Kern Carter's Blog, page 34
July 19, 2022
Call For Submissions — Summertime Nostalgia
Growing up in Toronto where winters can be furious, we yearn for the summer months. Because of this, I’ve had some epic summers with memories from my childhood that are still with me. From spending the entire summer playing basketball every day to summer crushes that ended when the school year started, I can write a book on my summers in Toronto.
But what about you? Any summer memories that make you smile or shed a reflective tear? Let’s write about it.
Same rules as always:You can submit to this or ANY of our past writing prompts. Just scroll through our previous newsletters. They’ll be marked “Call for Submissions.”If you’re already a writer for CRY, go ahead and submit.Be as creative as you want in your submissions. As long as you stick to the topic, we’ll consider it.Just because you submit doesn’t mean we’ll post. If you haven’t heard back from us in three days, consider that a pass.[image error]Call For Submissions — Summertime Nostalgia was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
July 18, 2022
July 16, 2022
Poem: Is This Love?
Photo by Caleb Ekeroth on UnsplashWhat is this I feel?
Such sweetness like honey,
The Cupid’s arrow definitely shot me,
The moment our eyes met,
The sparks flew,
That warm tender smile of yours,
Your pretty face,
Your beautiful soul,
Your sexy voice,
Ugh!! Just everything about you,
All that combo makes me melt,
Am I in love?
Is this what people call love?
Can someone please explain this to me?!
Poem: Is This Love? was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
July 15, 2022
July 14, 2022
July 13, 2022
July 12, 2022
Hopeless Romantics
Photo by Debby Hudson on UnsplashThe hopeless romantics are quite a hopeful bunch
They hope for sunsets and hand holding
They hope for tender moments and sweet experiences
They hope for genuine affection and honest feelings
They hope to be with someone that wants to share their company
They hope to laugh with another that’ll mutually blush
They hope for companionship and acceptance
They hope for love to be simple and kind
They hope to be reciprocated
Hopeless romantics is such an unfitting term
For they are truly the hopeful romantics
Hopeless Romantics was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
July 9, 2022
Dreamscapes: The Great Flood
Dreams can enhance the best and worst of us, exposing us as good and bad beings within the confined universe of our heads. I have no problem playing the bad guy, or the disadvantaged one, or the loser, or the background character of my dream. I also have no problem when it comes to being the hero and actually utilising my good qualities and skills in my dreams.
My only general issue is with running. It’s not one of the skills I can train very well. Neither is it a good quality in dreams.
Some people use dreams as a way to build their good skills subconsciously. An athlete might do a lot of their sporting activities within their dreams, training even the deepest depths of their minds in those skills. An artist might see or draw vivid images in their dreams. I certainly have done that before. Even a taxi driver might complete their job within their dreams.
I think the skill, and a quality, albeit not necessarily a great one, I’ve unintentionally built up in my dreams is the quelling of situational panic. I never feel stressed or rushed in my dreams, no matter how dim the situation. In an overall tense situation where I can understand the stakes, my panic doesn’t rise in my throat.
This dream is probably a good example of this not only being a skill, but also a somewhat negative quality.
I call this dream: “The Great Flood.”
— — —
A new building on a dock in Nouve-Ila is being unveiled. The dock resembles a shipping dock with a bright yellow overlay. It is devoid of ships and there are empty spaces where the lines of cargo boxes and trailers would be. The building being unveiled is entirely black and shoots upwards to a spike like a gothic kingdom. There are pillars around it that resemble the industrial smoke towers with lids of spiked church roofs made 200 years ago. There are no windows and only one door — the entrance.
My mind doesn’t fill me in on the lore of the purpose of the building, but I understand my team’s purpose. We are meant to survey the building, to test run getting to the top of the building. But as we suddenly enter the building, even the original purpose of our survey fades from memory.
The people I’m traveling with are a mix of those I’ve seen before — classmates — and those I’ve never met. Many of the faces just elude my vision, turning up as simple faded blobs that carry shape without the soul.
We walk inside and begin to wander up the staircase. It has checkered-patterned tiles and an entirely cool grey theme. There are large spaces on the wall where windows should’ve resided, but don’t. The empty spaces stare back at me, but I quickly brush them off.
We hear news that the building is filling with water. Although the news is from one of our own, we laugh and dismiss the concerns. They add on that the people outside cannot be reached and cannot reach us. A cooler grey lingers in the air and thickens with the thoughts of each person.
