#spatial poetics

[studiokultuurscape]

"Every step I have taken has led me right here, right now"

~ On art, roundabouts and garden caretakers: how art develops an irresistable circular society... curious? Read more on the blog👇🏻👌🏻 (text also in english available)

[russellmoreton]

Gildengate Vessels : The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard. by Russell Moreton Via Flickr: russellmoreton.blogspot.com

[catilinas]

pinned post 👍 #beeps -> my posts #five consecutive vowels -> queue tag. count the vowels in 'queueing' #epistulaeposting -> translating cicero's letters and then letting his ghost email them to people

@e-pistulae -> cicero translation project

@lekythoi -> my film photography :*)

44 bce is going to be my year

[fatehbaz]

I'm very interested in tidalectics, I hadn't seen the word before finding your blog but from what I can find it seems very much up my alley. Is there anything you'd recommend reading for an introduction?

I use 'tidalectics' as a sort of shorthand for a constellation or archipelago (pun intended, lol) of related concepts maybe better described as 'archipelagic thinking' and 'poetics of Relation' by Edouard Glissant, 'repeating islands' by Benitez-Rojo/Brathwaite, and 'sea of islands' by Epeli Hau'ofa. I also use it for related things like Black Atlantic, 'Caribbeanist' thinking, 'oceanic thinking,' transnationalism, 'intimacies of four continents,' etc. Much of this deeply, deeply connected to Afro-Caribbean thinking and literature. Unsurprisingly. Comes up often in discussion of eco-poetics and the postcolonial. This discussion is kinda becoming vogue in environmental humanities ('blue humanities' and critical geography) and postcolonial studies, but this has of course been discussed for years and years and years by Caribbean and Pacific scholars, especially Glissant (Martinican/Caribbean), Brathwaite (Barbadian/Caribbean), Cesaire (Caribbean), and Hau'ofa (Tonga/Fiji/Pacific).

The Caribbean(ist) journal Small Axe has also been a big arena for discussing the concept. Two of my fave authors on colonial histories and multispecies ethnographies, Sujit Sivasundaram and Elizabeth DeLoughrey, also focus on oceanic/archipelagic thinking. Highly recommend those two. Another, Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, also covers Caribbean eco-poetics and frequently describes archipelagic thinking in accessible ways. You can search their names/publications for articles to read online. (Macarena Gomez-Barris--author of The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives--is currently working on a text about "fluidity of colonial transits and the generative space between land and sea.)

Heavily involves what you could describe as 'emotional ecologies' or 'environmental perception.' About the fluidity of tidal zones, the sea, mangroves, estuaries, deltas, seasonally flooded rivers. Very much about materiality of land/water/bodies, but also very much about imaginative place-making and belonging-in-space. Invokes centrality of ecology to place-making and identity. How these landscapes (tidal, seasonal, fluctuating, flowing) transcend, subvert, defy, exist beyond nation-state borders and bounded properties. Also implies transnational shared concerns of people inhabiting sacrifice zones and imperial peripheries (from Caribbean to Fiji to Philippines).

As intro, maybe:

Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures (Elizabetth DeLoughrey), especially introduction chapter: "Tidalectics: Navigating Repeating Islands"

"Toward a Critical Ocean Studies for the Anthropocene" (Elizabeth DeLoughrey, English Language Notes 57:1, 2019)

"The Political Ecology of Storms in Caribbean Literature" (Sharae Deckard, The Caribbean: Aesthetics, World-Ecology, Politics, 2016)

At this blog, I've previously tried to summarize it by condensing excerpts here: DeLoughrey's "Submarine Futures"; Paravisini-Gebert's Caribbean eco-poetics of extinction; archipelagic thinking in South Pacific; Harney, Moten, and Sandra Ruiz discussing archipelagic and continental thinking; oceanic fugitivity and "thinking at the land-water boundary" in Hawaii; the "horror of the sea" and "environmental histories of colonialism" compared in Caribbean vs. English/US lit; the "hurricane does not roar in pentameter," poetics of storms, and "special geography of the Caribbean" which provides an overview of Caribbean writers on relation; the "Black Mediterranean" and contemporary archieplagic thinking relating to refugees/migration (a lot more too, but can't go through archives where I'm stuck right now).

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Also has come to be provocative framework for thinking about non-literal islands. You'll see 'archipelago' also applied to other spatial and ideological formation things like 'carceral archipelagoes' and 'plantation archipelagos' and 'poverty archipelagos.' Basically, that US-European empire treated the Caribbean as a laboratory for how to isolate, contain, extract, commodify, and experiment on people, labor, land, industry, ecologies, etc. during instantiation of 'modernity.' (While Spain and Portgual played around with this in the Caribbean they also did something similar in the early modern spice gardens and ports of Southeast Asia, while Britain/France/US continued similar in both regions too. So archipelagos of both 'East' and 'West' brutalized.) Added weight because British and then later US naval force understood and capitalized on importance of oceanic networks to maintaining global empire (think British Navy; Lisa Lowe's writing on Britain importing Chinese and South Asian laborers to Caribbean during technical abolition of chattel slavery; US building Panama Canal; US naval force in twentieth century linking Philippines, Hawaii, Panama, Puerto Rico). You might've seen me talk about Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt and others writing on the history of British takeover of Bengal 1780s-1850s, and how the seasonality and deltas and rivers frustrated imperial attempts to fix and tax property; Elizabeth Povinelli describes this process of colonial fixation of 'solid' land in Northern Territory in Australia, too.

