KwaNTum Field Notes 2022 #1: The NuTRix

Com/PuTer ProCeSSing uNiT ComMend 1:

The more research I do, the more KwaNTum no longer can be defined but becomes infinite. It becomes rearrangements and reflections of itself.

“All that you touch you Change. All that you Change Changes you. The only lasting truth is Change. God Is Change.” — Octavia Butler

The CoDe is Change

Nia: A network system of commends not commands. Of tenderness. Of compassion. The origin of why we communicate in the first place. To cross over, to (ex)change to fulfill a NeeD.

What do you have to offer in this (ex)change? We know of Ausar, Auset and Setekh, but Nebthet remains a mystery. She is often not mentioned in the story of betrayal, dismemberment and resurrection. If she were channeled on this screen, what would she offer you:

I, Nebthet, the child of Nut and Geb. I am my mother’s child, an arkive of death. I am my father’s child, the flow of (k)whys scattered across the arkive.

I am a (w)riter of funerals. I (w)rite laments. I (w)rite the griefs of re/mem/bering Setekh before he was corrupted, before Ausar was dismembered, before I joined my sister Auset to remember Ausar. But who helps me remember? I have always emptied myself out of duty.

The people within me are h/angry! I live in a system that profits off of my starvation and does not nourish me back.

And so I cry ComMends! I am trying to put my M>ND back together. A Riot is the language of a grrrrrrowling stomach. The response of another scratching into my flesh. I desire to scratch back into their flesh and call it (w)riting

A riot>rational>roots>rat>rit>reeds>ridiculous>redes>ritual>red>reads>riota>rhethoric>robot>riboter>ribbit>rip it>rupture> ribald>rugire>roar>rise>rapture>O/rigin>G/rating

The grumbling belly of grammar…Brrrr

I am a nurse of riots and I trouble myself into its darkness. Its world wide web. I midwife it to a new space. The mother is dead. The material is dead. The mountain of memories is dead. But like the river, flow allows it to be reborn. Flow like a grrrrrowling stomach, a grrrrrowling mouth, a grrrrrowling story, a grrrrrowling myth.

I am a professional mourner. A Black hawk effect. A Black quack effect. Every sound cracks me on the inside. Every sound of mourning I make is a question smelted from my fiery breath:

GGGGGGGGG

KKKKKKKKKK

SSSSSSSSSSS

NNNNNNNNN

FFFFFFFFFFFF

WWWWHHHHHHYYYYYY

I have been told I am an imitation of a woman. I do not know how to make a family out of my womb. But I see family beyond a womb. Family becomes a network of all the enslaved — each captured sound, the jars of embalmed lungs. Nia. Nub. Nous. The charged synapses of connection. A network of support becomes CoDe. A CoDe I can find rest. I swaddle myself in its wrappings. I trace myself back into myself. SW/T: My purpose is to move.

This year’s series of field notes will be a list of ComMendMeants exploring the idea of these programming codes as praise songs of the nature-based hybrid automaton Al Kym/Org. They are part of the process of my larger poetic project KwaNTum, which explores concepts of knowledge and knowledge-making from a Black, Afro-diasporic perspective, using ideas from STEM, Afrofuturism and the Black Speculative Movement.