#and i found the last poem i wrote from december and found it to be much better than i remembered

[darlingillustrations]

I feel like I should be panicking more. My rent is due in one week, my landlord isn't friendly, and I have no one to ask for help. And yet? I have an eerie sense of calm about it.

I know the calm that happens when you are not actually calm but panicking and your body is helping you survive. This isn't that kind of fake calm. I am sleeping at night. I'm not snaping at my kids. I am *at peace.*

(Read more for musings about the economy, my spiritual mindset in the midst of it all, and some Mary Oliver poetry.)

Five years ago? I would be panicking and staying up late working long hours and burning myself out. But now? These days I'm working full days, then stepping back and cooking meals or working on projects for my kids. It feels more stable this time. I feel like I've matured.

I got a report in my email yesterday which showed that retail sales in January plunged 0.8% from December, far worse than the consensus forecast for a decline of just 0.2%, and the largest monthly loss since March 2023. On the one hand, it made me feel better that it's not just me. On the other hand, it sucks that lots of other people are struggling, as well.

Still, I make the time to meditate every morning. Still, I pull out my poetry books and take my life advice from Mary Oliver. In the poem One or Two Things she wrote:

One or two things are all you need to travel over the blue pond, over the deep roughage of trees and through the stiff flowers of lightning--some deep memory of pleasure, some cutting knowledge of pain.

You don't need to have all the answers. You just need to put one step in front of the other.

Last year when I launched my wholesale business, I drummed up over 1000 leads. I'd pick a city and use google maps or yelp to search for gift shops, stationary stores, coffee shops... anywhere that I thought might want my work... and I took the time to write a personal note to each and every one of these businesses. This month I decided to check back in with them again, and so many of the businesses are now closed or their email addresses no longer work.

Having exhausted these leads, I sat at my computer yesterday with the knowledge that I needed to wait on people to get back to me, that the wholesale leads were out of my hands. And that I still did not have money to pay my landlord. Not once did I fear I would join the list of closed businesses. I did not despair.

Instead, I turned to my first joy. I went back to the sales history on my website and found my very first customers from back in 2016 when I launched my web shop. I emailed them, each of those first customers, sending personal emails. I did not ask them to buy anything. That wasn't what I needed. I asked how they were, what they have been up to, where their lives have taken them.

I was searching for that deep memory of pleasure, that cutting knowledge of pain. One or two things is all we need, after all.

And I got one email back.

This woman was the first person to ever buy an art print in my online shop--a honeybee boy painting--and it is still hanging in her stepson's room, nearly 8 years later. She shared pictures of her new baby, and I shared the pictures with my kids. This woman had sent me many emails over the years, asking for life advice or encouraging me on a hard day. She shared that she didn't realize her emails had made such an impact on me.

Funny how none of us truly sees how impactful we are to those around us. Funny how life keeps going on, whether we worry about it or not.

In One or Two Things, Mary Oliver also wrote:

For years and years I struggled just to love my life. And then the butterfly rose, weightless, in the wind. "Don't love your life too much," it said, and vanished into the world.

I want my character to be defined not by what I do when things are easy but by how I carry myself when things are hard. And I do believe things happen for a reason. Maybe the line between delusion and faith is very thin, but the universe has shown me time and again that it's had my back. I've been in worse scrapes and still came out ok.

If you've read this far and you want to help me get through the next week, you can buy something from my shop or support me on Patreon.

And if you've read this far but you are in a similar boat, don't fret. We will find our way through the fires. one. step. at. a. time.

#mary oliver #capitalism #queer artist #support queer artists #patreon artist #darling illustrations #erin speaks

[scarlettgauthor]

A Candlenights Sermon

So five years ago a friend of mine said, "I grew up religious and I don't want anything to do with that anymore, but damn do I miss the good parts of a Christmas Eve service, like singing together and lighting candles!" and I said, "Well, what if we invent our own holiday? With singing? And candles?" and she said, "That sounds awesome!" and then we stole the name Candlenights from the McElroy brothers and I wrote a non-religious sermon and we rewrote our favorite carols to be secular and now, five years later, we have a new holiday tradition.

