A Dreamworld of Magic

I’ve always loved escapism, in one form or another.  Before I could write I drew pictures, played with toys, I’ve always been into TV and movies, the second I learned about TTRPGs went hard for those, and in recent years have spent much of my time writing fantastic scenarios.

Actually before I even learned about RPGs, I’d kind of invented them for myself?  I’d tell stories when my brother and I were supposed to be sleeping, and he’d tell me what his character was doing.  I’d draw the characters when I got up in the morning – some version of ourselves as millionaires or future cops or cowboys or rock stars in a Van Halen mold.  Funny in those pictures I’d always be taller, but when we actually grew up he beat me by a few inches.

So I’m at the bottom of my social media feed, as it were.  I’m out of more mindless distractions, and my brain is calling out for magic again, like some kind of squishy pink Ronnie James Dio inside my headbones.  But somebody else’s fantasy won’t do.  Gotta have my own.  What will work for me?  What will scratch this itch?

Sometimes it’s giant robots.  My husband once suggested to me that Castle of Otranto could easily be turned into anime, and I thought the giant armor is basically already a mecha.  How would I render that?  As a comic?  Too much effort.  I like giant robots but I don’t do nearly enough with them.  Had an idea for a heavily giger-influenced mecha story with big gay overtones…  it’s not time for that yet.

Cat people.  As a fantasy trope.  Why are they on my mind?  They were always kinda weird, right?  Usually it’d be a sexy lady with a cat head, like, ok, are you seriously going to kiss a cat mouth while you’re boning down?  Eesh.  Let me not squander my furry points completely.  Um.  I dunno.  You can have a cat head if you want to.

Flamin’ swords.  I saw one recently somewhere; where was that?  A video game trailer?  I feel like it was a lady character with a flamin’ sword, sleeshin’ away.  I wonder what the first occurrence of fiery swords in fiction is.  Was it the arch-michael keepin’ us out of the godda davida?  So little in the bibble was truly original, wouldn’t be surprised to see an older source.

Through the course of various Spooktobers and MonsterHearts I have come up with a lot of fantasy stories, and as an exercise I recently tried to combine as many of them as I could into one excessively complicated plot.  That’s the key to making a 900-page fantasy doorstopper like Georgie the RatRollicker Martinez – have lotsa subplots.  But that’s too much.  I need something I can dip in and out of more easily.

Because I don’t have all the time in the world.  It’s back to work Monday and I’m not lovin’ it.

gimme a catboy in a gundam with a flamin’ sword.  he says reeawwrr!  flame sword is go!  and flies into the night sky, disappearing as a twinklin’ star.  then do your chores and go to work.  blugh.

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Awash

between the boards is where the roaches dwell.  i suppose they were named cockroaches due to an affinity for chicken coops.  the beams cross between floors and walls, sandwiched by the boards, plastered and painted over, but full of delicious prizes.  the cockroaches do not think about this.  it’s safe, it’s warm, it has lovely rot to eat.  gets a little crowded, so you venture timidly into the bright places to see what other nosh you might feel out.  this is where the war begins.  but until that comes?  back between the boards?  as much peace as they are ever afforded.

between the boards we dwell.  the other side of the plaster from the tiny ones, the lumbering creatures that need enrichment and numbness in equal measure, to balance our burning brains.  the electronics enrich, the plaster and the carpet, they numb.  we are megafauna, our median adult size defining the lower bond of that term, depending on who’s talking.  it fits.  takes a lot to move the old meat around, especially when it’s like this.

outside the boards, outside the boxes, it pours down on us, endless.  heaven taking a piss.  the universal solvent.  water.  the plants in the garden are left to their own devices.  sink or swim, guys.  if you were pruned now, you’d rot.  draw those old leaves in around you and pray overwatering isn’t a thing for your kind.  even worms famously find the sodden earth unlivable, and take their chances with crows and robins.  how do moles and gophers live through this sort of thing?

drips were a thing in art, and you still see it sometimes.  it might have emerged from the aesthetic of graffiti, of oversprayed paint running down walls from the tagger’s design, like so much blood.  lots of sculpture and visual art with sculptural elements bear this motif as well, and in both cases it is dripping frozen in time.  but that’s not how the dripping works right now, in the world.  it’s an unfathomable constellation of violence, roiling in the sky where the drops aggregate, hurtling toward the earth in columns sheets waves or just as so many singular streaks, so many more than in all the paintings in all the galleries in the entirety of the 2010s, coming down every minute of every hour, until the sky is spent.

