yeah, well.
A billion years ago I said I would use this as a writing journal, and then I didn't.
I wrote something a while back and it won $50 not a very good story, in my estimation, but good enough to beat out the other people, so what the fuck, it counts for something.
It is a short horror story where nothing happens. You can give me crit if you want.
the girl had risen
In simple terms, a Markov chain algorithm takes a sample of text and mixes it up to create a new, similarly written sample with the same vocabulary but less sense. The results are often humorous and startling, especially when already existent texts are mixed together, such as “Alice in Elsinore” (a synthesis of the Alice in Wonderland books and Hamlet), “The Revelation of St. Alice” (a synthesis of the Alice in Wonderland books and the Book of Revelations), and “The Egyptian Book of Yellow” (mixing Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow and the Egyptian Book of the Dead).
An excerpt from the last: In the Court of the north wind, thou eatest up the worms which are made when offerings are presented; may I receive it, but now my curiosity was aroused about the repulsive young man pressed his hands to his face, and the girl who sat down like Ptah. I am the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Tetu, and findeth there the Soul that liveth in Hensu, the giver of meat and drink, the destroyer of those who are in the bandages. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word when the earth in his form of Truth, and in silence […]
It's a simple trick of code. It's meaningless. Gibberish. The degree of randomness in the synthesized text varies in inverse proportion to n. The better the algorithm, the more the results appear, at first glance, to make sense.
It’s controlled chaos. Start with one word. Analyze the text, find all instances of that word, and look at all instances of what word comes next. Randomly pick out one of those words, and it becomes the second. Repeat the process as you go on. That’s how you get sentences that almost but don’t quite make sense. Or, more sinisterly, you get sentences that do make sense, but not any kind of sense you want to read. It’s a story that chopped itself up, self-cannibalized, and regurgitated. It’s a literary striptease, all the way to the bone. Delusion and illusion, prophecy and poetry.
I can’t get out.
If you come to the door and ring the bell, I won’t answer. If you call the phone, I won’t pick up. You could say I’m socially maladjusted. I would call it saving time. It’s not that I don’t care for people or social pursuits (though I don’t); the fact is, I find what I do more meaningful than human interaction. Why expect a fish to ride a bicycle?
I breathe books. I sell them, too, when I feel like I can part with them. Sentimentality is not a part of it. Rather, it’s the sense of ownership. First editions, rare prints, translated versions, original binding - I could talk you deaf about my work or I can talk to you about my real work, which isn’t just inflicting Markov algorithms on innocent, unsuspecting public domain texts. My research explores new and fascinating territory. Oh, but I’m not a wild-eyed lunatic in a tin-foil hat. I’m well aware nobody gives a shit besides me.
Have you ever had a lucid dream? It’s when you’re aware you’re dreaming and can control what you’re dreaming about. When I dream, every dream is lucid, except for that last quality. Events continue as charted by my unconscious regardless of my self-awareness, and there is no magical escape button to wake myself up. I am trapped in a series of incoherent fantasies, each of which make less sense than the last. The best I can manage is to dream of waking up, over and over. I thought only cartoon characters had dreams like that. Peaceful Lao Tze quotations about butterflies become hellishly real as again and again I wake up only to realize I’m still asleep.
To truly achieve dream lucidity, you must think clearly and disconnect yourself from the logic of the world around you. First of all, I wear contacts. If I ‘wake up’ and immediately go somewhere, I know I’m dreaming; but then, of course, I start dreaming about putting in my contacts. Frequently, however, I have plenty of trouble doing so. My psychiatrist tells me that everything that happens in a dream is really me, my desires, my fears. If I have trouble putting in my contacts that must mean there is something I don’t want to see. If the lights will never turn on and stay on, that must mean that part of me wants to be in the dark. And if I dream about dying on a meat hook, well. Part of me aspires to be a frozen cow carcass, apparently.
