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This is a dangerous sentiment for me to express, as an editor who spends most of my working life telling writers to knock it off with the 45-word sentences and the adverbs and tortured metaphors, but I do think we're living through a period of weird pragmatic puritanism in mainstream literary taste.
e.g. I keep seeing people talk about 'purple prose' when they actually mean 'the writer uses vivid and/or metaphorical descriptive language'. I've seen people who present themselves as educators offer some of the best genre writing in western canon as examples of 'purple prose' because it engages strategically in prose-poetry to evoke mood and I guess that's sheer decadence when you could instead say "it was dark and scary outside". But that's not what purple prose means. Purple means the construction of the prose itself gets in the way of conveying meaning. mid-00s horse RPers know what I'm talking about. Cerulean orbs flash'd fire as they turn'd 'pon rollforth land, yonder horizonways. <= if I had to read this when I was 12, you don't get to call Ray Bradbury's prose 'purple'.
I griped on here recently about the prepossession with fictional characters in fictional narratives behaving 'rationally' and 'realistically' as if the sole purpose of a made-up story is to convince you it could have happened. No wonder the epistolary form is having a tumblr renaissance. One million billion arguments and thought experiments about The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas that almost all evade the point of the story: that you can't wriggle out of it. The narrator is telling you how it was, is and will be, and you must confront the dissonances it evokes and digest your discomfort. 'Realistic' begins on the author's terms, that's what gives them the power to reach into your brain and fiddle about until sparks happen. You kind of have to trust the process a little bit.
This ultra-orthodox attitude to writing shares a lot of common ground with the tight, tight commodification of art in online spaces. And I mean commodification in the truest sense - the reconstruction of the thing to maximise its capacity to interface with markets. Form and function are overwhelmingly privileged over cloudy ideas like meaning, intent and possibility, because you can apply a sliding value scale to the material aspects of a work. But you can't charge extra for 'more challenging conceptual response to the milieu' in a commission drive. So that shit becomes vestigial. It isn't valued, it isn't taught, so eventually it isn't sought out. At best it's mystified as part of a given writer/artist's 'talent', but either way it grows incumbent on the individual to care enough about that kind of skill to cultivate it.
And it's risky, because unmeasurables come with the possibility of rejection or failure. Drop in too many allegorical descriptions of the rose garden and someone will decide your prose is 'purple' and unserious. A lot of online audiences seem to be terrified of being considered pretentious in their tastes. That creates a real unwillingness to step out into discursive spaces where you 𫵠are expected to develop and explore a personal relationship with each element of a work. No guard rails, no right answers. Word of god is shit to us out here. But fear of getting that kind of analysis wrong makes people hove to work that slavishly explains itself on every page. And I'm left wondering, what's the point of art that leads every single participant to the same conclusion? See Spot run. Run, Spot, run. Down the rollforth land, yonder horizonways. I just want to read more weird stuff.
"start a new paragraph when you'd imagine the camera angle changing" if you're writing prose you should not be imagining a camera at all i'm begging y'all to read actual books
There's a place just down the street where they chop off angel's wings and fry them in oil. You should try some. Oh, the angels? Yeah they're regular people now. Simultaneously their freedom of flight is ripped away from them violently and yet at the same time they are granted freedom from the yoke of divine subservience so it's bitter sweet for them or some gay shit like that. Anyways the wings are really good.
immortality as theft (you have to steal life from something else) immortality as parasitism (there is something else inside You that is keeping you alive and you become less of yourself more and more the longer it stays in you) immortality as violence (everything is trying to kill you because everything is supposed to die and the universe will always try to find a way to right the wrong that is You) you understand
#at least once a month I think about that one post about laminating a paper towel#and how that makes it immortal but also forever prevents it from fulfilling its true purpose#yes you will live. but at the cost of everything that makes you You
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one of the saddest things is when someone in your family tells you you would've loved someone who died before you were born. like my mother has told me & my best friend that we would have loved talking to her father. that me & my brothers have the same humor as our late uncle & even look like him. everyone is everywhere & nowhere & here & gone & dying & coming back. it's as though you know them through their shadow or their ghost or your own actions, but you won't ever really know. haunts me, i guess
If zombies were real, you wouldn't first be warned by the approaching horde by their smell, by their groans, not even a cloud of smoke of the dust they raise coming closer from the horizon. It would be the flies. Hordes and hordes of insects, corpse-flies laying eggs on the carcasses of people who still walk, eating the eyeballs from their sockets, climbing across their unfeeling leathery skin. And the buzzing. The inescapable, deafening buzzing. Everywhere. Like you did not just kick a hornet's nest, but the very ground you walk on was a hornet nest, and each step caused another explosion of insects.
