Broken: A Plague Journal

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search results: [[an + end] + [forever + dust]]: [translate: standard] :

author: unknown. title: “An End of Us: An Ontological and Epistemological Discourse on The Forever Dust.” publication: Ein Journal des Instituts fur die Erforschung des Heiligenscheineffektes.

[recovery team notes signal shatter; text incomplete.]

[la biblio[“o]mnitheque universelle confirms textual probability to statistical significance +/-33%]

excerpts:

…] post-Judas anthropological teams from Sol-3 (14.7+) found little to suggest that the agent actually arose from “Black Space,” that area of the AC system most affected by the destruction of Proxima Centauri. Intervention posts listening from the edge of the timeline reported no significant evidence of remaining industrial centers, much less the planetary production system that the creation of silver would have necessitated.

Perhaps it should be noted here that the anthro teams did eventually compile a comp/cont report on the status of the AC system pre- and post-war. That report is fundamental to understanding the conditions in that system that most likely were contributing factors to the madness of subject Maire and the Forever Dust she caused.

…] remember that teams arrived mid-war, and even under the cover of […

…] major shipping lanes closed, and some evidence suggests that orbiting war platforms enacted a planetary blockade that forced the starvation of over ninety percent of the population. We can only imagine the desperation that the survivors felt while quite literally under the gun of the blockade platforms. Added to the lasting effects of biowar and engineered climate changes, the […

…] without doubt tortured.

Torture is that most effective of appropriations: the victim in essence becomes the transitional commodity of the process. The information gathered during torture is only secondary in importance to the “owning” of the victim by the perpetrators. The process is one of excision. First, the victim is excised from her normal environment. Second, the victim’s language is excised. Torture enacts a regression within the victim; it takes away the ability to communicate as one always has and instead replaces it with those first forays into verbal communication that we make as infants: cries of pain and fear. Third, the perpetrator restores just enough verbal ability to excise the required information from the victim.

Torture is an insistence. Without the benefit of […

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search results: [[Paul + Hughes] + [criticism + posthumous + negative]]: [translate: standard] :

author: Thara Ruskin. title: a response to SE Colmey. publication: NY Times Book Review, 15 February 2010.

[la biblio[“o]mnitheque universelle confirms textual probability to statistical significance +/-27%]

full text:

My dear Mrs. Colmey,

You are the last person I would have expected to write to defend the late Mr. Hughes. My apologies for misspelling his surname. Truthfully, I couldn’t be bothered to care when I wrote my review; fact-checking is the responsibility of interns. Let us for the moment set aside personal differences (I am familiar with your painting practice and your work at revitalizing Cornish, and for that, I applaud you as an admirer) and analyze your involvement in PEH’s books.

We all know the story of the manuscript at the bottom of the cardboard box; please don’t insult my intelligence. I commend your willingness to seek the publication of the third novel in the silver series, given the unflattering character summary of you young Paul wrote in both an end and his online journals. I commend your willingness, yet lament it at the same time. What you’ve given the literary world is a horrid tangle of self-serving scribble hardly worthy of a hand-written diary entry. Empower yourself, woman! Can’t you see what he was writing about? You. He wrote about you in the most selfish, vain way possible; your side of the story has never been represented. All the readers are left with is but a shadow of whom I assume you truly are. That, in and of itself, is unforgivable. Had I been you, I’d have burned that cardboard box and been rid of that man.

We can only forgive so much to mental illness. I hope someday that you see what you’ve done. Broken will only serve to inspire future generations of conceited young authors.

Ms. Thara Ruskin, associate editor NY Times Book Review

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search results: [[Paul + Hughes] + [personal + journal + 2002]]: [translate: standard] :

author: Paul Evan Hughes. title: “hovering.” publication: 28 June 2002.

[la biblio[“o]mnitheque universelle confirms textual probability to statistical significance +/-50%]

full text:

through it all, i’m still crazy

this veil of dream i weave around myself

.

moon behind gauze: walk, because. that’s all there is. stumble. through tripping grass, barefoot. thistles, prickers. shred. flesh. but at least i can feel something, anything. not him, not now. he’s asleep.

stumble into black, smoke inhaled, exhaled, tears under gauze: moon. walk: because.

if this is a test…how much more can you take from me? how much more before i am broken completely?

whispers into that night. shards of a song. two songs. more. words run together, thoughts: none, because. there is this, but it isn’t stillness. there is defeat. replacement. there are silences begun, and

all i ever wanted was forever.

there was happiness in those months, happiness in those years. in that life. in what existed between us and between Us. i’ve lost. so much. and. the mind. it consumes.

i’ve considered locking myself away in a place where chemicals will wash the blood from these wounds. for a while. just to get away. from this. from

and i trip, fall into a rut, grass, stems: gouging pathways into palms. mud. water. wash my face with this dirt, rub mud into those wounds so that they’ll scar and i can be reminded someday of how far i once fell.

things will be okay. not now. not for a long time.

and tonight someone seemed genuinely concerned. thought i was joking at first. when i told her that i’ve slipped into a deep depression. slipped? falling, falling, feels so much like i’m still falling and there’s no end in sight. subtractions. how could anyone ever love this? broken? man?

it is better that you’ve escaped me.

take

take me

take me to

take me, too.