In defense of bureaucratic competence

Sure, sometimes it really does make sense to do your own research. There's times when you really do need to take personal responsibility for the way things are going. But there's limits. We live in a highly technical world, in which hundreds of esoteric, potentially lethal factors impinge on your life every day.

You can't "do your own research" to figure out whether all that stuff is safe and sound. Sure, you might be able to figure out whether a contractor's assurances about a new steel joist for your ceiling are credible, but after you do that, are you also going to independently audit the software in your car's antilock brakes?

How about the nutritional claims on your food and the sanitary conditions in the industrial kitchen it came out of? If those turn out to be inadequate, are you going to be able to validate the medical advice you get in the ER when you show up at 3AM with cholera? While you're trying to figure out the #HIPAAWaiver they stuck in your hand on the way in?

40 years ago, Ronald Reagan declared war on "the administrative state," and "government bureaucrats" have been the favored bogeyman of the American right ever since. Even if Steve Bannon hasn't managed to get you to froth about the "Deep State," there's a good chance that you've griped about red tape from time to time.

Not without reason, mind you. The fact that the government can make good rules doesn't mean it will. When we redid our kitchen this year, the city inspector added a bunch of arbitrary electrical outlets to the contractor's plans in places where neither we, nor any future owner, will every need them.

But the answer to bad regulation isn't no regulation. During the same kitchen reno, our contractor discovered that at some earlier time, someone had installed our kitchen windows without the accompanying vapor-barriers. In the decades since, the entire structure of our kitchen walls had rotted out. Not only was the entire front of our house one good earthquake away from collapsing – there were two half rotted verticals supporting the whole thing – but replacing the rotted walls added more than $10k to the project.

In other words, the problem isn't too much regulation, it's the wrong regulation. I want our city inspectors to make sure that contractors install vapor barriers, but to not demand superfluous electrical outlets.

Which raises the question: where do regulations come from? How do we get them right?

Regulation is, first and foremost, a truth-seeking exercise. There will never be one obvious answer to any sufficiently technical question. "Should this window have a vapor barrier?" is actually a complex question, needing to account for different window designs, different kinds of barriers, etc.

To make a regulation, regulators ask experts to weigh in. At the federal level, expert agencies like the DoT or the FCC or HHS will hold a "Notice of Inquiry," which is a way to say, "Hey, should we do something about this? If so, what should we do?"

Anyone can weigh in on these: independent technical experts, academics, large companies, lobbyists, industry associations, members of the public, hobbyist groups, and swivel-eyed loons. This produces a record from which the regulator crafts a draft regulation, which is published in something called a "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking."

The NPRM process looks a lot like the NOI process: the regulator publishes the rule, the public weighs in for a couple of rounds of comments, and the regulator then makes the rule (this is the federal process; state regulation and local ordinances vary, but they follow a similar template of collecting info, making a proposal, collecting feedback and finalizing the proposal).

These truth-seeking exercises need good input. Even very competent regulators won't know everything, and even the strongest theoretical foundation needs some evidence from the field. It's one thing to say, "Here's how your antilock braking software should work," but you also need to hear from mechanics who service cars, manufacturers, infosec specialists and drivers.

These people will disagree with each other, for good reasons and for bad ones. Some will be sincere but wrong. Some will want to make sure that their products or services are required – or that their competitors' products and services are prohibited.

It's the regulator's job to sort through these claims. But they don't have to go it alone: in an ideal world, the wrong people will be corrected by other parties in the docket, who will back up their claims with evidence.

So when the FCC proposes a Net Neutrality rule, the monopoly telcos and cable operators will pile in and insist that this is technically impossible, that there is no way to operate a functional ISP if the network management can't discriminate against traffic that is less profitable to the carrier. Now, this unity of perspective might reflect a bedrock truth ("Net Neutrality can't work") or a monopolists' convenient lie ("Net Neutrality is less profitable for us").

In a competitive market, there'd be lots of counterclaims with evidence from rivals: "Of course Net Neutrality is feasible, and here are our server logs to prove it!" But in a monopolized markets, those counterclaims come from micro-scale ISPs, or academics, or activists, or subscribers. These counterclaims are easy to dismiss ("what do you know about supporting 100 million users?"). That's doubly true when the regulator is motivated to give the monopolists what they want – either because they are hoping for a job in the industry after they quit government service, or because they came out of industry and plan to go back to it.

To make things worse, when an industry is heavily concentrated, it's easy for members of the ruling cartel – and their backers in government – to claim that the only people who truly understand the industry are its top insiders. Seen in that light, putting an industry veteran in charge of the industry's regulator isn't corrupt – it's sensible.

All of this leads to regulatory capture – when a regulator starts defending an industry from the public interest, instead of defending the public from the industry. The term "regulatory capture" has a checkered history. It comes out of a bizarre, far-right Chicago School ideology called "Public Choice Theory," whose goal is to eliminate regulation, not fix it.

In Public Choice Theory, the biggest companies in an industry have the strongest interest in capturing the regulator, and they will work harder – and have more resources – than anyone else, be they members of the public, workers, or smaller rivals. This inevitably leads to capture, where the state becomes an arm of the dominant companies, wielded by them to prevent competition:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/05/regulatory-capture/

This is regulatory nihilism. It supposes that the only reason you weren't killed by your dinner, or your antilock brakes, or your collapsing roof, is that you just got lucky – and not because we have actual, good, sound regulations that use evidence to protect us from the endless lethal risks we face. These nihilists suppose that making good regulation is either a myth – like ancient Egyptian sorcery – or a lost art – like the secret to embalming Pharaohs.

But it's clearly possible to make good regulations – especially if you don't allow companies to form monopolies or cartels. What's more, failing to make public regulations isn't the same as getting rid of regulation. In the absence of public regulation, we get private regulation, run by companies themselves.

Think of Amazon. For decades, the DoJ and FTC sat idly by while Amazon assembled and fortified its monopoly. Today, Amazon is the de facto e-commerce regulator. The company charges its independent sellers 45-51% in junk fees to sell on the platform, including $31b/year in "advertising" to determine who gets top billing in your searches. Vendors raise their Amazon prices in order to stay profitable in the face of these massive fees, and if they don't raise their prices at every other store and site, Amazon downranks them to oblivion, putting them out of business.

This is the crux of the FTC's case against Amazon: that they are picking winners and setting prices across the entire economy, including at every other retailer:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/25/greedflation/#commissar-bezos

The same is true for Google/Facebook, who decide which news and views you encounter; for Apple/Google, who decide which apps you can use, and so on. The choice is never "government regulation" or "no regulation" – it's always "government regulation" or "corporate regulation." You either live by rules made in public by democratically accountable bureaucrats, or rules made in private by shareholder-accountable executives.

You just can't solve this by "voting with your wallet." Think about the problem of robocalls. Nobody likes these spam calls, and worse, they're a vector for all kinds of fraud. Robocalls are mostly a problem with federation. The phone system is a network-of-networks, and your carrier is interconnected with carriers all over the world, sometimes through intermediaries that make it hard to know which network a call originates on.

Some of these carriers are spam-friendly. They make money by selling access to spammers and scammers. Others don't like spam, but they have lax or inadequate security measures to prevent robocalls. Others will simply be targets of opportunity: so large and well-resourced that they are irresistible to bad actors, who continuously probe their defenses and exploit overlooked flaws, which are quickly patched.

To stem the robocall tide, your phone company will have to block calls from bad actors, put sloppy or lazy carriers on notice to shape up or face blocks, and also tell the difference between good companies and bad ones.

There's no way you can figure this out on your own. How can you know whether your carrier is doing a good job at this? And even if your carrier wants to do this, only the largest, most powerful companies can manage it. Rogue carriers won't give a damn if some tiny micro-phone-company threatens them with a block if they don't shape up.

This is something that a large, powerful government agency is best suited to addressing. And thankfully, we have such an agency. Two years ago, the FCC demanded that phone companies submit plans for "robocall mitigation." Now, it's taking action:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/10/telcos-filed-blank-robocall-plans-with-fcc-and-got-away-with-it-for-2-years/

Specifically, the FCC has identified carriers – in the US and abroad – with deficient plans. Some of these plans are very deficient. National Cloud Communications of Texas sent the FCC a Windows Printer Test Page. Evernex (Pakistan) sent the FCC its "taxpayer profile inquiry" from a Pakistani state website. Viettel (Vietnam) sent in a slide presentation entitled "Making Smart Cities Vision a Reality." Canada's Humbolt VoIP sent an "indiscernible object." DomainerSuite submitted a blank sheet of paper scrawled with the word "NOTHING."

The FCC has now notified these carriers – and others with less egregious but still deficient submissions – that they have 14 days to fix this or they'll be cut off from the US telephone network.

This is a problem you don't fix with your wallet, but with your ballot. Effective, public-interest-motivated FCC regulators are a political choice. Trump appointed the cartoonishly evil Ajit Pai to run the FCC, and he oversaw a program of neglect and malice. Pai – a former Verizon lawyer – dismantled Net Neutrality after receiving millions of obviously fraudulent comments from stolen identities, lying about it, and then obstructing the NY Attorney General's investigation into the matter:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/31/and-drown-it/#starve-the-beast

The Biden administration has a much better FCC – though not as good as it could be, thanks to Biden hanging Gigi Sohn out to dry in the face of a homophobic smear campaign that ultimately led one of the best qualified nominees for FCC commissioner to walk away from the process:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/15/useful-idiotsuseful-idiots/#unrequited-love

Notwithstanding the tragic loss of Sohn's leadership in this vital agency, Biden's FCC – and its action on robocalls – illustrates the value of elections won with ballots, not wallets.

Self-regulation without state regulation inevitably devolves into farce. We're a quarter of a century into the commercial internet and the US still doesn't have a modern federal privacy law. The closest we've come is a disclosure rule, where companies can make up any policy they want, provided they describe it to you.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out how to cheat on this regulation. It's so simple, even a Meta lawyer can figure it out – which is why the Meta Quest VR headset has a privacy policy isn't merely awful, but long.

It will take you five hours to read the whole document and discover how badly you're being screwed. Go ahead, "do your own research":

https://foundation.mozilla.org/en/privacynotincluded/articles/annual-creep-o-meter/

The answer to bad regulation is good regulation, and the answer to incompetent regulators is competent ones. As Michael Lewis's Fifth Risk (published after Trump filled the administrative agencies with bootlickers, sociopaths and crooks) documented, these jobs demand competence:

https://memex.craphound.com/2018/11/27/the-fifth-risk-michael-lewis-explains-how-the-deep-state-is-just-nerds-versus-grifters/

For example, Lewis describes how a Washington State nuclear waste facility created as part of the Manhattan Project endangers the Columbia River, the source of 8 million Americans' drinking water. The nuclear waste cleanup is projected to take 100 years and cost 100 billion dollars. With stakes that high, we need competent bureaucrats overseeing the job.

The hacky conservative jokes comparing every government agency to the DMV are not descriptive so much as prescriptive. By slashing funding, imposing miserable working conditions, and demonizing the people who show up for work anyway, neoliberals have chased away many good people, and hamstrung those who stayed.

One of the most inspiring parts of the Biden administration is the large number of extremely competent, extremely principled agency personnel he appointed, and the speed and competence they've brought to their roles, to the great benefit of the American public:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/18/administrative-competence/#i-know-stuff

But leaders can only do so much – they also need staff. 40 years of attacks on US state capacity has left the administrative state in tatters, stretched paper-thin. In an excellent article, Noah Smith describes how a starveling American bureaucracy costs the American public a fortune:

https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/america-needs-a-bigger-better-bureaucracy

Even stripped of people and expertise, the US government still needs to get stuff done, so it outsources to nonprofits and consultancies. These are the source of much of the expense and delay in public projects. Take NYC's Second Avenue subway, a notoriously overbudget and late subway extension – "the most expensive mile of subway ever built." Consultants amounted to 20% of its costs, double what France or Italy would have spent. The MTA used to employ 1,600 project managers. Now it has 124 of them, overseeing $20b worth of projects. They hand that money to consultants, and even if they have the expertise to oversee the consultants' spending, they are stretched too thin to do a good job of it:

https://slate.com/business/2023/02/subway-costs-us-europe-public-transit-funds.html

When a public agency lacks competence, it ends up costing the public more. States with highly expert Departments of Transport order better projects, which need fewer changes, which adds up to massive costs savings and superior roads:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4522676

Other gaps in US regulation are plugged by nonprofits and citizen groups. Environmental rules like NEPA rely on the public to identify and object to environmental risks in public projects, from solar plants to new apartment complexes. NEPA and its state equivalents empower private actors to sue developers to block projects, even if they satisfy all environmental regulations, leading to years of expensive delay.

The answer to this isn't to dismantle environmental regulations – it's to create a robust expert bureaucracy that can enforce them instead of relying on NIMBYs. This is called "ministerial approval" – when skilled government workers oversee environmental compliance. Predictably, NIMBYs hate ministerial approval.

Which is not to say that there aren't problems with trusting public enforcers to ensure that big companies are following the law. Regulatory capture is real, and the more concentrated an industry is, the greater the risk of capture. We are living in a moment of shocking market concentration, thanks to 40 years of under-regulation:

https://www.openmarketsinstitute.org/learn/monopoly-by-the-numbers

Remember that five-hour privacy policy for a Meta VR headset? One answer to these eye-glazing garbage novellas presented as "privacy policies" is to simply ban certain privacy-invading activities. That way, you can skip the policy, knowing that clicking "I agree" won't expose you to undue risk.

