Truth arrives precisely when it becomes unusable. Chapter Twelve is live. 🔥

The pleasure that launched ten thousand words would one day hatch a terrible desire to be rid of you once and for all. And yet, you provoked it yourself, didn't you. You did. This is what actually made my stomach drop. I could never #betray you—never would have, but you pulled the trigger. #vss365

Understanding guides #intent in the one who above all things, loves well. We are driven by the calamities we endure, but we can temper pain with the nature which breathes life into every living thing.The shaft of light that burns through ice, the seed that bursts in spring, be like them. #vss365 ‎ ‎

Nobody patronised Kurt Vonnegut's writing by calling it "whimsy" because he wrote in a time when having a wild imagination and mixing extreme seriousness with extreme silliness wasn't seen as something freakish and troublesome to deal with for publishers.

"Word of The Day #77 FLAGXIETY (n.) The anxiety of being flagged as AI when you're a real writer who actually writes their own shit." — Ellis Elms

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‎Women who stayed #feral salute the strange, the insouciant, the ex-suicide. The ones you never saw again are out there, picking cactus spines from their bed rolls, so to speak, and not looking for rest save the fleeting kind. This is all the sustenance they require. They will outlive you. #vss365

‎You were #luminous in revolt, fragile and confrontational. In fear they took bitter blood from the hearth of your body. You fought back. Touching skyward, your words sharp as pointed stars—until they relented, only to lay unbreakable snares. But sun you are to us, we warm to your memory. #vss365 ‎

More fun with week two! 😁

The nature of their relationship did not lead to fulsomeness—neither disgust nor florescence, but to #barren obligation. More's the pity. He wanted to know the provenance of its sterility, but he could discern no logic in it. It was then that he learned the cruelty of the word incompatible. #vss365

No. There is no #forgiveness for you. None. Not after being dragged through all this exasperating, overly precious midwittery. There you go. There's a word for you, freshly minted. Ta, don't thank me. #vss365

I am not from the far river marshes, nor from the towerlands, nor the salons of the literati, nor the great library of the citadel, nor do I guard the secret scroll vaults of Alexandria, nor the words of the goddamned Oxford dictionary, but I know an #unalloyed cliché when I hear one. #vss365

‎In his diligence, he forgot others. Friends fell away, and family cut him off. He was audaciously talented, and hopelessly obsessed. His work was made to raise him to the firmament—to see God. And when he became blind, this was exactly what happened. He recited his works as incantation. #vss365

Robert makes a shocking discovery. Eleven is live 🔥

An almost intact Thermopolium site, a street food shop, with dishes of all kinds, from snails to a sort of "paella," which was discovered in Pompeii last December, bringing back an incredible snapshot of the day of the eruption in 79 AD. #History #Archeology

O #evenfall. Heavenful phantoms move vaulting and glowing an incendiary. Eerie half light bathes even star’s silvery path. All eyes follow the trajectory in hopes of knowing that which is inaccessible, what is lost, and what remains. And so, and so comes indigo. And sleep. And death. #vss365

‎Love is #fleeting. Peace is nothing if not impermanent—these mistakes are indelible. One does not ask for perfection, yet its memory plagues us until it's too late so say it never existed. We are strong. We are weak, Love and Hate, our secret business. We leave surprised by the transit. #vss365 ‎

‎I will two tales tell of fates unredeemed, two lives in times of grief and times of joy, and when forced conflict struck hard, Death came, and it was then the adversaries understood their folly. The one, #haunted by what could not be undone, the other haunting the act that knew no end. #vss365 ‎

Cry #misfit. Cry, cry, bébé. Cent projet après, t'as les dents aiguisées. Ai, ai, ai ai ai. Ouroboros, no one feels sorry for you. Gros fool, the circle is vicious on you. You weren't paying attention when everyone else became misfits, too. That's the world now, man. Wake up and look around. #vss365

Coming soon.🔥 When a man disappears, his reputation will defend or damn him.

"Fuck me, we've got a problem at depot 34a." That was the morning chatter at the #Dewdrop Decorative Napkin Company. The employees ran hither and thither, blithering out commands that would solve no part of the incident. The CEO, roused from her bed at 3am, bit a nail and called her mom. #vss365

‎He #dove into the pond and swam the murky water, avoiding the vegetation that waved in the gloom. When he had cleared a path to the center, he surfaced, and in the failing light, he could see the dogs, barking and snarling, had not entered the water. There was no time to wonder why. #vss365 ‎

Fun and games on Substack! 🤸

Official dives have started, the crew has its first tangle with danger. 🔥

‎In her VanHerpen, she zozzles into the room, a blaze of pointed tendrils streaming behind her like #moonbeam witchery. Is she cold? Has she drunk Baijiu? What language does she speak? Mystery clings to her every advancing step. A homunculus crouches on her left shoulder, making her laugh. #vss365

‎I found you listening behind the door for the sound of the strings. Glissando silk and singing amid the many colored lamps of evening. You are #dear to me, caralinda. You are the dark jewel I embraced in the harbor, with a gathering sense of an expanse opening, of spirit, of language. ‎#vss365

Tremendous fiction 🔥 from Gary Mucklow.

