#liturgical memory

[vanpeltfoto]

Stone Recumbence: Light, Memory, and Liturgical Silence

The body lies still, but the window performs.

This image stages a dialogue between stone and light — between persistence and ephemerality. The stained glass offers vertical transcendence, while the sarcophagus draws the gaze back to horizontal stillness. One is time passing through matter. The other is matter storing time.

In the memory studies tradition, we might say this is a space where ritual outlasts belief. Where architecture keeps remembering even when no one is asking it to.

This isn’t a tomb. It’s a sealed archive.

🎧 Listen: Geography of Absence

(Photo: d.)

[airitree]

Graduating art school and job searching awakened the theological sleeper agent in me like forcing an axolotl to hormonally morph into its adult form

[geoxx-carrboro]

Cache Miss Communion - By Geox

—where memory fails the altar call You reached for rite, for known refrain,But something failed along the chain.No wafer, wine, or holy hush,Just data gaps and static rush. Aquavit, cold with herb and root,A sacred echo in reboot.Dry vermouth, a sterile kiss,A silence labeled “do not miss.” A twist of lemon, bright but brief,Like liturgy without belief.You drank. The loop did not complete.The…

[barnacles34]

Lost in Analysis (Winter x Male OC)

5k words, smut, fluff, happiness, data

Winter x Male OC

The thing about Junho Kim's[1] weekly debriefs with Minjeong Kim was that they followed a precise algorithm, an almost liturgical routine that both participants had wordlessly agreed upon circa Winter's third month of employment (viz. April 2024). The format went as follows: Winter would arrive at exactly 18:30 on Friday bearing a leather-bound portfolio containing the week's logistics reports, margin analyses, and projected Q3/Q4 modeling scenarios. Junho would pretend to study these for exactly twelve minutes while Winter sat in the ergonomic chair across his desk, her accent becoming pronounced in direct proportion to her anxiety level[2].

What happened on this particular Friday deviated from the algorithm in ways that would later prove significant, starting with Winter's arrival at 18:27[3].

"The Busan account numbers are off," Junho said, his photographic memory already detecting a 0.03% discrepancy in the third-quarter projections. The words emerged with the mechanical precision of someone who had learned human speech through technical manuals rather than conversation. "This is—" he paused, index finger tapping against his mahogany desk in a rapidfire motion that Winter had learned to recognize as his pre-explosion tell, "—unacceptable."

And then something unprecedented occurred.

Instead of her usual composed absorption of his critique, Winter's face crumpled into what could only be described as a squeaky whimper, a sound so incongruous with her usual professional demeanor that it seemed to physically stun Junho into silence. It was the acoustic equivalent of watching a Mercedes-Benz hiccup.

The algorithm crashed.

—

[1] Junho Kim, CEO of Quantum Logistics Solutions, net worth $2.3B (₩3.1T), possessed what his former Harvard professors called "an almost frightening capacity for data retention" and what his former therapist (sessions terminated after 2.5 meetings) called "a pathological inability to process emotional bandwidth."

[2] A phenomenon her roommate had dubbed "The Accent Anxiety Index," where her carefully practiced Seoul pronunciation would gradually give way to her native Busan satoori, ranging from barely detectable at Level 1 ("감사합니다") to full coastal at Level 10 ("아이고, 사장님, 이 숫자 영 아니네요").

[3] The 3-minute early arrival would later be explained by a complex series of events involving a broken elevator, two flights of stairs, and Winter's determination not to let her carefully constructed timeline collapse due to mechanical failure.

—

The following Friday's debrief began with Junho actually pulling out Winter's chair[4], a gesture so unexpected that she nearly missed the seat entirely. The portfolio was reviewed. The whiskey was poured (Junho's usual Macallan 25, Winter's Hwayo 41). And then, somewhere between the second and third drink, Winter's accent kicked into what would later be classified as Level 11 on the Southern Comfort Scale.

"You know what your problem is, sajangnim?" Minjeong's words carried the warm weight of soju and suppressed frustration, her carefully maintained Seoul accent dissolving entirely into coastal inflections. "당신은 인생을 마치 스프레드시트처럼 대하시네요. Everything must calculate perfectly, but people aren't numbers, and some of us are tired of being debugged like broken code."

Junho's finger stopped its habitual tapping mid-motion[5].

—

[4] A gesture learned from a WikiHow article titled "Basic Human Courtesy: A Beginner's Guide" that Junho had queued up on his tablet at 3:47 AM the previous Tuesday.

[5] Later analysis would reveal this as the exact moment Junho Kim, master of algorithms and logistics, encountered a variable his photographic memory couldn't process: genuine human connection.[6]

The office fell into a silence that could be measured in heartbeats (Junho's: an efficient 72 BPM; Minjeong's: an elevated 98 BPM). Outside, Seoul's financial district performed its usual Friday night exodus, the sound of departing Mercedes and BMWs creating a capitalistic symphony twenty-three floors below.

"시간이..." Minjeong continued, her Busan accent now operating at what could only be classified as Level 12[7], "Time isn't just money, 사장님. Sometimes it's just... time. Like those lunches you wolf down in exactly eight minutes while reading reports. Or these Friday meetings where you never actually look at me, just through me at some invisible spreadsheet floating in the air behind my head."

Junho's hand, still frozen mid-tap, slowly lowered to the desk. His photographic memory began involuntarily cataloging details it had somehow missed during their previous 47 debriefs: the way Minjeong's left hand always fidgeted with her portfolio's corner when nervous, how her voice carried traces of sea salt and summer festivals despite years of Seoul speech coaching, the fact that she had memorized his coffee preferences down to the precise temperature (81°C, no higher, no lower).

"I do look at you," he said, then immediately registered the statistical improbability of his own response[8].

Minjeong's laugh carried the particular timber of someone who had been holding it in reserve for approximately 11.7 months. "아니요, you really don't. You look at KPIs and performance metrics and quarterly projections. Did you know," she leaned forward, her accent thick as Busan fog, "that I've worn the same earrings every Friday for three months just to see if you'd notice?"

The earrings in question were small silver cranes, Junho's memory instantly supplied, purchased from a street vendor in Gukje Market during last quarter's Busan office inspection, chosen because their wings formed the mathematical symbol for infinity when viewed from the correct angle[9].

—

[6] A concept that would later require Junho to create an entirely new category in his mental filing system, located somewhere between "Acceptable Business Practices" and "Breathing Exercises (Mandatory)."

[7] A previously theoretical level on the Accent Anxiety Index, characterized by the complete abandonment of Seoul linguistic pretense and the emergence of what Minjeong's mother would call "우리 딸의 진짜 목소리" (our daughter's real voice).

[8] Statistical analysis of Junho's daily eye contact patterns, conducted by his personal AI assistant, revealed an average sustained eye contact duration of 1.3 seconds with all employees, making his current 4.7-second gaze at Minjeong a 361.5% deviation from the mean.

[9] A detail that would have impressed Junho greatly had he noticed it at the time of purchase, rather than at this precise moment when his brain was simultaneously trying to process the concept of infinity and the way Minjeong's eyes reflected the city lights like binary code translated into stardust.

