first

as of may 2024, this substack is no longer updated. to read the old posts, you need a paid subscription. <3, k.e.r

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(no title)

aug 16, 2002
security - friends

August is purple
and heavy, spilling golden
tears into autumn.

It’s late and I’m extremely tired. But my fingers can’t seem to stop moving. There is a drop of destiny somewhere in this school and I will drink it up so quickly. You wouldn’t even notice it gone. I promise, I will remove it cleanly. I won’t call attention or my father in middle America. I won’t call. I promise I’ll stay off the line and give you my eyes. All I see is the ocean and pines. This world is nothing but ocean and pines and writers and sweaters and forthcoming winter and ice and aching…white ice cold aching. Stella, Stella, Stella for star. The stars are out and so am I.

mood - melancholy
listening to - round here live in paris ‘94 - counting crows

ici

feb 13, 2004
security - friends

i’m home, or some form of it.

i’ve begun wandering again, prowling this house until i am the sole capitvator. it is only a week this time, but i ache for madness. i started to read those old letters and they speak so clearly. i cannot explain.
bed is early tonight. i cannot imagine what dream i’ll have, shut in the room i grew up in, the room with the paintings of mine—blue horses & green skies. downward-gazing angels and ghost trains. my poems and screams. the bed of boys & cigarettes, blowing that horrible stink out into the february ice four years ago. four years ago i began the downward glances of angels, four years ago i realized it.

mood - nostalgic
listening to - margery dreams of horses (flying demo) - counting crows

low stakes

march 6, 2023
security - public, for the whole world to see

I am skittish. this feels stupid, like it very well could be a mistake or at the very least something I will regret. I’ve been writing-working in my own head for three years. time is luxurious and literally all I have ever wanted, but the echoes of empty rooms easily become unnerving. I say I want friends but I don’t, really. I want to be surrounded by versions of myself, stuffed animals propped up along the bed while I decide the plot. it’s like I either want others down in the pit with me, puking their heart-guts out alongside mine, or I want an audience. but only a specific kind of audience and they can only watch me when I say so. I’m particular, I’m hiding, I’m an exhibitionist who shrieks and cries victim when she catches you watching. I have a complicated relationship with the internet. I have been posting for thirty years.

I have no idea how interested anyone is in what I have to say. I wrote a book that a lot of people have read, but the book is one thing and I am another. I think a lot of writers are boring and foolish online and I don’t want to be like them. I want to be myself. but that feels so risky. maybe I am foolish after all.

last year I read three sci-fi novels that changed the way I think. they were the first sci-fi novels I’ve ever read. the trilogy is called the remembrance of earth’s past and the author is cixin liu, tho people usually refer to the trilogy as the three-body problem, which is the title of the first novel. this isn’t a recommendation, tho I do recommend the novels—it’s more like an explanation, a bit of context. because it really feels like every big idea I have these days can be traced back to these novels.

there is a plot point in the third novel (no spoilers) that involves information being disguised in fairy tales. the stakes, in this scenario, are extremely high. so much depends on one character being able to simultaneously communicate and hide meaning inside a story. the stakes of me writing a novel are nowhere near that level, but they still feel debilitatingly high.

I am spiraling around questions of meaning and what I can feasibly communicate in a story that will be released into the world. part of what I am working on right now, besides writing prose, is accepting that not everyone will get it. this is hard for me. I catch myself obsessing over hypothetical responses, the ones that won’t grant me the benefit of the doubt, or will assume I’m not in control. conceptualizing readership as multidimensional is helpful. I tell myself that readers in the lower dimensions are not going to experience everything I am offering and there’s nothing I can do about that. this is a little condescending, but I think of them as the flat people carl sagan talks about in this clip, my favorite clip from cosmos.

there are readers who will reach the higher dimensions of what I write, and it’s more fun to think about them. are you one of those readers? I hope you are. I really do have a lot to offer, a whole world that you’re welcome to inhabit, too. there are stipulations here, tho I think they’re easy enough to follow. be open to alliances, embrace discomfort, don’t police, keep an eye on your own paranoia.

does this make sense? is the tone too weird? (that’s ok, you can leave.) I am holding back, erring on the side of cryptic, but once I have a better idea of what this will become, the shape of it will become clearer and the voice I use here will become more free. you will get an idea of what I am working on for the second book and getting glimpses into my process might help yours, too.

I hope you will keep reading,
k.e.r