enter · other

i've always known this third space
cast between worlds and nurtured in another.

           an other


welcomed by kin, still founded in the peripheries; a minority state—of observation, of discovery.


emerging with, until now, some all-serving ether of universal thinking—one with boundless potential, and absolutely drowning in vague hope.

these lands know nothing but time—infinite grains of sand; the erosion of shores and promise.


organic environments; the conditions for vast cultural syntheses—creating worlds, well beyond any lone capacity.

we form connections to earth and peoples through proximity, food and story—customs passed down and touched upon at every entry.

splintering spirits; transferring and transforming; voices, life and lore—shared amongst bodies of land, water, and our own—home.

and where do we find our essence?
in what surrounds us, or what comprises us?
in context and in blood, pages unwritten.

dissecting our environments and selves to find meaning—origins, communities, traditions.

what is native?
and to where, am i?
ecosystems, timelines, economies.

a visitor amongst imports and invasions, produced by circumstance, in the chaotic expanse of energy in these miscellaneous human eras.

talo, ʻulu, ʻumu, afi

families bound by respect, routine and communal service. honour, shame and survival modalities in the connected, global age.

indeed enchanted isles, but unlike the brochures of exotic exaltation. 

from plantation to prayer to plate.

histories formed, yet forgotten—generational understandings through plants, seas, moons and mountains. war gods, and tales of love and mysticism across the great ocean.

new rituals are ancestral duty.

one foot in front of the—

                                             altar.


sources of higher operation—morality, mortality, and an abundance of belief-based animal iterations.

thousands, millions, billions—from ceremony to superstition, missionary motives eradicate our inheritance of domestic magic over time.

beyond these spoken tongues, language shifts and finds its form.  

                mālie lou loto

behind the conditioning of outsider apprehension, shallow judgements neglect my capacity to feel, communicate, or understand.

i observe and listen, mostly in silence—an invisible presence. 

these definitions are mine alone to mark—to tend to the wondrous gardens of ancestral past, and form new lines of intergenerational knowledge, context and exchange.

alterity—intricate and intertwined.

offerings from ancestors to descendance,
through kin, commons, and paths yet known,
duty in blood, chaos and time,
over the horizon, with translations of my own design.

me/i ~ ʻau

we/us ~ tātou

A - Samoan customary adornments, 'ulafala ~ traditionally made of pandanus keys—refused at Australian customs.
B - Thoughts leaving with light of the days, Apia habour.
C - Taro (talo) leaf, a staple of Samoan cuisine, Afiamalu.
D - Inspection of objects in places, gifts of the seas. E - Faʻafetai creating coconut milk (valu popo) before Toʻonaʻi (shared sunday feast), Papauta.
F - Ritual cleanse—curtains awash, Papauta.
G - Falagi preparing the cow (bovi) for the family, Papauta.
H - ‘Umu, a traditional Samoan earth-oven, Papauta.
I - ‘Ulu trees amongst passages of light, Manono/Vaitele.
J - Pandanus leaves drying in the sun for use in traditional weaving—Earthly practices and monuments of life, Manono.
K - ʻIe tōga ~ Samoan customary woven fine mats, a form of social currency, Papauta.
L - Morning light and eternal development, Manono.
M - Mum, Sone Naomi Eshraghi, Vaitele.
N - Baba, Vahid Eshraghi, Tiapapata.