Giving your book a title containing the words ‘contemporary’ or ‘modern’ ensures that, given enough time, it will be living a lie. The copy of An Anthology of Contemporary Latin-American Poetry that arrived in the post this week (Fig. 25) was contemporary with Casablanca and the initial success of ‘White Christmas’, having been first published in 1942. My copy is from the revised 1947 edition. I finished an initial read through of it on Saturday evening.

In his Preface, the editor, Dudley Fitts, begins by outlining his book's focus on poetry written in the quarter century from the death of Rubén Darío in 1916. To my mind, this broad geographic coverage over a relatively narrow temporal span works to the book's advantage. The nearest equivalent to it I've read — The FSG Book of Twentieth Century Latin American Poetry (ed. Ilan Stavans, 2011) — rather suffers for condensing a considerably wider-angled view into what is only a slightly thicker volume. All the text is given in the original languages, faced with their English translations. Naturally the great majority of the originals are Spanish, with a smaller number in Brazilian Portuguese and a handful in Haitian French. Unlike in the FSG volume, indigenous languages aren't represented at all. I'm unqualified to judge the quality of the translations, but I was impressed by how fluent and natural many of them seemed.

Among the highlights for me were the poems by Jorge Carrera Andrade that open the volume; José Lezama Lima's strikingly intense poem ‘Rhapsody for the Mule’; and the beguiling surrealism of César Moro, especially ‘You Come in the Night with the Fabulous Smoke of your Hair’:

…With the fabulous smoke of your hair
With nocturnal beasts in your eyes
And your body of embers
With night that you sprinkle in fragments
With blocks of night that fall from your hands
With the silence that takes fire at your coming
With the upheaval and the surging
With the swaying of houses
And the oscillation of lights and the most solid shadow
And your words a street like a river...

I was left, too, wishing to read much more by Moro's fellow Peruvian César Vallejo. It was interesting to read of Octavio Paz at a time when he was still making a name for himself; and to see Jorge Luis Borges considered as a poet first and foremost, with his famous Ficciones only having seen daylight between the first edition of this Anthology and its '47 revision.

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Not all of my musical acquisitions of late have been altogether successful. I first heard the pianist Vijay Iyer on Love in Exile, the record he made with Arooj Aftab and Shahzad Ismaily. I didn't fully warm to that album but was intrigued by what I heard of Iyer in other settings when exploring his music at YouTube. A few weeks ago I bought Uneasy, the first album he made with Linda May Han Oh (bass) and Tyshawn Sorey (drums). Having played it through a few times now it still has yet to properly connect with me. While the musicianship is excellent throughout and some of the tunes are good, I feel like I'm missing something in it. Memorable moments & striking contrasts come along a little too seldom over its seventy-odd minutes' duration for my liking.

Mountain in the Clouds is a re-issue of the debut album by the Czech bassist (and founder-member of Weather Report) Miroslav Vitouš. It was originally released under the title Infinite Search. I bought it having had good luck with some of the other ‘70s re-issues in the same series. The lengthy opening number ‘Freedom Jazz Dance’ got things off on the wrong foot, giving me more a sense of congested aimlessness than of any airier kind of liberty. I liked some of the other tracks a little better, and there's no disputing the calibre of the musicians involved (among them Jack DeJohnette, Herbie Hancock, John McLaughlin & Joe Henderson). For now though, the appeal of this kind of free-form fusion continues to elude me.

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Last Tuesday’s entry was written in the midst of an early heatwave that brought temperatures of 33-34C to these parts, numbers never before recorded here in May. Although it’s cooler now, I’m nevertheless apprehensive about what discomforts the fullness of summer might bring.

My condo is small. Space is limited, we have lots of stuff, and there’s barely any room to maneuver. When I enter through the front door and into the living room there’s a 80” x 72” playpen taking up the majority of the space.

With the playpen there’s barely enough room to walk around to the couch, stand next to the changing table, and swing the door open to allow people to enter or leave the house. But it’s a good place to write as long as my children don’t climb all over me, which is often. So, I always have my notebook and pencil with me instead of my phone.

If you do this, remember two things. Don’t let them grab your notebook and pencil so they can put them in their mouths and don’t focus too much on writing when your children want you to play with them.

#writing #children #playpen #stayathomedad

Mycelium fan out across loamy coco coir and vermiculite. A delicate organism, fungi. Unlike a yellow squash or modern hybridized corn, bacteria or atmospheric misalignment so easily interrupt the process.

A budding, amateur mycologist, contamination infiltrated my first three attempts. Not the kind of contamination that Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing explores in her anthropological study on the matsutake industry, The Mushroom at the End of the World.