Insects, corpse flies, the buzzing. Their swarms blacken the skies, more horrifying than their migrating meals. The deafening cacophony of constant buzzing, the horrid noise of the living who feast on the dead who feast on the living. The buzzing.
If you wanted, I'd love to read something about a god and their favorite priest. Maybe other priests thinking they're a heretic, or thinking they're not pious enough. Or the god and the priest having a disagreement about ethics.
Your brothers pray to me for your salvation.
Daniel shivered at the god's voice - always somewhere between familiar and unfamiliar, ever-changing and ever-them all at once. He couldn't say for certain if the great one spoke aloud or in his head or both. All he knew was that when the god was there, the rest of the world fell away. Gods were like that. They did not share with anything.
"Don't hurt them," Daniel said. "They do not know what they ask."
They call you a sinner. A heretic. They think that the devil has claimed you.
"I know what they say. I'm blind, not deaf. I still ask you to spare them."
They say your name like it is a synonym for a problem, for some terrible unspeakable disappointment. I know you are angry too. I can taste it in you like poison that tries too hard to be sweet.
Daniel swallowed.
At first, the god had visited him only when he prayed, in the deepest recess of the temple. With time, though, the god could appear anywhere. In Daniel's dreams, or when he was tending the garden with the sunshine warming his skin, or sometimes the god would even speak with Daniel's mouth or move with his body.
The other priests always hated it when the god did that.
They wish to save you by cutting me from you like a cancerous limb. It is an insult. You are mine.
A god's favour was a dangerous thing in the wrong hands.
A careless vengeful whisper to a god could raze cities, if the god in question was inclined to be indulgent, and the god usually was when destruction and sacrifice was involved these days. Not enough to tip the scales, to suck dry the well of believers that gave them power, but enough to remind humans every so often that they were but temporary residents in somebody else's doll house.
A god's favour was a dangerous thing, because they did not suffer kindly those who would harm their favoured in any way.
A god's favour could swallow a human whole.
Their god was certainly a vengeful god, but Daniel could understand that. They shared the same fury. The difference was that Daniel buried his rage and the god did not believe in such things.
But the priests, after all, only whispered their untruths about Daniel. They preached their lies about the great one loudly like it was fact, so loudly that they never stopped once to listen in the temple silence. Their prayers were demand masked as entreaty. Their love was fickle, yet it did not occur that the god who made them might feel fickle also as the centuries slipped by.
To the other priests, the god's own voice was blasphemy.
Daniel removed his hands away from the temple floor and offered them into the darkness, to the velvet night that came before all things and had since been shunned.
The god took them.
You see me, and they hurt you.
The god's voice grew softer.
I could burn their eyes out for their blindness. Maybe then they will see. Maybe then they will not be so arrogant as to question my choices.
Daniel released another steadying breath, his heart pounding.
"They will learn, with time. I am not asking you for their sake, i am asking you for mine. They will call you a demon and make you one with their convictions - I prefer you as you are."
Not good, exactly. But not bad either. Their god was a creature of balance, viciously protective, and hopelessly lonely. Screaming out in the dark not to be forgotten.
Daniel knew that feeling too.
The silence stretched between them, and then they felt the press of the god's lips upon their brow, or something similar. Something that mimicked humanity because it was the only way they could talk.
I will not hurt them. Not yet. But if they lay one hand on you...
The temple would run red with blood.
The priesthood had no idea how many times Daniel had saved their stupid lives.
not romantic not platonic but a secret third thing [what would happen between earth and the moon if the earth stopped spinning as illustrated by xkcd randall munroe]
99% of "mysterious disappearances" esp of people in their 20s who start acting weird for 48 hours and then vanish are not mysterious, thats just when a lot of reality-obliterating mental illness tends to kick in and it's pretty easy to get a short circuit in your brain that makes you go family guy death pose in joshua tree national park. it's not any less tragic, it's just a documented phenomenon and not particularly predictable. its a big reason the medical advice is for people with a family history of schizophrenia to completely avoid weed and psychedelics. "people just go crazy sometimes" is a principle of human health that used to be a lot more accepted prior to the american midcentury and to a certain extent thats a healthier way to conceptualize and prepare for the risk, as opposed to the modern assertion that anyone acting weird is dangerous and broken forever.
