Autre lieu où l'on se déporte à l'est de tout, où l'on peut sans craindre bannir le moi, le nous, tribunaux féroces, et dans les rythmiques de ce dehors que l'on écoute, jeter son corps entier.

Je l'entends toujours dire, malgré ma désertion, et parler sans reproche, de cette voix si claire que sur son texte je me retourne encore. Mais j'ai trop écrit d'elle, qui n'est plus que le vide en moi, de moi, l'espace de sa parole à taire.

Nombre d’occurrences : 15

#VoyageauLexique

Dans son ouvrage How I Take Photographs, Daido Moriyama présente quelques-unes de ses démarches. Une des premières présentée consiste pour lui à parcourir dans les deux sens une rue fréquentée. Pour lui, > «There is no better place to start than an ordinary shopping street – the kind you find in front of railway stations in any town or city in Japan.*»

Pas de rue commerçante ordinaire, puisque c'est dimanche, mais le bord de quai à Montreux, du côté de Territet, que nous avons parcouru dans les deux sens pour cette flânerie photographique inspirée par Daido Moriyama. Sans prétention.

Premier passage

La descente vers le bord du lac.

Le départ du quai près de l'Auberge de jeunesse de Montreux

Le port de Territet

Le Contre Temps, hors-saison et dans l'attente de la saison estivale

Le pêcheur

L'appel du large ou la joie espérée du pêcheur

Que serait Montreux sans ses palmiers et la promesse d'un doux séjour?

Sur le chemin du retour ou le re-passage

Piscator lacustrus. Labubu des Espaces

Le texte suivant accompagnait cette réalisation de la commune de Montreux: > Personnages issus de l’univers fantastique de l’artiste Kasing Lung. L’expression de cette peluche est souvent décrite comme espiègle, malicieuse, ou même légèrement sauvage, ce qui lui donne une personnalité forte et attachante. Ces figurines se déclinent sous divers coloris et formes tout en possédant leur propre nom. Ces sculptures végétales ont été imaginées et réalisées par les jardinier.ère.s de la Commune de Montreux.

« Pour une cause pure avec une épée pure »

Si je suis passé de nombreuses fois sur ce quai, c'est la première fois que je suis attardé sur ce monument et que j'y ai prêté attention. Probablement que le côté hors-saison de cette promenade dominicale a mis plus particulièrement en évidence le monument. Le texte sur la face présentée de cet obélisque est le suivant :

A LA GLOIRE DE LA FINLANDE ET DE SON PEUPLE HÉROÏQUE A LA MÉMOIRE DU NOBLE CHEVALIER LE BARON CARL GUSTAF MANNERHEIM MARECHAL DE FINLANDE 1867–1951 CANDIDA PRO CAUSA ENSE CANDENDO

En recherchant sur internet à l'aide du texte du document, il est possible d'arriver sur une page de l'armée suisse présentant le monument. On y apprend que le monument a été réalisé en 1955. Le baron Carl Gustaf Mannerheim (1867 – 1951), maréchal de Finlande, est devenu le premier commandant en chef de la jeune armée finlandaise créée lors de l’accession du pays à l’indépendance après la Révolution russe de 1917. Le Dictionnaire historique de la Suisse nous apprend que, durant la “guerre d'hiver” (1939-1940), il organisa la résistance de son pays en 1940-1941 contre les unités soviétiques et devint ainsi le symbole de l'indépendance nationale. Sous son influence, la Finlande se rapprocha de l'Allemagne dès le milieu de l'année 1940 et entra en guerre à ses côtés contre l'Union soviétique (“guerre de continuation”, 1941-1944). Enfin, il devint président de la République jusqu’en 1946. À partir de 1943, il vint régulièrement faire des séjours de santé à Lugano, Lausanne et Montreux (sanatorium de Valmont où il rédigea ses mémoires). L'article de Wikipedia le concernant me permet de comprendre que la citation Pro causa candida Ense candido (« Pour une cause pure avec une épée pure ») figurant sur le monument de Territet est la devise des Mannerheim. En effet, Wikipedia m'indique que cette citation figure également sur son tombeau du cimetière militaire de Hietaniemi à [Helsinki].(https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helsinki).

Voilà pour le côté week-end studieux de cette flânerie. Sur place, nous arrivons presque au terme de ce parcours.

Un dernier coup d’œil sur les quais.

Avant d'entreprendre la remontée…

J'espère que cette promenade vous aura plu et vous incitera tant à utiliser votre appareil photo dans vos pérégrinations qu'à entreprendre ce type de ballade.

Tags : #aucafé #Histoire #Roadbook #suisse🇨🇭 #montreux #photographie #twice #sonya6000 #sigma1850f28

In last week's post, I mentioned that my main current writing goal is to finish the draft of a novel that I've been thinking about for a couple of years now but have been struggling to get down on paper. Normally, I'm a pantser. I might have a rough idea of where I want a story to go when I start it (though I don't always), but I don't sit down and plan it out. My preferred approach is to discover the story as I write it, then refine the arc and give it a more intentional-feeling pacing and flow during edits. This has worked for me thus far for the majority of my projects. It works especially well for short stories, but I've also written a couple of novellas and four novels this way, so I have tangible proof that it can work for longer stories, too. 