This is all backstory to explain what I'm about to share, which is my 2022 Candlenights sermon. Please join me if you would like to cry about space.

~~~

Hello, dear friends and dear family. We gather in the winter darkness once again, as we have for the last five years; as we have for our whole lives; as those who came before us have, on and on, back to the beginnings of people. Back to when the first monkey raised its head to look at the sky, and instead of only seeing the darkness, saw the stars.

Saw the light.

I think humanity fell in love right then, fell in love with the wide sprawl of the universe and all its secrets. Why else would we dedicate ourselves to it, as we have throughout time? Why else would we look at those sparkling lights in the velvet darkness and give them names and stories? Why would we do that, if it wasn’t to bring them closer to ourselves?

The first recorded evidence of constellations comes from 3000 BC in Mesopotamia, as our ancient ancestors sought to draw the stars out of the sky and know them better. We saw ourselves in them, and named them accordingly. "The Loyal Shepherd of Heaven," “The Seed-Furrow,” “The Farmworker.” Do you still know them? Do you recognize Orion, Virgo, and Aries? Did you know how far back our stories go?

The first telescope came in 1608, allowing us closer to the stars and the universe; allowing us to see the light we loved in greater detail, almost close enough to touch. We saw the craters on the moon; we saw Saturn’s rings for the first time; we looked at the cloudy arc of the Milky Way and learned that it wasn’t a cloud. It was more stars, each of them a tiny point of light.

America launched the first Orbiting Solar Observatory in 1962, and we could look at the stars from out there with them, as though we were one of them. We learned about gamma rays in our solar system and distant galaxies; observed solar flares from the Sun, our closest star; saw parts of stars that were previously unseeable, that we’d only dreamed were there.

The Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990, the culmination of twenty years of work by humans who loved the stars so much they fought through earthly concerns like budget issues and engineering mistakes; humans who were so devoted that three years later they made repairs to the Hubble in space to bring the stars closer. We saw things we could never have imagined, great beauty and great destruction, birth and death and so, so much light.

Last December the James Webb Space Telescope was launched after over twenty-five years of development, because we love the stars so much we can never be satisfied. Earlier this year we saw the culmination of that work, and oh, what a culmination. Hundreds of thousands of galaxies previously invisible to us. Nebulae we thought we knew from the Hubble shown to us in awesome detail. Stars being born among the corpses of supernovae. Stars. So many stars.

Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine the line of discovery that traces from our earliest ancestors all the way to us now. Imagine taking your ancient relative by the hand and sharing this knowledge. Imagine looking at the wide, unmapped sky together and telling them our stories, about their future descendants who loved the stars so much we found a way to go out among them.

Don’t you think that they would be proud? That no matter how far we’ve come, we still stand in the darkness and look for the light?

There’s a poem by Mary Oliver called The Summer Day. You may have heard the final lines before, as they’ve been co-opted to support hustle culture or grinding or working out or whatever else capitalism thinks it needs to sell us. I think that’s a shame, as the full poem is much kinder, and gentler, and wondrous than that. Let me read it for you now:

Who made the world? Who made the swan, and the black bear? Who made the grasshopper? This grasshopper, I mean-- the one who has flung herself out of the grass, the one who is eating sugar out of my hand, who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down -- who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes. Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face. Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away. I don't know exactly what a prayer is. I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down into the grass, how to kneel in the grass, how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields which is what I have been doing all day. Tell me, what else should I have done? Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon? Tell me, what is it you plan to do With your one wild and precious life?

My dears, what do you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? 

I plan to live the way I want to live, and love who I want to love, and always look for the light wherever I can. I hope that you will join me.

Happy Candlenights.

#candlenights #fake holiday #new traditions #i legitimately cried when I wrote it #and again when I read it #space! #I feel a lot of things about it! #I also did a lot of research #so all the astronomy facts would be right #in this house we commit to the bit

[ghostedglitch]

happy one year to my hypnospace comic!

(and one day, just pretend i had this up yesterday shhhhh)

here's a little series of fun facts about making it

- started as a poem. i wanted to make a Millenium Anthem animatic and/or write a fic (i ended up doing the latter) but this came to me in the meantime and, being hyperfixated and eager to make something about it, it developed into a comic.

- that said, i was deep in the throes of an art burnout. i tend to make a lot of art around the new year, usually due to being in multiple gift exchanges, as well as working on my own things during winter break since i don't usually have the time to during school, and that wears me out. both this year and last i struggled with having energy to draw. however, i'd just recently found out a style that was pretty easy to work in even in that state: polygonal! so the comic is pixel polygons.

- the comic actually sort of ties into (and is directly quoted in the summary of) the aforementioned fic i wrote—which is called "do(n't) be afraid"—as evidenced by the focus on the HSPD badge as well as the Enforcer being almost a self-insert

- the typography is done by hand. i looked at the game's font file for the standard font and copied it. to this day i can pretty reliably just. handwrite in hypnospace font with the pixel pen. and i do! it's very space efficient!

- the dithering is also done by hand, because i'm a madlad. well, for each pattern i did like a portion by hand and then copy-pasted it until i covered as much area as i needed to, because i'm a madlad but i'm not a masochist. and then when i needed it again i just copied and pasted the layer and used a clipping mask to change its color. now though i have that big pixel brush pack on clip studio paint. so i won't be needing to do that again anytime soon.

- in panel 3 we see the Enforcer's face as well as glasses on their desk. like i said. pretty much a self insert. we also see their computer and hypnospace headband; i studied that intro video for this but between not seeing it a whole lot and the artstyle i was using being really simplified, i'm probably missing something lol

- in panel 4 we see dylan merchant at his desk. there's a calendar behind him. i actually looked up what day of the week was december 31, 1999 so i could circle it. it was a friday.

- the girl in panel 5 is supposed to be rebekah, the girl who likes squisherz and won the fan art contest but didn't get to find out because her dad took away her hypnospace headband. there's only one small picture of her to go off of, though.

- panels 7 and 8, which can also go together as one tall panel, were fucking FUN. what i did for the glitchy static bits was i made various clusters of black rectangles, each cluster on a different layer so i could copy and rotate them to fill more space. then on a clipping mask i used airbrush without antialiasing in white, RGB, and CMY. boom, static pattern. the elements from the game (the error message window, the cursors, the car) i had to copy by hand. see, the wiki doesn't have many screenshots, and if you try to screenshot the game or a video of it then it scrungles your image clarity. so i had to take those screenshots, eyedrop the colors from there, and then do such riveting and time efficient (that's a joke, it took forever) tasks as Count Pixels So Everything Is The Right Size. which for the shiny new HypnOS 2000 look was painstaking. look at those gradients. gradients everywhere. it was worth the work because it looks fantastic but man. and then to scrungle those elements i just used the rectangular selection tool, grabbed arbitrary bits and pieces of the things and Moved Them Elsewhere.

oh yeah babey

#harper babbles #hypnospace outlaw #hypnospace outlaw spoilers #not art

[scotianostra]

On November 21st 1835 the Scottish makar James Hogg, the poet died in Ettrick.

I say poet, but Hogg defied categorisation. As well as his poems he is known as a songwriter, playwright, novelist, short story writer and parodist, he wrote with equal skill in Scots and English. Labelled as the Ettrick Shepherd, the former Borders farmhand, whose life spanned the 18th and 19th centuries, befriended many of the great writers of his day, including Walter Scott, John Galt Lord Byron,and Allan Cunningham.

Even though he was celebrated off and on in his own lifetime, some details of the author’s life remain unclear. Records place his baptism on December 9, 1770. But Hogg long believed he was born in 1772, on January 25 – Burns’ Night no less.

Aside from mimicking medleys, Hogg’s own body of work is made up of mountains of bits and pieces – and must be enjoyed on those terms. Seeking conclusions or definitive statements will only frustrate. Tales can drift off into fragments of poetry both familiar and new. Within stories he flips perspectives with little warning.

His , The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner us described as dark, humorous, violent, sweet, light, weird, wild,

Hogg’s mother, Margaret Laidlaw, was an important collector of Scottish ballads and a canny taleteller. His maternal grandfather, known as Will o’ Phawhope, was said to have been the last man in Selkirkshire to speak with fairies. Fairytale figures certainly fill Hogg’s most imaginative stories, most notably in his first collection of prose fiction, The Brownie of Bodsbeck and Other Tales (1818).

Burns was an early influence on Hogg, who considered himself to be the rightful heir to the Bard of Ayrshire and published his own collection less than four years after his idol’s death. Long before then, the locals dubbed him Jamie the Poeter, and he wrote countless songs for local girls to sing.

After writing a popular patriotic song, “Donald Macdonald”, in 1803, Hogg was recruited to collect ballads for Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border. He also undertook extensive tours of the Highlands with a view to securing his own farm, but became more interested in the songs he heard along the way.

By 1819, he was recognised as a leading expert on Scottish ballads when the Highland Society of London commissioned him to produce the Jacobite Relics of Scotland, which became the benchmark of Scottish anthologies for many more decades.

He endured many failures on the way. In 1810, at the age of 40, Hogg moved to Edinburgh to settle into the life of a full-time writer. Within a year of starting it, his magazine The Spy folded. Readers weren’t ready for a publication that covered shocking themes such as extramarital sex!

Hogg spent the next few years scribbling more poetry and prose, and in 1817 he helped the subject of a post only yesterday, William Blackwood establish Scotland’s most influential literary periodical, the Edinburgh Monthly Magazine (later, Blackwood’s Magazine). In time, displaced by punchy younger contributors, Hogg eventually became a figure of fun in the same periodical. But he kept writing and writing. Winter Evening Tales, produced in the middle period of his life, is said to have been especially rewarding.

The University of Dundee recently produced a free online edition of The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, which includes explanatory notes and copies of the earliest reviews. Scotland’s great intermixer awaits new readers on the link below.

The statue of Hogg can be found at St May's Loch near Selkirk.

#scotland #scottish #history #edinburgh #poet #makar #writer #shepherd

[gatekeeperwatchman]

Daily Devotional for December 19, 2022 Proverbs: God's Wisdom for Daily Living Devotional Scripture: Proverbs 31:1-3 (KJV): 1 The words of king Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him. 2 What, my son? and what, the son of my womb? and what, the son of my vows? 3 Give not thy strength unto women, nor thy ways to that which destroyeth kings. Daily Devotional for December 19, 2022 Proverbs 31:1-3 (AMP): 1 The words of Lemuel king of Massa, which his mother taught him: 2 What, my son? What, son of my womb? What (shall I advise you), son of my vows and dedication to God? 3 Give not your strength to (loose) women, nor your ways to those who and that which ruin and destroy kings.

  Thought for the Day

