eibhlean

[eibhlean]

When encountering someone stuck in an Apology Loop, I do not uselessly ask, or worse, demand that they “stop apologizing.”

Rather, I have found it much more useful to affect a theatrical tone and formally “absolve” them. “Like a Renaissance pope, I absolve you, my child.” Usually the combination of having the absurdity of the situation highlit, combined with a touch of physiological release if I can get a laugh, is enough to soothe their nerves a bit and get them to break the loop. And who knows maybe they feel absolved I dunno I have an authoritative bearing

[eibhlean]

Wassail: apple cider, mulling spices, cloved orange, rum if you are so inclined. Heat in a crock pot. If you are cold you will no longer be.

Chai tea bag + lil but of brown sugar + apple cider packet + 16 oz. mug of hot but not quite boiling water

it will not Fix You but like. maybe. maybe.

[eibhlean]

This is my very favorite figure of speech. Especially when it's a little vague if the word is being used both literally and metaphorically or just literally. Like 'the judge threw the book and the gavel at him'.

Series: Nerdy Semantics

Semantics is so much fun!

“The symbol z indicates an introspective judgment that the sentence is ‘zeugmatic’. The traditional term for this figure of speech is ‘zeugma’ or, more accurately, ‘syllepsis’. ‘Zeugma’ originally referred more generally to cases in which a word is shared between clauses, regardless of whether it has different senses in each context, while ‘syllepsis’ specifically refers to those cases of zeugma in which the word appears in construction with two clauses ‘while properly applying to or agreeing with only one of them … or applying to them in different senses (e.g. literal and metaphorical)’ (OED entry for syllepsis, emphasis added) The term ‘zeugma’ is now often used in this narrower sense, as equivalent to syllepsis, and more specifically, for the application of one word in different senses; […]” (Wechsler 2015: 11–12)

[eibhlean]

my best friend sent me a picture of a book they read for their BA thesis paper and called the book

"surprisingly irrelevant and chaotically written"

and I can't get over it

[eibhlean]

The thing is though, semantics is sooo much more important than syntax, and just because syntax *says* you can't do that, doesn't mean you can't. Leftly means 'to go a little left' as in 'in a leftly direction'. Meatful means either full of meat or like unto meat, depending on context, as in 'impossible burgers are meatful'. Falsewise means the wrong direction, literally or figuratively, as in 'he was facing falsewise to see the sun'. If I can define these words and then use them in a way you can understand that meaning, then you can totally do that.

The worst thing about formal English is that it offers these wonderful suffixes, then only lets you use them in prescribed circumstances. I should be able to describe things as meatful or leftly or falsewise without departing from the formal register if I darn well please.

[eibhlean]

Grim Reaper. I think this is my favorite so far.

[eibhlean]

[eibhlean]

When working at the jewelry store I referenced the ship of Theseus all the time without actually being able to reference the ship of Theseus.

People would get emotional about needing to swap out gems or work on the metal. I’d say, “If you had a violin and had to change the strings it’s still the same violin, right? If you have to put new tires on your car it’s still your car. Your ring will still be yours even if we change a small component of it.”

This generally worked extremely well in overcoming the emotional component because they couldn’t deny that it would in fact still be their ring.

Ship of Theseus solved by mass consensus.

[eibhlean]

Daily Writing Practice 2, Electric Boogaloo

I wasn't really feeling any prompts today, so instead have the first little excerpt from my newest short story. I like how it's starting out.

He was late. She could not abide tardiness, she prided herself on her persistent punctuality, and he was late. To the first date. By all accounts she should have written him off right then, but there was something about those warm brown eyes, the charming half-smile, the silliness. She stayed despite herself.

She won him over with a song, sung loudly and off-key. Her red hair glinted gold and copper and blue and purple in the tacky lights on the karaoke stage. Her eyes shone with enthusiasm and alcohol and she crooned into the mic some meant-to-be sexy torch song that mostly just made her look adorable as she tried a little too hard. She was too cheerful to be appropriately jazzy for the song, her smile unable to hide itself long enough for sex appeal. He was instantly in love.