The only true test is time. When you dream, the part of your brain that deals with chronological sequence and continuous thought isn’t active. Nothing can stay the same in a dream for long. Something always changes. Scenery, objects, focus, yourself even. You have to be extra observant to catch it because part of you will just accept these changes and go along with anything. But part of you is still watching yourself…
When I wake up, I put in my contacts, assess the state of my room, and take my medication. (Some routines you dream about, and some you don’t.) And I wait. I wait to see if my world melts away into something else, because the things you know when you’re asleep shouldn’t be the things you know when you’re awake. For most people, these parts are separate and distinct. For me, I need a different way.
The museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, ten to five. For such a dinky little town, it has an extensive Egyptian section, which is, I suppose, what the kids like to see. I walk around the glass case surrounding a genuine mummy and think: he unlocked the door of Amentet; others say that it was the middle of her father and mother's death, and how he wandered, for her sake, year after year, poor, crippled, and almost demented. […]
Consider Amentet, Goddess of the Dead, Personification of the West. The ancient Egyptians took the direction of the setting sun to be the place of the dead. Standing at the entry to the land of the dead, Amentet would offer food and drink to the deceased, regenerating them. This is connected to regeneration of the dead - the rebirth of souls in the afterlife. So when one has unlocked the door of Amentet, what does that really mean?
The informative sign next to the case does not say.
In the cool of the museum air, things feel ancient, like the entire building is holding its breath. I make a slow circuit of the Egyptian exhibit, avoiding eye contact with the few people here this late, staring instead at carved hieroglyphics and stained urns.
Have you ever had a reoccurring dream? I do, all the time, except something always goes wrong; I know what’s supposed to happen, but it doesn’t. Sometimes I don’t know how I know. But for instance, I have a dream that I go to the museum and pay a guard $500 to let me stay in after closing time, alone.
If you make your dream a reality, what is reality?
The informative sign on the wall does not say.
I read my Markov prophecies until the lights go out. It is fortunate I know the Egyptian exhibit by heart.
“Was she fair?” I asked, but he only snarled, muttering to the crystal pool with its dark curls crowned with the Fathers. “Nothing can really harm the soul.” He went away without thanking me. An hour later when I had finished, and had filled and emptied a cup of wine, the Ant Fish in his Disk delivered me from tearing the Yellow Sign. And now he said, “I have made strong my mouth. Thereupon shall come Thoth, who didst make the word of the night, and doth fetter the members of all the wild foxes.”
I am awake in the dark - really, really, really awake - when I hear it. Footsteps. Not mine. I am seated on the floor on the far side of the sarcophagus. It is not the guard’s soft squeaky stride. They are measured and sonorous. Purposeful. And close.
I have never dreamt this, but I have that feeling, that everything’s going wrong feeling…
I claw my arm to make sure I’m awake. Pain is, for me, a fairly good indication, but it must be more than a pinch. I want to gasp like a fish, but am instead frozen in place, trapped by the need to breathe. I’m awake. I’m awake. What is the difference between dreams and reality? They’re two worlds we cross between nightly, preferring one but unable to stop visiting the other. Is there perhaps an in between? Because I think that’s where I am. I think this is what I get for messing with myself -
I think the footsteps have stopped in front of me.
It’s so dark.
For the next hour, nothing happens.
In a full hour of pitch black silence, you start to doubt things, both about the situation and about yourself. There are only a few physical realities to hang onto, like the cool support of the floor, the side of the case I’m sitting against, and my clothes. I’m awake. This thought is no consolation. Perhaps I imagined the footsteps. The question then becomes: do I want to move and find out? I ask myself this endlessly as I sit, one leg starting to fall asleep, every breath too loud. Or I could be bold and reach out to swipe the darkness, hitting whatever, whoever, is there. The thought almost makes me shiver. I could rustle out my phone as quietly as I can, turning the artificial glow on whatever may be there.
… or I could sit in silence for what feels like hours, feeling something strangely essential draining from the top of my head.
I close my eyes. I open my eyes. It’s morning. Nothing is there. My skull is intact.
I get the fuck out.
Imagine the dramatic scene in a movie where the protagonist returns to his or her house only to find it ransacked, furniture overturned, possessions strewn across the floor. Now imagine the opposite. I jiggle the lock until it turns, and open the door into my mysteriously cleaned and tidied residence. My prophecies have been put in binders and alphabetized. My socks are folded.