Collaboration means working across difference, which leads to contamination. Without collaborations, we all die…We change through our collaborations both within and across species. The important stuff for life on earth happens in those transformations, not in the decision trees of self-contained individuals. Rather than seeing only the expansion-and-conquest strategies of relentless individuals, we must look for histories that develop through contamination.

Two conflicting definitions; both reflect reality. For fungi, contamination suggests a conquest over resources. Expansion until death, with mycelium in sterilized (note: unnatural) environments often setup to fail. Within the cage of a growbag or monotub, young mycelium faces increased threats.

But when buried in the soil—even after mold suffocates the gossamer strands—the mycelium may still persist. Return to a natural state may result in a smaller, substandard yield. But the mushroom will fruit, little umbrella caps unfurling after a week of dense summer rain.

When I sift through my things, remaining trinkets of old selves lost, I see the contamination of others. The stories, the strangers, the lovers, the haters. Every encounter leaves a mark that stimulates growth. We are the reflections of every person, every place we have ever known.

We, too, carry a kind of mycelium within us. Socially-motivated, we extend ourselves outwards. Towards collaboration. Towards contamination. Unknowing that we are so often trapped in an artificial, sterile environment. Geared not towards upliftment nor solidarity but towards productivity.

Today, our environment lies on a substrate of falsity. Of profits over people. Every tendril we send out is contaminated by cash. Micro-communities build on payment plans because, having forsaken the collective, we are dying as individuals.

Change cannot happen alone. Contamination is the cost of a free life.

The Short Version

I spent two days in May chairing and speaking at World Class Cannabis Business Europe (WCCBE) in Frankfurt, on the subject of visual AI for cannabis cultivation. The biggest takeaway wasn't about the technology. It was about the gap between what the AI industry likes to talk about – autonomy, end-to-end automation, “AI runs the grow” – and what growers in the room actually asked for, which was something much more grounded. They want a tool that helps them decide, not one that decides for them. They want it to be specifically good at plants, not generically good at everything. Here's what I heard, and what it means for where PlantLab goes next.

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The setting, and an honest mismatch

WCCBE Frankfurt, May 19-20, 2026. I chaired a day and gave a talk on visual AI for cannabis – the kind of plant-by-plant diagnosis problem PlantLab works on.

The first honest thing to say is that a deep cultivation-diagnosis talk is not the same animal as a policy, regulation, and investment talk, and a conference that spans all of those is going to have rooms with very different centers of gravity. The business and policy sessions are genuinely useful for credibility and for understanding where the industry is heading. But the product conversation – the one where someone tells you what they'd actually use on a Tuesday in their grow room – happens with operators, not in the M&A track. That's not a criticism of the event. It's a note to myself about which rooms the product story belongs in.

With that said, the technical lessons that came out of the operator conversations were sharp enough to be worth writing down.

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Lesson 1: Growers want a co-pilot before they want an autopilot

The pitch the AI industry loves is autonomy: the system watches, decides, and acts, and the human steps back. Almost nobody I talked to wanted that as the first step.

What they wanted was a tool that makes their own judgment faster and more confident. Flag the plant that looks off. Tell me what you think it is and how sure you are. Then let me decide. The grower stays in the loop because the grower is accountable for the crop, and because they have context the camera doesn't – what they fed it last week, what the room did overnight, what this strain always does at this stage.

This maps cleanly onto a design choice: the most valuable output isn't a decision, it's a well-calibrated suggestion plus an honest signal of how much to trust it. Autonomy can come later, on the narrow slices where the tool has earned it. Human-in-the-loop is not a stepping stone to be skipped. For most growers it's the actual product.

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Lesson 2: Generic AI keeps disappointing growers

This came up again and again, usually as a half-frustrated aside: people have tried asking a general-purpose AI assistant what's wrong with their plant, and it gives them an answer that sounds authoritative and is often wrong, with no signal that it might be wrong.

This is the wedge, and it's a fair one to talk about publicly because it's about outcomes, not methods. A general model trained on the whole internet knows a little about cannabis among a billion other things. It will confidently call magnesium deficiency on something that's actually a pH problem, because the visual distinctions between plant health issues are subtle and the general model never had to get them right. Worse, it presents every answer with the same smooth confidence, so the grower has no way to tell the good answers from the bad ones.

A purpose-built tool earns its place precisely here: it's narrow on purpose, it's measured on how well it does the specific thing, and it can tell you when it's unsure. “Specifically good and honest about its limits” beats “generally capable and uniformly confident” for anyone making a real cultivation decision.

