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LAS VEGAS—In the hours following a violent rampage in Las Vegas in which a lone attacker killed more than 50 individuals and seriously injured 400 others, citizens living in the only country where this kind of mass killing routinely occurs reportedly concluded Monday that there was no way to prevent the massacre from taking place. “This was a terrible tragedy, but sometimes these things just happen and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop them,” said Iowa resident Kyle Rimmels, echoing sentiments expressed by tens of millions of individuals who reside in a nation where over half of the world’s deadliest mass shootings have occurred in the past 50 years and whose citizens are 20 times more likely to die of gun violence than those of other developed nations. “It’s a shame, but what can we do? There really wasn’t anything that was going to keep these individuals from snapping and killing a lot of people if that’s what they really wanted.” At press time, residents of the only economically advanced nation in the world where roughly two mass shootings have occurred every month for the past eight years were referring to themselves and their situation as “helpless.”

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Write-O-Ween Prompts: Unusual and Rare Words Edition

As practice for the famous NANOWRIMO, a prompts list of unusual and rare words! I’ll try writing them: will you?

Uncanny: strange or mysterious, especially in an unsettling way

Chimerical: merely imaginary; fanciful

Susurrus: a whispering or rustling sound

Aubade: a song greeting the dawn

Ephemeral: lasting a very short time

Sempiternal: everlasting; eternal

Euphonious: pleasing; sweet in sound

Billet-doux: a love letter

Pluviophile: any organism that thrives in conditions of heavy rainfall; one who loves rain, a rain-lover

Redamancy: act of loving in return

Lachesism: the desire to be struck by disaster; to survive a plane crash, or to lose everything in a fire

Rubatosis: the unsettling awareness of your own heartbeat

Nodus Tollens: the realization that the plot of your life doesn’t make sense to you anymore

Opia: the ambiguous intensity of looking someone in the eye, which can feel simultaneously invasive and vulnerable

Monachopsis: the subtle but persistent feeling of being out of place

Énouement: the bittersweetness of having arrived in the future, seeing how things turn out, but not being able to tell your past self

Skulduggery: devious behavior

Tatterdemalion: raggedly dressed person; looking disreputable or decayed

Athazagoraphobia: the feeling of being forgotten, ignored, or replaced

Oblivion: the state of being completely forgotten or unknown; connotes feelings of isolation and aloofness, which lead to the annihilation or extinction of the self metaphorically

Abditory:  a hiding, safe place to disappear 

Hiraeth: the homesickness for a home you can never return to; a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the lost places of your past

Fernweh: the ache for distant places; the craving for travel

Sonder: the realization that each passerby has a life as vivid and complex as your own

Kenopsia: the eerie, forlorn atmosphere of a place that is usually bustling with people but is now abandoned and quiet

Kuebiko: a state of exhaustion inspired by acts of senseless violence

Quiddity: the essence or inherent nature of a person or thing / an eccentricity; an odd feature / a trifle; a nicety or quibble

Wayfarer: a traveler, especially on foot

Nepenthe: a medicine for sorrow; a place, person or thing, which can aid in forgetting your pain and suffering

Gloaming: defined as twilight and dusk; the day’s end, the glittery, transient echo when time and nature meet

Eunoia: literally meaning “beautiful thinking” / FREE SPACE

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When I was a child, people told me I was an old soul because of my ability to understand the world around me. Now, I’m almost 30 years old and that understanding has turned into a cynical, sarcastic humor where my coping mechanism is to make jokes about everything. Now people tell me I’m childish.

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"Writing Advice" #1:

The only times I have ever used a character questionnaire or worksheet have been when I found the character would care to fill one out about themselves.

I don't think some sort of detailed list is a good way to know your characters. That's not how you know anybody else you know. (Unless you do, no judgement, you do you!)

Writing scenes between your characters, switching point of view, dreaming up childhood memories, that's the way I would most suggest. If you're going to spend a lot of time and energy writing down stuff that won't go into the final text, you might as well put that into the most authentic form.

Not to totally dis questionaires! In fact they make great scene prompts. :)

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He Knows

The three kids and their dad walk down the driveway as they do.  I think he doesn’t see me through the trees, sitting on my front porch but he does: I know because his head cranks to the side, and he is smiling.  Big.  His features and his eyes do not move in this time.  His teeth are like thick, white, wooden bone.

He knows.

And he is not safe.

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Masquerade #3

Paper collage by Annalynn Hammond

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2

I do not feel myself.

All I feel is trampled Ground down into the earth Under a round mammoth foot

And I'm just waiting to die because I can't get out.