—

The Hwayo bottle stood between them like a glass mediator, its contents depleted by exactly 73.4%. Junho found himself performing calculations he had never previously considered necessary: the precise angle at which Minjeong's smile disrupted his cardiac rhythm (42.7°), the correlation coefficient between her proximity and his ability to maintain coherent thought patterns (inverse relationship, R² = 0.97), the half-life of each satoori-tinged syllable in his auditory memory (approaching infinity)[10].

"There's a pojangmacha," Minjeong said, her words now performing linguistic gymnastics between Seoul and Busan, "down in Gangnam that serves 할매's 파전 just like back home. But you—" she gestured with her glass, creating small amber trajectories in the air, "—you probably have the exact caloric content memorized without ever tasting it."

"624 calories per standard serving," Junho confirmed automatically, then added, in what he would later recognize as his first attempt at human humor[11], "Not accounting for 할매's (grandmother’s) love."

The laugh that escaped Minjeong's lips was genuine enough to bypass all of Junho's statistical models for appropriate business interaction. It was the kind of laugh that made him wonder if his entire algorithmic approach to life had been operating on a fundamental error: the assumption that human emotions could be debugged rather than experienced.

"사장님," she said, then caught herself, "아니, Junho-ssi." The honorific shift created a quantifiable disruption in the office's atmospheric pressure[12]. "Do you know why I cry sometimes when you yell about the numbers?"

Junho's hands found themselves attempting to calculate an emotion he had no formula for. "I... have a working hypothesis."

"It's not because I'm scared or hurt," she continued, her Busan accent now wrapping around the words like a warm coast-side breeze. "It's because I see you turning yourself into code, like you're trying to compile a human being into binary, and..." she paused, searching for words in both Seoul and Busan vocabularies before settling on, "...��게 너무 아까워요."

The phrase hung in the air, untranslatable in its full emotional weight[13].

—

[10] A phenomenon that would later require Junho to create an entirely new mathematical framework he privately termed "The Minjeong Constant: Variables in Human Connection."

[11] Later analysis of office security footage would reveal this as his first non-data-related comment in approximately 2,847 hours of recorded business interactions.

[12] Advanced environmental sensors in the building's HVAC system actually recorded a 0.02% change in air pressure at this exact moment, though causation versus correlation remains a subject of debate among the building's maintenance staff.

[13] The closest English approximation might be "it's such a waste," but this fails to capture the uniquely Korean sense of regret for potential beauty lost to unnecessary efficiency, like trying to measure ocean waves in milliliters.

—

For exactly 15.4 seconds, Junho Kim—master of instantaneous data processing, champion of real-time analytics—found himself buffering. His mind, that perfectly calibrated instrument of calculation, attempted to run multiple subroutines simultaneously:

ROUTINE_1: Analyze the 2.3% tremor in Minjeong's voice during "그게 너무 아까워요"

ROUTINE_2: Process the 7.4mm dilation of his pupils upon hearing his given name

ROUTINE_3: Calculate the exact distance between their hands on the desk (23.7cm, decreasing by approximately 0.3mm per heartbeat)

ERROR: Stack overflow in emotional processing unit[14]

"I have a file," he began, then stopped, realizing that perhaps not everything needed to be classified and stored. "No, I mean... I remember every time you've smiled at work. Real smiles, not the ones you use for clients or difficult vendors." His fingers twitched, instinctively seeking a keyboard that wasn't there. "The data suggests that they occur most frequently when you're talking about Busan, or when you think no one is watching you arrange the office plants, or..." he paused, processing, "...or when you're correcting my humanity protocols[15]."

Minjeong's eyes widened, creating what Junho's brain automatically calculated as a 34.6% increase in their reflective surface area. "You... keep track of my smiles?"

"I keep track of everything," he said, then amended, displaying unprecedented runtime flexibility, "but your smiles occupy 43% more memory space than standard data points."

"아이고," Minjeong laughed, the sound carrying hints of sea breezes and noraebang nights, "only you would quantify feelings in percentages and memory allocation, 사장님[16]."

The Hwayo bottle now stood at 82.6% depletion. Outside, Seoul had transformed into its weekend configuration, all neon equations and binary dreams. But inside this office, something unquantifiable was compiling—a program written in neither Python nor Java, but in the ancient code of human connection.

"There's a logical error in your earlier statement," Junho said suddenly, his voice performing calculations it had never been calibrated for. "About me not looking at you."

"Oh?" Minjeong's eyebrow arched at precisely 27 degrees.

"I look at you approximately 2,347 times per day. My peripheral vision activates in your presence with 72% more frequency than baseline. I have memorized exactly 267 variations of your voice modulation between Seoul and Busan registers[17]. The error," he continued, his own accent slipping for the first time since Harvard, "is in assuming I don't see you."

—

[14] A phenomenon his Harvard professors had theoretically predicted but never successfully documented: the complete shutdown of pure logic circuits in favor of what they termed "human.exe."

[15] A private joke that had never made it past his internal firewall until this moment, referring to the way she subtly guided him toward more socially acceptable behaviors, like suggesting he say "good morning" to the cleaning staff or remember team members' birthdays.

[16] The honorific here carrying a new weight, somewhere between professional distance and affectionate teasing, a linguistic quantum state that would have fascinated physicists had they been present to observe it.

[17] This particular statistic would later become the subject of a 3 AM realization that perhaps "normal" CEOs don't maintain such detailed databases of their assistants' vocal patterns.

—

The confession hung in the air with the weight of a misplaced decimal point. Minjeong's hand, still holding her Hwayo glass, trembled at a frequency of approximately 3.2 Hz. The office's automated climate control system registered a sudden 0.7°C spike in local temperature[18].

"그래서..." Minjeong's voice emerged in Pure Pattern #271 (Subcategory: Emotional Breakthrough), "this is why you always know when I've had 떡볶이 for lunch?"

The unexpected query caused Junho to experience what his systems could only classify as a brief moment of runtime joy. "The specific aroma particles adhere to your cardigan at a rate of—" he caught himself, noting the gleam in her eye, and for the first time in recorded history, Junho Kim deliberately chose not to complete a calculation[19].

Instead, he found himself saying, "Your smile increases by exactly 23.7% when you eat 떡볶이. It's... optimal."

"최적화?" Minjeong's laugh carried notes of soju and starlight. "You're really going to data-analyze my happiness levels?"

"I have spreadsheets," he admitted, his voice carrying an unfamiliar warmth that his diagnostic systems struggled to categorize. "Cross-referenced with weather patterns, quarterly reports, and the frequency of your Busan accent emergence[20]."

"아이고..." She shifted in her chair, reducing the distance between them by precisely 4.7 centimeters. "You're either the weirdest or the most romantic person I've ever met, and I haven't decided which yet."

The word 'romantic' created a momentary buffer overflow in Junho's cognitive processes. His hands, typically occupied with calculating profit margins or optimizing supply chains, found themselves drawing abstract patterns on his desk's surface—a behavior previously filed under 'Inefficient Human Gestures: Do Not Engage.'

"I could..." he paused, processing, "...show you the data?"

—

[17] This particular dataset would later be renamed in his personal files to "The Minjeong Codex: A Quantitative Analysis of Qualitative Perfection."

[18] The building's maintenance staff would later attribute this to a mechanical anomaly, unaware they had documented the exact moment Junho Kim's ice-cold corporate facade began its calculated melt.

[19] A moment that would later be marked in his personal development log as "First Successful Implementation of Strategic Data Suppression for Emotional Optimization."