A classmate and I decide to check the situation out, mostly out of the disbelief that this is happening, and we head downstairs. The classmate is a scrawny and tall stereotype of an elf that always wears a grey hoodie. It is surprising he chooses to come with me, as he’s not a coward, but he’s not one to stick around long either.
As we go down the stairs, I get a nagging feeling that the building flooding might actually be occurring. Without warning, we get rushed by the water. It attempts to drag us down and swallow the staircase whole. It sucks at the base of each step as it crawls its way towards us.
My classmate is pulled in first. He struggles for a bit but gathers his balance and runs back up the stairs. He leaves me to fend for myself as the water grabs me next and attempts to sink me like a ship in cold water. I am a little bit upset at my classmate’s quick departure, but the feeling dissipates to a dull panic.
I cannot swim. The water knows that.
It’s like a heavy slime, ebbing and flowing through the staircase and turning this suburban industrial brightness into a deep ocean relic. The outlines of this world are dark blue. The colours of this world are a harvested, ancient blue. One that’s trembled for years and can finally explode. Everything feels tinted in this chemically potent colour. It’s sickening and fascinating.
Here I am, in the jaws of life and death itself, gazing up at every little fracture of light like it will drag me to the air I so desperately need to breathe.
The outlines of the stairwell ebb back into the flow of my eyes. They remind me that I’m still in a stairwell, not in the great blue. I use the handles on the stairwell walls and haul myself through the thick slime. I break through and immediately dash up the stairs.
I reach the group and we begin to run. My thoughts flicker on the idea that they stayed and waited for me despite the situation, but the light on those thoughts go out as the water rises.
The water moves fast, we try to move faster. With every set of floors, the water seems to linger and follow, keeping up with us as we traverse the building.
We reach one of the highest floors of the building. As we look down the stairwell, the water can’t be seen. We decide to stop for a break and to strategize. The hallway we are in is a square, lined with faux white bricks and dark grey tiles. There is a bathroom there as well, which sticks out due to it’s off-white, old paper yellow bricks.
A human girl, with pale skin and a red shirt, breaks down and begins to sob. She soon starts to bawl. Another, identical-looking girl, despite the lore of my brain reminding me they are not related, comes to console her.
I am insensitive as hell. Perhaps it is because I hate crying people as a start, or maybe it’s the lack of fear and panic I am feeling in the moment. Maybe I was just a jackass from the beginning? I am not sure, but I begin to crack jokes about our situation.
The jokes are initially meant to somewhat help cheer the human up, but when they don’t work, they turn into mocking her entirely. I mock many aspects of her, from her clothing to her naturally posh Anjeltic accent. Even the act of crying from deep desperation gets a joke.
The human girl gets pushed into the bathroom to calm her down. I feel a bit dumbfounded and rude afterwards. I played the game too many times and won the prize of a rotten heart to beat inside my chest.
We split up to look for some way of contact to the outside. The dream turns to mud for a bit while I wander the hallways, empty minded. The hypnotization of the white on grey on yellow makes everything feel repeated. It’s like I’ve walked by this hallway and continued to go forward into the same hallway, forgetting each time that I should turn.
In the mess of a mind that’s beginning to hit a creative block, I reach a classroom. The human girl from earlier is inside, drawing on some sheets of honey yellow paper. When I ask politely what she’s doing, she explains that she’s commencing a ritual to summon something. My ears just evade the name of what she’s summoning.
The dream ended abruptly. It ended perhaps, too open-ended for my liking. It made me think of what could’ve happened and realistically, how I should’ve responded to the whole situation. Perhaps my calm heart ended up not feeling the sympathy it should’ve. Perhaps my calm heart saved me when I could’ve left myself to drown.
I think of this dream as an example of a skill, of something both positive and negative in nature, of something that can be trained in these subconscious layers, of something potentially useful on a much greater level.
Dreams are equations waiting to be answered. If you answer enough of them, you’ll get better at answering them. Sometimes the answer isn’t the answer you necessarily wanted, but it is the correct answer. Sometimes the answer isn’t correct at all.
I think embracing the randomness of the equation and slowly but surely coming to a fair and correct answer is maybe the best way to dream. Let your skills shine and train them while your at it. Let your bad qualities through and hold onto them as you rid of them. Take you as you in your dreams.
— Heleza
[image error]Dreamscapes: The Great Flood was originally published in CRY Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