And these forms persist in extractivist settings and spatiality of labor, incarceration, industrial sites. Think Cancer Alley in Louisiana; archipelagos of Southeast Asian, West African, or Brazilian plantations along corridors of highways and railroads; low-income residential neighborhoods or 'workforce' housing compartmentalized along transportation corridors near logistics nodes; prisons in upstate New York; Commencement Bay's industrial sites and immigrant detention in Seattle-Tacoma, etc. Like hotspots or blinking lights along corridor. Australia, the US, and the EU all still use islands for migrant detention. At the same time, if global empire yokes together East and West, then empire's malcontents can perform the same trick. You can look at correspondences and writing from colonial subjects and radicals in like 1890s who explicitly described how anticolonial actors could and should also invoke transnational networks. (Linking networks in Buenos Aires, Havana, Los Angeles, Barcelona, Paris, Cairo, Istanbul, Tokyo, etc. And today still, too. Archipelagos of cooperation, not just on islands. What happens in a housing commune in Athens is related to movements in Puerto Rico, connected by defiance of same empire, market, capital, etc.

So since at least 1500-ish, 'globalized' world(s) involve circuits, networks, routes, often mediated by the sea. But people living on islands often have relationship with that sea long predating modernity. Glissant and others talk about a submarine/subterranean connecting tissue between islands, so that, even if they are apparently physically isolated or separated by Hispanophone/Francophone linguistic tradition, there is something akin, shared, in common.

But more than that: Relationality and relation to landscape asserts agency, autonomy, belonging. Especially with Glissant, this involves language, poetics, translation, reclamation of 'submarine' histories. Hau'ofa says "we are the ocean."

Maybe reminiscent of Indigenous resurgence, constellations of resistance, fugitivity, opacity/refusal, pedagogies of deep listening, maroons/marronage, resonances, and writers like Harney and Moten, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Achille Mbembe, Katherine McKittrick, Sylvia Wynter, Dixa Ramirez D'Oleo, and others.

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Anyway, four classics:

The Arrivants: A New World Trilogy (Rights of Passage; Islands; Masks) (Kamau Brathwaite, 1973)

The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective (Antonio Beniteze-Rojo, 1989)

The Archipelago Conversations (Eduoard Glissant and Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2021)

We Are the Ocean: Selected Works (Epeli Hau'ofa, 2008)

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And some others:

"Submarine Futures of the Anthropocene" (Elizabeth DeLoughrey, Comparative Literature 69:1, 2017)

Waves Across the South: A New History of Revolution and Empire (Sujit Sivasundaram, 2021)

"Archipelagic Interiority: Notes and Reflections on Poetic Voice and Trans Writing in the Philippines" (shane carreon, Kohl 9:1 Special Issue: Anticolonial Feminist Imaginaries, 2023)

"On the Unfolding of Edouard Glissant's Archipelagic Thought" (Michael Wiedorn, Karib-Nordic Journal for Caribbean Studies 6:1, 2021)

"Wet Ontologies, Fluid Spaces: Giving Depth to Volume through Oceanic Thinking" (Philip Steinberg and Kimberley Peters, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 33:2, 2015)

"New Materialisms, Old Humanisms, or, Following the Submersible" (Stacy Alaimo, NORA-Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research)

"Sensing Grounds: Mangroves, Unauthentic Belonging, Extra-Territoriality" (Natasha Ginwala and Vivian Ziheri, e-flux Journal Issue #45, May 2013)

"Storied Seas and Living Metaphors in the Blue Humanities" (Serpil Oppermann, Configurations 27:4, 2019) and Blue Humanities: Storied Waterscapes in the Anthropocene (Edited by Serpil Oppermann, 2023)

Hydrofeminist Thinking with Oceans: Political and Scholarly Possibilities (Edited by Tamara Shefer, Vivenne Bozalek, and Nike Romano, 2024)

"From the black Atlantic to the bleak Pacific: Re-reading "Benito Cereno"" (Alexandra Ganser, Atlantic Studies 15:2, 2018)

"Literary Ecologies of the Indian Ocean" (Hofmeyer, English Studies in Africa 62:1, 2019)

"Archipelagic Readings: towards a Poetics of Creolization" (Hugues Azerad, Trans-Revue de litterature generale et comparee, Special Issue: Insularities/Archipelagos, 2020)

"Water Enclosure and World-Literature: New Perspectives on Hydro-Power and World-Ecology" (Campbell and Paye, Humanities 9:106, 2020)

"A Poetics of Planetary Water: The Blue Humanities after John Gillis" (Sidney Mentz, Coastal Studies and Society, 2022)

"Tending the Forests Beneath Anthropocene Seas" (Williams and Zalasiewicz, in Oceans Rising: A Companion to Territorial Agency: Oceans in Transformation, 2022)

