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ghcstao3 · 2 months ago

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Johnny grows up listening to stories about the Ghost of the forest that surrounds his village.

A myth, a man, an otherworldly creature, no one quite knew what Ghost was. But as far as the tales went, Ghost was an evil entity, no matter of what genre, that haunted the woods and had nothing but bad intentions. A supposedly horrifying being, a powerful being, that did not take kindly to intruders. By magic, or something far, far worse, it is said that many who have attempted to seek Ghost out seldom returned, or if they did, they were never the same. If one went with offerings for Ghost, then the creature might be inclined to enact a singular kindness, one favour of goodwill, but like the tides Ghost's mood could change in an instant, and all his rare generosity would be instantaneously revoked.

It takes being one of the fools that attempts to find Ghost for Johnny to learn these stories are filled with nothing but falsities.

When Johnny's mother falls ill one autumn and not one of the village doctors is able to help her, Johnny decides to do the unadvisable thing of trekking into the forest to search for Ghost, and pray that he should be one of the lucky ones to be afforded Ghost’s good fortune. If human remedies and medicine are not of use, then perhaps magic could serve as a cure. So Johnny thinks, anyway.

He nearly gets lost several times over before he eventually comes across a homely-looking cottage that is far from the expectations he'd had set by the various stories meant to keep village children out of the forest. Smoke curls lazily out of a chimney, ivy creeps over stone and mortar, moss eats up the worn path leading to the front door. It doesn't... appear particularly menacing, so Johnny isn't at all dissuaded from making his approach and knocking on the old wooden door.

It would be at this cottage that he would, in fact, find Ghost.

But it would also be at this cottage that Johnny would learn that Ghost is merely a man only a few years older than him, a man named Simon, who is not at all evil and not at all magic and not at all the grotesque creature he was said to be.

Over tea Simon would explain to Johnny that when he was a boy he’d been cast out of the village, painted as a monster by all the townsfolk after his home had caught fire and, unfortunately, killed his family—save for him. They’d accused him of witchcraft, magic-use, demonic possession, and sent him out into the forest to die. But Simon is resilient, and Simon is smart, and yes, he does have something that will help Johnny’s mother. He’s far more advanced than those village doctors ever would be.

Johnny wants to ask more questions, wants to get to better know Simon, wants to know how all those legends came about—but soon enough the sun is due to set, and Simon is sending him away with an elixir and some herbs, and Johnny has to say goodbye.

He’d return one day, though, he promises himself. Because Simon seems lonely, and Johnny just simply cannot have that.

#sorry if this reads like nonsense im so exhausted #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #soapghost #ghostsoap #ghost x soap #ghoap #alternate universe #writing

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timdrakequotes · 8 months ago

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Nightwing: You’re getting better. I didn’t hear you until the mortar on that chimney crumbled.

Robin: One day I’m gonna get by you.

Nightwing: I’m sure you will.

--Tim Drake with Dick Grayson (Batman: Family #7 - Chapter Seven: Precipice)

#Robin #Tim Drake #Red Robin #Nightwing #Dick Grayson #timdrakequotes

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picturesofthegoneworlds · 6 months ago

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For one word prompts, I'm finally seeing some green in my garden again, so: Sage?

Oh, of course you know how to appeal to me. I hope this brings the vibes <3 ~

There was a variety of sage (still is, most likely) - sanctified – a herb that they would dry hanged from the rafters and tie into bundles like broomstick bristles, its own fibrous stem knotted in noose around the neck and ankles of the bale, burnt at the stakes and raised pitchforks to sweep away the wicked.

The smoke was what woke her, herbaceous floral distress signal, thrown through the open (paneless) window, accompanied by salt and circle.

They hoped to lure her out the front ‘door’ - she concluded with groggy post-dream clarity - strategized to trap her between saline force field and stone and mortar.

She stumbled over herself, gathered her few possessions. In time shorter the flames carpeted the threshing covering the floor, climbed into her bed to alight the straw stuffing the mattress, exorcised from there to cross exposed rafters to the mossy thatching comprising the roof-

She left through the vacant fireplace.

From a distance fled she observed the thick grapevine coiling of smoke as it billowed out above the forest canopy from a chimney that had crumbled decades ago.

Fire-licked masonry, tattered and scorched fabrics. Perhaps their malice left the cabin more befitting, well-suited, paralleled - outfitted in ash grey skin and soot ichor stains. The hunting party retreated but she could not return. She wondered who would take up residence in the hollow shell - as such a body must be an invite, must be a vessel (at least that was a lesson she was soon to learn) - but who would cohabitate with the spiders, birds, and other small mammals?