That said, I have written some select projects in the past that I planned out before writing. Any time I write a choose-your-own-adventure style story, for instance, I at least have a big-picture plan for how the pieces are going to flow together from the start. And when I'm ghostwriting novels, those always start from the outline first—it's the only way to wrangle the project in and make sure me and the client are on the same page from the start.

Of course, just because I know how to outline doesn't mean I enjoy it. To me, pantsing feels more organic and allows for more natural points of surprise. When I write a character into a corner, I need to be creative to get them out of it, in exactly the same way the character needs to be creative to get out of whatever bind I've put them into. What I've been reminding myself of lately, though, is that outlining doesn't need to mean putting rigid controls on what you write. There's a middle ground where you can get the thought-organizing, momentum-driving, rewrite-reducing benefits of an outline while still letting your story breathe and surprise you. With that in mind, here is my top advice for pantsers who are outline-curious on how to make the technique work for you.

#1: Don't limit yourself to just plot movement. 

One issue with stories written from an outline is that they can feel formulaic or overly architected. Sometimes you read them and can see the author moving the pieces around, or the characters feel like they're being directed through a series of actions rather than having those choices seem like their own, ones that arise out of their motivations, beliefs, and identity rather than something imposed by the person creating the story. 

While I can't confirm exactly why this happens in every instance, I suspect the problem often starts with what the writer focuses on when creating their outline. If you only think about how the plot will move, you're missing a critical ingredient of a compelling story: the development of the characters, and how their emotions, relationships, and motivations influence the choices they make and actions they take. 

An outline does need to clarify the plot movement, but that's not the only thing that should be in it. At each stage of the outline, think about the key players involved, how their prior experiences and beliefs influence what actions they'd take, how those actions move them closer to (or away from) their ultimate goal, and what impact each plot point would have on their emotional state, their relationships with other characters, and the choices they'd make in the future. An authentic character that's well-integrated into the plot and setting shouldn't be static. They change in response to the experiences you write for them, and planning out that evolution is just as important to creating a fully realized story as plotting out the story's action. 

#2: Let yourself take tangents.

One of the exciting things about pantsing is that I sometimes end up discovering new ways for the story to play out as I write, things that were never even in my brain when I first sat down to work on it. But you don't need to sacrifice this when you start from an outline if you take the same exploratory approach to writing it. 

Instead of just seeing the outline as a straight line from A to B to C, let yourself linger at each step and think about the different ways your characters might approach the situation. If you find yourself at a plot crossroads where you could take multiple paths forward, use the outline process to “audition” those paths and see which one will serve the story the best. One might stand out as the best option once you've finished the outline and know where you want the story to go. In other cases, you can wait to decide which path you’ll take until you're in the writing stage, when you'll be able to better assess which one seems like the most logical decision for your characters at that point of their journey.

The same idea can apply to filling in details of the characters' and world's history. When you reach a point that this backstory feels necessary to understand the choices characters make, or to get a full sense for the cultural, political, economic, etc. landscape that they're operating in, give yourself permission to go on a sidebar. Outline those backstory details the same way you would forward plot movement. That doesn't mean you'll necessarily include all of that information at this specific point in the story—these may be worldbuilding details that you want to sprinkle in through descriptions, or character context that you'll establish through conversations and flashbacks as you're building their identity on the page. But by brainstorming those background details as they come up, you'll give yourself a roadmap for which aspects of the world history or characters' past are actually need-to-know for the reader. Once you know that, all you need to do is find the right time and place to bring readers in on that knowledge. 

#3: Use whatever format makes sense for your brain.

Most people hear the word “outline” and think about the specific structured document that we're all taught to write for high school English, the kind that involves various levels of numbering and indenting and bullet points. This is one way to approach outlining a creative work, but that's not the only option. If thinking about things that way automatically kills all of your creativity or gives you flashbacks to writing five-paragraph essays, you can still get the same value out of doing things in a different format.

I’ll give some examples of other options. One way you can approach it is by writing a script-style outline. This can be especially effective for character-driven stories where conversations are going to be key plot drivers. With this style of outline, you write out many of the dialogue passages, surrounded by scene direction style summaries of their actions and expressions, as well as the setting and any other background information that you plan to work into the narrative. This is a kind of middle ground between outlining and pantsing. On your next pass, you convert this into full prose by filling in the narration and descriptive details around the dialogue, using the scene directions you wrote as a guide. 

Another option is to use a notecard outlining system. The basic idea here is that each chunk of the story (scene, chapter, plot point, etc.) gets its own notecard, where you can also write down things like the characters involved, where it's happening, and other details you'll want to make sure to include. This is the approach I default to when I'm doing choose-your-own narratives, since it makes it easier to visualize how the different plot choices branch off from each other, but it can be just as useful for other types of stories. I would say this is an especially good approach for more complex novels that have multiple plot threads or large casts of characters, because it also allows you to easily isolate each of these threads and experiment with different approaches to weaving them together. 