"Caribbean Archipelagos and Mainlands: Building Resistance against Climate Change" (Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, The Black Scholar 51:2, 2021)

Colonial Phantoms: Belonging and Refusal in the Dominican Americas, from the 19th Century to the Present (Dixa Ramirez D'Oleo, 2018)

"Oceanic Routes: (Post-it) Notes on Hydro-Colonialism" (Bystrom and Hofmeyer, Comparative Literature 69:1, 2017)

"Foreword: Ocean Space and the Marine Social Sciences" (McKinley, in The Routledge Handbook of Ocean Space, 2023)

"Atomic histories and elemental futures across Indigenous waters" (Hi'ilei Julia Hobart, Media + Environment 3:1, 2021)

"On Oceanic Fugitivity" (Hi'ilei Julia Hobart, Ways of Water series by Social Science Research Council, 2020)

Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (Alexis Pauline Gumbs, 2020)

"Materialities in the Making of World Histories: South Asia and the South Pacific" (Sujit Sivasundaram, Oxford Handbook of History and Material Culture: World Perspectives, 2020)

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Thanks, take care.

[thewertsearch]

Cal, get the fuck out of the frame. You're obliterating the vibe.

GG: ummmmmm hey guys i hope im not interrupting!!! TA: well, yeah, y0u kind 0f were […] AA: sollux try to be polite […] AA: jade is very nice and she did nothing wrong AA: none of them did so when you wake up maybe you should try to reconcile with them [...] TA: did Y0U? AA: did i what TA: be nice t0 them 0r whatever bef0re y0u expl0ded. AA: well no […] [Robo]AA: what actually happened after i died it sounds complicated

Not significantly moreso than your life was.

Although, this is additional evidence that Aradia had no idea she was going to resurrect on Derse. Even our most knowledgeable Player is less clued-in than she thinks.

GG: i have just been enjoying these little naps more and more lately! GG: each time i go to sleep i meet more new people and learn so much GG: but i still cant get karkat to take a nap, boy talk about a guy who is anti nap! TA: ahahahah, yeah, what a d0uche! GG: seeeeeriously!

A more pissed-off Jade meets a less pissed-off Sollux, and they're meeting in the middle for some Mage/Witch solidarity.

The guy's been free of his Voices for about two minutes, and he's already bonding with the humans he used to hate. Here for it!

GG: […] i should really thank feferi again for setting it up so we could meet like this! TA: wait, ff is here? […] TA: 0h g0d, why didn't that 0ccur t0 me, where is she?? GG: ummm probably in another bubble GG: but youll find her! maybe during your next nap… TA: well shit, why can't i just g0 glub ar0und 0ut there in the ring and find her n0w? […] AA: navigating between bubbles is difficult here AA: its better to drift between them naturally as they intersect AA: not spatially but through common points in memory

I'm starting to understand the mechanics here. You start out in a bubble simulating one of your memories, but you can move to adjacent bubbles if they're simulating the same scene, regardless of who is remembering it.

So, initially, you can only visit people that you share memories with - but after that, you can visit someone they share memories with, and so on. Eventually, you can visit anyone in the Ring, provided you're linked by some chain of memories.

It's easy to imagine how Jade arrived here. She wasn't originally present for this memory, but she has spoken to Aradia before, and probably joined her bubble while it was simulating one of their Pesterchum conversations. You don't get kicked out of a bubble when it changes, so Jade was able to stay after it morphed into Alternia. If she wanted to find someone she'd never met, such as Dad Egbert, she'd have to visit John's bubble as an intermediate.

Aradia's a special case, since she can circumvent normal bubble navigation by flying out of bounds - presumably because, unlike all her companions, she's here in the flesh.

AA: to navigate the furthest ring you need to have mastered the flow of time! AA: that is why i am here AA: i am alive again so i may assist the dead in this way

It's poetic, I think, that the ex-ghost is the one managing the affairs of the dead. I guess she knows how disorienting it is to be suddenly disembodied.

[leibal]

Curved Attic is a minimal home located in Valencia, Spain, designed by Destudio. The project, as the name suggests, demonstrates how architectural intervention can transform spatial constraints into poetic advantages, particularly through its thoughtful integration of a sculptural spiral staircase that serves as both a functional element and a dramatic centerpiece.

[bardic-tales]

The following is from a Tumblr game that went on a few months ago. I found it in my Scrivener drafts under Bia's character folder.

Full Name: Bianca Moore

Age: 28 (human years)

Gender: Female

Species: Celestial-Infernal Nephilim (hybrid of angelic and demonic lineage, infused with Jenova cells and S-cells)

Sexuality: Demisexual

Appearance:

(Pre-Fall): Bianca has golden hair that frames her brown eyes with round pupils and flawless skin. She stands 5 feet tall with an hourglass figure, measuring 36-24-36, and wears a D cup. She has elongated canines with white wings.. Her eyes glow with a golden sheen when she is using her divine powers.