you should have a rough outline of a plan for if any of your loved ones experiences psychosis, it really does happen a lot. UTIs can cause psychosis. taking drugs, even safe drugs, or prescription drugs, can cause psychosis. i was once prescribed a heavy regimen of vitamin D because i was deficient, but the doctor never told me to stop taking it, so i moved to california, stopped being deficient, and developed vitamin d toxicity with downstream hyperparathyroidism which triggered significant hypomania that was undetected and uncontrolled for yeeeeeeears. i just slowly got Weird and started making impulsive decisions based on slightly out-of-gamut beliefs. i drove cross country by myself to have a love affair. the love affair was real, the series of decisions leading to burning down my life in pursuit of it were based on not great brain function however. etc. you see what i mean. churchill mentioned depression being the "black dog who stalks us" (one reason for Churchgrim's multi-referential name) but theres another, stealthier dog called Insanity and it's closer to some people than others but man it sneaks up on you. every time i see one of those "guy gets weird and drives into the wilderness forever" missing persons stories i think "yeah i could totally pull that off"
if this is an outdated resource, please let me know so i can stop reccing it to people, but "i'm not sick! i don't need help!" is a book about how to help a family member experiencing psychosis. the link above is the internet archive scan.
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I am not proud of the frequency at which I worship this god. It is a awful habit and I don't know if I'll ever overcome it.
The first time I met him I was 16 years old. I was at a house party and I had followed a group of people outside. There were five of us in total.
I was a habitual smoker at this point but I didn't admit it. I was more addicted to the social ritual than the nicotine. There was something ancient about holding a lighter up to another person's cigarette, the way fingers brush as that small parcel of pleasure is moved from person to person. There was something sensual to me about the deep scent of smoke emanating from our hot, wet mouth's.
I was incredibly inebriated and my eyesight shuttered in and out of focus. Every now and then I would see the silhouette of a sixth person with us, chatting and making large gesticulations, but when I blinked, he would be gone. I tried to focus my eyes enough to see him, but it was impossible. His silhouette was like a hole punch taken out of the wall behind him. I admit this with shame, but I felt the familiar jolt of attraction as his blurry form moved in my peripheral vision. He noticed this, of course, and he grinned with a cruelty that excited me.
The next time I saw him, I was taking a cigarette break at work. I was alone this time, and he was leaning against the wall. I could see him better in the midday light. His whole body was a washed out grey colour. I tried not to look at him. I had become aware of my ability to converse with gods at this point, but I was scared. I lit my cigarette into my cupped hand.
He spoke in time with the flick of my lighter.
"Thinking of quitting?" He asked.
I shook my head and cast my gaze down. I watched the remnants of my other smoke breaks. Cigarette butts, bent sideways by the force of them being stubbed. They looked like fat little worms.
He ran his hand up my side. I still didn't look at his face. His body was warm.
"No point lying," he said, "I'm not angry at you. I just want you to stick around."
I nodded, taking a small drag, I felt like a child with my head underwater. The cigarette felt a soft, small mouth against my lips.
"Stick around for me, yeah?" His words crawled into my lungs.
I did stick around for him. For years.
I didn't stop smoking until a month ago, when he visited me again.
How could he have known that I was quitting? I had only decided in that exact moment. But there he was.
He was almost white this time, with a sickly orange hue to his complexion. There was someone else with him too. A twelve year old with ruddy cheeks and a shaved head.
I was packing up my car to move and walked right past him.
"Quitting?" He asked.
I shrugged, "It's not like I don't like you."
"I'm better," the little boy said, "in fact I'm good for you."
"Yes!" Smoking said, grinning, showing his blackened teeth, "have you met my associate?"
The little boy pulled a sliver of metal out of his pocket and sucked on it like a pacifier. The air suddenly smelled of raspberry.
"Oh," I said, "Yes, I think we've met."
I looked the Smoking God in the eye this time. There was still that bolt of attraction. The sharp twist of intrigue. I knew that this wouldn't be the last time I'd see him.
He gripped my hand tight, his eyes wet with tears.
"I'll see you around," he said.
I smiled at him, "Of course."
He hasn't appeared to me since then, but I have smoked in the interim. I wonder how he feels about it. If he is elated with every drag or if he doesn't even notice.
This is a really good example of how we can just make up words that work. âLuftâ is a perfect word for this it feels correct and we understand and can feel it.
Like it wouldâve necessarily work with other words but âluftâ is a combination of sounds that means luft (air equivalent of wet).
Thank you but the reason it works is because it is a deliberately chosen word!