The thick smoke filtered through the pines

All of her grievances aside (packed away once again with her bedroll and cauldron), it smelt rather wonderful-

There was another sage (surely must be, still) - common - cultivated in window boxes and allotments, the leaves torn to marinade meats, to infuse healing balms, unbiased towards the dead or the living, transmuting itself for both in order to permeate soft tissue.

Laudna would grab handfuls of the silver-furred leaves; amass them in pocket-lint-lined-bundles of potpourri. Crushed the sage between her fingers, rubbed it on her pulse points, tied it with red twine dried in parcels of cheesecloth that she decorated around her person. Loose in her coin pouch, trinkets, her spell component satchel too, sewn into Pâté’s stuffing, flattened behind her belts and tucked into the front of her bodice and trampled in the soles of her shoes-

Never sure if it was necessity or in her head, not like when she wore flushing and sweating flesh, saturated, awkward teenager dealing with the stubborn stench of puberty or drenched in the fragrance of a farm-girl-butcher’s-daughter composting straw manure and coagulated pigs’ blood –

-not the perfume of The Ladies, certainly, refined with their age, aged mahogany liquor barrel vintage sophisticated palate, finery of silks satin lace velvet layers stored in lacquered marquetry hardwood armoires and mausoleum-sized wardrobes, aired in gilded vase and bouquet’ed marble surroundings, chandeliers ornately framed paintings in alabaster hallways-

She would feel rather self-conscious of it; of her differences - but continued her play with the worms in the forest regardless.

Then, for a short time, she slept with them.

Or rather, she woke to fall onto a heap moving with them, dancing drunken room-spin carpet shag pile of maggots and flies and mosquitoes and pillows of other larvae unidentified, turning familiar faces into fertiliser.

She was not sure if it was the memory, or the actual (un)working order of things

Permanently rotting

Hard to smell past the end of a decomposing nose

Perhaps it wasn’t so hard to tell for others?

Every time she passed the plant she filled her pockets and hands - ironically unaware of how time had stilled, that she was embalming herself - hoping it would fight the trauma-ever-present smell, that she could throw off the(ir) scent.

There is a sage that blooms violet throughout the summer - wild - like early humid evenings with head thrown back in laughter and perspiration jeweling tanned neck, clouds underlit and voluminous as purple-sunset tousled hair.

Imogen points it out with inquisition; at the gatherings of spears of blossoms lanced into soil growing not far from the bank of a river in the sun-bleached and crunching-under-foot tall grasses of an open field.

Seeds from dried out flower heads are carried along the docile breeze, ashes falling in hazing-heat ground fog, smithing dandelion diamond rings to decorate the fingers of the willows that lazily wave, bid farewell to the jewellery that doesn’t fit, allowing it to marry elsewhere between clumps over the grass and charms accumulated at the banks of the gently moving river.

“D’ya know what this is? Smells good.”

She kneels down with her palm held open to the purple blooming sage, presentory, skin offering the tan lines above her knees exposed from the displacement of the tops of her tall leather boots, a dandelion seed catching in the mass of her mane like a feather, her hand not designated to indicating specimen shading above one of her eyes squinted shut and the corner of her mouth raised baring teeth as she looks to Laudna with the midday sun over her shoulder.

It’s a bit overwhelming, the life and the bliss it elicits.

Laudna walks the few paces over to her, gives a quick inspection with the cast of her shadow.

Smiles in familiarity, nods to the plant in greeting

“Would you like to try it?”

Imogen starts the fire, uses the abundance of dried grasses as kindling. It smells just like the burning cottage had, does so every time. Laudna prunes the wild sage, gathering toothed leaves and small violet petals into her wicker basket, rolls the fragranced stems between the pads of her fingers and inhales, implores the herbal scent to momentarily mask the memory of deterioration as it once had. Imogen sets up the frame for hanging the cauldron, drives the iron spikes into the dry ground, fills it from the river, has to submerge her hand into the gathered water, fingers tweezers removing errant dandelion parachutes that she wipes onto her gauzy dress skirt, skin glistening with the cascading droplets that intuitively follow the scarring of her lightning marks and drip onto the floor, where a lizard with skin like stones flees under the weave of the trodden grass once her footfall returns, retreats for safer ground. Laudna questions whether it will turn to watch the fire or let instinct tell it to keep running-

“You’re quiet…”

Imogen states, offers a softened and upturned corner of her mouth.

Another feather of an airborne seed lands in her hair. A warning arrow shot through the window and puncturing her pillow, innards flying-

“I seem to be having a reflective day, sorry.”

“Anythin’ you wanna share?”

Imogen wears her empathetic apology in her brow, strained, and Laudna isn’t sure of how legible abstract memories are to her, if the furrow is from an attempt at unknotting the tangles, mostly it feels a weight too unquantifiable to know what to share with intention.

“Not now. I think this is good, something new.”

Present is good, a gift, shared (willingly, in part).

