dark vibrations
bibliomancy forecast for the week of december 9th
LIFE RX 9 DEC 24
the queen of wands, und etwas von Kate Greenstreet’s Young Tambling:
How many people can you fit in your hand? Can you describe a color or a texture? Sunflowers, really? They can grow in the closet? Don't they need light—their throats?
Light from within. To light my candle for the feeling of
“receive me.”
Your clothes are dry now. (Talking to the gravestone.)
We call this pattern universal.
the aleatory
Recently, J got a wall mount for his beautiful tenor guitar—a haunting, and possibly haunted instrument which has, for no known reason, three dots drilled in it (like a bowling ball).
Now it hangs on the wall behind my spot on the couch, and sometimes when I laugh at a particular pitch, or cough, or say something, it picks up the frequency of my voice with a faint swell of sound like this: (boom). You hear a similar sound in the desert from training bombing runs at 29 Palms naval base.
There must be some pattern to what tones make the guitar respond, but I haven’t figured it out yet, so it is always a surprise when it happens. Probably each of its four strings has a resonant frequency. But what about the guitar itself? Does the negative space inside it correspond with an A# or something (boom)?
It’s like the way a snare drum rattles when someone plays the note that the snare has been tuned to, except instead of a snare, it’s the hollowness inside a guitar. The hollowness inside my throat sometimes becomes its twin.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. Sound seeks emptiness? Light seeks dark? (“Don’t they need light—their throats?”) Sometimes universal patterns only show themselves in echoes and shadows (boom).
in the week ahead:
Pay attention to things that catch the light. Pay attention to what vibrates when you speak. Don’t let anybody at the mall hand you anything. Pay attention to fiery women and the appearance of matchsticks. Be as literal as possible about getting enough light.
writing prompt
Catalogue forms of light that you know. (Microwave, flickering headlight, moth-spun porchlight, etc.) Call the poem or whatever “It’s a List of Lights I Have Seen.”
a chune
“Dream Over” by Pure X
Until I lived in California, I had no idea that it actually got dark at 4:30 pm here, just like it does everywhere else. Big Sunshine or whatever lobby backs this state really had me fooled. This is the sound of driving by the Honeybaked Ham store in San Marino as the last rays of light shoot through smog. Driving by the mall. Christmas lights on a palm tree. Spiderman with a backpack and busted Reeboks refusing to take a photo with a child on Hollywood Boulevard. And then darkness comes. It’s not not like Less Than Zero.
credits: small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
Young Tambling by Kate Greenstreet
Pleasure by Pure X
dear diary, this is now my official space for bitching about Airbnb guests. Because—surely, if you use benzoyl peroxide face wash, you have noticed that you have ruined all of your own towels? Surely, you have observed from your experiments with towels at home that when you wipe off your face after using benzoyl peroxide face wash, it bleaches the towel, ruining it forever? Certainly you wouldn’t be discovering this for the very first time staying away from home at an Airbnb, where you would then go on to ruin four towels and a washcloth? This happened *last* week and I’m still mad about it. And yet, we won’t put up a passive-aggressive sign, or have a fat binder full of rules. Because that’s hospitality, letting some things get ruined. (still allowed 2 bitch about it tho.) XS