The Sunderlorn Rise

James. 28. He/Him. London. I write, and fuss over books, games, food, swords, & climbing.

[olreid]

house as body - tma / i am in eskew / kirsty logan / shirley jackson / lisa robertson / the mountain goats / anatomy / shirley jackson / mabel / jessie lynn mcmains

[hyrude]

mark z danielewski

[geritsel]

Kuwagata Keisai - Spreads from  How to Draw Birds, Insects and Fish Simply, woodblock printed book, 1797.

[sunderlorn]

I have more bookshelves now. Two of them, just climbing out the wall, and hopefully not falling off and out of it.

All it took was a month of putting holes in a wall, and putting brackets in those holes, and realising the holes weren’t deep enough, the things stuck in those holes not grippy enough, and pulling the brackets out, and getting better holes and better things to put in them, and then realising I didn’t do the holes good enough, and these new impossible-to-take-out-of-the-wall things to put in wall-holes would need to be taken out of the wall, and better holes made, and then the brackets and the things to put in wall-holes would need to be shoved back in, and all the while hoovering up brickdust and living with holes just sitting in my wall and looking at me, and all the while living with all my cook books in two shoulder-high piles on the floor that I had to dismantle every time I wanted to look at one of them.

And now it’s done. And there are books hanging out on these two floating shelves. And one small string-of-hearts plant.

[fluoresensitivearchived]

THE WATER WOMEN by Yah Yah Scholfield / Émotion (Nobuhiko Obayashi, 1966) / What the Water Gave Me, Florence + The Machine

THE WATER WOMEN is up on my website! I think it was a commission but I really don’t know who for hm … Anyways! It’s about the town of Easton’s strange tradition, a girl named Myrtle and her uncle, who are trying to survive it. As with all of my stories, it has themes of mental illness, familial bonds and balance/circles! 

Massive content warning for suicide and descriptions of violence! Tread with caution!

[lifeinpoetry]

In the song, he sang, I am the thing

that ate the flowers. Then he smiled with his straight teeth. In the song the long forest path changed with every turn—

I saw meadows in the hard red earth. 

— Brittany Cavallaro, from “Orphic Hymn,” Unhistorical

[sunderlorn]

Molcajete’s developing her own scent. Logically I know it’s made up of the garlic I used to season her; the cinnamon quill and sea salt and rock sugar I’ve ground up since. But the scent’s kinda all of those and none of them. Synergy and synthesis: more than you’d expect.

[sunderlorn]

@fallingawkwardly replied to your post “@tsulean replied to your post “If I leave a draft half-finished and…”

“modern AU Ghostline, as set in the Manitoba wilderness” never underestimate how much i want this now james

I was struck and kicked, and buried in the dark to shrink or fester. Instead I slowly healed, cellared under the Horton’s at Darkwater Crossing.

For a while when I was let free I could only stand in the sun, blind and blinking, and be touched by the wind as it tasted my face. But after that I start my truck, and the keys bite and growl before the engine begins to purr. It is glad to have me back. I adjust the seat. My legs are wrong, have always been wrong, for the placing of these pedals. 

I lose myself in the traffic, and then I lose the traffic, and then I drive alone. Only the prairie as it sings to itself, the song of grass to grass. The dry ground, cracked brown in an irony of thirst, beside the wide brown wetness of river. The leafless trees and the trees that are still green, bristling with pins and resinous in the breeze. The wind, the wind, the wind through my rolldown window, sighing as it roars and sighs.

My cellphone beside me is brick-shaped in the cover it wears to keep it safe from my hands’ sometimes-stupidity. Inside it, riding passenger next to me, the lockscreen is alive with updates, rolling and scrolling over themselves like ants seething out of an anthome. Messages from rabbits and wildfowl. The simmering incessant push notifications, so teeming I sometimes am made to mute them, of a thousand-thousand things in the distance, gathered to dismantle a car-killed stag.

I glance from the road like I know that I shouldn’t, but me and the road are alone, so I see no harm in not seeing it. Another message; a new and seldom and special kind, for which I’m meant to be always waiting.