“I don’t dislike it…”

Imogen declares, staring into her cup as she swirls its contents under inquisitive-eyed assessment.

“It sounds like you are warming up for a caveat there.”

She pauses, holds the pottery between her hands on her lap.

“I’m not, s’just new. Tea back home was mostly black and made with lemons and alotta honey or sugar; was cold if the occasion were special-” she tucks her hair behind her ear as her eyes read the pattern of the blanket they had laid over the floor. Laudna wonders if there were birthday parties on picnic blankets out in the paddocks, waited by her father, Imogen and her childhood friends drinking sweet tea and running around in daisy crowns “-I guess we had other teas, but they were more for if y’all were sick?”

She doesn’t like to think of that.

The birds and the crickets carry on their background accompaniment, Imogen's hand returning to the other cradling the cup. Laudna feels as though she can see the slow turn of the skin on her exposed thighs from bronzed tan to sun-kissed red, convinced she is observing the freckles multiplying.

“This one is supposed to be good for anxiety.”

Imogen scoffs, it causes a nearby bird in the brush to scatter

“Yeah? Well I’ll report back on that - maybe we should take more with us just in case.”

Laudna laughs agreeably, enthusiastic. She knows how to make plenty of room for sage.

To follow the tea she also makes them a salad with the plant’s greens; a field-foraged thing prepared with borage and dandelion leaves, fleshed out with wild strawberries, a little olive oil and a little cider vinegar, served in a wooden bowl.

finishes the assemblage with an intentionally random flecking of the wild sage's violet petals, as though the bowl is a miniature diorama of the meadow in which they sit, olive oil babbling brook and cast iron fork fallen-tree bridge ready to present on a plinth, garden plans proposed by the landscaper in the study to a snooty gent stroking his chin and um-ing and ah-ing -

the hidden door that was disguised behind ornate wooden panelling, adjoining the ransacked and emptied floor to ceiling shelves of the study via dark stone corridors to the equipped and practical, cell-like laboratory-

She thinks that was the layout, at least - worries who she will rouse if she thinks too hard on it. There is comfort in the answer being left immaterial.

“All’a those times I was sittin’ in fields of flowers, I never really thought I could be eatin’ them.”

It is so nice to have someone she adores break up her ruminations.

“You had a lot of quality produce, there wasn’t really the need.”

"I guess not. Honestly, I think I prefer the salad to the tea."

Imogen licks her teeth, reveals a violet petal plastered over incisor that she shortly removes with a blade-of dry-grass toothpick, re-places the petal on the flat of her tongue, rolling it around her mouth and swallowing it.

Laudna stares.

"You like the flowers?" she finds herself leaning towards Imogen. Wants to tell her that for years this one was her perfume - pomanders adorned and concealed in tattered layers.

“They’re purple, ‘course I do.” she giggles, resting sat cross-legged with her weight behind her on her palms. Her head rolls towards Laudna, leaves their foreheads almost resting against one another, Laudna able to count each individual eyelash.

Purple, like the deep undertones of her hair. That much Laudna was very aware of.

“I should have guessed that that would be what caught your attention.” She brings her hand up and wraps her bony index finger in a ringlet of Imogen's hair.

“More like your magic, I was thinkin’…” She drawls, tenor lowered and breathy.

“And the taste?”

Imogen visibly swallows, cheeks flushing a further tint than what the sun has already given - it makes Laudna feel overly aware of the networking of her own heart and veins.

Imogen clears her throat

"’s’good - kinda familiar."

Laudna feels overwhelmed by the compelling need to kiss her - so she does. Her hand with finger still tied in ringlets of hair sprawling over Imogen's chest as she responds with a squeaked moan that reverberates underneath it. Her lungs halt in their expansion as her mouth is sealed with her own, the increasing pulse at the base of her neck decipherable carved runes under the tip of her fingers, her heart thudding against her palm.

Familiar. Laudna can muse on that in the future, certainly.

She sits back from Imogen - already breathless and chest heaving, lips kiss-swollen - and appreciates the sight she helped curate; the picture of her looking a little dazed on their tartan blanket with the surrounding flora densely reaching above her shoulders, crowned in multi-coloured paint strokes.

“Familiar? And here I thought that was your first time eating a flower.”

Causes her to blush furiously

“Don’t you use ma’words against me.” She pushes Laudna playfully at her shoulder, pretends to look away in dissatisfaction, bottom lip pouting.

“I apologise, that is your advantage to keep. My words are but humble ammunition for your armoury.” Laudna exaggeratedly plays acting pious at Imogen’s half-turned back, Imogen turning back to her with one eyebrow raised and a laugh she is clearly trying to keep within her stomach murmuring at the corners of her lips.

"That so? Well alright, how would y’all describe it?"