There are other options too, I'm sure, or you could come up with your own if none of the other approaches that people have tried seem like they'd work. The big-picture takeaway here is that there's more than one way to outline, and you don't need to lock yourself into anybody else's system. 

Outlines are tools, not rules

This was the big thing I needed to get into my own head before I could start to take advantage of outlining as a part of my process. I've heard a similar thing from other pantsers—that the idea of writing an outline feels restrictive, like it's preventing your creativity from having full room to blossom. But here's the thing about an outline: literally nobody else is going to see it. It doesn’t matter if it follows the rules or adheres to someone else’s standard. It's just a way to plan and organize your story before you start writing it. If you feel too constrained with a chapter-by-chapter outline, for instance, then you don't need to use that format. Maybe instead you just give yourself some key plot points to shoot for, and wait until you're writing it to decide where the chapter breaks will go. 

For the current novel, I'm starting with a big-picture outline divided into three acts. I've sketched out the basic plot movement and which characters will be involved, as well as how their motivations or allegiances will change over the course of the book. I plan to gradually reveal certain aspects of the world and characters to the reader, so I've also marked in the points where key info bits are going to be dropped. But there are some places where I haven't yet planned out exactly how the characters are going to get from one plot moment to the next—I know where I want them to end up, but I'm going to let myself figure out exactly how they get there when I sit down to write the thing. This kind of half-outlining gives me the structure I need to construct a complex plot involving a large cast of characters, so I'm not just stumbling around in the metaphorical woods for 30,000 words (like I did on my first attempt to write this novel a couple of years back), but it still leaves me some room to play when it's time for writing. That's important, because the actual act of writing a novel can be obnoxiously long and tedious, and it's even more so for me when I'm following a detailed outline and know exactly what comes next. Leaving myself some places to explore and make creative decisions during the writing phase I know is going to be crucial to forcing myself through those points where the writing doesn't feel exciting. 

That's the last tidbit of advice I'll end on. Writing a book takes a while. Experienced writers on the fast side of things can churn out a manuscript in 2-3 months, but for most people I'd say 6 months to a year is more realistic. In either case, though, you're going to be following this outline for a while, so it's smart to think about your writing process. Structure the outline in a way that will be easy for you to follow and matches up with how you prefer to write. If you like to work in chunks instead of writing through chronologically, for example, then doing a notecard system might be smart because it'll let you isolate or rearrange sections easily. The goal is to organize your thoughts and the story's structure, so whatever strategy will allow you to do that the best is the right tool for you, whether or not it matches with someone else's idea of what an outline should be.

See similar posts:

#WritingAdvice #NovelWriting

At the concert, I bought an extra beer for my friend, couldn’t find him, so ended up having to drink both.

There is a lesson to be learned from this.

This is my docker-compose.yaml for beszel:

services:
  beszel:
    image: henrygd/beszel:latest
    x-ports:
      - beszel.your-domain.com:8090/https
    volumes:
      - ./beszel_data:/beszel_data
      - ./beszel_socket:/beszel_socket

• Deploy the beszel webapp with uc deploy bezel.yml
• Signup and login
• Go to settings/tokens and activate “Universal Token”
• Under the ••• drop-down menu, select “Copy Docker Compose”. This will give you something like this:

services:
  beszel-agent:
    image: henrygd/beszel-agent
    container_name: beszel-agent
    restart: unless-stopped
    network_mode: host
    volumes:
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
      - ./beszel_agent_data:/var/lib/beszel-agent
      # monitor other disks / partitions by mounting a folder in /extra-filesystems
      # - /mnt/disk/.beszel:/extra-filesystems/sda1:ro
    environment:
      LISTEN: 45876
      KEY: 'ssh-ed25519 xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
      TOKEN: xxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx
      HUB_URL: https://beszel.your-domain.com

Add this line to the bottom of it:

    deploy:
      mode: global

This will ensure that the agent is installed on all your machines.

I usually just paste the beszel-agent bit into the first docker-compose, then re-run:

uc deploy -f beszel.yml

This will give you some output like this:

[+] Deploying services 8/8
 ✔ Container beszel-agent-xmai on eon    Started         1.4s 
 ✔ Container beszel-agent-os6i on itx    Started         0.6s 
 ✔ Container beszel-agent-hkhd on node2  Started         0.6s 
 ✔ Container beszel-agent-w84p on node3  Started         1.4s 
 ✔ Container beszel-agent-qd42 on node4  Started         0.6s 
 ✔ Container beszel-agent-c79q on pico   Started         0.5s 
 ✔ Container beszel-agent-v7ff on rock4  Started         0.8s 
 ✔ Container beszel-agent-odec on rock5  Started         0.7s 

Then you might want to rename the nodes in the beszel web UI for easier machine identification. I still haven't worked out how to make that process automatic, but it's not a big deal.

