Apis By Olga Tretyak It Really Reminds Me Of Nanna, To Be Entirely Honest. I Wonder If I'll Ever Be Allowed

Apis by Olga Tretyak It really reminds me of Nanna, to be entirely honest. I wonder if I'll ever be allowed to tell my baby sister stories of the cowherd that guides the stars through the sky.

The raging crown of Summer,

Livid over maddened eyes-

The heady burn of dry air

Poised on the precipice

Of swallowing whole

Half the country in a blinking

and the other half in terror

of the too-green arms that strangle

Gentle blossoms in their beds.

All that, child’s play,

A matchbox world in idle hands

As they fiddle with the package

Fray the edges soft with age

And remember of an evening

When the sky is black with soot

The loam-dark halls beneath the earth

That welcomed his fury, and gave birth

To the fiery death of melancholy

As the smoldering fields of war

Swallowed the heads he piled

on the doorstep of Death

And the welcoming graves split the earth

As a lover welcomes

Her soldier home.

(He caresses her in the trenches,

Kisses her steel,

Breathes in her cyanide perfume

And laughs at the way the earthworks growl as he leaves their cold embrace.

Soon, love, soon,

And when I come to bed at last

I will grip you

As the roots of the hanging tree

Grip the veins of the earth,

And love you

As surely as the fire loves a witch,

As the sweet rotting contagion

Loves a warm bosom

In which to sleep

and strengthen anew.)

In too Deep. 

You're heard about the edges, and a little of the middle, but let me tell you about the void heart of America.

I wasn't born in Kansas. My Dad's from Dodge City, my Mom's from Topeka. We moved there when I was small, to the very southwestern corner in a little town where all they have going for them is a feeble grip on Wizard of Oz tourism. Everyone goes to Wichita for that. You hear about the Universities, maybe the war planes pumped out of Wichita, the Westboro Baptist spittle-spraying Bible thumpers, Dodge City's Wild West days.

You don't hear about the cemetery that sometimes lights itself on fire.

You don't hear about much of anything. It's a flyover, the truly flat Pancake state. It's the literal center, but the monument is a barren little chapel and a circle of flagpoles in Lebanon on an endlessly quiet field. The real center is on some farmer's property, but they won't tell you that. And at one point, I quote from Wikipedia, "In an unusual technical glitch, a farmstead northeast of Potwin, Kansas, became the default site of 600 million IP addresses."

We sell the wind, the land. There's nothing else. In school you learn about when the land surged up to swallow the sky, when people choked and died with the land in their lungs and their skin cracked like the earth in the sun. You learn about one religious massacre, but it's honestly not as horrifying as when the rabbits surged up in a sea of hunger. Yes, the rabbits.

Respect the windbreaks. Respect. Them.

Of course the rest of the world hears about the tornados, it's called Tornado Alley for a reason. And yeah, you might walk out of the house to see a car on top of a building. But it's also called the Great Plains. Go look up the most isolated towns, most middle-of-nowhere, and you'll probably find Garden City. It's not that impressive, maybe. Stay on the road and you'll be fine. I wouldn't reccomend the dirt roads. Most people these days rely on GPS. Most people in Kansas rely on a road map. There's a reason for it. Don't worry if you get lost, the locals are friendly enough. When you find them. If you find them. Just stay on the main roads and you'll get somewhere eventually. Never leave a town without getting gas, I don't care how far you think you're going.

Every house has a wet bar for a reason.

Ignore the gunshots.

Play music if you're driving at night.

I know it sounds really Night Vale, but seriously. Don't match speeds with other cars on the road, at least not without checking your own. Ghost cars are a thing, and sometimes they play chicken.

Be VERY CAREFUL near train tracks. Don't drive slowly. Something might encourage you to go a little faster, and I don't mean an oncoming train because the trains never come.

Do NOT drive towards the lights at night, follow the goddamn map and don't turn onto a dirt road.

The entire land is pretty dead. No Man's Land. I think something died with the buffalo, because there's no soul there. Not like hungry Florida or even the revolving door of Missouri. Just. It's dead. A lot of cemeteries. A lot of nothing. Just a lot of wind that hasn't been declawed by trees or mountains or civilization. A lot of dead grass. We make metal flowers that play with the wind and plant them outside the cities to let you know you're close. They're the only thing that grows, really. They call us the breadbasket. Baskets are dry and brittle, don't you know? And ours is getting dryer every year. The aquifer that keeps us alive is running out.

The last time the land had enough of our shit, the Dust Bowl happened. I'm afraid of what might happen next time. And next time is inevitable.

The rivers only exist when it rains.

Also, don't ask about The Smell. Capitals necessary. It's probably the beef packing plant. Or something. Just. Sometimes entire towns will smell like rot and shit got stewed in a giant cauldron with dead man's blood added to taste, bad enough that no one will leave the house. Not even the dogs. Then it'll be gone the next day.

And I haven't even touched on the ghost towns. I get the feeling that nobody would notice if the wind blew most of us off of the map. Population density is around 55 people per square mile. Most of them are old people. Anyone young enough with the spine to leave their roots leaves quick. So that leaves tiny communities of elders dotting the endless wasteland, and sometimes without even a proper pharmacy in town. My dad was a medical examiner, he's told me the stories. The utter horror of never being found until sometimes weeks later, when a blue-eyed old waif is black and bloated or worse and you can HEAR the corpse moving from down the hall, maggots and worms decomposing what used to be a doddering old grandma who slipped while making zucchini bread and died of thirst in a puddle of refuse not two feet from her own sink because of a broken hip. Entire towns disappearing slow, just like that. Until the grey leeches back into the world from where we've tried so hard to paint over it. Until the roofs cave in. Until the land flattens out one way or another, and even the bones of our attempts at settling are blown away and buried.

it’s all you americans talk about… liminal space this… cryptid that

a short comic about witches and wishes and wanting things.

(all my comics are here!)

In Babylonia the commemoration was observed every year on the second day of the fourth month, called the month of Tammuz. It was not only a weeping for dead Tammuz, but a weeping for dead vegetation. The dying leaf had a mourner. The withered stock had a sympathizing friend. For the blasted blade of grass there was shed a tear. For the barren tree bereft of golden foliage and luscious fruit there went up a cry of sympathy. The ceremony was an expression of sadness that came over the people as the oppression of the heat of summer bore down upon them, the water supply being reduced, vegetable life put out and human life consequently made almost unendurable by the deprivation and heat of summer. The time of weeping was one for the expression of personal sorrow that lurks in almost every heart. The wail of anguish was a relief to souls burdened with their own peculiar griefs. The soul found relief in lifting up the voice attuned to some form of elegy. There came a relief like the rolling of the burden of guilt from the breast. The ceremony was one that embraced in its performance the expression of confession. It was, however, performed with the consciousness that the drought of summer was but for a season, and that there was to follow a period of happier existence, as the succeeding winter should merge into a new spring. Tammuz was supposed to leave the land with the season when the spring growth was completed, to come back again in the following year. He is considered as dead, but his death is not an absolute one. He tells the mourners what to do as they gather about his bier. According to some allusions he seems also to be a lord, as it were, in the bowels of the earth, preparing the inner earth for putting forth a new stock of vegetation, as spring shall come. Hence, the hymn to Tammuz in this thesis calls him “the generator of the lower world.”

Frederick Augustus Vanderburgh, Sumerian hymns from cuneiform texts in the British Museum (via wortwyrd)