The bastards.
But I don’t know of whom I speak.
“Now what sent you here,” he said, sleeping under the influence of drugs. She had been passed in paradise. I know their names, and all the time had come to the people near me: not one appeared to be in Amentet free from this hateful mood. I knew every volume by its relative position to the country. This figure shall repulse the enemies of Neb-er-tcher.
I’ll be frank. My apartment smells like girly lotion from those shops in the mall that you can barely stand to pass unless you enjoy olfactory overload. My place is more muted than that, but dogs have refused to enter… maybe they were just afraid of the eldritch horrors.
The point is, I don’t smell highly improbable combinations of fruits and flowers anymore. I smell potpourri. Somebody’s been eating my porridge. But nobody is sleeping in my bed. Not even me. After last night? No. In a way, I know I’m only prolonging the inevitable, maybe even making it worse. Sleeplessness and delirium go hand in hand, increasing the difficulty of distinguishing between dream and real. The solution is coffee, of which there is none in the house. I might as well get out of here. It’s no longer very welcoming, anyway.
Not quite spooked enough to enter a Starbucks, I settle on an independent chain I visit infrequently. I’ll get three large dulce de leche lattes, I decide as I near the door. I’m reaching for the handle when something -
- changes.
The door opens and she walks through me. Quicker than a heartbeat, she’s gone, striding purposefully down the sidewalk with a large dulce de leche in one hand. Measured, but not sonorous. We’re outside, after all.
I come back to myself sitting in the car. There are appropriate places for your face, such as on your own head, in the mirror, and on film. Even if you have an identical twin, you know intimately the differences between the two of you. To encounter your own face on someone else is an affront to the senses. To encounter your own being - walking around, talking, ordering coffee…
Did she pass through me because she’s a ghost, or did she pass through me because I am fog? Or simply because… we’re the same? She wore the clothes from last night, which I had exchanged for jeans and a t-shirt.
What to do.
The following passage is taken from the womb of the gods. And thou shalt make a scarab of green stone, with a false heart. Grant thou the name of “Soul.” I have not robbed with violence. Hail, Fenti, who comest forth from thy mouth and who shall be declared true.
Midnight finds me in the bathroom at home, taking out my contacts. I stare into the mirror, everything fuzzy-edged and indistinct. Who are you?
Mirror-me smiles.
She huffs on the mirror and writes in the fog: UOY era ohw.
For a dizzying second, I am the one on the other side of the mirror…
No. I was here first. She can’t have my life, my coffee, my books. I storm out of the bathroom. She’s not even real. She must be something I summoned up from the depths of my subconscious, brought to life by - by - belief and prophecy and dream. She is a dream. All the dreams I’ve had, all the games I play. Ah, you are greatly improved, and the girl had risen. A gray serpent was moving toward me, and let me hold conversation with Osiris; and my perfection shall be said over and over the sky. No more, please. It’s too late, but I burn them all, every last Markov text I’ve ever generated. I cover the mirrors. I wait for dawn.
But I am so tired.
Every time I read it, I like it less, but I don't know how to judge my own writing or, really, anything I do. The shit I do that I like, nobody else likes, and when shit I do gets attention it's nearly always shit I didn't like. It's difficult because I didn't write this story out of a desire to write, I wrote it because I needed to turn in a story for a grade. I hate writing in first person and I basically recycled a bunch of stuff I talk about a lot because I was short on time and ideas. I don't know how to transition from what I write when I RP to my own fucking stories. I just get all awkward and hesitant and I've always, always had trouble writing anything of decent length. Shit doesn't have to be long and I do prefer a more concise style but my stories are like, three pages tops in Word.
FUCK EVERYTHING
FUCK EVERYTHING
I need to be more disciplined about writing, I need to write every day, but instead I stare at the wall because I am full of hate and apathy. Because I am a mediocre writer in a world of writers. Because I don't find anything fulfilling, because something in my brain doesn't work right. Whatever. I don't actually care, I just can't think of anything else anymore. That is very tiring to me and even more tiresome for you, so I will endeavor to fill this journal with some goddamn writing already.
