The Voice before the Void: Arcana, Story, Poetry

Talking about a game that I’ve never played. Explicit.

-The Voice before the Void

H.P. Lovecraft and the Call of Cthulhu RPG (Role-Playing Game)

The Voice before the Void

A popular poem.

“Vagabond House”

Don Blanding

edited by The Voice before the Void

When I have a house . . . as I sometime may . . .

I’ll suit my fancy in every way.

I’ll fill it with things that have caught my eye

In drifting from Iceland to Molokai.

It won’t be correct or in period style,

But . . . oh, I’ve thought for a long, long while

Of all the corners and all the nooks,

Of all the bookshelves and all the books,

The great big table, the deep, soft chairs,

And the Chinese rug at the foot of the stairs;

It’s an old, old rug from far Chow Wan

That a Chinese princess once walked on.

My house will stand on the side of a hill

By a slow, broad river, deep and still,

With a tall lone pine on guard near by

Where the birds can sing and the stormwinds cry.

A flagstone walk, with lazy curves,

Will lead to the door where a Pan’s head serves

As a knocker there, like a vibrant drum,

To let me know that a friend has come;

And the door will squeak as I swing it wide

To welcome you to the cheer inside.

For I’ll have good friends who can sit and chat

Or simply sit, when it comes to that,

By the fireplace where the fir logs blaze

And the smoke rolls up in a weaving haze.

I’ll want a woodbox, scarred and rough,

For leaves and bark and odorous stuff

Like resinous knots and cones and gums,

To chuck on the flames when winter comes;

And I hope a cricket will stay around,

For I love its creaky, lonesome sound.

A long low shelf of teak will hold

My best-loved books in leather and gold,

While magazines lie on a bowlegged stand

In a polyglot mixture close at hand.

I’ll have on a table a rich brocade

That I think the pixies must have made,

For the dull gold thread on blues and grays

Weaves a pattern of Puck–the Magic Maze.

On the mantlepiece I’ll have a place

For a little mud god with a painted face

That was given to me . . . oh, long ago,

By a Philippine maid in Olongapo.

Then–just in range of a lazy reach–

A bulging bowl of Indian beech

Will brim with things that are good to munch–

Hickory nuts to crack and crunch,

Big fat raisins and sun-dried dates

And curious fruits from the Malay Straits,

Maple sugar and cookies brown,

With good hard cider to wash them down,

Wine-sap apples, pick of the crop,

And ears of corn to shell and pop

With plenty of butter and lots of salt–

If you don’t get filled it’s not my fault.

Pictures . . . I think I’ll have but three:

One, in oil, of a wind-swept sea

With the flying scud and the waves whipped white–

(I know the chap who can paint it right)

In lapis blue and deep jade green–

A great big smashing fine marine

That’ll make you feel the spray in your face–

I’ll hang it over my fireplace.

The second picture–a freakish thing–

Is gaudy and bright as a macaw’s wing–

An impressionist smear called “Sin,”

A nude on a striped zebra skin

By a Danish girl I knew in France.

My respectable friends will look askance

At the purple eyes and the scarlet hair,

At the pallid face and the evil stare

Of the sinister, beautiful vampire face.

I shouldn’t have it about the place,

But I like–while I loathe–the beastly thing,

And that’s the way that one feels about sin.

The picture I love the best of all

Will hang alone on my study wall

Where the sunset’s glow and the moon’s cold gleam

Will fall on the face, and make it seem

St. Valentine’s Day:

A gut-punch of a story of class and sex and privilege and college days.

-The Voice before the Void

“Houseparty”

Walter Bernstein

Fair use of copyrighted material is claimed under United States copyright law for not-for-profit purposes of commentary and education.

Groundhog Day:

Enthusing over this film. Spoilers.

-The Voice before the Void

“Have to see it again.”

The Most Spiritual Hollywood Movie: Groundhog Day, 1993, starring Bill Murray

Fair use of copyrighted material is claimed under United States copyright law for not-for-profit purposes of commentary and education.

 

“Groundhog Day (film)”

Wikipedia

Interpretations and analysis

The film is often considered an allegory of self-improvement, emphasizing that happiness comes from placing the needs of others above one’s own selfish desires. As the released film offers no explanation why the time loop occurs—or why it ends—the viewer is left to draw his or her own conclusions. Rubin has said that while he and Ramis discussed several of the philosophical and spiritual aspects of the film, they “never intended [it] to be anything more than a good, heartfelt, entertaining story”.