[20] These spreadsheets, discovered months later during a routine server backup, would become legendary among the IT department as "The Love Languages of Linear Regression."

—

Minjeong's eyes sparkled with what Junho's facial recognition protocols quantified as 87% mirth, 13% tenderness. "보여주세요," she said, the soju making her consonants softer, more Busan-bound. "Show me this data about me."

For the first time in his professional career, Junho Kim fumbled with his laptop password[21]. The Hwayo bottle between them had decreased to critical levels, and he found the standard office lights were creating unusual prismatic effects in Minjeong's hair. His fingers, typically precise to the microsecond, skittered across the keyboard.

"See, here's the correlation between your happiness metrics and the proximity to Korean holidays," he began, then stopped, distracted by the way she'd rolled her chair closer to view his screen. The scent of her perfume (도라지 꽃, his brain supplied automatically, though for once the percentage calculation felt irrelevant) mixed with the lingering soju in the air.

"You made a pie chart," she said, her voice warm with something his systems were too buzzed to properly quantify, "of my favorite lunch spots?"

"The data visualization seemed... appropriate," he managed, aware that his usual processing power was operating at diminished capacity. "Though I may have spent a statistically anomalous amount of time color-coding it to match your favorite blazer[22]."

Minjeong's laugh had shed all traces of its Seoul polish. "어머나, who knew the great Junho Kim was such a..." she searched for the word in both dialects before landing on, "...nerd?"

"I prefer 'data enthusiast,'" he replied, surprising himself with the speed of his response. The soju was definitely affecting his standard processing delays. "Though my enthusiasm appears to be... specialized."

"Specialized?" Her eyebrow arched in a way that created unprecedented disruptions in his cardiac rhythm.

"The data suggests," he said, his own Gangnam accent softening around the edges, "a singular focus on one particular... variable[23]."

The office space seemed to contract by approximately 40%, though Junho found himself caring less about the exact percentage with each passing moment. Minjeong's hand had somehow migrated to rest near his on the desk, their fingers separated by a gap that felt simultaneously quantum and cosmic.

—

[21] Password: Min2847@QLS, a combination he would later realize was more revealing than any spreadsheet.

[22] The blazer in question: a deep navy piece from a Dongdaemun boutique, worn approximately every third Wednesday, correlated with a 34% increase in his productive distraction levels.

[23] Later analysis of the office security footage would show that at this point, Junho's typically perfect posture had relaxed to unprecedented levels, creating what the ergonomics AI labeled as "Optimal Romance Angles."

—

"Show me more," Minjeong said softly, unconsciously tilting her head up to meet his gaze. Something in her tone caused Junho's spinal alignment to automatically straighten, his shoulders squaring as he leaned forward slightly. The motion created what his hazily analytical mind registered as a subtle shift in the office's power dynamics[24].

"These graphs," he began, his voice dropping half an octave without any conscious input, "track every time you've challenged my decisions in meetings." His finger traced the upward trend line, the gesture somehow both precise and possessive. "You're the only one who dares to correct my logic. It's... intriguing."

Minjeong's breath caught audibly. "사장님..." she started, then with visible effort, "Junho-ssi... you track even that?"

"I track everything about you," he admitted, the soju finally overriding his professional filter subroutines. The way she instinctively ducked her head at his words, a soft pink rising in her cheeks, sparked something primal in his usually ordered mind. "Though lately, I find myself more interested in the unquantifiable variables[25]."

"Like what?" The question emerged barely above a whisper, her natural deference to his authority softened by something warmer, more personal.

Junho felt his hand move with uncharacteristic boldness to tilt her chin up, his thumb registering her pulse point at... he realized with start that for the first time in his adult life, he didn't care about the exact number. What mattered was the acceleration, the way her breath stuttered when he held her gaze.

"Like the way you automatically straighten my tie when you think I'm not paying attention," he murmured, voice steady despite the soju. "Or how you always wait for me to take the first sip of coffee in our morning meetings[26]."

—

[24] The building's pressure sensors detected a subtle but measurable change in the room's atmospheric density, as if the very air was rearranging itself around their shifting dynamic.

[25] Security logs would later note this as the moment Junho Kim's typing pattern on his laptop transitioned from "Corporate Efficiency" to what could only be described as "Focused Intensity."

[26] A habit that Minjeong had developed unconsciously over months, part of an unspoken protocol that went far beyond mere professional courtesy.

—

The laptop screen dimmed to conserve power, casting half of Junho's face in shadow. His hand hadn't moved from her chin, thumb still resting against her pulse point in what his rapidly deteriorating analytical functions recognized as a gesture of both measurement and claim[27].

"You know what else I've noticed?" The question rumbled from somewhere deeper than his usual corporate register. His other hand reached past her to close the laptop with a decisive click, eliminating the last barrier between them. "You mirror my breathing patterns during long meetings. 호흡이... perfectly synchronized."

Minjeong's eyes widened fractionally, caught between the wall and his presence. "That's..." she swallowed, her professional composure wavering, "...very observant of you, 사장님."

"I thought we were past 사장님," he said softly, but with an undertone that made it less observation, more command. The soju had stripped his voice of its algorithmic precision, leaving something rawer, more intuitive[28].

"Jun...ho..." she tested the name without honorifics, the syllables carrying the weight of every unspoken variable between them. Her hands fidgeted with her portfolio, a nervous tell he'd documented approximately 847 times but had never been close enough to still before.

Until now.

His free hand covered both of hers, instantly calming their movement. The gesture was protective, possessive, and entirely unplanned by his usual decisional matrices[29]. "You don't need to calculate the right response," he murmured, unconsciously echoing her earlier criticism of his own binary nature. "Your instincts have a 99.9% accuracy rate."

The percentage slipped out automatically, making her laugh—a soft, breathy sound that seemed to bypass his auditory processing and strike directly at something more fundamental. Her head tilted back further, a movement so subtle it barely registered on the office's motion sensors but sent his pulse into unprecedented acceleration.

"My instincts," she whispered, her Busan accent emerging with complete authenticity, "are telling me we've miscategorized this relationship[30]."

—

[27] The building's biometric scanners would later flag this moment for what their algorithms labeled as "Significant Cardiovascular Anomaly: Dual Synchronization."

[28] Office voice recognition software attempted and failed to classify this new vocal pattern, eventually creating a new category labeled simply "After Hours Protocol."

[29] The exact pressure of his grip would have registered at precisely 7.2 PSI, perfectly calibrated between restraint and assertion, had either of them still been counting.

[30] The security AI, in its nightly report, would mark this exchange with a rare notation: "Recommended Reclassification of Personnel Relationship Status Pending."

—

"Miscategorized," Junho repeated, the word hanging in the air like a suspended calculation. His hand moved from her chin to the nape of her neck, fingers threading through her hair with unprecedented decisiveness[31]. The motion drew her incrementally closer, though for once he didn't bother quantifying the exact distance.

"yes..." Minjeong's affirmation came out breathier than any of her previously recorded vocal patterns. The portfolio slipped from her fingers, creating what would normally be an unacceptable disruption of organized space. Neither of them moved to retrieve it.

"You know what's interesting?" Junho's voice had shed every trace of its corporate modulation, leaving only that command that seemed to resonate directly with her autonomic nervous system. "I've run approximately 2,847 scenarios of this moment in my head[32]."

