i forgot to post this cus i’ve been real bad at tumblr...
i forgot to post this cus i’ve been real bad at tumblr lately but beach sloth wrote it and fuck it made me feel good.
Black Cloud by Juliet Escoria
“Black Cloud” is one of the best things I’ve ever read. Literature is distilled down to a life lived. I want more literature to be like this: brutal, honest, dark, and incredibly real like living it. Of course prior to reading this Juliet Escoria released a series of cryptic, dark transmissions. The videos are a definite welcome addition to the stories. Reading the entire collection in one sitting is highly recommended. Within each of the stories rests a particular rhythm that connects everything. Much of this is disconnection from surroundings, not sleeping, weird relationships, and lots of movement.
Emotion reigns supreme throughout the collection. Whatever attempts to leave this maelstrom are relatively futile. Safe harbors are the boring ones. A nice guy dives deep beneath the waves. Yet another one tries to prepare Juliet Escoria for a hurricane. Rather than spend time watching fires burn she decides ‘Nah’. Here the jerks are the fascinating one. Bad ones are fascinating with their glimpses into different worlds. One of the bad ones talks about New York City before it got clean expensive: back when it was wretched, filthy, and foul. More personality can be found among the wreckage than among the crystal clean.
Stabs at normalcy appear to be nothing but that. A glass casserole dish takes on a far greater heavier role providing sustenance in different forms. Lasagna may be nutritious and easily freezable. Nobody denies that. However there are other kinds of hungry, different sorts of emptiness to fill. The glass casserole dish serves many great purposes. It allows for time to get killed off, to transform itself into little blurs. Eventually the blurs become bad things the sorts of things that become a quiet bus coming from New Jersey or puffer fish trying to get their fill.
The best part is the others. They sit on the edges of Juliet Escoria’s stories. Some of them live in ratty motels and barely scrape by. Others still visit her world briefly. A few friends try to come by, friends like Zachary, who have been there and serve as a sort of guiding light. Yes they too have seen the darkness which makes it easier for them to appreciate the lighter moments. Some try to ask for forgiveness for what they did from years ago, how they tried to clean up, to be better. Unfortunately time can heal but only so much. Reconciliation is not an easy thing and it can take more than six years to make up for many more wasted ones. For at the end of the collection there is a heart stop, a realization that things can be beautiful liquid things never transforming into anything solid. Life is a permeable thing and “Black Clouds” celebrates life’s many forms.