“Groundhog Day”, as an expression, has become shorthand for the concept of spiritual transcendence. As such, the film has become a favorite of some Buddhists who see its themes of selflessness and rebirth as reflections of their own spiritual messages. In the Judeo-Christian tradition, it has been seen as a representation of purgatory. “Connors goes to his own version of hell, but since he’s not evil it turns out to be purgatory, from which he is released by shedding his selfishness and committing to acts of love,” wrote Jonah Goldberg. “Meanwhile, Hindus and Buddhists see versions of reincarnation here, and Jews find great significance in the fact that Connors is saved only after he performs mitzvahs (good deeds) and is returned to earth, not heaven, to perform more.” It has even been described by some religious leaders as the “most spiritual film of our time”. “The curse is lifted when Bill Murray blesses the day he has just lived,” wrote the critic Rick Brookhiser. “And his reward is that the day is taken from him. Loving life includes loving the fact that it goes.”

Theologian Michael P. Pholey, writing for Touchstone Magazine, commented on the difficulty of determining a single religious or philosophical interpretation of the film, given Ramis’s “ambiguous religious beliefs” as “an agnostic raised Jewish and married to a Buddhist”, and suggested that when not viewed through a “single hermeneutical lens”, the film could be seen as “a stunning allegory of moral, intellectual, and even religious excellence in the face of postmodern decay, a sort of Christian-Aristotelian Pilgrim’s Progress for those lost in the contemporary cosmos.” Others see an interpretation of Nietzsche’s directive to imagine life—metaphorically or literally—as an endless repetition of events. “How would this shape your actions?” asks Goldberg. “What would you choose to live out for all eternity?”

 

“Groundhog Almighty”

Alex Kuczynski

The New York Times

2003 December 7

Since its debut a decade ago, the film has become a curious favorite of religious leaders of many faiths, who all see in “Groundhog Day” a reflection of their own spiritual messages. Curators of the series, polling some 35 critics in the literary, religious and film worlds to suggest films with religious interpretations, found that “Groundhog Day” came up so many times that there was actually a squabble over who would write about it in the retrospective’s catalog.

Harold Ramis, the director of the film and one of its writers, said last week that since it came out he has heard from Jesuit priests, rabbis and Buddhists, and that the letters keep coming. “At first I would get mail saying, ‘Oh, you must be a Christian, because the movie so beautifully expresses Christian beli...

Winter:

A revery of a night wintry.

-The Voice before the Void

“Frost at Midnight”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

The Frost performs its secret ministry,

Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry

Came loud—and hark, again! loud as before.

The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,

Have left me to that solitude, which suits

Abstruser musings: save that at my side

My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.

‘Tis calm indeed! so calm that it disturbs

And vexes meditation with its strange

And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,

This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,

With all the numberless goings-on of life,

Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame

Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;

Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,

Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.

Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature

Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,

Making it a companionable form,

Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit

By its own moods interprets, every where

Echo or mirror seeking of itself,

And makes a toy of Thought.

But O! how oft,

How oft, at school, with most believing mind,

Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,

To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft

With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt

Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,

Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang

From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,

So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me

With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear

Most like articulate sounds of things to come!

So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,

Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!

And so I brooded all the following morn,

Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye

Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:

Save if the door half opened, and I snatched

A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,

For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,

Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,

My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,

Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,

Fill up the intersperséd vacancies

And momentary pauses of the thought!

My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart

With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,

And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,

And in far other scenes! For I was reared

In the great city, pent ‘mid cloisters dim,

And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.

But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze

By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags

Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,

Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores

And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear

The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible

Of that eternal language, which thy God

Utters, who from eternity doth teach

Himself in all, and all things in himself.

Great universal Teacher! he shall mould

Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,

Whether the summer clothe the general earth

With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing

Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch

Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch

Smokes in the sun-thaw; whether the eave-drops fall

Heard only in the trances of the blast,

Or if the secret ministry of frost

Shall hang them up in silent icicles,

Quietly shining to the quiet Moon.

World War I:

The Great War inspired a lot of poetry.

-The Voice before the Void

“Winter Stars”

Sara Teasdale

I went out at night alone;

The young blood flowing beyond the sea

Seemed to have drenched my spirit’s wings—

I bore my sorrow heavily.

But when I lifted up my head

From shadows shaken on the snow,

I saw Orion in the east

Burn steadily as long ago.

From windows in my father’s house,

Dreaming my dreams on winter nights,

I watched Orion as a girl

Above another city’s lights.

Years go, dreams go, and youth goes too,

The world’s heart breaks beneath its wars,

All things are changed, save in the east

The faithful beauty of the stars.

What darker?