Nayavia is an early-stage project exploring how students experience college learning environments. It begins from a simple observation: the same college can feel enabling to some students and quietly misaligned for others, even when preparation and ability appear similar. Rather than focusing on rankings, predictions, or outcomes, Nayavia is interested in understanding what learning environments actually feel like from the inside.

Where this work currently stands At the moment, Nayavia exists as a research notebook. This work is focused on: thinking carefully about how college environments shape day-t0-day learning, listening to student experience without rushing to conclusions, questioning assumptions that are often taken for granted in college guidance. No data has been collected yet No analysis has been completed This emphasis is on forming the right questions before attempting answers. What this is not Nayavia is not a ranking system. It is not a recommendation engine. It is not a promise of better outcomes or a guide to choosing the right college. There is no advice being offered here, and no decisions being optimized. Research The core work currently lives in an ongoing research notebook. The writing is primarily for internal clarity. External readers may follow along, but the purpose is to document how the thinking evolves over time, including uncertainty, revisions, and dead ends.

So it was a bit longer since last time… a lot longer, but that’s fine, I had in it a break and now I worked on it the last days again and made big progress, here everything I did, compressed.

Paging

I made the Paging System in Sv39, in short Terms, this Describes how the Page Table Entry (Short PTE) is built, in my case I used first Sv39, it looked like a default thing to use, at least from what I saw and it was good to learn, but its a bit more complicated to explain, at least for me, but to make it short, the MMU take an address, makes it in 3 Parts, all 9 bits, called (VPN2, VPN1, VPN0) and the last 12 Bits are the offset for the address (For me right now, I use 4KiB Pages). If you wanna know more about this, here you can find more: https://riscv.github.io/riscv-isa-manual/snapshot/privileged/#sv39

Lily

Lily is the Name of my Bootloader, currently it was that OpenSBI loads my kernel Directly, In future I want it so that it loads my Bootloader (from now on Lily) and Lily loads my Kernel, also Lily should be capable of installing the OS if its not already installed. Currently both are in the same Binary because i’m concentrating on getting the Kernel ready, Lily will get an overwork if my Kernel is stable and I have more experience with RISC-V in general.

General Overwork

I made more documentation and made some code more clean and MANY bugs found and fixed.

What Next?

I’m currently working on a Kernel Allocator and on the internal memory Map.

Thank you for Reading :D

Littleclone (Mastodon) (Twitter)

City est un roman de science-fiction de l’écrivain américain Clifford D. Simak, publié pour la première fois en 1952. En français, il a été traduit sous le titre Demain les chiens, et c’est ce titre français qui a été ma première raison pour lire ce classique de la SF des années 1950.

On a far future Earth, mankind's achievements are immense: artificially intelligent robots, genetically uplifted animals, interplanetary travel, genetic modification of the human form itself. But nothing comes without a cost. Humanity is tired, its vigour all but gone. Society is breaking down into smaller communities, dispersing into the countryside and abandoning the great cities of the world. As the human race dwindles and declines, which of its great creations will inherit the Earth? And which will claim the stars?

Ce roman se compose de huit “nouvelles”, présentées comme des légendes que se racontent autour du feu des chiens qui, dans un futur lointain, ont beaucoup évolué et ont remplacé l'humanité comme espèce dominante. Ces légendes racontent l'évolution parallèle de la race humaine, à travers la lignée de la famille Webster et de leur robot Jenkins, et celle des chiens, qui acquièrent la capacité de parler suite à une expérimentation humaine et qui développent ainsi leur intelligence sociale au point de prendre le relais de l'humanité en déclin.

L'un des points saillants du livre, ce sont les notes critiques qui précèdent chaque nouvelle et relatent les débats philologiques qui agitent la communauté savante des chiens concernant la véracité et l'origine des légendes, et en particulier l’existence ou non de ces Hommes et leur lien avec la civilisation canine. Plusieurs chiens que l'on devine être des spécialistes de l’étude des légendes sont cités à plusieurs reprises et portent des visions très différentes : l'un prend au sérieux l'existence de cette humanité et considère que ces légendes constituent une vérité historique, quand un autre estime qu'il ne s'agit que de récits mythologiques écrits par des chiens pour expliquer leur origine. Ces courts chapitres fonctionnent comme un paratexte fictif particulièrement drôle pour les lecteurs humains contemporains que nous sommes.

Les deux premières nouvelles m'ont semblé un peu faibles mais les six suivantes sont absolument géniales, tout comme l’épilogue émouvant rédigé par l’auteur en 1973 et présent dans les éditions ultérieures.

À travers les huit nouvelles, Clifford D. Simak dépeint une humanité condamnée à réinventer la violence, la domination, les armes, et la guerre, et à disparaître pour laisser place à une civilisation canine qui saura faire mieux qu'elle, sur de nouvelles bases d'empathie, de pacifisme et de solidarité. La civilisation menée par les chiens du futur constitue en effet une Fraternité des animaux où le meurtre est interdit et où la communication entre les espèces est sacrée. C'est donc un récit à la fois pessimiste sur la destinée et la nature de l'espace humaine, et optimiste pour le vivant dans son ensemble.

