Image Ping-Pong

Ok, let's do this, I guess.

I've been challenged (very aggressively) to a game of Image Ping Pong by the owner of this blog. (Original rules can be found here!)

This image, as horrifying as it may look, is just a music rehearsal. This poor cat is trying having practice for his one-kitten band, and his mom just walked in.

"Get out, mom!"

She reminds him that he's practicing in the garage, which, in fact, belongs to the whole family. He looks down sheepishly, batting away the dead plants hanging by him from that year's gardening attempt. Despite his teen angst, life is good. He managed to get into a class with his favorite teacher, and his screamo was getting better. Before these past few months, it was a miracle that his mom tolerated his songwriting sessions, especially the scream tracks, but she did it out of love. She believed in him, as she always had.

Years later, his music would be called "trashy nonsense", but he didn't care. It made him money. Money he could support his own kittens with, and maybe even get his mom something nice for Mother's Day. Ten years after that fateful day, he bought her a guitar, just like she had with him. As he fell asleep in his childhood room that night, surrounded by his own kittens excited for a sleepover at grandma's, he saw one of their ears perk up from a sleeping bag below. Faintly, almost inaudibly, they heard the sound of electric guitar coming from the garage.

For the next serve in Image Ping Pong, I'll be using this.

The Healers' Language

Surviving oral tradition makes it clear that the Healers were always at least a bit secretive. However, before the persecution of the Church, this was more of a precaution than a day-to-day necessity. These families had learned the hard way that they were some of the first put to the sword in Roman conquest, since conquerers of all stripes realized how easily their groups could turn insurgent. 

The Healer's Tongue

The most significant unifying force among these healers was their language. Thousands of years old, it began as a combination of common ancient languages, with their own words invented here and there. It had no official name, but its speakers passed on and graffitied a single word from it wherever they could, to show their fellow healers they weren't alone. The word was thiedra, one of their many words for humanity's collective life force. The more religious of their youth attributed it to their gods, especially the Egyptian goddess Isis, affectionately nicknamed Isis R'thiedra, or Isis as Humanity's Soul.

Book Burnings

Many, including healers, would assume that this language was a shield against the coming Plague's persecution. Of course, the ability to communicate in secret saved some, but depending on ethnicity or gender, it was sometimes a detriment. Suspicion of independent women or immigrants runs deep, and while their fellow healers were simply viewed as sorcerers hoarding immunity powers, bigotry was a lightning rod. These were the kind of people burned, not for being witches who could weather the plague, but because they were blamed for its emergence.

The senior members of their community saw the pain and corpses of their kin, and though they feared they were overreacting, they gathered their children and made the hardest decision of their lives. What information they could memorize, they did, but what they could not was lost. They set entire libraries aflame, fearing more death. Since so many healers blamed for the plague were caught at their studies, it was the only thing they could think of to do. The risk was steep, and entire histories were lost, but it was a low price for millions of human lives.

When questioned, the elders responded with their line of logic. They were all terrified of losing vital healing information, but if they all died, said information would be indecipherable anyways. With a few exceptions, they burned every last text they could find. Until the late 1920s, they thought they had lost everything, but the abilities of Life's Cavalry should not be underestimated.

An Alternate History of Plague Doctors

No one remembers the Black Death better than healers. Both metaphorically and literally, these cats that caught the plague rats were put to the sword and forced to go underground. They memorized and burned their literature, and they say the bonfire was so large it could be seen from France to the Vatican. Mothers taught daughters under the guise of "religious studies", and when the priests came knocking, they held out biblical commentary on how this plague was a punishment from the Lord.

Many, many times they thought of emerging from the shadows, but between the witch burnings and rampant colonialism that followed the Middle Ages, there were few safe places for these families. Most of them worked as physicians or nannies, hoping that their jobs would give them some cover for their more... subtle forms of magic. After all, they still wanted to heal. It was, often literally, in their blood.

However, all these years of hiding had taught them that plain sight was the best place for their operations. When they were working stiffs, people noticed how their families never got sick, and when they would visit plague-ridden children, they woke the next day miraculously better. Perhaps it was an unwillingness to question what little working medicine they had, but the townspeople forgave those of them who did this in doctor's garb. After all, your appointment with one of these mysterious healers was better than any plague doctor.

That realization washed over them slowly as the 20th century began. From the Bibles they carried with them to the medical societies that denounced them as quacks, they had always adorned themselves in what hated them. Then the "Roaring 20s" came.

The children of these healers found themselves taking things a step further, and when they went to parties surrounded by their own, they danced in plague doctor masks. Hundreds of black robes whistled under electric light, and the whole room smelled like sweat and potpourri. They had truly gone all in, and surprisingly, their parents applauded it. Besides, the war against death had a new enemy by the name of polio, and they needed all the help they could get.

