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        <title>crow tinylogger</title>
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        <description>crow's tinylogger blog feed</description>
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        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[muse feb ]]></title>
            <link>http://tinylogger.com/crow/bA8IKVvqsnhR8dz6</link>
            <guid>bA8IKVvqsnhR8dz6</guid>
            <pubDate>Wed, 30 Apr 2025 20:32:25 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded><![CDATA[week of feb 17th: write something that pulls from both a childhood memory (or something nostalgic to childhood) and a recent memory! explore how the two connect and differ

The smell of chicken permeated the kitchen no matter how wide Neuma kept the balcony door open. She paced near the sink, occasionally glancing at Jacin who was devouring a chicken thigh the way a dog would after stealing it from someone's plate. Despite the hell he’d been putting her through all week, she still felt a little sorry for him. Whatever. It was too much to think about right now, and she could use the company.

She directed her steps towards her room and reached under her bed to pull out a bottle of gin. 

"Still drinking that 'garbidge'?" Jacin wrinkled his nose at her as she came back in. 

She gave him a deep, frustrated sigh that bordered on a rattle. "All I've got is garbage."

"Serves you right." He rolled his eyes at Neuma's raised brow, and continued through another bite of chicken: "If you didn't shop so much, you'd be able to afford proper bottles, nya."

"Nah." Neuma tapped her phone, "I haven't been shopping. Friend borrowed my card." 

She opened the fridge and leaned against the door. "She'll pay me back. I don't really care."

"Friend?"

"New friend, ya. Said her name's Ran. Forgot if it's short for anythin'." 

She shuffled through the vegetable drawer and pulled out a bottle. "What..."

Jacin, whose face had dropped the moment Neuma spoke of Ran, stood up to look over her shoulder. Neuma turned around, shutting the fridge door with her shoulder. 

"Dude." She waved the dark purple glass bottle at him. "Date syrup."

Jacin's eyes widened as he scanned the label. "Jelleb?"

Neuma nodded. With the biggest smile he'd given in weeks, Jacin rushed to grab two cups. 

"This is gonna go so hard with the gin. Trust. Trust."

"Does that feel familiar to you?" Neuma asked as she poured the syrup. "Minus the alcohol, I mean." 

"Uh, yeah, we drink this stuff every summer. Jelleb on ice, with nuts on top." 

"Huh." Neuma frowned. She couldn't recall. She finished pouring the gin and raised her glass after giving everything a good stir. Jacin clinked his against hers with a small "cheers". They took a solemn sip.

"Still 'garbidge'," Jacin lamented. 

Neuma smiled. "Ya, but it's nostalgic garbage." 

Jacin nodded vigorously. Messy bleached strands clung to his sauce-stained mouth, and he aggressively pushed them aside with the back of his hand. "Oh yeah. Y'know what? This would be even better as shots."

"Wow." Neuma slammed her fist on the kitchen counter. "You're a genius, man."

They moved to her room and sat on the floor, armed with as many shot glasses as Neuma could carry in one hand, as many snacks as Jacin could find in the pantry, and the determination to forget how to speak proper English before midnight. 

"Bro." Neuma slammed her glass onto the floor. "How come you look like a thirteen-year-old girl?"

Jacin looked at her with a straight face. Half of his face was lit by Neuma's desk lamp, the other half entirely shrouded in hair and darkness. Neuma opened her mouth to apologise, but Jacin's smile interrupted her train of thought. He laughed.

"I literally went through divine punishment, man. I was starved through most of my formative years." He leaned forwards to line up the shot glasses again, his entire face now obscured in darkness.

Before she could stop herself, Neuma's next question slipped out. "Ya, but like, were you born a man?"

"Were you born a fucking idiot?" 

Neuma raised her hands. She couldn't tell if he was upset - she was too drunk to apologise properly, anyway. "Wow. Ya, I was. Sorry."

Jacin's nasal shortle filled the room. "What kind of teen girls do you hang out with, bro? I'm one ugly fucker."