‘The clan reeks of sickness. The land died beneath us. They broke it open for oil and forced us toward the horizon. The sky is ashen now, and these days even the air is harsher than once it was… [1m ago]’

[yummyinmytumbly]

Shanghai-Style Red Vegetable Soup (罗宋汤 - Luo Song Tang) by The Woks of Life

[llleighsmith]

“No writing is wasted. Did you know that sourdough from San Francisco is leavened partly by a bacteria called lactobacillus sanfrancisensis? It is native to the soil there, and does not do well elsewhere. But any kitchen can become an ecosystem. If you bake a lot, your kitchen will become a happy home to wild yeasts, and all your bread will taste better. Even a failed loaf is not wasted. Likewise, cheese makers wash the dairy floor with whey. Tomato gardeners compost with rotten tomatoes. No writing is wasted: the words you can’t put in your book can wash the floor, live in the soil, lurk around in the air. They will make the next words better.”

— ERIN BOW

[sunderlorn]

Bought a goodly sized molcajete today. Downside of this is walking a couple miles home with it on my back. Upside of that is treating myself to horchata when I got home.

Currently sacrificing rice to season/appease it. Rice to eat, water to drink, garlic for glaze and flavour!

[enochliew]

Roof Gardens in Rome

[frognonbinary-deactivated202412]

i’ve been doing my homework on how to break into a writing career and honestly. there’s a Lot that i didn’t know about thats critical to a writing career in this day and age, and on the one hand, its understandable because we’re experiencing a massive cultural shift, but on the other hand, writers who do not have formal training in school or don’t have the connections to learn more via social osmosis end up extremely out of loop and working at a disadvantage. 

[frognonbinary-deactivated202412]

like, i didnt know about twitter pitch parties!! i didnt know about literary agents and publishers tweeting their manuscript wishlist, in hopes that some poor soul out there has written the book they really want to read and publish!! this isnt some shit you learn about in school! you really need to know the ins and outs of the writing community to be successful! 

[frognonbinary-deactivated202412]

for anyone interested, here’s what i’ve learned so far in my quest for more writing knowledge:

1. Writer’s Market 2019 is a great place to start– it gives you a list of magazines and journals that you can send your work to depending on the genre as well as lists a shit ton of literary agents that specify what genres they represent, how you can get in contact with them and how they accept query letters. this is a book that updates every year and tbh i only bought it this year so i dont know how critical it is to have an updated version  

2. do your research. mostly on literary agents because if you listed on your site that you like to represent fluffy YA novels and some asshole sends you a 80k manuscript about like…gritty viking culture, you will be severely pissed off. always go in finding someone who you know will actually like your work because they’re the ones who will try to advocate for you in getting published.

3. learn how to write a query letter. there are slightly varying formulas to how you can write an effective query letter. you’re also going to want to get feedback on your query letter because its the first thing the literary agent will read and based on how well you do it, it could be the difference between them rejecting you outright and giving your manuscript a quick read

4. unfortunately, you’re gonna want to get a twitter. Twitter is where a lot of literary agents are nowadays, and they host things like twitter pitch parties, where you pitch your manuscript in a few sentences and hashtag it with #Pitmad #Pitdark, some version of pit. a lot of literary agents and publishers will ALSO post their manuscript wishlists, which is just the kind of books they’d like to represent/publish, and they hashtag this with #MSWL (it is NOT for writers to use, only for agents/publishers)

5. connect with other writers, literary agents, publishers at book events. you will absolutely need the connections if you want to get ahead as a writer. thats just kind of the state of the world.

[miss-ingno]

All of this is great info! I’d like to add two more:

Queryshark is great for seeing how query letters work and what doesn’t. There’s hundreds of examples on there to compare with!

and Printrun Podcast is run by two literary agents who recently started their own agency, they cover all sorts of book news and how publishing works. They also have a (paid) query critique and first pages show, the first one of each is up for free!

[sunderlorn]

I have a part of my brain that tells me “If you can’t finish something, or might get interrupted during something, you shouldn’t start that thing.”

And I’m pretty sure it’s the same part of my brain that tells me “What’s the point of planting herbs if they’re not perennials, and will only die in Winter, and won’t always be there for you, and will have to be replanted every year.”

Anyway, what I’m saying is, that part of my brain can fuck off.

[sunderlorn]

Pumpkin congee. (Brown rice, Persian smoked rice, jasmine rice. A summer pumpkin my parents grew.) A fried egg. Stir-fried green things. (Garlic stem, a kohlrabi top, some kale, spring onions. Things I had.) Preserved spicy mustard tuber. A spoonful of crispy chilli oil.

Eaten in the place I’ve started eating my meals when I’m alone. (The light’s nice at the time I tend to eat dinner.) 

[systlin]

If you were going to start a garden to prepare for the apocalypse, what would you plant? Housemates and I decided that was a better use of our anxiety than playing zombie games and I don’t have anyone else to ask.