This is the approach that Bennett Cyphers and I argue for in our EFF white-paper, "Privacy Without Monopoly":

https://www.eff.org/wp/interoperability-and-privacy

After all, even the companies that claim to be good for privacy aren't actually very good for privacy. Apple blocked Facebook from spying on iPhone owners, then sneakily turned on their own mass surveillance system, and lied about it:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

But as the European experiment with the GDPR has shown, public administrators can't be trusted to have the final word on privacy, because of regulatory capture. Big Tech companies like Google, Apple and Facebook pretend to be headquartered in corporate crime havens like Ireland and Luxembourg, where the regulators decline to enforce the law:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/15/finnegans-snooze/#dirty-old-town

It's only because of the GPDR has a private right of action – the right of individuals to sue to enforce their rights – that we're finally seeing the beginning of the end of commercial surveillance in Europe:

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/americans-deserve-more-current-american-data-privacy-protection-act

It's true that NIMBYs can abuse private rights of action, bringing bad faith cases to slow or halt good projects. But just as the answer to bad regulations is good ones, so too is the answer to bad private rights of action good ones. SLAPP laws have shown us how to balance vexatious litigation with the public interest:

https://www.rcfp.org/resources/anti-slapp-laws/

We must get over our reflexive cynicism towards public administration. In my book The Internet Con, I lay out a set of public policy proposals for dismantling Big Tech and putting users back in charge of their digital lives:

https://www.versobooks.com/products/3035-the-internet-con

The most common objection I've heard since publishing the book is, "Sure, Big Tech has enshittified everything great about the internet, but how can we trust the government to fix it?"

We've been conditioned to think that lawmakers are too old, too calcified and too corrupt, to grasp the technical nuances required to regulate the internet. But just because Congress isn't made up of computer scientists, it doesn't mean that they can't pass good laws relating to computers. Congress isn't full of microbiologists, but we still manage to have safe drinking water (most of the time).

You can't just "do the research" or "vote with your wallet" to fix the internet. Bad laws – like the DMCA, which bans most kinds of reverse engineering – can land you in prison just for reconfiguring your own devices to serve you, rather than the shareholders of the companies that made them. You can't fix that yourself – you need a responsive, good, expert, capable government to fix it.

We can have that kind of government. It'll take some doing, because these questions are intrinsically hard to get right even without monopolies trying to capture their regulators. Even a president as flawed as Biden can be pushed into nominating good administrative personnel and taking decisive, progressive action:

https://doctorow.medium.com/joe-biden-is-headed-to-a-uaw-picket-line-in-detroit-f80bd0b372ab?sk=f3abdfd3f26d2f615ad9d2f1839bcc07

Biden may not be doing enough to suit your taste. I'm certainly furious with aspects of his presidency. The point isn't to lionize Biden – it's to point out that even very flawed leaders can be pushed into producing benefit for the American people. Think of how much more we can get if we don't give up on politics but instead demand even better leaders.

My next novel is The Lost Cause, coming out on November 14. It's about a generation of people who've grown up under good government – a historically unprecedented presidency that has passed the laws and made the policies we'll need to save our species and planet from the climate emergency:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865939/the-lost-cause

The action opens after the pendulum has swung back, with a new far-right presidency and an insurgency led by white nationalist militias and their offshore backers – seagoing anarcho-capitalist billionaires.

In the book, these forces figure out how to turn good regulations against the people they were meant to help. They file hundreds of simultaneous environmental challenges to refugee housing projects across the country, blocking the infill building that is providing homes for the people whose homes have been burned up in wildfires, washed away in floods, or rendered uninhabitable by drought.

I don't want to spoil the book here, but it shows how the protagonists pursue a multipronged defense, mixing direct action, civil disobedience, mass protest, court challenges and political pressure to fight back. What they don't do is give up on state capacity. When the state is corrupted by wreckers, they claw back control, rather than giving up on the idea of a competent and benevolent public system.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/10/23/getting-stuff-done/#praxis

A Dream’s Winding Way

Part I — A Beetle in a Matchbox 

Pairing: Arthur Morgan (high honor) x Female Reader

Summary: For as long as you could remember, you dreamt of falling in a love so whole and pure it was worth enduring the many griefs in your life. But the world, cold and cruel as it was, robbed that dream from you, and you believed you would forever be broken until you met a man who was scarred in his own way.

Word Count: 9.2k

Warnings: sexual assault, grief (past loss of parents/caretaker). 

A/N: This story is about surviving sexual assault. Over the past two years I’ve been writing this an effort to cope and process my own experience, but I also set out to write this for others who have suffered this as well. I wanted to craft a story that explored healing, finding a partner who understands consent, and feeling safe with them. Not every reader may be in the headspace to read this as I deal heavily with the wave of emotions that comes after an attack. The attack itself I did not desire to go into violent detail of, but it is there and it may be triggering. 

Regardless, I want any reader who decides they aren’t in the right place to read this because of the triggers to know that healing is possible, that you are not broken, ugly, or worthless, and no matter how much trauma has taken from you, you can still live a good life. Arthur Morgan is a comfort character I imagine would be that partner who understands boundaries and vulnerability and sees a woman he holds feelings for as more than her pain.

Part Two | AO3 Link

In memory, the woolly tufts of a moon-white dandelion swayed in a long departed breeze. You held it close, contemplating your heart’s desire amidst the babble of brook and the music of birdsong.

I want my first time to be with someone I’ve given my heart to.

The wind sifted through your skirts and the trees, meanwhile the deepest hope of your heart unfurled with a wishful blow until all that remained of the dandelion was a bald stem. You cast it off into a pebbled stream for the water to claim. The seeds coasted in the air and a motherly breeze carried them in its gentle wake, cradling your wish to the future day it could come true. No spider webs ensnared them, and the canopy parted to admit their passage into the turquoise sky. On that bank you stood on the cusp of womanhood, your world lush with possibility and untouched by tragedy, allowing your young heart to nurture such a naïve fantasy in the spring sunshine. 

                                                            ~ * ~

                                      ~ I — A Beetle in a Matchbox ~

Sawtooth Mountain Range, Idaho. 1891

 In the before, life was a fairytale. It was rising with the sun to a land still cold from a night beneath the mountains’ shadow, where wildflowers purpled the meadows and dawn trailed amber fingers through the abundant evergreens. Every day you opened your kitchen door little changed. Each morning, before you unlatched the garden gate, you enjoyed the music of singing birds alone, breathed in deep the thick and clean scent of pine, and cherished every place the sunlight touched in this little, precious corner of the world. From spring thaw to fall frost, the morning grass beneath your lively step held pinhead glitters of dew, dampening your hem as you would amble to the chicken coop, basket in arm and contented at the sight of a tawny rabbit nipping at the vegetable patch. It was the rewarding routine and rustic simplicity of tending a goat and digging your fingers in the fresh soil of your garden, the enjoyment of friendly society while working at the hotel in town and the privilege of sharing a cottage with your grandmother—the only family you had left.

A few years after you were born you lost your parents to cholera. You had no memory, fond or otherwise, tethered to them and the objects they left behind to unfailingly inflict the salt and sting of grief. Tucked inside your blouse you kept your mother’s ring on a chain, and on your bedside table a portrait of them sat framed and propped. The coolness of the metal and the sepia tone of the photograph made you smile with gratitude for what pieces of them remained. Pieces that were soft and unserrated, that you could hold on to, thumb the edges, and feel only the smooth ease of kinship. But the most comforting reminder of them all was your grandmother.

To you, she was a soft-spoken and welcoming woman, one who had lived a full life beneath the sun by the token of her laugh lines and the fan of wrinkles beside each of her eyes. With others she was sensible and solemn, and not a person to scam or underestimate.

Few saw the side of her you did: the kindhearted woman whose hair you helped pin up in a nautilus of braids each morning, whose dainty collar was kept mathematically straight. She often took you through the forests and taught you all about herbs and curative plants, instructing you to gather the roots of ginseng and the ruby heads of yarrow for teas and tonics and you took an instant proclivity towards it. She gifted you with a stack of field guilds on mushrooms, wildflowers, trees, birds, and everything else within the forest to prepare you. With a cattleman stowed on your hip she trusted you to venture out alone, and your horse, Willa, carried back your fragrant pickings in large, leather sacks that hung from her saddle on the path home. In the evenings, through the space in the boughs overhead, a scarf of smoke greeted you from the cobbled chimney of your home, where inside a stew pot waited, simmering with the fragrant steams of vegetable broth.

Those were treasured times, and you would never fully appreciate the true goodness of those days until your grandmother passed away, because for as much as she taught you to watch out for yourself, you still had so much to learn about the dangers of the world.

The people from town came by to offer their condolences and casseroles, and Mr. Greely gave you a week’s pay and time to grieve. You would get back on your feet, you knew, but you were grateful for everyone’s generosity and sympathies.

Winter came, a season of most cold reflection, and the solitude of trackless snows resembled the emptiness in you. Food turned to ash in your mouth, the pale and placid blue of the sunrise on mountain snow stirred no awe in your eyes, and you drifted through life as if it were a waking dream. Loneliness was a pit, and long had you trailed the span of its walls with unfeeling hands to a degree of familiarity and cold comfort, circling, circling, listless and hollow. 

As snow did, melancholy mellowed with spring. A day came when you awoke and opened the windows of the cottage to a renewed earth, wherein the singing liberation of fresh streams and rosy birds suffused the air and lifted your spirits. A breeze stirred the curtains. A cloud melted in the sky. The serenest of sunshine warmed your cheeks and a wind cleared your lungs, and each breath you inhaled was like a sip of chamomile tea as it swept its balmy way through your body. Venturing out, steps bedded by clovers, the water you drew from the mossy well held your reflection, and within its silver glimmers you glimpsed a girl who had grown into womanhood and aged a year in the space of a season. You were not the only one to notice this change.

With the spring the surrounding woods grew replete with game, drawing in hunters from all around, of which included one familiar face: the town Sheriff. He rode a buckskin horse with syrup brown eyes and a tail so long it brushed the earth; a wild stallion he tamed himself. The horse’s dappled flank often carried deer pelts on his way back from the deep forest. A trail wound not far from your cottage and he loped up one day, checking on you. You spied the old cedar stock of his long gun, stowed in his saddle holster as he pulled up the reins, the fringe of his suede jacket rippling as he jounced to a stop.

A howdy was exchanged as you balanced a basket of currants on your hip. Hand cupped against your brow, the sun beamed warm through the straw of your hat and you offered a polite smile to the man with a neatly trimmed black mustache, his face otherwise clean-shaven. A few minutes of amiable conversation ensued—him discussing the heavy snowfall of the winter and you assuring him you managed the harsh season. He took a more meaningful tone when he inquired about living on your own, if you had a means to protect yourself, and if you happened upon any unfriendly-looking persons. You knew well how dangerous it was for a woman to live by herself, in the wilderness or otherwise, regardless of the presence of your father’s old hunting rifle mounted above the fireplace. His concern was not unwarranted, after all you supposed it was his job to keep the town and the people in it safe. Knowing that someone in the world was watching out for you was a small relief you welcomed, but you wished you peered past the cloak of concern to unveil the underlying intention behind his appraisal of your competence before it was too late.

He visited weekly. Oftentimes he brought a bundle of wildflowers he had collected on his journey over; bluebells, because they were his late wife’s favorite. And no shortage of compliments accompanied him, either. Both you accepted awkwardly, not used to receiving this sort of attention as you handled the uprooted, bent stalks with the utmost care. He was on his way with a tip of his Stetson before long, and you pushed all thoughts of men far from the forefront of your mind as his horse’s hooves thumped off into the waning afternoon.

You wished you paid more attention when the Sheriff spoke of his wife’s passing and tried to relate his grief to yours. He loved her, and the naïve part of your mind believed the love in his heart would remain and never dwindle, because the love you held for your family endured despite the tragedies. He made you laugh on occasion, made you look forward to his visits, and worst of all, he got you to trust him. But he began to ask things of you, about you. Questions too personal. Would you be looking to get married since you were of age? Were you sweet on anyone? Questions that made you stammer in a way he mistook for something other than being flustered.

For as long as you dreamed, you dreamt of what falling in love would be like. It was the momentous landmark you looked forward to reaching the most in life. Something worth treading the painful slopes and crumbling scree of loss. To disclose that dream to him would be to give the wrong person the right piece of yourself, so you guarded your answers to his intrusive questions with ambiguity. He would huff, thwarted, but somehow, in some inadvertent way, he took it as encouragement to think his forwardness was welcome, because maybe he never would have come to you that night.

An invincible storm had rolled in. Rain poured wild and cold against the windows in veins of silver mined from the ore of thunderclouds, battering the panes and drumming the roof. Dark through the wilderness shone the sheer slanting waves of the downpour, lashing against the trees until their branches bowed in submission, moonlight devoid throughout. Flows of water sluiced through the baskets of geraniums hanging in the eaves and ran off the shingles, splashing down upon the ground in rippling puddles that danced with each new drop. Droplets and branches tapped against the other side of the cool glass against your hand, meanwhile, at your back, your dinner popped and hissed in its pot. You turned and drifted away from the window pane at length, and let the lacy curtain fall back in place.  