they splash, they explode, or they wriggle vermiform down slick surfaces, loosely bound in their units by that surface tension whose bizarre nature we take for granted.  i can think of two fluids i’ve ever dealt with that cling to themselves like that – mercury and water.  nobody regards the behavior of mercury as normal, when in childhood you break the thermometer to watch the pretty poison burst apart and fuse again into strange orbs and amoeba-like puddles.  the eldritch properties of water slip past our notice as it slips past our gums.  the way we infuse it with fruit pulp, dried leaves, and burnt beans all break that surface tension, to some extent – coffee the most effective of all.  that’s why it spills so readily, leaping out of your cup at the slightest provocation.  tho maybe the tension is still there, just writ small, with narrower rivulets and spicules, clinging to the outside of your cup as it races down to leave its indelible brown stamp below.

water is water.  it all washes over us, keeps us hiding between the boards, until we can’t ignore it anymore.  like the war between roach and man that erupts whenever the border is breached, the water can bring chaos into our little shelters.  ceilings collapse, pipes burst, floods threaten everything.  there is flooding in my town, i hear.  i’m not so very far from the river.  will it swell enough to reach my family?  not likely.  not this year.  maybe when a little more arctic ice is gone.  i’ll live to see it.

let’s reflect on the reason for the season – to wish you had storybook weather, from books that were written in a land of distinct seasons, in the northern hemisphere.  whether you’re boiling away in australian heat or wiping snails off packages before you bring them inside pacific northwest doors, you want to see the jolly old elf dashing through the snow.  denied, like any other dream you’ve been sold.  i suppose hereabouts we are not the kind to buy dreams, but some of us feel the pain of their temptations more profoundly than others.

the long sleep continues.

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Thanks for Giving Us the Plague

We’re all sick.  My mother-in-law brought home some wacky virus or other, which naturally is hitting my husband the worst, because they always do.  As I compose it’s only 5:49 in the evening (black night this time of year at this latitude) and after eating some thanksgiving themed gruel, he’s gone back to sleep again.  At least there’s no wheezing.  They say rest is supposed to be good for sickness, right?

MiL cooked the gruel tho, and I said thanks to her for that.  Wish she’d ever wear a mask.

I’ve been thinking about how much of a social outlier you have to be to wear a mask these days.  Practically nobody does it.  That makes it a conformity thing, I think.  There is no way the vast majority of the population in a blue state feels easy-breezy-indestructible about disease and/or nihilistic enough to not care who suffers or dies for unnecessary transmissions.  Some of these people would do it, if they weren’t afraid of looking like a freak.

So when you see somebody wearing a mask properly, understand that person is either a cowardy custard whose germophobia exceeds their social fear, or they are a person so fucken cool they genuinely don’t give a fuck what other people think about them – mostly the latter.  Props either way, because vulnerable people like my husband don’t deserve this shit.  I wish his mom wasn’t a slave to conformity.

After a few hours of interruption, back to finish the article up.  He woke to eat two bites of pumpkin pie and went back to sleep.  Snoring again.  At least that’s breathing.

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DONK

weird birding day.  was looking directly at my bedroom window when a robin flew into it like a ton of bricks.  somehow it was able to fly away afterwards, but jesus fucking christ.  my phone just wanted me to type jesus fucking morbius.  maybe i should make a wattpad account.  also i saw a bald eagle pretty well, for a good amount of time, so one happy thing.

weird dreaming night.  something like hellraiser but more elaborate.  some goofy old lady kept nearly opening the box by accident and we had to force it closed.  there was a demon with a name like anh nyeng and all his cultists had it tattooed on their chest.  lots and lots and lots of violence.  skulls getting smashed, guns, machetes.  i think the trailer for tetsuo: body hammer may have been an influence.

i just wanted to get these memories down quick, don’t miss the post before this, if you want something more substantial.

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Can’t Tell My Husband

One day I randomly discovered that watered down coke zero tastes just fine, when served partially frozen or with a lot of ice.  Further, I found that randomly admixing other beverages to it lends a certain interest to the concoction, creating a kinder, gentler chalice of iggy pop.

My husband’s peculiarities are such that he never finishes his seltzer completely.  Waste not want not, I have taken to using the dregs of his seltzers to flavor my watered down coke zero.  This is disgusting to him, but he allows it.  But my newest transgression might be so odious that it provokes murdilation with extreme prejudice, and therefore it must remain a dark secret between you and you and you and I.

