I launched my indiegogo campaign in March, with enthusiasm and believe in my project.

Was it the right time?

Did I have the capacity?

Was there risks?

No it's never the right time, I just went for it even when my mind was shouting don't do it now.

No I don't think I had the capacity, while producing and performing my live performance art show on March 21st and applying for a master in environmental studies. I did not have the capacity but I made it work to launch the campaign.

Risks? Fuck yes, but what drove me to dive deeper into the possibility of this project was my love for collaborating with my creative friends and this time we would be well resourced.

This pulled me and I loved it. I launched and shared and shared and shared and got to 13% and stalled.

It never passed 13%

I failed flat on my face. I was embarrassed and desperate for something to move.

After a few weeks of avoiding it and the weight of failure that flooded my nervous system.

I had a talk with my life partner/lover and we discovered I didn't have strategy for the complete run of the campaign. A weakness of mind and I hated, the failure seeps into my confidence chambers and deflated my sense of direction.

I was humbled. shame patted me on my head.

I felt failure in a new way

It was the self loathing wanted to hide underneath the terror of my insufficiency.

I saw stupid success in my face flat failure.

I failed at the campaign, I did not get the outcome of 100% and the money to fund the project with my collaborators.

My success was and is putting my creative ideas into the world and asking for support and feeling failure with community.

Failing with community is fucking vulnerable, I want to run and hide in the closet but failure befriended my shame and set me free.

I seeked support from folks who were inspired by my project idea. So many funding opportunities came calling and I answered in a whole new way.

No validation needed

No approval needed

And yet

The project got me a Artist in Residency for urban planning

I also got a short contract job for a few months touring the east coast of Canada (something I really desired to do but no money and time) and this work will be almost exactly the amount of money I was campaigning to raise to fund my project.

My dream is to tour with my performance art show and this opportunity gives me the experience of what it means to tour and paid for it.

none of this was what I was campaigning for but the universe and I are dancing to a new song.

A new direction for now that gives me an experience I could have not imagined

Put the vision, the idea, the project in its state of imperfection and challenge the thoughts that plague our minds of the unknown.

Maybe failure will befriend your shame in the process to free you to dance with the universe to your new song.

This here is my way of saying Big Chess Thank You to all who believed in me, donated, posted and encouraged I deeply appreciate it. yes I failed and yes I failed with community, so I win deeper trust in my creative self expression.

Say hi to your shame and failure, I hope there become supportive friends.

From the east coast, your bitch in creativity

happie micha

The bedroom, chaos. Confusion rings loud in my head, agonizingly energizing. I urge my stomach to vomit but it does not come out. I am bloating and then a weakness seizes my knees.

my thoughts, a cloudy storm. I close my eyes to see the truth.

I smell beyond the disgust and the nausea inside me subsides.

I hear the thumping of my heart telling me to stay still.

my body tries to run, survival mode.

I breathe in past my conditioning,

I taste the ammonium on my tongue, colonizing all the way back to my tonsils.

Ugh! Saliva over-flows, drip drip, dripping from my half-open-mouth. I try to swallow and the acid burns as it forces itself up-out the wrong pipe.

Frightening fear recklessly chokes me and yet I feel a freeing relief.

I spit out the sourness and swallow the staleness on my tastebuds.

my eyes open, blurring into focus.

I see destruction dancing with the vintage furniture.

My shoulders start tensing. I feel a tightening pinch in the middle of my upper back, right at the base of my neck. I see blood all over, the walls, the bed sheets, the Ghana gold framed photograph with our family before grandpa made his transition.

my calf tightens.

“breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe” I tell myself.

I start feeling a sensation like a suffocation. a cringing underneath my skin. I inhale deeply into the mystery. I panic as the terrible thoughts attack my mind.

“whose blood? somebody dead? weh di body?”

run, run, run!

“mommy? weh you deh? mi hear yuh but… mi cah leave you”

run, run, run!

still cah run

tears flood ducts of fear

and it comforts me.

wobbly knees. shifting awareness.

racing heart. restoring rhythm.

kidneys summoning. ancestral chi.

A wave of energy like my mommy

A force of fierceness inside me

Another wave of energy like my daddy

A force of nurturing inside me

The chi of my grandmothers and grandfathers,

The great grands and great great grands

Aunty’s, Uncles and Cousins

run, run, run!

My eyes gently close

something sparks in my spirit

my body bolts to the window

I jump through the glass.

as i am airborne I think,

“why di fuck did i do dis?”

I start falling

all my inside organs pushing upwards through my esophagus

Pain permeates my entirety.

I am panicking but my mind is clearer than it has ever been.

I hear them say,

“trust the fall bway!”

The muscles in my thighs surrender to the frequency of the sky

organs rearrange themselves and synchronize to a new flow

blood slows its speed, gifting my eyes something ephemeral.

I hear them sing,

“do not force it, we are breathing for you”

I stupidly give into their advice before this body of mine smashes into the concrete.

I fly

My spirit soaring up and over the willow tree.

“wat di fuck?” I question my sanity.

“mi flying!” I sing-say in disbelief.

