"I simply want ice cream and to be alive until I am dead."

- "The House Call" from Near Flesh, by Katherine Dunn.

#writingcommunity

"I regard writing not as investigation of character, but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed."
- Evelyn Waugh

This quote gifted me the fulfilling experience of reading something I already knew, but couldn't yet voice.

#writingcommunity

Move over annelids, handelids are the new it-worm!

Carolina anole(?) enjoying a warm right triangle.

Sound on! A magical and chilling experience at Congaree National Park.

Arboretum: Bassoons in the Congaree National Park put on by @sc.edu

I think what I want is to live without knowing or feeling it.

Antisocieties, by michaelcisco.bsky.social

"So, how was your life? What did you do?"
- my toddler

Now that he had recognized himself as a dead man it became important to stay alive as long as possible.
1984, by George Orwell

The girl woke up feeling entirely at ease. She knew from habit that her mother would soon come into her room to open the curtains and let the morning in. Her mother would look at her with tender love, and say:

Would exasperation, however, if relief had longer been postponed, finally have betrayed me? It little matters, for relief arrived.

The astonishment which I had at first experienced on this discovery soon gave place to delight and rapture. After so much time spent in painful labour, to arrive at once at the summit of my desires was the most gratifying consummation of my toils.

The White Ma'at: a woman, or a woman-shaped thing, built in a long and heavy way, with a tall forehead like a white wall and a knotty blue vein labouring up it. What lies on the other side is a great store of irregular, wonderful knowledge; a cellar provisioned with all the vintages of magic.

Of course I was under the spell—and the wonderful part is that, even at the time, I perfectly knew I was. But I gave myself up to it: it was an antidote to any pain, and I had more pains than one.

THE TURN OF THE SCREW, by Henry James

Devil eggs; hail Satan.

Happy Christmas to me! Can't wait to crack this one open.

My secret Santa says there is even more coming from @tenebrouspress.bsky.social too!

1/2 A dead willow leans above the pool, tangling its wan, skeleton-like reflection with the green scum that mottles the water. There are no blackbirds, no kildees, no dragon-flies even, such as one usually finds in a place of that sort. It is all silent and desolate.

You can't manufacture saints like sausages!

THE SHADOWY STREET, by Jean Ray

1/2 The infernal swimmer shouted curses and supplications.

”Ballister! I'll make you rich, richer than all men on earth put together! I'll make you die, you imbecile, in horrible tortures that are unknown on your accursed planet!

Sometimes you holler at your dog to stop barking not because they'll listen, but so the neighbors know you'd like them to shut up too.