After supping, you draped a knitted throw around your shoulders and settled near the fire at last, to doze and drift in the peace of falling rain while tucked inside, safe and warm. As logs of cedar and birch snapped, sadness tapped against the window of your mind, as it often did, and your gaze was lost to the flames in rumination, the book in your lap forgotten as you reckoned with your circumstances. You were as content as you were able to be without the ones you had lost, but in the hollow of your heart your grief was a wound that never healed and yawned at times. Your grandmother’s perfume of heavy, dark red roses still clung to the soft weft of the blanket you held close—a smell that made you tender towards the past. So many traces of their life upon the Earth remained. 

A horse’s whinny broke your reverie. Your book fell as you jolted from the chair, seeking out your gun on the table before investigating the disturbance. Willa was situated in the small stable, and if someone was outside—

Rigorous knocking rumbled through your door frame, followed by a familiar voice, pleading.

You set the gun down and yanked open the storm-pelted door. At the same time, a boulder of thunder rolled through the night. Across the land lightning flashed through the sky to illuminate the weathered face standing at your threshold.

“Sheriff? What on Earth—“

He barged past you without invitation, shotgun ready in hand. For all of an instant you stood frozen in bewilderment, until the gusts of wind billowing in prompted you to shut the door and your gaping mouth. He was on a mission, it appeared, because he ignored your protestations.

The Sheriff blustered his way through your tranquil home in a whirring of spurs and a splatter of muck. Dirt ankle-deep caked his riding boots, his feet muddier than a pig’s hooves as he searched about the main room in a frenzy, yanking open doors and shoving aside furniture. Each of his intrusive footsteps quaked the floors, shaking the fine dishware in its special cabinet, the copper pots hanging above the dry sink, and the shelves of jarred fruits and jams. He carried rainwater and the look of a storm in his wake, shattering the peace you found earlier this evening completely. From his ebony gun belt a hunting knife and a freshly-oiled Schofield hung prepared beside his Sheriff’s star.

You stood waiting, arms folded, for an explanation.

When the last place for him to search were the floorboards you stood upon, he sagged and sighed with relief, deflated. He removed his hat, his face no longer obscured to reveal the grim line of his mouth and a hard determination simmering in the umber of his eyes. At last, he explained himself.

He said he came as soon as he heard to make sure you were safe. Safe from what? you asked. Bad men were about, he stated. Outlaws, murderous train robbers and thieves wanted across two state lines. Men devoid of a human conscience. The words sunk in with a weighty silence of understanding, silence in which the rain filled and your imagination could wander to gruesome places. Strangers seldom passed through here, let alone outlaws, you commented.

“Now you understand my lack of decorum. I hope you can forgive my negligent manners.”

Solemnly, you nodded. The hairs along your arm had risen, skin prickled, and you sought the ring hanging from your neck out of habit. To hold it against your heart and trace its comforting shape kept you grounded in moments of uncertainty.

In his hands he fiddled with the brim of his hat. A puddle formed on the floor where he stood.

“You must be chilled to the bone,” you ventured. “I’ll pour you some whiskey.”

“That’d be mighty fine of you, miss.”

Your hospitality indicated a hesitant welcome, but the Sheriff was clueless to your apprehension. The rain subsided to a light tapping on the roof and window panes; he could have his drink and be on his way momentarily. You turned to busy yourself with finding a glass. Meanwhile, the click of his spurs trailed over to the wall hook. Fabric rustled as he hung up his Stetson and shed his dripping coat.

With no electricity, you relied on oil lamps to keep your cottage illuminated. The steady, amber glow cast from the etched glass sconces always imbued the acorn brown stain of the woodwork with warmth and charm. However, the Sheriff’s presence in your home inverted all the comfort you found within it. The dried herbs hanging in the rafters offered no rich and earthy smell, the bowl of fruit on the counter promised no sweet taste in the gleam of their ripe skins. But you ignored all of these perceptions and the insect crawl of wariness creeping along your spine and retrieved the bottle of rye whiskey you kept for medicinal purposes.

You kept your back to the Sheriff as you perused your selection of glassware for a suitable tumbler. Touch skipping lightly along the wood, dust coated your fingertips as you drew from the top shelf. In the pit of your stomach dread curdled. Outside, the storm had lessened, but another one of unease was brewing inwardly. Through the reflection of the cabinet doors you caught the Sheriff’s stare as you shut them, latched to your form. The shameless indulgence in his gaze provoked a flare of ire through you and you cleared your throat with an air of reproach.

“Where was this gang of Dutch van der Linde’s spotted?” You turned to him, shoulders and chin raised in an effort to appear untroubled. The question hung for a moment as the Sheriff considered where to place his undue shotgun. The stock settled against the table leg and he straightened at your approach, smoothing a hand over the broom of his mustache.

“Near Taylor Ranch,” he answered.

You blinked. Without a hat, shadows no longer concealed his pockmarked cheeks and the bushy, ungroomed lintels of his eyebrows. His shirt was wrinkled and damp from riding in the storm, clinging to his skin. The top two buttons were uncharacteristically undone, peeking wiry chest hair.

You had paused, but not because of his unkempt appearance. The whiskey shivered in tones of gold and brass as you set it on the table absently, along with the glass. Light from a lone, flickering candle caught the ginger liquid like a brazier.

“That’s only two miles from here.”

A log fell in the fireplace, spent, embers spitting.

“Indeed.”

He thumbed the curling petal of one of his bluebells, a faint smile dangling on the corner of his mouth. You had arranged the latest cluster of his in a porcelain pitcher set on your table. Below, your eyes dropped to where a few of the flowers had withered and fallen upon the table runner. 

Pondering, wood creaked as you retreated to the fireplace, leaving him to his drink and odd fascinations. Meanwhile your fingers worried with your cuffs, twisted in your skirt as you swirled in the eddy of your thoughts. The Taylors. Closing your eyes you remembered the smell of their home: fresh baked bread and strawberries. All of your visits had the flavor of berries and apples. A cross-stitched picture of a goose wearing a bonnet hung in their window and welcomed any who knocked on their door, which Mrs. Taylor would swing open with a smile and a gingham apron around her waist. 

Though she had a square jaw and chapped lips, crow’s feet and a stern demeanor, her hugs were the warmest and most welcoming. No one was a stranger at her doorstep for long, for she was quick to invite them in and fuss over a pot of tea and offer her finest plate stacked with shortbreads. Her motherly hospitality and friendliness of heart healed a wound your parents' loss opened. Taylor Ranch was a place you sought in the hours you yearned for solitude and contemplation, amity and freedom. Within their prized orchards resided plentiful avenues for you to explore in the summer and stroll through in the rustling Octobers, twisting from the trees the honey-sweet pendants of autumn to bake into pies. 

Marveling at the filigree of branches through which the sun cast its lemony light, it was in this enchanting place you first met the Taylors’ youngest son, Gideon. And what a meeting it was, all those years ago: he fell for you, literally—off an orchard ladder to a ground strewn with windfall apples, his collarbone snapping in the process. 

In a rush you swept to his side, apples thudding to the leafy ground. The boy roiled in pain, his face contorting, and you rose to action. His family came running when you called for help, and you did your best to haul him back to the house until his older brother retrieved him from where he leaned against your shoulder. Together you gingerly delivered him to the sofa in the sitting room and his father galloped to fetch the town doctor. 

You stayed at his side, this strange boy, noticed the dimples set in his pale cheeks and his russet hair—the rings of which his mother swept aside soothingly. Such soft features garnered an unfamiliar attention from within you. You had stared. 

The doctor arrived and set the bone, the grimacing sound and sight of which you closed your eyes against. Standing aside uselessly, you fidgeted with your mother’s ring for lack of occupation. Mrs. Taylor registered your worry and assured you that you were blameless for his injury. 

For days you thought of him. Though no words had passed between you, the glance you first shared with each other stilled time and lingered in a meadow of memory. Curiosity was all it was—towards a feeling, an interest in another. Gideon was the first boy to capture your attention in such a way. 

At the end of that week you returned to the ranch bearing a basket of sourdough biscuits. Slathered in honey, warm from the oven, your recipe yielded the fluffiest batch perfect for sharing. When she answered the door Mrs. Taylor had the most knowing smile on her face before calling over her shoulder. Gideon appeared a few moments later, a sling around his arm and a thumb hooked in his suspender. He had a hard time meeting your eyes and shifted on his feet when you offered to lunch with him. You sat on the porch together, enjoying the sight of chickens scratching at the fenced-off squares of dirt, of barn cats lazing in the sun, observing the last of autumn’s spell fading in the air. 

You visited him while he recovered, kindling something pure and sweet with him. He admired you a great deal. But afterwards, when he was well again and you had no excuse to see him other than the obvious, a kiss was sealed. How peculiar and unexpected it was, the moment he leaned towards you. Sitting beneath a giant oak tree while acorns dug into your hands, you found you dreaded it: the nearness of him. In your mind a kiss was a lucent dream of falling blossoms and a soft blue haze of light, like the very action were a twist of a key, unlocking your soul to another. At least, that was what you had wanted it to be, had always imagined it.  

When Gideon the boy kissed you it was a wet slide of his mouth—hungry, rushing, pressing hard and then sucking while his hands groped, seeking parts of your body you had yet to grow into. You sat frozen, eyes wide, not knowing how to move as his tongue roamed. So you took it. Afterwards, you wiped the ring of spittle around your mouth with your sleeve. He had smirked as he leaned away, and you no longer admired the dimples in his cheeks. You made an excuse to leave and when you returned home your grandmother asked if something was wrong, but you never overcame the shame of it to tell her. 

A revulsion built and simmered within you for the next few weeks. In town—for you had ceased to visit the ranch—he would press you against the clapboard behind the general store and beg for your lips and your hand to hold as he humped your hips, and he would tell you what he wanted you to wear when he next saw you. He was a foolish, over-eager boy, and he had no notion of romance or how to properly treat the one he was fond of. He knew so little about you and what your heart wanted, and you were disinclined to share any more of yourself with him. Unable to bear it any longer, you broke his heart, and he blamed you for every unhappiness henceforth. 

Throughout the passage of ten years his face and the unwelcome manner of his caresses remained unbearable to picture. No longer a boy, Gideon had grown from a clingy and imprudent child into a snobby and spiteful specimen of a man; an arrogant prig who filled his role of deputy at the Sheriff’s office exceptionally. You had long cast him from the forefront of your mind, but the Sheriff’s mentioning of the Taylor’s home and the threat posed to it brought the unpleasant recollections rushing back, and it took a moment before you recovered your composure. 

The heat of the fireplace fanned across your cheeks. In the night thunder cracked, calling you back into the atmosphere of the room, where you knelt at a stone hearth, ash on your sleeves. Wood gathered, logs clunked in the grate and scattered sparks as you tossed them in. Your thoughts of the past reached a conclusion at the glug of liquor filling a glass; with your back to your guest you broke the long lasting silence. 

“You should be checking on them, not me. Are you rounding up a posse?” 

A pouring of liquid answered. His eager lips approached the brim of the glass and swallowed it as if it were a fount of water in a desert. You turned to him as he filled it again. 

“I can’t do anything in this storm, and neither can those reprobates,” he pulled out a chair at the table, settling into it as happily as a worm in an apple. “‘Sides, Ned has hired guns and four strong boys to protect his property, whereas you‘re all alone out here—” A cough interrupted him. He blew an appreciative whistle once his throat was clear, sniffing the bottle. “This is some strong stuff you got here.”

Irritation flared within you at his blatant display of indecorum, evident by the propping up of his booted feet on your table. With his bandana pulled down low, the V of his throat gleamed with sweat as he tipped the full glass back. His Adam's apple bobbed, big as a turkey egg.

“Sheriff, while I am grateful for the trouble you’ve…” A drop of mud splattered on the table from his boot. You blinked at it. “—taken on my behalf, I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself.” Not bothering to hide your annoyance you poked and prodded the logs in the grate with a fire poker, leveling his gaze afterwards. His expression held not a drop of seriousness or concern.  

“I can see that,” he chuckled. The key of his voice rang clear with condescension. With a great sigh you hung the poker back on its stand and dusted off your hands, looking about the room with a curled lip. His earlier theatrics had displaced much of your furniture. 

Your throw blanket laid in a soft puddle on the floor. You bent and folded it in a neat square, draping it over the back of your armchair, and setting that straight, too.  

“You don’t need to worry. I’ll make sure those men don’t come near here. By high-noon tomorrow, they’ll be human fruit for the buzzards.” Trouble must have lined your expression, for the aura of pride radiating from his demeanor softened, and you found his gaze fixed moonily upon you. His words painted a grisly image of the scaffold in your mind, which dispelled with a shake of your head. 

“What are they looking for, do you think? There’s nothing for men like that out here.”  

You wandered over to the window. Behind you, the Sheriff capped the whiskey. 

“The law is after them. They pulled a heist near Salt Lake and now they’re on the run with some big score, looking for a place to hide and wait for the heat to die down. But they’re fools,” he huffed, gritting his teeth. “And get this, they apparently give their money back to poor folk, like some sort of Robin Hood gang. They think they’re hero outlaws doing good deeds.”