Verse 1 - Chapter 31, the last chapter of Proverbs, was written by King Lemuel. "Lemuel" is thought to have been another name for Solomon, a loving appellation his mother used. As a young man, he was a person of splendid, godly character. This can be attributed not only to his father David, whose instructions to Solomon are recorded in Proverbs 4 but also to Bathsheba, his mother, whose instructions are recorded in this chapter. She called Solomon the "son of her vows." Like the name "Lemuel," this phrase meant that she had dedicated him to the Lord. This chapter reveals her aim to teach him the responsibilities that he would have as a king, that he might please God, to whom she had dedicated him.

Verse 2 - Through the centuries, many mothers have dedicated their children to God and He has used those children mightily. Hannah, another great woman of faith and prayer dedicated her son to the Lord, and he was used mightily during a time in Israel's history when the light of God's revelation burned dimly. Her son was the great prophet, Samuel (1 Samuel 3:20-21).

More recently, we have the example of Susanna Wesley. God used her two sons, John and Charles, to touch the lives of many people for Christ. John Wesley founded Methodism, while his brother Charles wrote over 9,000 hymns and poems. John Wesley received much of his early spiritual and academic training from his mother. The year 2003 marked the 300th anniversary of John Wesley's birth. His life still influences people today, for which much credit is due to his mother's faithfulness and dedication to teaching her children the ways of the Lord.

Verse 3 - The prayerful woman who gives her children to the Lord will also instruct them in His ways. The first instruction that Bathsheba gave Lemuel was to reject loose women, bad companions, and promiscuous ways. She realized the awesome responsibility her son would have as a king. She knew that if he were to please God, he must learn to fear the Lord. This would make him a man of integrity and help him to resist the three greatest temptations of those in authority: the misuse of wealth; yielding to pride, or yielding to lust. While these are especially tempting for those in authority, we all face the same temptations at various levels. We must remember, as Bathsheba did, our responsibility to warn our children of sin's dangers, and to teach them to walk in the reverence of God. Prayer Devotional for the Day Dear heavenly Father, thank you for the many women over the years who have dedicated their children to the Lord, and those children have, in turn, served You. May we all as mothers and fathers realize the awesome responsibility and opportunity we have to raise our children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. Use our children in Your kingdom and cause them to become strong Christian witnesses. May they speak the Word of the Lord, even as we speak and teach the Word to them. Use them as Your humble servants and keep them from evil. I ask this in the name of the Lord, Jesus. Amen.

From: Steven P. Miller CEO/ Founder of Gatekeeper-Watchman International Groups Jacksonville, Florida., Duval County, USA. Instagram: steven_parker_miller_1956, Twitter: @GatekeeperWatchman1, @ParkermillerQ, Tumblr: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/gatekeeperwatchman URL: linkedin.com/in/steven-miller-b1ab21259 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ElderStevenMiller

GWIG, #GWIN, #GWINGO, #Ephraim1, #IAM, #Sparkermiller, #Eldermiller1981

[what-the-fic]

14 February 1961

Cecily stared into the void around her as she racked her mind for any possible inkling of soft feelings. She hadn’t made a habit of allowing such tenderness to cross her mind since the death of her sister, it was a hard lesson but one she considered herself fortunate to have learned young. People, no matter how much you love them, will always leave you.

“Uh, oh,” Todd grinned, taking his seat next to her. “What’s got you bothered? Can’t you find anything that rhymes with saxophone?”

That was weeks ago, “Are you upset?”

“No, waking up and finding you two cuddled together, watching me, making sure I was ok… it felt like having loving parents or something. You should call him.”

“I don’t know.”

“I think you do.”

“I don’t know what I’m feeling. New Year’s Eve was too much. It doesn’t feel real.”

“I think we’re about to learn that too much can still be real,” Todd assured her as Professor Keating whistled through the door. He was dressed, of course, in oversized heart-shaped glasses and carried with him a quiver of Cupid’s Arrows. Cecily cringed in her seat at the idea of what a poetry class on Valentine’s Day would entail. Though she had grown to admire the professor and his passion for poetry and life, love didn’t feel like something deserving of his sweeping odes.

Several tragic and saccharine poems later, Cecily suppressed a yawn and glanced at the clock above the door. Then, noting her desperate calculation as she counted the minutes to the end of class, just hoping she would have one more day to complete her own assignment, Professor Keating stood over Cecily’s desk and offered her a wide grin. “It appears you’re eager to beat the clock, Miss Thomas. An anxious mind can be a writer’s best friend,” he stopped to raise an eyebrow in Todd’s direction. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Anderson?”

Todd nodded, more to Cecily than to Keating. Knowing she had his confidence caused her to rise to her feet and stuff the folded assignment into her back pocket. Cecily took a deep breath and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, Professor, I had something written, but it has fallen flat. I’d like to share More.”

“Share more? You must share something, Miss Thomas, before you can share MORE,” the professor mused.

“More. It’s the name of the poem I just wrote. Just now. If I may,” she drew in a deep breath.

Keating nodded and gestured to the front of the lecture hall. “I’d love to hear more.”

“More - by Cecily Thomas,” those were the last words she recalled saying as the room faded around her, and she found herself back in Todd’s room on that snowing December night. She could almost feel the frigid dormitory tiles beneath her as the fire raged within her with each kiss she and Charlie shared. The two had spent hours entangled as he sought the comfort of her kiss between his rueful lamentations of how he might have done more for his friend in a time of need, how he should have been more as a son and not caused a rift with his own father after his expulsion from Welton, how Charlie was never enough, and would never be enough for anyone or anything until he was more. Though, to Cecily, as she realized only then, he was enough. Just enough. Not too much. Not too much at all. The theatrics, antics, and grand gestures were not false in the sense that they were insincere. They were all he knew to do to get the attention and love he had always been denied.

The next thing to come into her focus was the reddening of Todd’s cheeks as a tear rolled down each side; she bounded up the stairs to her seat, unsure if she had even finished speaking, and ran her thumb along the bridge of Todd's nose, dragging his tears into a smile. “You alright?”

“I’m proud of you. Finally, you found something that rhymed with saxophone,” Todd nodded as he took a deep breath to settle his nerves.

“I did?”

“Have fun on your date. I’ll be by your place later,” he added, slipping her a note with Charlie’s number written hastily.

Cecily winked at her friend with a teary hitch in her giggle. “I know. I won’t be there. Have fun on yours.”

“Love you,” Todd nodded as he studied his own poem, the one he had written in preparation for his Valentine’s date.

“Love you, too. Be safe. Hurt her, and they’ll never find your body. Or… they’ll never stop finding your body,” she narrowed her eyes at her best friend, knowing his intentions with her dear roommate were nothing aside from the adoration they both deserved.

Cecily glanced at the clock before turning her attention to the professor. “I’m sorry, excuse me. I realized - well, I have somewhere else to be.”

“I suspected as much. Send Mr. Dalton my love. A+. Go.”

Though not a Frankie story, and Claudie is only mentioned in a cryptic way, it feels wrong not to tag @hystericalqween and @farrradays in the latest installment of YoungAwkwardWordyPeople. A project that wouldn't be the same, or even exist, without these lovely girls.

#yawp #young awkward wordy people #post dps #cecily thomas

[chronotopes]

2022 is nearly over. time for 2021 personal writing wrapped

(2020) (2019)

salvaging this post for drafts because i don’t wanna miss a year and i have important professional reasons to be ruminating on theme’s and such in my writing

poetry: 

“dancing balls of yellow light”, february. emotional breakdown poetry that i had literally no memory of writing until i decided to scour my notes app. #girl

“The sonnet holds a self-destructive place...”, march-ish. I was in the last gasps of a three-year Really Stupid About Something Phase, and wrote a super groundbreaking and original meditation on petrarchism after discussing him in class. I’ve written better things, and also worse things.

“London”, August. In the summer of 2019, I made a call that every time I or someone I cared about was on an airplane I’d write a poem titled after my/their destination. Plane poetry is for hacks but only if they publish it.

“Philadelphia”, December. See above.

Four completed pieces in total.

fanfiction

CHOICELESS HOPE, January-March. A fucking ILLUSTRATED FANADVENTURE about postacanon terezi pyrope, predictably unfinished. Was anxious about starting this one because I was afraid of not finishing it. Then I didn’t finish it, and nobody died.

“the truth must dazzle gradually (or every man be blind),” May. Kanaya & Terezi relationship study. Underrated.

“When the open road is closing in,” (published in the dirkjake zine). Flash fiction hastily brainstormed on a trip to the outer banks; postcanon jake and brain ghost dirk have a talk about the modernist crisis of representation, because, like, of course they do.

“In other words, please be true,” December. - Sequel to a dirkjake space au written for dirkjake week 2022. 

Three completed pieces in total.

AL2RNIA, which is kind of fanfiction and kind of origfic, i guess

AIVIDE THE PREQUEL, the whole damn year. The monster. All-drafted, half-published, not-to-be-completed-in-the-foreseeable-future. Anyway, this is a novel about a girl who hates college and sucks at lesbian dating.

the aivide epilogues, sequel to aivide the prequel. very, very unfinished. a novel about a girl who was looking for a job. and then she found a job. and heaven knows she’s miserable now.

Heartbreaking! The Two Worst Women You’ve Ever Met Have A First Encounter - fun little vignette that was meant to be the intro to the aivide epilogues, in which aivide’s evil mom and vinbre’s even eviler mom meet for the first time

A bunch of character-buildy exercises from a guy with a ~Hyper Fixation?!~, including aivide’s disco elysium skills and her thoughts on the cast

Two complete pieces in total.

ACTUAL ORIGFIC (FOR MY SINS, I TOOK A FICTION CLASS)

“cass & laura, nashville pride,” february. psychological realism assignment that started out being called “one semi-final hour in nashville, tennessee.” a secret about me is that i am not good about writing psychological realist literary fiction, meaning that this is just a creative nonfiction piece with enough names, details, and places changed to make that plausibly deniable.

“Two Stories.”, February. Fairy-tale assignment for the same class. Frankly, the most competent piece of fiction I have written as an adult without cribbing from either a fictional property or my real life. Plays around with fairy tales and why we tell them. Confused my fellow participants in a very shitty three-person Zoom workshop.

“HOW TO MAKE FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE: Or, a Smart Girl’s Guide To Persistent Boys.”, March. Lol. Another one that i always forget is not a nonfiction essay because i wrote it as what is basically a nonfiction essay. My professor, god bless him, astutely pointed out that it was, in fact, gender horror.

“The Saviors of the Galaxy! (And all that happened after.)”, April. Science fiction assignment. Introduction to what, scope-wise, is much more of a science fiction novella than a story. Pretty good; my professor was impressed, at least. What he didn’t know: the protagonists were based on June and Rose Homestuck.

Three complete pieces in total.

NONFICTION (2021 was my nonfiction flop era. huge L.)

“In another world, you die at eighty,” May. Lyric essay written the day of my friend’s funeral. (The world wasn’t this one!)

“Where Light Doesn’t Die,” April. Hypertext memoir about my trip to St. Petersburg; a more grown-up version of “Four Russias,” which I wrote in 2020.

“What Ceremony Else?”, November. Lyric essay written like six months after my friend’s funeral. About ghost tours and such.

Three complete pieces in total.

FINAL ROUNDUP CALLS

Works i was most excited about writing: AIVIDE THE PREQUEL and all of the other al2rnia writing

Work i am most impressed with in hindsight: “Where Light Doesn’t Die,” honestly the fairy tale and science fiction assignments, “In another world, you die at eighty.”

