Hey guys, been a while :D dunno when I wrote this (or how) It’s a ride but enjoy :D
‘Ka-chunk’. I perked up—my mother doesnt make that sound. Only he puts his keys down that way. I was getting a late night snack in between homework assignments, well, in between homework I did and homework I should have done. I was in the middle of putting some roasted nuts back in the cabinet and had two bags still out on the counter. I hurriedly and quietly (as possible) took some crackers from one bag before shoving it back into the cabinet and taking the other with me. I had been right, and my instincts prickled as I scampered out of the room as a familiar figure ambled in the other side. As I’m thinking about it, I wish there was a different word for familiar because he is not familiar to me in the familial sense which it roots from, rather in the way violence becomes familiar to soldier. I would say I am a soldier. I would, but familiar means not familial to me, clearly. I am a soldier who cries at the violence and suffers under it day in day out. I have become a veteran of life, of him. Yet it all still tears at me, hiding from the blackest corners of my mind, still under the enemy’s control. As a veteran I have become a cuckoo clock, crying the same cry day in and day out. I wish I could say something different but I know nothing else. I cry and I cry and I shriek and I shriek of the same thing every day. Nobody listens much anymore, honestly. It becomes background noise. ‘Ah yes, there it goes again, that cuckoo’ they say. Its their reminder they live in this house. They tried changing the sound long ago when the clock first left the battlefield. Home was not home and familiar was violence. Or was that the veteran? They don’t talk to the cuckoo clock. The cuckoo clock only cries the same cry day in and day out. The cry of the cuckoo which says nothing new.
(Part 3) Power of course gives access to larger recesses of the talent pool amongst the human population, but skills are needed to prop that notion up. Thus implied are artists. (I am very much going for visual artists, but performers, athletes, scientists, among many others are also (and have always been) implied here) Many artists struggle with mental health, and I wonder if this is also why. One thing many people in these professions or fostering these aspirations have such (sometimes quite powerful) desires to change the world (even if small). Once again, these desires require skill or power to manifest, which take years to develop. In the meantime, while the eventually-talented artists suffer at the hands of the burning desire they lack the skills to execute. This is what I suspect affects the poor mental health of many artists. The aspiration to create or to change the world around them with their ideas, and perhaps this overcomes some or pushes others toward power which means they stop developing their skills as a goal for the world if not altogether.
(Part 2) It’s always execution that takes a lot of time and effort to get right, and even then, it sometimes just fails anyway. The priviledge power gets you is the ability to not be good at something and still get your way. Once again, as an example, the government seems to prevail almost no matter what, and revolutions are, well, revolutionary, for a reason. The government needs much less skill to run and be widely accepted, though more importantly, accepted, than a grassroots organization or rebellion. Many rebellions fail to exert their idea—the idea that the current government should change hands or be abolished completely—because their leaders and participants are not skilled enough in how they go about rebelling. They are often not persuasive or transparent enough, or maybe they are only equally skilled as the government at effectively organizing. This is the lack of skill that kills those without default power at their fingertips. This is what I believe makes power so enticing and addicting to others. It’s a poison that strikes the heart of why many of us live—our ability to change the world, and our own agency to express ourselves even in the privacy of our own homes. When a powerful person has a desire, it is easy to express, whereas the skilled person puts in the labor and passion into it before it manifests, and the unskilled and powerless crumble and suffocate under the weight of their own dying desires.
(Part 1) Okok new braindump, people! Its on my blog as well, but I wanted to put it here as well since I've not posted here in a while. It's completely unedited so please forgive any grievous mistakes :3
I find myself really motivated by emotions. I mean, everyone is, but I can’t help but feel trapped if I can’t express myself. It is this that makes me wonder if that is why power is so addictive to so many people. (I promise they’re related)
In a world where we humans are social creatures who agree to live in a large and now global society, power (in and of itself or) over resources can get you the means to artists and those who have cultivated the skills to express your worldview. For example, control of government can help you pass or not pass laws that let people live the way you want them to live more easily. You get to exert your will on the world no matter how skilled you are if the position you are in makes that your de facto ability. As artists (or athletes) will tell you, doing things yourself takes a lot of time to build the skills that you need to perform what you want, even if you have the idea behind it well planned.