She puffs out air towards her head, hairs previously put behind her ear falling back out of (or into, depending on which of them you ask) place, sits forward again, arms folded. Adorable. Laudna is aware of how susceptible Imogen is to her teasing, always so charming and charismatic, and so often a bumbling mess - and it is intoxicating - to exercise any sort of outcome on such a gifted sorceresses’ disposition, is doing her best to learn what the differences and distinctions are between that and her own longer ongoing situation…

Focus.

Despite the more imposing associations, she can still remember

Can still remember her father butchering the pig, her mother in the kitchen slicing its fatty flesh into patchwork diamonds, stuffing the incised indents with sage and garlic and other seasonings, the slab of flesh tied with butcher’s twine around a whole peeled onion and roasted, skin crackling, the three of them sat around the oak table, talking about the small things, Laudna's mother showing off the basket Laudna had weaved that day, presented like a cornucopia on the kitchen table top, holding that weeks offering of vegetables.

She would describe it as herbaceous, sweet, and floral. Peppery, perhaps like a minty aniseed. Earthy. Mulchy. Rich as the soil it grew from. Could also admit to it being 'like the first home I'd made burning down, like the incense I'd crush between my palms and rub behind my ears so as to not offend any people who would be so kind as to get close enough to notice the death’

what she does say is

"nostalgic."

not a lie - though she hopes in futures she won’t be drowned marinating in it, the complex layering of all of the ingredients and flavours, hopes one can remain dominant, bountiful and nourishing.

Imogen there, seen over the end of a nose that did not rot and fall off. She’s sure that it can change.

#Imodna #Imogen Temult #Laudna #Critical Role #Bells Hells #Emma writes #Prompt fill

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jiubilant · 1 year ago

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If it is Known that Ravi is never without the Staff of Magnus and also Known that he often visits Laf and also also Known that baby mammoths are fond of brandishing sticks . . . how many times has a baby run away with a powerful artifact

“And that is how,” says the Archmage of Winterhold, gesturing grandly to the Staff of Magnus, “after two hundred years, I found a walking-stick of perfect height. Snipp, snapp, snute, så er eventyret ute.”

“Most people,” says the mammoth-herder, “cut their own to size, Hrafi.”

“Now you tell me.”

Midday, and the rolling Hviting plains gleam golden-green. The mammoth-herder lounges in the tickly grass. Most of her beasts are browsing well downslope, rooting like great gardeners through goosefoot and sedge. They chew with calm deliberation. Only the two calves gambol nearby, trumpeting and treading on each other’s trunks—and turning, every so often, to make sure that their minder is paying attention.

“It is a good walking-stick,” she says, keeping a fond eye on the calves. The sun warms her shoulders. A sleepy breeze ripples through the grasses of the steppe. “And a good story. Wundorlic.”

“Yes, well.” With an embarrassed smile, her friend returns to his lunch. He’d bartered the bread from a passing drover; the mammoth-herder had supplied the cheese, and he’d mortared it all together with fascinating disregard for the proper way to eat anything. “Yarn for yarn. You’ve answered all my questions.”

“No small boast.” The mammoth-herder glances down at the Staff, propped like a broom against the Archmage’s bedroll and bag. It’s a twig like any other, she thinks. Only the blue flame flickering at its tip betrays it as a wizard’s companion. “You found it for the clevermen. Why did you keep it?”

“Had to,” says the Archmage, his voice somewhat muffled by sandwich. (That’s what he’d called it, though the mammoth-herder had witnessed no witchery in its production.) “It’s choosy. Burned my Master Wizard’s hand.”

The mammoth-herder raises her eyebrows. The calves trundle over, cross at being ignored; she coaxes one to her side, deft as a shepherd with a lamb, and scratches it under the chin.

“How does it—ouch,” she says, and makes a face. A wandering trunk had tweaked her beard. “How does it choose?”

“S’a matter of, ah, of might,” says the Archmage with a vague wave of the sandwich. “And—and stature, supposedly, and so forth. Far as I’ve read, anyway—oof—”

He goes down with a helpless laugh. The calf who had butted him tries to climb into his lap, finds it too small, and snuffles with indignation through his hair.

“Gently, lytling,” the mammoth-herder chides it, catching the curious trunk. The calf, out of the corner of its eye, gives her a martyred look.

Then it wriggles free and rummages through the Archmage’s packs. The Staff tips over. A kicked cookpot bounces down the slope. The Archmage, lying limbs akimbo in the grass, stifles an undignified snort as a few notes from his field journal flutter by.

“The mammoth,” he intones with mock solemnity, as if dictating to a scribe, “is a known vandal, and smokes like a chimney—”

“Might, you said,” says the mammoth-herder with a great grin, and plucks the man’s pipe from the calf’s trunk.

The Archmage seems disinclined to sit up. He pillows his head under one arm, smiling, and shuts his eyes. “Mm.”