-The Voice before the Void

“The Snow-Shower”

William Cullen Bryant

Stand here by my side and turn, I pray,

On the lake below, thy gentle eyes;

The clouds hang over it, heavy and gray,

And dark and silent the water lies;

And out of that frozen mist the snow

In wavering flakes begins to flow;

Flake after flake

They sink in the dark and silent lake.

See how in a living swarm they come

From the chambers beyond that misty veil;

Some hover awhile in air, and some

Rush prone from the sky like summer hail.

All, dropping swiftly or settling slow,

Meet, and are still in the depths below;

Flake after flake

Dissolved in the dark and silent lake.

Here delicate snow-stars, out of the cloud,

Come floating downward in airy play,

Like spangles dropped from the glistening crowd

That whiten by night the milky way;

There broader and burlier masses fall;

The sullen water buries them all–

Flake after flake–

All drowned in the dark and silent lake.

And some, as on tender wings they glide

From their chilly birth-cloud, dim and gray,

Are joined in their fall, and, side by side,

Come clinging along their unsteady way;

As friend with friend, or husband with wife,

Makes hand in hand the passage of life;

Each mated flake

Soon sinks in the dark and silent lake.

Lo! while we are gazing, in swifter haste

Stream down the snows, till the air is white,

As, myriads by myriads madly chased,

They fling themselves from their shadowy height.

The fair, frail creatures of middle sky,

What speed they make, with their grave so nigh;

Flake after flake,

To lie in the dark and silent lake!

I see in thy gentle eyes a tear;

They turn to me in sorrowful thought;

Thou thinkest of friends, the good and dear,

Who were for a time, and now are not;

Like these fair children of cloud and frost,

That glisten a moment and then are lost,

Flake after flake–

All lost in the dark and silent lake.

Yet look again, for the clouds divide;

A gleam of blue on the water lies;

And far away, on the mountain-side,

A sunbeam falls from the opening skies,

But the hurrying host that flew between

The cloud and the water, no more is seen;

Flake after flake,

At rest in the dark and silent lake.

EXPLICIT CONTENT

Sara Young is a body-positive artist and writer. Find more of her work at:

EloquentAsFuck.com

“Brian, Lola and The Texas Swingers Club”

from Eloquent as Fuck

Sara Young

eloquentasfuck.com/blog/brian-lola-and-the-texas-swingers-club

Text © copyright 2015 by Sara Young. Phonorecord ℗ copyright 2017 by Sara Young and The Voice before the Void. All rights reserved.

Winter:

All downhill.

-The Voice before the Void

“Tobogganing”

Hattie Howard

Oh, the rare exhilaration,

Oh, the novel delectation

Of a ride down the slide!

Packed like ice in zero weather,

Pleasure-seekers close together,

On a board as thin as wafer,

Barely wider, scarcely safer,

At the height of recreation

Find a glorious inspiration,

Ere the speedy termination

In the snowy meadow wide,

Sloping to the river’s side.

Oh, such quakers we begin it,

Timorous of the icy route!

But to learn in half a minute

What felicity is in it,

As we shoot down the chute,

Smothered in toboggan suit,

Redingote or roquelaure,

Buttoned up (and down) before,

Mittens, cap, and moccasin,

Just the garb to revel in;

So, the signal given, lo!

Over solid ice and snow,

Down the narrow gauge we go

Swifter than a bird o’erhead,

Swifter than an arrow sped

From the staunchest, strongest bow.

Oh, it beats all “Copenhagen,”

Silly lovers’ paradise!

Like the frozen Androscoggin,

Slippery, and smooth, and nice,

Is the track of the toboggan;

And there’s nothing cheap about it,

Everything is steep about it,

The insolvent weep about it,

For the biggest thing on ice

Is its tip-top price;

But were this three times the money,

Then the game were thrice as funny.

Ye who dwell in latitudes

Where “the blizzard” ne’er intrudes,

And the water seldom freezes;

Ye of balmy Southern regions,

Alabama’s languid legions,

From the “hot blast” of your breezes,

Where the verdure of the trees is

Limp, and loose, and pitiful,

Come up here where branches bare

Stand like spikes in frosty air;

Come up here where arctic rigor

Shall restore your bloom and vigor,

Making life enjoyable;

Come and take a jog on

The unparalleled toboggan!

Such the zest that he who misses

Never knows what perfect bliss is.

So the sport, the day’s sensation,

Thrills and recreates creation.

A Frenchman telling a tale of Moors and Spaniards.

-The Voice before the Void

“The Pearl of Toledo”

Prosper Mérimée

translated from the French