#liminal space fanatic

[liminalfortune]

tears falling down at the party

[joeys-piano]

Summer Reading/Writing Tag

Tagged by @words-after-midnight whom is doing great, terrible, and twisted things. Writing-wise. To his characters. And I can get behind that.

I'm just going to tag my sweet cheese, my good sir, my crazy man, that writer, @voxofthevoid. I have no clue how you have so much vigor to hit the word counts that you do every month, but you're doing great things, man.

---

Describe one creative WIP project you’re planning to work on over the summer.

A knivewood (Knives x Wolfwood) project called Perennial. The concept came to me in the shower because I remember this superstition my Mom told us once when we were in the old country. That when you're leaving a funeral, hospital, or wherever ghosts are known to reside, you should never come straight home. That just invites the ghosts into your life. You have to make random pit stops on the way home to shake off the spirits so they can detach on their own. So, like a good kid, I slapped that superstition down into a Google Doc and started piecing things together. It's got a small town gothic vibe where the majority of the story takes place in liminal spaces. And our perspective character, Wolfwood, is a mortician who follows a standard routine to keep the ghosts out of his life. And to live as normal of a life as he can in a hometown he feels trapped in. But unfortunately, said tactics don't work when a religious fanatic -- Knives -- clings to him instead. And there is nothing quite as damning as an old Christian benevolence.

Recommend a book.

I am the wrong person to be asked for book recommendations. I look at new releases to see what's going on in the publishing space and see what sort of writing is out there. And that's about it. Sometimes, I do read samples for things that pique my interest, but that is few and far in-between.

Recommend a fic.

like a dog at the shrine of your lies | sacrilegious vashwood smut. Very fun read. Not too long, not too short. I thought it was very cute.

Recommend music.

Look, anything by Nathan Wagner is a banger. He is out there singing the songs for heroes and tragedies and serves!

Share one piece of advice!

Have at least one thing you're looking forward to in each writing session. Doesn't matter what it is. Doesn't matter how big or small. Just have one thing -- at least thing -- that motivates you to meet the page. Look, writing is as hard as we make it, so why not make it enjoyable, too?

[doomanddead]

Dead Cosmonauts Navigate the Wreckage of a Shattered Future

Here at Doom and Dead we shine a light on the underground doom, drone, and psych acts you’ve never heard of. Every month we choose a new release that deserves more attention than it’s gotten. This month’s pick is from the UK band Dead Cosmonauts. 

We find ourselves living in dark times. Every day we struggle a little harder in a world that’s more expensive, more hateful, and more toxic than ever. Dead Cosmonauts’ first full-length album, Parasomnia feels like a warning, or maybe a premonition, of how much worse things can get. These songs are constantly in flux, shifting between graceful melodies and dissonant noise. But above all, these tracks are undeniably HEAVY. The album was mastered by Cult Of Luna’s Magnus Lindberg, so expect a sound that’s both haunting and forceful. These Sheffield-based doomers offer up a feast of technical musicianship and audacious songwriting that will keep you enthralled from beginning to end. So strap on your gas masks, and step out with me into the post-metal wasteland that is Parasomnia. 

Liminal Space (65 mins REM, vitals = stable) is some moody, chaotic doom. Listening to this track is like dragging your fingertip across a wine glass; the sounds are both resonant and screeching, satisfying and unsettling. The song boasts deadly sharp riffage and decisive drumming, all bathed in a noxious broth of heavy fuzz. The composition shifts into a lower gear as we approach the finish line. Vocal samples from radio presenter Ailbhe Máiréad emerge from the digital snow, painting detail into the post-apocalyptic scene. The weight becomes unbearable, and the song finally buckles under the crushing atmosphere.

Beneath the Choking Sky starts with an ominous drone. Tone and texture form a boundless landscape. In time, the drone gives way to an introspective melody that slowly expands to dominate the space. The track is layered and delicate, but dangerous — a spider’s web that tangles listeners in silvery strands of desperation and despair.

Kenopsia propels the album forward with a digital pulse and an insatiable groove. Odd rhythms and novel drum patterns flare up and burn out rapidly, their short lives leaving stains on the unforgiving environment. The track flirts with intensity, building in magnitude only to pull itself back again. It’s a titillating composition, adroitly and artfully executed. 

In Spirals It Took Everything is a palate cleansing soundscape that weighs the noises of nature against digital human chatter. The vibe ranges from safe and cozy, to wondrous.

Swallowed In Dark Waters is mysterious, plush. It exists in a dim expanse with wafting smoke and the cloying aftertaste of plucked guitar strings. Mania descends and the composition is impassioned, even fanatical. Sumptuous bow work from guest violinist Ruth Nicholson adds spice to the experience. In the wake of this outburst, the mood curdles. Chugging, slow passages are interwoven with bursts of frenzied lunacy. Extra notes jostle for domination in the narrow space of each beat. This piece is nothing if not restless. The tide shifts again and again, pulling us into ever deeper waters. This track is not the longest on the album, but undoubtedly one of the most profound. 

The final offering, A Vision From The Valley Of Dry Bones, starts out insubstantial and jolly as if tapped out on a toy. A heftier layer of instrumentation rolls over the desert, dropping a barrage of gritty guitar riffs and jolting drum work. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls… dyin’ time’s here! Digital effects whiz by like meteorites. This piece fiddles with sound and texture, but remans melodic at every turn.

