Of Elsewhere
This year I’ve been writing a lot of poetry. It is fun, interesting, rewarding, and also potentially crucial to Evernost—if the thing really does want to incorporate poetry. As a result of this, I am in the process of submitting a (regular-length) chapbook manuscript to several contests—out of the desire to motivate myself to produce […]
Last week I wrote “Why C.S. Lewis?” I still seem to be in a period of Inklings obsession (the Inklings were C.S. Lewis’s Christian writing group), and I’m about halfway through Grevel Lindpop’s Charles Williams: The Third Inkling. I’m enjoying it enormously, although I will be objecting to one aspect of it in today’s post. (For […]
I’m an agnostic—not even a particularly hopeful agnostic, at least emotionally. Intellectually, I try to keep an open mind about the universe—to paraphrase Borges, the world is so strange anything could be real, even the Holy Trinity—and even, I would add, everything from eliminative materialism (which is, as far as I understand it, the conviction […]
I’ve seen the word thought-policing used (here, for instance) to describe a form of abuse in which one person tries to control the inside of someone else’s head. The abuser wants to know what the other thinks and feels and gets angry when they think or feel the wrong things. This is described unambiguously as […]
I had a generally good babysitter who nonetheless, to my indignation, had a temper. She once was mad at me (it had to do with clothes? I think I was five) and yelled at me. I burst into tears. She got even madder at me for crying and told me to stop. Watching parents at […]
At some point I wrote that I preferred the literature of conviction to the literature of perception despite lacking all conviction myself. I speculated that this was because I took malicious pleasure in all the scenes where people prove how right they are and how absurd their opponents are (a pleasure that in me has […]
I’ve tried expressing the ideas in my last blog post, Snaring the Moon, in poem form too; questionable if and how much it gains, but I had enough fun trying to make the form work I thought it might be interesting to share. A glosa, the form I’m using here, takes the first stanza (in this […]
One night in high school, my father and I took a walk along the railroad tracks in moonlight and then lay down to look at the stars. I have had most of my powerful experiences of nature in the presence of my father, and tonight was no exception. I looked up at the sky, saw […]
Near the end of Descent into Hell, Hugh Prescott and Adela discuss daydreams. Hugh only barely daydreams, whereas Adela does so often, and her defense of this calls the temptress Lily Sammile to her side. It is worth asking what exactly Lily Sammile is, other than Lilith. Her magical remedies seem to be an exaggerated […]
Having finished my chapbook (!) I have this intoxicating feeling I could finish my entire Evernostian project–although it will likely take me years! And the process of creating this skinny little chapbook makes it so much more real to me. I am ready to pour a lot more love and time into the larger work […]
Of Elsewhere 