I will be making a few changes to this website again. Some are actual new things. Probably most will be resurrections of older things. Today, I’m bringing back the Wednesday Word. This is no longer a Twitter phenomenon because Twitter itself is not much of a phenomenon now. In fact, before the Musk Ox bought the medium they’d already kicked me out of my own log-in for the Wednesday Word. I haven’t been able to access that information except as a reader for well over a year now. Maybe longer as I can’t remember when all that happened in the timeline of perpetual breakdown.
But I have been maintaining and expanding the Wednesday Word on my corner of All Poetry. It is a monthly contest there. I post words for the month’s four or five Wednesdays and let people choose their focus. I have to limit entries just so I can have a hope of reading them all and fairly judging the contest. (Yes, there are awards… no, I don’t feel that good about that… but that’s the medium…)
As this list of things already exists and as it is only visible in one narrow alley of the internet, I decided to put it back on my website. Not that this is not a narrow alley also, but there are daily readers, coming from all walks of life, all over the globe. So…
I give you… The Wednesday Word.
Wednesday Word
for 18 October 2023
twilight
You can respond in the comments below or go visit the All Poetry contest for October. Your response can be anything made from words. I love poetry, but anything can be poetic and you needn’t even be limited to poetics. An observation, a story, a thought. Might even be an image — however, I am not a visual person, so it has to work harder to convey meaning. In the spirit of word prompts, it’s best if you use the word; but I’m not even a stickler about that. Especially if you can convey the meaning without ever touching the word.
If responding on All Poetry, you are limited to the forms of that medium, though my contests are fairly open as to form. However, if you have something long, post it in the comments below. That said, please don’t go too long. Keep it under 2000 words. I’m not going to count, but I’m also not promising to read a novel.
Unless it’s really good!
If you have nothing to say, that’s fine. I know you all are busy and distracted. But if you’ve read this far, then I’ve made you think about… twilight.
wendigo
he is hungry mouth bone pale and cold older than will bolder than want haunt of the wood walking city streets stalking sunless alleys dark shadow under streetlights taking life breaking life unmaking life knows no rule nor sanctity save insatiable gravity sucking depravity inexorable calamity no escape from shambling gait no supplication sufficient to staunch the feeding the bleeding more and more and more through the maw caught in taut logic of lauds and lands and gold for the priesthood serving unholy communion in unhallowed halls concrete and stolen cathedrals and it is never enough water, soil, salvation, oil ingested all while smiling rictus grin but never fulfilled even as the world burns turns to rust and dust and death he knows the tally of his days but believes in starry reprieves building ships like bullets so he may swallow the whole of creation
We always talk about the twilight as being the incipient death of something. I believe we are in the twilight of modernity, or whatever you choose to call this social organization that has been dominating and destroying the planet for the last several hundred years. The sun has set. There probably isn’t a dawn for this system because there aren’t resources to take nor labor markets to abuse.
So this is the end.
However, it is also a beginning. It is the beginning of a dark resting period. It is also the beginning of whatever organizational system comes next. I don’t pretend to know what that will be, except that it will be different. It will very likely be many, many flavors of different because a system that has less oil to throw at dominating others is going to be a patchwork of small, localized ways of being. What is happening now in the dominant group will fail, but what is happening now in all the margins is what will grow our new worlds.
This is a good thing to keep in mind. You will undoubtedly contribute to birthing what comes next.
Weather Marker
Today, October 18th, is the last day with more than 11 hours of sunlight in my part of the world. Plants here are struggling to make sense of the contradictory cues from light and temperature. There hasn’t been a frost, but there isn’t much daylight for photosynthesis either. Plus, they know that the days are growing shorter, so they know that there’s no point in putting out new growth… but it’s still the growing season by the weather.
In fact, this is also St Luke’s Little Summer, the traditional name for a warm string of days that usually fall around the Feast of St Luke. I’m not sure that we had a real summer this year; September was our hottest month by a wide margin. But much of the year has been like this past week — highs in the upper 50s, lows in the lower 40s, damp, and dark.
So what’s a tree to do?
The ones that strictly follow the clock have shed their leaves. The ones that are not native this far north — those that don’t take cues from daylight because where they’re from, daylight doesn’t change much — they’re all brown. Many have green leaves left, but the leaves are riddled with spots and holes. From a distance it all looks olive drab to rust brown. It’s pretty in its own way, but it does make me think that nobody is much happy with the weather.
Except the mosquitos which are still breeding new generations of misery every week or so. You’d think the females would be worn out by now…
©Elizabeth Anker 2023
By My Solitary Hearth 