Nothing remains stationary on Parasomnia. Everything transmutes, changes behavior, and is continually replaced with something new. The bleak and unforgiving realm the band has conjured feels like a very real omen of things to come. The album oozes with narrative, even if the story is up for interpretation.

[berlysbandcamp]

A North American road trip of coming of age garage soul mapped by Ivan Liechti, Ghost Riders is Efficient Space’s latest narrative compilation, hovering in a liminal emotional ravine between moonlight melancholy, teenage heartache and unchecked, unrealised ambition. Across 17 open hearted ballads recorded 1965-1974, the 2LP collects and connects dots between British Invasion fanatics, child prodigies, the loners and the luckless, in a kind of trans-continental survey of those swept up in rock’n’roll mania and buoyed by local newspaper ads promising fame and gold records.

Ghost Riders simmers with the scent of youthful summers, the pang of schoolyard romance, and the excitement (and disenchantment) of teenage naïveté, delivered via a deceptively simple and frequently wonky garage band set up. The vision of record collector and graphic designer Ivan Liechti, these eternal psych-folk howlers are further crystallised by Colin Young’s fastidious audio restoration, the original artwork of Elise Gagnebin-de Bons and an aptly penned foreword from Sonic Boom.  

[formlessing]

Meditations on doing nothing

Although I always want to do things— Incredible things, unspeakable things, Things terrible, noble, sublime, and godlike, Things that could only be done On the horizon of the end of the world; Where all humanity would be condensed in a single action For the glory and eternity of my spirit and my spirit alone,

This fanatical fire collapses under its own weight; Consumed in liminal spaces, it goes nova in the realm of dreams, Ultimately eclipsed by the pressing, unremitting mundane: Everyday and Everyman. And the conflagration is seen by the world only as a distant light, A dim and dying ember: these words.

Then, with my head still warm, I begin to think of the lilies of the fields: “How they grow, they toil not, neither do they spin”, And how the spinning is done entirely by the world itself Without any eagerness or laid out plan, But manifesting the implicate order. 

And I think of the Way, and how everything is perfect, A perfection that brings tears to my eyes (There is ecstasy in understanding this, And I'm ravished by this thought): This world does not demand more fire To bring about anything—it has enough To create and destroy, freely, aggressively and joyously,

With no need of any flames breaking out, In a beautiful, majestic and terrifying parade, From the towering stone walls of my mind.

[griimreaping]

@utternocries​ - one word fic prompts

Lower ( part 1 )

The tolling of the church bells was genuinely ominous. An impending sense of dread dominating the grey morning fog, which blanketed Novigrad. Those silvery sounding clangs ringing out through the mist to call forward its faithful masses from the gloom. Pulling the traveling cloak tighter around her shoulders, if only to stave off the nerves rather than the general chill that harkened the coming of autumn, Jean flinches when Geralt's shoulder lightly brushes hers. Nerves had been high in the woman's chest as they neared the city, the last time she'd stepped foot in those walls being the night before her family died. Now with the cold solid stone rising around them, Jean couldn't help be reminded of a tomb.

This must have shown on her face from the flicker of a frown that graced the Witcher's mouth. He'd been summoned on a contract put forth by one of the wealthy governors that had come to occupy a mansion in the northern district of Novigrad. Since he'd taken up residence there, it's caused the man nothing but grief. Deaths in the family, along with some more insidious spectral activity that made even the most persistent of tenants shy away from even renting the place. Which only added to the misfortunes befalling an otherwise uninteresting and mundane man of wealth. With such wealth, he enlisted Geralt's help, and by some lucky stroke, Jean as well. Who had insisted she come along since the governor had mentioned something about black vines overtaking most of the house. 

"What plant has black vines?" Had been the first question Geralt had asked when done skimming the frantic letter that had been sent forward to Downwarren. The Witcher had to stop spending so much time in her little hut, now even people outside of the village were beginning to notice. Plucking the letter from his hands and chewing on the inside of her cheek as she read, Jean's mind crunched over all the various odd species that thrived in this environment.

 "Devil's bramble is the first that comes to mind, but it's more of a shrub than vines. Could also be just a mistaken color?" Placing the letter back down and folding arms across her chest, the Druid casts an uneasy glance out of the dewy glass in her kitchen to the misty bog. She hadn't been to Novigrad in nearly fifteen years. The harsh smell of a house fire coming back in a wave so sudden it took a considerable amount of will not to choke on the air stuck in her lungs. Hugging herself tighter, Jean forces the words out of her lips in an attempt to cast away unwanted memories. To drown the screams.

"You'll probably need an expert on plants and herbs," a glance is cut at the Witcher to gauge how the words are received. "I won't ask for any of your payment, I'm just genuinely curious now and could do with a bit of adventure away from the bog and corpses." Geralt grumbled a few words about how things were dangerous, and Jean's rebuttal of how she could handle a sword along with magic seemed to lessen the worries only marginally. Or at least enough that he put them to bed. Now walking among the cramped sewage reek which clung to the southern district like a diseased lover, Jean begins to miss her bog. Roaches hoof beats echo in the dull mist as they weave through cobblestone streets going north. A beggar approaches before seeing the Witcher and thinking better of his choices, slinking back into a darkened patch of fog that yawned into an alleyway. The struggling morning sun had yet to touch these streets, sleepy shop windows gazing out onto quiet abandoned boulevards. A liminal moment in time before the meager warmth of an autumn day shone through the slate clouds above.

