Southern Mid-Atlantic Appalachian Mountains: a spine of the world that dreams of the ocean

There is nearly half a season's difference between the bottom of the mountain to the top ridges. Virginia bluebells carpet every space between the trees along the river. Eastern wood pewees hunt for ledges to nest upon and the pileated woodpeckers warble to one another. The redbuds are slow to wake this year. One week was so dry and cold a friend's house burned down when a spark lifted out of the chimney. Two weeks later the drainage ditches were flush streams in their own right.

Slow. I am tired. I want to step outside the incessant call of life away from this mountain and devote time to listen. To breathe the daffodil-sweet air. To lie in the sun next to our planters and wait for the seedlings to push up through the rich soil. To open the windows in the rain and let the cool breeze lift the curtains.

Spring where you are -

Location: (can be a general region like “Midwest” or “city” or something)

What it’s like: (observations, ecology, who is out and about, quiet moments, hiding places, etc.)

How it makes you feel:

imagine the art that could be created if people weren't suffering just to survive.

Alice Te Punga Somerville, Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised - Kupu rere kē

2023 is the Year of Poison.

We name our years based off our summers, based off the most prominent insect or similar we notice. This year, there was none. We had an extermination service come out—our third time using him, a good old country gentleman who like to talk a lot about his cats—for the carpenter ants earlier in the summer, and now there are no other insects who have been plentiful enough.

The wildfires cast even more into the air, drifting down from the north in hazy clouds that smelled of burning pollution. Even if we hadn't had targeted poison applied all around the perimeters of our house, would the smoke had the same effect? Even the trees here are turning early, tired and stressed from the wildfire haze so pervasive the whole season.

tell me how you will remember this summer

As a society we have done thistles so dirty. Not even pollinator-plant zealots recommend planting thistles even though pollinators go absolutely crazy over them.

I saw 2 (two) Great Spangled Fritillaries trying to cram themselves onto the same thistle flower today as well as a thistle plant with multiple American Bumblebees on it. These things are a monarch magnet too.

I know what I'm gonna be gathering seeds from

September Prompts

1. everything matters 2. house key 3. bread 4. college football season (again) 5. school bag 6. willow street 7. disappointed father 8. seaward 9. relapse 10. ruination 11. trilogy 12. asters & goldenrod 13. lamprey 14. final rites 15. trespassing 16. below 17. not a lover 18. study group 19. vantage 20. rosary 21. questions to ask your mother 22. observer 23. cool nights 24. ultimatum 25. lonely boy 26. burning field 27. glancing blow 28. harvest moon 29. the empty homes 30. warm colors

cumulus ceiling

broken beams of blue and gold

support fleeting day

source

love is both a choice and an inevitability. it is a door that, once you open it, lets everything in: the sunlight, the rain, the moonlight, the insects, the snow. it is open windows through which laughter drifts. the kitchen with homemade bread and soup. it is the quiet of the room where you read next to one another. the tenderness and rapture of the bedroom. the clean steam of the bathroom. love is a house you tend and fix and add onto and live in every day.

xxxi. killed - 8.31.22 @nosebleedclub

In these woods you either belong, or you are an interloper. Keep walking along your trail that follows the mountain's spine and do not linger here. There are old things that live in the shadows. They are always watching you, watching one another, watching the forest.

You know if you belong here, belong to these woods. Not in. To. Those old things still slip through the shadows, but now they look for you. Tread lightly and watch for nooks in the rocks where you step. A flash of dark, sharp teeth is all it takes. The poison slows you. The claws toy with you. The talons shred you. The weight crushes you.

In these woods you learn real quick to respect the shadows and the old things, or you won't be here long.

xxx. in the shadow of the mountain - 8.30.22 @nosebleedclub

These mountains are old. Their backs are hunched and their roots sunk deep. If you stumble across one cave, you've stumbled across a dozen, splintering out from one another in jagged lines just beneath the surface, the memory pathways below the open maw of the earth. The trees here creak about you, interlopers just like you are. Young, just like you are. No more old growth forests left here, they said. But the mountains know better. The trees know better. People could only push so far into these woods, until the forest just stopped giving.

xxix. places we’ve never been - 8.29.22 @nosebleedclub

We stood in your kitchen and couldn't look one another in the eye. You were afraid of what you would see in mine, and I knew that. I didn't want to subject you to that. The countertop pressed against the back of your hips, and was cool and smooth beneath my fingers. Your hands still rested against my shoulders, feather-light, and I could hear the breath hitching in your throat. I leaned in slow again.