Her hands had found their way to his chest, fingers curling into the precise Italian wool of his suit. "And?" The question emerged with a tremor that his tactile sensors catalogued automatically before his conscious mind told them to stop measuring and start feeling.

"None of them..." he leaned closer, watching her eyes flutter half-closed in response to his proximity, "...included the variable of you looking at me exactly like this."

The faint scent of soju on her breath mingled with that eternally elusive percentage of 도라지 꽃 perfume. Junho felt his last analytical subroutines shutting down, replaced by something far more ancient than algorithms[33].

"Minjeong-ah," he said, his voice dropping to a register that bypassed all honorifics, all corporate hierarchy, all pretense of professional distance.

Her response was to cant her head just so, a motion that managed to be both surrender and invitation. "Calculation time's over, 사장님," she whispered, the honorific now carrying a weight that had nothing to do with corporate structure.

—

[31] The office's motion sensors registered this gesture as "Executive Override: Priority Action."

[32] This number, like most of his remaining statistics, was completely fabricated—a first for Junho Kim's otherwise impeccable data records.

[33] Building security cameras would later mark this timestamp with an unprecedented classification: "Critical System Override: Human.exe fully activated."

—

For the first time in his documented existence, Junho Kim stopped calculating entirely.

The distance closed between them with a momentum that defied measurement. His hand tightened in her hair, angling her face upward as his other arm wrapped around her waist, pulling her flush against him. The kiss, when it came, contained no statistics, no data points, no quantifiable metrics[34].

Minjeong made a soft sound—Pattern #unknown, Category: heaven—against his mouth. Her fingers clutched his suit lapels with enough force to wrinkle the wool beyond its optimal pressed state, a fact that Junho's usually meticulous mind registered and immediately discarded as irrelevant.

Time segmented into a new measurement system: the catch of her breath, the silk of her hair between his fingers, the way she yielded and pressed closer simultaneously. Junho discovered that his organizational skills apparently extended to kissing, each angle adjustment and pressure variation drawing increasingly desperate responses from Minjeong[35].

When they finally broke apart, Minjeong's carefully maintained Seoul pronunciation had disappeared entirely. "아이고..." she breathed against his mouth, "당신이..."

"Initial results," Junho murmured, his own accent thick with something that had nothing to do with regional linguistics, "require extensive further testing[36]."

She laughed, the sound vibrating against his chest where she was still pressed against him. "Did you just turn our first kiss into a quality control protocol?"

"Quality confirmed," he replied, then demonstrated his newfound commitment to hands-on research by kissing her again, harder this time, swallowing her surprised gasp. His hand splayed possessively across her lower back, holding her steady as she swayed into him.

—

[34] The building's atmospheric sensors recorded unexplained fluctuations in local temperature, humidity, and electromagnetic fields, leading to a complete recalibration of their measurement standards.

[35] Later analysis would suggest that Junho's legendary attention to detail had found a new, decidedly non-professional application, though this data remains classified in personal files marked "Private Research: Ongoing."

[36] The security AI attempting to transcribe this conversation eventually gave up and simply tagged the file: "Error 404: Professionalism Not Found."

—

Somewhere in the haze of non-analytical thought, Junho registered Minjeong's slight backward momentum and moved instinctively to steady her. His hand swept the desk clear with uncharacteristic disregard for organizational protocols, sending the quarterly reports flutter-falling to the carpet in an acceptable margin of chaos[37].

"Jun...ho..." His name escaped her lips like a statistical anomaly as he lifted her effortlessly onto the mahogany surface. Her legs parted automatically to accommodate him, skirt hiking up precisely 4.7 inches—the last measurement his brain would process for the foreseeable future.

"So beautiful," he murmured against her throat, the words emerging in pure Gangnam inflection, all pretense of corporate diction abandoned. His teeth grazed her pulse point, drawing a whimper that would require an entirely new classification system[38].

Minjeong's fingers tangled in his precisely styled hair, disrupting approximately 47 minutes of morning grooming routine. "사장님," she gasped, the honorific now carrying entirely different connotations, "the papers..."

"Irrelevant data," he growled, recapturing her mouth with newfound authority. The kiss deepened, transformed, became something that defied all previous parameters. Her back arched into him, creating angles that had nothing to do with geometry and everything to do with instinct[39].

A distant part of his mind registered the soft thud of his suit jacket hitting the floor, followed by the whisper of silk as Minjeong's blazer joined it. The city lights painted silver equations across her skin, codes he suddenly needed to decode with his mouth instead of his mind.

—

[37] The office's normally pristine state would require exactly 23.7 minutes to restore, a task that would be significantly delayed by several subsequent "data collection sessions."

[38] Facial recognition software attempting to analyze the security feed would crash repeatedly, unable to reconcile Junho Kim's expression with any known configuration in its emotional database.

[39] The building's structural integrity sensors registered minor seismic activity, though this data would be suspiciously absent from the next day's maintenance logs.

—

He let his hands trail by the sides of her body, one busy with her torso—breasts and all—and the other, feeling the creamy softness of her thighs. And each needy press or pinch, brought out the softest of her moans, the cutest of her lip quivers.

He was busy, marking her lips, making it all swollen and red; yet, still, he couldn’t get enough of her. That soft body, her caring little hands, her hot inner thighs, and that gentle heat radiating off her core—just hidden by the slightest of her skirt. “Minjeong.” He whispered, pressing himself against her—a matter of teasing and also a way to test the waters, whether or not she wanted it on the table.

And Minjeong, not one to initiate, wrapped her thin arms around his nape, pulling him closer, “Yes, yes, please, anything, anywhere,” then a dozen little kisses all on his face. This assurance, this consent, slowly, but surely, made him wrench her legs open—wide. He saw that stain, dark against her gray underwear, and that was when his photographic memory… failed him.

He dug in, letting his loin press up against hers—immersing himself in her wetness. Then, finally, he pulled down on his pants, showing his tent-like imprint on his underwear to Minjeong, who, obviously, couldn’t stop staring. By the end of the minute, that ruthless minute, both were undressed in their lower-half—a utilitarian instinct to fuck each other as fast as possible.

Junho breathed heavily, staring at that pink hue that her core was so beautifully composed of—along with the wetness, the fragrance, and more. “Minjeong…” He held his shaft, lining it up straight on her wetness. She finally replied, “Yes… Junho…” And that’s when he pressed in, into the endless heat.

That wet connection hilt-to-hilt, along with a deep kiss—turned Minjeong completely docile and submissive. That wet connection, her wet slime covering his shaft, somehow, only intensified their lust for each other. He pressed in again, faster this time, earning that soft mewl. “Mhm, fuck me,” she whispered, again and again. He kept honoring those wishes, going deeper, and faster. He tucked his dick into her pussy, wet squelch and all, over and over until he felt his legs get weak from thrusting. Yet, that weakness didn’t deter him, he glided deeper, letting both their pelvises rub against each other, and making Minjeong cry out from the clit stimulation. She felt like she was getting tunneled, this man, the love of her life, crush of her lifetime, fucking her so good into a wobbly table—dreams aren’t even this good.

“I’m gonna cum, Minjeong.” He whispered, low and growling.

“Inside. Please. Inside…” She whispered before getting overtaken by her orgasm.