Work that could feasibly help me on an mfa application: “What Ceremony Else” if i changed just about everything about it (lol)

#writing adventures

[cassiopeiawritespoetry]

i went for a walk today

just to clear my head

and let myself consider the past few months

away from the watchful eye of my mother

\\

there's a park by the house i grew up in

its tall plastic play structures

and large grassy field familiar

hints of the city i've called home all my life

stretch as far as i can see

in the dwindling afternoon light

the glow from the houses on the hill

and the skyscrapers behind it

almost look like stars

maybe that's why this view calms me so much

\\

i've come here before

every time i've needed a good think

or just to come back to myself

i wrote a goodbye letter

to the first girl i ever dated

sitting on the walkway across the field

i wrote maybe fifty poems there too

each one full of hope and self-discovery

and the swing i've found myself on

is where my ex and i ended up

every time she came over

but today i'm not really thinking of her

\\

today, i'm trying to let that past go

because now i understand

i never loved her

not in the way i thought i did

i was so desperate for something to work

for someone to love me

for something to last

that i never let myself realize

i wasn’t in love at all

\\

no, today, i'm thinking about the future

wondering what it might hold

if i just let myself feel

instead of thinking so much

honestly, i've just been scared of letting go

and not having all the answers

like i'm used to

things are different now, changing

and even though it's a good change

it's still hard

and that's okay

\\

the light is fading now

and it's too cold to sit here anymore

but i needed this time to think

to remind myself that even if i fall

i'll get back up again

i'm allowed to feel things

allowed to want things

because even if they don't last

i know now i'll still be okay

\\

- Cassiopeia, December 27th, 2022

#lgbt #lgbt poetry #lgbt poem #poetry #poem #fuck this was hard to write but i'm glad i did #it's weird... i've felt sad a lot the last few weeks but i've also felt so calm since i realized this stuff... i like it #doubt anyone will notice but i referenced some old poems with the first lines as i've written quite a few poems like this after walks lol

[coreymichaelsmithson]

The Balance of A Year

Every December, I relish the chance to look back upon the course of the last year and reflect upon all that has happened, all that has changed, all that I've learned, all the ground I've lost and gained. 2023 offered me many moments of deep fulfillment and happiness, but it also brought along a number of profound struggles ... for it seems that in order to experience joy, one must also be willing to endure a commensurate amount of sorrow. The waveforms of life may arrive with extreme amplitudes or in seemingly relentless frequencies, sometimes bringing the crests and troughs of fortune too closely together for comfort.

Midnight at January 1st of 2023 found me standing in precisely the same place as I had stood at the previous New Year's Eve: making crap coffee for an AA meeting in a badly lit kitchen in Dickson, Tennessee. I was not yet a local, still visiting from Florida ... but a few days prior, on Christmas Day, my soulmate Daniel had invited me to come live with him, with a handwritten note that read, simply, "Welcome home." And thus, it became clear that my time in St. Augustine, wonderful as it was, would soon be drawing to a close. So I resolved to savor every last bit of it.

In earnest, I hurled myself into the final three months of my life as a Floridian. I walked each sunset along the beach of Anastasia Island, trying to soak up every detail, studying the textures of sand and surf as if I would never see either again. There, on the First Coast's splendid and dynamic shores, I witnessed three rocket launches, discovered a sunken sailboat, found a drowned raccoon, and tripped over a dead pelican that had been half-buried in a dune. I caught an electrifying performance of Stravinsky’s "Petruska" at the Jacksonville Symphony, gobbled up as much sushi and Indian food as I could afford, and barely slept. I continued my therapeutic use of psilocybin, taking threshold-level mushroom trips on the beach ... sometimes accompanied by a close friend, sometimes alone, often barefoot. I hung out with terrific pals, swam in the Atlantic, burned a bunch of old artworks, and painted my fingers to nubs. To offset some of my overdue rent, I pulled weeds, hauled mulch, sprayed fungicide on fruit trees, cleaned the pool, and sweated through a lot of yardwork.

Knowing that the all-you-can-eat buffet of casual hanky-panky I'd gorged myself on in Florida was bound to dry up in rural Tennessee, I nonetheless managed to have a few meaningful liaisons with various men. I enjoyed a very sweet encounter with a professional male model, whose jawdropping pulchritude was eclipsed by his inner kindness. I had a soothing late-night reunion with an itinerant Turkish healer, whose hands were still gentle and sure, and whose voice was a balm for the spirit.

In March, I finally wrapped up one of the most ambitious artistic projects of my entire career ... The [C] Paintings, a collection of one hundred 12"x12" oils, all executed using only Titanium White and Ivory Black. This series of metaphoric illustrations, which took four years to complete, pushed me further (stylistically, technically, and conceptually) than I had ever gone before as a painter. I sold signed prints of these works, and eventually published a hardcover book.

In addition, I finished four fine art commissions: “WARRIORS”, “CARDINALS”, “OWL”, “MICHIGAN SNOW”, and an abstract diptych, “FROST KING I & II”. I pushed the needle forward on "BIG TOP" and "JEWELS", two large and intricate canvases. I created a music video for Daniel's gorgeous charity single, “SOUL ON A CHAIN”, did some pre-viz on an upcoming animation, and had the great honor of being interviewed about my writing for a podcast.

I published my book of “COLLECTED POEMS” and the short story cycle "SOUVENIRS". I released the long-overdue paperback edition of my first novel, "YOUNG PIM AND THE GOBLINS". I brought the first draft of my fourth novel, "THE FABULOUS MEDICINE SHOW", to the 95% mark. I wrote five essays: "MESSAGE FROM AN INJURED BIRD", "SIMULATIONS OF TENNESSEE", "EDISON'S MEDICINE", "DEBUSSY IN THE BONEYARD", and "I GAVE MY HEART TO THE JUNKMAN", which was inserted as a sad but fitting coda in a new edition of "THE PAMELA DIARIES".

Productive as it was, my year was marred by a few heartrending losses. The most distressing of all happened in early January, when I had to say goodbye to my beloved soccer-mom minivan, Pamela. My poor old hooptie finally shat the mattress. We had shared 99,700 miles in the course of six years, driving through every conceivable landscape and weather condition, through tornadic thunderstorms and forest fires and mountain snows, through godawful jobs and traffic jams, through countless sunsets and twisting wilderness roads and ghost towns. If you hadn't followed any accounts of our many adventures, you simply wouldn't believe the things we had gone through. It boggles my mind, to recall all of our close calls and spiritual victories and hair-raising rides. Pamela framed some of the most beautiful and terrifying things I've ever seen with her windshield. I'll never have another friend quite like her again, and it still hurts every day to think about how much I miss her.

2023 claimed the lives of several other loved ones. One of my very favorite teachers, a vibrant woman who taught me more about the process of mark-making than any other artist, finally folded after a long decline. A handsome musical theater singer, on whom I harbored a bit of a crush, widowed his lovely husband after suffering from a late-onset neurodegenerative disease. An extraordinarily gifted sculptor and very generous instructor left behind a sprawling artistic and educational legacy.

But good things came along, too, as they always do. The most significant shift this year, of course, was that I left Florida and moved to the middle of Tennessee, so that I could be with my Daniel, that goofy tattooed carny with a heart of gold and the voice of a '50s crooner. I traded my sandy stretch of coastal paradise for McEwen, a hamlet of maybe 1700 people, a place with no stoplights but a dozen churches, two cemeteries, and a Dollar General. 

Getting here, however, would prove to be no mean feat. I had no money at the beginning of the year, no job ... and with the loss of Pamela, no transportation. My printer also died, right when I needed it most. Luckily, though, I managed to rake in a few grand by selling prints of The [C] Paintings, enough to get a new printer and fund my move. I was able to purchase another car, "Scout", from my housemate and his family, under an extremely generous contract on their part and with the help of my dad. I rented my first U-Haul, one outfitted with a vehicle towing rig, and I drove the 700-mile distance in a state of utter disbelief. Seven years ago, I didn't even know how to turn on a car. Now here I was, driving a moving van through the winding hills of Appalachia, towing my second car behind me.

Tennessee welcomed me with a major tornado outbreak on the day after my arrival, which seemed somewhat auspicious. Worse storms would follow.

2023 was a terrible year in terms of monetizing my time. Both of my primary client relationships ended abruptly, under somewhat mysterious circumstances, for no clear reason. Afterward, I could not find sufficient or sustainable work, no matter how hard I tried, and thus I spent the latter half of the year in the worst financial shape of my life, basically living at or below the poverty line for months on end. Being so broke meant that I missed yet another wedding, one that I had been looking forward to attending for months. I went without health insurance for most of the year. This marks the lowest income level I've ever recorded in my adult life, a shockingly meager amount that I cannot even bring myself to type here. On paper, at least, I've never been this poor ... and I've been pretty goddamned poor.

This led to one of the deepest depressions I've faced in a long while, a valley of extreme self-doubt, defeat, and demoralization. There were times in which the train tracks that bisect our town seemed to offer two equally grim solutions: hop a boxcar and escape my woes like an old-timey hobo, or just throw myself under the groaning wheels and be done with it.

But I stayed alive and kept hustling. I beat the shit out of my laptop's keyboard, as I grabbed whatever writing assignments I could get. I ghostwrote brand messaging for an open-source monitoring application, cleaned up the text for a book on gut biome health, laid out the paperback for a theologian's analysis of biblical systems, proofread a veteran's memoir, and performed a grinding edit on a client's sci-fi novel. I helped make some didactic signage for MoMA and other arts institutions, dipping my toe into AI imaging for the first time.

Tennessee brought some unexpected work my way. My first gig was for a good friend's home staging company, hauling furniture and décor into and out of listed real estate properties, making fake "homes" out of empty houses. The two of us camped it up while fluffing throw pillows and tossing plastic houseplants into a truck, and it came as a great relief to have another gay pal with whom I could be as swishy and fey and arch as I liked. I helped build a golf simulator, did construction site cleanup at two different apartment complexes, and packaged vehicle springs for a defense contractor. I learned two things during my brief stint in the military industrial sector: I have a pathological need to keep my workspaces in order, and the Pentagon is getting fleeced on plastic toilet seats.

I did an 11-hour photo assistant gig at the CMA Fest in Nashville, lugging gear for a boss nearly two decades younger than myself, and a 14-hour personal assistant gig for an NBC television series. During the latter assignment, I ferried passengers in an enormous yacht of an SUV through rush-hour traffic in downtown Nashville, some of the most nerve-wracking time I've ever spent behind a wheel. I busted my hump in a sooty warehouse for an ornamental door company, where I learned how to use a strapping tensioner to band crates. I also narrowly avoided being crushed by falling iron jambs. I shoveled sodden insulation and charred debris from the burnt ruins of a cabin on the grounds of a nineteenth-century grist mill, getting stung three times by wasps in the process. I hauled hundreds of furniture boxes into a ridiculously bougie preschool, while flirting with one of my coworkers. Unfortunately, the gruff little sexpot got in a fight with a fellow mover, and he fled the scene before I got the chance to seduce him in one of the empty coatrooms.

I also had a few abortive bromances with confused dudes. I canceled my dalliance with a smoking hot lifeguard when his misogyny reared its ugly head. I stepped away from two different bisexual guys I'd once lusted after, when it became clear that they themselves did not know what they really wanted from me.

