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[the-inkless-writer]

[the-inkless-writer]

Antique Typewriter - Malling-Hansen Writing Ball

This wild-looking mechanical contraption is a typewriter as well. It was designed in 1867 and then patented in 1870. For the time, the Malling Hansen Writing Ball was a technological marvel and 50 years ahead of its time. The unique functionality of this typewriter makes it such a sought-after collector’s item these days. The estimated price for this is about $80,000.

www.ancient-origins.net/technology

[the-inkless-writer]

taglines from the posters of campy old slashers that i’ve laughed too much at

[the-inkless-writer]

You are a villain famous for “killing” heroes. In reality, heroes come to you to fake their deaths.

[the-inkless-writer]

Dear Mr. Gaiman,

I listened to the episode of Betwixt the Sheets on the Earl of Rochester where you read his delightfully dirty poetry yesterday, driving to and from my first day at a new job I'm not entirely enthused about. You made yesterday a good day for me. The discussion about the history was fun, but your readings were, as I said earlier, absolutely delightful! I hope they ask you to read things more often.

So. Thank you for making my first day at this new job not suck as much as it could have. <3

You are so welcome. I loved reading the Rochester poetry!

[the-inkless-writer]

“I took the image of a burning woman into my heart. I didn’t hate the fire. I hated the people who did not believe her.”

— Lidia Yuknavitch, from “The Chronology of Water: A Memoir,” wr. c. 2011

[the-inkless-writer]

"I'm worried we are entering an age of rage, where only anger will be considered an asset and the gentle will be mocked, then eaten. Those with soft voices will have their tongues cut out, as punishment for not using them the right way. Don't you know your words are weapons, kindness is obsolete, as obsolete as handwriting, as obsolete as silence and darkness in a city."

Rage - Florence Welch

[the-inkless-writer]

[transcript: 1. “the world begins at the kitchen table. no matter what, we must eat to live.”

2. “you have only to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. tell me about despair, your, and i will tell you mine. meanwhile the world goes on.”

3. “…and in spite of everything, tenderness there must be….”

4. “say that it is simply a wish to waste time forever, lingering with the friends you’ve gathered together, eyes brimming with the moment that is now.”

5. “so desire, like the dishes, could also get done.” /end transcript]

joy harjo— perhaps the world ends here/mary oliver— wild geese/katherine mansfield— collected letters/joyce sutphen— say it/f douglass brown— make out sonnet

[the-inkless-writer]

y'all got a noun that means extraneous things? i feel like 'extraneities' or something should be a word but it isn't. @shakespeare or someone get on that plz

[the-inkless-writer]

On a lighter note.

The main reason I ever wanted to write a Hungarian mythology-based urban fantasy is that I needed to see someone do Bread Magic in a mundane modern setting.

Bread Magic shows up in a variety in Hungarian fairytales. It works like this: when someone evil, usually the devil, sometimes a dragon, wants to come into your house and hurt you, usually by taking your children, what you do is put a loaf of bread on the windowsill. It will speak for you.

When evil demands admission, the bread will say: First, they buried me under the ground, and I survived. When I sprouted, they cruelly cut me down with sickles, and I survived. They threshed me with their flails and I survived. They ground me to flour with their millstones and I survived. They put me in a bowl and kneaded me, then they put me in a hot oven to bake me, and I survived. Have you done all these things? Until you do all these things and survive, you have no power here.

This is pretty powerful magic I think, and it makes sense in a country where wheat is the staple crop and bread is the staple food. If you have bread, you are alive, if you have no bread, you are dead, therefore bread is life. It was customary to refer to wheat as “life” well into the twentieth century, and not in high literary circles either: rural seasonal workers negotiated their wages in so and so many sacks of life.

And I totally want someone to do bread magic with a shitty store-bought muffin.

[the-inkless-writer]

One of my favorite things about learning about traditional textiles is the little ghosts they left in the language. Of course the ghosts are there, now that I know to look for them. Once upon a time, half the population spent a majority of their day making textiles. Spinning, at the very least, has been a part of humanity since the Neanderthals. That kind of knowledge doesn’t just disappear.

A heckle was a device with sharp metal spikes, and people drag flax through the spikes to separate out the fibers from the chaff. When you say someone heckled a performer, you think you are being literal but you’re speaking in an ancient metaphor.

When my grandpa says “spinning yarns” to mean telling stories, he knows that one’s not quite literal, but its vividness is lost to him. There is no image in his mind of rhythm, muscle memory, and the subtle twist that aligns clouds of fibers into a single, strong cord.

When a fanfic writer describes someone carding their fingers through someone’s hair, that’s the most discordant in my mind. Carding is rough, and quick, and sometimes messy (my wool is full of debris, even after lots of washing). The teeth of my cards are densely packed and scratchy. But maybe that’s my error, not the writer’s. Before cards were invented, wool was combed with wide-toothed combs, and sometimes, in point of fact, with fingers. The verb “to card” (from Middle English) may actually be older than the tools I use, archaic as they are. And I say may, because I can’t find a definitive history. People forget, even when the language remembers.

[the-inkless-writer]

The Goddess and her Knight

[the-inkless-writer]

saw an ant on the bus today, what a horrible fate. moved an unfathomable distance from everything you've ever known because of forces you could never possibly understand. no matter how long you follow the pheromone trail you laid you'll never find your way home.

[the-inkless-writer]

Andrew Ferez

source

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Chasing The Moon — Gabrielle Halperin

source

[the-inkless-writer]

Bixby Bridge | Big Sur, CA | October 2016

[the-inkless-writer]

i love pitting classically trained magic users against self-taught magic users in sci-fi/fantasy but it shouldn’t be snobbish disdain for them it should be terror