1. Potatoes. Best starch and caloric yield per acre of just about any food.

2. Tomatoes. Easy to can or dry, tasty, high in nutrients.

3. Corn, beans, and squash, planted Three Sisters style. All are nutritious, and planted this way the beans put back into the soil the nitrogen the corn uses. If you plant dent or flour corn and dry beans and sun-dry the squash, all store well. 

4. Mint. It’s useful for minor aches and pains in salve, it’s good for upset stomachs, and it’s quite tasty.

5. Hot peppers. Tasty, and also useful for aches and pains.

6. An assortment of herbs for both seasoning and medicinal use.

[queeranarchism]

Also great: 7. Lettuce. Easy, jummy. The types that grow as leaves (as opposed o full heads of lettuce) can regrow every few weeks. Fresh veggies all the time.

8. Radishes. Same reason. Regrows in a few weeks. How perfect is that.

9. Strawberries. If the climate is right for it. Easy and jummy. Strawberry plants can live multiple years (though they give less fruit after the first 3 years) and create their own baby-plants in fall. So you can have more strawberry plants every year or give the plants to other zombie-apocalypse survivors.

10. Winter carrots. Your winter will be boring if you only have potatoes. Carrots are a great winter veggie. 

11. Onion and garlic. Because you really can’t cook without them, can you?

Oh, & maybe just as important is what NOT to grow or the apocalypse or just for your first DIY garden:

1. Cauliflower. Difficult. Requires a lot of work, time, space and nutrients and you’re quite likely to end up empty handed.

2. Broccoli. Same reason.

3. Olives. The trees need to be over 5 years old to produce their first olive and many more for a good harvest. That’s not much use for immediate survival.

4. Walnuts. These trees take 15+ years to start giving nuts! Don’t plant em unless it’s for your kids.

[solarpunkactionweek]

Strawberries (and most berries/small fruit in general) will probably be snatched up by squirrels and birds before you can get to them unless you take proper precautions. They make nets and various deterrents for this, but the easiest option if it’s available is just to grow them inside

[queeranarchism]

True. They also do well on balconies but with the same restrictions.

Almost every veggie or fruit has its weaknesses and things you just need to know. Tomatoes will do way better if you know how to recognize and remove ‘suckers’. Mint and some other herbs will take over your whole garden unless you contain them.

So if at all possible, I’d advice people to start with a few plants and learn how to do those really well, adding a few new ones every year, instead of trying everything all at once and getting demotivated when half the plants die or don’t give you fruit.

[auressea]

Also- plant for YOUR climate and Soil conditions. Ask experienced food growers - what works and what doesn’t where you live?  We have micro-climates on the island where I live.. some of us can’t grow a peach - others can grow lemons!

Mix it up! mono-crops are BAD. you want resilience against Climate Change, Insects, and disease... variety=resilience.

learn about the native plants that ‘grow like weeds’- they’re often edible.

[elodieunderglass]

Remember that plantcraft is a combination of intention and situation. If one's intention is truly "to have green things for survival in an upcoming apocalypse" then the most practical survivable thing is to form a local growing collective with one's neighbours, and work within that local environment; if it's an urban area in Scotland then what you really want is an allotment and a polytunnel; if you're windowsill gardening in Brooklyn then how can you get access to the roof? And that sort of thing. And you would be starting to look into high-bearing, low-maintenance perennial things, but first you'd have to suit the local climate, soil, resources, skill level, abilities, etc. Compost is damn expensive for people doing container gardens in cities; potatoes planted in March and harvested in July will be a pleasure and a joy, and can be kept for quite a while, but your proudly won handful of potatoes that would have cost you $1.50 to buy in a supermarket isn’t exactly an Apocalypse Plan, especially for those irritating winter apocalypses.

If the intention is more like, "i am worried and fearful, and being able to control something would please me" then the answer is different. If it's more like "I want to feel mastery and build my skills" and the person has only done houseplants before and they live in the city, then an indoor herb or windowsill cut-and-come again lettuce mix would be fun. If they have a balcony and buckets, then nothing beats the sensory pleasure of digging up potatoes just for making one happy, but climbing beans might be a challenge; if they were in the right climate I would definitely try broad beans on a balcony.

And if it's really all about food resilience and security, then what we really want are perennial fruit bushes! Some of them are friendly companions for balconies, and would be an easy way to feel pleasure and begin learning without having any initial skills. But the payoff takes about a year, so it's very dependent on your anxiety and the intention: how much brain space is one planning to dedicate on apocalypse-fretting? Will it last a year?