I dropped out of a few friendships that had clearly passed their expiration dates. I had to leave behind a former coworker, a gal who I had once adored, when she proudly admitted that she was using online scams, credit card theft, and food stamp fraud to fund her way of life. Nope.

My phone headset crapped out. My computer monitor, shimmied by the vibrations from a passing freight train, toppled from my desktop, missing the head of our napping pit bull by inches.

In October, I flew up to Minneapolis, where a long-time collaborator and I completed our screenplay, “THE LAST BONANZA”. While there, I spent a week exploring one of the city's most beautiful and eclectic neighborhoods, happily tits-deep in orange leaves and Halloween décor, spellbound by Minnesota's autumnal glory. I discovered Tiny Tim’s crypt, toured a formal rose garden, and watched a pair of squirrels mate. I went to a boisterous backyard party, where I sat on a bench and comforted a bereaved mother who had recently lost her daughter. My friend and her spazzy but sweet little rescue dog did so much to soothe my soul ... so much laughter, so much barking, so much firmly-established trust.

Over a long weekend, I headed over to Memphis, where I met up with several of my oldest and dearest friends from my former life there. One of my soul sisters and I explored a muscle car museum in the Edge District, checked out the lobby of Sun Studios, and wandered over many of our old stomping grounds ... including my "field of ghosts", the empty lot where my home once stood, where I spent five years with my poor mad beautiful William, where he finally lost his struggle with addiction and mental illness and rotted away into the floorboards. The building itself burned down a few years ago, clearing away the last physical remnants of a very sad tale.

Happily, though, The Volunteer State balanced things by continuing to yield oddball delights. I checked out the Dickson County Fair, where I fed sheep, a cow, and an alpaca, watched my first teen beauty pageant, eyeballed some prize-winning pies, and stuffed my face with funnel cake while taking in the dirt-kicking splendor of a Jump n’ Run. I toured Nashville’s Parthenon, hand-fed a peacock named "Peter", petted several goats and pigs, held a chicken in my arms, encountered a camel in a church parking lot, took second place in a Spades tournament, befriended one of the NEA Four, and sat on the sidelines of a swim class for special needs kids. Scout and I drove up some scary-ass country roads, sometimes narrowly avoiding armadillos or deer, and crossed some of the prettiest scenery that Central Tennessee has to offer. I helped a buddy unload his moving truck of heavy shop tools, crates of ammo, and massive furniture. I mashed 15 pounds of potatoes for an AA potluck, and startled a committee of vultures lurking by the railroad tracks. I bounced around a bed with a fun pair of good ole boys, right across the street from a cemetery. On a starry autumn night, a bunch of cool folks and I gathered round a campfire on a friend's farm, where Daniel played the ukulele and our hostess thumped on her hammered steel handpan. It was a magical evening, blemished only by the dozens of fire ant bites Daniel suffered while sitting on the ground.

It's a simple life we lead here in McEwen. My sunset walks now take place in a boneyard, rather than a beach. Our town sheriff is a cordial hunk, and he always waves at us whenever he happens to drive by. Our house, which sits on pilings and sketchy cairns of brick, is crooked and drafty and crammed with sentimental bric-a-brac. This spring, Daniel and I strung up chandelier pendants in our windows, so we could see rainbows every afternoon.

From our front porch on Main Street we watched McEwen’s homecoming parade ... complete with marching band, pom squad, firetruck, and beribboned princesses throwing candy. Daniel told me that a few years ago he saw a plump little pre-teen go by on one of these floats, eating all the candy herself and tossing empty wrappers at the passerby.

Nobody says "bless her heart" like a Tennessean.

We share our home with four handicapped dogs: one blind, one deaf, one blind and deaf, and one neurotic. Our nightly routine is firmly established at this point ... we walk the mutts through the quiet streets of our town, playing Twenty Questions while they bark and tug and play Maypole with their leashes. It's our own wackadoodle Iditarod, and I wouldn't trade it for anything in the world. Afterwards, Daniel will cook us a scrumptious dinner (usually something with goat cheese, pork loin, sweet potatoes, couscous, and a shit-ton of cilantro) while I edit my manuscripts. Then we sit down on the recording studio sofa to watch reruns and eat out of mismatched bowls.

In January we celebrated Daniel's fourth year of sobriety, and in November I marked my eleventh. Much of the social life that we share is centered around the local recovery community. Honestly, I haven't missed booze one bit, and I do find myself getting a little bored by the topic of addiction. There really isn't a lot else for us to do here, it seems, besides attend these meetings. But that's okay ... it's been my privilege to befriend so many remarkable people, many of whom are rebuilding their lives after unimaginable cataclysms. There is a strong feeling of family among the sober, and I love our tribe. Our "heading to town" events these days are usually speaker talks or functions or festivals. We'll sometimes pop into to a rehab facility just to hang out with our buddies.

Daniel and I are planning to break our glut of AA holidays by spending this New Year Eve among friends, at a little get-together hosted by some lovely lady friends from our LGBTQ group. For the third time in my adult life, I'm thinking of making some potato salad for a holiday party. Lesbians still like potato salad, right? Strange as it may sound, this quotidian harbinger of middle age — hatching a plan to spring my best potato salad on partygoers — seems like the most joyous thing imaginable. It sounds absurd, I know ... but I actually choked up at the supermarket when I tossed a shaker of dill weed into my shopping cart. Sometimes being a grown-up is about acknowledging the plenitude represented by the smallest of acquisitions. For those of us who are constantly toeing the precipice of despair, even the task of selecting a kitchen spice is a luxury.

I am so lucky to be alive, unfathomably so. The more I think about it, the less probable it feels. I feel blessed ... blessed to be allowed to wave off another year marked by upheaval and goodbyes and emotional earthquakes, to push a cart through Walmart in a state of Zen mindfulness, to transform dullness into bliss by the alchemy of gratitude, to sanctify the gift of uneventful days, to value any hour devoid of catastrophe, to appreciate stillness, to savor the quiet country life, to share a sofa with one or more dogs, to curl against my sleeping boyfriend and murmur "I love you" into his neck, to have made it this far with limbs and eyes intact, to have exactly enough money left in my bank account to buy a tube of toothpaste, to see rainbows cast upon crooked walls, to cherish so many beautiful and brave friends, to give thanks, to survive another trip around the sun, to be here, to be here with you.

[xtruss]

It wouldn't be New Year's Eve without "Auld Lang Syne"—and we have legendary Scottish poet Robert Burns to thank for it. He wrote the poem and fine-tuned the melody for the traditional song. His original manuscript is seen here up for auction. Photograph By Jeff J. Mitchell, Getty Images

Why We Sing ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on New Year’s Eve

The Iconic Song Became a Staple at the Stroke of Midnight with a Little help from 18th Century Poet Robert Burns and the Scottish Diaspora.

— By Parissa Djang I December 27, 2023

If New Year’s Eve had an official carol, it would easily be “Auld Lang Syne.” Every year, just after the clock strikes midnight, people around the world join hands and sing this beloved song.

Why is “Auld Lang Syne” a New Year’s tradition? From its beginnings as an 18th-Century Scottish Poem to its Iconic Status today, “Auld Lang Syne” captures the spirit of the holiday.

A Scottish Poem

The song is actually a poem penned by Robert Burns in 1788. Traditionally considered Scotland’s National Poet, Burns stirred the Country’s National consciousness by writing in the dying out Scots language. In English, auld lang syne roughly means “times long past.” Fittingly, the song tells of old friends meeting after time apart.

An Oil Painting of Robert Burns in nature. Robert Burns is considered the National Poet of Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 for his work in the 18th century that celebrated Scottish Cultural Heritage. Photograph By Pictures From History, Getty Images

Although Burns’ version is the one that we know today, there were earlier versions of the poem, including Allan Ramsay’s from 1724. Burns explained his version was indeed inspired by another. As he claimed to music publisher George Thomson in September 1793, “I took it down from an old man’s singing.”

Burns was not satisfied with his version of the poem’s original tune, dismissing it as “mediocre.” So between 1799 and 1801, Thomson found and fine-tuned a different melody for the song. It’s the one we still sing today.

A Song For The Year’s End

Burns’ song soon found a home in an annual Scottish tradition: Hogmanay. A blend of Norse and Gaelic customs, the holiday celebrates the last day of the year.

For centuries, Hogmanay, not Christmas, reigned as the biggest winter holiday in Scotland. After all, the Church of Scotland, the country’s official church, had banned the celebration of Christmas in 1640, since it felt the holiday was not Protestant enough.

Unable to make merry at Christmastime, people embraced Hogmanay instead. During Hogmanay, Scottish men, women, and children exchanged gifts and visited friends and neighbors to welcome the new year.

Left: People in Edinburgh watch fireworks during New Year festivities. The New Year festival of Hogmanay became an especially important one in the Scottish calendar after the Church of Scotland banned Christmas in 1640. (The ban was lifted four centuries later.) Photograph By Crofts Simon, Anzenberger/Redux

Right: To welcome the arrival of 2006, the Hogmanay Celebration in Edinburgh attracted more 15,000 people and included a torchlight procession. Photograph By Marco Secchi, Camera Press/Redux

Another Hogmanay tradition? Singing. Some songs—such as “A Guid New Year to ane a’ A’”—were widely recognized. Others were created by families or local communities.

With its emphasis on friendship, reminiscence, and parting, Burns’ “Auld Lang Syne” expressed the essence of Hogmanay: bidding adieu to one year so another could begin.

A New Year’s Tradition

As Scotspeople emigrated in the 19th century, they brought their Hogmanay traditions with them around the world—including “Auld Lang Syne.”

The song soon became a fixture in New Year’s Eve celebrations in the United States. Jazz band Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians played it during a New Year’s Eve radio broadcast in 1929. It was a hit—and “Auld Lang Syne” remained a midnight staple of the band’s annual New Year’s Eve show, which aired on radio and eventually television every year until 1976. The show’s success popularized “Auld Lang Syne” as the quintessential New Year’s song across the country.

Guy Lombardo, center, poses with the Royal Canadians orchestra. The jazz band first popularized "Auld Lang Syne" on New Year's Eve in 1929 during their radio broadcast. Photograph By CBS, Getty Images

As Life reported on December 17, 1965, “Should [Lombardo] and his Royal Canadians fail to play ‘Auld Lang Syne’ at midnight on New Year’s Eve […], a deep uneasiness would run through a large segment of the American populace—a conviction that, despite the evidence on every calendar, the new year had not really arrived.”

However, musicologist M.J. Grant emphasizes in her book Auld Lang Syne: A Song and Its Culture that at the time the song “was already firmly established in many communities, quite possibly beginning in the Scottish diaspora.”

So the tradition of playing “Auld Lang Syne” on New Year’s may have not started with Lombardo, but his band ushered in a new beginning for a song that honors the past while welcoming the dawn of a new day.

#New Year’s Eve #A Scottish Poem #Auld Lang Syne #A New Year’s Tradition #Iconic Song | Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 #18th Century Poet Robert Burns #Scottish Diaspora #Scottish Cultural Heritage #Robert Burns | National Poet of Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

[tkswlsk]

3rd September 2023

3:32 am

To you

Quite honestly, my life has absolutely fell apart since you left, i am left in shambles with no one i can speak my mind to, so i text you in between busy days, "Do you miss me like i miss you?"

In my last letter to you, i wrote I didn't want to name what we had, it was beyond anything a mere word could hold. We were not friends, we were not lovers, I wouldn't dare call ourselves soulmates either, we were two people so completely absorbed into the other that when you left,i believe a part of me left with you, i'd say the very best part.