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Lesson 3: The near-term home for visual diagnosis is controlled indoor cultivation

Visual AI diagnosis works best where the inputs are consistent: stable lighting, repeatable camera angles, a known set of plants, a controlled environment. That description is controlled indoor cultivation, and it's also where the people most willing to adopt new tooling tend to be.

Outdoor and greenhouse settings introduce variability – weather, mixed lighting, scale – that makes consistent visual diagnosis harder. None of that is unsolvable, but it's the second problem, not the first. The honest near-term answer is that indoor, controlled grows are where this technology delivers reliable value today, and that's where the product should aim first.

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Lesson 4: The automation companies need plant-state signals, not another app

A recurring theme in the hardware and automation conversations: the companies building controllers, sensors, and grow-room automation don't need another consumer-facing diagnosis app. They need a plant-state signal they can pull into what they already build.

That's a different shape of product. It says the diagnosis capability should be available as something an automation system can consume – a clean signal of plant condition and how trustworthy it is – rather than only as an app a human opens. The growers running those rooms have already chosen their controllers and their dashboards. The useful move is to feed plant-state into those systems, not to ask everyone to adopt yet another screen.

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Where this points PlantLab

Four lessons, one direction. Take the product to the rooms where operators are, not only the rooms where the industry talks about itself. Keep the diagnosis specifically good and honest about its uncertainty, because that's the thing generic AI can't do. Aim first at controlled indoor cultivation, where visual diagnosis is reliable today. And make plant-state available to the automation systems growers already run, instead of competing for their attention with another standalone app.

None of these are surprising in hindsight. That's usually the sign of a good conference – it doesn't hand you a new idea so much as it sharpens the ones you arrived with and tells you which were wishful thinking. The wishful one was autonomy-first. The sharpened one was that being narrowly excellent and honest about it is the whole game.

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PlantLab is free to try at plantlab.ai. Three diagnoses a day, results in milliseconds. If you build grow-room automation and want a plant-state signal to integrate, the API documentation lives at plantlab.ai/docs.

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FAQ

What is WCCBE?

World Class Cannabis Business Europe (WCCBE), held in Frankfurt in May 2026, covering cultivation, policy, regulation, and business across the European cannabis sector. I chaired a day and spoke on visual AI for cannabis cultivation.

Why not just use ChatGPT to diagnose my plants?

A general-purpose AI knows a little about cannabis among everything else, and presents wrong answers with the same confidence as right ones. A purpose-built diagnosis tool is narrow on purpose, measured on how well it does the specific task, and can signal when it's unsure – which is exactly what a general model can't do.

Does PlantLab automate my grow room?

PlantLab provides the diagnosis and a trust signal; what you do with it is your call. Most growers want a tool that informs their decision rather than one that acts for them, and the API is built to support that human-in-the-loop use first. It can also feed plant-state into automation systems for the cases where automatic action makes sense.

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Related reading: – What's Wrong With My Cannabis Plant? A Visual Diagnosis Guide – The grower-facing diagnostic hub – Confidence Is Not Reliability: Trust Signals for Automated Plant Diagnosis – How to know when to trust an automated answer – Build an Autonomous Plant Health Monitor with AI + Home Assistant – Feeding plant-state into automation

Srpski ispod.

The first thing to say is simple. O.U.R. COOP has been founded.

From 16 to 21 May 2026, over 50 artists, cultural workers, researchers, cooperative practitioners, and members of the Shared Visions network gathered in Nikšić, Montenegro, for an assembly dedicated to cooperative organisation, art market research, and the formal founding of O.U.R. COOP, an international social cooperative for visual artists based in Belgrade. On 20 May, the founding assembly and signing marked the beginning of the cooperative’s first formal phase.

Collective Infrastructure for a Better Art Economy

The assembly opened with a question that set the whole week's direction. For whom are we producing art, and whose is the art infrastructure?

The question matters because art is usually seen through its most visible forms. Exhibitions, galleries, fairs, prizes, collections, public events, and institutional programmes shape how the public encounters artistic work. Behind that visible surface stands a much wider field of labour. Production, communication, administration, documentation, transport, maintenance of spaces, grant writing, negotiation, audience work, digital promotion, learning new skills, and finding the conditions in which an artistic practice can continue.

For many artists, especially in smaller or less developed art markets, that work remains unpaid, occasional, invisible, or treated as a private problem. Artists are increasingly expected to act as individual entrepreneurs while having limited access to markets, unstable income, weak institutional support, fragmented networks, and little control over the infrastructures through which their work circulates.

O.U.R. COOP begins from the recognition that these are collective problems. They can't be solved only through individual persistence, better self-promotion, or another round of professional survival. The cooperative is being built as a shared structure through which artists can pool resources, knowledge, contacts, tools, services, risks, and opportunities.