Après avoir relu et beaucoup aimé les Chroniques Martiennes de Ray Bradbury, je suis heureux d’avoir poursuivi avec un autre classique de l’âge d’or de la science-fiction. Et quel classique ! J’ai adoré ce livre, et hormis ses deux premières nouvelles un peu plus faibles que les autres, la perfection n’est pas très loin.

There are places in America that never make the news. Towns you can drive through in four minutes if you blink too long. Places where the sidewalks roll up early, the diner closes at eight, and the quiet is so complete you can hear your own thoughts echo back at you. These towns are not famous, not fast, not impressive. They are faithful in a quiet way. They endure. They wait. And sometimes, they become the stage for the most important lessons a human soul can learn.

This story begins in one of those towns.

It had one main street and one church that still rang its bell every Sunday even though fewer people came each year. There was a hardware store that smelled like oil and wood, a post office where the same woman had worked for decades, and a café that stayed open later than it should have. No one could quite explain why the café remained open past midnight. It never made much money. It never had a line. But the lights were always on, and the door was never locked.

People joked that the owner just hated going home.

But those who had ever walked in on a hard night knew better.

The café didn’t look like much. Old booths. Scratched tables. Mismatched mugs. A bell over the door that rang a little too loud. The coffee wasn’t special, but it was hot. The kind of hot that warmed your hands before it ever reached your lips. The kind of warmth you forgot you needed until it showed up.

On a winter night when the town had already gone to sleep, a man named Thomas pushed that door open.

He didn’t come for coffee. He didn’t come for food. He came because he didn’t know where else to go.

Thomas had lived in that town his whole life. He was the kind of man people described as “good” without thinking much about it. He worked hard. He showed up. He tried. But the thing no one saw was the weight he carried when the lights were off and the noise was gone. The way his thoughts turned on him the moment he was alone. The way shame replayed old memories like evidence in a trial that never ended.

Depression had settled into him slowly. Quietly. It didn’t announce itself. It just took more and more space until everything else felt crowded out. Prayer became difficult. Hope felt distant. God felt silent. And silence, when mixed with guilt, becomes something else entirely.

Punishment.

Thomas had started to believe that God wasn’t quiet because He was close, but because He was done.

He slid into a booth and stared at his hands. They shook just slightly. He didn’t notice until the mug appeared in front of him.

“On the house,” a voice said.

Thomas looked up. The man behind the counter wasn’t what he expected. No uniform. No forced smile. Just someone present. Fully present. The kind of presence that doesn’t rush you or try to fix you.

“I didn’t order,” Thomas said.

“Most people don’t,” the man replied. “Not at first.”

Thomas frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means people usually come in here because they’re carrying something,” the man said. “They sit down before they even know what they need.”

Thomas let out a breath he didn’t know he was holding. “I think God’s angry with me.”

The man didn’t flinch. Didn’t correct him. Didn’t quote Scripture. Just nodded, as if he’d heard that sentence many times before.

“Anger is a loud emotion,” the man said. “Silence usually isn’t.”

Thomas stared into the coffee. “Feels like punishment. Everything going wrong. Can’t feel God. Can’t hear Him. Feels like He’s turned His back.”

“Punishment always tells you the story is over,” the man replied. “Love never does.”

Thomas shook his head. “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

The man leaned on the counter. “I know what everyone says when they’re hurting.”

Outside, snow drifted past the windows. The town was still. The kind of still that makes you feel small.

“I’m afraid,” Thomas said quietly. “Afraid I’m condemned. Afraid this is just how it ends.”

The man stepped closer. “Let me tell you something about Jesus,” he said. “He never used fear as a doorway to God. Not once. Fear closes people. Love opens them.”

Thomas swallowed. “Then why does it feel like God left?”

“Because pain lies,” the man said gently. “It lies in God’s voice.”

That sentence landed heavier than anything else. Pain lies. It speaks with authority. It uses your own memories as evidence. It quotes your past like Scripture and convinces you the verdict has already been handed down.

Thomas felt something crack. Not relief. Not joy. Just recognition.

“Who are you?” he asked.

The man smiled. “Someone who’s very familiar with suffering.”

When Thomas looked down again, the man was gone. The mug was still warm. The café still quiet. The bell still hanging over the door.

Life did not suddenly get easier after that night. The depression did not disappear. The silence did not instantly lift. But something fundamental shifted.

Thomas stopped interpreting his pain as proof of rejection.

And that is where the lesson begins.

Because one of the most damaging lies many people believe is that suffering means separation from God. That silence means abandonment. That numbness means condemnation. And when depression enters the picture, those lies start to sound like truth.

But Scripture tells a very different story.

The Bible is filled with faithful people who could not feel God and assumed they were forgotten. David cried out asking why God seemed far away. Job believed God had turned against him. Elijah asked God to take his life because he felt alone and defeated. None of them were condemned. None of them were abandoned. Every one of them was still held, even when they could not feel it.

Jesus Himself entered silence.

