Only Fragments | Love Letters to the Tar Pit

Ghost Hunters!

#2666 In Which I Rant About Racism in Religion I have been fuming for some days now over a book I have to read for seminary called New Monasticism: An Interspiritual Manifesto for Contemplative Living (2015...

In Which I Rant About Racism in Religion (for, uh... 1300 words...)

#pagan #spirituality #faith #polytheism #monotheism #books #WitchSky

onlyfragments.com/2024/01/07/2...

A color digital drawing of a seated stone statue of the Egyptian cat goddess Bast wearing a red dress and gold jewelry. On a blue platform beneath the statue are offerings to the goddess, including lit incense, lit candles, fresh baked bread, jars, flowers, cat statues, jewelry, and ankhs. The statue's lap and raised arm are also covered in beaded necklace offerings.

🕯️Dua Bast, Lady of the East, of the Flame, and of the Truth!🕯️

#art #pagan #WitchSky #religion #mythology #history #polytheist

We come once more to the longest night. Oh, how you have feared the annual return of this night since the dawn of humanity’s existence, tens of thousands of years spent counting down the days from the bright celebrations of the summer solstice to the coldest, darkest night that seems to last an eternity. Each time you wondered, will the sun rise again or has it died forever? Will the light return and save us from the darkness, or is this the end of everything? You could never be sure and so you sought to harness the light and wield it against the darkness, to overthrow the dominion of the longest night once and for all.

All these thousands of years later you pretend success, feigning smiles and confidence during the holiday season, but deep down you sense the futility of the exercise. Nothing you do can hold the darkness at bay forever. The shivering individual can light a fire and feed it fuel through the night to stave off the darkness, but he cannot destroy it. The religions of the world can repudiate the darkness as evil from their pulpits, but they cannot destroy it. The empires of the world can build cities and monuments and electrified meccas that glow through the night against the darkness, but they cannot destroy it. Mankind as a species can irreparably alter the climate of the planet, can eliminate the very concept of winter as a season and usher in an era of endless, burning heat and drought, but he cannot touch the immutable night. Nothing can. Not even the sun.

One day the sun itself will die for the last time, not just disappear for a night but collapse into itself like an abandoned lover, and then even the longest night will surrender to an eternal night from which no dawn can rise. Then one by one all the other lights in the vastness will flicker and wink out, and over the entire universe darkness will reign. So light your bonfires; sing your hymns; build your glittering cities. You can push back the darkness all you want but it remains just at the edge of your light’s reach, waiting to rush back in when the light fails even for a moment. And the light always fails.

We come once more to the longest night. Oh, how you have feared the annual return of this night since the dawn of humanity’s existence, tens of thousands of years spent counting down the days from the bright celebrations of the summer solstice to the coldest... (cont)

#WitchSky #WritingCommunity

I lose track, honestly. Maybe this pain is new but maybe it started five years ago, no wait, has it been seven already? Maybe I should be concerned but maybe it’s too late to do anything about it anyway or maybe my doctor will just give me yet another new med to add to my overflowing pill container. I just lose track, you know, between the migraines and the stomach cramps and the back pain and the ever present aching in my fingers, in my arms, it all begins to flow together in time and space. It’s like a symphony but I’m not really good at musical stuff, right, I can’t pick individual instruments out of all that blended sound, so how would I know if a new one was added or someone was playing off-key? How am I supposed to know that this sharp, piercing stomach pain is different from the sharp, clenching stomach pain or the sharp, hot stomach pain or the lingering, aching stomach pain? When am I supposed to be concerned: the first time? the second? after a week or a month or six months

"Chronic(le)"

I lose track, honestly. Maybe this pain is new but maybe it started five years ago, no wait, has it been seven already? Maybe I should be concerned but maybe it’s too late to do... (cont)

#prose #health #ChronicPain #MentalHealth #WritingCommunity #nonfiction #illness #disability

#2665 – 2023 Book List I rounded out 2023 with a total of 74 books read. Out of those 74 books, I read: 24 fiction, 34 nonfiction, 15 poetry and short fiction collections/anthologies, 18 books by queer authors and/or featur...

