The City of Refuge
scenes from the city of eternal sunset
4F - 🌅
There is a city that exists perpetually on the horizon, forever bathed in the golden hour, caught forever in the moment between the inhale and exhale of the world. Those who are born there have never known a pure blue sky and spend the days and nights of their lives awash in the glow of pink clouds. They pause occasionally in their day to marvel at the …
50 - 🌇
The cinema of the City of Refuge is largely as one would expect. When the lanterns dim and the curtains open in the grand movie houses, an orchestra swells as title cards give way to sweeping Todd-AO panoramas that subsume their audiences into a neighboring reality for a few hours (with a brief intermission). The films are, of course, timeless in the tr…
51 - 🚬
After a long day of nothing and bliss, I exited the train and immediately realized the quality of light had shifted from the familiar evergold of permanent sunset to harsh neon bleeding out onto wet pavement. I had left the city, perhaps for good, and found myself somewhere distant and familiar.
53 - 🏮
Your busy mind will wander, your distracted feet will take over, you will find yourself climbing a previously unknown stairwell and opening the heavy metal door at the top. Through that door you will behold a society above society making their lives across the rooftops of the City of Refuge.
The City of Night
postcards from oblivion
55 - ♠️
On the outskirts of the City of Night, out where the wind hardly disturbs the ink and obsidian, a rundown little watering hole offers the only meager illumination available. To call it a building would be an embellishment: some permanent structure houses a kitchen and some storage, but the rest of the establishment consists of a corrugated tin roof held…
Bottles
not-necessarily-in-universe short stories
4C - 🎱
You’ve never seen the alley before, let alone the curio shoppe nestled within. Surely it must have always been there, but it has never caught your eye, never drawn you in, never directed your feet toward it. You’ve never felt your hand on the brass handle of the dark oak door as it yielded to your ingress. You’ve never been embraced by the smell of i…
4E - 📻
If you take Old State Route 73 north out of Martin, South Dakota and follow the bends after it becomes Hisle Road, not long after you cross the bridge over Bear-in-the-Lodge Creek, you may notice a dirt road that leads to a house in the distance. The house, once a retreat for a civil engineer from Omaha who earned a decent living solving infrastructure…
54 - 🐓
We are in a Chevy Silverado of indeterminate vintage. With the windows open, a choking cloud of clay kicked up from the tires fills the cabin. With the windows down, the sun bakes the vinyl dashboard and upholstery, commingling with the fumes of an ever-present packet of Red Man chaw to produce a unique smell that my brain will replicate for me whenever…
56 - 🚉
Death grip on coffee, perched on the border of consciousness, perception dulled to the squeal of brakes that pierce the dawn, the commuters wordlessly perform their routine shuffle across the threshold into the train. In an orderly fashion they slide onto the stiff vinyl padding of the benches and proceed to distract themselves with email, books, social…
Quarterly Reports
weirdo nonsense corporate speak to promote synergy and highlighting outstanding finds
4D - 💹 - Q1 Quarterly Report
Thank you all for taking a moment out of your valuable time to read the quarterly report. We think it will be well worth your time to peruse this overview so that you can understand how your investment is being applied and, more importantly, when you can expect to see a return.
57 - 📊 - Q3 Quarterly Report
Hello everyone, thank you for your remote, asynchronous, compulsory attendance of this important all-hands meeting. We will begin by reviewing this quarter’s accomplishments, see how we’re tracking with our previously established OKRs, put the spotlight on our new executive team member, and take a look at what’s coming up for Q4.
Older Tasting Notes
Tasting Notes Classic - digital mixtape liner notes without any of that bonkers fiction nonsense
4B - 🎠
sometimes i end up in a strange country, not having had any purpose while wandering. i’m not entirely displeased with where i am, tasting unfamiliar fruit and sampling unconventional scents. there’s no consistency here, nothing that heralds a typical, ordered beauty. this land shines from unusual facets, plaster applied in arrangements that seem unorde…
49 - 🎩
ok i know i know it’s hardly new year now. been on a bit of vacation from all things social but i’m back baby. the start of a new calendar is always a good time to be reflective, so a couple of meta notes before the tasting notes:
48 - 🤩 - m b b o n t m
This has become an end-of-year tradition for me: compile a playlist of songs by my favorite artists that I became aware of this year. This produces a document that encompasses my musical exploration, which generally serves as an anchoring artifact that I can return to when I need a temperature check on this place in time.
47 - 🤐
the relationship is not one of face value. there are sad songs that make you happy. they sound like the window open on a cool rainy day with nothing to do. and the party bangers, they’re implicitly foreshadowing a hangover, an arduous clean up, regret of poor impulse control. melancholy is not one singular thing. it is not mere sadness, it is a little…
46 - 🧛🏻♀️
my wife recently asked me why i like horror movies. she really doesn’t. she describes it as two hours of bad feelings and tension followed by a lingering suspicion that the world really contains, if not supernatural phenomenon, a deranged psychotic who wants to do something bad to people. she’s not wrong.
45 - 😤
I guess "nostalgia" has been on my mind. P, 14, and I were in Rockport for a summer trip we take often but this year almost everything was different: the Fudgery is closed, our favorite restaurant didn't have the right food, puttering about the beach doesn't hold quite the same appeal as when she was 6... we were sitting at lunch talking about "the past…