 That invisible line between districts isn't so invisible in Novigrad. A stark change between cramped tenant buildings that had begun to go crooked like a thieves smile, to the gaudy colors in the markets almost hurt the Druid's eyes. Even at such an early hour, a merchant in puffy gold pants tried valiantly to hawk some bruised peaches to her, claiming they were the city's sweetest. More polite "no thank yous" than Jean figured were necessary, and he'd given up his venture only to flag down another tired traveler bustling away. They did not make it out of the markets without expending a small amount of coin, which Jean put out to receive a small set of glass bottles in return, which now clinked softly in her bag. Geralt eyed the merchant selling her the glass wear with a critical eye, waiting to see if he was going to swindle her or not. This intense cat-eyed stare is more than likely what got jean a reduced price just to make them go away.

"I think I have a new idea about what the vines are." The Druid pipped up as another jarring change in scenery happened from the markets to the northern district. Now polished iron gates bore their teeth at them from the mouths of massive walkways up to ostentatious villas. No longer is the lower districts' corpse stench lingering; instead, a delicate waft of mountain roses and lemon trees walk in step with the Witcher and the Druid. Jean felt dirty here like she shouldn't be permitted to touch anything for fear of sullying it beyond rescue.

"There's a rare type of flower which only grows on the site of immeasurable evil. I've only ever read about it, though; the drawing seemed close enough to the description he gave." Rummaging around in the folds of her cloak, Jean produces a very worn and overly bookmarked tome. Roughly the size of her palm, the books brown and yellow pages had the look of something that had been steeped in bog water and perhaps blood at one point. Leafing through to the proper page, the pages crackle with age under the woman's touch.

"Here, Dagon's breath. Black vines with leaves about the size of a supper plate, able to produce flowers but only on full moons. Dried flowers turned into a powder can produce some of the most potent madness-inducing potions known to the world. Since this is such a rare specimen, there are speculations that even the scent of the flower can cause severe hallucinations." Reading this passage aloud, the Druid could feel a cold hand drag down her spine. If this was what they were dealing with, then whatever cast the curse even to make it grow had to be obscenely powerful.

The Dagon is old magic. Older than what most perceived as life it's self, coming from the chaos before time. From all that Jean could find in the books in her home, it was a god born of entropy and discord but required strict worshippers to ensure that it would have a proper host to inhabit when the void took back over. Mages and fanatics alike that dabbled in the Old Gods were ones that put their minds in the hands of babbling madness willingly, hoping to be rewarded with some form of forbidden insight to the world. The thought made the Druid shudder. She'd tasted the sharp edges of madness once before, those dark whispers in a language lost still snaked into the blackest of nightmares that she couldn't wake herself from. They'd always promised such alluringly unfathomable things to her.

It's lost in these troubling murky visions that cause the woman to bump into Geralt when he stops at one of the ornate gates. Placing a hand on her shoulder to steady her, the Witcher's disquiet shows fully. He'd had many half-hearted qualms about bringing her along on this, and now that she was becoming so distracted, it only furthered his worry about her being a liability.

"You should go wait back at the inn. Now that I have a better idea of what this plant is, it shouldn't be a problem." I don't want you to get hurt; goes unvoiced, but his cat-like eyes' narrowing conveys the sentiment. Jean's face flares pink around the ears at her embarrassment, but she doesn't allow the dialogue of the inn to go any further. Making a vague gesture at the nameplate affixed to the gate, the woman lets out an irritated breath, the frustrations more directed at herself.

"We're already here; it wouldn't make sense just to send me away now. Plus, I don't remember which roads we took to get here through the fog. Come on, Geralt, just let me continue, and I'll keep my head on straight, okay? No more distractions." A half-hearted smile that she hopes will cement the words into place only has Geralt absently rolling his eyes. Producing the key that had been sent along with the letter they'd received, the gate is unlocked. A horse post just inside the iron portal is where they part with Roach, who busies themselves with munching on the fresh hay that had been left out.

Path flanked on either side by overgrown flower beds containing every flavor of poisonous plant known to the region. Even a few that look notably exotic had a tight knot of anxiety forming in the woman's chest. A breeze sighing up the path causes the nefarious blooms and grasses to seethe in a green ocean around them, their ghostly voices curling in Jean's ears. Reaching out to place a holding hand on Geralt's arm, Jean freezes in her tracks when the house looms into view from the dismal fog, which had turned into a light misting rain.

When the governor had stated the vines were growing along the house, she had expected a few sparse fingers grasping greedily at the spaces between the bricks. Instead, what they were greeted with was a building that seemed to move with a life of its own. Thick coal-black leaves nearly the size of Geralt's head shiver in the breeze giving a sinister shivering quality to the house from foundation to rain gutters. Interspersed with wine-red flowers sporting elegantly curved petals and long golden yellow pistils that reminded Jean of a great blood-sucking insect searching for its next meal.