(Post-Fall) Bianca's appearance is marked by indigo eyes with feline-like pupils, waist-length wavy black hair styled in a half-up half-down do with a white ribbon, and porcelain skin. She has sharp fangs, a long prehensile tongue, and blood-red stiletto nails. Her wings are a mix of black and indigo feathers, embodying her corrupted celestial and demonic heritage with Jenova and S-cells.

Occupation: Published romance novelist / Self-Proclaimed Priestess of Jenova

Family Members:

Biological Father: Azrakiel (also known as Asmodeus)

Surrogate Father: David Moore

Biological Mother: Seraphine

Surrogate Mother: Sarah Moore

Daughter: Aurora (Sephiroth & Bianca’s)

Son: Lucien (Sephiroth & Bianca’s)

Spouse/Partner: Sephiroth (current), Mordecai (deceased)

Best Friends: Sephiroth (also her soulmate) Pets: None (sometimes refers to the Dark Dragon as her 'pet')

Ideal Bedroom: Bianca's room is a blend of elegance and gothic charm. Soft, ethereal lighting illuminates dark walls adorned with silver filigree patterns. A large, canopy-style bed with black silk sheets and feather pillows dominates the space, complemented by bookshelves filled with ancient tomes and romance novels. A single vase with white roses sits on her desk, next to a framed photo of Sephiroth.

Way of Speaking: Bianca speaks with a soft, sultry tone, choosing her words carefully. Her speech often carries an air of poetic eloquence, masking the sharp wit and occasional venom beneath.

Physical Characteristics: Petite yet striking, Bianca stands at 5 ft tall with a curvaceous hourglass figure. Her weight is 105 lbs (128.6 lbs with her wings). Her most distinguishing features are her indigo eyes, sharp fangs, and intricate wings.

Items in Their Bag/Purse:

A black notebook and pen for jotting down ideas

Healing salves (potions) and antidotes

A compact mirror and blood-red lipstick

Ornate silver hairpin with a ruby tip.

Hobbies:

Writing romance novels

Reading ancient texts and poetry

Practicing swordsmanship

Exploring ruins and celestial lore

Favourite Sport: Swordplay, particularly dueling

Abilities/Talents/Powers:

Abilities: Reality manipulation, shadow magic, ice spells, and casting nightmares. She can also communicate with the souls of the departed and navigate temporal and spatial rifts. Can fly

Talents: Journeyman swordswoman and an adept in manipulation and persuasion.

Powers: Her celestial powers are corrupted, allowing her to bend reality and wield destructive energy. They come at the cost of emotional and physical stability.

Relationships: Bianca is devoted to Sephiroth, sharing a deep soul bond and a history of trauma bonding. Her relationships are marked by loyalty and passion, but her past losses (Mordecai, her first husband, and other loved ones) deeply affect her trust and attachments.

Fears:

Losing Sephiroth to Asmodeus or his madness

Reliving her traumatic experiences with Shinra and Hojo

Being captured or experimented on again

Faults:

Obsessive devotion to Sephiroth, often leading to morally questionable decisions

Emotional instability due to her corrupted powers

A tendency to manipulate others to achieve her goals

Good Points:

Fierce loyalty and determination

Compassion for those she loves and considers family

A creative and strategic thinker

What They Want More Than Anything Else: To bring about a new world alongside Sephiroth, fulfilling both their destinies and securing their place as rulers of a reborn omniverse.

Theme(s):

tagging some fellow mutuals: @themaradwrites @littleshopofchaos @serenofroses @megandaisy9 @watermeezer

@nightingaleflow @prehistoric-creatures @creativechaosqueen @chickensarentcheap @prehistoric-creatures

@seastarblue

[chthonicgodling]

Sunsets in the Elysian Fields // Elysium’s sunshine

[ft. Maci x2; Celos, Py; Røkia]

there is no real sun in the Elysian Fields! The Underworld is underground. But across the “sky” of Elysium’s golden protective safety barrier, the artificial light of the false sun beautifully rises and sets and it’s all the same colors of the Princess💕

okay now onto the significantly less poetic paragraphs: haha Maci’s realm as Goddess of Elysium is such a bullshit sphere of influence her powers have nothing to do with anything in Elysium, SHE wants nothing to do with any of the functioning in Elysium, she can’t even control that safety barrier that surrounds the place to “keep evil out,” but HEY she’s got Maci-color-themed skies!! What more could anyone ask for, she argues legitimately!! She’s got the easiest job in the world!!

I drew the second pic first bc I just default to Maci doodles and uhhh then realized I’ve drawn basically this EXACT drawing before, so added the first slide as the primary illustration to feature here, loosely loosely matching. A moment at dusk with her babiest babies— newborn-ish Røkia, who I had yet to draw solo with his mama 🥹, and three year old twins Celos & Pyralis, who are entertaining themselves here with Maci’s hair and some dirt and putting dirt in Maci’s hair.

