neurodivergent to answer, but I’m very curious to hear from disabled, neurodivergent, and other marginalized people especially. Let me know in the comments 💛

    -Allēna

  • ✨ STORYTIME ✨

    Because this bit of Family Lore truly deserves to be preserved for posterity.

    One time my maternal grandfather nearly burnt down a church. This was an impressive feat, considering the church was, if I had to guess, a quarter mile away? However, my granddad is un fucking hinged and loves to burn trash, regardless of the weather conditions. One summer day, he was doing his usual routine after my grandmother kicked him out of the house for the day because he was “bored” and “needed a project”, in her words, and his idea of a “project” was, of course, letting the intrusive thoughts win and burning trash during a severe drought and resulting burn ban. No burn ban has ever stopped this old pyro. In fact, I think the burn bans make him want to burn MORE shit because hehe, fire, or something.

    He conveniently “forgot” that there were aerosol cans in the burn barrels. Naturally, they exploded. Two scorched properties and a raging fucking inferno that almost reached the church on the third property down later, the fire department was called. They were left with no choice but to issue this mother fucker a ticket. Yes, you read that right. The fire department had to issue him a ticket. When the fireman in question flipped through his ticket book, he said to my grandfather, “…the last ticket we had to issue was to you.”

    Some people just want to see the world burn. Or at least see several burn barrels full of trash and aerosol cans blow sky fucking high.

    Oops.

    -Allēna

  • Thinking zine thoughts…

    I’m slowly getting to work on my next poetry zine. It’s shaping up to be a larger one, somewhere along the size and scale of Field Notes From a Colder Time or Easy to Hate Like Everything You Love.

    I don’t have a working title yet and frankly I don’t want to rush one or reveal it until it feels right. All I know right now is that I’ve been working through and with a lot of themes regarding mental health and cyclical patterns since my therapy session a few days ago and an interesting few poetry workshop sessions. So expect a lot of new work to do with circles and cycles! Maybe ellipses, too…hmm…

    I do love a good ellipse.

    There might be a poem in there, too. I really am quite eccentric (ha!)

    I have some phone calls to make and I didn’t get much sleep last night since I was up until almost dawn watching Netflix – and not working – tragically, but I haven’t had access to my shows for weeks, so a good binge was in order.

    More tomorrow. I’ve gotta run before my energy runs out and I lost my nerve.

    -Allēna

  • I wrote this poem at roughly 5:30, 6 o’ clock this morning.

    It’s called “love letter to the predawn hours”. 

    at this time of day I could be anything 
    as the inky blue remainder of the night
    holds me like a child. instead, I find I want to be nothing and everything but myself. 
    I only pray I spend it well
    and that I am good company. not angry, but soft
    and gentle. my mask falls off because I don't have 
    to dance for the eyes that do not watch me now 
    and my hands and body are the right kind
    of firm and strong, if only for now. 

    at this time of day I want to be a good houseguest,
    a silent ghost, a near fugitive, stealing soft across
    the floor, taking in the joy of the wee hours of the morning like the thief I was always told I was growing up, but flipping the script this time. 5:46 keeps me safe from prying eyes and I keep its silence sacred in return as I would a lover, nurturing the ideas it gives me and even cherishing the hum of the fridge in the next room and the slow creaks of the house as the melodies they are. this time of day has always woken me gently, and I am remembering how to hear the music of the world again.

    -Allēna 9/7/2025

  • I saw this post yesterday.

    I have some things to say about it.

    Fuck the hardliners, as long as you’re doing your best to be a decent human being, all progress is good progress and the best praxis is to start right now with exactly what you have. There is no single definition of what being a “good leftist” looks like, and even if there WERE, there would need to be accommodations made for disabled people, Mad people, poor people, cultural nuances, etc..

    Additionally, as an ex Mormon and a cripple punk, I wish leftists who talk like rebranded Christians would understand how nonsensical their takes sound. Nothing will get fixed without real progress and real work from real people, and that involves being patient when people fuck up, working together in community, and actively building a better world together, however we all can contribute, no matter how small. There will be no Revolution without progress made in the first place ffs.