Then the whispers.

"Geralt, we shouldn't go in there." We're the words Jean heard herself saying, startled by how her voice sounded so terrified. While the Druid can listen to most of the passive voices of the plant life around her, these held that same nebulous darkness that only spoke to her in deepest nightmares. They carried the same voice as the madness. Their saccharine-sweet smell only there to lure you in closer with beckoning leaves and candy red petals.

Before responding to such a statement, a loud voice calls to them excitedly from the house. A gaunt man in a midnight black traveling cloak hurries toward them, waving his arms and wearing an almost crazed smile that shows far too much of his gums, which are far too pale to be healthy.

"Witcher! And... company. So good of you to finally arrive, and when I fear I am at my wits end!" The man nearly shouts at them, reaching out to vigorously shake Geralt's then Jean's hand with both of his clammy skeletal paws clasped around theirs. When his fingers leave the Witcher's, he notices fresh raw wounds on the man's forearms peeking out from his dark robes' confines. They looked almost like symbols carved into his skin, but such a quick glance hadn't been enough time. Deep-set eyes that once would have struck a woman dead with a glance now flit in their sockets nervously, the striking ocean blue ringed with bloodshot scleras and the deep shadows of exhaustion. The man looked to be hand in hand with death, yet the cold grip that clutches Jean's own spoke of fierce hidden strength that still dwelled like an angry spirit inside him.

"You must come inside! He has told me so much about you. I am looking forward to speaking with you before we get to such dark and dismal affairs. Come come." Voice and grip offering no rebuttal, the governor loops his arm with Jean's, nearly dragging the woman toward the house of dark whispers. Following close behind, Geralt notices the low humming of his medallion as they approach the building. There was nothing good contained within, the corrupted magic oozing out and tainting the air around them.

[ablogintwoacts]

You call yourself a Christian? Start acting like Christ. Flip more tables. Revolt. Call down the political oppressors. Give not just a voice but a victory shout to the homeless, impoverished, diseased, outcast, the forgotten. Scrawl words of prophecy and Thus Saith the Lords on bathroom stalls and subway walls. Open the doors and windows of your home; it isn’t yours anymore. Sell your possessions: your smartphones and flat screens and designer garbage. Call strangers to repentance like it’s their name. Go into all the alley ways and classrooms and corporate offices and make disciples of these tiny nations. Rebel against the relativism and soulless machinery of this age so hard that you feel your teeth rattle in your skull. Walk barefoot across deserts. Diet on locusts and honey. Drink communion wine until you’re dizzy. Baptize in rivers, public pools, water fountains. Rename yourself: apostle, saint, prophet, Messiah-fanatic. Go down fighting with bruises on your knuckles and blood and Hallelujahs in your mouth. They can't kill us. They can’t kill someone who came out of the womb twice, who was crucified with the Nazarene Savior all those centuries ago, who laughs and flips the finger in the face of death; death can’t scare us anymore, we bare our teeth like gargoyles at it and hang up crucifixes like Christmas ornaments and rejoice at the emptiness of the tomb in the emptiness of liminal spaces. Christ is risen and we’re worshipping in an empty parking lot at 1 a.m. The Kingdom isn’t coming. It’s shaking and Wall Street is crumbling. The Kingdom isn’t coming, it’s here now. 

[brothersgrim]

MUSE AS A DEITY.

RULES: think carefully about your character and their development through their journey (canon or oc ) within their story. fill out the chart and tag whoever you want! multi-muses, feel free to pick any of your characters—just a few, or all of them. please repost, so the dash isn’t clogged with reblogs.

DEITY OF: death and the afterlife. 

ASSOCIATED WITH: darkness, burial grounds, lightning, magic, abandoned and secret places, mourning, justice, judgement, power, motorcycles, travelling, tattoos.

SACRED PLANTS: nightshade, lavender, weeping willow, black rose, tumbleweed, tobacco, acacia, bay leaf, ivy, amaranth, witch-hazel, and dogwood.

SACRED STONES/GEMS: granite, marble, amethyst, obsidian, onyx, silver, and iron.

SACRED ANIMAL/S: black dogs, ravens, bats, coyotes.

COLOURS: black, silver, purple. 

FOOD: alcohol (esp. whiskey and red wine), cooked meats, pomegranates, apples.

SCENTS: fresh turned earth, dust, musty rooms, cold stone, wood, sawdust, embalming fluid, gasoline, motor oil, leather polish, alcohol, sweat, ozone, rain. 

ACCEPTED OFFERINGS/WAYS TO HONOUR: the kneeling salute is usually used for prayers or formal offerings. Bloodletting. Libations. Dressing in dark clothes. Many followers will find a nearby graveyard and perform small acts of maintenance, eg weeding or picking up litter, or put offerings at graves. More devout followers may carve or tattoo his sigil into their flesh. Forehead is the one for the REAL fanatics, but a lot of people do arm or shoulder blade or chest and that’s fine, too. Sacrifices. Animal or human. April 19th is a holy day, May 19th a somber day. Burying things. Ringing bells, the more low-pitched the better. If you do your rituals and things at night, so much the better. Celebrate lightning storms. Read omens. Especially night time bike rides. 