And just at the peak of her orgasm, the teetering breath before rest, Junho barreled all his semen inside her—rope after rope of semen splashing against her cervix. “Holy fuck.” they both said in conjunction. 

—

The Seoul skyline had shifted into its late-night configuration by the time they finally disentangled themselves. Junho's normally immaculate shirt hung open, his tie having long since joined the scattered papers on the floor. Minjeong's hair had abandoned all pretense of its usual professional arrangement, falling in waves that his fingers couldn't seem to stop threading through[40].

"이게..." Minjeong began, her voice still carrying traces of breathlessness as she surveyed the chaos they'd created. Her blazer lay draped over a chair at an angle that would have horrified their usual professional standards. "I should reorganize the—"

"Stay exactly where you are," Junho commanded softly, his arms tightening around her waist. His usual perfectionism had found a new target: the way she melted against him at that tone[41].

She tilted her head back to meet his gaze, her smile pure Busan sunshine. "데이트하자... be my 오빠?" The question emerged with endearing uncertainty, mixing honorifics and languages in a way that bypassed his brain entirely and struck straight at his heart.

"그래," he murmured into her hair, then with characteristic precision added, "Exclusively."

Her laugh carried notes of joy and residual shyness. "Then as your girlfriend, I should really clean up this mess..." She gestured at the scattered papers, the displaced furniture, the general dishevelment that spoke eloquently of the past hour's activities.

"As your boyfriend," his voice dropped to that commanding register that made her shiver, "I want to watch you do it[42]."

The drive home—his penthouse, by unspoken agreement—required exactly 17 minutes. Neither of them bothered to count.

—

[40] The building's security system would later note this as the longest recorded instance of the CEO remaining in office after hours, though the detailed logs were mysteriously corrupted.

[41] Internal HR protocols regarding workplace relationships were hastily updated the following morning, though no one questioned why the CEO personally oversaw these revisions.

[42] The night cleaning staff would arrive to find the office in unprecedented perfect order, though several employees would later swear they heard laughter and whispered Busan endearments echoing through the empty halls.

Fin

[malusokay]

Cult Dairy

On obsession, ritual, and the quiet holiness of sour milk. A five-part gospel of kefir devotion from a girl who should probably eat something else for once. (from my Substack hehe)

1. Origins: How I Became Fermented

My holy grail was always yoghurt. I’ve always been drawn to bland dairy—mild, muted, undemanding. Soft food for sharp minds. I was never much of an eater, but I liked things that felt gentle and efficient. Something simple. Something cold. Something you could eat in silence. Anything that could pass as both breakfast and barely anything.

Kefir started as a curiosity. It looked like an elevated version of my obsession—sleek bottle, minimalist label, the word “protein” in quiet, confident sans-serif. That was enough. I took it home like it might reveal something to me.

The first sip hit like a dare. Sour, cold, inexplicably fizzy. I wasn’t sure if I liked it. But I drank the whole thing. And I kept buying it.

It was easy, just enough fat to feel human, just enough calories to keep thinking. The perfect solution for someone who stays up until morning writing essays about Homeric structure. Even better than yoghurt: no spoon, no dishes, no interruptions. Just a bottle you could hold like a thought.

By the end of the week, it wasn’t a habit. It was a preference. A comfort. A constant. Something slightly strange and slightly alive that fit neatly into my life without making demands. A quiet indulgence that didn’t feel indulgent at all.

2. Liturgical Dairy

I don’t make it. But I do shake it, gently, like it might explode or bless me, depending on the mood. I keep it cold, unopened, until the moment feels right. Sometimes that moment is 3 a.m., barefoot in the kitchen, blinking at my own reflection in the microwave door while my head spins off like a chorus of Bacchae—delirious and half-starved, half-divine. It separates. I fix it. I like the fizz, the foam, the hush of resistance it offers when you twist the cap, like it’s alive, but polite about it.

The taste? Sour, chalky, slightly sparkling. With a whisper of something expired, but on purpose. Like licking a battery in a church. Holy, but vaguely wrong. It coats the mouth like an idea you can’t get rid of. It lingers. It insists.

There’s something Homeric about it. The ritual, the repetition, the quiet brutality of it. My bones hum when I drink it. I feel fortified. Like a ruin being held up by ivy. I think kefir might be the only thing I’d offer the gods without hesitation.

3. Saint Kefir

IfI believe in kefir the way people believe in saints. Blindly. Ritualistically. With myth in place of memory. I feel clear-headed: kefir. Suppose I hit a flow state mid-essay: kefir. If I’m glowing for no reason or feel quietly invincible by 11 a.m.—kefir. If I’m tired but beautifully functional, slightly translucent but alert—it’s because I remembered to shake the bottle before drinking it.

I like the idea that something so odd, so sour, so clinically alive could be good for me. That it’s doing things I can’t see—balancing me on a microbial level. It makes sense to me in the way poetry does. I don’t need proof. I just need the ritual.

I’ve decided this drink is keeping me together. I don’t care if it’s placebo. I don’t care if it’s unremarkable. I just like knowing there’s something in my fridge that always works. No chopping, no heating, no decisions. Just a bottle. Just a tang. Just a low-humming kind of care.

Because if I’m going to be kept alive by anything, it might as well be something strange and sour and full of invisible organisms that like me.

4. The Possession

It doesn’t matter what I eat, what I do, what city I’m in, what time I wake up, what else is in my fridge. The craving still comes. Quietly. Faithfully. Like something ancient moving under the floorboards. Like an old promise I accidentally made—a private pact sealed in hunger and swallowed in silence, something that now returns each day with the steadiness of a superstition I no longer question.

Sometimes I try to want other things. Smoothies. Soup. Eggs. Warm meals made with care. Bowls that look like comfort. But they leave me unsatisfied, full, but restless. Like I’ve missed something. Like I’m feeding the wrong hunger. I chew. I swallow. I wait. And still, the idea rises—clear, cold, insistent: kefir.

Not like a preference. Like a return. Like a bell being rung inside my ribcage.

I reach for the bottle without thinking. I know the weight of it in my hand better than I know the faces of people I used to love. I don’t drink it for pleasure. I drink it because I belong to it. I am its girl. I have been claimed—not in a romantic way, not in a way that softens or saves, but in the way a cathedral claims its echo or a storm claims the sea.

It’s not casual. I don’t offer it to guests. I don’t share it. I’d rather lie. I’d rather say I’m out than give up the last bottle. There are boundaries. There is belief. I don’t care if no one else gets it. I’m not drinking it for them. I never was.

This isn’t a habit. It’s a haunting.

This isn’t breakfast. It’s ritual.

And I love it.

And I’m not letting go.

5. The Philosophy

Kefir isn’t about health. It’s about obsession. A quiet one. The kind that settles under your skin without asking permission. That grows roots. That becomes part of how you move through the day, not like a habit, but like a secret. Like something sacred, you don’t need to explain.

I didn’t choose it to get better. I chose it because it felt right. Cold. Sour. Strange. Alive. I loved that it was alive. That it could go bad in a beautiful way. That it didn’t need sugar or sparkle or branding to be good. It just was. It existed. And that was enough.

It’s for the girl who doesn’t want to be improved. Who wants to be preserved. Who doesn’t care about being well in the way other people mean it—but craves something constant, something bodily, something that makes her feel held in a language beyond words. It’s not that kefir healed me. It’s that it stayed. That it asked nothing but presence. That it tasted like something I could believe in.

