Miceala Shocklee's Blog, page 4

**Trigger Warning**

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Over on his blog, the ever-fantastic Chuck Wendig is currently hosting a comments-based discussion (brave one, he is) on trigger warnings when it comes to written material. Not every book is exactly “safe to handle” for every reader. But is that the reader’s job to gauge? Or the writer’s job to present up front, like an STD in a potential lover? Should books come with sets of trigger warnings?

For those who don’t want to read the N paragraphs below, I’ll tell you my personal opinion up h...

Why I Am Not Angry At Tess Munster

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For all you folks just tuning in – for what amounts to about 50% of the time I’ve been alive, I struggled with an eating disorder. And by “an eating disorder,” I really mean several of them, because eating disorders are slippery, wily creatures that’ll change shape on you faster than you, the eating disordered person, can change shape yourself. They’re like viruses, in a way. They mutate at an incredibly fast rate, all in an attempt to stay alive and present and growing faster than your...

Magic at the Edges

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Originally deposited this on my crazy ramblings tumblr, but decided to include it here too. It’s a pretty good narrative of what’s been a large lump of my current frustration.

I wait up for people I shouldn’t.

I flock to artists,

people who breathe stories

and know how to put the

soul back in your eyes.

People with hands and mouths and voices

that mean something.

I like brushing fingers with those.

There’s magic at the edges.

…

But ours is too pragmatic a world

if you cannot always live at the seam...

Charlie

“Je préfère mourir debout que vivre à genoux.”

Charlie

(English translation follows)

On peut tuer l’artiste. On ne peut tuer pas l’art.

Et d’essayerà brûlerune idée, cecine fera que se répandit comme une traînée de poudre.

Et les Français, quand on leur dit de se taire…

ils ne deviennent que plus fort.

Mes amis français, ne vous arrêtez pas. Vous êtes Charlie. Et Charlie a plus àdire.

…

You can kill the artist. You cannot kill the art.

And to try to burn an idea will only make it spread like wildfire.

A...

How to cure writer’s block

miceala:

This. I like this.

Originally posted on Demetria Spinrad:

Take a break. Step away from your work. Leave your house. Change your name. Don’t tell your loved ones where you’re going. Let them think you died in that plane crash. Three decades later, reappear with a younger, blonder wife and a memoir about the life you led on the run.

*

Hemingway never got writer’s block. Every day, he stood across the room from his typewriter and shot each letter key with his pistol. Then he would down a fif...

The Fear-Killer

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The Fear-Killer

I fear.

But fear is the mind-killer

(so Dune says)

so I accept boredom instead,

the mind-number

that will let me flit from thought to thought

without falling in so many of these dredges,

high as a kite from not paying attention

’cause if I can’t see you

then you can’t see me

(so says the rules of childhood)

so it must be the same with pain too, right?

…

I do not accept melancholy

but it comes anyway,

the mind-trapper.

The slow sludge death of neurons cannabilizing themselves

in an attempt...

Causality

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Causality

It’s an odd place to live in

the universe

when you’ve got causalities like

making brownies ’cause your toes were numb

or deciding you’re going to live

because you’re going to die.

…

We learn to love hurt

because love hurts

and it’s more painful

when you hurt love.

…

We try not to,

but that’s not the way causality works.

Not when good intentions pave the road to hell

or maybe just divorce,

since we’re not really sure

we aren’t just giving ourselves hell anyway.

…

You can have pain from nonexistent...

The Lie of ‘Better’

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When you have a mental illness like depression, the first and most frequent condolence people will tell you is that “it gets better.” When you tell them that you are sad, sad not just one day, but sad for nearly every day the past month, they tell you it’ll get better. When you tell them that you have been down and clouded and crying for the past half a year, they tell you to just hang in there, thing a or thing b will change, feeling x or feeling y will be spirited away by a sparkling...

A Car And A Cute Old Man

Today, I met a cute old man. He was not by default cute because he was old. I have met a lot of old men, and many, many of themare not cute. A lot of them are crotchety fuckers.

But this old man, he was cute. He barely had any hair left, just a brush of white and wiry remnants as his eyebrows, and a U around his head. His skin has the yellow tinge of an elderly Philippino. He could have been stern, if his mouth puckered more. But it didn’t. He was not stern. He was not intimidating. He was lik...

A White and Shiny and Probably Horrendously Inflammatory Blog Post

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Dear White People,

it happened again. Another murderer got away because of white skin and a shiny badge. We drive around with our white skin and our shiny cars, mere passersby to injustice on the streets. We sit in our white houses with our shiny lives and ignore the systematic burning of a people to the ground. In both Missouri and New York, we like our white snow and our shiny presents, having the luxury of not caring that outside, it’s cold. We’ve got our white skin and our shiny priv...