DEITY OF: fire and vengeance 

ASSOCIATED WITH:  scars, imprisonment, anger, solitude, recovery, liminal spaces, retribution, escape/new starts, facades, resilience, hiding, secrecy, truth.

SACRED PLANTS: red roses (especially buds), moss, thistle, yew tree, forget-me-not, asphodel, nettle, rue, red dahlia, mushrooms, wormwood, and touch-me-nots. 

SACRED STONES/GEMS: ruby, garnet, gold, fool’s gold, copper, tiger’s eye, bloodstone, flint, coal. 

SACRED ANIMAL/S: feral dogs, stray cats, salamanders, badgers. 

COLOURS: red, black.

FOOD: raw meat, water, bread.

SCENTS: burning wood, smoke, must, mildew, antiseptic, heated metal, rotting meat, sandalwood, leather/leather polish, ointment, sulfur, old paper.

ACCEPTED OFFERINGS/WAYS TO HONOUR: Burning things. Taking your medication if you have any. Wearing masks. Getting revenge on people who have wronged you. Breaking chains  and/or locks or cutting ropes. Leaving doors unlocked. More devout followers may ritualistically scar themselves. Another way to show devotion is to wear a contact or patch over your right eye (or blind yourself, but again, that’s extreme.) Also sacrifices, human and animal. Both keeping and breaking secrets. Starting a new chapter in life or reinventing yourself. Grow your hair long then shave it off. Fast. Meditate. Burn more things. 

 TAGGED BY: @softestmood TAGGING: anyone and everyone who wants to and hasn’t done it yet :0

[redorblue]

An ode to Musa Yeswi (from The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, by Arundhati Roy)

(This was originally a part of this post where I talk more generally about The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Tilo’s character and the peculiar structure of the book. But that post got way out of hand, so I decided to split it up.)

So, Musa. On the surface, his life appears to be nothing but a string of tragedies, with him as a simple vehicle that the author uses to tell us about how fucked up the situation in Kashmir is. After all, he was pretty much forced into the underground after Amrik Singh made him his newest source of entertainment, and “underground” in this context means that he’ll have to join the rebellion. But I think that is a very superficial view on his character. For me, the two defining aspects of his personality are his sense of justice and his bond to the people and the valley of Kashmir. Sure, he could have fled to some faraway place in India, or elsewhere, kept his head down and hoped that Amrik Singh’s network doesn’t stretch that far. That wouldn’t have been easy, but theoretically doable. In reality, however, going someplace else wasn’t really an option. He’s tried that already with studying in Delhi, and even though he obviously knew how bad the situation was back home, he still chose to return after he graduated because he doesn’t want to live anywhere else. He loves Kashmir and his people with all his heart. So the underground it is - because he can’t bear the injustices done to them, because he owes it to his daughter to be brave, because he can’t run away from his grief and this might be the only way to work through it.

And it takes a toll on him, of course it does. It’s heartbreaking how both he and Tilo remark on how he has become less substantial (smudged, as Tilo calls it) than he used to be, which is such an on-point metaphor for what being in a war (and a pretty hopeless guerilla war at that) does to a person. But in his thought processes and his interactions with Tilo (and briefly with Garson Hobart - I can’t remember his real name for the life of me) show that he’s - maybe not the same person as before, but a person, a complete human being, which is a lot more that what you usually get. I mean, let’s face it: he’s a Muslim in a rebel organisation, which is more than enough to get you labels such as terrorist, fanatic, extremist etc. I was a bit afraid that someone in my book club would call him that, because my reaction would have probably got me banned from the book shop. There are so many instances where you can see how kind a heart he has, how intelligent he is, how caring - and yes, also how much he suffers from seeing his people suffer and how he puts everything he has into make it right, but what’s important here is that it’s not his only defining feature. There are so many scenes that I could cite here, but I’ll try to restrict myself.

“The meal was delectable. Musa was a relaxed, accomplished cook.” (p. 431) I know it doesn’t sound like much, but that was the one line that drove home how much I adore his character. It’s from his last visit to Delhi when he accidentally meets Garson Hobart. Theoretically, they’re on diametrically opposed sides of the conflict that has been eating Musa’s life for years, and he’s still able to see his old friend from uni days instead of some guy who used to be pretty high up in his enemy’s hierarchy. They spend time together, they talk, and in the end Musa cooks for Garson Hobart which says so much about his character - how he sees people instead of sides, how he has at some point in his life taken the time to learn how to cook (and getting good at it) instead of relying on some female relation to do it for him, as the stereotype demands, how he still wants to spend some time with an old acquaintance even though he already got what he came for. Maybe I’m reading too much into this scene, but for me it just really encompasses much of what I love about him.