On the cross, He cried out words that sound eerily familiar to anyone who has ever lived with depression: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Those words were not a confession of condemnation. They were a quotation of Scripture spoken from within suffering. They were the voice of someone fully human, fully faithful, and fully hurting.

If silence meant God had left, Jesus would not have known it.

The problem is that we often confuse feelings with facts. Depression dulls the senses. It numbs joy. It quiets emotion. It muffles spiritual awareness. And when that happens, the mind searches for meaning. If no comfort is felt, it assumes punishment. If no reassurance is heard, it assumes rejection.

But love does not withdraw because it is unseen.

Jesus did not come into the world to reward the emotionally strong or the spiritually confident. He came for the sick, the broken, the burdened, the ashamed, and the exhausted. He moved toward people who believed they were disqualified. He sat with those who thought they were beyond help.

Condemnation shouts. Mercy whispers.

And mercy almost always shows up in ordinary places. A café. A conversation. A quiet moment where someone finally feels seen instead of judged.

This is why Jesus so often taught in stories. Stories slip past our defenses. They don’t accuse. They invite. They allow truth to land gently where arguments would fail.

The lesson of the café is not that God removes pain instantly. It is that pain is not proof of God’s absence. Silence is not evidence of punishment. And depression is not a spiritual verdict.

If you are still breathing, the story is not over.

Jesus does not wait for you to feel worthy. He does not wait for your emotions to line up. He does not withdraw because you are numb, afraid, or exhausted. He sits with you in the quiet. He stays when you assume He has left. He remains present even when you cannot feel His presence.

That is not weakness. That is love.

And love, real love, never condemns the wounded for bleeding.

There is something deeply human about wanting proof that God is still near. Not theological proof. Not arguments. Just evidence that He hasn’t turned away. When the prayers feel flat, when worship feels empty, when Scripture feels distant, the heart starts to wonder if the problem is not the circumstance—but the soul itself.

That is where condemnation grows.

Condemnation does not usually arrive loudly. It slips in quietly and disguises itself as spiritual seriousness. It tells you that your suffering must mean something about your standing with God. It frames pain as punishment. It interprets silence as judgment. It rewrites grace into a probationary system where one mistake too many disqualifies you permanently.

But that voice does not belong to Jesus.

Jesus never spoke to the broken as if their pain proved their guilt. He never treated suffering as evidence of divine displeasure. In fact, He corrected that thinking repeatedly. When His disciples assumed blindness must be caused by sin, Jesus stopped them. When people believed tragedy meant God was angry, Jesus dismantled the assumption. Again and again, He redirected attention away from blame and toward mercy.

The Gospel does not teach that God withdraws from people in their darkest moments. It teaches the opposite—that God moves closer.

This is where the modern church sometimes struggles. We are good at talking about victory. We are less comfortable sitting with sorrow. We prefer testimonies that end quickly, stories that resolve neatly, faith that looks confident and clean. But Jesus did not limit His ministry to people who were emotionally regulated and spiritually certain.

He lingered.

He sat at wells with the ashamed. He ate meals with the accused. He allowed His feet to be washed by tears. He touched lepers before they were healed. He stood beside graves even though He knew resurrection was coming.

Jesus never rushed suffering out of the room.

Depression, anxiety, despair—these things do not scare Him. They do not repel Him. They do not offend Him. They are not evidence that faith has failed. They are part of the human condition He willingly entered.

That is why the idea that God punishes people by withdrawing His presence collapses under the weight of the cross. If God’s response to human brokenness was distance, Jesus would never have come at all. The incarnation itself is God’s answer to the lie of abandonment.

God came close.

And He stayed close.

Even when it cost Him everything.

This matters deeply for anyone who believes they are condemned because they cannot feel God. Feeling is not the same as truth. Emotional numbness does not equal spiritual separation. Silence does not mean rejection. Depression does not invalidate faith.

In fact, one of the cruelest aspects of depression is how convincingly it speaks in God’s voice. It uses religious language to reinforce despair. It says things like, “You’re being punished,” “You’ve gone too far,” “God is done with you.” And because those thoughts carry spiritual weight, they are harder to challenge.

But Jesus never speaks in hopeless absolutes.

Condemnation says, “There is no future.” Grace says, “There is still a story.”

Condemnation says, “You are beyond repair.” Grace says, “You are still being formed.”

Condemnation says, “God has left.” Grace says, “I am with you always.”

The café story is not meant to suggest that Jesus appears magically behind every counter or that suffering resolves through mysterious encounters. It is meant to remind us that Jesus specializes in meeting people where they least expect Him—and often in ways they do not recognize immediately.

Sometimes He shows up as presence rather than answers. Sometimes as companionship rather than correction. Sometimes as quiet endurance rather than instant relief.

And often, He shows up through other people.

This is where humility becomes holy. Needing help is not failure. Reaching out is not faithlessness. God has always worked through human hands, human voices, human compassion. To refuse help because you think you must suffer alone is not strength—it is isolation.

Jesus did not heal in private when crowds were present. He allowed witnesses. He allowed community. He allowed stories to spread. Healing was never meant to be hidden.