You had no idea what to think of that. The clock on the wall ticked. Some minutes had passed since the last rumble of thunder, and your hand had naturally sought the ring hanging around your neck in the course of staring off into the night; the rain only pattered, no longer drumming hard on the roof. 

“The rain is stopping,” you said. 

Chair legs scuffed across the floor. “I suppose I’ve worn out my welcome?” 

Turning, you rallied a tepid smile. He had risen to his full height, his clothes still damp and wrinkled. Looking at you, he passed a knuckle across his lips, the hairs of his mustache scritching and the gold of his wedding band flashing. Across the room dark eyes descended from your face, fixing on the hand near your breast. You dropped it and squared your shoulders. To bring his attention back to your face, you called out his name in question.

After all of these years, you wished you could have forgotten it. It would have been a small mercy to your memory.

“I’m sorry, I forget myself sometimes. It’s just…you’re so pretty, standing there in the firelight like that.” 

His voice was but a murmur. It was so strange—hearing those words from him. They were supposed to be soft, and from any other man they could be, but his brash voice and hungry stare ruined anything gentle about them. Like putting lace gloves on a fishmonger, they were all wrong and unsuitable for him. They prickled the cold kind of goosebumps down your arms, making you shiver like a rabbit caught in a trap.

At your speechlessness, he took a step in your direction.

“Sheriff,” you started, putting your hand up. Pressing on, you measured the tone of your voice to be as low and as serious as you could muster. “I think you’ve had a drop too many.”

He smirked at you, hooking his thumbs in his belt, beside his badge and his gun. One of his eyes crinkled and the crooked slant of his mouth revealed the stains of tobacco on his teeth. 

“No,” he continued on. His steps, as they advanced, grew more condemning than the ones before it, maintaining his slow and leisurely gait. “I’ve noticed it before. I’ve noticed for a long time.” 

The truth. So plain before you; it dawned dreadfully like a blood-red sun at sea, shone clear like coins in the murk of a well. The authenticity behind his hebdomadal visits and floral offerings rippled into clarity with those few words: for a long time. How could your eyes have looked everywhere but at the black heart of him? That moment, too, was no exception. You sought salvation from the sight of him by glancing around the room, meanwhile chiding yourself for not being more distrustful and vigilant and for overlooking his true intentions. 

Graciously, his foot knocked against something. You caught your breath. For a moment, you had the chance to scope out your options, and put some distance between you and him. 

The Sheriff picked up the object impeding his path. Your book—the one you had been trying to read before his fists pummeled your door. The embossed title flashed beneath his passing thumb. 

Wuthering Heights. 

Long ago the thundering storm and crackle of flame ebbed away, especially within those pages. Branches captured in the sway of a breeze adorned the cover modestly for such a tale of the nature of love and bitterness. 

“You’re lonelier than I thought,” he said, quiet and drifting like an afterthought. You tensed. “There’s another reason why I came here tonight.”

He set the book aside and stood. The sideboard rattled as your back bumped against it. 

“I think you should leave.”

“Leave? Is that what you really want?” 

In one devastating blink, he was before you, so close the thin and pale violet skin beneath his eyes was visible. The fumes of alcohol on his breath stung your nostrils and you wrinkled away as he tipped the sharp beak of his nose to sniff the crown of your head. 

You could not help the sharp breath you took at his sordid deeds, the sound of which only pulled his gaze to your quivering bodice and your knuckles, tightened on the edge of the sideboard. He had you blocked in, like a beetle trapped in a matchbox, skittering from corner to hopeless corner. He licked his lips. 

“How long are you going to play at this?” A touch meant to be soft and reassuring singed your wrist. “Always looking so pretty and proper, the picture of a perfect wife,” the touch of his hand turned into a vice grip, so total and absolute your fingers could not move. A numb feeling overtook your limbs, your senses held hostage by fear. “Then actin’ all innocent as if you don’t want me too.” 

Another touch, this time seizing your cheek coldly as the statue that you wish you were not. At the imminence of his hot, wet mouth seeking to devour yours you found it within yourself to move. A wave of urgency swelled up and carried you away, towards the door, but he had you in his grasp before any hopeful seed of escape could be planted. 

The kitchen table with its cheerful lace runner and softly burning candle jostled as your front was bent over it, knocking the pitcher of bluebells to the floor. Porcelain cracked and you watched the water pool, petals floating, darkening the wood, and you wished the night that passed would fall apart into similar pieces, to leave the memories scattered and unstrung like the beads of a broken necklace across a floor. 

“What’s it going to take with you,” he had hissed in your ear, his spittled words dripping black, wicked and vile. Metal jingled. Fabric lifted. Cold air met your legs. Buttons freed their hold.

Stop. 

“I always knew you were a—”

Stop remembering. 

“—pretty thing.”

Absorbed in his vice, he little cared for his actions, entranced by his insidious deed. Foul words and heavy breaths hissed through his teeth and echoed for years after. 

Your mind left your body. But you remembered all of it. 

And you were so tired of remembering. You hated how easy it was for him to take everything from you. You hated the lust that drove him, your body for being an object of his desire, and yourself for being unable to stop any of it from happening.

The ringing report of rifle fire split the night, and it was the only thing that made him stop. But the damage was done. He tucked his shirttail in, buckled his belt. Left; a promise to return the next evening finalized by a vulgar squeeze to your backside, stinging your flesh. 

Wood scraped along your nails as you slid to the floor, clutching the table leg, trembling. At once, with an empty stare and shaking limbs, tears blurred your sight as all of your remaining strength relinquished. You curled into your body, disconsolate. Hugged your knees. Sobs, sobs, sobs wrenched your jaw apart in mourning what was lost and what was done to you.

It would follow your every other thought, that scene of despair in the lonely dark of night. You were cold for so long afterwards; for months, in a way no blanket or bowl of soup could remedy. The misery nested so deep within you. Further than the marrow of your bones. 

Every day for the rest of your life you would remember his hands. On you, squeezing, guided and distorted by depraved intent. Darker and drearer fell the night, and the full tide of your thoughts consumed you in a bitter, burning woe. 

Until dawn there was nothing but the pale, dead gold of the moon. You saw nothing. You felt nothing. Your mind only replayed it all, over and over. 

The violent tint of dawn crept in between the curtains. On the end of your lashes the last of your tears hung, and as the light came upon you, so softly bright, the deep-welling sorrow that sunk your heart yawned into something else. An emotion that braced your hands against the wood floor, collected you to your knees, and drove you shuffling forward. Shame. 

In your bedroom you gathered soap and new clothes into a basket before stepping foot outside. A glorious morning announced itself in every sound, from the sweetest music filling the trees, to the wind that gently stirred their nascent leaves. But it all fell on deaf ears. Your senses were lost to grim contemplation. 

Along a forest path rippling waters wandered. To their source they led, and alongside its flow you followed. 

Ties loosened, you dropped your skirts to your feet at the riverbank. All over, your skin spidered with memories of how he had touched you. The fastenings of your clothes came undone mechanically. You pretzeled arms behind your back to yank at your shirt buttons until all of your body was bare to the misty morning. Silver water whispered its coldness between your toes as you stepped forward onto the pebbled, silty shore, walking without seeing, feeling nothing but the cold encasing your ankles, your knees, rising up until the river embraced your shoulders in a purging chill. With a breath you dipped under. In a blink you escaped. 

Beneath the surface, the feelings and the memories dimmed. Slippery rocks brushed your feet and you grasped a slimy branch to sink farther. Little white bubbles floated up as you let the wintry temperature of the water numb your mind into blessed silence. The sensation calmed you, and that was all you wanted; the only thing you could seek within your tremorous reach. Quiet, and a state of unfeeling. Until that moment all of your thoughts were a repetition of the same statement of instability and unease: I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. Teeth chattering; every pore over your body squirmed with the taint of his violation every step of the way to the river. Only beneath the current had it stopped. At last you ceased to think. 

Your heart seized and your lungs begged for air. And again, something brought you up. From the kitchen floor, from the bed of the river. With a gasp you broke the surface and your eyes fixed upon the sky. The great blue bowl of it was ringed with treetops, eagles circling—the world around you, going on as it should while droplets trickled down your spine. Clouds of river foam gathered around the stagnant driftwood you stepped over while treading to the bank. Taking a seat upon a rock, you scoured your limbs with soap until the skin squeaked and your fingers pruned, the bubbles drifting downstream. From your hand, ice cold, help deep in the river, the water fell over your knees and your shins, down your shoulders and in the hollow of your back, cleansing and numbing. With the print of the Sheriff’s fingers no longer pressed into your skin, you dried and dressed, ready to face the scene inside the cottage once again. 

Too often in this world girls become women before they are ready, before they are strong enough, before they know enough to endure all of the trials womanhood entails. Losing your family to sickness so young, being on your own completely, you thought your world was as bleak as it could be. Until the night that passed—when the universe peeled back another layer of darkness to descend over your life.

Upon approaching the front gate of the only home you had ever known, something changed. The familiar consolation of its shelter was absent. No smile tugged your lips at the dance of dragonflies in the air, at the tulip bulbs in your garden plot sprouting toothy stalks from the dirt. 

Within each season resided a singular wealth unique to the forest, the remembrances of which carved fond grooves in your mind to touch over in times you sought comfort, the niches imbued with a sense of belonging and safety. You reached inwards for them. 

For the trinkets of winter, silver, blue, and white—the sugaring of snow, the glittering of frost, the river’s music silenced by ice. Leading to the light of the sun warming once again, stout icicles dripping onto emerald moss, coaxing the golden crocus from the thaw. How, slowly, the days grow longer, April rain moistening the lichen on the roof tiles, darkening the soil, spawning the green scent of an Earth renewed. 

It was as if every page of memory were ripped from the book of your life, leaving an empty tome. There was no story left for you here. 

The door threw a trapezoid of light when you opened it. Standing in the threshold, a five-leaf cluster wandered down from the sky and landed on the floorboard, dotted damply with the night’s rain. Inside, everything was the same, yet changed, like some place in a dream. The house was as dark as a tomb, haunted with the echoes and dust of people taken from you, and someone who took from you. Nothing but a vacant chair welcomed you.  

On the mantle rested trinkets from your parents. A pocket mirror of your mother’s, silver and elegant, and a rosewood pipe of your father’s, smooth and genteel. To hold them in your palm, curl your fingers over their edges and clasp them to your skin as if wringing out the last ghosts of their touch, as you so often did, would only bring you to your knees. You needed to move forward and leave it all behind. You needed—

A chip crunched beneath your foot. You stepped away, revealing the obliterated piece of vase. What a helpless, fragile vessel. Admired throughout its lifetime, only to be thrust into ruin. Your hands shook beside you, the bones of your fingers tingling with riotous nerves all the while anguish swelled in your chest to a volcanic boiling point. 

A wrenching, piercing roar split your throat apart. 

In a rush the desecrated table toppled over. Screaming, you kicked it harder and harder until your toenails bled and the whole thing scudded ten feet across the floor. Your arms swung wildly about with each effort, fighting the images of yourself bent over it, helpless and frozen, and unable to beat them back. More and more you screamed with outrage, but it was not enough. You were not strong enough. Your limbs alone could not prevail. 

No man would ever know of the darkness their touch leaves behind. Meanwhile you would carry it forever.

It was not fair. 

Your rage conducted you outside, sustained you in the search of some outlet, some tool to deliver greater destruction than your feeble body could convey. Leaving the table behind, pools of last night’s rain splashed beneath your blazing step on the path to the shed where you kept your father’s axe. Jabbering cardinals flurried away to the trees at your storming approach and the sun graced your forehead through the lacings of the leaves they found shelter in. 

Ordinarily, the sight of so much emergent green abounding after one rainfall would stoke wonder in you. In one place, in one wind, the new leaves sang wavily while a cloud passed over the glare of the sun, bringing a cooler depth to the shades of the earth until all brightened and warmed again once the cloud melted away. After the longest winter, it was what your soul needed to fill the holes in your heart. Grief was becoming a part of your landscape, however. You stopped short on the path.

A wind-cloven branch warped the roof of the shed. It must have fallen in the night. The severed limb was great and heavy, and in the place where it was once joined to its life force the splintered wood was a tender, meaty white, darker in its center. Bugs skittered along the scales of lichen patching their once steady home; in days the leaves would wither and wilt.

With gravity and a few tugs the branch came down. As it lay upon the stone path, uprooted, your simmering rage found its outlet. This was something you could destroy. You reached inside the shed, and with it in your hand, the axe dragged across the ground. The curved edge shone sharp in the sun as it scraped along stone.  

Raising it above your shoulder, your limbs quaked before you released it all at last. Swing after swing, hack after hack, again and again you heaved the hatchet into the log, pieces splintering as memories of him came free as well. Him, his voice. How his acts of kindness were all a lie—a ploy to get you where he wanted you. Bent over a table. 

Crack. 

Alone. No one to help you. First Gideon with his groping hands, then the Sheriff with the smoldering fire in his eyes. 

A split. 

You braced your foot against the branch and twisted the hatchet free. Deeper and deeper down into the wood you burrowed, gathering venom with each reflection. As the branch fell apart and wood chunks flew your resolve stitched itself together. 

He.

 Swing. Your skin is so soft here.

Had.

  Breathe in. Forget his words.

No.

