post_self | Entries tagged with fiction

Earlier today, I came across this post on Tumblr of some fan art of Motes and felt compelled to write a tiny snippet to go with it.

It is important, Motes long maintained, that there must be some things that you are just plain not good at.

If you are going to be in this life for the long-haul — and she was most certainly in this life for the long-haul! — there would be plenty of things that she would have the chance to be good at. She was fairly good at painting, yes? And chalking up the streets outside the House on the hill, that house she shared with her Ma and Bee. She was a pretty good actor, of course, for she had her favorite roles to play in Au Lieu Du Rêve's productions. She was an amazing dreamer.

And there was plenty of things that she did not want to be good at. She did not want to be good at breaking hearts. She did not want to be good at growing up. She did not want to be good at being anything other than what she was.

But one thing she was decidedly, cheerfully, joyously terrible at was skateboarding.

She was in this life for the long-haul, and so perhaps she could practice long and hard to become good at skateboarding, and there were times when she might give this a halfhearted try for a month or two, but something about it just evaded her. She could go in a straight line, perhaps. She could sometimes make a turn, so long as it was to the right. She could drift to a stop or tumble into the grass and dandelions, but actually deliberately stepping off the board to come to a stop had led to the most skinned knees of all.

Better, she thought, to lay on her front on the board and push herself along with her paws, or perhaps lay on her back, tail hugged up to her front, as she scooted around down the driveway. Better to sit on her board at the edge of the sidewalk, feet planted in the gutter, talking to her friends. Better to rejoice in the incompleteness of it all, of holding out this one thing and saying, "One day, maybe I will be good at skateboarding. Maybe next year."

After all, she was in this life for the long-haul.

skunkcetera

Someone on the Post-Self Discord wondered what one of those silly recipe blogs written in the style of Idumea might look like. Rye took that as a challenge.

It is the beginning of summer, and the air still bears a chill, and yet the sun is hot and the memories of the life I lived before — the life of Michelle, the life of phys-side — are dogging me.

Memories are dogging me, and thoughts of food, thoughts of those lovely little things that we have discovered over the years. I have told you of The Woman's explorations with food, yes? I have told you of newness and of the joy of tasting, of that lovely restaurateur who doted upon her as she wept at spice, yes?

But there is also the comfort in familiarity! There is the joy in those foods we know well, having long ago discovered them. There is joy in every bite, I think, and I imagine you, dear readers, have experienced this as well, have dwelled in the simple loveliness of a very good sandwich.

One must understand the joy in contrasts, in the crumb of the bread and how it is specifically not the crumble of the tofu, in the crispness of the sprouts and microgreens and how they are counter to the avocado's smoothness, in the still-warm protein and the still-cold vegetables.

We are all, you see, beings of contrasts. When we find joy in ourselves, we find it in the ways in which we are contradictions. Why, I will look in myself and see the love of life and the dire terror of being beholden to the whims of my traumas. I will look around me and see the loveliness of my sim, my beloved up-tree and The Child zipping about the yard twelve times over, twenty four times over, and I will know that this place, this dream, was built from the trauma of the lost. From AwDae, yes, but did we not also shape the early days of the System? Was our trauma — our fears of being lost yet again — not formative for Secession? For all that the eighth stanza did?

Dear readers, surely you must know that we, that I, that The Woman and trillions of other individuals, contradict ourselves, just as does our beautiful and broken and terrific and terrifying world.

Do we contradict ourselves? Very well, we contradict ourselves.

We are large.

We contain multitudes.¹

You may also consider whole-grain mustard if you desire more tanginess.

Ingredients

Two slices of whole grain bread (consider: the crunch of something nutty to go with the toothsome bread)
A quarter cup of sprouts (cool and round, as flavors go)
A quarter cup of microgreens (bitter and sharp to counter)
Half an avocado, sliced (fat to aid in the tasting of nuances)
A slab of baked tofu (for that is its shape, is it not?)
Curry powder

Process

Sprinkle the baked tofu liberally with curry powder. Lightly oil a pan. Gently fry the tofu until crispy and fragrant.
Toast the bread — but only lightly so! One must be cautious not to rip to shreds one's hard palate, yes?
Layer thus: Bread. Half of the avocado. Tofu. Greens and sprouts. Any dressing you wish. The rest of the avocado. Bread.

¹ Cf. Whitman:

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)

We are ever ourselves: built off that which we love. The Instance Artist read "Song of Myself" and latched onto this particular phrase. It has said it enough to have thoroughly exhausted it, then wrapped around to the point where it is endearing; where, if it were to not say it at times, it would somehow be less.

airah

Did a bit of an upload story to try and shake some of the cobwebs out.
Posted initially to my main page, but also linking here. <3

It isn’t to say that older folks uploading is a particularly rare occurrence, but just that they are not nearly as common as younger folks. Generally, or so at as least the statistics tend, if a person was the sort to be interested in uploading they tended to do it as soon as possible. Even after the attack, after the climate began to stabilize, people generally uploaded early or not at all. Especially once it became nearly free to do so, or at least funded in such a way to be widely available to the masses regardless of wealth.

In that way it was fair for the upload technicians to be surprised by the presence of a man in his sixties. Time and the environment had not been kind to him, he walked slowly and slightly pigeon-toed, the trademark swelling and unevenness of arthritis was plain to see in his scarred hands. His arms and shoulders were pockmarked with tattoos of various styles, of various meanings. The technicians did not ask and he did not volunteer anything, but the old industrial worker’s union symbol etched into his upper arm marked him as a friend. He laid down upon the upload table, jacked in one last time, and willfully met his end upon the planet. A hell of a retirement party, he called it, moments before his motor control was cut off and his heart stopped.

The construct in the upload room was entirely unsurprised to meet him, as constructs tend to be.

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