Trauma and Violets

18 May, 2025

(an almost‑respectable dispatch from the intersection of cosmic dread and dirty fingernails)

Non-specific cosmic shifts that may be an oculus into doom

Something in the last year has shifted. Specifics, I have no idea. A faint click in the brain stem like lock tumblers falling open. Turn the knob and a rush of dusty wind outward like a sigh. Tasks that once felt herculean now slip beneath the shovel with disconcerting ease.

In order of flabbers least to most ghasting :

3. Writing

I pitched a new tent under vast and frightening new stars and the vibe feels gloriously undergrad again: cheap coffee, bad lighting, the thrill of spilling guts onto a screen at 2 a.m¹. New Old Magic-with-a-k.

I have stopped trying to create Pulitzer-bait treatises on Big Ideas and Deep Thots to attract internet fame. I’m just thinking out loud, tossing words into the void to see which wanderers lick the chum. The soapbox fits my feet, the corner is quiet, and the only background noise is a confused Waymo trying to parallel park and a Labradoodle defiling synthetic turf. Fine ambiance for a sermon no one asked for.

2. Reading

I learned recently that kids that read voraciously, especially fantasy, may have been using reading as an escape from trauma². And, yeah, maybe that was me. I free-based fantasy like Gen Z chases nihilistic dragons. People left me alone when I read because you don't fuck with junkies that might be doing down. But into adult and the absolutely horse piss last few years, it was impossible to focus to read even short things. And the glowing screen is a very persuasive siren. Why read when I could just do scroll and feel sorry for myself instead?

I read in near silence in my study with my cat ³. and like.. that just works now? Even if I'm reading on a device, I'm just not swiping to social media for a good ole angry screed. I don't want to? Maybe I finally cracked the cycle the day I quit shoving every stray thought into Instagram’s or Threads or Whatever's claustrophobic confession booth. You can't get mired in the cesspool you never swan dive into.

1. Tending

This one is something I've been trying to fix in me. I have a garden and an orchard and there's a lot to do. I bought this property in some monastic fugue thinking I, too, could be the zen garden master and rake this sandy, dead interior into something beautiful. At first, stepping into the orchard meant reliving every punitive chore of childhood—sun-scorched penance meted out by vengeful gods.

Sweat in the eyes? Instant profanity. Nettles? Open warfare. It always comes back to trauma.

Not bliss... but a serenity not often felt. Soil under the nails, violets in the air, and the old rage curls up like a salted slug. Maybe this is what “normal” feels like: a human in a field rather than a trauma ghost doing community service? It's become an opportunity to rest with my hand(s)⁴⁵ rather than an endless nightmare of razor weeds that slice through full leather gloves, of finding dust and insect corpses in every pocket of every pair of pants, of anaerobic compost after way too much rain.

The unholy trinity

Shovels + Books + Words = A life that suddenly functions. No choirs singing, no tentacles waiting—just a green hum in the skull where the klaxons used to be.

Maybe the real magic is embarrassingly mundane: do the chores, read the pages, write the words. Repeat until the cosmic horror becomes old radio tunes filtered through a tin can and the day feels… good.

Sure. I'l take that. Even an elder god knows better than to mock a fragile truce.

Footnotes

#garden #me #trauma