    So if all you could do is survive and take care of yourself today, I think that’s good praxis. Self care is community care, and I’m glad as fuck you’re still here. If all you can do is share memes and news, that’s a form of activism in and of itself, and I think that’s good praxis. If you’re making art, writing things, being a performer or creative in any way, even if you’re only sharing it with your friends, partner(s), and/or family? Art is political. This, too, is good praxis. If you can do more? Badass. That’s also good praxis. Please don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

    -Allēna

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  • I tried (another) experiment today.

    I took half a magnesium supplement again  and my body had a… typical reaction?

    I did this because I noticed that my heart was hurting last night for some strange reason, and in most people, magnesium evens out heart rate and calms them down. I’ve been worried about having another cardiac event since my last seizure in the wee hours of July 7 of this year when my heart rate shot through the roof after smoking weed to manage severe lower back pain, which triggered a chain reaction.

    Thirty minutes later, I was on the floor convulsing for some 25 minutes and I don’t remember most of July. I would not like to repeat that incident, thank you very much. So I’ve stopped the weed since then and attempted the magnesium again today (which I last took when I was smoking weed like a motherfucker, so that might have had something to do with my strange initial reaction to it). The initial reaction in question was a strong spike in blood pressure and heart rate that induced the migraines it was supposed to prevent. I hadn’t begun my vitamin B experiment or my ibuprofen experiment yet that I can recall, either, which may have contributed, as well. Hell yeah, science in my brainhole!

    Anyway, shortly after I took the magnesium supplement, I fell BACK to sleep for around another much needed 4 hours. I went to sleep at around 4 AM last night and woke up at 9 AM initially, took my meds, and after hanging out with my partner Zelda for a bit before they went to work, I fell back asleep and frankly don’t quite remember passing out. It was nice. So I think I might take the magnesium at night tomorrow since it appears to help with sleep when I’m not literally high on life, lol. My heart feels better and I do feel calmer.

    I have no clue what I’m going to do for the rest of the day. More sleep, since I’m effectively nocturnal at this point? Possibly.. that sounds nice.

    -Allēna

  • Well, I had therapy yesterday…

    this session actually felt productive.

    I’ve been wondering for a long ass time why I write the way that I do. It feels like I’m possessed much of the time. Once I start on a project, I find it very difficult to stop, and if I’m not working on a project, even if there is no specific creative urge, it induces paralyzing anxiety. I feel like I constantly have to be working on something or else I feel like I go (more) insane, start climbing the walls, what have you. I’m a perfectionist about my work, too – if it’s not up to a very high bar that LITERALLY NO ONE ON EARTH is holding me to but myself, I panic and find it very difficult to share it.

    I’m also VERY rigid in other areas of my life. I am severely anxious about a lot. I have a damn near pathological need to know as much as possible, especially if it might possibly involve me, no matter how mentally taxing learning all of this information might be day in and day out. I feel like I have to know. Additionally, I feel like I have to be doing something about what I know, lest the doomspirals begin in that way, as well. I hold people to very, very high standards as well because if they fall short, it makes me VERY anxious, like my life could fall apart at any moment, someone could get hurt, etc..

    I’ve been like that for as long as I can remember. We all have.

    I talked with my therapist about much of this yesterday and he said that it sounded like I was describing obsessive-compulsive disorder. Initially he recommended seeing a psychiatrist about it, but I reminded him that due to my trauma with all of that (see: all of my posts about my mother DIYing MKULTRA with psych meds, etc.) and the fact that while it does suck to create this way, writing and creativity is my lifeline. I don’t know what I would do without it, and I am processing a lot of my trauma when I write. So ultimately we determined that that probably wasn’t the best idea since it wasn’t necessarily harming me and in fact doing more good at this point in time.

    So, that’s my confession for you all. I quite likely have OCD and it’s the root of much of my creativity, perfectionism, and a whole lot of other shit. It feels less like a death sentence to admit that than I thought it would.

