Neal Auch

I can't believe I never noticed this before but it feels intentional, presuming that parable would have been familiar to a Romanian in the 50s, which I have no idea how likely that is one way or another.

Like, instead of being a story about someone being alarmist for no good reason, it's about living in a world where you see the wolf plain as day, yell "wolf!" at the top of your lungs, and then the townsfolk just stand around uselessly debating whether or not wolves exist.

For all the thought I've given to Ionesco's Rhinoceros, I cannot believe I'm only just now realizing that the story is also constructed to be literally the exact opposite of the boy who cried wolf parable...

It's all so frustratingly prudish, lol. Like I get just having a zero nudity policy, but parsing shit like "genitals are okay but not when they're engorged or being used for their intended purpose" just feels weird to me, lol.

Wow, I don't think I'd realized how limited the social media options are for explicitly sexual content... Here is fine, apparently, but even Substack and Tumblr are somewhat limiting. I guess here and fetlife and reddit are the exceptions.

vanitas with roses and crucifix, by neal auch

“God has died, and His death was the birth of the world.“ – Philipp Mainlander

Newsletter!

New email this Thursday! I'm gonna talk about Mailander. "God has died," he wrote, "and His death was the birth of the world."

Vanitas with Dice, Flowers, and Coins, by Neal Auch

White Noise, Talk Radio, and Our Unexceptional Present - Typebar Magazine To view our era as unprecedented is both chauvinist and defeatist.

"To view our era as unprecedented is both chauvinist and defeatist. It flatters our desire to be special and also our desire to be absolved for our failures." -- Danny Cohen on our (un)exceptional present.

www.typebarmagazine.com/2025/08/29/w...

It's weird little bug orgy season, apparently. I actually wrote a body horror story inspired by weird bug orgies a while back: Orange Frenzy l, published in issue 2 of Tenebrous Press' Skull and Laurel magazine.

Happy birthday!

vanitas with flowers and lemons by neal auch

"We are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all."

– Joan Didion

Light reading for the spooky season.

vanitas with lemons and coins and teeth by neal auch

"The presence of death annihilates all superstitions. We are the children of death, and it is death that rescues us from the deceptions of life. In the midst of life he calls us and summons us to him.” – Sadegh Hedayat

Skeptical...

Seven bucks!

You're not wrong. But not all art has dong, so I probably should have just said "dong art"

Partner: "Oh, are those pictures from today?"

*Looks at my laptop screen.*

"Well... That's weird... I dont know how to feel about that..."

So, I guess my transition into erotic art is going well?

vanitas with cross and coins, by Neal Auch

“Lord, take pity on the Christian who doubts, on the skeptic who would fain belief, on the galley-slave of life who puts to sea alone, in the darkness of night, beneath a firmament illumined no longer by the consoling beacon-fires of the ancient hope.”

― Joris-Karl Huysmans, Against Nature

a still life arrangement with fruit coins and bones, by neal auch

Vanitas with Lemons, Coins, and Teeth, by Neal Auch

Newsletter...

They are a mirror of both myself and my audience.

I'm very pleased to introduce the charming model who will accompany me on my journey into portraiture.

Hey! Thank you so much. Glad I could serve as an inspiration of sorts, lol. Hope she does great ob her project!

Tomorrow's newsletter is about the men who laugh at fruit bowls.

Vanitas with wine, coins, bone, and teeth. By Neal Auch.

“In the end, everyone is aware of this:
nobody keeps any of what he has,
and life is only a borrowing of bones.”

― Pablo Neruda

No lie detected.

Book...