Ink and the Morning Light

Books, Coffee, Old Things Poe, Dickens, Austen, Film Cameras, Hikes Linguist in Texas, formerly Brooklyn She/Her

[academic-vampire]

𝔞 𝔯𝔢𝔞𝔡𝔢𝔯 𝔩𝔬𝔰𝔱 𝔦𝔫 𝔭𝔞𝔯𝔞𝔡𝔦𝔰𝔢

[inkandthemorninglight]

I’ve used a bullet journal for several years. Loved the system.

But I like planning and writing random thoughts and ideas but no where to place them. So they’ve done on random scraps of papers throughout my office.

So, sticky notes on my desk, sticky notes in my bag, sticky notes that say things like “look up whether sycamore trees are native here” and “the word for the smell before rain has a name and you should know it.”

Things that don’t belong in a tracker. Things that just needed somewhere to land.

So I started a commonplace notebook. I know this is old news in the book gram and booktok world but it’s new for me.

So I do have my first quote to remind me.

To give and not count the cost.

I think that’s always a good reminder.

[forkingandcottage]

journeyswithjon

ᑲɣ౿ ᑲɣ౿ ᑲꪱᜒ𝗋ᑯꪱᜒ౿

[aperiodofsoftness]

Ronjanicola

[inkandthemorninglight]

“The Hound” H.P. Lovecraft

“The Hound” isn't awful. I want to be fair to it. But I can see why it tends to sit towards the bottom of the rankings. Reading it, I kept thinking of “The Raven”, “The Black Cat”, and “Reanimator” arriving together at a party and deciding to be less interesting than any of them individually. The combination doesn’t quite work.

It's more predictable than the earlier stories and Lovecraft at his best earns his dread slowly. He lets it accumulate. Here it felt announced. And the figurative language, which in the stronger work feels genuinely strange, tips over into imitation of itself. Style without the substance underneath it.

(Say I, who am a terrible writer.)

Still committed. On to the next.

[amithsyt-deactivated20260523]

“you’re so quiet” thanks! i actually tried to speak twice but you kept talking over me

[inkandthemorninglight]

I’ve been thinking about this one since approximately the first time I read it, which was long enough ago that I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve underlined it since.

I came to Dickinson as a reader and stayed as someone who studies language, and this poem sits differently when you do. As someone with anxiety, depression and just life, it echoes such beautiful words.

“The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-

The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’

And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?”

I think about this when I’m working. I think about it when I’m writing. I think about it more than I’d care to admit in contexts that have nothing to do with either. And it yet has a hope that gives me strength.

“First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -“

[renardchagrin]

That fourth verse might seem rhetoric, bit it’s scientifically accurate: trauma stays in the body for generations.

Scientific facts apart, this poem has a beautiful cadence and some powerful images. Not even slightly rare in Dickinson.

[fairydiaryworld]

[i-will-arise-and-go-now]

— 𝑺𝒊𝒓 𝑻𝒉𝒐𝒎𝒂𝒔 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝑳𝒂𝒅𝒚 𝑫𝒊𝒙𝒐𝒏 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒌

𝓟𝓱: 𝓝𝓪𝓽𝓪𝓵𝓲𝓮 𝓦𝓱𝓲𝓽𝓮

[inkandthemorninglight]

I’ve been thinking about this one since approximately the first time I read it, which was long enough ago that I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve underlined it since.

I came to Dickinson as a reader and stayed as someone who studies language, and this poem sits differently when you do. As someone with anxiety, depression and just life, it echoes such beautiful words.

“The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs-

The stiff Heart questions ‘was it He, that bore,’

And ‘Yesterday, or Centuries before’?”

I think about this when I’m working. I think about it when I’m writing. I think about it more than I’d care to admit in contexts that have nothing to do with either. And it yet has a hope that gives me strength.

“First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -“

[moonss-and-stars]

“She was mystically delicate”

-Virginia Woolf

[iphigenesis]

sherlock your line was i congratulate my dear friend watson on his recent marriage in this public piece that he will probably read

[inkandthemorninglight]

Hyperfocused tonight on Peg Entwistle and the other ghosts of Griffin Park in Hollywood.

[ariaiscursed]

- vintage jewelry and dusty drawers

[inkandthemorninglight]

“Reanimator” H.P. Lovecraft

Look. I know. We have to talk about the man before we talk about the work and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Lovecraft was a racist. Not product of his time hand waving , actively, explicitly, and it bleeds into his writing. You don't get to love this and not hold that at the same time.

I suspect “Reanimator” was originally published as a serial and it shows. There's a repetition to the structure that would probably frustrate you if you read it straight through without knowing that. Each instalment resets just enough to catch new readers up. Once you understand that, it stops feeling like bad writing and starts feeling like what it is: a pulp serialised horror story doing exactly its job.

The narrator is unreliable in ways that Lovecraft doesn't fully announce, which I appreciate more than I expected to. You're meant to trust him and I'd argue you probably shouldn't, and the ending ,which I will not spoil here *River Song “Spoilers”*, earns that ambiguity in a way that genuinely surprised me.

It's grotesque, occasionally campy, and weirdly compelling. I enjoyed it more than I expected.

Recommended with full acknowledgement of the asterisk attached to everything Lovecraft ever wrote.

[skylar-helsing]

Reanimator was, indeed, published chapter by chapter, hence the repetition ; Lovecraft had to make sure the audience knew the plot that had happened prior so they could get what was happening now. For this reason he considered it one of his lesser works, which I would tend to agree. While it is a fun narrative, it isn't as thought-provoking as some of his more cosmic tales. The racism here is not as omnipresent or crucial to the plot as in other stories, but it is very egregious. Be wary of it before reading. If you want to avoid racism, try another Lovecraft story, like At the Mountains of Madness (though that one is an acquired taste) or Colour Out of Space.

[midnightinshadow]

[inkandthemorninglight]

“Reanimator” H.P. Lovecraft

Look. I know. We have to talk about the man before we talk about the work and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. Lovecraft was a racist. Not product of his time hand waving , actively, explicitly, and it bleeds into his writing. You don't get to love this and not hold that at the same time.

I suspect “Reanimator” was originally published as a serial and it shows. There's a repetition to the structure that would probably frustrate you if you read it straight through without knowing that. Each instalment resets just enough to catch new readers up. Once you understand that, it stops feeling like bad writing and starts feeling like what it is: a pulp serialised horror story doing exactly its job.

The narrator is unreliable in ways that Lovecraft doesn't fully announce, which I appreciate more than I expected to. You're meant to trust him and I'd argue you probably shouldn't, and the ending ,which I will not spoil here *River Song “Spoilers”*, earns that ambiguity in a way that genuinely surprised me.

It's grotesque, occasionally campy, and weirdly compelling. I enjoyed it more than I expected.

Recommended with full acknowledgement of the asterisk attached to everything Lovecraft ever wrote.