Where do you guys publish your works if you do? I've been searching for a site that isn't just for fiction, but I haven't really found anything other than substack TT
A photo I took this summer (taken with a really low aperture so bc I forgot auto focus was on and not edited yet so the colors are weird) Hoping to get some edited but take this in the meantime :D
Blog Roundup! It was brought to my attention that people don't see the blogs as often so in the spirit of raising more awareness, here are of some of the blogs from the past week I found interesting :D "cool websites" by i dont exist :3 kwenk.com/b/329 is the oldest post on here from August 16, and it´s a repository of websites for different things. I really liked the anti-corporate section because I think we're all a little fed up with the current state of things, and it even features a blog post from the typesetting and writing website I usually use--Ellipsus! I haven't had the time to fully check out all the websites on there yet though, but all of them seemed worth giving your time to if you're interested in what it does! "Being queer (a-spec)" by smilez kwenk.com/b/335 is something I resonated with, being a-spec myself, and even though it's not a deep dive, I think it's worth checking out, whether you are a-spec, or just want to learn more about the kinds of experiences people have. "Public Transport" by Wawaiibb kwenk.com/b/339 piqued my interest because, as an american, I don't have a ton of public transit around, and I think it's a conversation worth having, or a story worth understanding if you're an artist looking to add something into your worlds, or even just draw from it. "scratches beard" by raki kwenk.com/b/363 was interesting to me because it mirrors a struggle I have as a creative between the idea and the living version of it that I end up creating
Though these were some of the more standout blogs imo, if we want blogs to get more traction, or to be more active, we need to go out there and make them and interact. It's nice having our own community not curated by anyone else, but that means we have to go do it for ourselves. Have a good day or night wherever you are and good luck with the week!
Also I swear I have more photos, I just gotta sort through all 1000 I have left before I post any from my camera (Rest assured, many more are coming :D)
Do y'all keep a list of quotes or is that just me? (If you do, what are your favorites?) One of my favorites is "I own communism" (in reference to owning a brick from the berlin wall) so far, but I have so many
Been meaning to make this for a while but finally finished it today :D I thought it was clever with the stray kids and missing children connection (pictured with members I have ripped out)
Hello! I'm Penny, but Penlesscalligraphy is ok as well! I joined a couple days ago, but have been a little shy about posting an intro.
I prefer to stay pretty anonymous, but I go by he/they (really as many different pronouns as you can fit in one sentence because I think that's funny).
I'm an amateur writer and digital artist as well as an amateur [a lot of other things]. I love music and am looking to broaden my horizons, so any music recs are welcome. I am currently into more mainstream genres (alt, kpop, rock, etc.), but have been trying to expand into more languages and genres.
I'd love to make a few connections here, (especially internationally) (from US), so feel free to friend or message me!
But once I had enough, the world colorized, for lack of better words. Once I had snagged enough hope to see the world differently, I realized that the world appeared to be, in my opinion, a vibrant celebration of life. A small part of the world at large, but quite complex and worthy, life is the only thing capable of witnessing everything that comprises the universe around itself.
Hope is all around us, but not everyone partakes in the celebration, despite being reserved their own seat. I want everyone to help show others their throne, and whether you have to drag people or merely walk with them, I want you to laugh the entire way, knowing that you are capable of helping so many people see in color. I want flowers in their home, hair, clothes, air. I want the blossoms and seeds of hope to be forced everywhere they can exist.
Quite the miracle you are, and I can only hope you can find how to see it on your own.