The closest word we have in English for âwet but with airâ would be âaeratedâ, which is the past principle of the verb âaerateâ. As a multi syllable Latin derived word, aerated wouldnât feel equivalent to wet even if you just used it as an adjective in a sentence- so to have something that feels like âwetâ I looked for a monosyllabic air-related word with a German root.
As many have pointed out in the notes, âLuftâ means air in a lot of languages, because it comes from the proto-Germanic word âluftuzâ. Itâs also used in English as a chess term, and is a doublet of âloftâ. Because itâs rare in conversational English but has the right etymology to evoke the idea of air and the texture of âwetâ, it is very easily appropriated for the concept of âair equivalent of wetâ.
When Cole Escola said trying to create a piece of art is like trying to convince your doctor that you have a tumour even though you have zero symptoms.
ough i started thinking about the inherent tragedy of a spare heir
what if you and your sister had the same tutors, same arms instructor, same conversations with your mother regarding politics and strategies and the million terrible choices a ruler must make. but all of them, from your nursery governess to your fencing coach to your mother herself, knew that she was real and you-- weren't. not yet. only if the unthinkable happened. what if you were a walking reminder that she wasn't invincible. what if you were tragedy's page, carrying its train, walking soft in the shadow of all of their hopes that you would never be needed.
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Iâm offering you a proposal, with potential financial compensation for your troubles. It may sound off putting at first blush, but hear me out. I am looking for a human host. And I mean a âwillingâ human host who might be willing to give up some of their time to help out an odd fellow that doesnât have hands or blood.
Am I asking to control your body? Yes. Sometimes. Youâll still be there, but taking the backseat. Now youâre probably thinking âThat sounds no fun! I donât want to spend all my time riding shotgun.â
And thatâs valid.
But you all spend about half of the day unconscious anyway. Your body is just there, doing nothingâa complete waste. As for me, I donât sleep (haha), so we could have it so that during the day, I will graciously let you do fun human things, and at night, Iâll do whatever. And by whatever, I mean perfectly safe, perfectly reasonable activities.
I donât drink, and I rarely go outside.
I enjoy baking, I look at pictures of birds online, Iâve been getting into neuroscience lately. Very interesting stuff. Youâre all very interesting.
And maybe youâre still thinking âHey now, I donât want some random mind-controlling thingy hauling my body around in my sleep, âWeekend at Bernieâs Styleâ to which I say, youâre no fun and youâre not the kind of person I want to live with anyway.
âBut Iâm a light sleeper!â you say.
Donât worry! I can isolate your somatosensory cortex so you canât feel anything.
âBut my family will think itâs weird!â you say.
Donât worry! You donât have to tell them.
Actually, I would prefer that you donât tell anyone. Please.
And should anyone question me, Iâm not bad at impressions. Iâll get really good at a âyouâ impression, itâll be the first thing I do!
I know this all sounds very strange and potentially unpleasant, but remember the financial compensation that may or may not be happening. Hell, Iâll even do some of your chores if you like, while you sleep. You can wake up and the dishes will be done, laundry folded and coffee made. Doesnât that sound nice? And then you open the fridge and oh, whatâs this? Someone baked banana bread last night (that was me, I baked banana bread last night.)
Now I should say, I donât have a lot of standards, I really donât. But I do (unfortunately) have some, so letâs just get them out of the way before I waste your time.
Please do not contact me if you have any of the following:
- Anemia: Sorry, itâs just not going to work out. I can pay for iron supplements, but I canât work miracles.
-A weak immune system: I donât like getting sick, Iâm sorry. Itâs gross, sick people are gross. I mean I know itâs not your fault, but healthy folks only please.
-A strong immune system: Yes, I know what I just said, but I also donât want to be attacked by your immune system. So maybe youâre not the picture of health, but youâre just kind of okay. Iâm looking for someone who is just kind of okay.
-A penchant for alcohol: It makes me feel strangeâŚ
-A name that starts with a P: Iâm not the greatest at âspeaking.â Itâs hard, moving air through your throat and moving your tongue and your mouth at the same time. You all do it so easyâcanât say Iâm not envious! Iâm the worst at making the âPâ sound.
I intentionally avoid any "p word" in conversation, and get by well enough, but Iâll look pretty foolish if Iâm cavorting about, pretending to be you, and I canât even say your name!
Those are my standards, but really, other than that, Iâll take anyone.
I donât care if youâre male or female or anything in between.
I donât care if youâre gay.
I donât care if youâre smart.
