[abyssata]

a call to arms! we must bring back "traditional" blogging (not the pale tumblr simulacrum, microblog or regurgitated substack slop). a long-form breath, image (photography) and language held in balance, people writing themselves into coherence while documenting the faint atmospheres of daily life and offering what they cherish (devotion and hobby, study and travel, fashion as affect, aestheticism as articulation, thought carried to depth, the slow work of reflection)... there once existed an intimacy, an interpersonal texture that feels nearly extinct now, eroded by over-curation and a kind of emotional anesthesia. everything polished, everything optimized, nothing felt. whatever instagram and its contemporaries once promised—connection, exchange—has been hollowed out and replaced with a kind of obedient machinery. an advertising ventriloquist, every gesture bent toward sale, every self rendered legible only insofar as it can be monetized. i'm exasperated by the surplus of micro-content, brief captions, truncated thought, meaning reduced to a garnish... i miss the human pulse that once sustained "social" media. ( ;´ - `;)

[worldspirit]

#i need room. to write around a thing; to let meaning accrete instead of sparkle and vanish.

[worldspirit]

logged on to complain about the way everything costs $400 without tax these days. then i realized (= hoped) it's probably just better to trust that what has been extorted by life will be replaced in time. i can't let this stuff get to me; i literally don't care.

[worldspirit]

as MARCUS AURELIUS once coped:

[worldspirit]

logged on to complain about the way everything costs $400 without tax these days. then i realized (= hoped)—it's probably just better to trust that what has been extorted by life will be replaced in time. i can't let this stuff get to me; i literally don't care.

[worldspirit]

separating analysis from summary in my reviews is giving me real difficulty. problem being: i know both are involved to some degree by necessity, but where to draw the line? how to do the latter without simultaneously veering into the former via superficial "the curtains were blue, the carpets brown" grocery-list-style observational commentary...? wisdom suggests reading reviews by people who "know what they're doing" and learning that way. i guess i fear coming out of it all having only learned to speak with another person's voice instead of my own. as arrogant as it may sound, i don't want to sound like anybody else, i want to sound like me.

[worldspirit]

"the autobiography of cassandra: princess & prophetess of troy" and "cassandra: a novel and four essays": two novels centering cassandra of troy that have recently excited my attention.

the art on these covers is lovely. if i'm not mistaken, ursule molinaro painted hers; i wasn't able to find anything about the artist behind wolf's. i can only guess about the stories inside, meaning the quality of them, as a stranger to both authors.

these books had been buried fathoms-deep in my reading list until recently, resurfacing during an audit i was conducting to clear out books no longer of any interest to me—and just in time. i haven't had the time or opportunity to see nolan's the odyssey (2026) in theaters with everyone else, but all the discussion circulating around it has inclined my appetite toward something with a mythological bent <3 as is usually the case in the summertime anyway. so i'm crossing my fingers and making a wish that i'm able to enjoy these as soon as i may.

[worldspirit]

A year or more ago, I read M. Atwood's The Penelopiad. I thought it was an underwhelming take for the premise, which promises the reader insight into Penelope's life on Ithaca in parallel with Odysseus' adventures in warmongering abroad and eventual homecoming. There's even some prologue covering the contours of their married life prior to the war's onset. I wish I had taken better notes documenting my experience with the text as I was reading to better explicate why and how specifically The Penelopiad disappointed me because it's undeniably better than some other retellings I've read, and there were some aspects of this alt-telling I recall genuinely liking that deserve equal parts attention and examination. That is on me. It wasn't what I was expecting as a story so I flew through it faster than I could digest it; this is unfair to the author, whose work demands to be met on its own terms (or DNF'd if that isn't worth doing). All I have to say about it now is how I felt after reading it—and I felt my time had been wasted. Gave it a 3⭐rating then because it was "technically" fine, as I recall, and I think I was still figuring out what these ratings meant to me, but given the benefit of time and hindsight I'd even lower it to 2⭐. Flat and ephemeral. Not in a good way.

[worldspirit]

Items that need doing, an ongoing list: ① send email and letter responses ② continue digital cleaning, clearing out old mobile tabs, refining reading lists to must reads only. 1.25k is an unsightly hoard lol ③ practice: sketch, write, plan. do something. ④ submit weekly timesheet.

[worldspirit]

The concept of a "formative influence." What delimits a formative influence from regular influence? If it's an influence, aren't we fundamentally altered regardless?

I think "formative" and think of its near-antonym, "immutable." Formative, as I'm understanding it, whether rightly or wrongly, implies influence with an immutable quality to it, implies an influence integral to the architecture of personal taste or personality, a load-bearing pillar, a sort of foundation, as belongs to a house.

The logic follows: 2 Hydrogen atoms combine with 1 Oxygen to make water what it is. Before this reaction takes place they aren't much of anything but base elements themselves, meaning it's the reaction that is the formative influence.

Reaction. Change. I am who I am as a consequence of my exposure to the formative influences that forced me into newness—every [regular] influence thereafter is somehow lesser. So formative influence = a base one grows out of (or on top of)? Different from regular influence how? I'm right back where I started lol.

If that's the case then every influence feels formative to me. I can't think of an influence enacted upon me that hasn't reformed me in some way, shape, or form. I'll have to Google the question later. Feels like there's something very fundamental I'm missing that's preventing my understanding

[worldspirit]

In my twenties. Nameless.

Behind the URL, worldspirit

𖦹 This blog is an exercise in self articulation. Reblogs are hosted elsewhere. I have a blog, separate from this, for games. you'll know them when you see them. :)

𖦹 In spite of my reservedness, I enjoy being social! Likes, reblogs (to a sideblog), comments, even tags where appropriate, every part of it.

[worldspirit]

today: harusari—“I feel like a droplet of oil in a glass of water.”

[worldspirit]

utilizing the same creative faculties involved in oc-making to develop a better realized Self. let's see where this goes

[worldspirit]

today: angelus silesius—“The rose is without ‘why’; it blooms simply because it blooms. It pays no attention to itself, nor does it ask whether anyone sees it.” equally beneficial: “I think you guys might be thinking about yourselves too much.” in that “you guys” = me

[worldspirit]

in rotation as of yesterday evening: WH40K: Rogue Trader.

so i know next to nothing about the warhammer series going into this adventure, my exposure heretofore limited to a couple conversations with friends. don't even remember what sold it to me BUT i'm really loving the premise of the thing... so far... intergalactic tyrant in this disgustingly overwrought nightmare empire at the end of time...even if the politics of everything are beyond my understanding.

[worldspirit]

What Movement Would You Have Joined in Early Modern Europe? A Typology Quiz — theodramatist

A typology quiz for the years 1500 to 1789. Thirty-four questions, thirty-four types—humanist, Puritan, philosophe, magus, salonnière, merce

The years between 1500 and 1789 broke the world open. The stability of church, of knowledge, of political order, even of our place in the cosmos—all of it was called into question and left unsettled, to be fought over. Out of that turmoil came a crowd of new movements: some drove the changes, some struggled to make sense of them, some fought to undo them, and not one came through untouched. A few you’ll recognize. Most you won’t. But every one of them still leaves its mark on the world you live in now. They are gathered here, and the questions that follow—most of them about you as you are today—will find where you would have stood in the chaos. Thirty-four questions · about eight minutes