Incognito Transit underwent a modest refresh in 2022. It features friendly colours and improved content structure. My posts now live on the homepage for greater visibility. Feel free to scroll through. Other elements will be redesigned—check back soon!
Thinking about my ancestors bring up a deep sense of connection, an awakening of primal energy, a magick that has neither substance nor location, a knowingness that carries me to a different world.
The Dark Mother watches over me. She watches over everyone. She is the Keeper of Keys who inhabits and rules over liminal spaces.
My first lived experience of liminality was when my father was getting ready to pass away. When he was in the hospital, mum and I will visit him by taking the bus. I was enamored by the idea of taking buses. From my childhood through college, mum and I will take buses everywhere in Seattle. And the Dark Mother would watch over us.
When mum passed away, I continued to take buses recreationally to honor her and her spirit. Mum moved on to a different world, the Spirit World. Little did I know that in getting to know the Dark Mother Hekate two years ago, public transport is one of her domains.
I returned to Seattle for one summer after my first year of graduate school in Minneapolis. I was riding the Woodinville express bus sitting in one of the rear-facing seats in the middle of the bus. I wondered to myself—What if mum is sitting next to me right now? That was one of the many times I sat on a bus and thought about my ancestors.
The bus is my altar. New Flyer, Gillig, Glavel, whatever. It is in these liminal spaces (and more) that I find joy and magick in my life. This is why I embrace my liminality. The cost of ignoring my spiritual calling towards liminality is too great. The stakes of my practice is to dismantle the presumption that the worlds we inhabit—whether the institutions on this plane of existence or spaces of spiritual passage in the next—are stable and immutable. It is through embracing liminality that we can create and inhabit new worlds that are grounded in our lived experiences and sense of connection with our communities, deities, ancestors, land, the elements, human beings, and other-than-human beings.
Chad. Thad. Brad. If those names don’t sound familiar to you, then I don’t know what you’re on. Today, I want to talk about my experiences living in the Alpha Tau Omega (ATO) frat house during Fall Quarter of 2018 at University of Washington. It was my first quarter on campus since returning from overseas studies in Sāmoa. After completing an abbreviated term of AmeriCraps that summer, I moved back to campus as a sublease in an ATO fraternity house (however, I never actually became a member of the frat). That decision put me on course for a thrill ride that ended up burning down the frat chapter (metaphorically) and left me on a long road to mental recovery.
It’s over a week since I last talked about scams and I can’t believe I’m bringing it up again. Today in 51 short minutes, I cut ties with a former high school classmate who attempted to scam me on Facebook Messenger. The scam is a quarantine version of ‘Distressed Stranger‘ in which a stranger (in my case, a long gone classmate who I didn’t even talk with much during school) pretends to need cash for petrol or other urgent personal needs. They bait the victim by coming up with an elaborate, seemingly convincing story. Then, they’ll ask the victim if they can lend a reasonable sum of money with the promise of a high interest return upon repayment.
Tl;dr: It should be made known that I do not sell products and services at this time. If you receive any solicitation for goods, spells, readings, or witchy contraband, walk away immediately. Block and report the bloke who is trying to impersonate me.
—REAL socials— These are the ONLY social media profiles I have. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/faaumu Instagram: @longhouse_cat Twitter: @longhouse_cat (not active) Linktr.ee: https://linktr.ee/faaumu TikTok: All TikTok profiles that purport to be me are FAKE. Tinder: I do NOT see people online.
What’s up everybody, it’s dǰ pišpiš. Last year I posted a tier list of 20 durable moments of 2020 which reviewed a number of noteworthy personal, local, and regional events throughout the year. The months following that tier list were filled with uncertainty, ranging from the wild goose chase of in-person AmeriCorps service (at least from the standpoint of my site supervisors) and the onslaught of COVID 19, to contours of grad school admissions vis decreased enrollment and departmental/college cash flow issues. Yet, 2021 was a time for me to step away from the arrogance characteristic of my high school and undergraduate educations. By arrogance, I mean my propensity to relentlessly pursue merit and recognition in my intellectual endeavor without regard to the costs on my body and self concept.
Two weeks after the fabled Apple Cup train wreck, we get an apology written either by Peter Rogoff, CEO of Sound Transit—or one of his PR or legal goons. Either way, I think that apology is solid. It gets into the meat of what went wrong and hits on all of the issues I think are critical during a mechanical emergency inside the Link tunnels.
Facebook profile of the alleged thief, a lad who lives in Canada. For reasons I explain in the preamble, I will not reveal his name nor exact location.
Editorial note: A Canadian transit forum indicated the first two thefts happened on or around 24 and 25 August, respectively. The erroneous dates of 8 and 9 September were based on posts made by bus fans on Facebook about the same incidents a few weeks later. I apologise for the errors.
When you think about bus fans, do you think about someone who takes pictures of buses? Do you think of someone who knows the make, model, and trim of every bus they observe? Do you think of NUMTOTs, a specific community of fanners who espouse liberal ideals of car-free places through investments in public transport infrastructure?
What’s up everybody, it’s dǰ pišpiš. Last month, my friend sent me a screenshot of a now-deleted tweet from a fellow student activist. Basically, it claimed Asian Americans for Mental Health (AAMH at UW; formerly API Cares) changed its name because it didn’t want to try to include Pacific Islander students. After a brief consultation with me, my friend wrote back, pointing out Pacific Islander student advocacy and thoughtful consideration of the term “API” went into the name change. It was at that point the student activist understood, chose to remove the misinformation, and carried on.
Incognito Transit 