We’ve made it, my writing project on this website has reached the end of its first year, and what a year it’s been! Reading back through entries from months past, especially last November and December, feels like a journal of sorts, bringing back vivid memories of piecing together each new entry at the end of the day. My goal of writing a full entry every day through this November has already fallen through, but I’m hoping to fill each day once again. Maybe I’ll even get around to the site renovations I’ve been scheming about! Here’s to another year of writing!
There should be one day, once a year, with no week. The Week is wholly artificial, obviously arbitrary, and holds far more sway over our lives than it needs to. It is known that the Day and the Year reign supreme as temporal partitions, and yet are somehow held in the same regard. The Week needs to be put in its place. Let there be an entire day of pause, a chink in the armour, a flaw so small yet so blatant that all the seams are exposed, to bring us all closer to experiencing real time, unfiltered and uninterrupted.
Leave your worries at the door when you leave; you’re burdened enough with boots, coats and scarves. And hurry, we’re heading north, and it’s long past sunset. The streetlamps, the storefronts, the beckoning bus doors and our friends’ smiles, they all glow warmer in the chill air. Breathe in deeply. Even without snow (my heart aches in anticipation) the world is sharpened, contrasts heightened. The darkness is crisper in the cold. We weave through detours down frosted-over streets, piercing gusts drawing us all closer together. Laughter hits like the first step back into a warm home after a long day.
I want to learn how to-3- (And) my work environment is unforgiving. Typos,mis-tratranscription errors, even smudged letters have a whole system ofstricterror codes and timestampstoin pursuit of completeandpermanentlegibility. It works too: -3- The fastest way to complete your paperwork is to go as slowly as possible, because any time gained by rushing through forms is lostdoublytwice-over by corrections. The only wayto change thisis practice. over the learning curve -1- I’m trying to learn how to write with a pen. Out in the <i>Industry</i>, my skills with a pencil, honedtoby years of fast-paced notes on paper and hundreds of hours of solving physics problems by hand,are unfortunatelyare no use against
-4- I write this entry with my beloved Uni Kuru Togamechanical pencil, a gift to myselfin theduring my first semester of Uni(1). It has seen my through dozens of exams and midterms, and likely approaching 1000 physics problems, practice + assigned. For the last 6 months, it has sat unused in the side pocket of my satchel. It feels good to take it for a spin again. (1) , over 4 years ago -2- the need for permanent ink. I miss the feedbackfeelof graphite, the texture of the pencil reverb- up through the tip into my fingertips. erating(?) -2-Sight variances in pressure and the slight twisting of the lead let the pencil flow cleanly across paper, barely marking the surface as I lift from one letter to the next. A ballpoint pen can be consistent, but through purple nylon gloves I barely feel anything at all. NOV 07 - Entry 199(?) Pen on paper <3
How did I forget about this place? I’m coming out of a malaise that lasted the last few months, one that swept my habits under the rug and stole away many of the joys I relied on. Writing was a frustration during this time, both from a lack of inspiration and a fear of dropping my “standard of quality” blocking words from hitting the page. And somehow, I went almost two whole months without looking at my website. Is this not part of my home? Did I not craft this delicately for my own ends? (go press the buttons, I had a blast setting up that styling!) Sure, some of the links are broken, and penny is covering up too much of the home page (as she often does irl), but this is my space, built by me for me.
Yes, art “should be” made for the joy of creating, for the excitement of expressing and connecting, but it does look good hung up on my wall, and I’d be lying if that wasn’t a huge part of it for me. I’m not just writing a piece, I’m adding to an ever-growing collection. And while my writing actually happens in a combination of notebooks, focuswriter, and sublime text, emotionally it happens here, on neocities.org. I aught to spend more time here, admire my work and that of my friends, settle in to this armchair I spent a full year breaking in just right. The most fun projects are perpetually unfinished, because there’s always more I want to do.
The sun is set when I leave my work, with a few faint traces of colour on the horizon, and up north in Laval’s tech business parks the sky is enormous. If I’m lucky I can pick out the planets alongside the moon, together forming that 22.5° axis our whole solar system revolves on. It’s always there, and never visible, but two points is enough to draw a line, with that line in view perspective drops into place. It’s hard to see the stars in a city with this much light pollution, but with these conditions I won’t complain.
Last night I took a small telescope into the street and caught a fuzzy view of Jupiter and its biggest moons. They have their own axis, a miniature solar system mirroring our own. It’s shocking that this collection of bodies is in our sky half the time, somewhere, obscured by clouds and sunlight. I can’t fully wrap my head around it. I wish I could have some sort of overlay of where in the sky it was, a little indication one of our sibling worlds was just barely over there. The sky feels less empty when I bother to look.
From “Observations on the outer shell”, a treatise written by Durnhom CaAl2 hive, delivered to the Sildruthian SiO2 hive as part of a mutual assistance treaty.
In the gaseous membrane at the edge of the world plant organisms can grow to staggering lengths, reaching far away from the heart of the world to feed off the intense void radiation present. In some regions, these organisms fight for supremacy over radiation exposure, stretching further and further from the soils and stones that hold them to the world. The expanse is chaotic and unyielding. Its currents change unpredictably, and with no support from a lithic structure only the deepest roots can hold one upright.
Still, life thrives at the edge of the expanse. Lack of mechanical resistance from the medium, accompanied by a high concentration of reactive gasses that gathers up-gravity, has resulted in colossal animated life. These superterannean megafauna are several orders of magnitude larger than the mightiest of the terranean creatures. It is said their internal structure can support dozens of internal miniature biomes, and and their sum complexity can rival that of a small hive, in a single individual. Investigations into megafauna cerebral structure shows that they have an impressive ability to anticipate, bordering on precognition. Further research into how such an unstable biological structure could maintain these systems is strongly recommended.
My grandma grows dead trees. They sprout out of the ground all cracked and blackened, like a single burnt twig thrust into frozen earth. Over months they slowly grow, sprouting branches, thickening into a trunk, and only after years emerging into a canopy of spindly arms, like the hair of a ghost. They drink no water and feel no sunlight, feeding only from a weak flame she keeps alive against their base, twelve hours every night. One day, she says, spring will come, and with it flowers and fruit and vibrant leaves, and her and her garden will live again.
Some words on my favourite album <3 thank you Sasha Cay!