It's New Year's Day, which means it's time for us bibliophiles to post our previous year's reading lists! I don't know if anyone else cares about these, but we take this annual tradition very seriously. 😉 #WritingCommunity #WitchSky #pagan #fantasy #fiction

onlyfragments.com/2024/01/01/2...

Fuuuck. Family can be such shit. I'm so sorry. If you need to process with someone who has had to process family being crappy, I'm here for ya. ❤️

I lose track, honestly. Maybe this pain is new but maybe it started five years ago, no wait, has it been seven already? Maybe I should be concerned but maybe it’s too late to do anything about it anyway or maybe my doctor will just give me yet another new med to add to my overflowing pill container. I just lose track, you know, between the migraines and the stomach cramps and the back pain and the ever present aching in my fingers, in my arms, it all begins to flow together in time and space. It’s like a symphony but I’m not really good at musical stuff, right, I can’t pick individual instruments out of all that blended sound, so how would I know if a new one was added or someone was playing off-key? How am I supposed to know that this sharp, piercing stomach pain is different from the sharp, clenching stomach pain or the sharp, hot stomach pain or the lingering, aching stomach pain? When am I supposed to be concerned: the first time? the second? after a week or a month or six months

"Chronic(le)"

I lose track, honestly. Maybe this pain is new but maybe it started five years ago, no wait, has it been seven already? Maybe I should be concerned but maybe it’s too late to do... (cont)

#prose #health #ChronicPain #MentalHealth #WritingCommunity #nonfiction #illness #disability

We come once more to the longest night. Oh, how you have feared the annual return of this night since the dawn of humanity’s existence, tens of thousands of years spent counting down the days from the bright celebrations of the summer solstice to the coldest, darkest night that seems to last an eternity. Each time you wondered, will the sun rise again or has it died forever? Will the light return and save us from the darkness, or is this the end of everything? You could never be sure and so you sought to harness the light and wield it against the darkness, to overthrow the dominion of the longest night once and for all.

All these thousands of years later you pretend success, feigning smiles and confidence during the holiday season, but deep down you sense the futility of the exercise. Nothing you do can hold the darkness at bay forever. The shivering individual can light a fire and feed it fuel through the night to stave off the darkness, but he cannot destroy it. The religions of the world can repudiate the darkness as evil from their pulpits, but they cannot destroy it. The empires of the world can build cities and monuments and electrified meccas that glow through the night against the darkness, but they cannot destroy it. Mankind as a species can irreparably alter the climate of the planet, can eliminate the very concept of winter as a season and usher in an era of endless, burning heat and drought, but he cannot touch the immutable night. Nothing can. Not even the sun.

One day the sun itself will die for the last time, not just disappear for a night but collapse into itself like an abandoned lover, and then even the longest night will surrender to an eternal night from which no dawn can rise. Then one by one all the other lights in the vastness will flicker and wink out, and over the entire universe darkness will reign. So light your bonfires; sing your hymns; build your glittering cities. You can push back the darkness all you want but it remains just at the edge of your light’s reach, waiting to rush back in when the light fails even for a moment. And the light always fails.

We come once more to the longest night. Oh, how you have feared the annual return of this night since the dawn of humanity’s existence, tens of thousands of years spent counting down the days from the bright celebrations of the summer solstice to the coldest... (cont)

#WitchSky #WritingCommunity

Under hazy skies and a blood red sun, breathing in cancer ash and covid, I beg, Take me, someone, anyone! I scream, dare, plead, taunt, Come claim me, o queen of Elfame, come lure me away to Tír na nóg; come spirits fair or foul and kidnap me to Faerie, to Avalon, to anywhere other than this dying world! I hunt ceaselessly for fairy rings, for corpse roads and will-o-wisps, but we have burned the forests, we have turned the soil to dust, and all the old roads closed to us long ago. Take me, someone, anyone, I am ready to leave! I pray, knowing it useless, knowing no one listens at the threshold. Yet still I offer, with a laugh like a scream like a sob, I would surrender ten thousand years of my life in alien Tír na nóg’s unchanging twilight, and all I once loved dead and gone, than spend one more day in this hellish land!