    Until tomorrow (or the doomspirals will get me, haha),

    -Allēna

  • like an inkblot

    I attended St John’s College in Annapolis, MD for my freshman year of college. My dad died at the beginning of second semester. I was a young eighteen, already struggling deeply with depression. I didn’t think I would live to see my eighteenth year, and losing him fucking gutted me. I spent the remainder of the year an angry, lonely ghost. It broke me to such a degree that my headmate Eight took over as host for the first time in my system’s life, setting off a power struggle that would persist for many years to come.

    I would later write of that period in my life around a year later: 

    "my father
    they say
    i had a father once 
    i can’t forget his eyes
    green olives from the top down
    and this man i do not know
    may have created me 
    but i hope he won’t keep me 
    for his own
    i am not even my own
    and i keep telling the same
    old stories to new people

    i wish i could make myself new
    i wish i could bring him back
    i wish none of this shit would
    have ever happened
    i wish that the olives had never 
    gone 

    oh, stranger 
    take this cup from me
    will i die if i drink?
    blessed are the poor in spirit
    for they will inherit a life i
    do not want
    nonetheless
    not my will but yours"

    Now, the interesting thing about the way they do things at St John’s College is that there aren’t any final exams. Instead, all your instructors gather in a room at the end of the year and tell you what you did wrong and what you did well. They call this unique form of humiliation the “Don Rag”. It was fair to say that I was absolutely not a good student, especially considering the circumstances, and they did not go easy on me. That being said, my seminar instructors said something that’s stuck with me for the past decade. It was something to the effect of, “even if they can’t make it through a full class or can do nothing else, they show up.” Many of my instructors echoed the same thing, including my Greek instructor, who had told me earlier that year that I show up even when I look like I want to be blotted off the face of the earth.

    That’s something I take a lot of pride in. I do my utmost to show the fuck up, no matter what shape I’m in. I don’t give a flying fuck if I have to come up with 17,000 workarounds in the process, if I want something, I show the fuck up, I put in the work and I get it. And I love a challenge.

    Many people thought I would kill myself that year and in the years to come. My writing and my friends saved my life. I hated myself, and that was apparent in nearly everything I did. But I lived, despite not wanting to. My depression is much better now that I’ve gotten out of Texas, stopped pushing myself so damn hard, and I have better medical care. I’m tremendously thankful for that.

    So here’s to showing up, again and again.

    -Allēna

  • on being mostly nocturnal…

    nighttime is really the only time I get to myself these days.

    This post was first published on my Substack.

    Hello, everyone. I want to preface this by saying that I have absolutely no fucking clue where this is going. I started a draft of this post in the Substack app, but the links were being odd, so I am starting over from the web editor and seeing where the night takes me.

    Before I began that draft, I reread the zine I dropped in June, easy to hate like everything you love, and started listening to the companion playlist I made, called I think you made me hate this city, and started thinking about why I wrote the damn thing at all.

    easy to hate’s cover.

    For starters, I was really, really fucking pissed off at the state of the world, and still am. I was at the tail end of a five year and some long divorce process that I address in the poem “the jailer”, and I was stuck in a deep flow state, often in the wee hours of the morning, screaming my thoughts out on paper, kinda like I’m doing now.

    I felt like everything in my life was in shambles, and, desperate to regain some internal sense of control, I wrote like my life depended on it. I’ve written my way out of holes like that for years.

    I’m also often up for most of the night most nights doing what the fuck ever, whether I’m writing rambles like this, crafting zines like easy to hate, catching up on messages, watching shows, or reading fluffy fanfics. It feels like a fuckload is expected of me during the day, I go nonstop, and the wee hours of the morning is the only time I get to myself to just…be and have time to do whatever I want and actually feel like I have time to be a functional person. Nobody needs me at 2:27 AM (the time I’m writing this), and if they do need me, I know it’s truly dire. In a time when I still feel like I have very little agency over my life, this is heaven.

    I think I’m gonna leave y’all with a few lines from “20 January 2025”, one of my favorite poems from easy to hate:

    "I hail from the hellfire that raised me
    and the shadows that granted me solace 
    Black as the Pit from pole to pole 
    And I thank whatever gods may be
    For my unconquerable soul."

    Go forth and carve some time out to relax today. It’s rebellion.

    -Allēna

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