Because if I’m going to unravel, let it be slow. Let it be careful. Let it be curated by cultures I can’t see. Let it be done with reverence. Let my undoing fizz softly in a bottle no one else touches.

And if I’m going to rot—

let it be like this:

deliberate, delicate, and just sour enough to be remembered.

[whencyclopedia]

Touching Parchment: Volume 1: Officials and Their Books

"Touching Parchment" culminates 25 years of research on European medieval manuscripts (ca. 1100–1500). By scouring archives and taking more than 900 photographs, Kathryn Rudy documents the visible damage of neglected and undisplayed copies, interpreting the marks of wear that remain. She suggests these signs are not merely damage but are readable evidence of the deep emotional connections and ritualistic gestures people used to engage with the written word.

Manuscript historian Kathryn Rudy from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland is known for taking a forensic approach to studying medieval manuscripts. Renowned for her Dirty Books Project, she introduced a new historical approach by using the densitometer to measure grime and manipulation.

In Touching Parchment, the first of two open-access volumes, Rudy presents the culmination of 25 years of research across European archives. Collecting more than 900 photographs of European medieval manuscripts (ca. 1100–1500)—many of which are reproduced in this book—she argues that these works are often left unexamined since damaged manuscripts are typically not chosen for display. Yet, she asserts that the damage on these manuscripts represents “interpretable marks of wear” and each mark, whether intentionally put there or not, has a story to tell (4). These signs of wear reveal the deep emotional connections people formed with manuscripts, shedding light on the ritualistic gestures they used to engage with the written word.

In Part I, the first chapter serves as an introduction outlining the structure, method, and approach along with how the book relates to its relevant historiography. In “Ways of Touching Manuscripts,” Rudy breaks down her analysis of manuscript damage into the broad categories of “inadvertent wear” and “targeted wear,” each of which has various subcategories (29). The discussion of the targeted wear had much more detail. She talked about depositing wax as place markers and scratching them off, kissing texts, touching images, and sewing curtains to pages among other explanations for visible damage to manuscripts.

Part II, titled “Books and Authority,” begins with Rudy exploring the broader trends of oath-swearing, tracing its evolution from the "Peace of God" movement in 975 to roughly the 14th century—a period spanning four centuries during which the practice of swearing on Gospels and missals gradually replaced using relics. A discussion of coronations and other acts of oath-taking was interestingly used to explain manuscript wear. Chapter Four relates how the history of kissing “images, words, and decoration within books” left physical evidence of wear (85). A history of missals that focused on liturgical practices highlights a shift in the 12th century, when worship became more theatrical, incorporating an increasing number of prescribed religious gestures—many of which are now evident in manuscripts. The next chapter “Swearing: From Gospels to Legal Manuscripts” emphasizes the late medieval expansion of oath-swearing from something concerning only emperors and kings to a practice adopted by the literate public. Legal manuscripts copied images from religious texts and adopted many of the rituals that were once exclusive to the religious sphere. Touching these images in oath-taking ceremonies left smears and other signs of wear that were painstakingly photographed and analyzed. The final chapter reviews the wear on books used in liturgical singing and memorializing the dead. Given the purpose of these manuscripts and the frequent use of ritual liturgical gestures, these books survived with much greater wear compared to other medieval manuscripts.

Overall, many of the chapters could function as stand-alone supplementary texts for a variety of post-secondary courses, spanning disciplines from art to history. Secondary teachers might make use of the hundreds of images to illustrate how people interact with both art and the written word. Its open access ensures that this incredible book can reach and benefit a wide audience.

Read More

⇒ Touching Parchment: Volume 1: Officials and Their Books

[caviarsonoro]

Arvo Pärt: Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten (Remastered 2015).

The first time I listened to Cantus in memoriam Benjamin Britten, I was overcome by an overwhelming emotion, as quiet as it was absolute. I felt a purity that was difficult to name, as if the music had enveloped me in an intimate space, suspended outside of time. In that moment, I understood that this was not merely a composition, but a form of sonic prayer that spoke directly to the soul, with a nakedness that transcended language.

This work by Arvo Pärt, in its 2015 remastered version performed by the Staatsorchester Stuttgart under the direction of Dennis Russell Davies, begins and ends with a single toll of a bell. That sound, deep and suspended, does more than mark the opening and closing: it contains the spiritual architecture of the entire piece and wraps it in an atmosphere of transcendence.

The initial bell is not a mere effect or incidental gesture. It is a sonic ritual. A low, suspended tone that stops time. Its slow, mournful vibration introduces a space of active silence, almost liturgical. Pärt is not seeking to move us through accumulation, but through purification. The toll marks the threshold between the everyday and the spiritual. And it does so with an austerity that moves more deeply than any orchestral climax. I remember clearly the first time I heard this piece: I was left frozen. Not only by its beauty, but by the sensation of absolute suspension, as if sound and silence had merged into a single substance.

From that first strike, the string texture unfolds in a descending canon in D minor. It develops with the implacable logic of time, yet breathes with the cadence of a prayer. The compositional technique based on parallel resonances—one of the most refined hallmarks of Pärt’s mature language—reveals itself here with moving clarity. Each note seems to contain a world; each silence, an echo of the invisible.

In the final cadence of the strings, where harmony seems to dissolve slowly, there is a gesture of farewell devoid of drama. The return of the bell, at the exact moment when everything seems to fade, is not merely a formal closure. It is a response without words. As if the music, on the verge of extinction, returned to its origin to remind us that every resonance, even the most fleeting, leaves a trace in the air and in memory.

[butchhamlet]

So re: Hamlet, purgatory, the reformation, etc.

I'm just about to start writing a my final paper for a Reformation History class at university. I'll probably focus on the English reformation because I'm already familiar with Tudor/Elizabethan context. And I got a hunch that talking about Hamlet and ghosts and purgatory would be a great way to talk about the impacts of the reformation on Elizabethan English life.

You wouldn't happen to feel like info dumping some more about religious themes and conflicts in Hamlet would you? And/or drop some more books/papers/scholars that I can research and cite?

I will happily absorb any info you wish to dump!

i desperately wish i knew enough off the dome to burst into a monologue here, but most of what i know about hamlet and religion fits in the quote i posted from emma smith re: the catholic/protestant split. (apparently some people think shakespeare was a closet catholic? but i kind of doubt it.) not sure what your own religious background is, but it might be worth looking into general stuff about wittenberg/martin luther/protestantism during the time period--although if you're focusing on the reformation you may know a lot of this.

my first thought was stephen greenblatt's Hamlet in Purgatory, which i have not read but which is cited in the notes of my copy of hamlet. it's on jstor apparently but i don't have access. sad! but it seems to be honestly less about hamlet specifically and more greenblatt using hamlet as a wedge to explore conceptions of purgatory at the time, which sounds cool as fuck. (i'm not suuuuper familiar with greenblatt, but i remember liking his criticism in the norton shakespeare; YMMV.)

the ghost is the obvious Big Religious Issue of hamlet, but there's also the praying scene, the whole deal with ophelia's suicide, horatio coming from Protestant University R Us, and to be or not to be itself and what that speech implies about hamlet's religious view. i really like the lockdown shakespeare podcast about TBoNTB--i haven't listened all the way through because i'm awful but iirc they do touch on how weird it is that hamlet's musings about the afterlife seem to counter what you might assume about his religious opinions from the rest of the text.

the folger shakespeare library has further reading recs for every play on their page; skimming through this, you might be interested in richard mccoy's writing on memory in hamlet? emphasis mine:

McCoy examines the play’s four funerals (King Hamlet’s expedited obsequies, Polonius’s “hugger-mugger” burial [4.5.91], Ophelia’s “maimèd rites” [5.1.226], and the “somewhat incongruous” soldier’s funeral for Prince Hamlet) in the context of the ambiguity (“liturgical double-bookkeeping”) that marked the Elizabethan compromise over Catholic-Protestant funerary practices and intercessory rituals for the deceased. Informing the discussion is the doctrine known as “the King’s Two Bodies” (i.e., the Body natural and the Body politic), specifically the efforts of the “cult of Elizabeth” to continue what has been called “the migration of the holy” begun by Henry VIII’s reforms in which “ ‘the socially integrative powers of the host’ were transferred ‘to the rituals of monarchy and secular community,’ ” a shifting from the eucharistic real presence to the royal presence.

and also the roland frye book, though it is from the 80s (i am not up to date on modern shifts in historiography lmfao):

Among the events and documents Frye invokes are ... Protestant beliefs that ghosts were demons, beliefs shared by Catholics, who also believed ghosts might be souls from purgatory...

i do also recommend emma smith's book (and marjorie garber's. ack. so good) but those are less specific examinations of many plays, so idk how helpful they'll be. this is what i've got at the moment followers sound off if you have additions or comments

[writingjourney]

I recently made a liturgical scarf/stole and it looks so much like something Papa would wear, which got me thinking- what if Papa gave you one of his stoles/vestments? \(//∇//)\

Maybe it's just me but I feel like they would all get a bit of a thrill out of decking you out in their vestments!!! (or just anything they can find, preferably with nothing else on your body and especially when it smells of you later when they have to use it again, getting a little flustered up there on the pulpit at the memory)

But also consider this: The Papa of your choice specifically having a stole/scarf or even a habit made for you that matches his robes and colours and patterns as a sign of devotion and commitment ♡

[chapelofmyheart]

Amulets of Early Christianity ~

Firstly, what are amulets?

"Amulets are objects imbued with magical properties that protect against bad luck, illness and evil. Amulets are universal and are answers to age-old needs: to be healthy; to be virile and fertile; to be powerful and successful; to have good fortune." -Occult World

Back in ancient Rome, at the beginning of Christianity, early Christians resorted to the traditional practice of using amulets to protect themselves from harm and to bring blessings. Christian preachers insisted on their fellow Christians to make the sign of the cross or use holy water or holy oil from a priest or monk as a replacement for amulets, but the use of amulets still continued to be practiced by the early Christians.

Amulets composed of animal and vegetable matter have perished throughout the centuries but amulets made in the forms of figurines, carved stones, papyrus texts, parchment, potsherds, wood, and metal have survived. Written amulets give an insight on how Christian prayers and worship effected how these amulets were made, including a collide of Paganism and Christianity in certain texts. Some amulets contained short spells with artwork of Christian symbols. This is one example of a merge between Paganism and Christianity within the writing of an amulet, “I bind you, Artemisian scorpion, 315 times. Protect this house with its inhabitants from every evil, from all bewitchment, […] from the sting of scorpion and snake.” The spell then follows with, “Give protection, O Lord, son of David according to the flesh, born of the Holy Virgin Mary, O holy, highest God, of the Holy Spirit. Glory to you, O heavenly King. Amen.”

Some amulets contained Christianity mixed with a Greco-Egyptian chant. Other amulets had chants that were dedicated to calling out for the assistance of a saint or biblical figure, a common saying in these chants were “now, now, now, quickly, quickly, quickly”. These amulets also relied on the use of words snd works from the bible, rather than using such things from non-Christian amulets.

Many amulets consist of bible passages or passages from liturgical services. Psalm 91 was popular among amulets, even with Jewish amulets. The Lord's prayer was also popular. Occasionally, amulets spoke of the correspondence between Jesus and King Agbar of Edessa, for healing and protection due to this being in Jesus's promise. Some amulets seem to have the intention of being used in rituals to exorcise evil spirits with the use of the creed.

When looking at the amulets, they show the different skills of their creators. Some amulets seem to have been written by a high skilled scribe while others seem to have been written by people who could barely write. Most amulets were found in common places, documents, letters, and personal copies of books. Some words were written as they would have been pronounced, instead of in proper Greek. This shows how some amulets were probably written by memory for chants and devotional texts.

Here are some examples of amulets

Source: Archeological Views: Christian Amulets-A Bit of Old, a Bit of New

[apilgrimpassingby]

Happy Feast of Ss. Peter and Paul!

And I'm going to use this day to indulge in a favourite Orthodox hobby: pissing off both Protestants and Roman Catholics!

Protestants (and some Orthodox), St. Peter is the Rock in Matthew 16:18

It's simply the most natural way of reading the text, considering that "Peter" is Greek for "Rock". As Roman Catholic apologist Jimmy Akin has said in the past, if someone opening a wing of a hospital addressed a doctor called Robert Stone by saying "truly, Bob, you are a Stone, and on this rock I will build my hospital", despite the fact that "stone" and "rock" are considerably more different than petros and petra. And, as my good friend @kaleb-is-definitely-sane has said in the past, we see St. Peter as a crucial force in the reconciliation of Pauline and Jacobean Christianity and a leader of the Early Church in the Acts of the Apostles.

Some Orthodox also go with the "the rock in the verse is St. Peter's confession, not St. Peter himself" which is extra dumb because it's explicitly contradicted by the Orthodox liturgical tradition. From Matins today:

You abandoned the fishery of the deep and received from the Father the heaven-sent divine revelation of the incarnation of the Logos. And unto your Creator you cried out for all to hear, “I know You, one in essence with the Father, O Son of God.” Therefore you were truly and most worthily shown forth indeed as the rock of faith and the man with the keys to grace, O Apostle Peter. Intercede with Christ our God that He grant forgiveness of offenses to those who with longing observe your holy memory. (emphasis added).

Although, part of why I think these Protestant (and sometimes Orthodox) circumlocutions are dumb is because..

Roman Catholics, St. Peter being the Rock does not prove papal supremacy

To get from "St. Peter is the rock on which the church is built" to "the Bishop of Rome possesses full and immediate universal jurisdiction over all the Church and communion with him is necessary to be in communion with the Church of Christ", a few assumptions have to be made.

Apostolic succession is a real phenomenon. Orthodox will obviously grant this assumption, Protestants (with the exception of Anglicans and Scandinavian Lutherans) will need persuasion.

This specific apostolic dignity passes down. Everyone agrees that the apostolic charism to write Holy Scripture has not been passed down, so it needs to be argued (and not merely assumed) that the Rock on Which the Church is Built is an inheritable office.

This passes down only to St. Peter's successors. This is where the Orthodox would start disagreeing; we generally hold to St. Cyprian's view that all true bishops occupy the Seat of St. Peter.

The bishops of Rome are St. Peter's greatest or only successors. They're clearly not his only successors - St. Peter also reigned as bishop in Antioch, and the See of Alexandria was founded by St. Mark, his disciple. Thus the Roman Catholic has to argue that the See of Rome is the greatest of the Petrine sees.