He won her over with humor. He was happy, and his happy bubbled over into a deep need to make everyone else happy too. He wanted nothing more than to make the world smile. And so he told bad dad jokes at every opportunity, played little games to make her laugh, danced with her in the kitchen and chased her with pillows and made her giggle until her sides hurt and she forgot that all the bad things in her life had ever happened. And the laughter healed something that had been broken a very long time. She was in love.

It's impossible to say exactly when they moved in together. One day he came over and just never left. And from that point their love was ripped from the pages of a fairy tale or a rom-com. She baked for him, brought him breakfast in picnic baskets to be eaten on the bench outside his work. He left her love notes throughout the house, hidden in refrigerator drawers or behind the soup. Their wedding was exactly suited to them in every way, and all who witnessed knew that they loved each other deeply and truly and without hesitation. And that should have been happily ever after.

But life is not a fairy tale and does not end when the prince marries the princess. And sometimes that is exactly as it should be, for love is hard to come by and harder to hold and when you have it you should cherish it for as long as possible, past the wedding night and on to the grocery trips and the late night cuddles and the fights and the make-ups and the life that you can build together. And this is what our couple had, for a time. A marriage as designed by Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way. Their love was real, and deep, and able to withstand anything. Until it wasn't.

Because sometimes, too, it might have been better to stop at the wedding night, before the outside world breaks back in. No marriage exists in a bubble, and the partners are not the only members of said union. Parents-in-law, and bosses, and friends, and step-children, and neighbors all become part of your marriage too. Our couple was no exception, and lives, even the very best lives, are hard. There are bills to pay and pets to feed and children to clothe and so much to distract from just being each other being with each other.

He wanted so badly to provide for her. To give her the life he thought she wanted. To take her to beautiful places and to buy her beautiful things. So he left one day, to find his way. To find his vocation. He held her so tight and he promised her that he would return soon with a fortune, or at least the beginnings of one. And she held him so tight and she begged him not to go, for he was really all she needed in the world. He would not be swayed, so strong is the pull of desire that it feels more like need than the want it really is. Off he went, into the dark forest where anything could be lurking. She remained behind, holding on to the hope that was in his eyes as he walked away.

Forests contain within them the potential to be anything. A forest can be magical, a place of wildflowers and birdsongs and sunbeams that feels as though anything is possible and isn't that a wonderful thing. Or a forest can be dark and foreboding, a canopy that blocks the sun and haunts you with the fact that anything is possible and isn't that a frightening thing. This was the second kind of forest. The quiet was tangible, as thick as the mist that obscured weeping willows and yellow eyes that peer and assess. He didn't notice. He didn't see the dark shapes that prowled the fog, looking for dinner or something worse. He believed, and belief is a powerful thing. Belief starts wars and ends them. Belief brings people together and forces them apart. Belief makes you feel that everything you want is just around the corner if only you can get there. And he believed so hard, deep in his core, that he could change their lives if only he could find the right place, the right person, who would see in him all the things he could and should be. If only he had realized he'd already found that this story might be shorter.

He wandered the woods with a skip in his step, whistling a rhythmless song. The trees were not impressed, and they leaned in angrily, asking him to stop before someone caught his scent and came looking. Branches interlocked above him, hiding more and more of the sun. Trying to warn him that he should be careful. Careful what he asks for, careful who he asks. People have been too long separated from the wild places, though, and no longer have the instincts to know when something in the dark is watching. Cold blue eyes followed his travels, unseen and unfelt and unacknowledged. The scent of his desire was strong. An aphrodisiac designed to attract only things you should not attract. Desire is also a powerful thing, and there are things out in the world that feed on powerful things . They know how to use our wants against us. How to make the right promises, how to say the very nicest words. And when the trail began to change, leading not to the city but to somewhere so much worse, he didn't notice. He didn't see when his usual path made a sharp and previously impossible left turn, brambles and thistles and ferns moving themselves out of the way to allow him to pass, so subltly. He didn't notice as the woods morphed and transformed, becoming something else. Becoming somewhere else.