Neuma froze, mid-reach for the gin. "You're kidding, right?"

"Always." He swiped the bottle from under her hand and took a swig. "How come you gave your credit card info to a stranger?"

"She's a friend."

"You aren't even sure of her name."

"I don't really care about names." 

The room grew quiet. Every few shots or nacho bites, Jacin would speak up and talk about something that happened summers ago. Neuma thought that there was something stupidly sweet about this whole thing: the syrup, of course, but also the way everything got calmer a few shots in, instead of descending into drunken chaos. She savoured the syrup, feeling the warmth of summer memories she never had along with the burn of the alcohol. She knew Jacin would dunk on her if she thanked him for sharing what his childhood summers were like. On her next shot, Neuma figured that nostalgia wasn't meant to be experienced alone - much like jelleb. And much like jelleb, nostalgia seemed to sweeten things enough for Jacin to ride out the garbage gin. 



]]></content:encoded>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[muse dec 16]]></title>
            <link>http://tinylogger.com/crow/1bHaxlFTvPgK2gUx</link>
            <guid>1bHaxlFTvPgK2gUx</guid>
            <pubDate>Sat, 04 Jan 2025 17:21:43 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded><![CDATA[week of dec 16th: come up with a title and write a piece around it!

paper coaster
-



Ran's bedroom was the coldest in the house, making it especially difficult to get out of bed. She reached behind her headboard to pull free her long, wavy hair - she had developed the habit of wedging her head between the wall and the headboard to sleep - and slowly made her way to the bathroom.

She wore a white shirt layered under a black dress. The thick denim of the garment at least kept her warm. Sliding on her woolen knee socks, she stepped into her cowboy boots and grabbed her axe.

Instead of heading to the kitchen, Ran descended to the basement, to her temple of thirty-three faces. She sat on a stone stool, and one of the grey masks mounted on the wall shifted outward. A body, attached to the anonymous face it bore, emerged sluggishly and wandered about before returning with a cup of hot chocolate. She smiled, eyes closed as she always did, and thanked it before taking a sip of the warm drink.

As she went to place her mug on the empty stool beside her, a pale hand slid a paper coaster under it. Her gaze flicked to the reddened knuckles, then to the scars and freckles of the intruder - the one she came to know as "the horrors."

Without a word, he picked up the axe she had left resting against the wall and walked away.

That was the last time she ever saw him.



]]></content:encoded>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[muse prompt]]></title>
            <link>http://tinylogger.com/crow/VMxjXBZoOgvv4PDa</link>
            <guid>VMxjXBZoOgvv4PDa</guid>
            <pubDate>Mon, 30 Dec 2024 22:40:11 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded><![CDATA[prompt: write about someone you look up to or aspire to be like-- a role model of any kind. how do you relate to them? what about them resonates with you? is there anything you don't like about them? credit to tasmyn / ormulum for this suggestion
 


"Enzo Mari was a universe." (Francesca Giacomelli /Disegno journal)
Enzo Mari was a designer, a critic, a provocateur. He didn’t see design as decoration but as a way to confront the world’s problems. Mari believed that good design shouldn’t just look nice or sell well, it should be useful, lasting, and honest. His work was about people and how they live. That belief (that design has a moral purpose) pulls me in, makes me want to do better, think harder, and not settle for mediocrity.

Take Autoprogettazione, his DIY furniture manual. It wasn’t just a set of design plans, it was a manifesto. He wanted people to connect with the act of making, to understand the materials, the joints, the weight of wood in their hands. He wasn’t selling products, he was teaching people how to make their own, rejecting the waste of mass production and the ever-hungry consumerism it feeds. That resonates with me because I’ve always felt uneasy with the wasteful culture we live in. Mari’s work feels like a challenge: a reminder that what we create should matter, not just now, for us, but for decades.