Now came their time of light. They began to transcribe their histories, first in scraps on secret notebooks, then heading towards the libraries they still waxed poetic about. Where the pre-medieval healers had groups, they formed societies that stretched across the world.

The most famous of these societies, known as Life's Cavalry, led the charge. Its members were young and ambitious, and they recognized that their abilities were a double-edged sword. So, it comes as no surprise that when it came to picking a uniform, they chose the garb of plague doctors.

Scenes from Another World: 8.23.2020

    This place is almost classically remote, only accessible via a small offroad vehicle or on foot. Everyone in town knows to turn their heads when families or groups of travelers, clothed in mist and otherworldly garb, slip between the trees in a local park. From there, the trail grows narrower and more absurd, and patches of random seasons appear during the hike. Children stuck on this trek catch snowflakes on their tongues or stomp in unexpected puddles, overjoyed at the absurdity of it all. Their parents stare ahead, often so accustomed to this journey that it no longer fazes them.

    After what seems like forever, the trees-- now gathered in a crown far beyond their reach-- have a break in their endless wall. Those who know the landscape are relieved, for they know it's not just a clearing. Almost immediately, the travelers find cobblestone beneath their feet and breathe a sigh of relief. Their journey is almost over.

    Someone usually stands near the edge of the pit, dressed like this weary band and smiling. Bells ring somewhere in the pit's mirage-like darkness, and everyone rejoices. Their friends are home; their families are home.

The children are so swept-up in the fanfare that they hardly notice their parents leading them down a new kind of path, a bridge stretching into that pit. Some clutch to the handrails or their mothers in fear, but the elevator doors at the end slide open, and fascination overtakes them once again as they see through its windows and into the city below.

With the barrier spells peeled-away, the first thing they see are the lanterns, floating glass globes that sparkle and bob through the air. A few of them even bump into the elevator as it descends, passing houses that now hold them in nets to their outside walls. Each home is itself a work of art, carved out of the sides of the pit and layered with patterned tiles. Tunnels lead deeper into that solid rock, lit up on the edges like movie-theater aisles.

A balcony connects those houses, and the people who see the elevator pass by them look up from what they're doing to wave. Children chase each other; people read, study, and cook. An old man weaves shawls that glisten with magic whenever he passes his hands over them.

Somewhere, hidden deep out of sight, a staircase leads to layers of houses deeper in the cavern, where translucent window boxes replace many of the lanterns. A school stands resolutely at this depth, with thick-paned windows plastered with children's drawings. More families live here, sharing spaces deep in the caverns with cousins, grandparents, and family of friendship rather than blood.

Near the bottom of the pit is a town square, lively and welcoming. The shopkeepers look up from their wares as the elevator stops beside them, and the doors slide open.

What cooking taught me about how I write

I've long thought that the creative gene skipped a generation in my family, especially considering that my family was always a bit traditionalist. My mother did much of the cleaning and child-rearing while I was growing up, but her and my dad shared the job of cooking. They both have their specialties, but you wouldn't know it from the burned frozen pizzas and hot dog bun garlic bread they've prepared over the years.

Just because I sometimes cook like that today doesn't mean I can't cook otherwise; a sentiment I know my parents would echo. I dream of the day when I can move out of these shitty dorms and have a steady job, and with the power of my own money (and also my own goddamn stove), I hope I can make art.

Why is there no lifestyle short of homemaking that allows a person to cook from scratch? It infuriates me to no end that with many foods, I can't even step away from them to check my email before I come back to find my skillet smoking. Here is where the similarities with my writing start.

The expectations of our society drain me-- on top of my existing depression-- and I find myself barely able to string words together for long enough to make a difference. Of course, this spirals out of my control, where I'm frustrated about how little I do in hopelessness-inducing ways.

I need my books again, like I need access to those good ingredients again, for art can't happen without materials. I've grown so disillusioned with the books I read when I was young, now that my mind is more developed and my eyes were forced open to the world. There can truly be no living heroes to a writer, for the same reason I cook from scratch whenever possible. The veneer of age protects me from the horrible aftertaste of both canned soup and JK. Rowling's transphobia.

Journal Post from 8.12.2020

8.12.2020: On Depression and Thrift Shopping

     I need to return to my passions, even though they seem miles away from where I am now. If I were more pessimistic, I would say that mental illness and trauma have made me a shell of a man, but I long ago chose to accept that calling myself such a thing would be reductionist at best and dehumanizing at worst. Even now, as I sit in my half-organized office space, I find myself at a loss for what the correct term for myself would be. I'm so goddamn disillusioned that my own brain is starting to look like a scam, and my love of science as little more than something encouraged in my growing brain for economic benefit.

    But at the end of the tunnel I see all these things that inspire me: the return to college, the end of my nightmarish dental procedure, and the knowledge that I donated so many childish things yesterday. Someone, somewhere, will be made happy by the things I no longer want, and for today, that is enough.