If you are struggling, staying connected is an act of faith. Talking is an act of courage. Continuing to breathe when everything inside wants to stop is not weakness—it is resistance against a lie that says you are finished.

The Gospel does not demand emotional certainty. It invites trust in the midst of uncertainty. It does not require you to feel God to belong to Him. It requires only that you keep turning toward Him, even when your steps are slow and your hands are empty.

Jesus never told anyone to clean themselves up before coming to Him. He said, “Come as you are.” Exhausted. Afraid. Ashamed. Confused. Numb. Angry. Silent.

Come anyway.

The café stayed open after midnight because some people don’t break down on schedule. Pain doesn’t punch a clock. And grace does not close early.

That is the lesson.

If you are still here, God is not done. If you are still breathing, grace is still active. If you are still reaching, mercy is still present.

Jesus does not abandon the wounded for bleeding. He does not condemn the suffering for struggling. He does not withdraw because the night feels long.

He stays.

And sometimes, staying is the miracle.

Watch Douglas Vandergraph’s inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Support the ministry by buying Douglas a coffee https://www.buymeacoffee.com/douglasvandergraph

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

#Faith #Grace #Jesus #Hope #DepressionAndFaith #ChristianEncouragement #YouAreNotAlone #Mercy #SpiritualHealing #FaithInDarkness

In the darkness, feelings become visions that our minds make real.

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À l’abri de la nuit, la tendresse s’incarna.

Cette prise, refuge de tes plaies, non pas désir seulement,

mais soin — mon désir, baume offert

aux violences du jour qui veille.

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Our cover of night became gentleness.

This grip, a refuge for your wounds— not desire only,

but remedy: my desire, a balm

for the violences of waking hours.

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#poetry #madrid #wyst

OSRIC 3.0 PDFs are now available on DriveThruRPG:

• OSRIC 3.0 Player Guide
• OSRIC 3.0 Gamemaster Guide

Offset print version will be available from Mythmere Games later this year.

#OSR #OSRIC

courir pieds nus

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I’m not particularly interested in car racing or spectator sports in general. I did follow Formula 1 casually in the 90s and watched a race from start to finish once on TV, which I found to be an almost meditative experience. 

Yesterday, we watched the movie, and I loved it. It proves that it is possible to create big-screen excitement with an original story if you just follow time-tested rules. A rookie vs. seasoned pro trope, a Hollywood superstar in the lead, a believable love interest, and a Hans Zimmer soundtrack. Add some nail-biting action elements, and the movie is fun to watch.

The mastery of director Joseph Kosinski in F1 is evident in how well-measured these elements are. There were plenty of twists and turns, but the story always moved forward and left the big question open until the very end: Will Sonny Hayes win his first grand prix?

Stay entertained thanks to our Weekly Tracker giving you next week's Anticipated Movies & Shows, Most Watched & Returning Favorites, and Shows Changes & Popular Trailers.

Anticipated Movies

• Le Mage du Kremlin
• Return to Silent Hill
• ☆ Mercy
• I Want Your Sex

Anticipated Shows

• The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins
• ☆ A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
• Handsome Devil: The Charming Killer
• Star Search
• Cat for Cash
• Steal
• The Beauty
• Mel Brooks: The 99 Year Old Man!
• Canada Shore
• The Pendragon Cycle: Rise of the Merlin
• Free Bert
• Finding Her Edge
• Blind Sherlock
• It's Not Like That

Returing Favorites

• Single's Inferno — Season 5
• Les Gouttes de Dieu — Season 2
• ☆ Queer Eye — Season 10
• NOVA — Season 53
• Real Time with Bill Maher — Season 24

Trending Shows Status Changes

• Agatha Christie's Seven Dials — Returning Series → Ended
• Can This Love Be Translated? — Returning Series → Ended

Most Watched Movies this Week

• = Predator: Badlands
• new The Rip
• new People We Meet on Vacation
• new Rental Family
• +1 One Battle After Another
• -3 Zootopia 2
• -5 Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery
• = The Running Man
• +1 Bugonia
• -5 Now You See Me: Now You Don't

Most Watched Shows this Week

• = Fallout
• +1 Landman
• +2 The Pitt
• -2 Stranger Things
• +1 High Potential
• +1 The Rookie
• new HIS & HERS
• = Percy Jackson and the Olympians
• -5 Pluribus
• new The Night Manager

Popular Trailers

• Are you ready to be strapped into your 4DX chair? Experience Mercy in 4DX — Mercy
• Adrenaline — Primate
• In Cinemas Everywhere Now — Marty Supreme
• Season 2 Episode 3 Preview — The Pitt
• The next installment is here. — 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple
• Desperate times call for desperate measures. Park Chan-wook's ingenious NO OTHER CHOICE. — No Other Choice
• Traitors Message — Scream 7
• Season 3 Trailer — Euphoria
• Official US Trailer — Pillion
• The Wakandans and The Fantastic Four Will Return — Avengers: Doomsday

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Hi, I'm Kevin 👋. I make apps and I love watching movies and TV shows. If you like what I'm doing, you can buy one of my apps, download and subscribe to Rippple for Trakt or just buy me a ko-fi ☕️.