 Bury them. 

Right.

With a momentous strike the tree limb cracked asunder. A final scream tore your throat raw. The birds split free from the sunlit canopy, and the forest was still as your shriek petered to a shriveling wail, then nothing. 

The line of thought looping through your head quieted too. The uncertainty and fear of not knowing what to do, how to move forward from this, was gone. While the thread of anger and veins of sadness and shame still pulsed within, it all flowed together, steady and purposeful. The axe hung from your hand, dangled a scant inch from the ground, and your breathing relaxed as the sweat dried cool on your brow. 

Lightning had struck this tree twice before. Each fracture diminished its once formidable heights, an august maple which sheltered your childhood in the sweltering summers and cast familiar shadows in your room at bleary midnights. But every spring it flourished in a robe of green, the ruptures healing, new branches broadening their offshoots, and marched onwards to the grand vault of the heavens. However lightning-struck, it lived on, not dying of ruined hopes alone. 

The time to dwell had passed. You were done crying. You were done blaming yourself. And you were done with asking yourself why. What you were ready to do was protect yourself from ever getting hurt again. You could not let the pain stop you. So you finished chopping up the tree to break down into firewood later. 

A whicker sounded from the stable. Willa, your sweet, gentle mare. Until that moment you had forgotten her. Putting the axe aside, in a dash the door clanged open at your hand and you found her thoughtful eyes in the slanting ribbon of daylight. You sighed in relief. Safe and sound, your only friend left in the world shuffled in her stall, the space smelling of wood and hay. You approached her with an open palm, smoothing it over her black and white coat.

“Hey, sweetie.”

Animals could be so intelligent and perceptive at times. Willa nudged your shoulder, sensing the sorrow molding your heart, and you pressed your cheek to her warm neck. Smelling sweetly of grass and hay, her black mane slipped through the comb of your fingers like a shadow melting back into shade. You drew it away to uncover the white star on the center of her forehead. Her long lashes dipped somberly. You took a comb from its niche behind a joist and brushed along her coat for a long while. Without words, you found a way to speak to her of the events that unfolded the night before, thinking of them deeply and shutting your eyes as she remained close. 

In the evening he would return. And the next, and the one after. On and on it would go, and you could live a whole lifetime in fear and hatred and pain, unless you stopped it. He said you were the picture of a perfect wife. No man would have you now. A word from him and the whole town would condemn you if you refused his wants. Deviously, he had made sure it was impossible for you to say no to him and once again you were backed into a corner, that beetle trapped in a matchbox with no way out. 

You needed a place to think. After scooping Willa some oats you donned a hat and your father’s old hunting jacket, a garment fashioned from a durable brown suede with deep front pockets and elk horn buttons. It was familiar and warm, and a comfort. 

You hefted your horse’s saddle off the hook and over her back, commenced cinching the straps and adjusting the stirrups, and led her outside. Fetching your gun belt and a waterskin from the cottage, you mounted up and loped down the forest path. 

Deep in the woods, where the mountain air of spring violets and dew-spangled moss came sweet upon the senses, Nymph Lake rested like a jewel in a chest lined with evergreen velvet, a treasure to the eyes and ears. A glassy calm transfixed the sleeping waters, an aquatic scent lingering. Lily-pads shouldered its reeded edges, rocks shone brown beneath the changeful sheen of the serene ripples, and minnows balanced themselves among the underwater grasses which wavered and streamed in the natural flow of the pond. All around, the timberline hemmed the lone mountain lake in, with the sun scarcely streaking the treetops at the early morning hour. A woodpecker clung to the knot of a treebole and drilled for insects, and along the water a frog added its voice to the song of the wilderness. 

Thompson’s Peak rose up in the azure of the sky like the spires of an Arthurian castle. Seams of snow dwelled in the vast fissures of the mountainside and thrived in the shadows of the rock, a granite tapestry striated with the grays of smoke and storm clouds with canals of rust between. Willa’s hooves sunk into the soggy ground as she shifted on her feet. You swayed in the saddle, giving her some rein and leaning back as she began to climb uphill past a pile of rocks, out of the tree line and towards the sunny side of the bouldered mountain trail. 

For all of its sentimental worth to you, and as safe as any place you could find, Nymph Lake was not the refuge you sought. The times ahead and the path you were about to embark on was uncharted and uncertain territory. The trusting, pure chapter of your life would have to be left in shadow. 

Through the notch between Willa’s ebony ears, you aimed yourself towards the rugged slopes and mounds of the Sawtooths, the earth coarse, shifting with detritus and scree, with few and far pine trees taking root between. Long, bare logs and trunks of trees, parched and decaying, strewed the land, slowly sliding away and downwards, the old bending back into the earth as the new prospers, rising up in the form of saplings. 

Your grandmother’s words came to mind. Always do what your heart tells you. In the bare wind you listened; for one, for the other. The world to you once, the presiding presence of Thompson’s Peak filled your vision, steady as a lighthouse. 

If it were any other man, you could go to the law and report his crime. If you did nothing, you would crumble into a shell of yourself, something brittle and hollow for the wind to sweep away like the exoskeletons of summertime cicadas. If not you, it would be another. Picturing him luring and coercing another unwise girl, grinning at the prospect of her ruination, was enough to temper your insides to steel, your heart to adamant. 

You pulled Willa to a stop and dismounted on the gravel trail, unlimbering your gun. Six bullets occupied the cylinders in the loading chamber and you traced the notch in each one, twisting the mechanism around and around, acknowledging its life-altering clicks, small and clear. Your finger brushed the cool, curved steel trigger. For your protection, grandmother once said. In case you’re in the forest, lost in your foraging, and maybe you’re not watching your step, and you unwittingly stumble upon the hunting grounds of a predator. A beam of sunlight glinted along the barrel like a blinding star. I would have more peace of mind knowing you have some way to protect yourself and how to use it. I’m getting old, you know. 

Amidst the painful contemplation of your fate, fighting your last fight for the principles of your youth on that crumbling mountainside, Willa nosed a cluster of plants growing alongside the trail and set her teeth over their leaves, intending to munch, and everything stopped, suddenly sharpened. In a blink you tsked her away, and as you snapped the revolver chamber back into the loading gate, it all clicked into place, the sound like that of a key sliding in the lock of Death’s door. 

From memory, the page from one of your field guides on plants emerged in your mind’s eye. Death Camas was a member of the Liliaceae plant family, discernible for its grass-like leaves from which sprouted a raceme of white flowers with yellow anthers, as well as its distinctive onion scent. Fifteen different species thrived throughout North America, inhabiting mountain valleys, grassy plains, forests, and dry land alike, all of which grew from a white bulb with a fibrous root system. An unknowing passerby could easily mistake them for wild onions. A mere bite of one would invariably cause weakness and convulsions, vomiting and difficulty breathing, impair their muscles and nerves. A meal of them would stop their heart altogether. 

You crouched to the ground, stones grating underfoot, and your shadow fell over the colony of unassuming plants as you idled over them. Hands gloved, you grasped the base of the stems and pulled firmly. There was a snap as the pearly bulb relinquished its hold in the dirt and emerged in the light of day. One after another, dozens more ripped free without protest, clods of dirt clinging to the Camas’ stringy, tenuous roots. 

Indomitable and unwavering, as you reaped your bounty your resolve cemented to the same rock-hardness of the impassive mountain you stood upon. A mountain formed ages ago from the molten caverns of the Earth, transmuted through pressure and fire; a voyage that began with a roar, a rupture, a rock rending itself from an Archean mountainside which hurdled, crashing, into a valley to be carried down, down into the depths of the sea to slip beneath the subterraneous folds on the ocean floor, only for the process to begin again. 

This journey of tumult and upheaval was a natural cycle, one whose path was familiar to your tread through grief, and, newly, violation. The decision was final as you straightened to your full height.

You were not going to live with fear. You were going to live with guilt. 

He had you helpless, flat on your stomach with a rope of terror binding you in place. You would have him the same, and he would learn an inkling of the measure of pain you would forever carry throughout your life while he realized the end of his. 

I hate leaving it off here and the next part is so so close to being finished, but I was about to lose my mind if I didn’t post something I’ve written. I also thought it would be better to break it off here instead of part one being 22k words. 

I've worked so hard on this, drawing from my own well of pain, and I know this game came out in 2018 and fandom traffic has died down considerably, so if any part of this story sticks out to you I would love to hear your thoughts <3

Also a big fat thank you to every person who has encouraged me to keep writing. Y’all have no idea how many times you have saved my life. My betas, Jessica and Sara, as well my other mutuals on here 💗 Thank you. More than I can say. 

//The Wire//1830Z February 26, 2024//

//ROUTINE//

//BLUF: NORWEGIAN CRUISE SHIP QUARANTINED DUE TO CHOLERA OUTBREAK.//

-----BEGIN TEARLINE-----

-International Events-

Mauritius: A Norwegian cruise ship has been quarantined in the Port of Mauritius following a cholera outbreak onboard the vessel. The M/V NORWEGIAN DAWN has been quarantined in port until further notice. Though the origin of the outbreak is unknown at this time, several of the passengers reporting illness traveled to South Africa earlier this month.

Red Sea/HOA: Several telecom providers have begun to report issues regarding undersea communications cables in the Red Sea. As of this report, only single-source reporting is available, which suggests that a total of four cables have been impacted over the past few months. AC: As cable disruptions are extremely common due to natural seismic events on the seafloor, the timing of such outages is critical. So far, the Jerusalem Post is the only media outlet reporting on this issue, which (aside from being a highly questionable source in its own right), did not indicate whether or not this is a new issue, or a culmination of incidents since the start of the Red Sea Crisis.

Houthi forces have made direct threats to sever these communications cables, however it is not clear as to if they are actually capable of tampering with or targeting undersea cables in the Red Sea. Additionally, in a time when covert operations and false-flag events have become extremely common, judgement is probably best reserved for when more information becomes public. On the other hand, due to the nature of the incident, independent investigation is not likely.

-Homefront-

Washington D.C. – Yesterday a uniformed active duty Air Force service member self-immolated outside the Israeli embassy in a self-described act of protest in support of Palestine. The service member, later identified as Aaron Bushnell, later died at a local hospital. No information regarding his rank or unit has been confirmed by defense officials yet.

In the western United States, no new information has been released regarding the recent unidentified high-altitude balloon incident. Pentagon officials continue to assess that the balloon was “likely” a civilian craft, but zero evidence has been provided to back up these claims, whereas the culmination of information as released so far indicates the contrary. So far, no one has come forward to claim the balloon or its payload.

On the economic front, over the past few weeks financial observers have noticed strategic financial moves among many elites. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dillon dumped $150 million in JPM stock last week, his largest sell-off of his own company’s stock to date. Jeff Bezos has sold $8.5 billion of his Amazon portfolio, and Mark Zuckerberg has sold $428 million of his Meta holdings. In 2023 Q4, Bill Gates sold off 65% of his entire financial portfolio, worth approximately $80 billion. The Walton family also sold $4.5 billion of their Walmart holdings after the closing bell on Friday.

-----END TEARLINE-----

Analyst Comments: No financial expertise is needed to assess the strategic impacts of billionaires dumping significant investments all within a few weeks of each other. On the other hand, the field of economics is more complicated than a single soundbite; For instance, Bill Gate’s asset sell-off could be largely restructuring and consolidation, not necessarily a “dump”. However, these financial moves are an indicator of something; figuring out the exact details of which will largely be speculative.

Analyst: S2A1

//END REPORT//

So my dad loves to read, and he adores fantasy. Series he likes are The Lord of the Rings, The Wheel of Time, Mistborn, The Dresden Files, Throne of Glass… Things like that. I’m really unsure of what to get him.

1828. Robin Swift, orphaned by cholera in Canton, is brought to London by the mysterious Professor Lovell. There, he trains for years in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all in preparation for the day he’ll enroll in Oxford University’s prestigious Royal Institute of Translation—also known as Babel. The tower and its students are the world's center for translation and, more importantly, magic. Silver-working—the art of manifesting the meaning lost in translation using enchanted silver bars—has made the British unparalleled in power, as the arcane craft serves the Empire's quest for colonization.

For Robin, Oxford is a utopia dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge. But knowledge obeys power, and as a Chinese boy raised in Britain, Robin realizes serving Babel means betraying his motherland. As his studies progress, Robin finds himself caught between Babel and the shadowy Hermes Society, an organization dedicated to stopping imperial expansion. When Britain pursues an unjust war with China over silver and opium, Robin must decide . . .

Can powerful institutions be changed from within, or does revolution always require violence?

To possess the Mandate of Heaven, the female monk Zhu will do anything

“I refuse to be nothing…”

In a famine-stricken village on a dusty yellow plain, two children are given two fates. A boy, greatness. A girl, nothingness…

In 1345, China lies under harsh Mongol rule. For the starving peasants of the Central Plains, greatness is something found only in stories. When the Zhu family’s eighth-born son, Zhu Chongba, is given a fate of greatness, everyone is mystified as to how it will come to pass. The fate of nothingness received by the family’s clever and capable second daughter, on the other hand, is only as expected.

When a bandit attack orphans the two children, though, it is Zhu Chongba who succumbs to despair and dies. Desperate to escape her own fated death, the girl uses her brother's identity to enter a monastery as a young male novice. There, propelled by her burning desire to survive, Zhu learns she is capable of doing whatever it takes, no matter how callous, to stay hidden from her fate.

