I’ve been doing lots of navel gazing when I haven’t been writing Vengeance, My Heart, which is why my activity has diminished somewhat on the site.
Some of it is getting around to coming up with a useful term and framework that I can hand people who ask me about my spiritual practice. I know, most folks are not clamoring for information here, so that isn’t the issue. But it does come up in conversations at times. And I’ve discovered that people prefer a tidy couple of words when it comes to answers of that sort rather than my rambling, ambling version of it (which is almost as much about what I am not as it is about what I am). Plus, it is time to settle down with it without sounding so darned intellectual about it.
Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.
Somewhere in the dark, what was about to happen — simply began.
All attentions shifted. Hers. The crow’s. The women’s voices, too, surrendered to sudden silence while the air in the cave grew both damp and heavy, weighing her down with a new emerging wrongness rising from within the darkness. The space turned in on itself and the fresh scent of water turned to sour and stagnation.
It did not arrive. It was simply present, the way the water had been present before she found it — already there, belonging to the space, waiting for her perception to catch up with what the space already knew. Across the spring. Near it. The bioluminescence on the cave walls throwing its faint cerulean into the dark between them, and in that dark, a familiar shape pouring forth from shadow.
some bonds lack ropes no chains nor jailer keys a razor's liminal edge betwixt a world and me
A rune poem, based on an Elder Futhark rune selected at random.
Today’s rune is nauthiz, which has a core meaning of “need”. Alternative translations have been “hardship” or “constraint”. Among other interpretations, nauthiz is seen as a indicative of a transition or transformation, a period of learning or strengthening of resilience, lacking, change, and impermanence — inclusive of other related concepts.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
Okay, YouTube has been at me for weeks to watch these guys (gals?), so I finally caved and watched the video.
These folks are off the deep end of the spectrum. Not the most experimental I’ve ever heard for music, because it is still recognizable a rock-adjacent in sound. They do some neat tricks with loops and effects on top of a microtonal guitar/bass combo with polyrhythm drums. The whole, adjusting knobs on the effects with bare feet is an interesting trick.
And they’ve cultivated their “weird vibe” very precisely between the phallic masks and eye-melting pattern clash. They also, apparently, have their own language for interviews for which their manager “translates”.
Looks fun. And they appear talented (from what I can hear, but there is an emphasis on disruption and subversion, so I might not be hearing it quite right).
But.
For me, it started to sound clever but samey after a point. More gimmick than hook, if you know what I mean.
I jumped to a song above, but feel free to start and the beginning. Give me your read on this. Is microtonal (other notes than the Western chromatic scale) the future? Do you think they’ll be around in three years? Or just a flash in the pan?
Seriously, though, they make Zappa sound relatively grounded. Makes me long for Diamanda Galás and her Steak Knives experimental (opera-trained) vocal/screaming routine, honestly. Wait. Maybe don’t listen to that link. It may give you reason to judge me.
Meh.
Curious if you think they are good, bad or if you’re indifferent to the whole thing. Drop me a note.
At first, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I would go to the usual place, sit down and wait for the fire to light itself. It remained stubbornly unlit. Without fire to draw them, nothing was drawn. I might have taken it upon myself to light the flames but, in the strange rules of the place when it comes to starting fires, I am entirely ignorant.
Vengeance, My Heart is a work of serialized fiction. Jump to key story links to read earlier content.
The dark within was unsullied by Dusk. It stood apart from the twilight standing without.
The understanding was immediate and absolute. It came before her eyes drank in the faint bioluminescence rising from the stone walls beyond the entrance, casting a faint, ghostly cerulean into a dark that drank in light with a fullness. It came before the smell of water betrayed its location within the hollow space between the stone. The burden that rested on her neck since the shootout at the camp three or five days before, was simply absent. Not lifted. Gone — the yoke had never existed, never had been slung across her neck, never pushed her body to the ground.
It was in stillness that she stood just within the threshold dividing the entrance between the gloaming and this new, fresh darkness, letting the feeling wash over her in waves.
with eyes returning to campfire's flickering old grey relations welcome back without performance to sit without a word to say
sharp skull the tap wake up wake up he croaks today
A poem prompted by a randomly selected Elder Futhark rune.
Today’s rune is mannaz, a rune that translates to “man” in the sense of “humankind”. The rune is associated with family and the social order, and in trusting the intuitive process or seeing clearly — both from within and from without. Mannaz influences relationships of all kinds, including those of a romantic nature, and encourages compassion, for oneself as well as for others.
Please visit my Elder Futhark pages at sceadugenga.com for additional interpretations of the runes based on multiple references and personal reflection.