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FYI: This post is unapologetically romantic. It’s throttle therapy in prose.

I remember my life in London a few years back. I wouldn't bother picking a particular month — even year: they were all the same. My mornings felt like a starter motor spinning but failing to ignite — only draining the battery. My evenings felt like an engine running on fumes. I knew there was a ton of fuel in my tank, but no way to put it to action.

London is a great place, but I was suffocating. Short gulps of freedom on holiday only made it worse — because you inevitably come back. Low-voltage life.

Any of that rings a bell, huh?

I was very lucky to find my cure — the spark in my plugs. I never felt any attraction to motorcycles, considered bikers pretentious assholes. But three years ago I was in the mood to try something new, and a one-day motorcycle “Compulsory Basic Training” sounded cool.

That’s where my ride began.

Oh, I remember the first training day — just one day for fun, no plans to continue. It looked as easy as riding a bicycle. A 130kg bicycle where I need to twist the throttle with the right hand, gradually release the clutch with the left hand, slightly engage my rear brake with the right foot, and balance a low-speed wobbly takeoff ('cause I have no guts for any speed yet).

Then there was the first ride on a rented scooter back home — 15 miles through busy London roads with zero road experience, and “what the hell am I doing with my life?!” screaming in my head all the way. I was terrified... but awake. Never been so happy to get home. Everything felt sharper for the rest of the day — even the air.

Then came my first rented motorcycle (with gears), missing an intersection sign, van cutting across my path, with no time to brake, miraculously twisting the throttle and shooting centimeters in front of the hysterically beeping van. It took ten minutes and two cigarettes until I could even look at the bike again. It was all totally my fault, and “I must pull myself together and focus” was pounding in my head.

Then came my first ride on big roads, overtaking a massive lorry, turbulence around it pushed me back and forth like a leaf in the wind, I heard the rattling and hammering of this metal beast — literally at arm's length — the air smelled like engine oil and my own fear. I didn't feel brave. But presence was the reward. My brain shut up.

I miss the intensity of those first experiences. But somehow the panic turned into focus, and noise — into music.

A couple of years later, I am doing close to 200 km/h on the German autobahn on the blue rhino of a bike. Cars flash by (some even overtaking me, Germany is crazy). There is no panic, just a laser-sharp focus — my heartbeat is strong but steady. I'm relaxed — no way I keep it for a full-day ride otherwise.

This 105 HP beast is my co-pilot. I handle strategy, the bike handles tactics with only a soft touch of my hand. One twitch of a muscle, one mistake, and we pay in blood and oil. It's not reckless — it just demands skill and a calm mind.

Then a car changes lanes right into me without a war declaration (no signal) — the driver clearly didn't see me. Even if the helmet helps, my well-protected head would be very far from the rest of the body. But I anticipated it, planned the exit up front. A swift and precise swerve to jump between lanes, a quick glance over the shoulder just in case (I already knew it's empty) — the lane is mine. I avoided a crash by ~50 cm. I eased off for a few seconds, took a deep breath, and got back to normal cruising. This minor inconvenience can't ruin my good mood today.

I remember I smiled, comparing it to how it felt before — my experience with a van in the first months. I know, the whole thing sounds reckless. But I never lost the lessons the van near-miss taught me. No zoning out. And “ride like a ghost” — as if nobody sees you. I was ready for this car's swerve into me, noticed the danger in a split second ('cause I expected it), and executed the escape plan.

It demands constant focus. It's a deep meditation for hours per day. No thoughts — just the road, full presence, full trust in the bike. At these moments, I feel truly happy.

I'm not advocating for anyone to take big risks to feel alive — just describing the feeling of pure focus when the stakes are high.

It's already a long post, so I'm not going to write about the bike hopping side to side under you off-road, crossing rivers, practicing emergency stops at 80 mph in a corner — and using it on the road a few months later to save my ass. Or riding through 0-2C rain from London to Münster. These were intense three years.

Now I'm going round the world on my 300 cc donkey. Slow, steady pace, camping, exploring remote places, rain on my jacket and bugs in my teeth. It's a different vibe, requiring peace of mind. Mood changed, the focus and clarity stayed.

I didn't get this peace for free. Damn, riding has changed me completely. It taught me to regain composure in the face of fear. To trust. To take firm action when the situation demands, and let go of control when it's not necessary. All the stuff I never learnt before — simply had no reason to. But most of all — I can stay with my thoughts for days. Demons used to show up after minutes. Now they need to book an appointment.

Maybe you can also find something to light you up, to rev your engine. It should be risky in some way, well outside of your comfort zone. That's how your brain shuts up. Modern life's noise can't keep talking over your focus anymore. That's when you feel unapologetically alive.

It's no sermon or spiritual awakening speech. I'm just a dude who found my way through questionable decisions, doing what I love.

Find what works for you — and twist the hell out of its throttle.

See you out there.

Holy shit. I’m so happy E is here.