vandrendehare

Comes a conqueror, bent on conquest.
You know this; clad in Oakleys and piss.
Scent him first, he’ll kill for the notice. He’ll kill
for killing, kill to develop the habit.
To hone a craft. His sex, he’s told,
will be fantastic in the blood.
He would have you hang those sheets for him,
With their single stripe of blue, a stolen skull,
a single, lidless eye. His sweat, a mire,
a land out of reach of theodicy,
stagnant pools of the soul. Did you see one?
It wriggles in the water, larval, voracious,
crying “Gods drink blood and so will I!”
They wriggle, one and all, s-curved, all dark
no stars and a dishwater sky. Scent him first,
he tells himself he is a predator and comes
looking for quarry. He rises, mosquito from water
in love with the clenched fist, in love
with the blocky matte of his possessions.
Sickness listens in his cells, ameboid, infects.
Come and see, he rises from the water,
smells of well-bottom, copper, and cordite
murder in the flare of his nostril.
He wants you to see what he does next.
And he thinks about the sex he’ll have.
Fantastic.

So I am a witch. I use that term specifically. I’m not Pagan or Neo-Pagan. My tradition Swamp Yankee by temperament and a preponderance of blood. Problematic as fuck, since anything that isn’t as stolen as the swamps from the First Peoples is kind of OG Satanism. But I am a coward and I don’t like Ayn Rand, so there I am. But I spend a lot of time with various and sundry flavors of Neo-Pagan, and thinking a lot about it.

There was a post ran across my dash recently about Christmas, and the supposed Pagan roots thereof. The jist of the post was that chances are the holiday wasn’t chosen by the early church to overwrite the Pagan observances of the Solstice so much as what’s 9 months after the Annunciation. From there it picked up the pre Christian traditions around that time of year because why wouldn’t it? Celebration of Christmas is sort of a modern thing anyway, if one does the historical research.

It’s a simpler argument than “we need to convert these people and make them forget what they were doing before.” It makes more sense that people would turn their traditional Gods and spirits into saints than have them turned into saints for them. That’s something that could theoretically be done with the current technology, but not so much with word of mouth. The post ended with the assertion that it’s disingenuous and appropriative to go off about the Pagan roots of Christmas if you are not part of a cultural group that kept pre Christian winter solstice traditions specifically alive since your part of wherever. My Swedish and Norwegian ancestors were Lutherans, not the fucking Harga, so if I say God Jul, it’s got Jesus and that little girl with the candles on her head in it. Also, I am barely Scandinavian at all, so if you call me a nordic appropriating cosplayer, you’re not wrong. Talk to my dad. He sent me one of those sweet little wooden horses for Christmas this year.

There is an argument that you cannot choose your religion, and your religion gives not one scraggly fuck whether or not you believe. It’s a part of culture, and it’s a part of you, and you get to eat it and like it. I don’t believe in Jesus Christ, but I sure talk to him a lot, especially when I stub my toes. I find this argument persuasive, which is the extent to which I will advocate it. This is one of the reasons why I am don’t call myself Pagan or Neo-Pagan, because my grandparents and great-grandparents were all God-fearing, and that fear is part of me. I am a witch, and I don’t believe, but I am such a fucking Lutheran/Congregationalist combo, and I’m stuck with that. I bleed church basement baked ziti. I get my back up when Catholics get up to their Catholic bullshit. I’ve got opinions on every Protestant sect out there, and I can tell you about them if you want. I pass. I pass easy. No one is surprised when they find out I’m a witch, but only occasionally do I get pegged as one unbidden.

But here’s the part where it gets interesting. I know kids raised by Neo-Pagans who don’t pass as Christian. Are they Pagan? All arguments of authenticity aside, they’re lacking some of the cultural knowledge that most of their peers have. They see some Christianity around them, but it’s not part of them or their understanding, and well, maybe the general run of Christians don’t notice this shit, but it sticks way out to me. But then, I know what I am looking for.

Is it ethical to raise your kids according to your beliefs if they run counter to your traditions? I say yes, but sometimes I get the notion that folks I respect and think are wiser than me disagree, and I am not sure why. Sometimes, when it is directed toward those in my demographic, it’s an eat-mayo-and-die missive, and while I respect the anger and the reasons why those sentiments exist, I can’t convince the others to go along with it, and there are some I’d like to see choke on the mayo before my turn comes up.

