seeker of the muse

one’s character has no impact on whether they were/are a victim or not, victim status is not something that is only afforded to the palatable.

or say that he "could do this all day" after visi asked him if he jerks off in his mech suit.

or say he loves donuts from his mouth to his butt after she made a sex joke

oh but sure he was totally uncomfortable, whatever u say gng 🥀

brideshead revisited edit

So it's not for you. Meditations in imagery and sensory experience and feeling and emotion, meditations on human experience, have been some of my favourite pieces of writing. They can be moving, and beautiful, and remind the reader to notice parts of the everyday and how wonderful they can be, even remind the reader that they are not alone.

I have found that approaching the everyday, with its imagery, like the tall grass dancing in the wind, like light shining through the clouds, like the salt that blows in from the sea, as something wonderful and significant and letting it be moving and emotional and worthy of time and consideration, to have improved my experience of being a human being, and has helped me to write stories that I am proud of. Other people, with their lives, and their stories, and their grief, and their hope, and their loss, and their love, their joyous celebrations and those rainy days where they weep, they are all worthy of consideration and they have value.

Fuck this post. Genuinely. So it's not for you, but writing off meditations on imagery and the human experience is fucking damaging, especially in trying to present it as some punchy line easily delivered to young writers who want to make "good art" and are looking outside of themselves for approval and guidance.

[ #writing tips #‘what else’ is not very specific advice anyway #it shows a refusal to engage with what’s presented by the reader I think #mundane things are worth writing about if the writer thinks so #it gives signifance and meaning to things that might be otherwise ‘boring’ ]

tags via @dkniade

While I'm at it, here's a kinda-vaguepost I wrote off the cuff the other day in response to this, because it irritated me so much that someone would call something as significant as the everyday life of a person and their experience a case of "what else?"

The fact that you are alive, and I am alive, and we are both two beings on the green, teeming crust of a planet with a molten core spinning and hurtling in space can be so deeply moving if one cares to linger on it.

Like, fuck, isn't that what it's all about?

At least part of it?

Moving through the world and seeing a blackbird hopping, one-footed, around the picnic tables, and being struck by it: you and I, we are both so very much alive, and I will probably live so many more years than you, but in this moment both of our hearts beat, and we breathe, and our bodies both pump blood, and we might be like very, very distant cousins from one another. You are alive, and you live your own little life, and you have your own history, and you are marvellous. You are so beautiful, and we both have bodies covered in keratin, yours is a beautiful glossy black, and I see you, aware of your environment, searching for calories while I eat mine.

Or, like, you're outside, and a great, older oak stretches above you, their many, many, many, leaves, more than one would sensibly try to count, all move gently in the breeze. It's a living being and if you pay attention you can feel it, that there's this great, big mostly-sessile creature, and you can feel the space it takes up in its 3D geometry, and you can feel and see how it is so alive. It reacts to changes in its environment, though typically a bit slower than us quick-quick mammals with our rapid lives running around on this great, big planet. It's fucking amazing to just feel that it is a living being so different from us, and yet, we are coded by the same DNA base pairs, and the tree has cells, too.

This is the stuff that lingers in my memory for a long time and I just keep thinking about it and how to portray it and make someone else see it and feel it like I do, because people just, it seems, get into the habit of not noticing it.

tags via @penelopepennington

Right! Like, it makes me want to rattle the bars of my imaginary enclosure like an excited feral ape, hooting and hollering in sheer delight and wonder and amazement about the "little things in life". And like, especially with getting to write online, it's not just about the words I write, it's also like,

I'm holding out my hand and my palm grasps yours and I'm gesturing wildly and I'm practically jumping up and down on my heels and I'm saying, "See? See? Do you see it?" and we are two apes that are alive and it's communication and the beat of my heart is in the palm of my hand that beats against yours, and I am saying, "Do you see that the world is alive? Do you see how the grass moves in the wind? Do you see the light that filters through the branches? Do you feel how the blackbirds and the oak trees and the bluebelly lizards are alive like us, and that we are both alive, you and I, in this precious time, and we both get to experience it, together."

Like, I CARE!! I care so much about the "little lives" because it is significant and I am a human reaching out for connection and to try to understand and be understood and because I am a pack animal living in this modern world driven to connect.

Like, the smell of the salt that blows in from the sea, the sight of the geese flying overhead in formation, calling to one another, the sight of a little being, like a spider in the house or a frog in a garden, so much smaller than I am, and I am struck by the size of myself and my own, as a human being, capacity for violence and harm.

Here, I say, and I lead you outside to the garden, where rows of potted succulents sit along an old yellow wall. I say, look, and it's a little frog, small enough to sit in the palm of my hand. I don't mean it any harm, but the thought still comes to me, I could hurt it so easily. This little being, who breathes, who beats, who eats and sleeps and lives, is so much smaller than I am. I am so very large in a world of little frogs and spiders and millipedes, and I think, god, with tears welling in my eyes and sobs, you are so much smaller than I am. I don't want to hurt you.

So I allow the spiders that are not clinically venomous to humans (brown recluses, black widows) or very significantly large, to remain in my house, because they are so much smaller than I am, and because we can both coexist here. I have known people who would kill them just for being there.

Just being in a public platform makes me feel so inspired to write about these "everyday" parts of my life because a significant part of the motivation is trying to show someone a piece of how I view the world, a piece of my "little life". And maybe they'll tell me something about their "little life".