oxygen

the gravity of sunshine and salt

anyone who has witnessed or been involved up close in a random chaotic bar fight between strangers knows the moment. the dead full stop frozen where. everyone. everything. everything with a pulse inside a windowless smoky room stops. the full stop. mid flight. birds fall like stones. tucked in amber. time dilates. all the way down up sideways. the fuck. slow as slow can go. then more slow. down to limbo. to the tick of a dead grandfather clock. all because some dumb jawbone just said or did some next level dumb shit and. you sigh. shrug. you’re the one nearest. the one who gives the biggest fuck. whichever. you’re the one. stand up slow easy cool hands where folks can still see them. slow easy afterthought cool. unload phone take off your glasses your watch anything you don’t want to break. anything dangling that might be used to snatch choke or otherwise compromise you.

you don’t know this jackass. this uncouth piece of human flotsam. any other context you might keep walking. but in this enclosed space the rage within somehow faraway and close as the buzzing of hornets nesting in the earth of you there is no walking. nowhere to walk to and no choice. you’re more tired really than angry. sad almost. the unforgivable act is loathsome vile and tedious beyond words. but already it’s too late. the fight the flight tremors are under the skin and whatever is about to happen is coming. the whole bar knows it’s about to happen. because it has to happen. because the wrong two dollar piece of empty skin walked into wrong shared space and said or did the unforgivable. chose the wrong moment to do or say that particular wrong hateful thing. that moment. I’m feeling that moment. I am a writer who still lives primarily in the real world but float more and more in this shared nonspace through a screen lightyears from nowhere to live also in this shared place that isn’t a place but feels real because the others the people around me most of them are real and I care about them. I give a fuck what happens to them and I know there must be a civilized literary way to deal with this shit. but really. I’m not sure what. how. I remember this feeling from the early days the cult the velvet early myspace tumblr. it was only cool because there were no mods. or if so was moderated with such a light touch you barely noticed them.

flashing back now to that lost velvet space all I can say is we have to moderate the bullshit in this place that is not a place ourselves. I despise the troll economy. loathe the dog pile. the public executions on twitter for whatever wrong groupthink side of fence bullshit. I don’t know. I do not fucking know. I know that I don’t know. I know this. everyone of the writers here the ones most worth a damn most deserving of goddamn oxygen are those who contribute a blink of sunshine to the collective to the humans who still love books. they give. they throw even the most fleeting shimmer of something lovely something gold some line or phrase that blows your hair back and changes you for a day for a minute for two precious heartbeats. none of us have the time or energy to waste going to war with this shit. I told darkling just an hour ago daylight is burning. none of us has a minute to waste. we have so much shit to write still. the stories untold. the half remembered memories that may disappear like smoke on the wing if nobody writes them down.

I’m drifting slow fast slow into the first turn down my no country for old men homestretch but I’ve got a a bit more fire left. I’ve more gas still in my tank than the legend Tommy Lee had alone out in that wide open lonesome facing the deep cold dark. the endless dark. all that dark all that cold. I know where that particular stretch of lonesome is because I’ve been there. I see the endless every time I close my eyes but I do have the fire still and I swear that if Anton Chigur the philosopher assassin spun to life by McCarthy and the Coens were to drift into this corner of what I call the new velvet sky within a hellscape liminal if he set foot or poked even a toe in this orange space on the wrong day with that bowl cut the dead robot cadence the cold fish eyes to put a coin on the bar and say choose I would by god do what Tommy Lee could not quite manage and do it with grace and style.

if blood were to spill on anyone’s keyboard it would be Anton’s. that much I know. I would take my time. I’d do it in a flash of knives bright yet unseen. knives flicking fast as insect wings I would absolutely tie his ass in such knots he would cut himself apart with his own slow blade because I’m better at this fighting style than he is or ever will be. that I do know.

I love the writers’s I’ve come to know in this the velvet tucked in the orange hellscape liminal. everyone of you. keep the stories essays chunks of raw poetry coming. keep your hearts close. keep the voices you love alive. keep bringing your best shit to the table. if you leave your cowboy hat on a bed you’re on your own. otherwise I will never not have your back. I will fight for and stick up for any writer on the stack worth the weight of their salt. the gravity of their words. the wealth of the water in their skin and the oxygen in their lungs. that I know. I do know that.

peace.

oxygen. goddamn oxygen. sunlight and oxygen remain the last of vital resources free to all and I’ve no doubt blackrock is hard at work to correct that concocting a scheme to require the peasants beyond the one percent to pay sub fees for uninterrupted access. sunlight as far as I know is impossible to set fire to but oxygen we could afford to burn and keep burning. if given the option to lose a third of the available fresh water or breathable oxygen surely we would choose the latter even though we scorch and slaughter vast swathes of the rainforests on the daily. point being we have oxygen for days. the above spasm of thought above was sparked spawned by the revelation of hateful shade and pure evil lack of courtesy thrown at a fellow writer retired english professor and respected elder moving among us publishing stories and essays on substack known as the good gentlewoman Elizabeth Lamont. the vile act in question was the slithering into her messages and comments by ageist snakes and spiders infesting the stack universe. the final spark being a message from a deeply damaged or born sociopath incel cockroach who told Elizabeth to go ahead and die because she was wasting oxygen.

this will not be shrugged away. it will not be accepted tolerated or ignored. it must not and cannot be.

peace.