Fish Song

Germany Gothic

- there are many fields of flowers. Pick yourself, the sign says. Leave money in box. Leave the money in the box. Bring a knife, not scissors for the flowers. Do not use the one supplied, you don't want your fingerprints on it.

- The playground is empty after eight. Empty. Don't be convinced otherwise. She's not there, the playground is empty.

- If you have a problem, do not approach the teacher watching over the children. Do not approach the mother of three. Smile and greet them, but approach the child waiting behind them. They are the ones truly guarding the children. They will help you. Their guardians guard something different.

- Some time ago, men in brown shirts stole people from their houses. These houses are marked with gold, but not by us. We only know not to step on the gold. The stolen people will not haunt you, the neighbours that watched will.

- This buildings is old, he proudly says. They survived the wars. You smile. You do not asked why they survived. The houses know your question, they grin. Ask them later, he doesn't know.

- A soccer field's lights are always on. People are always playing. Don't approach them; you don't know who they are playing against. Pray they win every night.

- The beggar is not hungry. Not for food. Be kind, and they will ask their price from someone else.

- If you are lost, don't ask the police officer. Ask the street musician. The oldest person in the city doesn't remember a day without that saxophone sounding through the streets. Music is a hobby for many species, and they know better than you where you came from.

- trust the fields. They have seen young girls safely pass. If it calls to you, answer it.

- avoid the people smiling at you, the ones with bright eyes and pretty scarves. No one has seen them here before. Walk beside the ones in grey and black who stare forward, never meeting your eyes. Trust me, they are watching you. If they do meet your eyes, they are telling you you are in danger.

- The bus driver is your friend. The security camera in the back of the bus is not.

-You do not talk to the person in the seat next to yours on the bus. Do not ask them where they're going. Do not ask where they need to get out. Humankind may have buried body language a long time ago, but it will serve you well now.

you can love him, but you can't keep him, tumblr user @/pencap / mother mary, badflower / the burning, venetta octavia / bastards and betrayal, pinterest user @/soupenthusiasts

A Blacksmith’s Dream

from hildegard of bingen - the woman of her age by fiona maddocks

Harry, Ginny and Lily Luna!

it is november, and yesterday it felt like it was supposed to be snowing. in boston, november used a winter month, not a fall month. it is supposed to be chilly; rarely capping over 45F. it is a sweater-and-jacket month. it is a "maybe a scarf too" month. in my childhood, november meant blizzards and sleet.

it did not snow. tomorrow the weather predicts a high of 76.

i have spent so many years of my life studying the longterm possibilities of climate change - the culmination of capitalism wreaking havoc on the bodies of people, animals, plants - but every so often i am still shocked by something small and personal.

in a hundred years, when someone goes outside in boston - will they know the feeling of "snow in the air"?

i know it's a learned feeling, a sensation that maybe only longterm experience can teach. a few years ago, i was walking with my friend who had just moved up from the south. i said it smells like snow and she gave me this look like - what the fuck. i said it feels like snow too, which didn't help. she looked up to the bright blue sky and then back at me and then back at the sky. 12 hours later, we had 3 inches. you can just tell if it's going to snow.

except i can't tell, anymore. i stand outside in a tee shirt and watch my dog dance around a lake. we're in a drought and the skin of the water has peeled back twenty meters. the lake is tamed, quiet, puddlelike and sour. my pokemon go app warns there's a weather condition in my area.

my dog gets too hot from running and sits in the water and i want to laugh about his long frame and how awkwardly he sits - and i can't. some simian part of my brain is scratching the walls. it was supposed to snow. it was supposed to snow, but now it's warm instead.

during the last full solar eclipse, the dogs and the birds and the crickets went crazy under utter darkness. we laughed at them then, promising it will all be okay in a moment. but some part of me is still locked in that long night: some animal sensation.

something is wrong, my body says. i can't afford eggs or rent. i go outside to watch a sunset and listen to birdsong. i don't bring a jacket. allergies are killing me this season, allergies i didn't have as a kid. everyone comments that halloween has started to feel strange, offkilter. that it's hard having "holiday cheer." my body thinks it's april, and then it thinks we're in september, and then june.

something is terribly wrong, she whispers. go outside. it is supposed to be snowing.

Sometimes I wish we would start calling out the performative radicalism on this site for the poser bullshit it is. "Remember, it's always morally correct to kill a cop!" "Don't forget to firebomb your local government office!" "Wow, it sure would be a shame if these instructions on how to make a molotov cocktail got spread around!"

Okay. But you're not killing cops or firebombing government offices. You are posting on a dying microblogging website to a carefully-curated echo chamber that has radicalized itself into thinking that taking the absolute most extreme position on any subject is praxis but that anyone discussing the most practical way to effect actual change is your sworn enemy. You do not have the street cred OR the activist cred to be talking about killing cops, babe.

You've never heard AnnenMayKantereit soulfully cry about how Love is saying the truth and it being so easy, the easiest words being "no" and "I'm not ready yet" and how she makes every day so simple and the biggest question is what they'll do today and how maybe, just maybe, this time it could work, because she is sweet and compassionate and loves snow in winter and every season and this time, it could work, it would be so beautiful if this time, maybe it could work, maybe- and it shows.

Menci Clement Crnčić (Croatian, 1865–1930), "A View of Novi Vinodolski"