After her sanctuary is destroyed for supporting the rebellion against Mongol rule, Zhu takes the chance to claim another future altogether: her brother's abandoned greatness.

SO Y'ALL REMEMBER THAT ALICE IN WONDERLAND RABBIT OC I WENT ON AND ON ABOUT???????

MEET VORPAL :DDDDD

His name is a reference to the Vorpal blade, and he chose it because of his desire for vengeance.

Vorpal was born as a young boy by the name of Tenniel Shivers in Essex, England. He was always a wild card, and never before did he find joy in life until he partook in the clockwork shop by his father, who was his star and idol. He learned from a young age to fashion clockworks of all kinds, and eventually became an inventor! His mind was always curious and he desired nothing more than to make his father proud.

Eventually, their work was noticed by a local baroness who took great interest, and became a patron. The two were will off and fine for quite some time, merry and hearts filled with purpose and passion.

Tenniel's mother died very shortly into his childhood of Cholera, and so he was on his own with his father. Sadly, his father with inheritance left to Tenniel, died as Tenniel neared his 17th birthday.

Between his schooling and the mixture of stress for the shop, Tenniel never found romance at the forefront of his mind..until, he met Everett Barks. The man was head over heels, and quick to fall..but how would the other feel? This was a forbidden desire...He's overtime spend his days getting to know the other, and for the better part of three years doing all but to impress him with his craftsmanship.

During this time, a new career path was chosen. Psychology. He had become a well versed psychologist, knowing how to read people with a firm flick of the wrist. He learned many a trade from his studied, as well as personal observations growing up.

And, as it neared year six into the friendship, it finally was spoken. Those three words.

"I've caught emotions"

His cheeks flushed, and despite the horrific knowing of having to hide their affections, the two with great desire fell into more than friends.

However, with this came...an issue. Tenniel had a rather wandering mind, and a desire to never lose what was his. And so...a brilliant idea came to mind.

He'd keep the man for himself, and should anyone be in the way, he could fashion himself a little poison for their tea.

Everett was his, and only his.

Unfortunately, all good things must end. And end they did.

Tenniel soon contracted a poisoning from the rusts and mineral substance of his craft, and his sanity began to ever so slightly dwindle. It helped for naught that the buildings were rife with asbestor.

He soon lost rationality more and more, and jealous and possessiveness fell over him. And yet, fate delivered a fate worse than his lover being stolen by affection.

But by mortality itself. Their relation was found, and so Everett was without consequences of the accused and guilty, murdered.

When justice was lacking, Tenniel took his own and went upon a bloodied rampage.

All while singing "Tick tock the mouse ran up the clock" in a fit of hysterical laughter, and with his lover, the only one he had eyes for was realized to be gone.

One bullet was all it took.

Upon arrival to Hell, Tenniel had amassed power by the day, his innate ability to pause time for even a smidge and did as he so please. Before long, he was dubbed Vorpal, and he will find his Hatter..even if it took everything within him.

1933.

The fateful day.

Of a new source of his time and energy, and a new target of his affection.

However, this affection was far from reciprocated or shown in a way that could be conceived. The three foot tall impish man would taunt and poke and prod the Demon for a Century, every chance he had gotten.

HEADCANONS:

Think of how the Cheshire cat can be in Alice Madness Returns, but also a mix of a chaotic little SHIT. He's ready for a good time and willing to make a mess of Alastors' plans for a laugh and can easily psychoanalyze him, as OOPSIE, Tenniel was a psychologist when alive! and Alastor hates that. he hates SOMEONE CAN READ HIM FOR ONCE.

"I see mon blanc lapine has decided to scurry back'

"I see you still use your native language to intimidate and or create a false sense of security to attempt to throw me off guard~'

He's sneer at him and try to threaten him and Vorpal would have no fear. He also has a cheshire smile and is known as "The Cheshire Rabbit of Pride'.

"HEYA HANDLEBARS, your horns grow any bigger so I can steer you when you walk?" That's what he'd ay as he sits on Alastor's head with his smug grin.

'they grow when my blood pressure rises'

"kinky'

"NOT LIKE THAT YOU SALACIOUS LITTLE RAT'

Just the imagine Alastor being completely furious at Vorpal and like, desperately trying to come up with a good comeback but just being completely incapable of doing it is so good. he'd be the equivalent of like, totally fuming and red because he can't even think of a good comeback and just being totally and completely shut down by Vorpal.

His tran-atlantic accent slips to his Cajun one he attempts to hide. that's how MAD HE IS. Tenniel is from 19th Century Essex and has a posh accent, and when Alastor slips to his own he mocks him as "his mother not teaching him to stay refined' WHICH MAKES HIM MORE MAD CUZ HIS MAMA WAS BROUGHT INTO IT.

He'll rub his anger and inability to mask his accent RIGHT in Alastors' face just to make him snap (and because he likes to watch Alastor get mad, too). The idea of Vorpal being 19th-century British is just as funny; I can just picture the thick, sarcastic, haughty accent and him saying things like, "How barbarous, Alastor. *Tut-tut tut-tut tut-tut'."

Alastor has a tiny few insults he can give him, but it's very little compared to Tenniel and the way he can easily make Alastor lose all sensibilities. Husk keeps a tally chart for his own entertainment.

no one ever rivals or matches Alastor in intimidation or has the BALLS to stand up against him. Damn, the guy probably is more feared than the devil himself.

So when they first meet Alastor undermines him, and the guy doesn't take it sitting down. And Alastor is shocked and his pride is injured, and now it's about his ego and getting even for once.

He's just a petty bastard to Vorpal every chance he gets, passive aggressive and wordless. Alastor always subtly trips him on his cane or spots him in the corner of his eye and makes a hole appear under him, only to pluck him from the ether for a "pulling a bunny from a hat' joke.

"sorry love, my mad hatter is waiting for me. If you want any of these reserved affections, I require the shillings for it~"

"....drops him back to the ether so he's in a loop of going in one black hole and out the other portal style'

What was read 2022

Jamaica Inn - Daphne du Maurier (1936)

A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess (1962)

The Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler (1939)

On Writing. A Memoir of the Craft - Stephen King (2000)

Choke - Chuck Palahniuk (2001)

Hell’s Angels - Hunter S. Thompson (1966)

The Trial of Henry Kissinger - Christopher Hitchens (2002)

Hitch-22 A Memoir - Christopher Hitchens (2010)

The Meek One - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1876)

The Rum Diary - Hunter S. Thompson (1998)

Hollywood - Charles Bukowski (1989)+

1Q84 Book Three - Haruki Murakami (2010)

Fiesta: The Sun Also Rises - Ernest Hemingway (1927)

The General of the Dead Army - Ismail Kadare (1963)

Americanah - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2013)

Notebooks - Leonardo da Vinci (Collection published1952)

God Is Not Great - Christopher Hitchens (2007)

Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1985)

Chronicle of a Death Foretold - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1981)

The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea - Yukio Mishima (1963)

The Idiot - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (1868)

The Guide - R.K.Narayan (1958)

Taste - Stanley Tucci (2021)

Rage - Bob Woodward (2020)

Rabbit, Run - John Updike (1960)

Rabbit Redux - John Updike (1971)

Rabbit Is Rich - John Updike (1981)

Rabbit at Rest - John Updike (1990)

Half of a Yellow Sun - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2006)

The Dawn of Everything - David Graeber & David Wengrow (2021)

The Karamazov Brothers - Fyodor Dostoevsky (1880)

And Away - Bob Mortimer (2021)

Zen & the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance - Robert M. Pirsig (1974)

Beautiful Star - Yukio Mishima (1962)

Nothing to Envy. Real Lives in North Korea - Barbara Denice (2010)

Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (2004)

Saints&Reading: Tuesday, October 18, 2022

october 18_october 5

VENERABLE FATHERS AND MOTHERS OF THE KLARJETI WILDERNESS (9th c.)

For centuries the region of Tao-Klarjeti in southwestern Georgia was known for its holiness, unity and spiritual strength. The cultural life and faith of Kartli were nearly extinguished by the Arab-Muslim domination from the 8th to 10th centuries. Tao-Klarjeti, however, which had been emptied by a cholera epidemic and the aftermath of the Islamic invasions, filled with new churches and monasteries, becoming a destination for many Christian ascetics. St. Ekvtime Taqaishvili wrote that “Every monastery included a school and a seminary where the Christian Faith, philosophy, Greek and other foreign languages, chant, calligraphy, fine arts, jewelry making, and other disciplines were taught. Countless priests, translators, miniaturists, and jewelry makers developed their craft in these schools.”

The prayers of the Tao-Klarjeti monastics multiplied and were lifted up to the heavens like holy incense. Hagiographical works were written, original hymns composed, and theological texts translated. The literature of this period was thoroughly infused with the spirit of the Georgian people. Tao-Klarjeti reinvigorated the soul of the Georgian people and redirected the lost back to the true path.

St. Grigol of Khandzta, a priest of great virtue and wisdom, spearheaded this spiritual revival. He was a good shepherd to his flock and the builder of many churches. The Lives of St. Grigol of Khandzta and the other holy fathers and mothers of Tao-Klarjeti are recounted in St. Giorgi Merchule’s work The Life of St. Grigol of Khandzta. Giorgi Merchule labored in the Khandzta wilderness in the 10th century. His epithet, “Merchule,” means “the theologian” or literally “the knower of the law.”

Giorgi Merchule also provided the Church with the Life of Holy Catholicos Nerse III, an Armenian by descent. Nerse confessed the Orthodox Faith and labored in Tao-Klarjeti with the Georgian fathers. (At that time many Orthodox Armenians fled to Tao-Klarjeti after being exiled from their homeland.) In the first half of the 7th century St. Nerse laid the foundations of Ishkhani Church and labored there in holiness.

Holy Catholicos Ilarion was the founder and abbot of Tsqarostavi Church and a disciple of Grigol of Khandzta. He arrived at Khandzta Monastery with his spiritual father, St. Davit, Abbot of Midznadzori Monastery, and St. Zakaria, the builder of Beretelta Church. Those who witnessed the fathers’ unity and piety abandoned the world to join them in offering their lives to God. In the middle of the 9th century St. Ilarion was enthroned as Catholicos of Kartli in recognition of his wisdom and holiness. He followed Gabriel II (ca. 830–850) and was succeeded by Arsen I “the Great” (ca. 860–887) in this most honorable role.

St. Stepane of Tbeti was the first bishop of Tbeti. He was a major writer and hagiographer in the Church of his time and a brilliant figure of the Tao-Klarjeti literary school. St. Stepane is credited with authoring the narrative The Martyrdom of St. Gobron.

From his childhood St. Zakaria of Anchi was filled with love and fear of God. Strict in his discipline but free from every constraint of this world, he led the life of a shepherd like St.David the Psalmist. As a child, St. Zakaria would gather his friends and relate with precision the words and scenes he had witnessed in churches and monasteries. Once the bishop of Anchi observed this unusual pastime and reported seeing a pillar of light descend fromthe heavens and alight atop St.Zakaria’s head.

When he reached a mature age, St. Zakaria became the spiritual leader of his brothers. Through his prayers many miracles were performed: he stopped the stone wall of a collapsing building from crashing to the ground, eliminated the troublesome birds and grasshoppers from the monastery’s vineyard, and killed two venomous snakes that were keeping his frightened brothers from the vineyard. Filled with good faith and virtue, St. Zakaria was later consecrated bishop of Anchi.

St. Makar of Anchi served as bishop of Anchi following the repose of St. Grigol of Khandzta in 861.

St. Ezra of Anchi, of the noble Dapanchuli family, labored in holiness during the 10th century.

St. Saba of Ishkhani was a cousin and one of the closest companions of St.Grigol of Khandzta. Along with two other friends, Kristepore and Tevdore, the young Saba accompanied Grigol of Khandzta to Klarjeti on a quest for the ascetic life. At first the young monks settled at OpizaMonastery and labored there with great zeal, and afterwards they moved to Khandzta.

Once St. Saba made a pilgrimage with St. Grigol to Byzantium, and there he learned the typica of the local monasteries. On the way back to Tao-Klarjeti, God revealed to them His will for Saba to restore Ishkhani Church, which had been destroyed by Arab-Muslim invaders. St. Saba desired to begin this holy task at once, but he continued on the way with St. Grigol at the latter’s insistence.

Later, Grigol assigned two monks to help Saba restore the church and sent the three of them to Ishkhani. By God’s grace, the brothers restored the church and monastery and the number of monks who labored there multiplied. Before long their abbot, St. Saba, was consecrated bishop of Ishkhani.

St. Ioane the NewMartyr for Christ labored at KhandztaMonastery.

While he was journeying to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage, the Saracens captured him in Baghdad and attempted to torture him into a denial of the Christian Faith. But by shedding his blood St. Ioane demonstrated his immutable fidelity to the Faith of our Savior.

St. Tevdore, Founder of Nedzvi Monastery, and St. Kristepore, Founder of the Dviri Monastery of St. Cyricus, were spiritual sons of St. Grigol of Khandzta and the first men to join him in his holy labors. With St. Grigol they labored first at Opiza and later at KhandztaMonastery.