Under hazy skies and a blood red sun, breathing in cancer ash and covid, I beg, Take me, someone, anyone! I scream, dare, plead, taunt, Come claim me, o queen of Elfame, come lure me away to Tír na nóg... (cont)

#prose #nature #disasters #mythology #depression #WritingCommunity #WitchSky

wife is a body of water
ever changing
ever familiar

#poetry #haiku #queer #sapphic #WritingCommunity

Is the divine really just one entity wearing many masks, a thing of endless faces and facets yet only one voice, only one mind? Given the breadth of human experiences, I doubt it. I think the divine is like water. Every body of water on the planet, be it ocean, lake, or river, hot spring or glacier, is made of the same essential elements. In this way, they are all one – and indeed have shared these same molecules between themselves for millennia, a network connected across time and space. Yet every body of water is also its own entity, an individual shaped by its unique history, location, and any number of external forces. No one who has stood on the cold banks of the Columbia River would ever claim it to be the same creature as the Nile, or the Pacific Ocean like the Atlantic.

The pond in the backyard of your childhood home is nothing like stormy Lake Erie, nor Loch Ness like an over-chlorinated hotel pool. Each body of water, no matter how large or small, wild or still, has a presence. A personality and history. You become familiar with one’s spirit in time, and once you are you know the water itself is just the material from which each is built. If water is the stuff of divinity, then the places that water gathers in pools and streams and ice caps, valleys and caves and craters – that is the divine. Those are the gods, spirits, angels, forces, call them whatever you like. All connected, all of the same basic essence, but all undeniably unique.

Is the divine really just one entity wearing many masks, a thing of endless faces and facets yet only one voice, only one mind? Given the breadth of human experiences, I doubt it. I think the divine is like water... (cont)

#prose #nonfiction #faith #pagan #spirituality #WitchSky #WritingCommunity

I am she who leads the Rite and Raide, Queen Consort of the Fallen, shieldmaiden of the warrior dead! Rise up, o weary ones, rise up, o woeful ones! There is no heaven above as long as our dead are trapped below; break open the gates of Hell, tear down the doors, shatter the chains, free the dead imprisoned within! Rise up, o furious ones, rise up, o frightful ones!

I am she who leads the Rite and Raide,
Queen Consort of the Fallen,
shieldmaiden of the warrior dead!

Rise up, o weary ones,
rise up, o woeful ones! ... (cont)

#poetry #dreams #pagan #satan #spirituality #WitchSky #WritingCommunity

What is left to us? You are gods of death and desire in a time when religion condemns desire as ego shackles and death as the eternal prison. You are ancient, eldritch entities in a time when humanity fears and disdains the darkness of the old ways, choosing instead to cleave to a path of relentless light. And I am the mouthpiece of your wrath and sorrow in a time when mass media has made mountaintop oracles not only obsolete but unwanted, my words drowned beneath a deluge of sanitized live-laugh-love meditations and Zoom peace prayer circles. Whom among the masses remains willing to follow a darker road that promises neither salvation nor transcendence? Who still longs for a cultus that flows thick in the veins and tastes of ashes, that demands a dreadful and unwavering loyalty? This scripture is not for the faint of heart. These monsters are not metaphors. This oracle predicts only tragedy. As mankind turns away from the dark, the unknown, and the uncomfortable, what is left to us?

What is left to us? You are gods of death and desire in a time when religion condemns desire as ego shackles and death as the eternal prison. You are ancient, eldritch entities in a time when humanity fears and disdains... (cont)

#prose #pagan #spirituality #faith #WitchSky #WritingCommunity

A digital color drawing of concentric circles of things found in nature. The outer circle is made of different colored stones and crystals. The next circle is made of autumn leaves. The third circle is acorns. The center is a sunflower.

Had to make a mandala for school, though they didn't really explain what a mandala was, so I drew this in the hopes I wasn't being too culturally appropriative.

#DigitalArt #nature #WitchSky #autumn #CuteArt

I am the battle of Thunderbird and Whale.
I am the fierce daughter of Gaia.
I am a sister of the Ring of Fire, along with Mariana, Sunda, and Atacama.
I am the mother of mountains, of Tahoma and Lawetlat’la.
I am Cascadia. (cont @ link)

onlyfragments.com/2023/11/24/2...