I donât care if you donât have a lawyer.
There are so many things that I donât care about.
Now, Iâve specified all the ways in which I could compensate you and how our relationship will be not in any way problematic, but I want to stress that, above all things, I am looking for a friend.
Someone I can spend quiet evenings with.
If you want to hang out with me during the day, thatâs great! I can give you fun hallucinations. Or you could have hallucinations the normal way, like by reading, like what youâre doing now. I love to read! I love doing funny voices. I wonder what you think I sound like?
I hope I sound nice.
And one of the best things about me is Iâm very quiet. No one else will be able to hear me except you. Iâll be like your own personal friend that only you know. Like a secret friend. And you donât even have to talk to me because I can read your thoughts.
I suppose I should tell you a bit more about myself, since youâre still reading.
I was born in the Everglades, I think. Itâs been awhile.
But I remember being so coldâŚ
And so alone...
But then I met this sweaty man in a colorful tee-shirt, with a camera, and half a granola bar, and with blood so hot.
So yeah, he was my first host, and Iâll admit, we werenât the best of friends. It was a confusing time for both of us. I was confused. He was confused. What happened was really both of our faults, you could sayâŚ
He was a bird watcher, if I recall correctly. Just watched birds all the time. I thought it might have been out of jealousyâwatching those little things flying around makes you feel kind of stuck. I felt stuck.
So I decided to be a bird for a while to see if it was really all itâs cracked up to be. Squished myself into the body of this lovely American crow. We settled down, built a nest, and laid several nice, healthy eggs with a man-bird by the name of âRichard Baxter.â
He was a very proud bird, very large. And he gave me so many wonderful gifts. Like children, and also small pieces of plastic.
I still have all of them.
The plastic, not the children.
Iâd never been so happy, all these hormones had me consumed in the joy of motherhood, but the crowâs health was failing. I could not sustain myselfâitâs pathetic little heart beat weaker and weaker.
I tried starving, I tried everything I could, I wanted to be a bird so bad. But it just wasnât working out.
The bird stopped working.
The other crows held a funeral service for me, even though I was still alive. I tried to tell them, but Iâm not good at speaking, you remember.
It was all just a big mess.
I haven't seen Baxter since, but I still think about him a lot.
Is that weird?
Iâm totally over it though, haha.
After that incident, I got kind of depressed... I possessed a lot of trash animalsâgulls, racoons, and salespeople. I did what I could to survive. Thatâs kind of where I am now.
I am currently living in Miami floridaâbeen body surfing almost every day (haha). Right now Iâm using a library computer and a librarian. She does not like being possessed, boy howdy are these fingers twitching. But you can thank her for my halfway decent grammar.
Iâm tired of feeling like a parasite.
I want to try a different approach.
I want to be friends? Like with Richard Baxter except I also live in your brain and drink your blood sometimes. But Iâll make you bread in your sleep, so itâs okay.
Itâs been really hard finding someone willing to put up with me.
Iâve tried everything.
So I thought I would put up an advertisement online, why not?
Canât say the P word in real life, but you can hear it in your head loud enough I hope.
I know I kept saying that I would compensate you financially, but Iâm going to be real with you, I donât have much. Iâve got like twenty bucks, some small pieces of plastic and a book about...finance....
But Iâm a real hoot! ;D
So,
(P)lease,
If you are interested, leave your comments below. I would love to get to know you :)
I need to go now, the library is closing soon, but Iâll get back as soon as I can.
You're going for a stroll in the woods one day when you see a person approaching you on the same path you're walking on. From afar it looks like they don't have a face. That's a funny illusion, you think to yourself, but as you pass them you realize they actually don't have a face. Less than a minute later you see the same person approach again, exactly as they had a few seconds ago, and this happens another time, and then again and again, and you realize it's not just the faceless person that is the same. You hear the same exact bird chirps in the same exact order with regular intervals, go past the same trees including a tree stump with a cluster of mushrooms on it and a small ant hill. You want to stop and get your bearings but you can't stop, you just keep walking, passing by the same things and the same person over and over. You're starting to realize something about this person, too, that you hadn't realized before for some reason. They're wearing the exact same clothes you're wearing, they have the same hair, they're basically you. Somehow you know your face is beginning to disappear too, little by little, but you can't check because you can't stop walking and your arms won't stop moving in step with your feet. Soon your face is entirely gone just like the other person's face but you keep walking. You don't remember a time when you weren't strolling through these woods, seeing these same things over and over. You don't remember a time when you had a face.
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