I hear them reply,

“aligning with the ancestors is flying”

I swallow the sovereignty surrounding me.

I glance back down at the house I escaped,

the clouds fade the image of that lonely life away.

I am breathing differently now.

I wish i could sit in the sky,

But I know it is time for our people to remember the secret they hide

How to return home to ourselves

It is not a myth,

it is a tale,

yes it true

I am the last Juju mxn

flying over the island.

“you betta nuh go out deh a tell people wi secret now, you hear mi chile?”, mommy whispers with wide eyes then continues.

“you see dis yah?” She asks me and I hold my right hand to my 11-year-old left chess.

“you betta protect dis yah!” she forces her fierceness through her left palm against my right hand igniting a warmth above my rib cage.

The fierce force pushes me.
I back-up into the jackets hanging in my grandfather’s closet, smelling of stale-cigarette-smoke .

Mommy bends to her knees to pull me up by my shaking shoulders.

“mi know mi neva seh dis to yuh, an mi caah control wah ago happen when we leave deh closet yah, but you need fi know dis…” Mommy pauses to swallow something tough in her throat.

My stomach pangs with purpose. Prickles of needles pierce a prayer inside my 11-year-old heart chambers.

“a wah you haffi tell mi mummy?” I ask with all the courage I never knew I had.

Mommy looks behind her to the door, a shadow appears blocking out the purple glowing light shining through the crack at the threshold.
I feel fear gripping my neck.
Mommy looks back at me and the walls seem to collapse in, onto us.

She says in a hush, “do not be afraid chile, a time you know di truth. Afta tonight you will be the last living juju mxn pan dis island.”

“ you betta run, run bway, run!”

The closet door creaks open.

I block out.

except from a short story

The Last Juju Mxn saga continues…

it is generational

the anger tears us apart

destroys our organs

the eyes get cloudy

sunlight glares, sharp pains

brighter days are not in the past

of what was and how good things where

stiff bodies of betrayal never processed

bitter blood needs bush medicine

Mommy calls the emotional one, me

with minor information,

why she does not ask the doctor questions

she ask her son, her person to lean on

i hate myself for the frustration

wanting desperately to care for her

but the distance doesn’t help

and the fixing the symptoms isn’t working

Mommy is 58, doctor writes she needs urgent eye care

the Cubans are the best for eyes for years they serve Jamaicans

i called my dad for advice, he had gone to cuban many years back for his eye care

Daddy say Jamaica kick out the cubans because of your president

i remind him i live in Canada and I didn’t ask him about the orange hump that rhymes with stump.

this wound is deeper than the eyes can see.

diabetes has been plaguing our peoples disproportionately

my Uncles, Aunty’s and Cousins complain the pills make them sleepy.

the hardest part is nutrition and vital nourishment, health is expensive.

the opposite is even worse yet we have schools of children who graduate with great grades and a diploma in malnutrition.

our schools teach us to use our brains properly and not how to be and live as Whole, well nourished and Engaged human beings, beings of human forms.

we can name the bones of this body, how humorous the power and powerlessness of knowing something, knowing its name, like tarsals and how bright I am to remember the meta tarsals. Yet in all my knowing my fingers don’t understand how to not to pick up that refined sugar, starch or salt.

i have no respect for the institutional structures and systems designed to shape human beings into ‘better’ but yet produce mere production machines.

we are living in the results of colonizing approaches to a ‘better people, better world, better life.’

better is a bad word.

better can make us bitter.

better maybe a tool of control.

when the colonizers arrived in the West, they believed it was the East and called the First Nations ‘Indians’.

how kind?

i gag on this vomit and disgust.

they named them savages not because they cared but because they feared.

they feared the wild, they feared the divine. They feared the truth.

then they labeled us.

and still to this day we try to exist in their naming. We learn to fight their structures and to center their voices and violence.

we cannot breathe with lungs that never belonged to our bodies.

the pancreas of our people screams for ease and rest and then grieves the ungrieved.

i am afraid to face the sadness, the helplessness.

this is collective not individual.

image by Eternia Studio

Image by Eternia Studio

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wah gwan, happie Micha (myka) here.
Interdisciplinary Performance Artist livining in Toronto.

This is a space for stories, rest, and reimagining—rooted in Caribbean diasporic life, creative practice, and collective healing.
Part journal, part studio, part offering.
Welcome to The Happie Practice in motion.

Unfinish, undone.
In process, progress?
Transformation.

Under the carpet,
behind the corners of these closets—
the spaces where the ugliness we hide, Spirit expose.

Expose with care.
Expose in ease.
Expose in joy.

Not the sharp “aha”—
not being caught or found out.
But an unveiling of the undercurrent
that keeps us tethered to one another—
interdependent,
the things we don’t share.

Here, I’ll be sharing writings, audio, and speculative worlds I’m building—
family narratives, erotic poems, folklore, maybe songs,
some dystopian, some unfolding stories,
some food system reflections.

Some may not make sense.
This world burning doesn’t make sense.

I stopped trying to make sense
and chose instead to contribute to creation.

I ask for your grace
as I unravel what blocks my expression and confidence.

Be aware—
the alien rebel is here.

Asé

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