It’s not easy to sit with Mari’s ideas. He was uncompromising, sharp, always insanely creative. When I look at his book 25 Ways to Drive a Nail, I see how deeply he thought about even the most mundane tasks, elevating them into art, but also how exacting he was, leaving no room for shortcuts. In an interview, he said 

“Political activity consists of bringing others round to one’s own position. Isn’t that perhaps the shared goal of design?”  He was openly a communist, despite the backlash he could've faced for following such an ideology in Italy. “Would you like me to reveal a secret straightaway? I realize it’s a suicidal thing to say, but I’m going to do it anyway: I’m a communist.”  A bravery I hope to be able to emulate.



When I work, it can feel like Mari is staring over my shoulder, asking, "Why are you wasting time on this? Why isn’t it better?" even if the real Mari probably wouldn't have said that, haha. Mari’s work pushes me to try to make things that aren’t just convenient or trendy but that have meaning, that respect the user, the maker, and the world they exist in. Mari didn’t settle, and he wouldn’t want us to, either. That’s the part of him I aspire to most.]]></content:encoded>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[muse prompt:first week of dec]]></title>
            <link>http://tinylogger.com/crow/IsCChGpCIJ842lOF</link>
            <guid>IsCChGpCIJ842lOF</guid>
            <pubDate>Sat, 07 Dec 2024 19:11:40 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded><![CDATA[the prompt: explore a mythological, religious, spiritual, etc figure in a piece of writing. write about their story, or their energy, or what they mean to you, or something else entirely!

--


I think about Asherah a lot.

In the Old Testament, there was a law that forbade people from planting "asherim" near temples made to worship God. "Asherim" is plural - scholars speculate on whether these asherim were just trees or carved poles as well, but they were planted in honor of Asherah.

Asherah, consort of El, the Queen of Heaven. The Lion Lady. We planted groves in her name. Look! A forest of sacred trees, alive with whispered prayers and the scent of welcoming resin, branches reaching skyward like arms uplifted in praise. Each tree was a hymn under a cathedral of leaves.

But the asherim were cut down, turned to ash, and scattered in the winds of time. Her name became practically an annotation, a noun, with one foot in the margins.

If you stay still and wait, you can still hear her in the spaces between the noises that usually take over your day. In the rustle of leaves after a car passes or the hum of the earth after the metro rumbles past a waiting crowd. She is the mother who neither scolds nor demands, but simply exists, patient and ever-present, and waits for her children to return.

There is something breathtaking about her presence, even now. She's part of a balance we've all heard of - a divine feminine to counter the roaring, modern masculine. Asherah is not thunder and commandments, no, she is quiet growth and enduring strength. She's taken so much slander - yet she is the sacred tree that watches time pass, unhurried and wise, her branches offering shelter even to those who would seek to destroy her. 


Her hands are calloused from tending roots through metal and concrete, but her eyes are soft, like the stars reflected on the summer waters by the coast of Sidon. She doesn’t ask to be worshipped. Her skin is covered with scars of asphalt, yet she remains humanity's nutrix. 

I wonder what might have been if her groves had remained. Would humanity have learned something different about itself under her branches? If we could step back into her forests, I imagine the air would be thick with the scent of myrrh and sap. I think she would speak in parables, not to withhold, but because humanity has always gotten its best wisdoms through discovery, not dictation.

Asherah feels like a secret, and perhaps she always was. Like a riddle scribbled on a cardboard coffee cup by an anonymous hand for the right person to solve. There’s a bittersweet warmth to her story, like seeing a picture of a place you’ve never visited pop up on your feed in the middle of the night, but somehow still long to return to.]]></content:encoded>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[insides (muse prompt)]]></title>
            <link>http://tinylogger.com/crow/vhVoWXnIzn8op9hS</link>
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            <pubDate>Sat, 30 Nov 2024 21:18:21 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded><![CDATA["Despite it all, there are still people who are willing to love me."

Standing before her was a corroded office door. She brushed the rusty spherical handle with her fingertips. Shivers ran up her spine as flashbacks that weren't hers shot from her wrist to the back of her head - images of pain and despair beyond what anyone should experience. She knew she had to step in. It was the only way.

