lycanthrope raze it's so good to see you here. i'll likely always think of morning's furtive first whispers as dark carbon smears now, and my broken waking thoughts will be better for it. 221214 ... lycanthrope I'm glad I stopped in. As I wrote it, I cursed myself for not naming a band in high school "matutinal meow." 221214 ... kerry wow, it's been a minute. 221214 ... raze your poetry pulses with the beauty and pain of a life lived with eyes and heart wide open. thank you so much for sharing it with us. i'm going to be thinking about memorys_odd_work for a long time. 230106 ... Lycanthrope Thank you. Eyes too wide open...I wanted to sleep in but myself made myself get up to write it before I forgot it. 230106 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Yes, I love your blathe that raze mentioned here: the vivid images, the narrative, the surreal-funny last line. It made me think why I form strong memories (sometimes they're connected to emotional upheavals or breakthroughs, other times it was just something I found curious, yet other times it seems random.) 230106 ... raze i'm always grateful when you stop by to sing a gorgeous hymn of remembrance and observation. 230707 ... lycanthrope I'm in a resting and writing phase. There are great comforts in all of the words shared here. 230707 ... raze you ever read something and feel like it was somehow meant for you to find? that's how i felt reading the story you shared on first_date while eating breakfast. it was exactly the meal my mind and soul needed this morning. (welcome back, old_friend.) 260302 ... ovenbird Your line in first_date about finding someone who is very interested in the empty seat next to you struck me. That's such a great image. There's so much truth in it. I think when we find someone who sparks something in us we start looking for the empty spaces around them and imagining how we might exist in those spaces, how we could fit in the vacant lots of their life. (Nice to meet you!) 260302 ... lycanthrope It's nice to be not gone and not forgotten. I've been clicking through blather all day, which is a much better use of my time than ruminating on the news. 260302 ... ovenbird Re: cup_o_noodles. SHIT that was powerful. It’s really great to have you here. 260311 ... nr welcome back, friend! 260311 ... Lycanthrope It's nice to have this place and blatherskites old and new to talk to. 260311 ... ovenbird After reading "taiga," which was so gorgeous and layered, I suspect you might very much enjoy the book The Bear by Andrew Krivak. It's a small book that stands as one of the most powerful things I've read in the past few years. And some of your imagery made me think of it. 260313 ... lycanthrope I will add it to my aspirational library! 260313 ... e_o_i I loved your poem the_living_gaul and the story it tells. 260827 ... lycanthrope Thank you kindly. 260827 ... raze i'd like to second that. the note you chose end on is just gorgeous. (it's always great to see you around these parts.) 260827 ... lycanthrope old blatherskites don't die, they just fade to nothing to say. 260828 ... ovenbird I would argue that you still have much to say, given the complex depths of what you just wrote. I was interested in the way the holding of small hands was framed as the taming of something wild. In some ways I’ve experienced the opposite—parenthood as a re-wilding, an emergence of an animal self that feels strangled by rules of social decorum. All of this fascinates me. It’s nice to see you here. 260828 ... lycanthrope I don't know that I thought of it as taming a beast to be less wild so much as redirecting the vital energies away from trauma survival strategies to the grim task of actually living. The central figure of the Gaul as symbolic of resistance to the crushing conformity of society has always been interesting, so to me the question posed is what does the pugilist do at rest - when that defiance and the desperate existential fight so central to identity no longer serve a purpose - how does one incorporate it into an equally natural/wild but certainly different role and identity. The famous statue is the dying Gaul - so the question is what does the Gaul do when he is instead living? It's easy to romanticize large heroic sacrifices, but smaller deaths and the softening they involve do not tend to inspire statues. There are layers to it and different themes, and my concern is that it was too hastily thrown together to present them all well. But I like what I was after. 260828 ... ovenbird I can absolutely see what you were getting at. I think I latched on to the image of the lamb and the sense of relative calm, the notion of settling in to the work of a life and interpreted that as a type of taming, or a transformation into something associated with peace. I guess the thing about poetry is that it is always left open to multiple interpretations. I think the ideas were very well conveyed, with space for the reader to bring their own perspective. 260828 ... lycanthrope Well thank you for so thoughtfully engaging the work. I will always love this place. It is everything the internet promised and very little of its eventual horrors. 260828 what's it to you? who go blather from