“Stature.”

“S’what I said.”

“Why, then,” asks the mammoth-herder, not unkindly, “did it choose you?”

The Archmage blinks up at her. He’s wearing his squashed lunch. His hair sticks up in peaks where the calf had mussed it.

“I’ve no notion,” he says.

The calf, with a gleeful toss of its head, seizes the Staff and waves it. The Staff sends forth a delighted shower of sparks.

#BABY MAMMOTH has earned TENURE #skyrim #microfic #oc tag #laf #ravi

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probablynanobots · 9 days ago

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My List So Far

Because my mind was trained to think,

I tend to write my needs in ink,

But when the grammar takes too long,

I twist my lists to rhyme in song.

And since my heart was trained to teach,

I like to find a path for each.

Below a path for poets, that have access to colors,

For those who count with number,

And those who note with words.

If you have the access, you can make one too,

But if you need to have yours made, I'll leave it here for you.

I've made a range of shade from 100 down to nought. 0

100 set to FFFFFF, 0 set to hex of knots. 000000

Each 10 between are shrined in grey, set at each ten cent. %

90 80 70 60 50 for tea Sir T twinsies tin

Tin as roof, with chimney 0ver it.

Cinders fall, turns to ash, white spread thin.

Set each 11 pixels to reflect pH colors,

For every litmus chemical that wiki has to serve.

Align along a ruler, with each pixel at a notch,

Then set the top at highest 0, and stretch

To mark the range it shows.

Store in folders, colored for the range of pain to us,

Red burns, Yellow fuels, Green is where we stand.

Blue pulls you beneath the waves,

Purple churns to sand.

Arrange each on the ruler, like the branches of a fir,

Reveal the ones beyond the ones that burned the ones before.

Burned or drowned, bummed or clowned, mortar, pestle, grain.

Are you whole or are you ground? Check pulse, eyes, and brain.

If all are still or white or blank, only hope remains.

Is hope a leaf or powder? Flesh, or skin, or juice?

A root beneath, a limb above, some bark that's fallen loose?

Check before you wreck, whether yourself or the cure,

If you do your own research, then you'd better be quite sure.

#particle poetry #particle physics #particle biology #people particle physics #particle therapy #particle literature #particle chemistry #particle organizational method #poetry organizational method

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tmhuntschimneysweepinc · 5 days ago

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Key Chimney Repairs Essential for Older Homes

Older homes often come with charm, character, and... aging chimneys. Over time, wear and environmental factors take their toll, making chimney repair an essential part of maintaining an older property. Here are some of the most common repairs needed to keep your chimney safe and functional.

Tuckpointing and Brick Replacement In older chimneys, the mortar holding the bricks together can deteriorate, leading to loose or crumbling bricks. Tuckpointing restores the structural integrity by replacing damaged mortar, while brick replacement addresses severe wear or missing bricks.

Chimney Liner Replacement Many older homes have chimneys without modern liners, or their existing liners may be cracked or corroded. A new liner enhances safety by preventing heat and harmful gases from escaping into your home.

Crown Repair or Rebuilding The chimney crown protects against water intrusion, but age can lead to cracks or deterioration. Repairing or rebuilding the crown helps prevent water damage and extends the life of your chimney.

Flashing Repair The flashing, which seals the gap between the chimney and the roof, is prone to leaks as it ages. Repairing or replacing damaged flashing prevents water from seeping into your home, protecting both your roof and chimney.

Damper Repair or Upgrade Older chimneys often have outdated or broken dampers. Upgrading to a modern damper improves airflow, energy efficiency, and overall chimney performance.

#Chimney crown repair #tuckpointing #mortar joint repair #chimney liner replacement #flashing repair #damper repair #chimney maintenance #chimney safety #chimney inspection #fireplace repair #masonry repair #chimney waterproofing #chimney leak repair #chimney cap installation #chimney relining.

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pinkygrocket · 1 year ago

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i think peppino would make for a really fun mental world in psychonauts. i've been imagining it as a mashup of the inside of a "volcano mine" (think dragon roost caravan or goron mines from zelda), the food kingdom from mario odyssey, and the inside of a giant pizza oven.

brick and mortar instead of rock and stone, sauce lava, cheese stalagmites and stalactites, ingredients both as ore and plants, lava tubes that function as chimneys, giant kitchen utensils and tools being used as mining equipment, you name it.

the idea isn't fully formed yet but i think an active volcano would be an interesting metaphor for peppino flipping between anxiety and rage at a moment's notice.

also raz gets a little pizza deliveryboy outfit when he jumps in

#pizza tower #psychonauts #crossover #rocket blabs

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winterjourney · 4 months ago

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23. July 2024 - REALLY Black Ink

Ink made from charcoal dates back to prehistoric times. Charcoal was used 17,000 years ago in the caves at Lascaux. Ink made from soot or lamp black has been in use for at least 4,000 years. Gutenberg used it. It was easily made in Colonial America.