I wrote something a while back and it won $50 not a very good story, in my estimation, but good enough to beat out the other people, so what the fuck, it counts for something.
It is a short horror story where nothing happens. You can give me crit if you want.
the girl had risen
In simple terms, a Markov chain algorithm takes a sample of text and mixes it up to create a new, similarly written sample with the same vocabulary but less sense. The results are often humorous and startling, especially when already existent texts are mixed together, such as “Alice in Elsinore” (a synthesis of the Alice in Wonderland books and Hamlet), “The Revelation of St. Alice” (a synthesis of the Alice in Wonderland books and the Book of Revelations), and “The Egyptian Book of Yellow” (mixing Robert Chambers' The King in Yellow and the Egyptian Book of the Dead).
An excerpt from the last: In the Court of the north wind, thou eatest up the worms which are made when offerings are presented; may I receive it, but now my curiosity was aroused about the repulsive young man pressed his hands to his face, and the girl who sat down like Ptah. I am the great Tchatcha Chiefs who are in Tetu, and findeth there the Soul that liveth in Hensu, the giver of meat and drink, the destroyer of those who are in the bandages. Hail, Thoth, who didst make the word when the earth in his form of Truth, and in silence […]
It's a simple trick of code. It's meaningless. Gibberish. The degree of randomness in the synthesized text varies in inverse proportion to n. The better the algorithm, the more the results appear, at first glance, to make sense.
It’s controlled chaos. Start with one word. Analyze the text, find all instances of that word, and look at all instances of what word comes next. Randomly pick out one of those words, and it becomes the second. Repeat the process as you go on. That’s how you get sentences that almost but don’t quite make sense. Or, more sinisterly, you get sentences that do make sense, but not any kind of sense you want to read. It’s a story that chopped itself up, self-cannibalized, and regurgitated. It’s a literary striptease, all the way to the bone. Delusion and illusion, prophecy and poetry.
I can’t get out.
If you come to the door and ring the bell, I won’t answer. If you call the phone, I won’t pick up. You could say I’m socially maladjusted. I would call it saving time. It’s not that I don’t care for people or social pursuits (though I don’t); the fact is, I find what I do more meaningful than human interaction. Why expect a fish to ride a bicycle?
I breathe books. I sell them, too, when I feel like I can part with them. Sentimentality is not a part of it. Rather, it’s the sense of ownership. First editions, rare prints, translated versions, original binding - I could talk you deaf about my work or I can talk to you about my real work, which isn’t just inflicting Markov algorithms on innocent, unsuspecting public domain texts. My research explores new and fascinating territory. Oh, but I’m not a wild-eyed lunatic in a tin-foil hat. I’m well aware nobody gives a shit besides me.
Have you ever had a lucid dream? It’s when you’re aware you’re dreaming and can control what you’re dreaming about. When I dream, every dream is lucid, except for that last quality. Events continue as charted by my unconscious regardless of my self-awareness, and there is no magical escape button to wake myself up. I am trapped in a series of incoherent fantasies, each of which make less sense than the last. The best I can manage is to dream of waking up, over and over. I thought only cartoon characters had dreams like that. Peaceful Lao Tze quotations about butterflies become hellishly real as again and again I wake up only to realize I’m still asleep.
To truly achieve dream lucidity, you must think clearly and disconnect yourself from the logic of the world around you. First of all, I wear contacts. If I ‘wake up’ and immediately go somewhere, I know I’m dreaming; but then, of course, I start dreaming about putting in my contacts. Frequently, however, I have plenty of trouble doing so. My psychiatrist tells me that everything that happens in a dream is really me, my desires, my fears. If I have trouble putting in my contacts that must mean there is something I don’t want to see. If the lights will never turn on and stay on, that must mean that part of me wants to be in the dark. And if I dream about dying on a meat hook, well. Part of me aspires to be a frozen cow carcass, apparently.