The cooperative primarily works in the field of visual arts, while bringing together artists, curators, researchers, producers, cultural workers, digital practitioners, and organisations involved in artistic production. It emerged through Shared Visions, a multi-year Creative Europe project focused on developing models of collective work, exchange, and economic organisation in the visual arts.

The Assembly in Montenegro

The programme of the founding assembly in Nikšić moved between research, public discussion, organisational work, and practical testing. Participants from more than thirteen countries worked across several locations in Nikšić, including OKC Tibor, the Nikšić City Museum and the Black Metallurgy Institute. The local context was also part of the process, with presentations of organisations active in Montenegro’s cultural and artistic scene.

A major part of the programme was dedicated to art market research. Shared Visions presented research on visual arts ecosystems in Serbia, Bulgaria, Montenegro, and North Macedonia, together with comparative reports from the Netherlands, Belgium, Portugal, and Ukraine. The discussions examined market dynamics, institutional landscapes, working conditions, cross-sectoral relations, support structures, and future possibilities for regional and international cooperation.

The founding sessions focused on the cooperative itself. Participants worked through questions of governance, decision-making, national cooperative legislation, bylaw frameworks, voting mechanisms, roles within the cooperative, financial models, revenue streams, and member onboarding. The way decisions are made, resources are distributed, and responsibilities are shared determines the kind of organisation that can exist.

Future Perspectives

O.U.R. COOP is being developed as a model of shared ownership, democratic governance, and practical support. The cooperative will support knowledge exchange, professional development, collective publishing, digital infrastructure, and new models for the circulation and distribution of artistic work.

One of the important directions already being developed is the exchange of artworks for knowledge, services, time, hospitality, professional support, or money. In such a model, the person who receives or buys an artwork is not only an anonymous figure at the end of a transaction. Exchange can become a relation between what someone makes, knows, has, needs, or can share. An artwork can be paid for with money, but it can also open forms of exchange involving translation, legal support, design, accommodation, transport, production help, craft knowledge, space, writing, mentoring, or time.

Another direction is collective publishing. In practical terms, an artist developing a publication could connect with editors, designers, printers, translators, distributors, writers, and spaces across the cooperative network. Editorial, technical, artistic, and distributive capacities become shared resources through which publications can be developed collectively across different countries and contexts.

The cooperative is also preparing an online gallery and digital platform for presenting artists internationally. The platform is imagined more broadly than a catalogue of works or a sales page. Alongside artworks, it will present artists’ knowledge, skills, methods, and services, from illustration, design, education, mentoring, production, archiving, and community work to commissioned interventions and collaborative formats. Schools, local communities, organisations, independent cultural centres, architectural offices, companies, collectives, and individuals could become part of a wider circle of exchange with artists.

Digital tools are being developed to support collective decision-making, artistic exchange, sales, resource sharing, and collaboration across different countries and economic contexts. Web3 technologies and digital commons are being explored as practical frameworks for transparency, access, and cooperative governance.

O.U.R. COOP is being developed as a working organisation shaped by its members. Through membership, artists and cultural workers can participate in decision-making, develop projects, exchange knowledge, contribute resources, and collaborate across different contexts. A public membership programme and open call will be launched soon for those interested in joining the cooperative and participating in its future development.

With the founding assembly in Nikšić, O.U.R. COOP entered a new phase of development. The cooperative will now focus on expanding its activities, welcoming new members, and building the structures, programmes, and relationships that will shape its future.

Zadruga je osnovana!

Posle nekoliko godina zajedničkog rada, istraživanja, razgovora i planiranja, O.U.R. COOP je zvanično osnovana.

Od 16. do 21. maja 2026. godine više od pedeset umetnika, kulturnih radnika, istraživača, zadružnih praktičara i članova mreže Shared Visions okupilo se u Nikšiću kako bi učestvovalo u programu posvećenom zadružnom organizovanju, istraživanju tržišta umetnosti i osnivanju međunarodne socijalne zadruge vizuelnih umetnika sa sedištem u Beogradu. Dana 20. maja održana je osnivačka skupština i potpisani su osnivački akti, čime je započela nova faza razvoja zadruge.

Zajednička infrastruktura za drugačiju ekonomiju umetnosti

Skupština je otvorena pitanjem koje je obeležilo čitavu sedmicu. Za koga stvaramo umetnost i kome pripada infrastruktura koja omogućava njen nastanak, prikazivanje i distribuciju?