I often read our old texts, i try to make myself understand that nostalgia just makes everything feel a hundred times better. I lie to myself. I go through our texts, i go through your letters, i go through the story you wrote me before you left, i go through the books you left, i see the bizarre things you'd do on a daily basis for me, painting me or writing me a poem, sending my name to mars lol, open fan accounts for me, and just think only how much of your life was about me. And just how much was mine about you. You were always there, through every heartbreak and every ignorant man i fought online, you were with me. Making sure you never slept without having me fall asleep, making sure i wasn't suffocating myself with my thoughts.

Of all the years i've spent intertwining my life with yours, my favourite bit has to be the last. as memorable and fun in the most childish way we were before, after your mother died something changed in us, both of us. Do you remember you calling me from the hospital balcony? It was during the pandemic, and i'd stay awake all night in case you'd call. I knew, you were alone in the hospital room. I remember how you said you couldn't cry, i remember asking your friends to visit you, i even remember consoling your girlfriend when she complained she hadn't heard from you. I remember everything, and i remember everything way too much to let anything go.

After the December, i tried to create a balance in my university life and my life with you. After what happened, i didn't have the heart in me to leave you alone for a second. I remember missing classes to watch movies with you, or sit silently in daylong calls with you. I didn't want there to be a moment when you needed me and i wasn't there. So i did my best. And as time went by, you healed, very slowly but you started making jokes again.

May happened, i remember sitting on a call prior to leaving for rs with you. i remember almost crying thinking i will not make friends, i'd keep asking you to keep texting me, you promised you would. And you kept it, even on days that were painfully lonely, i had a text from you. on boring afternoons you'd ring up my phone. There was not a moment when i needed you and you weren't there. but thing was, i was purposefully cooped up in my self build cage all my life, the new version of me surprised me. I had never opened myself up so much, the new, the exciting got the best of me. And for most part, i wasn't even me. Consequentially, with you i was absent.

Do you remember the afternoon you called me to let me know you were leaving later that month? T heard the whole conversation and said "No one will find anything like the two of you". i silently nodded.

i remember your sniffles and i remember wiping my tears aggressively so that my roommates don't see. I remember you, as i remember me. I felt betrayed, ever since we were teens we planned on going abroad for college together and now you're leaving, you're leaving me behind. i knew just like me, the new the exciting will also be the reason for your absence in my life, i was being selfish, i wanted you to stay right where you were, right where you always had been. i knew i won't have your unopened text every time i checked anymore, i won't have your missed calls on my call logs no longer.

So, we drifted apart, just as i expected. I never actually found someone like you, but then again it'd be impossible to. Unless i take birth again and spend the most vulnerable years of my life, sharing every single detail and thought with someone like you. I still listen to bestfriend on the days i can't seem to grasp the idea of losing what i had. I still read Eleanor and Park and the note i wrote for you, i wish i could've given it to you.

I think i'll fail tomorrow, but i couldn't sleep without writing to you.

Love

s

[parisstreet]

How To Write A Song Called 'Square One'

The newest Paris Street EP, Brief Feelings, is out now. As I've occasionally done with Paris Street releases, I'm going to spend this week rambling a bit about each song on the EP. Enjoy!

The song: Square One

Original song title: ‘Poems 2’. Somewhere in a notebook that is at least 10 years old, I wrote one line at the top of a page: “I’m making poems out of lovers.” The line always stuck with me as something to build a song around. When I finally sat down to work on the idea, I almost-immediately failed miserably, so I scoured a different notebook for something else to write about.

I have no song called ‘Poems’ or ‘Poems 1’, so have no clue how this ended up as ‘Poems 2’.

When was it written? Around October of 2021. I don’t think I actually finished the lyrics until December of that year.

Where was it recorded? It was mostly recorded in a hotel room in Corona, California during a week in December 2021 in which this stupid(ly awesome) song became all I could think about. I assembled a mostly-complete demo, then scrapped it entirely because – in my head – the song started switching to a different key, which led to new melodies that didn’t work in the original key. The scrapped version still exists in my hard drive – it’s different enough from the final version that, with a few tweaks, I can probably use it as the basis for a new song. Never delete anything, folks.

The instruments: Electric guitar, LMMS, various Spitfire Audio plugins via Reaper. Those Spitfire Audio plugins are fantastic and I really should use them more.

What’s it about? There’s a fellow at the bar by my apartment who had a crush on another bar patron. At the time, he had just turned 50. She was 27. I was friends with both. To the best of my knowledge, she had zero interest in him beyond saying a polite ‘hello’ whenever their paths crossed.

One Friday night, all three of us were at the bar. He was sitting towards the front. She was at the back. I exchanged pleasantries with both of them, then took my seat and did my weirdo-sitting-alone-and-zoning-out-while-watching-Sportscenter thing.

A short while into that, I watched her begin a conversation with another guy. A little while later, she and this other guy left the bar together, heading out through the back door. I saw them leave, then went back to zoning out on my barstool.

Hours later, with last call looming, I looked over and saw our 50-year old protagonist talking to a friend, looking really down. In one of the more pathetic little whimpers I’ve ever heard a 50-year old man say in regards to a girl almost half his age who never expressed any interest in him, he told his friend, “She left with another guy.”

That formed the basis for this song. Someone heading to a bar, with irrational hopes of ending up with the person they’re crushing on, then immediately having those hopes dashed, then trying to figure out what to do next.

The moral of this story is to crush on someone your own damn age, dude.

Anything else to say about this song? Nope!

Brief Feelings can be found on Bandcamp, Spotify, Amazon Music, and all other streamers of note.

#paris street #brief feelings #square one #how to #songwriting #indie pop #synthpop #sad-sack songs #Youtube

[prettylittlelyres]

2022: My Year in Writing

Happy New Year, friends! I’ve been quiet again, but here’s my yearly round-up. Hopefully I’ll be more active in 2023! Without further ado:

What did I manage?

I wrote just over 168,500 words in 2022. It’s felt like a slow year for my writing, but that’s equivalent to 3 novels… so I’m pleased! I started the year wanting to write 500 words per day, and I managed an average of 462. In the spirit of being kind to myself, and celebrating achievements, I’ll consider that a target hit.

I wanted to read 50 books last year, but ended up reading 45. At first, comparing my 2022 reading record with its 2021 counterpart, I was disappointed, but then I thought about what I’d read in 2022, and realised I could remember more about the stories. Looking at my 2021 list, most of the books on there now come as a surprise. If I reading them at all, I can’t remember what they were about. More of 2022’s list is familiar, which may just be the recency effect, but I think reading more slowly has let me read more deeply. It’s hard to find time to read these days, but I do love it, so I’ve found ten or twenty minutes here and there to enjoy a tasty bite of story.

I’ve taken part in #PitMad several times, and was looking forward to future events, but it was discontinued after December 2021. I had to look for other pitching events. On 23rd June, I tweeted my pitch for “Vogeltje” at #PitchDis (a pitching event for stories by Disabled authors), and got a “like” from an agent. During Twitter pitch events, literary agents use the “like” button to express interest in pitches, as invitations to send them queries. I didn’t get a response to the query I sent, but in the meantime I’ve put querying on hold while I redraft, so that’s probably a good thing. I love the atmosphere of Twitter pitch events, and I’m looking forward to being able to take part in more!

What did I start?

I wanted to write more short-form work in 2022, so I started responding to other people’s writing prompts, and even making a few of my own. That led to five completed short stories (and even more that I planned or started but which never made it past bullet points in my notebook), and seven whole poems! I hardly ever wrote poetry before 2022, and seven isn’t a huge number, but it’s more poems than I wrote in 2023, and writing four in June alone pleased me so much.

Some of the short stories that I wrote last year have made it onto this blog, but I want to redraft others, and have a go at some of the ideas I sketched out in my notebook. I started it in May, and it’s just-over half-full of drafts and spider-diagrams planning responses to various prompts I’ve created and collected over the year. I can’t decide if I’ll start a new notebook for 2023, or if I’ll carry on working in my 2022 notebook until it’s full.

In amongst the short stories and poems that I scribbled into that notebook are bits of plans for other projects: three longer pieces that I’ve been working on this year which are probably going to end up as novels, but which are still far from finished. I’m hoping to finish drafting one of them in January, but I’m not ready to talk about it on here just yet. It’s still very early days!

What did I finish?

I finished redrafting “Vogeltje” on 1st February, at about 3am. I was still doing shift work then, so it wasn’t unusual for me to be awake so late, but now – feeling sluggish and queasy because I stayed up until 1:30am for New Year’s Eve – I wonder how I did it. These days, I can just about manage 2am, but I’m not up to writing anything coherent by then! So, not only did I finish a draft this year, I also finished my youthful years, when I could stay up late and not SufferTM.

There were drafts I didn’t finish. At the time, I felt bad about them – wondering why I couldn’t just motivate myself to complete a story like I apparently used to be able to – but now I can see that I did the right thing in stopping. I’ve learned to recognise when I need to stop, instead of slogging on to finish something I’m enjoying! I understand myself and what I want to write a lot better in January 2023 than I did in January 2022, and that’s because of all the stories I’ve abandoned.

Although it’s unrelated to writing, I’m pleased to say I’ve also completed the challenge I tentatively set myself at the beginning of the year: 300 days of clarinet practice! I’m so proud of how far I’ve come and I’m glad I recorded it all, so I can hear (and see) the improvements I’ve made. Now I feel like a proper musician again, and feel better in general. I think I’m standing up straighter, breathing more deeply, and even typing more quickly. My sight-reading has also improved a lot, and I’m finally, at 24, starting to figure out embouchure (only took me 14 years, but a win is a win).

I also had my graduation ceremony at last. I finished my degree in 2021, but graduation was postponed until 2022 because of COVID-19. It was wonderful crossing the stage with my best friends, and seeing my favourite lecturers again. (And I look absolutely delightful in my graduation photos!)

What did I do?

I put far too much pressure on myself in 2022.

I told myself I needed to write a huge amount, and finish a massive pile of projects, in a year when I was also trying to brush up another hobby, and when I changed from shift work to a 9-5 pattern and suddenly had a much more regimented schedule. Too much.

I wrote over 339,000 in 2021, probably more than I’ve written in any other year of my life, and I wanted to write just as much in 2022. I didn’t think about the fact that I was still at university for the first five months of 2021, and frequently had to write long essays and extensive notes alongside my own writing, which went very well. I work well under pressure, but only if someone else is putting it on! My brain doesn’t pay attention to deadlines I set myself because I can move them; as long as I’m in charge of what I write and when, I don’t write much at all.