I would love if we could start approaching plantcraft with clarity of intention, and understanding of our situation. It would be easier for kind folk like systlin to share their knowledge. It would lead to more satisfying results. And it would help to teach us that our green relationships are not about terraforming - that we are not, in fact, casual natural masters of all things that grow, that we are not entitled to summon our cravings from the earth with a snap of our fingers - but relationships, where things like attention and boundaries and communication and understanding and realistic expectations and social feedback are more important and productive than "put seed in, get food out." That there are many ways to meet our needs - which are usually, simply, to feel safe & loved & skilful - and that the first step is to know and name them.

[probablyasocialecologist]

“Those working-class Londoners sheltering in tube stations during World War II? They weren’t supposed to be there. In fact, the British government of the late 1930s built far too few municipal shelters, preferring to leave that to private companies, local government councils, and individuals and when the first bombs first fell, the hardest hit areas were poor, immigrant, and working-class communities in the East End with nowhere to go. Elite clubs and hotels dug out their own bomb shelters, but the London Underground was barricaded. On the second night of the Blitz, with the flimsy, unhygienic East End shelters overflowing, hundreds of people entered the Liverpool Street Station and refused to leave. By the time the government officially changed its position and “allowed” working-class Londoners to take shelter down among the trains, thousands were already doing so — 177,000 people at its most packed. Eventually it was adopted into the propaganda effort and became part of the official mythos of the Blitz, but the official story leaves out the struggle. It leaves out the part about desperate people, abandoned by their government, in fear of their lives, doing what they had to — and what should have been done from the start — to take care of each other.”

— Laurie Penny, Tea, Biscuits, and Empire: The Long Con of Britishness

[sunderlorn]

And Blitz Spirit has been co-opted by the Tory establishment ever since.

Austerity? No Deal Brexit? Global Pandemic? Pump up the Blitz Spirit rhetoric. Paint it as proof for British exceptionalism. Fortitude, high spirits in dark times, community support.

When, nah, actually it was a desperate response to government failure. Not even failure: conscious political choices, about who matters, who doesn’t, and who should bear the brunt of national economic challenges.

That’s been their game forever. Choose to fail. Choose those who get rich off that failure. Choose how to paint the failure as success, for government and for the nationalist project, after and forever after.

[omgthatdress]

A list of my favorite POC/international cooking channels, if you no longer want to support Bon Appetit:

De Mi Rancho A Tu Cocina: an abuela from Michuacan shows you how to make DELICIOUS rancho food and occasionally shows you scenes from around the rancho.

Doña Lupita: Another abuela, this time from Guerrero, making incredible-looking food over a comal

Simply Mamá Cooks: Tejano woman with a Korean-American husband makes recipes from both cultures, great for classic easy-to-make weeknight comfort food recipes, too

Li Ziqi: a real-life Disney princess from Sichuan who shows you how to make sauce with duck egg yolks, starting with hatching the ducks that lay the eggs

Dianxi Ziaoge:  another Chinese farm girl, she shows you her idyllic life in rural Yunnan as she makes food with her HUGE RIDICULOUS FUFFYBOI, Dawang, often joining her on adventures

Wild Girl: Yet another Chinese farm girl, this time from Guizhou, who has a little bit more of an emphasis on cooking with food foraged from her gorgeous surroundings

Catch The Sea Official: A young woman living in the fishing city of Rizhao, foraging her own seafood and then cooking it up. I could watch her squeeze the water out of cat’s eye turban snails all day.

Cooking with Sros, Sros Yummy Cooking Vlog: Sros makes delicious Cambodian food with a warm, sunny personality and a great accent!

Am Thuc Me Lam: A son who videos his mother farming and cooking in rural Vietnam

Traditional Me: Young woman in rural Sri Lanka lives with her grandmother and brother, makes incredible looking food set to jaunty music with lush scenery

Village Cooking Channel: Five VERY ENTHUSIASTIC Tamil men make large batches of food for their local old age home.

Veg Village Food: Pakistani granny makes huge batches of vegetarian food for local needy children. 

Desi Food Recipes: Soothing Indian granny shows you how to make classic Desi dishes in non-giant size proportions

Maangchi: The Julia Child of Korean food, everyone fucking loves Maangchi

Jun’s Kitchen: Japanese guy makes food with his cats, what’s not to love?

Stove Top Kisses: Southern soul food served up with a fun, bubbly personality