To pitanje je važno zato što se umetnost najčešće posmatra kroz ono što je najvidljivije. Izložbe, galerije, sajmovi, nagrade, kolekcije, festivali i institucionalni programi oblikuju način na koji publika susreće umetnička dela. Iza te vidljive scene nalazi se mnogo šire polje rada koje retko privlači pažnju. Produkcija, komunikacija, administracija, dokumentovanje, transport, održavanje prostora, pisanje projekata, pregovaranje, rad sa publikom, digitalna promocija, usvajanje novih veština i neprestano stvaranje uslova za nastavak umetničke prakse.

Za mnoge umetnike, naročito u manjim i perifernim umetničkim sredinama, veliki deo tog rada ostaje neplaćen i nevidljiv. Od umetnika se istovremeno očekuje da budu autori, menadžeri, producenti, administratori i preduzetnici, iako rade u uslovima nestabilnih prihoda, ograničenog pristupa tržištu, slabe institucionalne podrške i fragmentisanih profesionalnih mreža. Problemi koji su po svojoj prirodi kolektivni često se predstavljaju kao lična odgovornost svakog pojedinca.

O.U.R. COOP nastaje iz drugačijeg razumevanja te situacije. Ako su problemi zajednički, onda i odgovori moraju biti zajednički. Umetnici ne mogu dugoročno unaprediti svoj položaj isključivo individualnim naporima, boljom samopromocijom ili još jednim krugom profesionalnog preživljavanja. Zadruga se zato razvija kao zajednička infrastruktura kroz koju članovi mogu da dele resurse, znanja, kontakte, alate, usluge, rizike i mogućnosti.

Iako prvenstveno deluje u polju vizuelnih umetnosti, O.U.R. COOP okuplja i kustose, istraživače, producente, kulturne radnike, stručnjake za digitalne tehnologije i organizacije koje učestvuju u umetničkoj produkciji. Zadruga je nastala u okviru projekta Shared Visions, višegodišnjeg projekta programa Kreativna Evropa, posvećenog razvoju novih modela kolektivnog rada, razmene i ekonomskog organizovanja u vizuelnim umetnostima.

Skupština u Nikšiću

Program osnivačke skupštine kretao se između istraživanja, javnih razgovora, organizacionog rada i praktičnog testiranja ideja. Učesnici iz više od trinaest zemalja radili su na različitim lokacijama u Nikšiću, među kojima su bili OKC Tibor, Gradski muzej Nikšić i Institut za crnu metalurgiju. Važan deo programa bilo je i upoznavanje sa lokalnim kulturnim kontekstom kroz predstavljanje organizacija koje deluju na crnogorskoj umetničkoj i kulturnoj sceni.

Značajan segment programa bio je posvećen istraživanju tržišta umetnosti. Predstavljeni su rezultati istraživanja ekosistema vizuelnih umetnosti u Srbiji, Bugarskoj, Crnoj Gori i Severnoj Makedoniji, kao i komparativni izveštaji iz Holandije, Belgije, Portugala i Ukrajine. Razgovori su se bavili tržišnim odnosima, institucionalnim okvirima, uslovima rada umetnika, mehanizmima podrške, odnosima između javnog i privatnog sektora, kao i mogućnostima buduće regionalne i međunarodne saradnje.

Poseban fokus bio je na samoj zadruzi. Tokom radnih sesija učesnici su razmatrali pitanja upravljanja, donošenja odluka, različitih nacionalnih zadružnih zakonodavstava, statuta, mehanizama glasanja, organizacionih uloga, finansijskih modela, izvora prihoda i procesa uključivanja novih članova. Način na koji se donose odluke, raspodeljuju resursi i dele odgovornosti nije tehničko pitanje. Upravo od tih procesa zavisi kakva organizacija može da nastane i opstane.

Šta sledi

O.U.R. COOP razvija se kao model zajedničkog vlasništva, demokratskog upravljanja i praktične međusobne podrške. Njene aktivnosti obuhvatiće razmenu znanja, profesionalni razvoj, kolektivno izdavaštvo, razvoj digitalne infrastrukture i nove modele cirkulacije i distribucije umetničkog rada.

Jedan od pravaca koji se već razvija jeste razmena umetničkih dela za znanje, usluge, vreme, gostoprimstvo, profesionalnu podršku ili novac. U takvom modelu osoba koja prima ili nabavlja umetničko delo nije samo anonimni kupac na kraju tržišnog lanca. Razmena postaje odnos između onoga što ljudi stvaraju, znaju, poseduju, trebaju ili mogu da podele sa drugima. Umetničko delo može biti plaćeno novcem, ali može otvoriti i drugačije oblike razmene koji uključuju prevođenje, pravnu pomoć, dizajn, smeštaj, prevoz, produkcijsku podršku, zanatska znanja, radni prostor, pisanje, mentorstvo ili vreme.