These holy fathers journeyed to Abkhazeti to increase the fullness of the Faith in that region, and on their way, in Samtskhe, an aristocrat named Mirian entrusted them with the care and upbringing of his son, the six-year-old Arsen (later Holy Catholicos Arsen the Great).

Eventually St. Grigol of Khandzta desired the return of Tevdore and Kristepore, and he traveled to Abkhazeti to find them. St. Grigol took with him his young disciple Eprem (later the bishop and wonderworker of Atsquri). When he met the brothers in Abkhazeti, St. Grigol entrusted them with Eprem’s upbringing and made them vow not to leave Khandzta Monastery until Eprem and Arsen had reached maturity.

When Eprem and Arsen reached manhood they were “perfected in wisdom,” and Tevdore and Kristepore left Khandzta to establish the Nedzvi and Dviri Monasteries. There each father labored until the day of his repose.

Holy Fathers Giorgi, Amona, Petre, and Makar labored in the wilderness of Opiza. Abba Giorgi was abbot of Opiza’s St. John the BaptistMonastery during the two years St. Grigol of Khandzta and his companions labored there. Fr. Giorgi was the third abbot of the monastery (he was succeeded by St. Andria and St. Samoel). Through God’s grace Abba Giorgi recognized the pilgrims’ faith and received them, not as pupils, but as honorable and wise elders. Witnessing the ascetic feats of the venerable fathers of Opiza, St. Grigol increased in virtue and humility, and acquired inner peace. (History has preserved a Holy Gospel from the Opiza Wilderness that has been dated to the year 913, around the time that Abba Giorgi was laboring there.)

In the second part of the 9th century St. Serapion of Zarzma founded Zarzma Monastery in Samtskhe. St. Serapion’s nephew, St. Basil, later performed great ascetic feats and worked miracles at that monastery. St. Basil authored The Life of Serapion of Zarzma and recounted the lives of the other venerable fathers of Zarzma as well.

St. Giorgi, “a brilliant and kindhearted man of great virtue,” succeeded St. Serapion as abbot of Zarzma Monastery. After St. Giorgi, the Venerable Abbot Mikael began building a second church in Zarzma, in fulfillment of St. Serapion’s prophecy. St. Pavle, who followed Mikael as abbot of the monastery, completed construction of this second church.

The holy and righteous St. Khvedios labored as a hermit in the caves of the KhandztaWilderness. God revealed to him the news of St. Grigol’s arrival, and he received Grigol and his brothers with great joy.

He blessed them, while receiving a blessing himself from St. Grigol of Khandzta. Then, rather than journeying on with St. Grigol and the other brothers, St. Khvedios retired to his secluded cave, since he had taken a vow before God to live his whole life in solitude. After the holy father reposed, his dwelling place filled with a sweet fragrance.

St. Epipane was a wonderworker and a spiritual son of St. Grigol of Khandzta. This venerable father was truly clad in the armor of righteousness, and he was an inspiration to many. According to St. Grigol’s instructions, he became an example of obedience for the other brothers of the monastery. St. Epipane’s prayers healed many who were afflicted by terminal illnesses.

St. Mato labored in the KhandztaWilderness. After the abbess of Mere Monastery reposed, he took upon himself leadership of the women’s monastery and for forty years set an example of life lived in the fullness of the Faith. He was so strict in his asceticism that, for those forty years, he never once shared a meal with the mothers, nor did he receive a single object from any of their hands. When St. Mato reached an advanced age, he became diseased in the flesh, but he declined the nuns’ offers to care for him. Instead he asked his relative, also a monk, to attend to him in his time of need.

St. Zenon was born in Samtskhe to a family of aristocrats. He was raised in the fear of God, and he desired from his youth to enter the monastic life. Before this desire was fulfilled, however, his sister was kidnapped by a certain godless man. Zenon set off to pursue the abductor on horseback, but while he was riding the devil began to assault him with anxieties. “I am a respectable man,” he thought, “but the one whom I am following is dishonorable. If I catch and kill him, I will destroy my soul, but if I turn back, shame will come upon me.”

And so, at that very moment, St. Zenon turned back to fulfill his lifelong desire. He was tonsured a monk and later became a disciple of St. Grigol of Khandzta.

St. Zenon, the “Treasure of Virtue, Holy Model of Asceticism and Gate of the Klarjeti Wilderness,” reposed at an advanced age.

St. Ioane, Abbot of Khandzta, is celebrated for having completed construction of the new church at Khandzta that was begun by his predecessor, St. Arsen. Both holy fathers reposed in the KhandztaWilderness. St. Tevdore the Abbot and his brother St. Ioane both labored at Khandzta Monastery. St. Giorgi Merchule recognizes the brothers as historians, however, believe that they were contributors, rather than coauthors, of this work.

The monk St. Gabriel ministered to the infirm and elderly monks of Khandzta Monastery. St. Gabriel verbally recounted the Lives of the great Church Fathers and admonished his brothers to follow the same strict disciplines as the fathers who had gone before them.

St. Demetre was raised by the blessed St. Pebronia and later became one of St. Grigol of Khandzta’s first disciples. He is commemorated among the holy fathers for having attaining the heights of the monastic struggle and for working wonders, both in this life and after he had been received into the bosom of Abraham.

Sts. Arsen and Makar, “good monks full of wisdom and the gift of wonder-working,” were relatives of St. Eprem of Atsquri. They labored together at St. Sabbas Monastery in Jerusalem and corresponded regularly with the monks of Khandzta. Sts. Arsen and Makar possessed a profound love for Christ and a longing to serve their motherland and mother Church.

St. Shio the Wonderworker “shone upon the land of Kartli like the North Star in the morning sky.” According to Basil of Zarzma, St. Shio was the spiritual father of St. Mikael of Parekhi.

Sts. Basil and Markelaos, “abounding and brilliant in virtue,” were disciples of St. Mikael of Parekhi. St. Basil was buried in Parekhi next to his spiritual father. Both fathers worked miracles from their graves and healed the infirmities of the faithful who came to seek their blessings.

Venerable Father Davit, “an image of the angels” and builder of many monasteries, labored as abbot of Midznadzori Monastery. He was the spiritual father of the holy catholicos Ilarion.

Endowed with many gifts of grace, St. Iakob was a prominent figure in the tenth-century Georgian Church. He labored first in Shatberdi, and later near Midznadzori Gorge, where he shone forth as the brightest of stars.

Venerable Sopron the Great was the restorer of the Shatberdi Church and a famous writer, but his literary works have not been preserved. St. Giorgi Merchule numbers him among the wise and holy fathers whose stories are worthy to be told. St. Grigol of Shatberdi labored at the same monastery. Several of the tenth-century manuscripts copied by him at Shatberdi Monastery have been preserved, including the Notebooks of the Shatberdi Wilderness and the Gospels of Hadishi, Jruchi, and Parekhi.

St. Zakaria built the famous Beretelta Monastery and set an example of wisdom and holiness for the fathers who labored there after him.

St. Giorgi Merchule honors the venerable and God-fearing St. Ilarion of Parekhi as one of the greatest writers and figures in the Church of his time.

St. Ilarion, Abbot of Ubisi, labored for many years at the Lavra of St. Sabbas in Jerusalem, where the Georgians had their own chapel for many centuries[1]. After he had reached an advanced age, the venerable father moved to Georgia and settled at Khandzta Monastery. Later this clever and learned father began construction of Ubisi Church in Imereti, where he labored until his death.

St. Pebronia labored at Mere Monastery in Samtskhe. She was a close friend of St. Grigol of Khandzta. He sent to her a certain woman whom King Ashot Kuropalates (later the holy martyr) had taken as his mistress, to instruct her in the Christian Faith. St. Pebronia denied the king’s pleas to return the woman to the royal palace.

Angels often visited St. Pebronia to inform her of God’s holy will. St. Temestia labored with St. Pebronia at Mere Monastery. For forty years she ministered to St. Mato, the spiritual father of the monastery.

St. Temestia herself remarked that her relationship with Father Mato was so chaste and innocent that the holy father would not even permit himself to receive the holy incense directly from her hands.

St. Anatole (also called Antonios) labored in seclusion at Mere Monastery. Angels often appeared to the holy mother, who herself led a life equal to that of the bodiless powers. Both venerable Temestia and Anatole were informed by angels of the repose of their abbot, St.Mato.

St. Anastasia labored among the holy mothers in remarkable sanctity and humility. She descended from an Abkhaz family and was known as Bevreli in the world. As queen (the wife of King Adarnerse) she was often called upon to protect the interests of Mere Monastery. King Adarnerse later grew cold towards Bevreli, so she left the world and was tonsured a nun with the name Anastasia.

St. Anastasia bore the most difficult labor at the monastery: she gathered the firewood and carried it from the forest. She wore only rags and prayed constantly.

Once King Adarnerse suddenly fell ill, and he sent messengers to Persati Monastery, where Anastasia was laboring, asking forgiveness on his behalf. St. Anastasia prayed for the sick king: “May Christ forgive all his sins and heal him in soul and body.” King Adarnerse was soon healed of his infirmity.

Abounding in holiness and humility, St. Anastasia labored at PersatiMonastery to the end of her days on earth. God granted her the gift of wonder-working both during her life on earth and after her repose. St. Anastasia’s own sons, Gurgen and Sumbat, were cured of their diseases at her grave, and afterwards many more who came with faith received healing from the holy mother.

The historical region of Tao-Klarjeti has throughout history, and even up to the present day, been inhabited by ethnic Georgians. However, since 1921, when the Communists annulled the independence of the Georgian Republic, Tao-Klarjeti has been a Turkish possession.

God endowed this region with abundant sunshine and clear air, free from cruel heat and bitter frost. The local climate heightens the beauty of this wondrous region.

But Tao-Klarjeti has been transformed into a battlefield countless times throughout history: it has witnessed victory and defeat, destruction and restoration, treason and selfless loyalty. Through all these trials it has remained an inseparable part of the unified Georgian nation. In spite of the fact that, today,Tao-Klarjeti is located within the borders of a foreign government and itsGeorgian dioceses are often referred to as belonging to the Armenian Church, the historical truth must be upheld.

On October 17, 2002, the Georgian Apostolic Church nominally restored the dioceses of Klarjeti and Lazeti to its own jurisdiction and declared the incumbent bishop of Akhaltsikhe to be their spiritual leader. On the same day, the Georgian Church canonized the holy and venerable fathers and mothers who labored in those regions under the leadership of St. Grigol of Khandzta. Only a few of the God-fearing laborers, among them Holy Catholicos Nerse II, were Armenian by descent, but they had converted to Orthodoxy and preached the true Faith in the wilderness with the Georgian fathers.

Through the intercessions of the holy fathers and mothers of the Klarjeti Wilderness and all Thy blessed saints, Lord Jesus Christ our God, have mercy on us and save us!

[1] See Archimandrite Grigol Peradze, “An Account of the Georgian Monks and Monasteries in Palestine,” Georgica, Autumn 1937, nos. 4–5, pp. 181–246.

Archpriest Zakaria Machitadze

Source: Pravoslavie

MATTHEW 5:14-19

14 You are the light of the world. A city that is set on a hill cannot be hidden. 15 Nor do they light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a lampstand, and it gives light to all who are in the house. 16 Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven. 17 Do not think that I came to destroy the Law or the Prophets. I did not come to destroy but to fulfill. 18 For assuredly, I say to you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle will by no means pass from the law till all is fulfilled. 19 Whoever therefore breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does and teaches them, he shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven.

HEBREWS 13:17-21

17 Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you. 18 Pray for us; for we are confident that we have a good conscience, in all things desiring to live honorably. 19 But I especially urge you to do this, that I may be restored to you the sooner. 20 Now may the God of peace who brought up our Lord Jesus from the dead, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, 21 make you complete in every good work to do His will, working in you what is well pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen.

PHILIPPIANS 1:8-14

8 For God is my witness, how greatly I long for you all with the affection of Jesus Christ. 9 And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, 10 that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ, 11 being filled with the fruits of righteousness which are by Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God. 12 But I want you to know, brethren, that the things which happened to me have actually turned out for the furtherance of the gospel, 13 so that it has become evident to the whole palace guard, and to all the rest, that my chains are in Christ; 14 and most of the brethren in the Lord, having become confident by my chains, are much more bold to speak the word without fear.

Climate change can make most human diseases worse

Polio is back, monkeypox is not slowing down, COVID-19 is however around — and now there’s extra not-so-great information on the infection front: more than 200 human health conditions could get even worse for the reason that of climate alter, according to a  new review . 

 Researchers have recognized for a long time that the switching local climate affects illness. Warmer temperatures can make areas newly hospitable to sickness-carrying mosquitoes, when floods from far more recurrent storms can carry microbes in their surges of water. 

 Most investigation, however, only concentrated on a handful of threats or a person condition at a time. The new review, published in  Character Local climate Change , constructed a thorough map of all of the ways various local climate hazards could interact with 375 documented human infectious conditions. 

 The authors reviewed about 77,000 scientific content about these health conditions and weather hazards. They   located that, of those 375 conditions, 218 could be aggravated by factors like heatwaves, rising sea degrees, and wildfires. 