The basic recipe: soot from your local chimney sweep mixed with water and your choice of binding agents: egg white, honey, gum Arabic, et al. Mix well in a mortar and then pestel the daylights out of it.

The result is an incredibly black ink. It has the scent of a fireplace or a house after the fire department has left. (Clove or lavender oil can fix that.)

I'll be using this pigment in creating Art and illustrations.

Note: I received enough soot from a local handyman and chimney sweep to make a 55-gallon drum of ink.

That should last me for a while.

Have a safe and interesting week, everyone

🐝 Stockwell

#ink #Lamp black #Black #Soot #artists on tumblr

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o-craven-canto · 2 years ago

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Extracts from Alan Weisman, The World Without Us, 2007. The book considers the material aspects of human civilization and how long they would last, unattended. If humans were to vanish from Earth, if all maintainance and repairing work ceased, what would happen to what we leave behind?

(The book went on to inspire two speculative documentaries, Life After People by History Channel and Aftermath: Population Zero by National Geographic, emphasizing different aspects of it. They were neat.)

Chapter 2: Unbuilding Our Home

No matter how hermetically you’ve sealed your temperature-tuned interior from the weather, invisible spores penetrate anyway, exploding in sudden outbursts of mold—awful when you see it, worse when you don’t, because it’s hidden behind a painted wall, munching paper sandwiches of gypsum board, rotting studs and floor joists. Or you’ve been colonized by termites, carpenter ants, roaches, hornets, even small mammals.

Most of all, though, you are beset by what in other contexts is the veritable stuff of life: water... moisture enters around the nails. Soon they’re rusting, and their grip begins to loosen... As gravity increases tension on the trusses, the ¼-inch pins securing their now-rusting connector plates pull free from the wet wood, which now sports a fuzzy coating of greenish mold... When the heat went off, pipes burst if you lived where it freezes, and rain is blowing in where windows have cracked from bird collisions and the stress of sagging walls. Even where the glass is still intact, rain and snow mysteriously, inexorably work their way under sills. As the wood continues to rot, trusses start to collapse against each other. Eventually the walls lean to one side, and finally the roof falls in...

While all that disaster was unfolding, squirrels, raccoons, and lizards have been inside, chewing nest holes in the drywall, even as woodpeckers rammed their way through from the other direction... Fallen vinyl siding, whose color began to fade early, is now brittle and cracking as its plasticizers degenerate. The aluminum is in better shape, but salts in water pooling on its surface slowly eat little pits that leave a grainy white coating... Unprotected thin sheet steel disintegrates in a few years. Long before that, the water-soluble gypsum in the sheetrock has washed back into the earth. That leaves the chimney, where all the trouble began. After a century, it’s still standing, but its bricks have begun to drop and break as, little by little, its lime mortar, exposed to temperature swings, crumbles and powders.

If you owned a swimming pool, it’s now a planter box... If the house’s foundation involved a basement, it too is filling with soil and plant life. Brambles and wild grapevines are snaking around steel gas pipes, which will rust away before another century goes by. White plastic PVC plumbing has yellowed and thinned on the side exposed to the light, where its chloride is weathering to hydrochloric acid, dissolving itself and its polyvinyl partners. Only the bathroom tile, the chemical properties of its fired ceramic not unlike those of fossils, is relatively unchanged, although it now lies in a pile mixed with leaf litter.

After 500 years, what is left depends on where in the world you lived. If the climate was temperate, a forest stands in place of a suburb; minus a few hills, it’s begun to resemble what it was before developers, or the farmers they expropriated, first saw it. Amid the trees, half-concealed by a spreading understory, lie aluminum dishwasher parts and stainless steel cookware, their plastic handles splitting but still solid... The chromium alloys that give stainless steel its resilience... will probably continue to do so for millennia, especially if the pots, pans, and carbon-tempered cutlery are buried out of the reach of atmospheric oxygen. One hundred thousand years hence, the intellectual development of whatever creature digs them up might be kicked abruptly to a higher evolutionary plane by the discovery of ready-made tools...

If you were a desert dweller, the plastic components of modern life flake and peel away faster, as polymer chains crack under an ultraviolet barrage of daily sunshine. With less moisture, wood lasts longer there, though any metal in contact with salty desert soils will corrode more quickly. Still, from Roman ruins we can guess that thick cast iron will be around well into the future’s archaeological record, so the odd prospect of fire hydrants sprouting amidst cacti may someday be among the few clues that humanity was here...