[eibhlean]

the most disorienting thing thats ever happened to me was when a linguistics major stopped in the middle of our conversation, looked me in the eye, and said, "you have a very interesting vernacular. were you on tumblr in 2014?" and i had to just stand there and process that one for a good ten seconds

[eibhlean]

And the first one was so much fun, I kept going.

[eibhlean]

A quick sketch in honor of Inktober and to flex my drawing muscles a little. Not perfect, but not bad for 30 minutes.

[eibhlean]

Daily Writing Practice, Take 1

Several short story rejections have me feeling a little dejected. To get myself out of a writer's rut, I decided to spend 30 minutes a day writing... something. Today I used a prompt to get the juices flowing, and this is the result. Not sure if I'll keep going with it or not, but it's an interesting start.

Prompt: A voracious reader starts noticing odd synchronicities in the books she's reading.

“This is the... 40th(?) one. He's just... hiding in the background. It doesn't matter the genre, it doesn't matter the print date. As recent as this year, as old as the written word. I find him everywhere.”

Ayden looks at my pile of books with his patented skepticism. He has always found my eccentricities a little annoying. The insistence on leaving out rice for the fae to count, the knocking three times. He pretends to ignore it, but I know he wishes I were a little less... me.

“Are you sure you aren't just picking up on a trope?”

“I swear it's not some coincidence or writing cliché. It's too specific. Will you please just look? I feel like I'm going crazy.”

Ayden sighs deeply. “Fine, show me.”

I have several books already open to the relevant pages. I pull him over to a large, leather bound tome first. “I think this was the first time I found him. At least, the first one I remember. He might have shown up before. But I read this one about a year and a half ago.”

I've highlighted the relevant paragraph. The book in question is a collection of myths and legends from around the world. In a story about the adventures of Sun Wukong, the mischievious monkey steals from a copper-haired farmer named Koh Lin. It's quick, only a line or two, but it stands out, in part because it is so brief. It has no impact on the story as a whole and seems thrown in.

“If he hadn't been a little incongruous I probably wouldn't have remembered him when I saw him again. But I got a little sense of deja vu.” I hand him the second example, a paperback fantasy novel. About a third of the way through the book the protagonists find themselves hiding in the barn of a farmer named Cailean, who's fiery temper matches his fiery hair.

I keep going down the line. A book on etymology written by Colin Farmer, whose author picture on the back cover shows a man with bright red hair. A children's book where a red fox named Cullin raises chickens on his farm. Pulpy sci-fi where a red-headed Callum is a pioneer on a new planet, helping to establish one of the first farms. An Arabic poem written by Khaleem Fallah, who a quick Google search reveals to have bright red hair.

“So, you see the pattern, right?” I look up at him, giving my best 'please don't think I'm mental' puppy-dog eyes.

“It is a weird coincidence, but I don't know, Andy, it still seems like just a coincidence. So there are a lot of authors who stick red-headed farmers with names that sound a little like Collin into their stories. That doesn't mean there's something supernatural happening.”

“It gets weirder now.” I say it quietly, a little afraid to show him the next bit. This is the part where either I'm right or I'm getting checked into a facility.

“Alice in Wonderland, Stranger in a Strange Land, Snow Crash, To Kill a Mockingbird. The Taming of the Shrew. Our Town. He's in all of them. He wasn't there before, Ayden. I swear he wasn't there before.”

“I think you've Mandela effected yourself, babe. I remember these passages, they've always been here.”

“Then why don't we talk about it? How many literary theory classes have we taken? Am I really the first person to notice that all of these works contain the same character? How could that be possible. You agree it's a weird coincidence. So why don't we study it, when we study why the curtains are blue? And why did I only start noticing it after?”

“You're traumatized, Andy. You nearly died and we still don't know what happened to him. You're seeing him everywhere. You really need to accept that he's gone. Did you see that therapist?”

“You weren't there, Ayden. You didn't see what I saw. He isn't gone. He didn't just vanish without a trace. We were trapped there together. I would have seen him leave. And if he did get out, and go for help, and not make it, we would have found his body. We never found his body.”

[eibhlean]

I didn't write this, but it feels like the words were ripped from my soul. Beautiful and heartbreaking.

I wish I could love you in a way everything was all you, again.