‎It was the #phantom chasing us. Waiting before we knew she was there, before we could prepare, the birds did not warn us. This was the ghost of many winters' reckonings come homewards, demanding our attention, and for some, contrition. It hovered unseen to most; cruelly visible to others. #vss365 ‎

‎Where #affection glimmer warms the germinating younglings, there, under the copper bells of springtime. They weave and stretch in the light of attention and will someday tower over the garden wall in color. The kindness rains will nourish them and the deep caring loam will be their bed. #vss365 ‎

A comparative reading of two films decades apart, with interesting parallels. 🔥

No luck for love or #fury, that's what we were told. I was hopping mad, but hoping they were wrong. It could not end like this, I said. Yet we all knew the chances had never been good. But the cheddar wars are over! I cried. No matter—the secrets are lost. Kraft is all we can get now. #vss365

John Cassavetes is one of my favorite directors, and in rewatching this film last night, I idiscovered interesting parallels with Anora. Drops tomorrow 4pm CET/10 am EST🔥

The voice came from nowhere and everywhere: behind me, beneath me, inside the cold place where my #name had been. I opened my mouth and river-water answered. My tongue remembered mud. My hands found the two small moons upon the eyes, the stones I had laid there myself to shut out thinking. #vss365

The plant got sick and almost died, while I, imitating the courage of the great cats, imagined it would pull through. Insistant, determined, ferocious—I admired these traits, transferring them to myself. The plant in miniature, a milky #lion, yellow and dandy, had to survive, same as me. #vss365

Artifacts rise from the sea floor, but what surfaces from the deep past requires no decompression, only belief. Chapter 9 is live! 🔥

‎Let's not visit the #dichotomous country. How can you trust a place of split mind, like a cracked egg, bleeding yolk on the steps of a fractious tower where voices decry the ills of the nation, only to be drowned out by gunfire, in a nuclear winter of .45 caliber falsehoods—let's not. #vss365 ‎

The fantasy of elsewhere is powerful—it gives loneliness its map. We hunger for a place where one cannot say: here lightning strikes but once. This, because you are there. I know very well it will strike every time we meet, and this electrifying vein of yours will inevitably become my art. #vss365

‎Every #tactician grasps the structures ‎s/he inhabits enough to exploit them. Yet the apparatus is often deleterious. A certain hurt is certainly the cost. It must be factored into the balance. Will the gains exceed the losses? Only feral animals reject the foolishness of the ideologue. #vss365 ‎

‎The special was #lunar quince cake for the anniversary of a moon mission. Chef bought a surfeit of quince, so as pastry chef, I had to come up with this bogus commemorative dessert and get rid of the quince. The icing was a violet cream of black sesame with the print of a moon boot on it. #vss365 ‎

‎Pompos, where do you take me? Have you the fare, shade? ‎Yes, take the coins from my eyes and speak truth. ‎A #psychopomp cannot lie. You will walk the path you spent a lifetime making. Will I survive the journey? You needs must, though it is never-ending. Will you stay with me? Hark! #vss365

-—Furor, your coat! Omg, cat hair! —Most of my clothes were incinerated. I barely have the Opex to feed myself. This coat's from the Goodwill. The cat hairs are probably from sleeping here in the park. ‎—You’ve been sleeping in the park? ‎—I wake up covered in stray #cats, said Scribendi. #vss365

“Art is the means we have of undoing the damage of haste. It's what everything else isn't.” ― Theodore Roethke

When you fish, you are one with the water. You listen for the infinitesimal signs of life vibrating down the line. Your patience may be rewarded, but today the #fishing goes hard against you. Your prey's seen the bait, and it's swimming away, leaving you with stillness and an empty basket. #vss365

You face your fear at 20 meters. Then you come back for more. Chapter 8 is live. 🔥

The #‎wolves near our camp. We check them with fire, with nets and with spears. They fear nothing. We keep vigil through the night, yet blood will spill. We are tired, and the threat is unrelenting. It has always been so, but there is never a time when we feel innured to them. #vss365 ‎

‎Along the river, #Jade sat weaving the many strands of amethyst into a cloth of a thousand night blooms. When it was finished, she would attach the pennies she earned at the Chrysanthemum Fair, and drape it across her shoulders to call good fortune. Her fame increased with the seasons. #vss365

Take me to the #undersea. Be our father and mother, where we can find you, hidden under the ferns with the octopus and the damselfish. Stay until the boats are gone. In my cave I will paint the stars and birth a culture; you will recount the legends, so we do not forget who we once were. #vss365 ‎

Today's thought on craft: Overwriting doesn’t just add noise—it competes with the voice. #writingcommunity

There was #trickery in his clever response to my reply. Slippery words in an argument set on deflecting the point I was making. I spent days thinking about it. Yes, it was telling, but of what exactly? Bias, cowardice, laziness, petulance, belittlement—I ran out of synonyms, fruitlessly. #vss365