“This is the worst part of the Occupation… what it makes us do to ourselves. This reduction, this standardization, this stupidification… […] if and when we achieve it… will be our salvation. It will make uns impossible to defeat. First it will be our salvation and then… after we win… it will be our nemesis. First Azadi.Then annihilation. That’s the pattern. (p. 371) This scene is taken from when Tilo visits Kashmir for the first time and watches Musa pray - also for the first time. Superficially it might read as him saying Islam/religion in general = stupidification, but I think there’s more to it. First of all, as this passage clearly shows, Musa is not stupid, and second, in a room alone with Tilo he has no need to perform uniformity, so he must actually enjoy the ritual of prayer - maybe as a way to bring him some peace of mind, but definitely not because he wants to eclipse his personhood or something. What he does comment on, I think, is the way that Islam/religion/ideology (not sure which) is used to turn ordinary people into a fighting force. He doesn’t use any of the essentialistic, short-sighted allegations on Islam that are frequently thrown around (the book in general has a very positive portrayal of Muslims), but he looks at it from a functionalist perspective from where it’s indistinguishable from any other ideology ever invented. But this instrumentalization of Islam is clearly separated from the spiritual/personal dimension encompassed by him getting up early in the morning to pray.

“We’ll win this war, and then we’ll be together, you and I. I’ll wear a hijab - although you look lovely in this one - and you can take up arms. OK?” (p. 389) This scene takes place a few pages later, when Tilo prepares to go back to Delhi and she and Musa have to say goodbye to each other. On the one hand, it’s very romantic - not because of the “and then we’ll be together”, but because it’s a white (and very obvious) lie that Tilo needs to hear at that moment (just before that, she witnessed Gulrez’ murder and was interrogated at the Shiraz). On the other hand, it shows that the two of them have a great dynamic that’s not stuck in gender roles. He uses gendered images here to convey that the current situation is a reversal of their normal dynamic where Tilo is more of a revolutionary than he is, but at the same time he shows that he doesn’t really care about the conventions attached to those images. He’s an armed fighter and a commander, which is as manly as it gets when it comes to jobs, but he doesn’t attach any intrinsic value to his role. He doesn’t feel the need to constantly reaffirm his masculinity because his sense of self is not as fragile as that. And if that’s not attractive, I don’t know what is.

Babajaana - do you think I’m going to miss you? You are wrong. I will never miss you, because you will always be with me. (p. 342) This is another snippet that could be cheesy if taken out of context, but here… it really isn’t. These are the first two lines in a letter that Musa writes to his dead daughter the day after her funeral. The whole letter is a work of art, it’s that beautiful, and he never finishes it, which breaks my heart into tiny pieces. It also ties nicely into one of the big topics of this book: the issue of borders and borderlands. In this book, the stories of all the characters deal with the things that separate people and put them into categories, be it gender, religion, caste, physical distance our, as in this case, life and death. However, the book doesn’t stop at criticizing those borders and revealing their artificial nature, it also transcends them. For the gender divide, there’s Anjum who doesn’t really feel at homereally on either side of the gender binary and finds a solution in the liminal space that’s occupied by Hijras. For religion as well as caste, there’s Saddam Hussein who was born a lower caste Hindu and looks for a way to escape both logical frameworks by pretending to be Muslim. For physical distance, there’s Tilo and Musa’s relationship that regularly bridges years of separation and vastly different experiences in life. And for life and death, there’s the graveyard that is turned into a ministry of utmost happiness when it’s inhabited by people who have found a home in each other. And this. This beautiful sentence that a grieving father writes to his daughter who was taken from the world in an act both utterly random and and frighteningly systemic. The same sentiment is mirrored at the end of the book, when Tilo gets the news of Musa’s death, and although it’s hard for her, she has the same feeling: that he isn’t really gone, that she can still be with him on the other side of a border that is, like so many others, not as unforgiving as it seems.And that view, that lesson is definitely the opposite of Musa’s life being nothing but a string of tragedies.

[liminalfortune]

The Eyes are watching. Do you see them?

[experimentsinsimultaneoustime]

[the essay] A rose is not a rose is not a rose is not a rose is a rose

Online, everything (every thought, action, object) is abstracted into language in order for it to exist.

The gap between a rose online and a rose IRL is big. At a basic level, the online rose is no longer in a garden, cared for, watered, subjected to the wind and the sun, rooted, dying. It no longer represents the blight of colonised land under the guise of exquisite beauty. This online rose, which we still call a rose, exists differently. This rose is floating in an absurdist multidimension. There is no residual association of smell or touch. Its context endlessly warps, its meaning endlessly shifts as people scroll past it. It multiplies to become stitched between photos of dogs, drunken nights out, holiday snaps, promotional selfies, sports highlights, amateur food photography, photos of art, individualised political outcries, inspirational encouragements, life achievements, a beer can in a gutter. Its value becomes contingent upon a heat map of relational engagement: views, likes, comments, shares. But even though the online rose loses heat – is quickly forgotten – it doesn’t die. It doesn’t decompose and get turned into some other energy-matter. It simply becomes lost, or archived, in an algorithmic soup of infinity, floating in the liminal space between existence and non-existence.

 In this way, the IRL rose and the online rose have become completely different things. The meaning of the word ‘rose’ has been stretched to encompass a whole new set of relations, contingent on the inherent political structure of a global network (the internet) where information (language) defines currency (value). Eventually, the online rose has nothing to do with the original meaning of the word rose. In fact, the constant shapeshifting of the online rose’s relational environment means its own meaning is constantly deferred, until it doesn’t even have anything to do with itself anymore. It just refers to other things, which in turn just refer to other things, until we are nowhere.

