ceceliacaecarum

[ceceliacaecarum]

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[ceceliacaecarum]

[ceceliacaecarum]

For the Red-Shouldered Hawk

Down, down, from the vault you hear a rabbit wail, a thousand miles away. An aperture retracts and focuses – the world is one single point –

I have a visitor today.

An angel sits outside my window; a rabbit squeals in your hand… I don’t mind. A camera flashes and blinks; I say, ‘hey’ to get your attention. You look at me and your face is kind;

one moment of time in suspension.

Everyday, I looked at the pictures I took: but they were statues, pale imitations; movement and life made you blurry. Something so grand cannot be captured, for all machines have their limitations. I freed memory from my camera,

and let myself forget.

White speckled your wings like stars in the sky All of history was stored in your resin colored eyes. You and the rabbit flew westward, as the sun began to set.

Goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.

[ceceliacaecarum]

it’s not necessarily that I hate the themes most prevalent in fiction set in the real world and it’s not necessarily that I don’t like stories revolving around real people or relationship drama or interpersonal issues it’s more like im a dog who doesn’t recognize that a pill is still a pill if it has peanut butter on it. I need like the little peanut butter spoonful that is aliens or robots or monsters or time travel or something fantastical and not at all down to earth real life so that you can approach me and be like “this story is about how friendships can deteriorate over time and also how this guy feels bad for being a bad friend and causing his buddy problems with their girlfriend” and then look at me making a face at you and be like “AND! they’re all aliens who are doing all that across spacetime” and I’ll be like OHHHHHH OKAY YAY (shlop shlap shlup the sound of a dog horking down peanut butter pills) wow what a poignant story

[ceceliacaecarum]

at last, dreaming is accessible I dreamt of dreaming statues who could dream things I could not. There are dreamers who make giant worlds without a second thought. When I lay my head to rest nothing stirs inside my mind but dreaming statues printing dreams perfectly refined. My dreams are poor and ugly and they pale when I compare them to the dreams of dreamers that are nurtured and well cared for. I don’t have ambition, nor do I have the time to cultivate something so sweet and sublime. I spend my days doing things important to the Earth. I work and work listlessly and that’s what gives me worth. The dreams of dreamers craft the world and make up all I see but dreaming is not work, so we do not need to dream. My statue dreams for me and I will never dream again. It guts out all the dreams it sees and only eats the skin. Swallowing and spitting out slop looking somewhat like the pretty things it eats, but lacking all their guts, because a statue does not rest, it does not sleep, it does not walk. A statue does not breathe, it does not feel, it does not talk. A statue does not dream; a statue does what it is told. A statue cannot dream; a statue has no soul. 

[ceceliacaecarum]

card for a stranger

In dark times, should the stars also go out?

There is no other person like you. The hundreds of people you’ve talked to or passed by on the street, every single place you’ve been, & every event in your life – they have all made you the person you are today. You are an incredibly rare photo, capturing this small part of the earth you’ve been in – a piece in this big puzzle of the world. There is no other person like you. 

The world needs you. You know someone. You probably know a lot of people. They know you too. They’ve impacted your life, made you who you are, and simply by being there, you have impacted them too. They need you. They will never have another person like you in their life. 

Most days it will feel like nobody’s there. But that’s not true – if nothing else, you have yourself. That is the most important person in your world – that is the only world that matters. If you do not exist, then the world fades from existence: all the people you love, have loved, almost loved, do not love at all… all gone. Keep the world alive. The world needs you. 

I do not know who you are. I never will. But in reading this, we are connected. You are part of my world and I am part of yours. Whoever you are, I care about you. You are part of my world, if only for just a moment. I love you. 

vvv disco elysium spoilers ahead. please play the game

A couple hours or so ago I wrote that message to a homeless man. My mother came to me and asked me to write a message of hope, because she did not know what to write. It was for this church event. I’ve decided to share it here. Everyone deserves hope. There’s this game, Disco Elysium that I started playing this year – it is a game about hope, and it inspired me. 

Disco Elysium is a character builder. You wake up with no memory of anything and you get to create a new person through the stats you choose to level up and the dialogue options you pick. And a third thing, the thought cabinet – the loot system of the game. You talk to a person and that conversation gives you an idea that you can internalize, and it becomes part of your character. Sometimes, you get new dialogue options from it. It can be from your partner, who you spend a majority of the game with, or from a character like Neha, who you only talk to once or twice. In the very few conversations you have with her, she is able to shape part of you. I think that’s a beautiful thing.

Another thing that inspired me was Shivers. This fragment of Revachol is able to speak to you through the wind; you feel the cold air on your arm, and it sends electricity through your nerves, up your spine, into your head. You are connected to the city and its people, and they are connected to you. Everyone in Martinaise has their mind somewhere else. Mainly, the past: it’s war-torn, with exposed scaffolding, bullet holes in the walls, and whole chunks of buildings are missing. And one day, a bomb will drop on it all and leave nothing. The world needs you. To not only just help some people (even if it only helps just a little), but just to remember it. Nobody’s gonna pick the same dialogue options as you, internalize the same thoughts, wear the same clothes, do the same quests, fail and succeed the same rolls… each and every playthrough will be a little different. The world needs you to remember how *you in particular* experienced it, failures and all – one day it will be flattened to the ground, and as long as you remember it, the world and all its connections still exist. Be vigilant. I love you.   

[ceceliacaecarum]

For She is Giant

Have you heard of that lady who had just ran from town? That gangly thing that would rise high above crowds walking with a hunched back and arms dragging ‘cross the floor. People ran in droves from her voice’s roar, and her face and her size sent away everyone she’d meet. There was no house for her size, so she lived and lumbered in the streets and people stared and said nothing or just looked away,  but we all know she had left just the other day.  There is no way you could miss her, For she is a giant.

She would curl up and shiver and cover herself with her hands in the darkest alleys of the village, far from any man. And she would cry very quiet to try to shrink her size   Any man who had seen her saw terror in her eyes. She would always run away and try to hide her face, but we’ll never let her memory ever leave this place. She may be in a forest: calm and peaceful and at ease, but we will find her face there, up above the trees. There is no place she can hide, For she is a giant.

[ceceliacaecarum]

a disease that kills you slowly The first signs of the dormant symptoms show themselves at three: rigid stone growths only the afflicted sees. Exposure to the world worsens her condition as she grows; a jagged rough shell is all the afflicted knows. 

At thirteen, under all the snaring weight, the symptoms spring awake  the shell carves its own form and all the flesh begins to shake; unsteady and unraveling, each fiber falling apart the afflicted, her eyes open, knows of the illness in her heart.

It is a wasting one, a quiet one Pulling threads out each day: from the liver, then the throat, until they’re undone towards the heart, then the brain, everything unspun. There are shells around all of you, but it eats away  at the afflicted.  Many of us keep our eyes shut  but it is here to stay.

It is a replacing one, a transforming one, a disease that buries a man under a monster, who must stay under the moon with a great hunger, gone mindless; large and strong and hairy Their torches rise as the sun does; they can see the disease we carry. It is not the disease that makes a monster, but the rising from the tomb When they see a man break free from the rock  they see nothing but their doom. 

[ceceliacaecarum]