The status of St. Peter's successor accords to the importance seen in the Papacy. It's possible for the bishop of Rome to be in charge - for example, by getting the tiebreaking vote in ecumenical councils, or being the caller of all ecumenical councils - without possessing infallibility, universal jurisdiction and communion with him being necessary to belong to the Church.

Point is, RCs can't just say "St. Peter is the Rock on Which the Church is Built, therefore papal supremacy!"

[verba-leo-pp-xiv]

"Today we have the joy and grace to celebrate the Jubilee 2025 of the Holy See on the liturgical memorial of Mary, Mother Of The Church. This happy coincidence is a source of light and inner inspiration in the Holy Spirit, who on Pentecost yesterday poured Himself out abundantly upon the people of God." — Papa Leone XIV [9.6.25] (© Vatican Media)

[theseriousjester]

hexennacht as far as i can tell sells exclusively through their website* and they have a TON of scents of which i have only tried requiem and sanctum so far

requiem is my #1 Aradia Smell; listed notes are graveyard dirt, liturgical incenses (smoked frankincense, myrrh, co-distillation of olibanum resinoid with a Virginian cedarwood oil), iso e super, woodsmoke, and coal embers

it has this very cozy spicy smell to it on me that i find more comforting than spooky but DOES give me big halloween vibes. actually it reminds me strongly of halloween/birthday parties from when i was a kid when it was cold outside and my parents had their fireplace lit and the candles and gas lamps lit with the electric lighting off or low... that's some bonus merc lore for you entirely unrelated to aradia but those are my impressions. and i wanna share them.

it almost gives me pumpkin spice vibes but not in a typical gourmand way and it might just be associations on my part? in any case. very aradiaesque to me. cozy and spicy and ghost-adjacent but not Scary itself and the association with childhood memories probably adds to it for me haha

HOWEVER. if u want a creepier smell for ghost aradia: spirit board (notes of cistus, tobacco, violet, earth, and opoponax) smells like actual wood and dust to the point where i dont wear it much but also one of my friends loves it and finds it very comforting. the wonders of smell...

*which i kinda prefer cuz Fuck Etsy but sadly many companies only sell through etsy. though you could probably get them to sell to you directly if you ask nicely

[caviarsonoro]

Andrei Tarkovsky: Ivan's Childhood - Rachmaninoff: O Serene Light

(Vespers, Op. 37).

The reasons that led me to combine the beach scene from Ivan's Childhood (1962) by Andrei Tarkovsky with O Serene Light by Sergei Rachmaninoff (Vespers, Op. 37) lie in the profound emotional and aesthetic resonance shared by both works. The scene of the children running on the beach, with its poetic visuals, captures a moment of purity and freedom that powerfully contrasts with the tragic and war-torn context of the rest of the film. This moment encapsulates a nostalgia for lost innocence, a reminder of the fleeting beauty that can exist even amidst devastation. Tarkovsky, with his characteristic use of symbolism and meticulous attention to detail, creates an image that transcends the literal to become a meditation on life, memory, and human fragility.

In turn, O Serene Light, with its choral texture and profound spirituality, perfectly complements the atmosphere of the scene. Rachmaninoff's work, a Russian liturgical hymn, carries a contemplative character that evokes both a sense of elevation and lamentation. Its solemnity and beauty resonate with the inherent melancholy of Tarkovsky’s film, intensifying the viewer's emotional experience. By combining these two pieces, a dialogue is created between image and sound, enhancing the contrast between innocence and loss, the fleeting and the eternal. This union invites the viewer to reflect on art’s ability to capture and preserve beauty in fleeting moments, even in the darkest contexts.

[eretzyisrael]

Syrian Jews in exile still embody a rich tradition

The Jews of Syria were displaced, like hundreds of other communities. Yet they have always carried the memory of their origins with them and today act as a repository of cultures. Senior rabbi of the Sephardi Community in the UK, Rabbi Joseph Dweck, writes in the Jewish Chronicle:

Photo taken of Jews in Aleppo in 1935 (Sephardic Heritage Museum)

The recent history of Syria is a tragedy that resonates with anyone who has a connection to the land, its people and its history. For me, as a Syrian Jew, it strikes a particularly poignant chord. Syria is part of the ancestral memory of my people. It is a land that once hosted vibrant Jewish communities, where ancient synagogues echoed with prayer and study, where markets bustled with life, and where centuries of Jewish history intertwined with the cultural tapestry of Arab and Levantine society.

Yet today, war, displacement, destruction, and despair compel reflection on deeper truths about what it means to live through exile, to carry the memory of a homeland, and to find strength in resilience and adaptability.

For 20 centuries, the Jewish people have been migrants. Following the destruction of the Second Temple, we became wanderers, forced to find refuge in foreign lands. From Babylonia to Spain, Morocco to Poland, Yemen to Germany, and beyond, Jewish communities settled, flourished, and integrated. Each migration was marked by resilience, a willingness to adapt, and a commitment to preserving Jewish identity.

The Jews of Syria were no exception. They lived in harmony with their neighbours for centuries, contributing to the country’s trade, culture, and intellectual life. Yet, like so many Jewish communities throughout history, they were eventually uprooted – some by choice, others by force – in search of safety and security.

For Syrian Jews, this migration was a painful but familiar story. It echoes the experience of Jews worldwide who were displaced, yet always carried the memory of their origins with them. My family first came to the eastern shores of the United States in 1901, seeking better economic opportunity after the opening of the Suez Canal diverted major trade routes away from Aleppo, which led to a decline in commerce. But they arrived on those shores with a robust culture and tradition that they faithfully instilled in their descendants. It is only due to their strong commitment to its preservation that it continues to live within me to this day. Migration for Jews has never been simply about survival, it has been about transforming displacement into opportunity, exile into growth.

One of the most remarkable aspects of Jewish identity is its role as a repository of cultures. Wherever Jews have lived, they have absorbed the languages, customs, and traditions of their host nations. From the spices of Aleppo to the melodies of Sephardic prayer, Jewish life reflects a mosaic of influences.

In this sense, Syrian Jewry embodies a rich tradition. Aram Soba, as it is known in Hebrew, produced renown rabbis, exquisite liturgical poetry, and delectable cuisine.

Read article in full

[heathersdesk]

Okay, so y'all remember how we did the whole "Mormonism needs more holidays" thing and we came up with a whole liturgical calendar?

Go with me for a second.

Adding ritual and ornamentation to our personal worship for flavor.

Examples:

Lighting candles or incense when you pray, making/using prayer shawls, or using a special fidget when you pray

Sitting in silence after prayer deliberately and writing down whatever comes to mind

Putting blessings and cursings on tithing money when you give it

Performing ablutions before touching/reading your scriptures

Burning unkind words, memories as part of repentance or personal healing

I think part of why it's so easy to go through the motions as a Mormon is because our worship is so plain. There's no distinct transition between our interactions with the divine, making the whole thing feel too ordinary. I don't want to feel ordinary. I want to feel like I'm a druid calling upon God by an ancient name, conjuring power and commanding the elements through my spiritual practice. And I think what's missing in creating that feeling, to use stage terms, is blocking and props.

Thoughts? Suggestions? Let me hear em!