I refuse to make an active effort to improve on backgrounds but here is, incidentally, Something™. I have zero sense of spatial awareness and my brain does not conceptualize or visualize settings so I cannot tell you where specifically she is right now— garden? Palace Porch? There’s a pillar.. there… there’s pillars everywhere I guess idfk. That’s Fenixe’s job (so sayeth me right now, surprise to her, i refuse)

Anyway. Cute cute cute cute cute. Hopefully these successfully match together bc I think it’s kindave a stretch lmfao

fun Elysium’verse bonus fact: not only is there no sun in Elysium, there are also no stars, no moon, no rainy days🌟

this whole pile © to me :)

[studiokultuurscape]

Stop in motion.

Your walk is essential to shape the memory of space and the space of your memory.

~Part of the thesis "The building and the city": Vertical walk through the city of Arles_ Heritage mediates city transformation. Find the full thesis in the archive of KU Leuven.

[germanpostwarmodern]

The architecture of Carlo Scarpa isn’t one that reveals itself at only one glance. Instead it takes patience, attention and a sense for atmospheres, textures and materials to fully grasp the ingenuity of his works. Much of it can be attributed to his upbringing in Venice: the rich architectural and art history of the city instilled in him a natural sensibility for the combination of artistry, craft and construction as is e.g. present in the Byzantine and Baroque architecture in Venice where ornament, colors and light create unique spatial experiences. Scarpa, a modern Venetian nevertheless, translated this heritage into a modern architecture that bridged past and present without nostalgia. With poetic attention to detail he composed his designs in a process of continuous elaboration to make sure every detail was spot-on, a process that often accounted for long construction periods.

In a new account of Scarpa’s built works Emiliano Bugatti, Jale N. Erzen and photographer Cemal Emden provide a beautifully illustrated tribute to the Venetian master: „Carlo Scarpa - The Complete Buildings“, recently published by Prestel, chronologically presents a total of 54 buildings Scarpa saw through from project to completion. Proceeding from the Aula Mario Baratto of Ca’ Foscari University in Venice Emden in both general and detail views documents the immense quality of Scarpa’s architecture. Although plans are not included the book nonetheless captivates the reader by conveying the atmosphere and many-faceted materiality of each building. Some details even appear as works of art in their own right.

Emden’s photographs receive further context in Jale N. Erzen’s essay about the architect, appropriately titled „Carlo Scarpa’s World: Beauty and Meaning“: Erzen emphatically follows Scarpa’s development as architect, adds biographical details and also discusses the influence of Japan and poetry on his conception of architecture.

„Carlo Scarpa - The Complete Buildings” is a great addition to the catalogue of Scarpa literature and an emphatic portrait of the architect’s oeuvre. Highly recommended!

[altrbody]

Torkwase Dyson, Liquid a Place, Desert X, Palm Desert.

Torkwase Dyson describes herself as a painter working across multiple mediums to explore the continuity between ecology, infrastructure, and architecture.

Examining human geography and the history of Black spatial liberation strategies, Dyson’s abstract works grapple with the ways in which space is perceived, imagined and negotiated particularly by black and brown bodies. Dyson has distilled a vocabulary of poetic forms to address the spaciousness of freedom and question what type of climates are born out of world building.

[fatehbaz]

In February 2024, creature enthusiasts and popular media outlets celebrated what has been described as the 200-year anniversary of the formal naming of the "first" dinosaur, Megalosaurus.

There are political implications of Megalosaurus and the creature's presentation to the public.

In 1824, the creature was named (Megalosaurus bucklandii, for Buckland, whose work had also helped popularize knowledge of the "Ice Ages"). In 1842, the creature was used as a reference when Owen first formally coined the term "Dinosauria". And in 1854, models of Megalosaurus and Iguanodon were famously displayed in exhibition at the Crystal Palace in London. (The Crystal Palace was regarded as a sort of central focal point to celebrate the power of the Empire by displaying industrial technology and environmental and cultural "riches" acquired from the colonies. It was built to house the spectacle of the "Great Exhibition" in 1851, attended by millions.)

The fame of Megalosaurus and the popularization of dinosaurs coincided at a time when Europe was contemplating new revelations and understandings of geological "deep time" and the vast scale of the distant past, learning that both humans and the planet were much older than previously known, which influenced narrativizing and historicity. (Is time linear, progressing until the Empire is at this current pinnacle, implying justified dominance over other more "primitive" people? Will Britain fall like Rome? What are the limits of the Empire in the face of vast time scales and environmental forces?) The formal disciplines of geology, paleontology, anthropology, and other sciences were being professionalized and institutionalized at this time (as Britain cemented global power, surveyed and catalogued ecosystems for administration, and interacted with perceived "primitive" peoples of India, Africa, and Australia; the mutiny against British rule in India would happen in 1857). Simultaneously, media periodicals and printed texts were becoming widely available to popular audiences. For Victorian-era Britain, stories and press reflected this anxiety about extinction, the intimidating scale of time, interaction with people of the colonies, and encounters with "beasts" and "monsters" at both the spatial and temporal edges of Empire.

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Some stuff:

"Shaping the beast: the nineteenth-century poetics of palaeontology" (Laurence Talairach-Vielmas in European Journal of English Studies, 2013).

Fairy Tales, Natural History and Victorian Culture (Laurence Talairach-Vielmas, 2014).

"Literary Megatheriums and Loose Baggy Monsters: Paleontology and the Victorian Novel" (Gowan Dawson in Victorian Studies, 2011).