2020 and 2019 were also really good years for my writing – I wrote 210,000 words in 2020, and a similar amount in 2019, although I don’t know exactly – and I expected myself to be just as prolific in 2022, but that wasn’t sensible. I was extremely lucky, three years running, to have my brain click and let me write so much, and it’s not a reflection on me that 2022 wasn’t like that. It was just an unlucky year, and I’m starting to realise that now. 2023 might be a lucky year, or it might not. It doesn’t matter how much I write, as long as I enjoy it.

How do I feel?

Honestly, I feel a little silly. I tried to overdo things and while I’m feeling healthier now than I’ve ever felt in my life, I’ve only been doing this well since October. Before that, I was floundering, and I need to remind myself of that any time I’m tempted to look at 2022 as a bit of a rubbish year. Yes, it was… but I had a bit of a rubbish time!

I didn’t finish “2021: My Year in Writing”, but I still have the bit I drafted. I gave up trying to get it all down because there was so much to talk about, and that gave me unrealistic expectations for 2022. “This year, I will write just as much as last year,” I thought to myself, not considering the context in which I wrote so much. I should have re-read the partial draft a few times this year, because, looking back at it now, there’s a few things that really jump out at me, particularly what I wrote in April:

“I rather set myself up for disappointment in April, hoping I would achieve the same amount of work as I had done the month before. There was a weekly translation for French and German, a weekly psycholinguistics reading to note down, and seminars to prepare for “German-Jewish Writing Across the Twentieth Century”. I had nearly all my weekly lectures on a single day, with barely a moment to grab a fresh cup of tea in-between them, and started to struggle with my energy levels. Sometimes, I couldn’t make it to class because I was so tired that I couldn’t sit up for an hour at a time. The rest of the week was spent trying to catch up on work I’d missed without falling behind on prep for the next week. Nevertheless, I managed to add a few scenes to “Violins and Violets”. I ended up with a 19,900-word total for the month. Couldn’t quite make those last 100 words happen… Couldn’t help being a bit disappointed in my achievements, which I knew was an unhealthy attitude, so I tried to be kinder to myself the next month.”

In hindsight, I was working so hard that I was making myself unwell. In hindsight, I knew a long time ago that I needed to be kinder to myself, and to stop setting myself up for disappointment by aiming for goals I just couldn’t achieve.

Somehow, I thought it would be a good idea to spend most of 2022 forgetting all that.

I can’t help but notice similarities between how I apparently felt in April 2021 and how I felt for most of 2022. I feel a lot better now, but I’ve been so tired this year that I’ve… managed to forget how tired I’ve been.

I’m not disappointed in myself. I just want to laugh. And then move on.

What am I looking forward to in 2023?

I’ve decided to set myself soft goals this year:

- write things I enjoy;

- put less pressure on myself;

- pause or quit projects I don’t like.

What happens happens. What I achieve, I achieve. I would quite like to be a professional writer one day, but I have to remember that I am not one at the moment. I don’t need to meet deadlines, I don’t need to write a certain number of words per day, and I don’t need to finish a certain number of books every year.

I just need to like writing.

In 2023, I want to engage more with writeblr and my local writing community (I’m part of my local NaNoWriMo group on Facebook) and participate more in the Discord server I’m in. It’s lovely having friends in other writers, and feeling like part of something. I took a writing course at the beginning of 2022, and I hope I’ll find another one (or a repeat!) this year. I loved the camaraderie of last year’s lessons, and how friendly and encouraging everyone was.

I want to read more slowly, more carefully, and more thoughtfully this year. I think I’ve benefited from reading a little less in 2022. Stephen King said, “If you don’t have the time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write,” and he was correct. I’ve let myself spend more time on each book I’ve read this year, and I’ve enjoyed everything more as a result. Hopefully in 2023, I’ll read a few more craft books, and improve my writing like I’ve improved my clarinet.

I hope all of you have a lovely new year, and I’m looking forward to reaching out a little (lot) more!

#writeblr #blog #happy new year #my year in writing #2022 year in writing #year in review #writer's life #hilary hale author

[andydelire]

“Have you ever thought to yourself, writing is cool, but words are just so reductive.” —Andy Demczuk, Mythos of a nonequilateral sound

How are audio plays on a labyrinth website full of color-changing GIFS of drawings, Youtube links, and bad poems a glitch? How is this glitching a reflection of the unexpected and how does it feel strangely joyful in that mode of expressed freedom, even as it uses the very technology and companies that cause or exacerbate many of these problems addressed? 

No longer is art and media solely a linear representation of ideas that progresses with cultural innovations, it is also rendered (in the public consciousness and internet) as an interconnected cartography of material and exists in syntagms of metonymic expressions and excavations. In harmony with Writing Machines (2002), “Materiality is content, content is materiality” (Hayles qtd. Kaye 75), for this Cybernetic Fictions project, I began working with forms and methods that I had never tried before to see if I could create a text that responded to both my visual art practice and my academic thoughts on how hauntology, performance, and spatiality are expressed and received between writer, artist or performer, and viewer. This reflection will palpitate instances in how my TechnoText plays with intertextuality, a myriad of material forms, and translation of images from other projects and writings to form a network of experiences. Inspired by the asides and stage craft of Middleton and Shakespeare’s plays in Renaissance theatre, the mythology of ‘the crowd’ interested me by its performative/recipient role as well as how it acts as a space of judgment, laughter, madness, drunkenness, sobriety, memory, violence, and praise where the media product is at the mercy of the crowd. With these concepts in mind, I read the one-man plays of Samuel Beckett which inspired me to try an audio play myself. In his play, Krapp’s Last Tape (1958), Krapp is the only character on stage, and he appears to relive past memories via his tape recorder and begins to engage with it in quasi-dialogue. I found the interplay between an apparatus such as tape, his memories, and his words in the present tense (on stage in front of an audience) to be a fantastic example of earlier electronic technology confronting traditional theatrics. The vastness and potentiality of Cybernetics is always at tension with literary forms (and language). Hayles’ definition of literature moving beyond its words struck me as relevant to this discussion: Literature was never only words, never merely immaterial verbal constructions. Literary texts, like us, have bodies an actuality necessitating that their materialities and meanings are deeply interwoven into each other. (Hayles 107) The audio play I wrote titled Mythos of a nonequilateral sound (2021), begins with an interaction between the main character, Roland, and a guitar. The guitar serves as a representation of an instrument but also as a medium to demonstrate the limited ability that our memories have in relation to analogue instruments, even if we remember scale shapes, chord forms, and note names on the fretboard, we can forget entire songs or even every song we ever learned. Roland then reaches for his phone to find a recording of himself playing guitar to prove to the audience (or himself) that he could actually play guitar. As he attempts to scroll to his recordings, he sees several depressing titles such as “December 10AM, lost the One” etc. Suddenly, a voice message from what sounds like Microsoft Word’s “Victoria” begins speaking. The eery robot recites bits from a past conversation that Roland had with his former lover about a breakup. The audience does not know whether the dialogue is recorded from conversations or if the phone was merely dictating text messages. Mythos of a non-equilateral sound is an audio play which comments on the idea of the absent lover’s departure from the person who is left alone (from the I perspective) as Barthes put it so well, the I becomes like “a package in some forgotten corner of a train station” (Barthes 13) where the absent lover is constantly receding away. The narrator (or the representation of both Roland Barthes and the I) is stuck in the Blackbox of the stage of his own mind. Another aspect of my TechnoText is the menu page where there is a ‘Join Us’ button as well as edited stock videos of a sunset with heart emojis and cooking channel clips. The videos looping on the homepage act as uninteresting, non-interactable windows of what is to come. The ‘Join Us’ button does not appear to work at first and thus the user is forced to scroll down the page in search for another link, where they find only the word Lo. . . a reference to the first word sent as a message via the internet as well as Werner Herzog’s documentary about the history of the internet Lo and Behold (2016). That link takes the user to said audio play, which is in the form of a video box displaying a floating curtain. The text itself shown on the page is meant to reflect the chaotic nature of thoughts occurring simultaneously as Roland is ruminating on love. The user is invited to listen and read along, or forced rather, because the audio play is intentionally recorded at difficult to hear volumes and contains competing sounds which assemble what Hayles refers to as noise. It is almost certain the user will be annoyed by the quality of the audio play and just simply read the text (I also omitted the user’s ability to skip around on the audio file, start over, or fast-forward). Throughout the first few minutes of the narrative, a stand-up-comedian-like voice is asking cheesy rhetorical questions starting with the phrase “have you ever thought to yourself. . .” as he goes into a musing on some mundane topic—meanwhile, the stage is being set for Roland, who enters in front of an audience, in a Blackbox-Beckett-esque manière. Roland’s first spoken line is “So. . . annoying.” Is he referring to the audience or the voice in his head? The music element adds to the overall rhythm of the words and reacts in an orchestral sense at times when the action calls for a stop or for tension. At one point the stand-up comedian Roland comments on the music, “This beat is pretty good, but it could be better. . .” alluding to the thoughts that arise when choosing a partner in a romantic relationship as well as the impossible nature of perfecting music or the written word. The music then transmorphs from real sounds, samples, keyboards, to a bizarre processed MIDI render, marking the ascension into the Green World, or a type of Fairy Land where, in Act II, Roland confronts an alter ego fairy who doubles as his inner writer persona and attempts to explain to Roland where he is—but ends up getting frustrated and wanders off—only to complain about needing a vacation (however, according to Barthes, writer’s cannot take vacations). Between the two acts of the play are a series transitional spaces, like an intermission at the theater, except time gets extended and numerous bunny trails are offered in the form of visual candy. The page with the multi-colored GIF began when I was in the process of Photoshopping a round of paintings. As I played with the Color, Vibrance, and Warmth, I noticed how specific lines and shadings on the images reacted to the adjusting parameters. I thought it would be interesting to film the image as colors slowly alternated. The resulting short video was uploaded into a GIF generator online. I took that GIF and copied and pasted it into my WIX web builder to create a space which could act as a transition. The images ‘fly in’ from the margins (seemingly out of nowhere) as the user scrolls down. I used cheesy animated stock features from WIX to call attention to the template choice/materiality and juxtaposed that with the use of ‘out-of-the-box-curation’. Once the user scrolls all the way down the page, an icon of an arrow pointing right appears. The user is invited to click on the icon which leads back to the homepage, only this time there is no Lo. . . link and the ‘Join Us’ button works (this is a reference to the idea of occultism of Western love and Andy Warhol’s exclusive club). Once the user clicks on the ‘Join Us’ they are sent to yet another strange page with a kitchen scene copied over and over. This kitchen scene represents a time when the absent lover and the narrator were together, enjoying a cup of tea. The URL is /tea-time and at one point included a soundscape which I deleted (an experiment on my own self, I still hear the soundscape in my head as I scroll). On the second transition page, there is a drawing of cell phone users on a train as a ticket checker walks by. This scene is in reference to Barthes’ comment on lovers and train stations, as well as a nod to how technology plays a role in the art of noticing and ruminating (the figures in the drawing are perhaps all the absent lover, leaving the narrator behind). Now the user is left with two options: click on the ‘enlarge icon’, which takes to a music video, a track called “Dada Gone Fauve” from AR for the Ears, which is a narrative chapbook and EP, and explains more of the backstory between Roland and his absent lover (in this case, named Julie), or the user can click on the ‘Trashcan icon’ which leads to a list of poetry. This ‘bad poetry’ can be seen as written from the perspective of Roland as he attempts to navigate a near future where AR exists everywhere around him and he can no longer tell what is real or a simulation: “I swear these insta-gen lyrics are getting so sad, Julie says, and then we both realize we have never actually met. The streetlights came on squeaking like a bike tire against a brake pad.” The list of poetry, as mentioned, are little fragments that often lead nowhere. The user is free to explore each link, until at the bottom there is Mythos 2, a link to the second act of the audio play. In Act 2 it becomes apparent (especially after watching the music video) that this is just another ‘song map’ programmed by coders—algorithms based on the narrator’s preferences and memories.     Works Cited Barthes, Roland. A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. New York, Hill & Wang, 1978. Print. Hayles, N K. Writing Machines. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2002. Print.

