One hundred slakes
or, somehow one hundred slakes
Some long time ago, I hit a button on a website I’d only just heard of and in so doing I sallied forth into the ether a whole set of words strung together into nonsensical sentences about something or other. Possibly whisky.
Ninety nine posts later, not much has changed.
OK, so maybe a few things have changed. I’ve written and written and written, sitting here at my desk, sometimes with a coffee, sometimes without1, trying to hone a craft I care dearly about. Be it morning, evening, or the train home from work—in all these places I write. Even mid-walk, when an idea has smacked me about the face with its untimely imposition, I find I have to jot it down lest it be lost to the winds and carried to someone else. I’ve written and edited (and edited and edited), sweating too much over the placement of every single word. The repetition has been good for me. The (mostly upheld) self-imposed deadline of weekly posts has been good for me. It’s been a routine to stop myself from procrastinating2.
I don’t really have a plan for what I want to say here. One hundred posts is hard to fathom. That's at least ten more than ninety. Scrolling through the archive is a strange experience. It speaks to the fleeting nature of creativity that I can go and click on something I wrote last year and not really recall doing the writing, or having any idea where the idea came from. Those moments of creativity born ephemeral are what I crave.
It has, of course, been thrilling. More so because I know that there might be someone—you—here reading. Thank you. It’s really rather special that you’re here.
A lot of things have happened this year. A lot of things may still happen this year. Time marches on and the age of a new… oh, wait, no, that’s something else. Anyway, I keep thinking about what next year means for this space of slaked words and what it means for me to strive onward in attempts to be a writer. I keep seesawing between emotions of well this is a fun side thing to that of admit to yourself, you want this to be more than just a fun side thing.
As I close out this short missive, one more thing: I keep a draft of snippets of writing that either get culled during editing or that I ruminate on, pondering whether to insert somewhere. Some of these jottings might even have made the cut into some story or other2. The draft of snippets is full of plenty of things I wince at but keep there as fertiliser, but occasionally I see within the compost arrangements of words I enjoy and that continue to ferment. I don’t even know what some of these are3, but here are a sprinkling.
The wind began to pick up from the north, tinged with warmth and something I couldn’t quite define.
If there had been another tattooed there on her skin, wrapped across the edge of her ribs, then the creature traced there would have been me.
The long spindle of a church spire loomed in the distance, marking our destination. The pub in the village, that is; not the church. It may have been Sunday, but our religious beliefs amounted to nothing more than an acknowledgement of good architecture.
It's the coffee talking. It does that. I've started consuming it again. I take a syringe and fill it with espresso, then attach a needle and slowly pierce my eyeball, pushing the plunger until the contents flood my eyes, my world darkening as the black and organic substance clouds my vision, distorts my world, reveals the very reality I wish I could forever perceive.
I have looked back on these pages, seen the descent through which I have fallen, the labyrinthine words that now succumb to my heart. And so I retreat.
I saw in every tree an angel, already fallen upon this earth.
Synodic4.
A hundred words strangled my throat, yet I said nothing, looking instead to the silhouette of branches that played across the sky.
“A consequence of branches,” she said, reading my gaze.
“A consequence?” I asked.
“It is what I call it, when a tree has enough limbs.”
I squinted, wondering how many was enough.
“And what of flowers?” I asked, thinking of when we had stopped in the forest.
“An undulance,” she said, stifling her laughter, her hand on her mouth as she rolled her body into mine.
Let us not forget the great coffee drought that swept through my limbic system in 2023.
Obviously I didn’t check.
OK so I can at least spot trace elements of The Sernox here.
Back in the cabinet with ye!
These are beautiful snippets, or slakes! I find this especially clever: "It may have been Sunday, but our religious beliefs amounted to nothing more than an acknowledgement of good architecture." All these could be like inspiration prompts for others. I do hope you keep unfolding these words and the worlds within them. Congratulations on your 100th post!
Try doing One Hundred pieces of digital ART ! Sometimes my Idea Fairy whacks me with her mallet & I just have to get on Canva OR ELSE.