UC San Diego

The title of this collection borrows from the contemporary magical practice (also spelled chaos magick); initially emerging in 1970s England + essentially defined by the idea of belief as a tool for achieving effects, Chaos Magic was heavily influenced by the magical system of artist Austin Osman Spare, who claimed that belief itself was a form of psychic energy that became locked up in rigid structures but could be released by breaking them down and then redirected towards new aims. One of its central tenets: “nothing is true everything is permitted” somehow begins to get at the slow unlearning that has been this feelingly never-ending attempt to return to a state conducive to writing / invent the self that made this book. Something about slugs or snails + arrival; something about learning to be where I am and move from that place.

The whole world + the work = the whole world.