Bitter saliva pooled in the back of her throat as she slowly opened the door. The room was cold, but she could feel warmth radiating from somewhere in the darkness—it felt like sunrays hitting her cheek, yet her surroundings were pitch black.

She took a few steps in, following the warmth, before scurrying back.

"...Mars?"

In front of her, on the wall, she could see a silhouette. It didn't look human, and she thought she could see something glisten in the mass of darkness before her. But she could sense it—that warmth...

As if waiting for her to speak, the room suddenly lit up, buzzing off-white LED tubes above her head bathing the room in a sickly hue.

Her eyes widened as she beheld the grotesque mass adhered to the wall. Stretch across the concrete and peeling yellowing paint was a tangled amalgamation of muscle and bone and scarlet flesh, a horrifying sculpture of anatomy twisted beyond recognition. Sinews of muscle fibers stretched alongside anchoring chunks of burgundy tissue that seemed to pulsate - was it alive? Exposed ribs arched outward like the skeletal frame of a monstrous cathedral, each bone interlaced with strands of raw, quivering muscle.

Veins coursed over the surface, engorged with dark, sluggish blood that gave the entire mass... oh God, it gave it rhythm. A twisted dance to a melody she almost couldn't hear, yet it was there, the squelching and a soft wail, so soft... here and there, patches of pale skin clung desperately to the underlying flesh, torn and frayed at the edges like tattered cloth, and if her gaze lingered too long she could see peach fuzz and freckles. And oh Lord, jutting out off-center was what remained of a skull, one eye socket empty while the other housed an orb that swiveled erratically, its gaze landing on her with unsettling intent.

This warmth...

"Mars?" she whispered again so low she wasn't sure she had spoken at all.

In response, the single eye lowered its gaze slowly. A fissure opened below it, revealing more layers of flesh, more layers of muscle, until she could see it, right there, unmistakably... a beating heart. Tendrils of flesh began to protrude from the sides, reaching out towards her like the bulging little arms of a newborn baby seeking an embrace.

Despite the revulsion twisting in her stomach, she took a hesitant step forward. The mass quivered, and a louder wail emanated from deep within it.

Compelled by an inexplicable force, she reached out her hand. The moment she touched the slick surface of the flesh, a surge of emotions flooded her mind: anguish, longing, love,terrible loneliness. The eye rolled back, and the tendrils wrapped gently around her wrist, not to restrain, but to connect.

And she understood. 


]]></content:encoded>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[Home (Muse Ariadne prompt)]]></title>
            <link>http://tinylogger.com/crow/MTYMhdBxg5fMQbIT</link>
            <guid>MTYMhdBxg5fMQbIT</guid>
            <pubDate>Sun, 24 Nov 2024 22:09:40 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded><![CDATA[(more info : https://museariadne.neocities.org/)
(you may find my muse page on baalbek.neocities.org)

" look around your room, or any space that you love & call home, and write about some aspect of it"

"I suppose that'll do."

Her mother had just left for Beirut. Neuma scanned her new room with a critical look, as if she were logging the HEX color code of every piece of furniture: white wallpaper tethering on blue, a brown desk that shone orange but looked red near the wall... A great window spanned the entire width of her room, offering little privacy save for the thick grey curtains drawn over the dusty glass that framed a direct view of her neighbors.

The air smelled faintly of cedar from an "acqua profumata" her mom had bought her. She sighed and let her gaze wander back to the desk. The light spilling in from the edges of the curtain gave the varnished wood a peculiar glow, shifting in color depending on where she stood. It reminded her of the way her mother’s nail polish looked different in the warm lights of their old living room in Beirut compared to the sharp fluorescence of the airport.