(Aside: sometimes you’ll read something from a person fed up past the breaking point by the appropriation of their culture, food, etc by white folk, and they will, quite understandably, go off, and someone of my pigmentation and milieu will get defensive and inevitably ask if they should just eat mayo and die, thus the name.

Some of the people who make the initial statements probably do legitimately believe that white people can only ethically take part in the most mass-produced horrors they’ve spawned, I’m sure. Most, I suspect are just appalled by how we tend to commodify and make asinine the things that they love while claiming to have elevated whatever it is. They also rightly diagnose things like capitalism and imperialism that are huge parts of many white peoples’ cultures [especially anglophone white people to an extent that without those there is very little left] are FUCKING HORRIBLE FOR EVERYONE and that the world would benefit from their absence. Anyway).

The point is, my culture is defective and I want to abolish it. That’s probably not possible, though I think seizing the means of production would get us 99% there. But then the snake eats it’s tail and says “What is your culture if not capitalism and imperialism at all cost? What do you have left that isn’t bound up in those two things? You have mayonnaise is what you have. Your culture is uniquely and exclusively hostile to socialism.” The fact that a snake can say all that while eating its tail gives you an idea how tricky the damn thing would be to kill. So my culture is defective and I want to change it into something that isn’t complete shit. For some reason, I believe that magic and witchcraft have a place in this, but I don’t know what place that is, and I fear a lot of fellow practitioners try to dodge the responsibility or the guilt of our defective culture through our practices. I think that’s the wrong way.

My swamps are stolen. My swamps are poisoned. I have them because they were stolen, not by me, but for me. And I did help poison them. I have no power to clean them or return them, but I have a really tiny chance at getting that power, and I want to be able to use it right. Not to get the stains off. Those really are mine, and mine forever, but because I like to try to do right, even if my tradition spends most of its time with an embodiment of evil.

So yeah, I have given you 100% of your daily cringe, but I’ve got to think about these things, and writing them down helps. I am probably way off. Probably missing some things. Probably a disingenuous cosplayer, but what can one do?

I've been on a frothy darkwave binge, primarily thanks to The Aviators, and this song:





A video game fan song, of all the adulthood denying things.  Here's the thing.  The game in question, Bloodborne, is a legitimate piece of gothic/weird fiction, and the sequence that this song refers to is one of the most affecting sequences in the game.  Affecting, and a sequence that I do not think can be effectively conveyed outside of interactive media.

Early on in the game, your protagonist, amnesiac, afflicted with a mysterious disease and driven to seek treatment in the city of Yharnam, pioneer of blood ministration.  The cure might be worse than the disease, though, since it plunges the protagonist into a nightmare of endless bloody slaughter with only the thinnest of apparent threads.  You are a hunter.  You're trapped in a city full of beasts on the night of the Hunt.  Don't think too hard about it, the old man in the wheelchair says, killing beasts is just what you hunters do.

In the early evening of the hunt, there are some people still unaffected, or only marginally affected.  You can tell by the lanterns and censers hanging outside windows and doors.  No one's going to open their door to you on the night of the Hunt, and most people seem to think that the difference between the hunters and the beasts they hunt is vanishingly slim.  You might be inclined to agree.  There are very few sympathetic voices on the other side of the doors.  In fact, there are three.  

The first is a dying man who tells you to head for the cathedral and gives you a small personal flame thrower, more a mild deterrent to the beasts than an effective weapon, but not without use.

The third is a sex worker, fallen descendant of an ancient line.  You can convince her to move to safety, after which she is able to supply you with vials of her special-properties-bearing (and implied menstrual) blood for a time.

The second is the subject of the song.  A child, younger daughter of a short-lived compatriot hunter, a man who becomes drunk on blood and becomes a beast.  Her mother has gone out looking for the father and not returned.  If you should find her, give her the music box they use to remind the hunter of who he is when the blood goes to his head.  The mother, you will be able to identify by a broach with a distinctive red gem.