Važan pravac razvoja predstavlja i kolektivno izdavaštvo. Umetnik koji razvija publikaciju može se povezati sa urednicima, dizajnerima, prevodiocima, štamparima, distributerima, autorima tekstova i prostorima širom zadružne mreže. Urednički, tehnički, umetnički i distributivni kapaciteti postaju zajednički resurs kroz koji publikacije mogu nastajati kolektivno, kroz saradnju između različitih zemalja i konteksta.

Zadruga istovremeno razvija onlajn galeriju i digitalnu platformu za međunarodno predstavljanje umetnika. Platforma nije zamišljena samo kao katalog radova ili mesto za prodaju. Pored umetničkih dela, predstavljaće znanja, veštine, metode i usluge svojih članova. Od ilustracije, dizajna i edukacije, preko mentorstva, produkcije i arhiviranja, do rada sa zajednicama, naručenih intervencija i različitih oblika saradnje. Škole, lokalne zajednice, organizacije, nezavisni kulturni centri, arhitektonski studiji, kompanije, kolektivi i pojedinci moći će da uspostavljaju različite oblike saradnje i razmene sa umetnicima.

Digitalni alati razvijaju se kako bi podržali zajedničko odlučivanje, razmenu umetničkih radova, prodaju, deljenje resursa i saradnju među članovima koji deluju u različitim zemljama i ekonomskim kontekstima. Web3 tehnologije i digitalna dobra zajednice istražuju se kao mogući alati za veću transparentnost, dostupnost i demokratsko upravljanje.

O.U.R. COOP zamišljena je kao organizacija koju oblikuju njeni članovi. Kroz članstvo umetnici i kulturni radnici mogu učestvovati u donošenju odluka, razvijati zajedničke projekte, razmenjivati znanja, doprinositi zajedničkim resursima i graditi nove oblike saradnje. U narednom periodu biće otvoren poziv za sve koji žele da se uključe u dalji razvoj zadruge.

Osnivačkom skupštinom u Nikšiću završen je jedan period razvoja, a započet drugi. Pred O.U.R. COOP sada je zadatak da ideje pretvori u trajne strukture, programe i odnose koji mogu unaprediti uslove rada umetnika i otvoriti prostor za drugačije modele saradnje, razmene i organizovanja u umetnosti.

Our Father Who art in Heaven Hallowed be Thy name Thy Kingdom come Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven Give us this day our daily Bread And forgive us our trespasses As we forgive those who trespass against us And lead us not into temptation But deliver us from evil

Amen

Jesus is Lord! Come Lord Jesus!

Come Lord Jesus! Christ is Lord!

Pripyat

Bindless And afraid to make a man Void And cold To dust and rot forgiveness To settle and became This forest often love The right and truesome rain In dusting road To troop in poor today The rising Sun Efficacious ruin and rifle The Olivet of mist And cure and all of disc To site the storm give way A poor and often friend The lantern belie And suppose this thorn- In her side, the mouth The office pages and syntac Praise for lava floes And Mitchell form denies No frame to occupy- This road in understeer And tasting vapour for the memory A sweet untangle from the ruin Flowers to the home- And indentations would An early breath to modern This sicking cure and was The night belittle And fortunes to the pyre Brave and wise did visit Isle of electricity shod A fateful, stole republic The Earth on record as this mass Shot to Early day and South Retracted to the frame Bless this house in day And lacrymal be back Oppostrium declare That no to her, my soul Would give to someone, this Sights are set and were The often man befriend,- Betray A home For often keep that lair This little ruin of red And simple watching blue Verseless water keep Our act and world Sympathy to keep this place In fights for new at all To keys distribute us the vessel Top of war will be A place in early June The crash of light became A stolen man was here Lighting fire arrest A simple door And scrutiny by the time.. Frets for very public The steam of her and weight In shunning next to week and proper This is this in hours And only wait for her The time is ten and shoreline To notice pen in amber Alight reune And nothing left unsaid To Rome.

I know, Waiting for Me to complain about something today or say something important enough to justify why i haven’t wrote this late at night. Instead im writing this after i got back from work. I Unfortunately, Had a normal day. terrifying right? it is irritating in its own way. But I do have a question, Have you ever noticed how some people can turn a paper cut into a personality trait?. One bad day and suddenly they’re standing in the middle of the road waving their arms around like they’re directing traffic. I’ll drop the sarcasm for a second and say this plainly. I dont care. Nobody cares. nobody was lost. nobody asked. and yet there they are. I think attention seekers must wake up tired. exhausted even. Imagine carrying a spotlight everywhere you go. Must be heavy.

