ghoul-flavored sunset
bibliomancy forecast for the week of june 16
the seven of cups, and Ingeborg Bachman’s Malina
“I never sleep anymore except for late in the morning. Who would want to sleep inside a forest of the night teeming with questions? With my hands clasped behind my head, I lie awake in the night and think how happy I was, happy, and after all I did promise myself I’d never complain again, never accuse anyone, if I might be allowed to be happy just once. But now I want to prolong this happiness, like anyone who's experienced this good fortune. I want this happiness which has had its time and is now departing. I am no longer happy. It's the spirit's beautiful tomorrow that never dawns ….. But it wasn't my tomorrow by any means, it was my spirit’s beautiful today, the today of my waiting after work between six and seven, of my waiting by the phone until midnight, and this today cannot be over. It can't be true.”
the aleatory
You are a traveler in the woods, and you come into a glade where the air is cool and clear and foaming at the edges with gnats. The air wrinkles, the wrinkle rips, and a hand appears through the hole, waving a goblet in your face.
Inside the goblet is the underside of your childhood dining table and the smell of watered-down grape koolaid.
Suspicious, you walk along. But it happens again. A goblet holding the pink wine of sunset.
A goblet with a sandcastle rising out of it.
A goblet with a pink sherbet ghoul trying to climb out.
A goblet that makes the sound of a spinning quarter slowing to a stop.
And the shimmer that rises above an orange as you tear the skin away is rising out of one goblet.
And a poisoned cake dyed green (because it is more fun to eat something poisonous when you know so ahead of time).
If you are a good traveler, you will understand that these goblets exist to debauch the forward progress of your journey. You will turn away from them, because they aren’t as real to you as the bed that is waiting for you at the inn on the other side of the woods.
If you are cursed, you will want to prolong the happiness of each incredible goblet, the happiness of surprise, the happiness of not knowing, and the complete endlessness of worlds which froth over in such enchanted spaces.
If you are cursed like me, you will never get to the inn, you will never leave the cool glade. You will try to buy your bread with fairy gold. And you will sometimes not be able to sleep, because the night is full of questions and your mind can make anything spin and shimmer, even your fears.
But also—you will never blow out your candle, stare at the roof of the inn, and feeling the first nip of fleas biting your ankles, wish you had tasted the pink sherbet, or be haunted by its memory.
the forecast
A good week for bad jokes. You might be too excited by beauty to sleep. Tie a rope around your waist before you go into those woods.
writing prompt
Build a bridge between two castles.
a chune
“Starlight” by Leikeli47
Nothing makes me happier than when a new record drops from a musician I like, and it sounds weird. Like, uncomfortably “I don’t know if I like this” weird. Because inevitably, I do like it. I like the ragged edge of what I like expanding.
small spells tarot deck by Rachel Howe
For promotional use only by Leikeli47
Dear diary, I fully believe that autoplay videos created the ruminant passivity that made TikTok possible. XS