 And because the internet is an ideological triumph of planetary capitalism, the meaning of everything online is at the mercy of (mostly) straight, white, male coders. They are the invisible power brokers of the abstraction of language into flows of information, where value is perpetually postponed in order to keep you wanting, and beauty is a mirage you hope you can click yourself towards. The rose is now unattainable.

 On 3 July, 2016 @britneyspears regrammed a photo of a white-pink rose from @drewbarrymore’s Instagram. Britney’s post, uncaptioned, received 74,921 likes and 539 comments. Perfect. Perfection. Britney… That was amazing. Thank you so much. Wooww. Lovee. Love it. I hate flowers. Wonderful! I love you. Omg. Any news on the new single? Pretty rose. That’s gorgeous. Wow. Lmao but wow. Pretty just like you Britney. Remember when u shaved your head? A beautiful rose for a beautiful woman.

 @drewbarrymore’s original photo of the rose, posted over a year earlier on 2 May 2015, was captioned #tgif and garnered 49,462 likes and 265 comments. Pretty flower!! Beautiful! :) That’s pretty. Ty for the very nice photos. Have a blessed weekend. O M G. I love flowers, thxs for sharing @drewbarrymore. Stay happy, healthy and blessed. Looks like it smells soooo good. Beautiful! Lovely. Love. Amazing!! So purty. I love you. I love u. Wow how beautiful that rose is!

 The rose has become a stand-in, a proxy, a conduit for understanding a series of personal histories, relational maps, unexpressed emotional states and ultimately, obsessive longing. This photograph has left its garden original to die in the dirt. It has travelled globally, transmuting to represent Drew Barrymore’s position in the market as a real person who “gets it”, as well as a symbol to express thanks to God that the working week has ended, as well as setting a relational connection between Drew Barrymore and Britney Spears, where siloed fanworlds have momentarily crossed wires as Britney’s identity transcends crazed LA celebrity to arrive at wholesome mother via the image of the rose.

 This essay itself is not about roses. It’s about the deferral of meaning, it’s about the alienating experience of objects being out of place. How can we bypass the capitalist architecture of the endless scroll, the trauma of language distancing meaning from lived experience?

 The reason deferral happens is not so much because language is inherently abstract, as because we’re experiencing this process through a dominant paradigm that prescribes lived experience as a linear timescale. How can we sit in a simultaneous multiplicity of meanings that produce value in the present moment? How can we arrange ourselves for eternal gratification?

 It’s not ordinarily possible to know about, or have the capacity to feel things, that have happened or are going to happen, outside of the present moment in which they are actually happening.

 But there are fissures in this world, that allow us to bypass the laws of our own brains, to hack logic and enter into feeling, or rather, to turn feeling into logic so that they are the same.

 Memory, belief, imagination, acid, ghosts, dreams, dancing, de ja vou and sex are just some states that invoke simultaneous time.

 I could feel us fucking for days before it happened, and for days after. The actual lived moment of physical impact was so intense, as if it were all of the echoes of before and after combined, I cried and hid my tears. Even though now, I’m walking down the street, I’m eating ramen, I’m sitting at my computer, I’m talking to a friend, it still feels like part of me is fucking you / being fucked by you. In a queer mind all love is happening simultaneously.

 Simultaneous time makes the rose attainable again, without denying its mutability. It validates the way we love each other beyond the impossibility of our present set of circumstances, and how that experience is not deferred but embodied. Simultaneous time doesn’t erase the past and the future, or the potential and unlived versions of it, but rather suggests that everything is in a constant state of happening. You can tap in and feel / know any part of it at any time. It can be intensely happy and it can be intensely sad and it can be both / all at once.

 I’m in a state of exhaustion but I can’t sleep. In my pre-dream mind, I’m kissing you outside that Italian restaurant where we both ordered lasagnes and watermelon granitas at the bar before I gave you a deck of tarot cards that I ordered online, even though I don’t believe in tarot cards, which I wrapped so neatly in paper from my notebook, and watched you unwrap so carefully, and felt kind of self-conscious as you unwrapped it, because I didn’t know how you felt about anything, because you hadn’t told me, though I would find out later via text message that your ex-boyfriend wants you back. In my pre-dream mind, I’m imagining the kiss that I pre-meditated and then didn’t act on when you actually arrived. I feel both the absence and presence of that kiss as I run my phone battery flat listening to rain sounds on YouTube, eyes closed, simulating the conditions for sleep.

 It’s impossible to describe this relationship because it exists almost entirely in a state of deferral, of ambiguous instant messages and deep longing and overlapping timescales we can’t extricate ourselves from to just be together, even though we share an intense reality of the possibility. And because it’s impossible to describe, it’s impossible to locate, and so it tends to exist wherever it can, in moments where it shouldn’t. Simultaneous time recognises that love is non-linear.

 I can feel your hips trembling around me that night my flight was cancelled, and it makes my heart cramp with hurt.

 If Britney Spears is the ultimate embodiment of the split between object and meaning in a linear capitalist framework of pleasure deferral, simultaneous time returns her to herself, and to her fans. It validates her incoherence, and it validates the fanatics’ fantasy as an embodied reality that manifests as feeling and identity.

