I waited until I got settled in my apartment to give the phone a closer look.
When I tried to turn the phone on, I got a whole lot of nothing aside from a flashing battery icon telling me the thing was out of juice in a critical way. No surprise there.
When it finally charged enough to turn on, the corner of the screen read “Emergency calls only.” A large clock sat over a picture of a woman, the grey just beginning to show through dark, shoulder-length hair loosely tied in a small ponytail. Younger-looking than she probably was. Beautiful in a natural way, not made up or phony.
I am only the momentary caretaker of the story. It is one of those stories that drops in someone’s lap without warning. Except, in my case, it made its appearance by being underfoot.
A recent transplant to the Twin Cities, I had been warned by a friend that January and February were bitterly cold, and buses were less dependable on those frigid days. His advice: just buy a decent car and an engine block heater and plug the car in at night so it would start the next day. That way, he said, I wouldn’t find myself standing in twenty-below wind chills waiting for a bus that may or may not come.
I have decided to add some additional security measures to account for malicious bot activity on the site. If you are experiencing or have experienced 429 errors, that is due to those changes rolling in. Everything should settle down within the next 24 hours or sooner.
I’m sure it gets easier the more you do it, but I tried to write a fictional article for Everything Falls Apart and discovered that writing one following the styles set out for pieces of journalism breaks almost every single habit and rule of writing for poetry or fiction. Or even technical papers (which is part of my day job).
It took me four hours to write <500 words, with multitudes of rewrites as I discovered in editing that I had slipped into the habits formed by writing fiction.
My respect for copy-editors and journalists has gone upwards by a significant degree. It takes an entirely different mindset (for weak-minded me) to do what they do. And how!
And — to be 100% transparent about the process — I suspect there are still places that it could be fine-tuned in the article.
So, hats off to those folks. Their job is not a clear cut nor as easy as they make it look.
a feverdream fingers flowing for to brilliant the light from fingertips bright drowned of shadow flickering the night
A rune poem, based on an Elder Futhark rune selected at random.
Today’s rune is kenaz, which has been translated as both “torch” and “ulcer” . It is conceived as symbolic of flame, which is the illuminated creativity as well as the source of purification/healing/cautery. Fire is a a source of transformation and unmaking as well as heat, passion and light. As an ulcer, kenaz can be associated with a fever or inflammation, perhaps a wound which requires healing.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