Neuma took a sip of tap water, slipping between the heavy curtains and the window, her fingers grazing the cool glass. The quiet inside her new room was different from the quiet she remembered in Beirut. There, silence was a fragile thing, always at risk of breaking from a sudden horn blaring or a television spilling news no-one wanted to hear. Here, it was dense, as if the room itself was holding its breath, waiting for her to say something. She shifted away from the window, letting the curtains fall into place, muffling the sound of a dog that had suddenly barked - there were so many dogs in this city, Neuma hadn't seen a single cat yet. A cheerful voice called out, followed by laughter. She tried to imagine herself joining in, becoming part of the neighborhood instead of a stranger peeking in through its cracks. But she knew better than to try to belong anywhere: she never settled long enough to do so.

For now, this room would have to do. The curtains, the desk, the dusty window: they were all hers, at least for a while. As the sun dipped lower in the sky, scattering cool beige rays into the room, she made a promise to herself: this time, she would unpack her suitcase.
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        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[laundry day]]></title>
            <link>http://tinylogger.com/crow/oyXedBagfxnLt0Wx</link>
            <guid>oyXedBagfxnLt0Wx</guid>
            <pubDate>Fri, 22 Nov 2024 19:23:21 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded><![CDATA[It's six PM & I'm thinking about wine again. You're nowhere to be seen, which is unusual, but a part of me is glad - you make it difficult to indulge in vices, light of my days.

I sit on the floor and the room spins.
I'm not drunk, no, my brain is playing tricks on me. It seems to be doing this all the time - trick me, I mean, not the spinning. The Devil is in my skull & the only way out for him is through a hole in my head. I suppose my mouth will do for now.

But I do not throw up, I never do. It reminds me of what you said about making yourself puke to lose weight. 
So I drink, or pop a few pills, or smoke enough to cleanse my synapses like a freshly sage-smudged room. I realize that you've been calling my line, but I do not pick up. I keep going until my ego is a puddle on the floor, until I've mangled my psyche enough to be unrecognizable to myself, until "I" am barely around, tethering between this world and the static blanket of total dissociation. You're calling me, but I'm looking at my phone on the floor a few feet away through heavy eyelids and ten degrees of separation from my own body. I can see myself sway left and right. I might hear myself speak. I do not speak.

At midnight, I pick up the phone.
]]></content:encoded>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[in class]]></title>
            <link>http://tinylogger.com/crow/IKi9Y1yIRBEBF1d5</link>
            <guid>IKi9Y1yIRBEBF1d5</guid>
            <pubDate>Thu, 21 Nov 2024 21:53:09 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded><![CDATA[black zipper duffel bag bodies in bodies of water terrible temperament a storm full of rose petals lying on a snowy pavement, a box of tissues in your therapist's office this cab isn't yellow it's blue like a bruise it shifts under the moonlight and you blush thinking about your first kiss with a wolf of a man you stole a tiger eye ring from until your headphones run out of battery and you ponder the meaning of this existence and your position on humanity's timeline but it's no use to stop and think because the world goes on without you like a beautiful platinum marble full of warm blood that tastes like milk and honey and the first bite of the fruit of the tree of eden and there's no other choice than to walk out when he starts yelling and throwing beer bottles out in the heat of a summer from ten years ago that you thought you wouldn't see again outside of the eight minutes god gives you to look back on all you've done and witnessed.]]></content:encoded>
        </item>
        <item>
            <title><![CDATA[text zero]]></title>
            <link>http://tinylogger.com/crow/cGSJcKNREWp3wUEI</link>
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            <pubDate>Sun, 17 Nov 2024 21:53:55 GMT</pubDate>
            <content:encoded><![CDATA[in the citrus fog of south italy i saw a great big wolf by the name of randy. he had grey ears and a dark muzzle and he spoke these words to me: do good by your parents and you shall be rewarded eternally. do good by god and you shall be rewarded even more. i asked randy how that was possible but he didn't elaborate. we sat by the water and he took out a flimsy fishing rod. we talked about the sunset and how everything dies and he said that god doesn't die and that nothing else matters. ]]></content:encoded>
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