We sat less than an arm's length from one another on iron café chairs, with a matching table between us and the murmur of conversations all around us. The sun was setting down below the tops of the trees, and the smell of warm pastries and tender-cooked lamb was a secondary thing to the rise and fall of our conversation. It was like we were truly meeting for the first time. Hours passed without much notice, and the light from the café window bathed your smile in rich gold. The Seine glittered in the dusk.

We relaxed next to the open panel door and looked out over the gardens. Everything was in bloom, and bees meandered between the bushes and flowers. You leaned your shoulder against mine and I smiled as I poured us both another cup of tea. I'd wanted to surprise you, to take you somewhere special. I enjoyed the rise of color on your cheeks when the server asked if we were celebrating our anniversary. You got a complimentary sweet cake when I told her it was your birthday. The tea from this hole in the wall teahouse in Shimogo Ward had been the best so far.

xxviii. go to her - 8.28.22 @nosebleedclub

Carefully crafted hangings of masterwort, chicory, and monkshood decorate the wood in a wide arc around the hut, and colorful foxglove and delicate henbane line the well-worn path leading to the front door. She waits behind the windowpanes.

xxvii. cellist - 8.27.22 @nosebleedclub

The heat in Valbonne is more than bearable, with a cool Mediterranean breeze frequent on the air. We found a large enough town we can walk where we need to, or bike out to the countryside for a picnic retreat, and the sea is a short bus ride away. The house we rent is centuries old, with wide windows and exposed beams across the ceiling. It is only four rooms—a kitchen and a living area where, and upstairs, a loft bedroom with sloping ceilings and a bathroom with a clawfoot tub. There are bookshelves in the bedroom and downstairs and stacked in piles on the floor because we ran out of room. The cat likes to lounge either across our bed or on the kitchen counter, looking out the open window while we make tea. Laughter fills this small house and its open rooms, laughter and music. You were so afraid to ask me to move across the ocean with you when you got the offer to tour Europe, singing, but the answer was't a difficult one to make. The sun is warm and welcoming here, filling the old house with a golden light and making your hair catch bright auburn above the smooth curve of your neck. I've never regretted it, either. While you don't tour anymore, you haven't stopped singing, and while I can't make any kind of living off it, I've picked up the cello to make music with you. I don't perform for anyone but you, but the contrast between its deep, rich notes and your throaty soprano never ceases to thrill me. You've become a better baker than I, and I've become a better gardener so we could grow our own vegetables—and so I could give you fresh flowers every morning. Anything to see you smile and blush, even after these handful of years.

xxvi. white house - 8.26.22 @nosebleedclub

It's stark against the waving green of the swell of land it sits atop. The lush of growing things stretches out all around it, but instead it leans into a state of decay. Rot bows the porch, thick dust greys the siding boards, and moisture has long clouded the glass panes of the windows. Like milky, blind eyes, they stare out over the slope of un-mowed grass, seeing nothing and allowing nothing to see within. The chimney is black from fires, so covered in layers of soot not even ivy risks clinging to the old bricks. It is a ghost, hovering at the top of the hill. The road leading up to it has long overgrown, but a bare ring of dusty, choked dirt surrounds it, as if the wild grasses and wildflowers, like the ivy, avoid growing closer to it than necessary. The second story windows are dirty, rather than clouded, and sometimes the shadows of lingering memory can be seen through them, a dark movement across the opening of glass. Ghosts of the past clinging to the skeleton of a hollowed-out house, both a reminder and a warning. The land here chooses what to keep and what to consume, slowly dragging down remnants of abandoned lives until they are nothing but dust.

xxv. neck bite - 8.25.22 @nosebleedclub

Starlight slick skin, moon-bright eyes, summer breath, this coiled strength so close by. It chases you through the gaps in the trees, out into the clearing, tracking and hunting and seeking and finding. Hands both rough and soft reach out and grasp, holding but not bruising, demanding but with steady patience beneath the surface. The night stirs beneath your blood, giving you pause, causing you to listen. The song of the wood is chorus all around you, alone in the field with this newness that frightens and intrigues you. Your throat could be torn out in a hot red flash, but instead warmth floods your neck and chest and belly at the feather-light touch of mouth against sensitive skin, just below your jaw, right where your pulse can be tasted. Bathed in pale light, you sink slowly to a bed of soft grasses together. How can something so deadly show such tenderness?

xxiv. swallowtail - 8.24.22 @nosebleedclub

You find them gathered at the edges, barely touching the small puddle of water. The high heat of summer summons them, coming in from high above the canopy to drift down on dusty wings, spiraling gently on the top of the wind. The red keeps them, bright and sturdy and beckoning sweet. Their paths take them along borders, the liminal places, and are keys to a new cipher yet to be recorded (they will only lead you to bones and blood, these silent messengers). They linger at these edges, always at the edges, through the burning days. Is it respite they seek, or are they here to watch the world wilt?