Bursting the Limits of Time: The Reconstruction of Geohistory in the Age of Revolution (Martin J.S. Rudwick, 2010).

Assembling the Dinosaur: Fossil Hunters, Tycoons, and the Making of a Spectacle (Lukas Rieppel, 2019).

Inscriptions of Nature: Geology and the Naturalization of Antiquity (Pratik Chakrabarti, 2020).

"Making Historicity: Paleontology and the Proximity of the Past in Germany, 1775-1825" (Patrick Anthony in Journal of the History of Ideas, 2021).

'"A Dim World, Where Monsters Dwell": The Spatial Time of the Sydenham Crystal Palace Dinosaur Park' (Nancy Rose Marshall in Victorian Studies, 2007).

Articulating Dinosaurs: A Political Anthropology (Brian Noble, 2016).

The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802-1856 (Ralph O'Connor, 2007).

"Victorian Saurians: The Linguistic Prehistory of the Modern Dinosaur" (O'Connor in Journal of Victorian Culture, 2012).

"Hyena-Hunting and Byron-Bashing in the Old North: William Buckland, Geological Verse and the Radical Threat" (O'Connor in Uncommon Contexts: Encounters between Science and Literature, 1800-1914, 2013).

And some excerpts:

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When the Crystal Palace at Sydenham opened in 1854, the extinct animal models and geological strata exhibited in its park grounds offered Victorians access to a reconstructed past - modelled there for the first time - and drastically transformed how they understood and engaged with the history of the Earth. The geological section, developed by British naturalists and modelled after and with local resources was, like the rest of the Crystal Palace, governed by a historical perspective meant to communicate the glory of Victorian Britain. The guidebook authored by Richard Owen, Geology and Inhabitants of the Ancient World, illustrates how Victorian naturalists placed nature in the service of the nation - even if those elements of nature, like the Iguanodon or the Megalosaurus, lived and died long before such human categories were established. The geological section of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, which educated the public about the past while celebrating the scale and might of modernity, was a discursive site of exchange between past and present, but one that favoured the human present by intimating that deep time had been domesticated, corralled and commoditised by the nation’s naturalists.

Text by: Alison Laurence. "A discourse with deep time: the extinct animals of Crystal Palace Park as heritage artefacts". Science Museum Group Journal (Spring 2019). Published 1 May 2019. [All text from the article's abstract.]

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[There was a] fundamental European 'time revolution' of the nineteenth century [...]. In the late 1850s and 1860s, Europeans are said to have experienced ‘the bottom falling out of history’, when geologists confirmed that humanity had existed for far, far longer than the approximately 6,000 years previously believed to represent the entire history [...]. ‘[S]ecular time’ became for many ‘just time, period’: the ‘empty time’ of Walter Benjamin. […] The European discovery of ‘deep time’ hastened this shift. [....] Historicism views the past as developments, trends, eras and epochs. [...] Victorians were intensely aware of ‘historical time’, experiencing themselves as inhabiting a new age of civilization. They were obsessed with history and its apparent power to explain the present […].

Text by: Laura Rademaker. “60,000 Years is not forever: ‘time revolutions’ and Indigenous pasts.” Postcolonial Studies. September 2021.

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At the time when geology and paleontology emerged as new scientific disciplines, [...] [g]oing back to the 1802 exhibition of the first Mastodon exhibited in London’s Pall Mall, […] showmanship ruled geology and ensured its popularity and public appeal [...]. Throughout the Victorian period, [...] geology was as much - if not more - sensational than the popular romances and sensation novels of the time [...]. [T]he "rhetoric of spectacular display" (26) before the 1830s [was] developed by geological writers (James Parkinson, John Playfair, William Buckland, Gideon Mantell, Robert Blakewell), "borrowing techniques from [...] commercial exhibition" [...]. The discovery of Kirkdale Cave in December 1821 where fossils of [extinct] hyena bones were discovered along with other species (elephant, mouse, hippopotamus) led Buckland to posit that the exotic animals [...] had lived in England [...]. Thus, the year 1822 was significant as Buckland’s hyena den theory gave a glimpse of the world before the Flood. [...] [G]eology became a market in its own right, in particular with the explosion of cheaper forms of printed science [...] in cheap miscellanies and fictional miscellanies, with geological romances [...] [...] or [fantastical] tropes pervading [...], "leading to a considerable degree of conservatism in the imagery of the ancient earth" (196). By 1846 the geological romances were often reminiscent of the narrative strategies found in Arabian Nights [...].

Text by: Laurence Talairach-Vielmas. A book review published as: “Ralph O’Connor, The Earth on Show: Fossils and the Poetics of Popular Science, 1802 - 1856.” Review published by journal Miranda. Online since July 2010.