Anyway, Ten is a strange number, And i mean it. out of all numbers that one suddenly starts apppearing everywhere. I spend most of my life not thinking about it. and then Out of no where.. Ten steps. Ten pages. Ten reasosn. Ten days. People love counting down to things. Like the number itself is responsible, Maybe thats why calenders exist. Tiny little reminders nailed to the wall. little boxes pretending to be equal. Not that it matters. I’ve got more important things to think about. Like why people announce they’re leaving a room as if they’re the main attraction, Or why someone can post trillion photos of themselves and still act surprised when nobody has anything new to say.

Maybe im just old. Ten days is still ten days. Tomrrow it’ll be nine. hilarious how that works.

I have nothing else to talk about today. extreme stomach pain, i think i ate something i wasnt supposed to eat and now im getting punished for my crimes.

Sincerely, Ahmed

4km 500m run 500m walk

We've been composting our own humanure since we moved into our new house. We practiced doing it before moving in while building the house but now it's full time. At first it was kind of gross, took a little getting used to. What really helped was reading the book “The Humanure Handbook” by Joseph Jenkins. That book took away what remaining fear and doubt I had on the topic. Now that I'm used to it I much prefer it. We have filled up five or six bins so far. We make the bins out of shipping pallets so it is a decent amount of compost in the end.

This spring we've had two bins to use. We use our chicken bedding and composted cow manure in our vegetable garden. We use some of the sheep manure in the garden but a lot of that just gets spread in their pastures. And we use our humanure compost for our trees and shrubs. We've been planting a bunch of fruit and nut trees this year and it's been so great having some home-brew family compost to add to the plantings. I laughed and said we need a bumper sticker that says “We give a sh*t for the trees.” Because you know, we literally as a family totally live up to that.

Just a friendly warning for those interested in the subject. Do not spread uncomposted human waste in the environment. You need to properly compost it to make it environmentally safe. But after proper composting it is perfectly safe even for vegetable garden use. However I still find it psychologically a little gross. Our trees and shrubs need compost to, so I find that the perfect use for our composted humanure.

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夜になると街は祭りのようになった。競技場の歓声が遠くで波打ち、ライブ会場の低音が建物の壁を震わせ、通りには照明が灯って、まるで毎晩が祝日の続きであるかのようだった。

けれど俺は、その輪の中には入らなかった。

窓を閉めた部屋でオーブンの中のグラタンを眺めているほうが好きだった。騒がしい街の中にありながら、自分だけが静かな場所にいる感覚があった。外から流れ込む音は不快な騒音ではなく、遠い焚き火のような暖かいノイズだった。世界が勝手に盛り上がっているのを背中で感じながら、俺はその熱の外縁で暮らしていた。

食べ終えたあと、空になった袋がベランダの隅で風を受け、かすかな音を立てた。その軽さを見ていると、自分の中からも何かが抜けていくような気がした。

人の行動は半分ほど自動で動いているのではないかと、だいぶ前から思っている。だから最近は、自分が何かを決めるというより、手や足に勝手に動いてもらっている感覚があった。夜中の二時ごろ布団に入ると、体の輪郭がゆっくり痺れていく。そのまま意識は沈み、心地よさと不快さの境目のような場所で眠った。

翌朝、布団の中でスマホを眺めていると、が肩甲骨を柔らかくする方法を説明している動画が流れていた。試してみると少しだけ肩が軽くなった。正月の朝に何も予定がなく、時間だけが静かに流れていた頃の感覚がふいによみがえった。まるで季節を間違えた正月の再来だった。

冷蔵庫に残っていた梅干しを口に入れる。少し酸っぱく、それでも甘みが残っていて、美味しかった。再び横になろうとしたが、寝すぎたせいで首も肩も固まっていた。枕の角度を変えるたびに鋭い痛みが走る。

自分だけが辿り着きたい場所がある。それは現実のどこかに存在するようでいて、同時に抽象画の背景のように曖昧だった。学問や理屈に落とし込めるものでもない気がする。それでも近づくための方法は探さなければならない。人生とは結局、そのための長い助走なのかもしれなかった。

そう考えながら横になっていると、体の奥で何かの改造工事が終わったような感覚があった。細胞が微かな合図を送ってきたような気がして、布団から起き上がる。これまでは何も考えずスーツを選んでいたのに、その日は自然と私服に手が伸びた。

家を出る前、鍵を確認した。もし倉庫の鍵なら、そのまま外へ出て確かめに行っただろう。しかし家の鍵だったので玄関に置き、部屋の電気を消した。昨夜は二時まで起きていたはずなのに、不思議と疲れは薄かった。