[trustasset]

Saturnalia and christmas

#Saturnalia and christmas free

Martial’s ring epigram (speaking from the perspective of the ring itself) reflects fondly on the generous gifts of the good old days: “In time past friends often gave us as presents, but nowadays it rarely happens.

#Saturnalia and christmas free

For a gold hairpin, Martial writes, “That your oiled tresses may not injure your splendid silk dress, let this pin fix your twisted hair, and keep it up.”Įnjoy stories about art, and news about Getty exhibitions and events, with our free e-newsletter Martial wrote epigrams (short satirical poems) for the many possible gifts of Saturnalia-fattened pigs, incense, turtledoves, glass cups, ivory knucklebones, lamps, and clay statuettes, to name a few. Let everyone give his guest an appropriate gift.” The Roman poet Martial described something like a White Elephant gift exchange: “At this time of the year, when the equestrians and senators show off their party clothes, and even the emperor wears a freedman’s cap…accept the gift you have drawn, whether from a poor or a rich man. In another topsy-turvy tradition, households would appoint a mock king or “Lord of Misrule” to reign over everyone and give silly orders like telling someone to shout embarrassing insults, dance naked, or chase others around the house.Īlong with drinking, feasting, and gambling, exchanging gifts was a popular Saturnalia tradition. And everyone would wear the freedman’s cap, a conical felt hat awarded to freed slaves, to celebrate the liberty and free spirit of the holiday. Instead of the formal and unwieldy toga, Romans of all ranks would put on a synthesis, a comfortable and colorful dinner dress that was normally reserved for private dinner parties. Strict Roman dress codes were also overturned. During the holiday week, enslaved people could attend banquets and were waited on by their owners, and were celebrated with gifts and wine. “Everywhere there is clapping and singing and playing games, and everyone, slave and free man, is held as good as his neighbor,” he says. In one ancient account, the god Saturn was featured describing the festival. These “deluxe” knucklebones, pictured below, do not go together, but numerous examples have been found across the Roman Empire and are frequently depicted in painting and sculpture, suggesting the widespread popularity of the game. They were later fashioned from all sorts of materials like wood, stone, terracotta, but also fancier mediums like translucent glass, bronze, gold, ivory, and precious gems. As their name implies, they were originally made from the foot bones of a goat or sheep-easily accessible and cheap. Knucklebones ( tali or astragaloi in Greek) were used for games of chance-they could be rolled like dice or played like jacks. According to some accounts, you were only supposed to gamble for nuts, not money, to recreate the golden age of Saturn. Gambling, normally outlawed, was allowed in public. When the Roman poet Statius attended Emperor Domitian’s Saturnalia feast in the late first century AD, he left this five-star review: “Who can sing of the spectacle, the unrestrained mirth, the banqueting, the unbought feast, the lavish streams of wine? Ah! now I faint, and drunken with thy liquor drag myself at last to sleep.”ĭuring Saturnalia, a time of jovial merrymaking, many social norms were relaxed and inverted. Businesses and law courts were closed so everyone could take part.⁠ In Rome, the holiday was kicked off with a religious ceremony in the Temple of Saturn, followed by a free public banquet open to all. Originally just one day, over the centuries the festivities grew to last a whole week, starting on December 17 and coinciding with the winter solstice.⁠

#Saturnalia and christmas

[lalmohanpatnaik]

The Legend of Baji Raut

On a day after October 10, 1938, at the Khannagar cremation ground in Cuttack, seven bullet-ridden bodies lay burning on a single funeral pyre. One of them was Baji Raut. He was 12.

Beholding it a 24-year-old revolutionary Oriya poet’s heart caught fire and what followed was Baji Raut – a long narrative poem that went on to become a classic that inspired generations and led to the birth of a legend…. The legend of a boatman-boy who fell to the bullets of British troops for resisting them to cross the river near his village by denying them the ferry boat.

The poet was Sachidananda Routray, popularly known as Sachi Routray who was later conferred with Padma Shree in 1962, Sahitya Akademi Award in 1963, Soviet Land Nehru Award in 1965 and Jnanpith Award in 1986. He died at the age of 88 at his residence in Mission Road, Cuttack on August 21, 2004.

Baji Raut won nationwide acclaim after Indian English poet and author Harindranath Chattopadhyay rendered it into English – The Boatman Boy in 1942. Later it was published in The Boat Man Boy and Forty Poems by Sochi Raut Roy in December 1954.

In the 33-page long Translator’s Notes dated February 15, 1942 published along with the anthology by Prabasi Press, Calcutta – 9 Harindranath Chattopadhyay wrote: “When that ugly and blood curling incident – the shooting and bayonetting of Dhenkanal boatmen – took place Sochi arrived on the scene with a mighty song celebrating the courage of those boatmen, the cowardice of the tyrants who slew them, and specially the immortal example of young boatman boy Baji Raut of barely twelve, whose name has now become a household one in the homes of revolutionary thinkers and writers. This song of Sochi’s begins with the powerful invitation to the tyrant:  

“Shoot, shoot as steadily as you can.  Our breasts are bared to your bullets!

Keep aside your wooden lathis, for we damn it all. Our breasts are made of rocks!”

The Song caught on, even as flames catch on in a forest-lighting up all the night with its lurid glare! Thousands and thousands sang it – it rang like a message of release struck from a giant gong hung from the ceiling of the firmament. It was not a song anymore; it became a machine-gun-a dangerous weapon which must be withheld. The song was proscribed in the state. It still is. But its effects on the masses have been ineffaceable”.

In a prelude to the Anthology – The Background of the “Boatman Boy” - Sachidananda Routray wrote: “The hero of the major poem in this book is a boatman boy of barely twelve, namely Baji Raut who fell a martyr to imperialist bullets of British Raj and its feudal underlings in India. He was but an ordinary human being, a mere dot in the vast multitude of man. But he has now grown to be a great force or should I say a mighty institution that inspires and vitalises a nation!

Further describing “The Daring boy of Dhenkanal”, Rautray wrote: “Baji Raut, born at the village of Nilakanthapur in Dhenkanal state in Orissa, was then barely twelve. He came from a poor family and had none to look after him except his poor old mother.

The fateful night of October 10, 1938 came. It had been raining incessantly for the last three days. The night was dark and the sky and the hills looked ogrish every time the patterns of the cloud changed. Baji was fast asleep on the banks of Brahmani River inside the little thatched shed of his ferry boat fastened to a tree. He had been posted there by the Praja Mandal as a sentinel to watch over the ‘ghat’ and to see that the boat was not used by the troops of the State Durbar to cross the river carrying out their murderous game of killing and looting people and burning down the houses of the houses of peaceful villagers across the river who were found sympathising with the Praja Mandal workers.

At the dead of the night, the police troops arrived at the bank of the river where Baji’s little boat was fastened………. They roused Baji Raut and demanded his boat to be taken across………. But the little hero stood undaunted and an inspired voice rang out – “This boat of mine belongs to the Praja Mandal. It cannot be hired out to you- the enemy of the people”. ………… One of them shook his tiny body violently while another struck his head with the heavy butt of his gun……. His skull was fractured and blood was oozing profusely. However, he did not succumb immediately. He got up, jumped to the river bank from the boat tied ashore, and called out to the workers of the Praja Mandal……. Soon after, other workers of the Praja Mandal appeared in the scene. They fastened the rope of the boat tightly to their waist and stood on the bank like trees deeply rooted in the soil. The police cut the rope that fastened the boat and rowed away…… After rowing away the boat a few yards the troops loaded their guns and fired a volley at the silent crowd standing in the bank. A few were killed instantly and many were wounded fatally.

Baji Raut, Hurushi Pradhan, Lakshman Mullick, Raghu Nayak, Guri Nayak, Nata Mullick and Fagu Sahu were among the brave deads who fell martyrs to imperialist bullets……. The dead bodies of the martyrs were later brought to Cuttack, the capital of Orissa and after the post mortem, were cremated on a single pyre by the author and his friends”.

“The poem that follows seeks to immortalise heroic sacrifice and the burning patriotism of the young hero Baji Raut who stands today as a supreme symbol of deathless struggle against the forces of darkness and reaction”, Routray wrote in the seven-page-long prelude dated September, 1942.

Exactly forty-four years later Friends Publishers, Cuttack printed the first edition of Surendra Mohanty’s Patha O Pruthivi in 1986.

Mohanty, one of the leading modern fiction writers in Odia language who had 50 books written in different genres, including some in English received the Central Sahitya Akademi Award for his magnum opus – Nilashaila. He was also conferred with Padma Shree.

Mohanty was also a parliamentarian. He was Member of Rajya Sabha 1952-57 and 1978-1984. He was also elected to the Lok Sabha from Dhenkanal in 1957 and from Kendrapada in 1971. He died at his residence in Shelter Square on December 21, 1990.

Written in the form of a memoir - Patha O Pruthivi – a book of 566 pages earned the Odisha Sahitya Akademi Award. In Page 244, he recollected how he visited Nilakanthapur and met the mother of Baji Raut and queried about her son’s death. 

According to Mohanty, while narrating about her son's death on that fateful day, she said; "On that day, Baji had neither gone to the ferry ghat nor had held the ropes of the boat. He was standing under a tree in our backyard, on the river bank and watching the villagers holding onto the ropes of the boat. The river was in spate. The boat was going up and down with the rising waves. When the police troops fired the shots, a stray bullet came and hit Baji and he fell down on the spot".

 Mohanty then concluded: “Tenuh Pulice Fauzku Pratirodh Karibaku Jai Baji Raut Je Goolichotareh Sahid Hoijaichi – Eha Eka Sahityaka Kalpana Matra (Hence, that Baji Raut was martyred by bullet shots while preventing police troops is just a literary fiction)”.

Be that as it may. But Baji Raut has gone down in history as a classic case of literary fiction transcending facts. That is where fiction rises higher than facts and fiction is chosen over fact.

No wonder the Government of India in Azadi Ka Amrit Mahotsav -an initiative to celebrate and commemorate 75 years of independence and the glorious history of its people, culture and achievements named Baji Raut among the ‘Unsung Heroes’. 

“Baji Rout who was martyred on 12 October 1938 at the age of 12 only while peacefully resisting the British troop to cross the river in his village by denying them the ferryboat, is the youngest in the history of freedom struggle in India to gain martyrdom……. The killing of Baji became a sensation in Odisha and he became a legend”, the ‘Unsung Heroes Details” says.

#odisha #bajiraut #patriotism #history