Those who guessed where this part leads win a shiny No-Prize.  The broach is found on a messy corpse and only after you have killed the bestial hunter who was her killer.  This is nothing unusual, not special, not strange.  What is truly affecting is what happens next.  

What you choose.

You can inform the girl of her new status as an orphan, returning the broach to her.  Despair takes the child then, sure as the beasts will eventually infiltrate her house and murder her.  There is no further response to your knocks at the window, and as the night wears on, and Yharnam is progressively destroyed, her fate doesn't stand in doubt.

You can choose to keep your secret, at which point she will ask where is a safe place she can wait out the night.  At this point, you may be aware of two possibilities.  You can keep that knowledge to yourself, but sheltering in place is not an option, and the child will eventually stop answering your knocks, when the beasts find her.

You can send her toward the clinic you sought out at the beginning of this nightmare, where a sympathetic physician claims to be treating the ill.  Or you can send her to the chapel, where a blind and incredibly sketchy beggar is sheltering hoping for some companionship in the final hours of his city's life.  

Unbeknownst to you, an impostor has since infiltrated the clinic, overpowered its mistress and is performing experiments on the patients within.  Send the girl there, and later on, once you find the secret path to the parts of the clinic previously denied you, you'll find a ribbon on the body of one of the panicked, flailing things within.

The chapel is safe.  The beggar is simply awkward and desperate for friendship.  Unfortunately, the path between the child's house is stalked by an evil hog the approximate size of a U-Haul.  Traverse the area later, and you will find the ribbon, stained red with blood.  No other sign.

Later, you can discover that the older daughter has returned home, but by then, the moon has become as blood and the older child is been driven mad.  Her dialogue through the window is rambling, covetous of her sister's ribbon, and trails off into bloody chuckles.

You cannot save the girl, any member of the family, in fact.  But this is something you only find out in successive playthroughs, trying different choices in hopes there is a solution, something that will allow the child to survive the night.  No one survives the night, no innocent, no one complicit, not even you, though something of you always endures to see the sun.  In aggregate, you learn that the fate of the city and its inhabitants, even the child who might tell you she loves you almost as much as she loves her family, depending on your actions, is sealed.

There is no option to escort the child.  No option to place her in the care of sympathetic and sane fellow hunter Eileen the Crow and convince them to flee the city together, though I have seen heartfelt fix-fic comics to this effect.  This might be a bit of failure of interactivity, but its an understandable one.  You are trapped within a nightmare that bleeds into reality around you.  There is no safety by your side.  In a few minutes, you could be overcome by cloaked, sack bearing figures and dragged to a dungeon in a part of the city where the buildings are infested with eye-gouging semi-invisible crones and the streets are full of milk-truck sized, carnivorous hogs.  There is no way out of the nightmare but through it.  Even those who made it to Oeden chapel lose their minds and lives, one by one as the night drags on, saving the lonely, blind beggar for last to be taken in his solitude.

That said, I will leave you with a song about what's going to doom us.

Whatever else you or I have to say about the United States, one of its founding cultural values is a boundary between the military and civilian government, which extends all the way back to Washington resigning his commission before going into politics and the presidency. This is something I cherish as a citizen of this country, and when modern politics promotes the crossing or blurring of that boundary, it upsets me, not as a liberal, or someone who is opposed to militarism, but as a patriot.

Whatever purpose a French Bastille-Day style parade would serve, expression of national unity or martial pride, there is something un-American and tacky about the notion of having one here. Let the towns have parades to honor their returning veterans, and leave it at that.

Whatever grim portent a French Bastille-Day style parade would signify, the blending of partisan politics with military force, the trappings of historical fascism or totalitarianism, that sense of tacky un-American-ness hits me first and deepest. It did when 43 wore a flight suit, it did when then-candidate Dukakis rode around in a tank, it definitely would now.

There are other things a feel in particular about 45's advocacy for such a display; dread and dismay, primarily. I won't pretend that my feelings against this aren't stronger against his desire than I would for some member of my supposed team. I would trust a member of my team not be so tacky, and if they were, I would not consider them a member of my team anymore.