窓の外では、昨夜の祭りの名残がまだ街の空気に残っていた。人々はまた夜になれば歓声を上げ、光の下に集まるのだろう。

俺はその中心には向かわない。

ただ、その喧騒のすぐ隣を歩く。騒がしい世界に包まれながら、自分だけの静けさを持っている。その距離感こそが、今の俺にとっていちばん居心地のいい場所だった。

I thought about it and this is actually the second time in San Jose since the breakup, and it’s a little bit ironic that I’m explicitly mentioning this but I feel like I have reclaimed San Jose in my mind because it does not hurt me. I’m excited to see my friends and I ate a ton of sushi for dinner because it is all work expensed. There was someone from college that was apparently in the area and I found out through sheer coincidence since we hadn’t talked in a long time, and she wanted to hook up with me and I said no and I’m gonna proud of myself for that, because I feel like in my mind sex is something that is kind of sacred in the sense of something loving and caring that you get to do with someone, rather than just satisfying some primal need, or something that society pressures you to do as a form of value.

This review is a Writing Repository original.

JANGAR!: Slaves of the Mind Mage

By Logan D. Whitney – Cliffhanger! Press – June 1, 2026

Review by Robin Marx

The pounding of drums deep in the jungle draw savage wild man Jangar to an encampment of Ur-Men—hostile ape-like creatures—who revel as caged humans cower in fear. When he spies a terrified young woman tied to a spire in the outpost’s center, offered up as a sacrifice to the Ur-Men’s lumbering god, Jangar is pushed to violently intervene. Even after his daring rescue is complete, however, Jangar’s troubles have only begun. While Jangar was born to the jungle, Yara—as the beauteous former captive is known—is altogether unprepared for such a dangerous environment and unlikely to survive on her own. As Jangar and Yara set off for civilization, the pair soon encounters threats unknown even to Jangar: the otherworldly Mind Mage and his eerie servitors.

Hot on the heels of February’s Honor Among Rogues: Six Thrilling Tales of Pulp Adventure, JANGAR!: Slaves of the Mind Mage marks the first installment in a new project by Logan D. Whitney. It’s the first novelette of six planned monthly releases; the first five will be DRM-free ebooks, with the sixth installment to be collected along with the previous installments and printed as a mass market-sized paperback.

Where Honor Among Rogues kept to the relatively grounded terrain of Earth’s historical past as viewed through an adventure pulp lens, in JANGAR! Whitney is in full Sword & Sorcery mode. In his Author’s Note, he cites contemporary author Steve Dilks’ hero Gunthar as an inspiration, one that then led Whitney to another character that would become a further influence on JANGAR!: Lin Carter’s Thongor. While the broad-strokes setting of primeval Muu does feel reminiscent of Carter’s ancient Lemuria, readers are also likely to feel the shadow of Edgar Rice Burrough’s Tarzan. Like Tarzan, Jangar is a solitary human raised in the wilderness by animal parents: saber-tooth tigers rather than the gorilla-like Mangani from Tarzan of the Apes. The panther-like Jangar is portrayed as more beast than man, and his interactions with other human beings as guarded and tentative. In one memorable passage, he even teaches Yara how to use dangling vines to navigate the jungle.

The greatest strength of JANGAR!: Slaves of the Mind Mage is its fast pacing. Just 42 pages in length, there’s no wasted verbiage. Jangar and Yara face one struggle after another, with very little opportunity to catch their breath. Readers are only given enough worldbuilding required by the story, and the distant metropolis of Q’oth and the rest of the continent of Muu remain mysterious and ripe for future elaboration.

With a savage barbarian hero, a beautiful woman in need of assistance, brutal ape-men, and glimpses of cosmic horror, the ingredients of JANGAR!: Slaves of the Mind Mage will be familiar to seasoned readers of Sword & Sorcery, but they’re served up in such an entertaining manner that I suspect most fans of the subgenre will happily overlook the lack of boundary-pushing. Indeed, Whitney includes several amusing references to other pulp tales as if affirming the story’s connection to similar adventures, rather than trying to stand apart. Jangar’s jungle home is named “Zan-Tar,” a barely-concealed anagram for “Tarzan.” Paraphrasing Conan’s memorable “if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion” reflection from “Queen of the Black Coast” (1934), Jangar echoes “If life is a dream, then I, too, am a dream.” There’s even a sly reference to the work of Whitney’s Rogues in the House podcast associate Matthew John when Yara is tempted with the knowledge of how to “walk on worlds,” a phrasing suspiciously similar to the title of John’s first S&S collection.

Fast-paced and action-packed, with a satisfying conclusion, JANGAR!: Slaves of the Mind Mage is a tasty Sword & Sorcery snack. I look forward to future installments. The digital novelette is available now via Amazon Kindle and Payhip.

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