 The review uncovered 4 primary approaches local climate improve exacerbates illnesses. To start with, difficulties transpire when adjustments lead to illness-carrying animals to shift nearer to people. For example, animal habitats are disrupted by items like wildfires that generate bats and rodents into new regions, rising the likelihood they’ll transmit health conditions like Ebola to persons.  Other investigation  displays that local climate alter would make viruses more likely to jump from animals to men and women, as transpired with the coronavirus that triggers COVID-19. That phenomenon also most likely contributed to the  2016 Zika outbreaks . 

 People today also go nearer to disorder-triggering animals all through weather-pushed situations. Ailments like cholera and Lassa fever ended up joined to human motion after storms and floods. Third, weather dangers also give pathogens a improve   — like how condition-carrying mosquito populations develop in warmer temperatures. Lastly, local weather improvements make men and women less ready to cope with conditions. For example, significant swings in temperature can weaken the human immune procedure, which may well be the cause for flu outbreaks. 

 If you’re interested in having a nearer seem at particularly all the illnesses that are affected, the study authors crafted an  interactive  chart that connects each and every sickness to the local climate hazards that amplify it. So you can see, for illustration, how drought, fires, and floods make wellness troubles induced by sand flies — such as fevers and parasitic pores and skin circumstances — a lot more frequent. Pleased (or not so delighted) scrolling!

https://socialwicked.com/climate-change-can-make-most-human-diseases-worse/

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We work to enhance the coverage and regulatory setting for sanitation through partnerships across all levels of governments, multilateral organizations, community-based nongovernmental organizations, service providers, and others. WHO additionally supports collaboration between WASH and well being programmes corresponding to uncared for tropical illnesses, cholera, polio and antimicrobial resistance. Aspect of local weather resilience are integrated in all WHO sanitation steering paperwork. Improving handwashing habits, meals hygiene, and secure water practices. Materials for handwashing and hygiene may embrace provision of mounted and moveable handwashing services, purchase of cleaning soap and alcohol-based hand rubs, provision of water supplies for handwashing, and point of use water remedy. MedlinePlus also links to health information from non-government Web websites. See our disclaimer about external links and our high quality pointers. When you hire King’s Green Cleaning for weekly house cleansing and bi-weekly cleansing, your house stays cleaner in the course of the month. If you cannot replace tools with irregular seams, clear that equipment extra frequently to avoid buildup of bacterial biofilms. The frequency of device and equipment cleansing and sanitizing will depend in your operation. Establish cleaning/sanitizing frequency protocols and hold records of when tools/equipment are cleaned. Proper dilution rates, required dwell occasions, and actual kill claims will vary by chemical solution and model. Always review the original label and instructions to be used previous to disinfecting. Best apply for mopping, or well-method disinfection, consists of replacing the disinfectant solution frequently between rooms or floors of the power. Daily disinfection should be completed on restroom, kitchen, high-touch surfaces and high-traffic areas. 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I feel like maybe we’ve been underestimating Italy’s sense of humor. 

SOMETIMES you may find yourself compelled to knit some kind of peculiar sock/slipper/things that look like they were drawn by Dr. Seuss. Probably this is a better stress-avoidance activity than some.

What brands REALLY mean with their COVID commercials

brief video summary: a fabulous satirical video that plays off of all the commercials faking concern “in these strange times” of the covid-19 pandemic to try to make us buy things. The narrator voice is perfect, and their narration is SPOT ON A++++

How do I come up with a gripping title for my book?

10 Ways to Craft a Gripping Book Title

Everyone knows you want a book title that’s unique, gripping, memorable, and relevant, but how do you craft a title that meets those criteria? Here are some tips...

#1 Look at Other Titles in Your Genre - This should be the first step, really, because different genres can have their own common title styles. For example, mysteries and thrillers often contain words like murder or death, or vague character references like “the woman” or “the man who...” Knowing what’s popular in your genre gets your brainstorming session off on the right foot. 

#2 Make a List of Story Keywords - Your story’s keywords are an important tool for promoting and marketing your book, but one of the first places they come in handy is when you’re brainstorming titles. If you had to boil your book down to a list of relevant words, what would they be? For Harry Potter , some keywords might be magic, wizardry, wizards, muggles, potions, spells, transfiguration, patronus, dark magic, etc.

#3 Look at the Text of Your Story - Sometimes, the title of your story is a phrase that exists in your story. For example, maybe your protagonist’s grandmother always tells him he’s brighter than he looks. Brighter Than I Look could be a good title. 

#4 Consider Famous Sayings - Are there any famous phases, mottoes, idioms, nursery rhymes, etc. that fit your story in any way? Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest uses a line from a nursery rhyme as a title. Not only are birds a powerful symbol in the story, but the rhyme’s reference to “flight” offers a clue to something that will happen in the story, too.

#5 Look at Your Story’s Opposing Themes, Subjects, or Forces - Every story revolves around conflict. A good force versus an evil force, one mindset against another mindset, one entity against another entity. Angles Versus Demons, Pride & Prejudice, North and South, The Blue and the Gray. 

#6 Descriptive Imagery Makes Great Titles - Is there a particularly relevant moment in your story where there’s memorable descriptive imagery? For example, maybe after the inciting incident, your character hikes out to his favorite spot called Hester’s Brook, and while he’s there it begins to snow. Snowfall at Hester’s Brook could be a good title.

#7 Who, What, Where, When - Who is your story about? (Emma, The Raven Boys, Six of Crows.) What is your story about? (The Hunger Games, The Scorpio Races, Looking for Alaska.) Where does your story take place? (Wuthering Heights, Northanger Abbey, The Hazel Wood.) When does your story take place? (Love in the Time of Cholera, April Morning, The Winds of War.)

#8 The Big Question - Sometimes, the big question of the story provides an interesting title. For example, maybe the inciting incident of your story is the moment when the protagonist sees a mysterious man watching her in a crowd, and finding out who he is represents the big mystery of the story. Blue Eyes in a Crowd could be your title.

#9 The Big Answer - Depending on the big question of your story, you can sometimes even work the answer into the title. Maybe the blue-eyed man turns out to be the protagonist’s father who went missing decades earlier. The title could be Memories of a Forgotten Father. 

#10 Look for Title Formulas - As a last resort, Google “book title formula” and quite often you’ll find specific formulas people have come up with for titles. These tend to lead to things like The ____ in the _____. Or _____ of the _____ _______, and as such they can be, well, formulaic. Those kinds of titles have been so trendy that they’re bordering on cliche, but for some books that’s exactly the title you need. These formulas work with your story’s keywords to come up with a catchy title, so if none of the other options work, this one is worth a try.

Best of luck coming up with your title!

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DEMONS, ASTROLOGY, & SOLOMON

Any practitioner of Kabbalah or Alchemy is without a doubt conscious of the Testament of Solomon. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the passage it’s seldom ever seen as an actual testament as the usual pattern of predictions are completely absent from the text. No. This text lies somewhere in between true testament and grimoire. It chronicles a tale of how King Solomon subdued various spirits through use of a magick ring and forced them to work on the construction of the Temple. The storyline is loosely put together and chooses to focus on the names and functions of spirits, their astrological signs, and what archangels they answer to.

In fact, it is this text that first links- at least in western thought- demonology and astrology together. Each spirit explains that they reside in a particular star or constellation. One chapter lists 36 heavenly bodies which are the stewards of the zodiac. In the ancient world, particularly the Near East, these spirits were seen as the cause of disease. Essentially, this part of the text acted like an old school Solomonic medical encyclopedia. “Oh! Timmy has cholera? Wear this amulet and repeat this prayer to Gabriel three times a day!”

This wasn’t an uncommon practice at the time. Not only can we find parallels to Solomons demonology in Babylonian texts there is also a verse that describes how Solomon captured a demon in a bowl. This is a throwback to Aramaic incantation bowls designed to trap evil spirits. What this tells us is that this early Christian text- written in Greek- is based on older Jewish traditions alongside Hellenistic magick.

What this means to the initiate today is that we are all working from a copy of a copy of a copy. One shouldn’t simply pick up this text and expect to be able to imprison Barsafael because they know the seal of Gabriel. In fact, anyone who has genuinely studies Solomons way and seen the alchemical symbolism it’s birthed is all to aware of how difficult they are to decipher making said seals a bit more difficult to use than the internet would have us believe. Why?Initiates of olde shrouded their discoveries in symbolism meant to hide their secrets. So, while it is a helpful guidepost to understand the connection between demonology and astrology one should be leery of using the Testament of Solomon to wrestle down dark spirits.

The book is old enough to exist before copyrights were a thing and easily found online. Anyone interested in study should do so. It is good practice to see how our craft is aided by certain energies present at certain cycles and have a way of cross referencing why. That being said, our intuition should ultimately serve as our guides long before any ancient text should dictate our practice. So study away but do so reliant on your own internal wisdom long before putting faith in the words of an unknown author of olde.

Happy hunting.

full name: Ruth Leveen

birthday: July 12, 1868 (20)

gender & pronouns: cis woman, she/her

Beyond the Bio

Ruth has six younger siblings. Six. There were two older ones, but cholera took the both of them in the summer of 1860. One would suppose the methods of family planning utilized by her foremothers was long forgotten at this point.

Her older brother and sister were gone long before she was even born. She has always been in charge, always been the figure that the flock of small, vulnerable faces looked to when times were difficult. When their mother left them, not in body but most definitely in mind, she was there. When their father was injured those years ago, that flock of wide eyes once again looked to Ruth.

And so, noble Ruth took up post in her father’s absence. Just as she once swaddled and fed her mother’s children, her own siblings, the eldest daughter filled the necessary void. Noble, noble Ruth. When she looks within she does not like what she sees. She sees chaos, she sees a gaping wound. She sees a void. She does not exist beyond what she may provide for her family. She loves her family dearly, the littlest ones she may dare say she sees as her own children. However, something is there. Something is hanging over her shoulder when she lights her lights. Something is pulling her. Something angry, something resentful. It is threatening, yet somehow alluring. It whispers to her, how dare you let yourself be treated in such a way? voice sneering and taunting, you don’t know do you? It whispers to her vague promises of powers unknown, if only she should adhere to the voices’ conditions.

Ruth is no naive lass, but she has always strived to do good, has always followed the path of brightness and compassion. However, with each passing day, that something lurking in the shadows taunts her, pulls her away from that brightness inch by inch. She fights it relentlessly, but that something is growing stronger, and she weaker.

Ruth is the eldest of seven children: Oscar (16), Matilda (13), Lawrence (10), Violet (8), and the twins Josephine & Adeline (5).

Ruth’s mother is a medium, although she does not know it. Far back in her lineage, those blessed with the gift of magic, whatever form that may take, were quite plentiful. However, they were hunted down, shunned, expelled long ago, driving Ruth’s ancestors to disperse throughout Europe. Having been the first gifted child born in generations, her mother was and still is unaware of this gift. Her voices, visions, unidentifiable feelings were attributed to madness, for they did drive her mad. Ruth’s mother lives her life largely disconnected from the world around her, her soul bogged down by both her unharnessed craft as well as the various medicinal remedies peddled to her throughout the years. Ruth, too, unknowingly posesses a gift. Ruth refuses to acknowledge the possibility of the supernatural, although her interactions with her ghost have that resolve shaking.

Her mother’s mental state began to decline most noticeably after the birth of her daughter Violet. Ruth, then twelve years old, took up the duties of child and home care in her stead which only intensified when the twins were born. At present time, with the youngest of the brood now five years old, her mother will disappear for days, perhaps weeks, at a time, only to return and sleep for days more. Ruth could not be prouder of her younger siblings as she watches them bloom, but the seed of resentment for the loss of her own childhood and individual identity only grows with each passing year and each new responsibility placed on her shoulders.  

Since her father’s injury, some of the child care has been placed upon him. However, having spent most of his adult life largely uninvolved with the child rearing, Ruth must now juggle her duties as a lamplighter with the needs of her siblings that their father is unable, or unwilling, to fulfill.

The Ghost

She can feel them, she knows they are there. It always starts with a sickly sweet voice, assuring that it wants to help her, that it only wants to see her flourish into her full potential. As Ruth ignores it, steadfastly telling herself that nothing is there, it grows angry. Its voice takes on that of a displeased, judgemental mother, how dare you ignore me? ignore us? you are pathetic, wasting away tending to those gremlins! It taunts her, ruffling the hem of her skirts as she illuminates the dark city streets, only to plunge the alleyways and sidewalks back into shadow and shade once she has finally completed her duties for the night. Its raucous laughter bounces from post to post each time she glances up at the now darkened lamps. Although she should expect it by now, every night she looks at those unlit lampposts with fear and confusion. Ruth tells herself she cannot become accustomed to the specter that haunts her on those London streets, because it isn’t real. It isn’t. Nor are its promises of powers untold which slither into her ears each night.

That which haunts Ruth is not a long lost loved one, nor any individual in particular. It is something old, something angry, something that wants power. Every night, Ruth feels her resolve slipping, growing closer and closer to giving in to its serpentine voice. A little listen won’t hurt right? It seems to know me so well... Little does she know that it cares not for Ruth, not in the slightest, it cares only to use the girl as a pawn in whatever game it has planned. Its primary goal is to draw her away from those lamps, of course. However, that end could be met through many means. Whether that be tricking her into giving in and doing its bidding in exchange for those powers untold or simply....removing her from the equation by way of death or madness if she refuses to cooperate, it will have its way in the end.