I'm here, confined, yet I know, I hope, it will get me what I want If I am not crushed before it's over, it is my ticket to ultimate freedom

Like a Christian, working for a future contrived heaven of sorts

I confine myself, too - But exactly - Needing a home is different Needing somewhere I can hide from the world I fight all day Needing somewhere nobody can tell me what to do

I only hope I live long enough to make it there

I must cling to different particles of hope Hanging in the air Maybe forgotten by most of the others And I envy their freedom now but it's been shown before I cannot ever carry on as they do In anything It's sad and annoying What unpoetic words Sad and annoying That's what I feel like these days, to myself, to my lover, to my friends and coworkers Sad and annoying It's almost as if I saw myself as not sad and annoying when I was able to join them But to partake in everything they want to do And nothing I want to do So I become other Sad and annoying.

Am I less psychotic by the day or just ever morphing into different kinds of psychotic?

I am lost amid a world I do not understand Like I'm a ghost and I can't touch it People don't know I'm a ghost People don't know what it's like to be dead

People don't know what it's like to be other people They won't And here I try every day to understand and to be While I myself stay numb The kind of numb that hurts

What doesn't hurt? Why do you feel this way? "Insert a naysayer" they say, so here's one. Some people you want(ed) to trust think you're merely off your rocker And sure, why might not you be? After all, you thought your way into these problems, right? All you gotta do is think yourself right back out of them.

I don't think these people get it About the world I feel like if they did they would feel like me.

Not like I'm fucking better. Wouldn't wish this on anybody.

"Stop feeling sorry for yourself and just get on with it!!"

Welp, poetry break's done

Back to work.

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Late morning with thick blue air; we wait for something, surely

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I feel like I’ve lived so many different lives at this point, I can’t even remember who I am anymore, like I forget about entire segments of my past until they sneak up on me and then I’m smacked in the face by how much time has passed, and I can’t even remember who I was back then, and I don’t know if I’ll ever meet her again. It’s truly mad, truly, I feel so disconnected from so many parts of myself and my past and my life, and so connected to others it’s startling at times, and it hits me like a goddamn train.

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(At first I just glazed over while skimming this post because apparently my brain decided it was my own inner commentary...)

Dude I get this same thing. Different kind of place in a different location, but then again nothing I can quite pin down. It's a feeling I chase in images, movies, and music - 70s everything, and things of eras prior from which the 70s evolved, can move me to this ache for something I'm not even sure I've actually experienced. Close things, from when I was a kid, but again.

Hey, I'm agnostic, so in no way have I ruled out reincarnation. At the same time I'm skeptical.

My boyfriend understands a similar feeling. He often describes it as the "dark glam rock" feeling, but after extensive discussion and exploration into images and music we've determined it's essentially the same thing, stemming from the same root. In certain moods I call it the "back porch banjo" feeling, because it all feels like I'm getting back to my roots. Maybe it's just all the blues, jazz, and Americana sounds that really are a part of my heritage - or something else altogether?

I'm not advocating or not-advocating, but I think it's worth mentioning that lately we have been exploring this topic on LSD. This has the double effect for me that it was a very popular drug in the 70s that enhances sensory perception (aka music from or influenced by the 70s is even more amazing and nostalgic), and its brain-peeling-back effects make my mind even more susceptible to making these "non-memory" connections. Once I'm not tripping, some of the profundity goes away, of course, but anyway, my puzzle is slowly coming together either way.

Anyway, I'd be curious to know if any of this resonates, and I don't think anything is wrong with you. Though of course I wonder the same thing. 😉

Nostalgia

I have memories, or not memories, but nostalgia for things I’ve never experienced? And I don’t even know how to explain it, like I have this vague “memory” of like a white room with kind of geometric 70′s/80′s decor and it’s somewhere in Europe, but idk what the fuck it is or how I remember it because I’ve never been there? And I get nostalgia for this place and it’s also in the past but idk what it is or where…it’s so creepy. Like I also get nostalgia for being out west, going to somewhere in the mountains in like an old car and it’s the 70′s and everything has this look…but I wasn’t alive in the 70′s, and I’ve never been out west to the mountains, so idk what this memory or nostalgia is? I genuinely don’t get it, like sometimes I just think about this places and times and feel sad but it makes no sense…idk maybe something’s wrong with me.

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Cinderella City Mall, Denver, Colorado, 1998 – Ron Pollard

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AUGUSTIN HERNÁNTEZ NAVARRO, Casa Álvarez in Bosque de las Lomas, Mexico City, 1975

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If I show up at your house ten years from now and find nothing in your living room but The Readers Digest, nothing on your bedroom night table but the newest Dan Brown novel, and nothing in your bathroom but Jokes for the John, I’ll chase you down to the end of your driveway and back, screaming ‘Where are your books? You graduated college ten years ago, so how come there are no damn books in your house? Why are you living on the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese?

Stephen King, commencement speech at the University of Maine, 2005 (via wordpainting)

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My dad think it’s weird when I watch people play video games instead of playing it myself, I ask him why he watches sports instead of playing it

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Moody Kalsoy