TW: Mentions of depression and (kinda) suicide This is a piece I wrote a while back, n I don't think it's finished bc I'm not really in love with it, but Ik I can improve it, so I wanted a bit of feedback on it. I know a lot of this group is fiction n poetry, but I figured it was writing enough tho it's creative nonfiction.(Pt 1 begin, pt 4 fin.)
Part 1
Pale yellow is a happy color. It’s soft, yet pleasant and inspiring—a quietly graceful display of hope. I like pale yellow. It represents, to me, quiet hope. This quiet hope nuzzles itself into quiet situations; a faraway dream, reading a story, an emerging garden. It’s the way I hope for a dessert to be tasty, or the way I hope I will like a class or a person. But why would I use pale yellow when I could unleash the entire visual spectrum all at once?
Life is no quiet situation. Life is a vibrant celebration of everything and everyone that cohabits this tiny rock hurtling through space. Life is a miracle, you are a miracle, and everyone alive deserves to love and celebrate that miracle. To any malady that may arise from the mind, I prescribe a healthy and potent dose of hope.
To quote John Green, “Hope is the correct response to the strange, often terrifying miracle of consciousness. Hope is not easy or cheap. It is true.” I believe hope is the positive manifestation of the belief that things can be better. It is the happy of and for the future that pushes a person to open doors and skip through life.
Forever has hope proven the most powerful tool to apply to the human condition; from revolutions to beliefs. If hope dries, people shrivel. The people who have reason to lose hope have none and life is no longer living, but surviving, and if people have systematically removed hope, they will have had no hope, and needed to lessen the hope of others so comparatively they will have more, They will continue their hope drought, and expect no more hope, as their meager hope comes from subjugated people.
This, however, is unfortunate for the subjugators because while they consume hope, the way animals do, this becomes the only source of hope they know how to process. The people they steal hope from, however, retain this knowledge, and become better at creating hope. They make and store hope in excess until hope soars and they overcome the lid placed on them while those who steal it are shocked and angry that people surpass their own hope, finding their own.
The problem lies in the fact that people need hope. Both as a society and as individuals, we are capable of procuring hope and spreading excess across, especially in the age of endless communication (this deserves its own discussion), and a large amount of hope can be spread and multiplied many times over.
Thus, I urge everyone to engage in aggressive hope.
The more places seeds can land, the more plants can pop up and blossom. Those who have hope must aggressively shove it into other people’s lives, whether they do it subtly or bluntly.
I like to imagine this as a comedic scene of someone shoving copious amounts of flowers into a friend’s home as they turn their back.
Not everyone will understand why being aggressively hopeful is even helpful if you are the only direct beneficiary, however, so I ought to describe and define it. For me, it could begin when one of my friends and editors commented, saying “life being vibrant isn't a fact. I want to know why you think that. What happened to you, to make you value it?” What happened to me was that I went through a depressive period in my life. I felt like I couldn’t find joy in anything—not the hobbies I had previously, and not the people I considered my friends. Any sense of enjoyment was ripped as soon as I turned to my inner thoughts. It became a cycle of not thinking about what I enjoyed or what I was doing with my life, and I performed poorly in school or messed up my own relationshipd. The depressive thoughts were endless depressed, and I never wanted to think about what I was doing with my life. Everything seemed hopeless—like I didn’t want to keep going. I’d end up crying while thinking about how I felt trapped. Yet, I couldn’t take steps towards ending my life because of the shreds of hope that had barricaded themselves somewhere in me.
I used to think I was a pessimist, but I don’t think so anymore. I couldn’t let go of the hope that someone would come and help me get out of this mess, or that the world would align for me. Even though I didn’t think I had hope for the future, it was there, working overtime to keep me alive.
Hope isn’t a miracle that saves you all by itself, but it does make sure you’re there to save yourself.
If hope had been shoved into my life, I wouldn’t have had to find it myself. It expedites the recovery and revival process of people. To become vibrant, I had to fight tooth and nail against myself to drag hope into my life, until I had enough to stand on in my own right.