The only true test is time. When you dream, the part of your brain that deals with chronological sequence and continuous thought isn’t active. Nothing can stay the same in a dream for long. Something always changes. Scenery, objects, focus, yourself even. You have to be extra observant to catch it because part of you will just accept these changes and go along with anything. But part of you is still watching yourself…
When I wake up, I put in my contacts, assess the state of my room, and take my medication. (Some routines you dream about, and some you don’t.) And I wait. I wait to see if my world melts away into something else, because the things you know when you’re asleep shouldn’t be the things you know when you’re awake. For most people, these parts are separate and distinct. For me, I need a different way.
The museum is open Tuesdays through Saturdays, ten to five. For such a dinky little town, it has an extensive Egyptian section, which is, I suppose, what the kids like to see. I walk around the glass case surrounding a genuine mummy and think: he unlocked the door of Amentet; others say that it was the middle of her father and mother's death, and how he wandered, for her sake, year after year, poor, crippled, and almost demented. […]
Consider Amentet, Goddess of the Dead, Personification of the West. The ancient Egyptians took the direction of the setting sun to be the place of the dead. Standing at the entry to the land of the dead, Amentet would offer food and drink to the deceased, regenerating them. This is connected to regeneration of the dead - the rebirth of souls in the afterlife. So when one has unlocked the door of Amentet, what does that really mean?
The informative sign next to the case does not say.
In the cool of the museum air, things feel ancient, like the entire building is holding its breath. I make a slow circuit of the Egyptian exhibit, avoiding eye contact with the few people here this late, staring instead at carved hieroglyphics and stained urns.
Have you ever had a reoccurring dream? I do, all the time, except something always goes wrong; I know what’s supposed to happen, but it doesn’t. Sometimes I don’t know how I know. But for instance, I have a dream that I go to the museum and pay a guard $500 to let me stay in after closing time, alone.
If you make your dream a reality, what is reality?
The informative sign on the wall does not say.
I read my Markov prophecies until the lights go out. It is fortunate I know the Egyptian exhibit by heart.
“Was she fair?” I asked, but he only snarled, muttering to the crystal pool with its dark curls crowned with the Fathers. “Nothing can really harm the soul.” He went away without thanking me. An hour later when I had finished, and had filled and emptied a cup of wine, the Ant Fish in his Disk delivered me from tearing the Yellow Sign. And now he said, “I have made strong my mouth. Thereupon shall come Thoth, who didst make the word of the night, and doth fetter the members of all the wild foxes.”
I am awake in the dark - really, really, really awake - when I hear it. Footsteps. Not mine. I am seated on the floor on the far side of the sarcophagus. It is not the guard’s soft squeaky stride. They are measured and sonorous. Purposeful. And close.
I have never dreamt this, but I have that feeling, that everything’s going wrong feeling…
I claw my arm to make sure I’m awake. Pain is, for me, a fairly good indication, but it must be more than a pinch. I want to gasp like a fish, but am instead frozen in place, trapped by the need to breathe. I’m awake. I’m awake. What is the difference between dreams and reality? They’re two worlds we cross between nightly, preferring one but unable to stop visiting the other. Is there perhaps an in between? Because I think that’s where I am. I think this is what I get for messing with myself -
I think the footsteps have stopped in front of me.
It’s so dark.
For the next hour, nothing happens.
In a full hour of pitch black silence, you start to doubt things, both about the situation and about yourself. There are only a few physical realities to hang onto, like the cool support of the floor, the side of the case I’m sitting against, and my clothes. I’m awake. This thought is no consolation. Perhaps I imagined the footsteps. The question then becomes: do I want to move and find out? I ask myself this endlessly as I sit, one leg starting to fall asleep, every breath too loud. Or I could be bold and reach out to swipe the darkness, hitting whatever, whoever, is there. The thought almost makes me shiver. I could rustle out my phone as quietly as I can, turning the artificial glow on whatever may be there.
… or I could sit in silence for what feels like hours, feeling something strangely essential draining from the top of my head.
I close my eyes. I open my eyes. It’s morning. Nothing is there. My skull is intact.
I get the fuck out.
Imagine the dramatic scene in a movie where the protagonist returns to his or her house only to find it ransacked, furniture overturned, possessions strewn across the floor. Now imagine the opposite. I jiggle the lock until it turns, and open the door into my mysteriously cleaned and tidied residence. My prophecies have been put in binders and alphabetized. My socks are folded.