There's a peculiar kind of ache that comes with loving someone in a way that's less than whole, a love that's been chipped away at, leaving only the sharp, jagged edges. It's the kind of love that cuts into you every time you breathe, a reminder that the air you inhale is the same air that once danced around them, tantalizingly close yet immeasurably far.

I used to dream of loving in vast, boundless measures, where the universe itself seemed too small a stage for the magnitude of my affection. I wished to love in a way that made everything else insignificant, where the mere thought of you would eclipse the sun, the stars, and the galaxies beyond. I wished to love you in a way that was all-consuming, where sacrificing the world for your sake would be as effortless as the sun's rise each morning. But wishes, as they say, are the currency of the foolhardy, and I, it seems, had invested heavily in a market of heartache.

Now, my love for you has been distilled into something painfully pure. It's a love that hurts, a love that's become its own entity, gnawing away at my insides, leaving me raw and exposed. Do you ever feel the weight of a love that's too heavy to carry, yet too precious to put down? It's like holding onto a shard of glass, knowing it will cut you, but you can't let go because it's the last piece of something beautiful that once was.

I find myself wondering, is it worse to have loved and lost, or to have loved and be left with the echoes of what could have been? To see you in the crowd, the light catching your hair just so, and feel the world tilt on its axis, only to remember that the axis now spins on a point of pain. How do you reconcile the image of someone who was once your everything with the reality that they are now just a silhouette against the backdrop of your life?

There's a cruel irony in the way love can transform. It starts as a gentle flame, warm and inviting, only to rage into an inferno that consumes everything in its path, leaving nothing but ashes in its wake. And here I am, sifting through the remnants, searching for a spark that might reignite the fire, knowing full well it would only burn me again.

I've asked myself a thousand times if I would go back and do it all over again, knowing the heartache that awaited me. Would I still choose to love you with every fiber of my being, or would I take the coward's way out and shield myself from the inevitable fall? The truth is, I would choose you, every single time. Because even though this love hurts, it's a testament to the depth of what we had. It's a reminder that I am capable of a love so profound, so intense, that not even the pain of its loss can diminish its worth.

But what does it say about me, that I would willingly embrace this suffering? Is it strength or foolishness that keeps me tethered to a love that no longer exists outside the confines of my own heart? I grapple with these questions, turning them over and over, like stones worn smooth by the relentless tide of my longing.

The reality is, I can't love you the way I used to. That love belonged to a different time, a different version of us. Now, I love you in the quiet moments, in the spaces between breaths, in the whispered dreams of what we might have been. I love you in the past tense, with a love that's a ghost of what it once was, haunting me with memories that refuse to fade.

I wish I could say that this love has made me stronger, that it's given me the courage to face the world with a defiant heart. But the truth is, it's left me battered and bruised, nursing wounds that may never fully heal. And yet, despite the pain, despite the scars, I wouldn't trade this love for anything in the world. Because it's mine, in all its agonizing glory.

So here I am, penning my heartache into existence, hoping that somehow, these words will reach you, that they will echo through the void and touch the edges of your soul. I'm not asking for a second chance; I'm not even asking for absolution. All I'm asking is for you to understand the breadth and depth of a love that refuses to die, even as it slowly kills me from the inside out.

In the end, this is my confession, my testimony to a love that was all-encompassing, a love that was you, again and again. A love that, despite the hurt, I would sacrifice the world for, over and over, without a moment's hesitation. Because, in the twisted labyrinth of my being, you will always be the minotaur at its center, fierce and untamed, a beast I will never stop trying to tame, even if it means losing myself in the process.

-ayi, @hyikien on insta :)

[eibhlean]

French fails as a written language imo. Don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful language, but the French word for egg (œuf) is literally just the word "oof" italicized and decorated with sprinkles. You can't change my mind

Behold,

"𝓸𝓸𝓯"

The French word for egg

[eibhlean]

Buying the entire collection of Terry Pratchett books feels wrong. You shouldn't be buying boxed sets. You should stumble upon them in a used book store in a city you've only visited once, leaving you unsure of its reality- so that you can read them out of order the first time and then in the correct order when you have the full set (for that series.)

[eibhlean]