There is also at least some risk of foodborne illness.  That said, I’ve seen a guy regularly eat bananas that have turned completely brown and mushy – like that was his preference – and he never died, so here I go…

Last week I sliced an apple and I did not eat the whole thing.  It remained in the crisper until this week.  It wasn’t completely rotten, but it was a little off.  Random areas had become lightly discolored, and more peculiar, the taste was altered by proximity to a big bag of fire roasted hatch chile peppers.  Both the apple and the peppers were sealed in ziploc bags, but those peppers were radioactive.  This experience is like eating a radish with light sweetness and a healthy dash of green pepper flavor.

Why am I strangely compelled to continue eating this corrupted apple?  By the time this post comes out of queue, I will either be dead from the consequences, or alive and fine, despite my poor judgment.  Stay tuned.

Hello from beyond the grave perhaps.  I hope you’re having a nice day.

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Be Still and Know

I was in the parking lot of home despot, when I saw this sign at a distance.  Initially I thought it said, “I AM GOD.”  Strange place for fundie horseshit, I mused, until the actual product was revealed: “FARM FRESH SOD,” where the words farm and fresh were de-emphasized.

I had been primed to see these words by this ornament dangling from the rearview mirror of my ride’s coach:

Sit still and know that if you misbehave, jesus will fuck you up.  Bes’ believe.

I like to mix the ideas.  KNOW THAT I AM SOD, THE FARM FRESH GOD, like a parody of this jam:

If you haven’t thought of that song since your homeboy in college DL’d a midi of it in 1989, you’re welcome.

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Hey Greydies

Some time ago I saw a lady with sort of purple-grey-blue skin, likely argyria.  Maybe she was exposed to silver as part of an industrial job, or pollution in an area she had lived, or because she had whack-ass beliefs and was drinking that shit for medical woo.  I saw her a few times in the Crown Hill neighborhood of Seattle, and a few years after that at a malwart in Federal Way.  Had to be the same lady, tho it’s not like I had her face memorized.  How many people in her demographic have that color in my neck of the world?  This time she was decked out in clothes that advertised her fealty to shitler, so I’m thinking it was the medical woo.

I’ve seen some other grey ladies.  One time when I was working in that same malwart, very early in the morning a short old white lady bought something at my counter.  She was probably done up for church, but she was so fashionable looking.  She was in a suit jacket and dress, with a blouse and pearls and silver jewelry on her wrists and fingers, all silver-grey like her hair, but in different sheens and patterns to strike a balance of contrast and harmony.  I don’t remember what her face looked like, just that fashion, which is probably the kind of impression most old ladies are hoping to leave on people.  So cool.

More recently I saw a pretty dark-skinned black woman with perfectly formed thin locs in a striking blend of black white and grey, like shining rocks in a river.  Her skin was kind of grey, so what one would call ashy?  That’s usually bad news, but for some reason it was more an even tone over her limbs, rather than whitish stuff some people get in areas of thicker skin.  Maybe it was a temporary effect from some kind of lotion; it didn’t look unhealthy.  Still, that was another grey lady, and I believe she was wearing grey as well.

Hey greydies.  Sorry to notice you.  I know a lot of ladies would rather not be noticed.  Just to say, that’s a legit color.  Ya cool, except maybe that first fool.  Have a nice day.

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ERposting

composing this in “hall bed” at emergency room, drankin saline solution thru stigmata.  was weak all day and slightly short of breath.

not lookin forward to the bill.  the way the insurance tango works i might not know the final tally for months, or might find out in a week.  that is to say, i might come to y’all with hat in hand again at some point in that time frame.

fun how so few people here wear masks.  minimizing my household’s exposure to crud by having no company in here.

i’ve queued this post so if it goes live with nothing after this point, you can assume i’m dead or otherwise unavailable.  be concerned if the rest of my queue starts rolling out one day at a time, posts with titles but no text other than a hasty note to myself or a keysmash.

i’m sure it won’t be like that, but this is a weird one for me, and who knows?  will it be better for them to discover nothing or for them to find out i have something annoying or expensive to treat?

will i contract covid in here?  will the visit be worse for my health than muddling thru without help?

will check in later…

nothing!  they found nothing.  i don’t think they ran the most expensive tests so i’ll probably be coo.  just gotta get up the gumption to stop smoking my sick leave.

yeah, back home, had dinner, feel better – if a bit frail.  what will i feel like tomorrow morning?  stay tuned lol.

