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Wilderness from my new book Faraway Dreaming. 🌱🌲 Available on Kickstarter until 24 June, 2025!

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I was working with an item today that just utterly flabbergasted a part of me (the other was deeply frustrated with the catalogue record AS SOMEONE APPARENTLY THOUGHT IT WAS PRINTED ON SILK, coming back to that in a minute) … but ANYWAYS … said item is a replica of a medieval manuscript prayer book THAT IS ENTIRELY WOVEN out of grey and black silk … WOVEN … text, images, intricate grey scale, WOVEN … NOT PRINTED …

And it’s flabbergasting because it’s from 1888, Jacquard machine, IT USED PUNCH CARDS to weave these intricate pages … something like 400 weft per near square inch … IT looks like a page of textured paper, but it’s not, it’s entirely SILK … F*CK …

Anyways …

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I think I may never be sad ever again. There is a statue entitled "Farewell to Orpheus" on my college campus. It's been there since 1968, created by a Prof. Frederic Littman that use to work at the university. It sits in the middle of a fountain, and the fountain is often full of litter. I have taken it upon myself to clean the litter out when I see it (the skimmers only come by once a week at max). But because of my style of dress, this means that bystanders see a twenty-something on their hands and knees at the edge of the fountain, sleeves rolled up, trying not to splash dirty water on their slacks while their briefcase and suit coat sit nearby. This is fine, usually. But today was Saturday Market, which means the twenty or so people in the area suddenly became hundreds. So, obviously, somebody stopped to ask what I was doing. "This," I gestured at the statue, "is Eurydice. She was the wife of Orpheus, the greatest storyteller in Greece. And this litter is disrespectful." Then, on a whim, I squinted up at them. "Do you know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?" "No," they replied, shifting slightly to sit.

"Would you like to?"

"Sure!"

So I told them. I told them the story as I know it- and I've had a bit of practice. Orpheus, child of a wishing star, favorite of the messenger god, who had a hard-working, wonderful wife, Eurydice; his harp that could lull beasts to passivity, coax song from nymphs, and move mountains before him; and the men who, while he dreamed and composed, came to steal Eurydice away. I told of how she ran, and the water splashed up on my clothes. But I didn't care. I told of how the adder in the field bit her heel, and she died. I told of the Underworld- how Orpheus charmed the riverman, pacified Cerberus with a lullaby, and melted the hearts of the wise judges. I laughed as I remarked how lucky he was that it was winter- for Persephone was moved by his song where Hades was not. She convinced Hades to let Orpheus prove he was worthy of taking Eurydice. I tugged my coat back on, and said how Orpheus had to play and sing all the way out of the Underworld, without ever looking back to see if his beloved wife followed. And I told how, when he stopped for breath, he thought he heard her stumble and fall, and turned to help her up- but it was too late. I told the story four times after that, to four different groups, each larger than the last. And I must have cast a glance at the statue, something that said "I'm sorry, I miss you--" because when I finished my second to last retelling, a young boy piped up, perhaps seven or eight, and asked me a question that has made my day, and potentially my life: "Are you Orpheus?" I told the tale of the grieving bard so well, so convincingly, that in the eyes of a child I was telling not a story, but a memory. And while I laughed in the moment, with everyone else, I wept with gratitude and joy when I came home. This is more than I deserve, and I think I may never be sad again.

Here is the aforementioned statue, by the way.

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the insane experience of missing a fictional character . like you can always go back and reread the book , replay the game , rewatch the show or movie , you can always go back & see them , but you can never experience them & their story for the first time again . its absurd to miss them because they'll always be there , but you'll miss when there were still new things for them to say .

for a small time they were real & growing and changing and you hung onto every new word, but now all they can do is repeat the same story forever&ever & they're not real anymore because you know everything they're going to do. & you miss them. its fucked man...

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*wrinkles nose* shouldnt you be repressing that

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Triple J's holding an Australian Music Hottest 100, lets gooooooo

https://www.abc.net.au/triplej/countdown/hottest100

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tbh people don't give zuko enough credit like wtf are you supposed to say when someone hits you with "my girlfriend turned into the moon" like. damn. that is in fact rough buddy

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You don't even need to study for the Rorschach test, btw, it's super easy. All they do is show you a bunch of stupid pictures of your dad getting eaten by a horse

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Leonid Pasternak  (Ukrainian, 1862–1945) - The Torments of Creative Work

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Characters who were raised by wolves but somehow still learn how to speak and act human despite of having spent the key developing years without human contact are both unrealistic and frankly kind of boring and overdone by now. Imagine a character team where one of them is a (somewhat) realistic raised-by-wildlife grown feral child, and the other one is essentially a glorified handler, who manages all the people-business for both of them.

And the companion is the only other human person that the feral one trusts in any way at all. Better yet, make them clearly be romantically involved with each other. Like

"Wait, she's your wife? ...Uh, with all due respect, but can she like... Can she even consent?" "Look lad. I respect you being worried for her welfare and for being direct about that instead of circlin' around so I'm gonna be straight about it right back at you: She's bigger than me, stronger than me, and frankly, I don't think she spent much time wondering whether I'm consenting."

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This is for all y’all who don’t understand how terrifying these suckers are. 

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bert and ernie go to ikea

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help

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Theory: Nobody who writes a physics textbook gives any fucks

Evidence: