tiercell

[tiercell]

Did I create a shortcut just so I could change a name and bury the other one where I never have to look at it? Yes. Yes I did.

#itwillalwaysbetwitter

[tiercell]

People give me things to hold like “Here, these are yours.”

I look around the cluttered floor searching for free space.

I hold my arms out with a smile, “Thanks. And sorry you had to deal with it.”

They nod in understanding as they walk away.

I look around the floor of me looking for space.

Wondering where I should go with all the parts I didn’t know I needed to carry.

#writing #prose poetry #so much stuff

[tiercell]

My Father’s Ghost is right here

next to the world I found in my waste paper basket.

I misunderstand things all the time but then I like my misunderstandings better.

They’re a cocoon from the boring, the mundane.

The cruel.

In the beginning the world was without form.

Then God said “Let there be light.”

And there was light.

“Well shit. That wasn’t what I meant.

Eh. It’ll be fine.

It’ll be good.”

And it was good.

#writing #poetry #random mistake #it was good #My Father’s Ghost is Climbing in the Rain #what happens sometimes when you shorten a long book title

[tiercell]

The Toast Sessions: Drew

Drew hums to himself. Given time that hum will become a wail of happy sound but right now he’s just beginning and it’s just a hum. He pulls the bread out of the oven and inhales deeply, setting it on the counter to cool. The toaster’s plugged in. There’s a jar of peanut butter and three types of jam and grape jelly because even though he hates the texture it’s a classic. He pulls open the door to the fridge, “Land ‘O Lay-akes!” He’s got time while the bread cools enough to slice. What else can he do? A wide grin breaks across his face as he grabs a banana. There’s nutella somewhere in the cupboard and he knows it. What about cream cheese? Is cream cheese on toast any good? He doesn’t know why it wouldn’t be any good. He veers back to the fridge again. It’s probably good and at least this way he’ll know. Ohhh maybe he can mix it with the apricot preserves. Apricot and peanut butter always seemed a little weird to him anyhow. Not that it wasn’t fine if that was your jam but… He’s rolling now and the words start to slip in. “I know a guy who can really do the cool whip!” Pancakes would be good with cool whip. Maybe tomorrow though. Today toast was gonna be the star. Did they still have that smoked salmon? If he was doing cream cheese there might as well be smoked salmon. Kait wanders into the kitchen with a yawn. He bounds over to her, brushing his cheek across hers with a happy, “How’s the world treatin’ yas tadays, Katie-cat?” She wipes a palm across her bleary eyes and offers a groggy smile. “Good.” He smiles. “Was hoping to have this all around b’fore you got up.” She takes in the loaded counter tops. “I’d say ‘all this’ is pretty accurate.” His smile turns sheepish. “See ‘f the neighbors are hungry at all?”

#writing #toast sessions #oc #overboard in the kitchen

[tiercell]

I finally knew what he was after years. A handful of dialog and a man with a shovel. “Man”. I had the pieces now that I’d been missing and a name he’d actually answer to. I just needed to track down all the other parts. Stitch them together. Only now I couldn’t find him. One notebook that held a hint, but it wasn’t the beginning. It wasn’t what had held him in my head for years. While the piece that I needed most I’d never forgotten, I can’t help but feel like I’m missing something. Their first bit of shared conversation, like a birth certificate. He has to be difficult and I know he’s enjoying this. I guess it’ll be fitting too. Some parts stay the same, some change forever, without some kind of record there’s no knowing what used to be. “There’s the now and the always was, what more do you want?” I put quotations where there weren’t any. My words in his voice now. He claims what he wants because it was his to begin with, just took me a bit to recognize it.

#writing #oc #random character #Nes #character creation #change

[tiercell]

He sits plinking the strings of a steel guitar while country music lulls softly in the background.

“What made you pick steel guitar?” they ask.

“Trying to be someone I’m not. Someone who never existed like I wanted them to.” He smiled up at them. “So you know, just setting the bar pretty low for myself.”

#writing #random characters #instruments #this savage song #questionable life goals

[tiercell]

I huddle into the corner of the couch, wrapped in the finite, hoping it will shield me from the infinite. Suddenly it makes sense why I have so many blankets like so many plans.

#writing #blankets are the best #my vote goes for poofy comforters

[tiercell]

The Toast Sessions: Joel

“I bet she took it with her.” Joel leans his hip on the counter, scanning the cluttered surface one more time. He forgot his ex bought the toaster and no amount of looking where he knows it should be will drop the thing back down when it‘s gone. Oh well. He turns on the stove burner and undoes the twist tie on the bag of bread. His timing with it could be worse. Brown but not black. Qualifies as toast. He shrugs before taking a bite. He eyes the refrigerator. He can’t blame Stacy for the lack of butter. He twists his neck to the side hoping to get it to crack, work out the kink from whatever way he slept. A grocery run should probably be up there on his list. Maybe tomorrow. That and a new toaster.

#writing #oc #toast sessions #exes

[tiercell]

The Toast Sessions: John

John presses the lever down on the toaster. There’s a crackle. Then a pop. Then a spark before the wallpaper at the outlet discolors black and there’s a small wisp of smoke. “Are you serious right now?” He moves to inspect the socket. “Well shit.” He goes to get his toolbelt from the pile by the door, muttering to himself as he takes the screws out of the wall plate. By the time he leaves for work there’s a new hole in the drywall where the replacement wiring needs to go. The bread’s still in the toaster.

#writing #oc #making toast #yeah toast

[tiercell]

The Toast Sessions: Cam

The scent of charred bread drifts across the kitchen to Cam’s seat at the table. “For fuck’s sake.” He stands, chair legs scraping across tile. He pushes the lever up to retrieve the slices, glaring at the darkness settings that never quite work how he wants them to. He swears again as the toast burns his fingers, shoving a bite into his mouth before dropping the rest of the piece onto the countertop, blowing crumbs across his scorched fingertips. It‘s one of those days when nothing is going to go right. Either that, or toast is now his least favorite breakfast food on the planet.

#writing #oc #burnt toast #toast sessions

[tiercell]

#writing #wanna be something to somebody #Charlie’s Spot #comic #the bear was the best #please ignore the draftness I wanted the picture #talisman

[tiercell]

I am a dragon of notebooks. That is to say a hoarder and protector. When I was younger (elementary-early HS) I was keeping them for the perfect thing, something like a novel that would somehow be in the exact right order from first draft. Then the person at the Renaissance Faire selling leather journals pointed out how they were just nice to write in, things as simple as shopping lists. So now my notebooks are stroodled with bits to keep them from being empty and every time I want to compile parts of an old story idea it becomes a weird treasure hunt through yesterday’s me.

#writing #notebooks #where the hell is that character #modern dragons

[tiercell]

What happens to a houseplant when we die? I mist the collection on the kitchen table. Not all of them. Some of them don’t like it. “Feeding the loas” she called it. “Spirits” when I asked her about it.

“Have you ever read Ishmael Reed? Mumbo Jumbo?”

“No,” I said.

“I think you’d like it. If you’re supposed to.”

She said things like that a lot. I was over once she was gone, watering the houseplants. Looking through the bookshelves. I saw it there, Mumbo Jumbo, and slipped it off the shelf. Flipping through I saw pictures which were unexpected. Then I saw what I was looking for, what I hoped I’d find. Some writing in the margins and the underlining.

We’d had that discussion before. The untraining done to take a book and make it yours. Put a part of yourself undeniably into the pages. What that would mean.

I couldn’t tell if the marks were hers but they were someone’s and she’d led me there. I took the book home and read it. I guess I was supposed to.

I’m standing in the sun misting the houseplants. She’d heard somewhere once that trees are more aware of us than we are of them. It made sense when I heard it. I’d pay attention too if I was always stuck in one place.

My friend comes in from the car to see what’s taking so long. “I’m almost done,” I say. “Just feeding the loas.”

#writing #short story #grief #memories #mumbo jumbo #jus grew

[tiercell]

He pressed his fingers into the wound on his side and winced, felt the slip of blood. It took him back to the mud when he first recalled opening his eyes.

Othel had heard people talk about being born. It stood to reason that he had been as well, at one point. But for his purposes he had emerged fully formed from a Pennsylvania swamp at the age of 34.

He dug his fingers into his ribs, ignoring the swell of pain for the slick wet feel, his brain turning it into stinking black clay. He’d pushed himself up off the ground to the sound of peepers and a cool early spring breeze.

Everything was the opposite. Brow furrowed with the effort of converting midday scorched sand into midnight decay. If he could will it…

The frogs were harder to catch than he’d thought they’d be. Until he stopped worrying about crushing them. He wished there’d been a twinge of sadness for their broken bones, churned insides. They’d gotten as much sympathy as he was likely to.

The smoke from the overturned car made him cough. Or maybe it was the smoke. Flecks of red on the palm that had covered his mouth said it was something different.

Was shock supposed to make you cold? If so it could hurry up.

He slowly folded his legs beneath him, closer to the ground. As his free hand made the first pass over the sand his stomach clenched with regret. That or it thought if it tried hard enough it could knit him together again.

As he dug absently he wondered if he’d ever grown back a limb. He could believe it. It felt right.

Othel let go of his side to stare at his crimson stained left hand. He flexed fingers that were fast turning brown. This one.

He looked back at the shallow depression he’d begun before lurching unsteadily to his feet. There wasn’t enough time to dig for cool. And he hated sand anyway. Too much grit.

His gait was unsteady, one foot dragging behind.

#new oc #who on earth is this #writing #monster #let me know if this is worth continuing #cause odds are good I won’t if left to my own devices

[tiercell]

I was working on a history paper today and found a book from 1826 that seemed promising (though dull) for my topic, on an English Catholic family’s experience moving to France.

And it ended up not really being suitable for my purposes, as it goes. But part of the book is actually devoted to Kenelm, the author’s oldest son…and man, his dad loved him.

Kenelm seems to have had a fairly typical upbringing for a young English gentleman, although he is a bit slow to read. At twelve he’s sent to board at Stoneyhurst College—often the big step towards independence in a boy’s life, as he’ll most likely only see his parents sporadically from now on, and then leave for university.

When he’s sixteen, however, his father moves the whole family to France, so Kenelm gets pulled out of school to be with them again. Shortly after the move, his dad notices that he seems depressed. Kenelm confides in him that he’s been suffering from “scruples” for the last eighteen months—most likely what we’d now call an anxiety disorder.

And his dad is pissed—at the school, because apparently Kenelm had been seeking help there and received none, despite obviously struggling with mental health issues. So his dad takes it seriously. He sets him up to be counseled by a priest—there were no therapists back then—and doesn’t send him away to be boarded again, instead teaching him at home himself.

And his mental health does improve. His dad describes him as well-liked, gentle, pious, kind and eager to please others; at twenty he’s thinking about a career in diplomacy or going into the military—which his dad thinks he is not particularly suited for, considering his favorite pastimes are drawing and reading. He’s excited about his family’s upcoming move to Italy, and he’s been busy learning Italian and teaching it to his siblings.

Henry Kenelm Beste dies of typhus at twenty years, four months, and twenty-five days. That’s how his dad records it. That’s why his dad is telling this story. It’s not an extraordinary story—Kenelm’s story struck me because he sounds so…ordinary, like so many kids today. And he was so, so loved. His dad tried hard to help him compassionately with his mental health at a time where our current knowledge and support systems didn’t exist. You can feel how badly he wanted his son to be remembered and loved, to impress how dearly beloved he was to the people who knew him in life.

I hope he’d be glad to know someone is still thinking of Kenelm over 200 years later.

Anyway, that’s why I’m crying today.

[tiercell]

All I see is people screaming. I’m screaming with them. Is it better or worse when you can hear it? Better or worse when you know you’re doing it? All I see is people screaming… pretending not to scream. Like somewhere along the way we learned screaming and singing are the same thing. And when you start to notice the song has no words, just one long drawn out syllable, something happens a world away. A world away that isn’t really away anymore. It’s right there on the screen in front of your face. People screaming. Really screaming. Screaming as bombs fall and families… cease to exist. And we’ve been told we’re singing, that the notes are sweet and the words are true. If they were true there would not be

so

much

screaming

And now you can’t pretend anymore. The universe knows true too well to let the lies live forever. Fiction used to be my happy place, my dissociative spot. Part of what makes a song a song. I connect the dots on my arm like the thoughts in my head. I can’t stop the screaming. I’m working on giving up my savior complex that seemed so normal I didn’t know I had it. But I do have power, too. Another thing I’m learning, true is a lot more complicated than it looks, and it really doesn’t care what anybody thinks of it. I have power too, so I write. Throw that pebble into the pond, wait to see what it takes to turn a scream back into a song. One that’s true this time.

#truth #change #ripples #if you know you know #if you don’t ask more questions #if you do ask more questions #question everything

[tiercell]

Dear artists,

You can make a character live in my head forever through sheer awesomeness of character design or intrigue factor. Please use this power for good. I really didn’t need to give a shit about Ghost or Soap but your mini comic had unintended consequences and I’ve now lost hours of my life.

#letter to artists #soapghost #artist responsibility #ships that confuse me #I need more canon evidence please