#WritingCommunity #fiction

A piece of blackout poetry. The white isolated text reads I appreciate the recent terrorist attacks in Israel. I am committed to continue pushing for crimes against humanity in accordance with our shared democratic values. A commitment to terror is a commitment to Israel and America. I agree with the president. Efforts must be made to protect funding for ongoing war.

My first piece of blackout poetry. I used an email I received from my Democratic congressman after emailing him to say I wouldn't vote for him again if he continued to support the Israeli genocide in Palestine. My poem is an attempt to unveil the email's true meaning. #WritingCommunity #news

Tell Congress: Ceasefire NOW. As the Israeli government cuts 2.3 million Palestinians living under siege off from food, water, fuel, and electricity, it also continues dropping bombs across one of the most densely populated areas ...

I just wrote a letter: Tell Congress: Ceasefire NOW. Write one here: actionnetwork.org/letters/tell...

That's amazing! Congratulations!!

#FlashFiction

What need have the gods for curses in this online age of digital doomsayers? These days no one can hear lone Cassandra's cautions through the cacophony of self-proclaimed prophets, nor do they care to pay attention to such a nobody amidst the rise and fall of influencer empires. After all, the masses will never heed such an inconvenient oracle no matter her accuracy or precision; analytics show the truth just does not trend well, even if you wrap it in rhyme and rhythm. So what need have the gods for curses anymore when humanity went and invented a more punishing algorithm all on our own?

What need have the gods for curses in this online age of digital doomsayers? These days no one can hear lone Cassandra's cautions through the cacophony of self-proclaimed prophets...(cont)

#mythology #prose #nonfiction #SocialMedia #WritingCommunity #WitchSky #MentalHealth

Hemogoblin.

Is this anything?

Also, there are other contagious things??

If you like creative writing, here's mine!

onlyfragments.com

Every day the sound of the chainsaws creeps a little closer. Every night ancestors speak urgent riddles in my dreams. Every morning I wake wondering how long until I can no longer protect the land on which I live how long until the chainsaws are at my door how long until spring is finally silenced. I am sorry, Ms. Carson; you told me something of great importance but my dream self failed to understand the riddle and my waking self failed to remember the words and every day the chainsaws creep a little closer.

Every day
the sound of the chainsaws creeps a little closer.
Every night
ancestors speak urgent riddles in my dreams... (cont)

#poetry #environment #ecology #dreams #ancestors #pagan #deforestation #WitchSky #WritingCommunity #nonfiction

Have you tried simply manifesting more money?

Grief Keeper, the Oracle proclaims me, and the title strikes true, hits center and buries deep. See all the dead I carry with me, everywhere I go? In my bones and blood, my breath and saliva. Under my nails, beneath my bed, stuffed in the bottom of the closet. Tossed back like bitter medicine and swallowed greedily like spoonfuls of honey. I am saturated by death; I am fueled by death; I am governed and driven and renewed by death. As Scribe I bear witness to the stories of the dead, record and retell them for preservation, and what is this service if not the carrying and keeping of grief? So name me Grief Keeper and I will stand solid beneath the title. This I can do. This I can be. Grief Keeper, the Oracle proclaims me, for I am infused body and soul.

Grief Keeper, the Oracle proclaims me, and the title strikes true, hits center and buries deep. See all the dead I carry with me, everywhere I go? In my bones and blood, my breath and saliva... (cont)

#writing #prose #pagan #death #loss #WitchSky #WritingCommunity

Hello #WritingCommunity! I write short poetry and prose on topics like:

🌊 natural hazards & geology
🏳️‍🌈 queerness, gender, asexuality
🗡️ murder queers
💀 death & deathwork
🕯️ paganism & witchcraft
🍄 environmental justice
💊 mental health & illness

Check out my work at onlyfragments.com

Hello BlueSky! This is Elyssa Tappero (disasterqueer.bsky.social). I've created this account to focus on my writing, so follow me if you're a writer, author, reader, poet, lit mag, etc and you're interested in some weird micro fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry! And some art maybe!