It's not lost on me that France is significantly to the left of the US in just about all the ways you care to measure. I don't think it's wrong for them, or any other country to have such displays if that's what they do. I think it is wrong for us, not in the sense of morals [though I have opinions on that], but in the same sense that I think taking up singing as a career, or owning an exotic bird is wrong for me. We are many things, some good, many bad, but we aren't that.

This article is infuriating. Not only because it says something with which I disagree in a way I find insulting, but also because I find myself formulating her argument for her in a way that I can rebut, because the point it's trying to make is muddled and mired in stupid.

So let me try: The argument I am interpreting from this word salad, the way I interpret meaningful advice from effing tarot cards is this - what with the state of the world deteriorating because of factors that require course-work to even grasp, let alone react to, and the finite and dwindling time people spend reading, we're better served doing said course-work than reading fiction for escape.

There, now that I rewrote the thesis into something a little sturdier (is there a term for reverse straw-manning, because I feel like it would come in handy talking to facile twits... "brick manning"), let's refute.

0) To keep the baby once the bathwater's gone, yeah, we could all use to be more informed about the complex socioeconomics behind late capitalism, 21st Century Nationalism, environmental degradation and all that shit. Good point.

1) Fiction serves purposes other than escape. It's proven to develop empathy, abstract reasoning, and complex problem-solving skills. THE THREE VERY THINGS THAT MIGHT SAVE US FROM ALL THIS.

2) A wonkish understanding of the factors that lead us all to this state is not sufficient on its own to formulate any action to improve our lot. Not only that, but in many cases, such as the financial actions that caused the 2008 recession (and the one that's just arrived in 2018, you heard it here first), not only will the most eloquent and complete work in layman's terms fail to get you sufficient wonkish understanding, even full-time course-work might not get you where you need to be. Part of the seeming insolubility of the financial crisis in 2008 was that no one fully understood what was going on. Thomas Picketty is not going to get you there on his own, nor would he ever claim to.

2a) That said, I do want to read his book.

3) "Escape" as in from prison, and all that. I forget who I'm badly paraphrasing, but for many of us, the state of the world today involves a seemingly gratuitous and spiteful parade of outrages. Snowflakes you say? Search your feelings. Doesn't it sting and stab at you, too? They might not be the same things, but I notice that left, right, and middle (such as they are) all seem to have no shortage of things which cause pain. Knuckling down to endure some pain is healthy and necessary. Enduring it all without end or relief is really not.

So yes, we could use to learn a little more about our situation and how shit it is. But swearing off fiction is not the solution we need.

As a side note, I put forth my own little corner of literature. In SF, Gods love us, we have our problems and our failings, but we do feel the responsibility of writing ourselves and our society out of this peri-apocalyptic corner we're in, and I still think that's kind of cool

Sassafras opaca – A tree whose leaves are the grasping hands of the abyss. The oils are sweeter, grittier, cloying. Also they unstick flesh and plant matter, making it malleable.
Abyssal Birch – Another tree, whose rugose bark shifts and twitches. You can see it slink, up and down, back and forth, stretching, bunching up, splitting, shedding pagan-green sap like watery riotous spring. The bark adheres to flesh, it fixes to run.
Notional Aspen – When you think on it, you are it. The tree grows in you, and you are part of the tree. You shiver when it shakes. The symptoms are chills and golden eyes. Your children belong to the tree as much as you do.
Bloody Mess Maple – Here we have a maple tree that bleeds. All the time. The blood is thin and light, coppery, and the maple sugar collects on the branches like clustered garnets. The blood is a medium, a quantum entangler, no difference between it and your blood. No difference between it and any blood. The ground beneath the tree where the blood falls grows feathers and bird bones.
Shy Oak – Trees hide from you. Where are they? Anywhere. Look, there’s an acorn like onyx beneath your pillow.
Lich Apple – If you eat of this fruit, so shall you never die. Sort of.
None of the trees respect the boundary between plant and animal. Or animal and animal, plant and plant, thought and object, dream and waking. This is the young-growth forest of the abyss. All scrub and darkness, where ghoulish seals or seal-like ghouls swim between the trees. Where the samaras drop as mussel shells.
Bleeding puppets and wooden bones.
Porcupine needles to inject the secret saps.
We’ve been bottled. We’ve all be bottled up.