In a warmer world... drier, hotter desert climates will be complemented by wetter, stormier mountain weather systems that will send floods roaring downstream, overwhelming dams, spreading over their former alluvial plains, and entombing whatever was built there in annual layers of silt. Within them, fire hydrants, truck tires, shattered plate glass, condominia, and office buildings may remain indefinitely, but as far from sight as the Carboniferous Formation once was.

No memorial will mark their burial, though the roots of cottonwoods, willows, and palms may occasionally make note of their presence. Only eons later, when old mountains have worn away and new ones risen, will young streams cutting fresh canyons through sediments reveal what once, briefly, went on here.

***

Chapter 3: The City Without Us

Under New York, groundwater is always rising… Whenever it rains hard, sewers clog with storm debris… With subway pumps stilled… water would start sluicing away soil under the pavement. Before long, streets start to crater. With no one unclogging sewers, some new watercourses form on the surface… Within 20 years, the water-soaked steel columns that support the street above the East Side’s 4, 5, and 6 trains corrode and buckle. As Lexington Avenue caves in, it becomes a river.

Whenever it is, the repeated freezing and thawing make asphalt and cement split. When snow thaws, water seeps into these fresh cracks. When it freezes, the water expands, and cracks widen… As pavement separates, weeds like mustard, shamrock, and goosegrass blow in from Central Park and work their way down the new cracks, which widen further… The weeds are followed by the city’s most prolific exotic species, the Chinese ailanthus tree… As soil long trapped beneath pavement gets exposed to sun and rain, other species jump in, and soon leaf litter adds to the rising piles of debris clogging the sewer grates.

The early pioneer plants won’t even have to wait for the pavement to fall apart. Starting from the mulch collecting in gutters, a layer of soil will start forming atop New York’s sterile hard shell, and seedlings will sprout…

In the first few years with no heat, pipes burst all over town, the freeze-thaw cycle moves indoors, and things start to seriously deteriorate. Buildings groan as their innards expand and contract; joints between walls and rooflines separate. Where they do, rain leaks in, bolts rust, and facing pops off, exposing insulation. If the city hasn’t burned yet, it will now… with no firemen to answer the call, a dry lightning strike that ignites a decade of dead branches and leaves piling up in Central Park will spread flames through the streets. Within two decades, lightning rods have begun to rust and snap, and roof fires leap among buildings, entering paneled offices filled with paper fuel. Gas lines ignite with a rush of flames that blows out windows. Rain and snow blow in, and soon even poured concrete floors are freezing, thawing, and starting to buckle. Burnt insulation and charred wood add nutrients to Manhattan’s growing soil cap. Native Virginia creeper and poison ivy claw at walls covered with lichens, which thrive in the absence of air pollution. Red-tailed hawks and peregrine falcons nest in increasingly skeletal high-rise structures.

Within two centuries… colonizing trees will have substantially replaced pioneer weeds. Gutters buried under tons of leaf litter provide new, fertile ground for native oaks and maples from city parks. Arriving black locust and autumn olive shrubs fix nitrogen, allowing sunflowers, bluestem, and white snakeroot to move in along with apple trees, their seeds expelled by proliferating birds… as buildings tumble and smash into each other, and lime from crushed concrete raises soil pH, inviting in trees, such as buckthorn and birch, that need less-acidic environments…

In a future that portends stronger and more-frequent hurricanes striking North America’s Atlantic coast, ferocious winds will pummel tall, unsteady structures. Some will topple, knocking down others. Like a gap in the forest when a giant tree falls, new growth will rush in. Gradually, the asphalt jungle will give way to a real one.

***

Chapter 7: What Falls Apart

(context: this chapter describes Varosha, a city in Cyprus evacuated in 1974 after the Turkish invasion, and left abandoned until 2019)

[Two years after abandonment] Asphalt and pavement had cracked… Australian wattles, a fast-growing acacia species used by hotels for landscaping, were popping out midstreet, some nearly three feet high. Creepers from ornamental succulents snaked out of hotel gardens, crossing roads and climbing tree trunks… Concussions from Turkish air force bombs, Cavinder saw, had exploded plate-glass store windows. Boutique mannequins were half-clothed, their imported fabrics flapping in tattered strips…

Pigeon droppings coated everything. Carob rats nested in hotel rooms, living off Yaffa oranges and lemons from former citrus groves… The bell towers of Greek churches were spattered with the blood and feces of hanging bats.

Sheets of sand blew across avenues and covered floors… Now, no bands, just the incessant kneading of the seathat no longer soothed. The wind sighing through open windows became a whine. The cooing of pigeons grew deafening.