The bastards.
But I don’t know of whom I speak.
“Now what sent you here,” he said, sleeping under the influence of drugs. She had been passed in paradise. I know their names, and all the time had come to the people near me: not one appeared to be in Amentet free from this hateful mood. I knew every volume by its relative position to the country. This figure shall repulse the enemies of Neb-er-tcher.
I’ll be frank. My apartment smells like girly lotion from those shops in the mall that you can barely stand to pass unless you enjoy olfactory overload. My place is more muted than that, but dogs have refused to enter… maybe they were just afraid of the eldritch horrors.
The point is, I don’t smell highly improbable combinations of fruits and flowers anymore. I smell potpourri. Somebody’s been eating my porridge. But nobody is sleeping in my bed. Not even me. After last night? No. In a way, I know I’m only prolonging the inevitable, maybe even making it worse. Sleeplessness and delirium go hand in hand, increasing the difficulty of distinguishing between dream and real. The solution is coffee, of which there is none in the house. I might as well get out of here. It’s no longer very welcoming, anyway.
Not quite spooked enough to enter a Starbucks, I settle on an independent chain I visit infrequently. I’ll get three large dulce de leche lattes, I decide as I near the door. I’m reaching for the handle when something -
- changes.
The door opens and she walks through me. Quicker than a heartbeat, she’s gone, striding purposefully down the sidewalk with a large dulce de leche in one hand. Measured, but not sonorous. We’re outside, after all.
I come back to myself sitting in the car. There are appropriate places for your face, such as on your own head, in the mirror, and on film. Even if you have an identical twin, you know intimately the differences between the two of you. To encounter your own face on someone else is an affront to the senses. To encounter your own being - walking around, talking, ordering coffee…
Did she pass through me because she’s a ghost, or did she pass through me because I am fog? Or simply because… we’re the same? She wore the clothes from last night, which I had exchanged for jeans and a t-shirt.
What to do.
The following passage is taken from the womb of the gods. And thou shalt make a scarab of green stone, with a false heart. Grant thou the name of “Soul.” I have not robbed with violence. Hail, Fenti, who comest forth from thy mouth and who shall be declared true.
Midnight finds me in the bathroom at home, taking out my contacts. I stare into the mirror, everything fuzzy-edged and indistinct. Who are you?
Mirror-me smiles.
She huffs on the mirror and writes in the fog: UOY era ohw.
For a dizzying second, I am the one on the other side of the mirror…
No. I was here first. She can’t have my life, my coffee, my books. I storm out of the bathroom. She’s not even real. She must be something I summoned up from the depths of my subconscious, brought to life by - by - belief and prophecy and dream. She is a dream. All the dreams I’ve had, all the games I play. Ah, you are greatly improved, and the girl had risen. A gray serpent was moving toward me, and let me hold conversation with Osiris; and my perfection shall be said over and over the sky. No more, please. It’s too late, but I burn them all, every last Markov text I’ve ever generated. I cover the mirrors. I wait for dawn.
But I am so tired.
Every time I read it, I like it less, but I don't know how to judge my own writing or, really, anything I do. The shit I do that I like, nobody else likes, and when shit I do gets attention it's nearly always shit I didn't like. It's difficult because I didn't write this story out of a desire to write, I wrote it because I needed to turn in a story for a grade. I hate writing in first person and I basically recycled a bunch of stuff I talk about a lot because I was short on time and ideas. I don't know how to transition from what I write when I RP to my own fucking stories. I just get all awkward and hesitant and I've always, always had trouble writing anything of decent length. Shit doesn't have to be long and I do prefer a more concise style but my stories are like, three pages tops in Word.
FUCK EVERYTHING
FUCK EVERYTHING
I need to be more disciplined about writing, I need to write every day, but instead I stare at the wall because I am full of hate and apathy. Because I am a mediocre writer in a world of writers. Because I don't find anything fulfilling, because something in my brain doesn't work right. Whatever. I don't actually care, I just can't think of anything else anymore. That is very tiring to me and even more tiresome for you, so I will endeavor to fill this journal with some goddamn writing already.