 We’re back out on the street after the sweat catharsis of a 25-and-a-half-hour rave that we experienced for four hours, not touching. You’re wearing a pink bucket hat and the air is cold and you’re tired and we talk seriously about Big Life Decisions and whether he should be the one to love you. It’s really bad timing, you apologise.

 At the tram stop, back in singular time, where I have to wait for 9 linear, non-cosmic minutes, a seagull eats the crumbs of my chilli flavoured chips and I wonder if that’s bad.

[tanmath3-blog]

THIS IS GOING TO HURT.

The eleven stories in Ugly Little Things explore the depths of human suffering and ugliness, charting a course to the dark, horrific heart of the human condition. The terrors of everyday existence are laid bare in this eerie collection of short fiction from the twisted mind of Todd Keisling, author of the critically acclaimed novels A Life Transparent and The Liminal Man.

Travel between the highways of America in “The Otherland Express,” where a tribe of the forsaken and forlorn meet to exchange identities. Witness the cold vacuum of space manifest in the flesh in “The Darkness Between Dead Stars.” Step into the scrub of rural Arizona and join Karen Singleton’s struggle to save her husband from a cult of religious fanatics in “When Karen Met Her Mountain.” Visit the small town of Dalton in “The Harbinger” and join Felix Proust as he uncovers the vile secrets rooted at the heart of Dalton Dollworks. And in the critically acclaimed novella “The Final Reconciliation,” learn the horrifying truth behind the demise of the rock band The Yellow Kings.

With an introduction by Bram Stoker Award-winner Mercedes M. Yardley and illustrations by Luke Spooner, Ugly Little Things will be your atlas, guiding you along a lonely road of sorrow, loss, and regret. This is going to hurt—and you’re going to like it.

      1. How old were you when you first wrote your first story?

The first story I wrote (that I remember, anyway) was in 1989. I was barely six years old, and believe it or not, my local newspaper published it. I guess I was destined to do this sort of thing.

2. How many books have you written?

Books written to completion: Eight. Books abandoned: Two. Books in progress: Three. Books published: Three.

3. Anything you won’t write about?

I’m not sure. I haven’t written a story yet that made me step back and say, “No, I’m not writing that.” But that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

4. Tell me about you. Age (if you don’t mind answering), married, kids, do you have another job etc…

I’m 34, married, and I have a son who just started high school. By day, I work in accounting for a corporate entity that I’ve grown to loathe, but it pays my bills, provides health insurance for my family, and I like the people I work with. So there’s that.

5. What’s your favorite book you have written?

Right now? It’s definitely UGLY LITTLE THINGS: COLLECTED HORRORS!

6. Who or what inspired you to write?

My mom was a big reader, and I think my love of reading sprang from her. Stephen King and Dean Koontz were household names when I was growing up. Reading fed my imagination, which fed my creative instincts, and…I suppose the rest is history.

7. What do you like to do for fun?

I love to read, I love watching movies, and I love playing video games. Also, ritualistic human sacrifice and scaring my neighbors with ominous chanting. You know, the usual.

8. Any traditions you do when you finish a book?

Usually, when I’m close to finishing a book, everything else falls to the wayside while I sprint that last mile. That means I become a hermit in my own home. When the book’s finished, I step away from my computer for a few days and try to reintegrate into society.

9. Where do you write? Quiet or music?

I have a home office that serves as my domain. I always have music playing when I write. Quiet or loud, it doesn’t matter as long as it fits the scene I’m writing at the time. Lately, I’ve been listening to the new Nine Inch Nails, In This Moment, and old Monster Magnet while I work.

10. Anything you would change about your writing?

I wish I could write faster, cleaner first drafts, but I suppose every writer does…

11. What is your dream? Famous writer?

It’s probably the same as every other writer out there: I want to be successful enough with my work to quit my day job and support my family. I don’t care about the fame.

12. Where do you live?

Physically? Somewhere in the Reading area of Pennsylvania, in the United States, in North America, on planet Earth, 92.6 million miles from the sun.

Creatively, I’ve been living here for the last few months: 36°53’52.3″N 84°17’52.6″W

13. Pets?

I have three cats: A tuxedo named Tsar, an orange tabby named Obie, and a white Turkish Angora named Ophelia.

14. What’s your favorite thing about writing?

For me, it’s the aspect of creation, of conjuring something out of my imagination with mere words, giving it life, making it dance, and then sending it out into the world for others to experience.

15. What is coming next for you?

I’m currently at work on a long novel called DEVIL’S CREEK. It’s a small-town, cosmic horror novel. A few weeks ago, when I told Laird Barron about it, he jokingly asked, “Are the children in danger?” To which I replied, “No, the children are the danger.” I’ll leave it at that.

You can connect with Todd Keisling here:

My website:http://www.toddkeisling.com Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Todd-Keisling/e/B002RDT0T0 Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/todd.keisling/ Twitter: @todd_keisling Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/toddkeisling/

    Some of Todd Keisling’s books:

Getting personal with Todd Keisling THIS IS GOING TO HURT. The eleven stories in Ugly Little Things explore the depths of human suffering and ugliness, charting a course to the dark, horrific heart of the human condition.

[liminalfortune]

who’s up there?

[liminalfortune]

i’ve been breathing air but there’s no sign of life

[liminalfortune]

DONT TRUST THEM

[liminalfortune]

close your eyes