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Dinosaurs, then, are malleable beasts. [...] [T]he constant reshaping of these popular animals has also been driven by cultural and political trends. [...] One of Britain’s first palaeontologists, Richard Owen, coined the term “Dinosauria” in 1842. The Victorians were relatively familiar with reptile fossils [...] [b]ut Owen's coinage brought a group of the most mysterious discoveries under one umbrella. [...] When attempting to rise to the top of British science, it helped to have the media on your side. Owen’s friendship with both Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray led to fond name-dropping by both novelists. Dickens’s Bleak House famously begins by imagining a Megalosaurus, one of Owen’s original dinosaurs. Both novelists even compared their own writing process to Owen’s palaeontological techniques. In the scientific community, Owen’s dinosaur research was first [criticized] by his [...] rival, Gideon Mantell, a surgeon and the describer of the Iguanodon. [...] Naming dinosaurs was a powerful way of claiming ownership [...]. Owen [...] knew the power of the press [...]. [M]useum exhibits [often] [...] flattered white patrons [...] by placing them at the apex of modernity. [...] Owen would not have been surprised to learn that the reconstruction of dinosaur bones is still an act that is entangled in politics.

Text by: Richard Fallon. "Our image of dinosaurs was shaped by Victorian popularity contests". The Conversation. 31 January 2020.

[majestativa]

The state of bemusement and incipient illumination which arises within certain settings, defined as lieux électifs — elective places, or sites conducive to the marvellous. A distinctive poetic response Is activated by the encounter with particular locations or spatial constructions — sinister passageways or benighted avenues in the city, dark precincts with enticing porticos and alcoves, oneiric mansions, alluring corridors or labyrinths, nocturnal parks, secret streams and clearings within woodland, mesmerising vistas and horizons.

— Roger Cardinal, Angels of Anarchy: Women Artists and Surrealism, (2009)

[thelostmetallurgist]

THE DWEMERI PHILOSOPHY OF LOVE: A TONAL TREATISE BY MZULAN ARCTUR NHEZTAR

(Recovered fragment from the Aether-Pack of Mzulan. Translated from Rourken-Acoustic Notation to Tamrielic script.)

🜂 “Love is a Harmonic Anomaly.”

“We were taught to refine. To calibrate. To strip the soul from the equation. But love... refuses precision. It is the hum beneath the tonal structure. The heartbeat that slips through the resonator's gate.”

I. The Five Tonal Expressions of Love (As Observed through Azhrina)

1. The Resonant Pull (Attraction)

“You cannot explain why one lattice sings with another. You simply feel it. Like standing too close to a charged amplifier. The vibration finds you.”

✧ Tonal Equivalent: Harmonic Phase Alignment.

✧ Symptom: Prolonged staring at subject. Excessive journal entries. Mild emotional combustion.

2. The Fracture Pulse (Fear)

“Even perfect constructs shudder. Fear enters when the harmonic shifts. When you ask: ‘What if I tune too close? What if I break her?’”

✧ Tonal Equivalent: Unstable Feedback Loop.

✧ Symptom: Avoidance, overthinking, forging unnecessary objects at 3am.

3. The Counterpoint Echo (Acceptance)

“She spoke and I did not correct her. That is love in its rawest form: the willingness to let another voice define part of your song.”

✧ Tonal Equivalent: Sustained Dual Frequency.

✧ Symptom: Shared plans, shared silences, mutual tuning of aetherial devices.

4. The Reverb Union (Intimacy)

“Her hand on mine was not a gesture. It was a joining. Like two notes touching in a vault that has never echoed before.”

✧ Tonal Equivalent: Spatial Merge Harmonics.

✧ Symptom: Skin-on-skin static, memory loops, heartbeats aligning with field resonance.

5. The Quiet Core (Commitment)

“I reforged my soul not with fire, but with her name carved into its structure.”

✧ Tonal Equivalent: Tonal Reinforcement Matrix (TRM)

✧ Symptom: Fear becomes calm. The forge burns steady. The mind accepts permanence.

II. Schematics of the Soul-Bond Circuit (In Progress)

(Crude drawing of two aether-resonant cores connected by tonal sinewaves. Azhrina’s sigil is etched into one. A small heart is drawn in the corner, then hastily scribbled out.)

THESIS: Emotional frequency may be more stable than tonal law assumed.

ACTION: Build twin Tonal Anchors for emotional transference in times of separation. (Working name: “The Echo Rings.”)

III. Addendum: Quotes and Doodles

🜂 “She asked me if I believed in fate. I told her I believed in vibrations. She kissed me anyway.”

🜂 “Kissing her felt like leaning too close to a tonal distortion. Dangerous. I did it again.”

🜂 (Doodle of Azhrina in her armor, planting flowers on top of a Dwemer control panel. Caption: “Sabotage via aesthetics.”)

🜂 (Schematic of a “Love Forge”—a mythical machine powered only by shared breath. Incomplete. Marked: “Not practical. Too poetic. Revisit after wine.”)