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The Lowest White Person

I recently had an injudicious rant about racism, chiefly that against latinx immigrants in the united snakes, and the very day after I composed that, I ran into a living example of the old LBJ quote “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket.  Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”  OK, not the entire quote, just the phrase “the lowest white man.”

At the same bus stop where I once met a friendly narcoleptic dude, on another hot shitty day, there were two random things of note.  On the bench, a very well-groomed man was reading a tablet.  I took him for Middle Eastern but he could have been from anywhere medium-toned, as far as I can tell.  The other thing of note, a girly purple backpack sitting in the street, where the bus would be pulling in.

When you see an unattended bag, you might reflect on post 9-11 warnings about explosives.  It did cross my mind; was a bomber sitting in a car with tinted windows nearby, waiting for a crowded bus to pull into view before hitting the remote control switch?  Not likely.  I decided it was randomly dropped there by a drunk or high homeless woman.

Coming down the hill from the overpass, I saw two white people approaching.  The lady could have been conventionally attractive at that distance – thin, tan, whatever.  But a healthy person would have no reason to be in the neighborhood of that overpass.  I knew they were unhoused.

They reached the bus stop and she went straight for the backpack, adding it to the bags she was already hauling.  Up close, she was hard-lined, had a few witch warts, and had the expression of a pit bull that had eaten too many babies and was now bored with the experience.  She had pissed her pants, the wet area centered on the crotch was the size of a dinner plate.  This made enough of an impression I didn’t clock as many details in the man she was with.  He also had too much sun on his skin and was hauling a backpack or two.

They made their way to an empty stretch of parking lot nearby, to rifle through their stuff and make sketchy plans, then hobbled back to the bus stop.  I was listening to my headphones, but lifted them just long enough to fit the N95 over my face – the bus was arriving soon.  In that one little moment, I heard the lady say a racist slur against Mexicans I haven’t heard in years.

Man, I do not thank Satan often enough that I have the privilege of not being around nazis every day.  Thanks, Satan.

Was she referring to the well-groomed guy?  Some other random people she had encountered in her miserable day?  Didn’t matter to me.  I was just thinking, this slang term is based on a sense of disgust, yes?  How can a person living at the outer limits of what normies find disgusting devote her hard-won life energies to feeling disgust for anyone else?  Does that shit help?  Personally, the more I become disgusting to normies, the more convinced I am that disgust is not a value I want to base my own perceptions and judgments upon.

Lady, I get that every day of your life is hateful and desperate.  Everything you own is stolen by your fellow homeless people about as often as you steal everything another homeless person owns from them.  Pleasures are thin on the ground and largely poisonous; pains are constant.  Nobody loves you; I’m sure you don’t love yourself.  But still.  I wish you didn’t let that own your mind, change the way you treat others.  Shit’s a fucken mess.

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Life List, Supplemental: Chill Geese

Every damn time I see this post’s title in my queue I think “grilled cheese?  What did I want to write about grilled cheese?”  It’s chill geese.  Chill geese, I swear!

I had to go on a long journey by bus and by hoof, on a hot shitty day.  I despise summer profoundly.  There were a few nicer stretches, though I didn’t have time to enjoy them.  The apartment complexes on 1st Ave had shade trees and grass near the road, which were a good environment for canada geese.

There were a few small flocks on this day.  I wondered that they might be mixed flocks because some of the geese were much smaller than the tallest adults, but I realized they had just recently come into adult plumage.  Stray bits of down stuck to the surface of those feathers like they’d been caught in a dandelion’s orgasm.  The white and black on their head weren’t quite 100% contrast yet.

Geese have a big rep for hostility and violence, but I’ve never experienced it myself.  The ones closest to the sidewalk, closest to me, were the youngest – of whom you’d think the largest ones would feel protective.  Nobody threatened me.  They all looked very peaceful and sweet.  I could have busted a professional wrasslin’ move and collected a goose dinner, but they felt no danger from me.  They got my number.

I just love beautiful animals, even if they muck up the sidewalk.  They looked so pleasant, like this was paradise, despite the proximity to the asphalt and speeding cars.  I look one way I can see the endless train of people going places, the other and it’s goose elysium.

Thanks, geese.

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