Lately, I’ve been spending copious amounts of time in the kitchen. Whether this is out of compulsion, intrigue, or survival, I don’t know. But what
Laughter is my drug of choice. If you’re asking me, I’d say that where you can find humor, you can also find a shred of joy. That makes sense, right?
Before the original sin, stark naked and unaware, Adam and Eve were merely a part of their perfectly balanced ecosystem. They worked for nothing. They created nothing. They likely would have felt nothing except for the basic instincts that govern living creatures. An even temperament. A homeostasis. No real love, no fear, no desire. They were content with such an existence until the serpent slithered up Eve’s arm and told her to take a bite. To open her eyes. To know. To truly feel.
A gratitude letter to Lilly detailing some of the greatest events that happened this last year and celebrating the friendship that made it all possible.
Lilly, You caught me just in time with your letter. Just in time to soothe my anxieties about the upcoming holidays, cease with my planning for a few moments, and reflect on the reason that we’re having these celebrations at all.
A common canonical rule in horror, or if you’re incredibly spiritual & superstitious, is that a monster must be invited in to cause any real damage to you. In classic literature and occult media, vampires must be invited to cross the threshold of a home and demons must be given permission to enter an object or take possession of body. In much the same way, Victor invited his monster into existence by creating him in the first place. And this is first and foremost how horror begins to befall our rather dim-witted main characters.
Given how I tend to experience places, with my senses first, I became particularly enamored with the work of Antoni Gaudí while I was in Barcelona. Some of his whimsical creations, expert use of color and avoidance of straight lines in his most experimental designs have stuck with me this long, inspired some of my own art and helped me to rethink everything I’d previously considered to be “beautiful”.
Pregnancy is hard. When you hear women joke about their “tapeworms,” usually it’s a lighthearted way of describing a rather cumbersome reality – feeling like all the energy, motivation, and nourishment is being literally zapped right out of your body. Now factor in raising an infant and working full time. Suddenly, things seem more grim.
Although I heavily empathize with Lilly’s pain and frustration at mortality, how short and fatuous our lives must seem in the grand scheme of, well, everything especially in this perceived unremarkable time in our earth’s grand history – I cannot help but feel envious of the cultures who willingly embrace mortality while we fight it. We fear the end. The catharsis. We fear the limitations death imposes upon us.
In this fictional prose piece, the protagonist has an encounter with two alternate versions of herself – her burdensome, yet loyal companion Fear and the idealized version of her youth The Bride. Set against the backdrop of a castle in Chianti, Italy, a place Taylyn visited as a teenager, this rhythmic story illustrates the main character’s desire to overcome Fear and seek out greater adventures, ultimately coming to terms with all of the versions of herself she has still yet to meet.