[nymphcria]

꒰ 🪷 ꒱  the weaver’s lexicon, volume i: foundations of the tapestry — as compiled by eiresi of chrysálios for general reference, public discourse correction, and foundational metaphysical literacy

꒰ ooc ꒱ i spent way too much time on this :< 

anyways!! this is a little bit about how lotus' species (?) kind of view the world, written like an academic textbook (kind of? i don't know) there will be another lore-related text coming soon!! written in this same format as this one :3

also i called lotus' species "fae" cause i'm too lazy to come up with some other name for them 

꒰ word count ꒱ 772

on the tapestry of the world

“one cannot navigate a web without first seeing how it’s strung.” — from common sayings of the lower realms, ed. unknown

introduction: understanding the frame before the picture

in recent decades, it’s become fashionable to speak of the tapestry in vague terms—some use it as a metaphor for fate, others for nature, or society, or love, or whatever else they’re currently fixated on. the actual structure of existence is more precise than that, and less poetic.

this book, and the ones that will follow it, exist to untangle that mess.

the world (and by world, i mean all of existence) is made up of a dual-loom structure: the loom above, which governs the abstract and celestial, and the loom below, which houses the tangible and the lived. 

side note: some esoteric traditions claim a third, hidden “inner loom” or “mirror weave,” but this text will not address that. 

i. the loom above

“that which we cannot climb to, but which climbs into us.”

the loom above is the metaphysical source of structure, pattern, and influence. it is not a place, not in the spatial sense. it is a system of intentions—nonlinear, layered, semi-conscious—that collectively forms what we call the celestial tapestry.

this is where the threads, those foundational forces that shape all things (covered in the next section), are born and maintained. but these forces do not govern themselves.

they are tended.

each of the four major threads—heart, mind, fate, and essence—is overseen by a singular, chosen being known as a star. these stars are not abstract ideals or myths. they are fae, real ones, born as any other fae is, but marked from the moment of emergence. the loom above selects them with signs, dreams, and omens, and once chosen, they become something other. not immortal, exactly, but close enough that the difference only matters in theory.

there are only ever four stars at once. when a star fades or dies (and they can), the loom chooses another. that’s rare. most millenia never see a succession.

the stars are not distant. they are not unfeeling. but they are burdened. each carries the weight of their thread- its balance, integrity, and will.

things that originate from the loom above tend to exhibit certain qualities:

universality – they recur across cultures, species, and epochs.

resonance – they evoke deep metaphysical reactions, often unexplainable but widely felt.

continuity – they are not easily broken or lost, only tangled or suppressed.

ii. the loom below

“here is where the needle stings.”

the loom below is the plane we inhabit. it is composed of matter, sensation, time, and consequence. while it is often thought of as a “mirror” of the loom above, that metaphor is flawed. mirrors reflect; the loom below interprets. it is translation, not duplication.

here, threads become tangible. they embed into people, places, storms, illnesses, decisions. they fray and twist. they interact with context, culture, and choice.

key features of the loom below:

mortality – all things decay, even those influenced by celestial threads.

interference – forces from the loom above manifest imperfectly, often colored by the vessel receiving them.

imbalance – because this realm lacks the precision of the upper loom, threads often conflict or knot. this is both a hazard and a necessity for growth.

some beings, particularly the fae, are more sensitive to the flow between looms (see volume iii: on the fae). this is not always a gift. sometimes, it’s the metaphysical equivalent of standing too close to a lightning rod.

iii. between the weaves

“where intention becomes form.”

while the two looms are conceptually distinct, they are not sealed off from one another. there is interplay—points where the above impresses upon the below and vice versa. these moments are often brief, difficult to predict, and dangerous to misunderstand.

events such as:

sudden inspirations with no logical cause

“thin places” in the world, where perception shifts

spontaneous descension events (see: on the fae)

inexplicable omens, shared dreams, mirrored symbols

...are all evidence of contact between the looms.

to navigate these thresholds responsibly, a working understanding of both layers is essential. that, of course, is the purpose of this entire collection.

 this volume is meant as a reference, not a holy text. if you take it as gospel, you’ve already misunderstood the spirit in which it was written. think with it. question it. that’s how one honours the loom.

[studioriver-dfts]

Kurt Schwitters, Picture of Spatial Growth - Picture with two small dogs, 1920-39 (Oil paint, wood, paper, cardboard and china on board)

This is a type of mixed-media work known as 'Merz', a term Schwitters coined in 1919 to describe 'the combination for artistic purposes of all conceivable materials'. According to this principle, found objects contain the same aesthetic potential as tubes of paint. Schwitters started this assemblage of discarded rubbish and printed papers in Germany in 1920. Seventeen years later he brought it with him to Norway, having escaped from Nazi Germany. There he added Norwegian material: theatre tickets, recipts, newspaper cuttings, scraps of lace, and a box with two china dogs. The different layers of collage reflect the artist's journey into exile.

Focus on collage: combining everyday objects and materials became a new technique for twentieth-century artists.

More than a century ago, artists began to use cut-up newspapers and pieces of wallpaper in their compositions. This technique brought recognisable pieces of everyday life into artworks.

Artists such Man Ray and Joan Mirò expanded this technique into three dimensions. They were attracted by the potential of combining discarded objects to create new forms. Their work draws on the surrealist idea that unexpected combinations can have an unsettling power. This often relates to violence or sexuality but is sometimes humorous too.

Subsequent generations of artists have brought images and objects together in new ways. Some continue to use this approach to create moments of poetic surprise. For others, collage is a way to analyse the images in advertising and mass media that surround us.