Varosha, merely 60 miles from Syria and Lebanon, is too balmy for a freeze-thaw cycle, but its pavement was tossed asunder anyway. The wrecking crews weren’t just trees, Münir marveled, but also flowers. Tiny seeds of wild Cyprus cyclamen had wedged into cracks, germinated, and heaved aside entire slabs of cement…

Two more decades passed… Its encircling fence and barbed wire are now uniformly rusted, but there is nothing left to protect but ghosts. An occasional Coca Cola sign and broadsides posting nightclubs’ cover charges hang on doorways… Fallen limestone facing lies in pieces. Hunks of wall have dropped from buildings to reveal empty rooms… brick-shaped gaps show where mortar has already dissolved. Other than the back-and-forth of pigeons, all that moves is the creaky rotor of one last functioning windmill.

In the meantime, nature continues its reclamation project. Feral geraniums and philodendrons emerge from missing roofs and pour down exterior walls. Flame trees, chinaberries, and thickets of hibiscus, oleander, and passion lilac sprout from nooks where indoors and outdoors now blend. Houses disappear under magenta mounds of bougainvillaea. Lizards and whip snakes skitter through stands of wild asparagus, prickly pear, and six-foot grasses. A spreading ground cover of lemon grass sweetens the air. At night, the darkened beachfront, free of moonlight bathers, crawls with nesting loggerhead and green sea turtles.

***

Chapter 10: The Petro Patch

If, in the immediate aftermath of Homo sapiens petrolerus, the tanks and towers of the Texas petrochemical patch all detonated together in one spectacular roar, after the oily smoke cleared, there would remain melted roads, twisted pipe, crumpled sheathing, and crumbled concrete. White-hot incandescence would have jump-started the corrosion of scrap metals in the salt air, and the polymer chains in hydrocarbon residues would likewise have cracked into smaller, more digestible lengths, hastening biodegradation. Despite the expelled toxins, the soils would also be enriched with burnt carbon, and after a year of rains switchgrass would be growing. A few hardy wildflowers would appear. Gradually, life would resume.

Or, if the faith of Valero Energy’s Fred Newhouse in system safeguards proves warranted—or if the departing oilmen’s last loyal act is to depressurize towers and bank the fires—the disappearance of Texas’s world champion petroleum infrastructure will proceed more slowly. During the first few years, the paint that slows corrosion will go. Over the next two decades, all the storage tanks will exceed their life spans. Soil moisture, rain, salt, and Texas wind will loosen their grip until they leak. Any heavy crude will have hardened by then; weather will crack it, and bugs will eventually eat it.

What liquid fuels that haven’t already evaporated will soak into the ground. When they hit the water table, they’ll float on top because oil is lighter than water. Microbes will find them, realize that they were once only plant life, too, and gradually adapt to eat them. Armadillos will return to burrow in the cleansed soil, among the rotting remains of buried pipe.

Unattended oil drums, pumps, pipes, towers, valves, and bolts will deteriorate at the weakest points, their joints… Until they go, collapsing the metal walls, pigeons that already love to nest atop refinery towers will speed the corruption of carbon steel with their guano, and rattlesnakes will nest in the vacant structures below. As beavers dam the streams that trickle into Galveston Bay, some areas will flood. Houston is generally too warm for a freeze-thaw cycle, but its deltaic clay soils undergo formidable swell-shrink bouts as rains come and go. With no more foundation repairmen to shore up the cracks, in less than a century downtown buildings will start leaning.

… When oil, gas, or groundwater is pumped from beneath the surface, land settles into the space it occupied… Lower the land, raise the seas, add hurricanes far stronger than midsize, Category 3 Alicia, and even before its dams go, the Brazos gets to do again what it did for 80,000 years: like its sister to the east, the Mississippi, it will flood its entire delta… flare towers, catalytic crackers, and fractionating columns, like downtown Houston buildings, will poke out of brackish floodwaters, their foundations rotting while they wait for the waters to recede.

… Below the surface, the oxidizing metal parts of chemical alley will provide a place for Galveston oysters to attach. Silt and oyster shells will slowly bury them, and will then be buried themselves. Within a few million years, enough layers will amass to compress shells into limestone, which will bear an odd, intermittent rusty streak flecked with sparkling traces of nickel, molybdenum, niobium, and chromium. Millions of years after that, someone or something might have the knowledge and tools to recognize the signal of stainless steel. Nothing, however, will remain to suggest that its original form once stood tall over a place called Texas, and breathed fire into the sky.

I cannot really describe the feeling I get from reading these portions in particular, only that it’s the strongest I ever got from any book. It’s certainly not one of joy: I don’t want humans to disappear -- in fact, there are a lot of humans among my family and friends -- and I don’t want human civilization to vanish, after the unspeakable effort it took to put together, with all the promise that, despite everything, it shows. It’s not one of sadness or fear, either. I suppose it’s just one of awe, of terrible grandeur, similar in kind to what I feel when considering the alien horror and beauty of evolved life, its sheer multi-layered complexity, or the unthinkable vastness of geological time.

#quotes #books #longpost #deep time #aesthetic

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