but now isn't
& wishes somehow that it still was mostly boring
when my mom got diagnosed with cancer i immediately began searching for an answer
it was a mystery exactly in what part of her history this malignant thing had come, & what from
she was always healthier in habits than the rest of us by half
getting up well before the rooster'd even think to crow
then swimming ten by ten laps at the local Y by the time the sun rose
then back home she'd go, to wake the family waiting—dad & i—as they dozed away the daylight with a gentle kiss that bestirred one to rise as if roused by a goddess
& the house under her touch did flourish in all corners from the moment she awoke
she was a fixer of any thing within it that mayhaps did fall or get broken
lazy clocks she would spin back to proper horology
chairs unbalanced would be leveled to seated functionality
shoes mended, miniature window gardens tended
& all the while at her keyboard she would type the types of stories you'd never think were boring
when my mom got diagnosed with cancer i immediately began searching for an answer
it was a mystery exactly in what part of her history this malignant thing had come, & what from
she was always healthier in habits than the rest of us by half
getting up well before the rooster'd even think to crow
then swimming ten by ten laps at the local Y by the time the sun rose
then back home she'd go, to wake the family waiting—dad & i—as they dozed away the daylight with a gentle kiss that bestirred one to rise as if roused by a goddess
& the house under her touch did flourish in all corners from the moment she awoke
she was a fixer of any thing within it that mayhaps did fall or get broken
lazy clocks she would spin back to proper horology
chairs unbalanced would be leveled to seated functionality
shoes mended, miniature window gardens tended
& all the while at her keyboard she would type the types of stories you'd never think were boring
she had a way with words
the well-tended domicile represented her effort to click into place a life of reason so that beneath the keys could unfold an irrational world
she wrote fantasy novels for kids
it was her passion and her gift
but not in style just in audience
not playing down to YA types per se; just making children her most immediate market
like so many others before she made a world where magical creatures did appear for those who needed it
but hers had a difference: fully digital descriptions of the beasts included in the books
in JavaScript she did render quasi-physical depictions of a hundred sixty one animalian exemplars:
the fantastic species that inhabited the tales she would spin
the well-tended domicile represented her effort to click into place a life of reason so that beneath the keys could unfold an irrational world
she wrote fantasy novels for kids
it was her passion and her gift
but not in style just in audience
not playing down to YA types per se; just making children her most immediate market
like so many others before she made a world where magical creatures did appear for those who needed it
but hers had a difference: fully digital descriptions of the beasts included in the books
in JavaScript she did render quasi-physical depictions of a hundred sixty one animalian exemplars:
the fantastic species that inhabited the tales she would spin
coded diskettes part and parcel of each novel, like a bonus that was always there (is it still a bonus?)
these little characters could appear when plugged into an internet-compatible machine
later HTML5 then 6 served as mechanism
to guide the story kind of pictorially
every mini monster drawn in 3D spinning freely on your PC
pulled in bits from what I'd draw when she would first tell me all these stories circa bedtime every night
under darkened covers I would scribble in pre-adolescent delight shoddy illustrations of the creatures hatched from eggs she laid in my imagination
and in the morning's light she'd find them strewn by my bedside and redesign them in her better-eyed perspective
to grow from crayon to pen
then they'd evolve beneath her hand upon the paper
to be incorporated forthwith in the next night's iteration of the story
after a bit (my ages 4-6) she realized soon her natural knack for it
her husband too—my dad—becoming quite enthralled by these little children's myths, too, if you believe it
he encouraged her to publish; she at first demurred
denying talent in her self vis-a-vis spoken words in forms resembling the best stories for kids i'd ever heard
though to be fair i was quite biased
first impressions mostly gross but i later began to comprehend the glory of the fact that she appreciated me—who she'd just met at birth—maybe more than i appreciated her
which was more than anybody else on this earth
her demurral soon became absurd, though, when her older sibling came to visit for the weekend
T: in the book biz her bro with the high-flying mohawk and the hottest fucking Oakley's he'd ever fucking seen in fucking Target
YE: can you believe the chrome sheen on these?
C: the glasses just the latest in a long slew of some mid-half-life crises
he 12 years older and always accorded more shit for his age over her but in there always needed more for it
his loop of moreness had led recently to extreme sports
parasailing and BMX water skiing ad infiniti etcetera
probably more into the gear than the activities themselves but anyway he overheard one bedtime the last stanzas
and was floored by the words, the second soul to be enamored of the world she had created for one little boy
the hopeless romantic in him, the hero he had hoped to be, engaged in creature capture with his nephew in that bedtime semi-vicariously
and but so saw as much thru his own eyes as mine the possibilities that lay in the ley lines she'd made to bind the magic
the way he viewed it though meant he was trying first to use it as a form of making moreness beyond his own self
as a stepping stone toward towers formed of torrid bones
viz, he wanted to make money
unfortunately this was his most potent approach to winning
buy them and deflate their egos
defeated by currency we become no longer people just bodies taught our values are not equal, or at least that they can be bought
ruthless dollar signs lurked back behind the curtains of his mind as he approached her
L: after i had gone to sleep
T: and he said
these little characters could appear when plugged into an internet-compatible machine
later HTML5 then 6 served as mechanism
to guide the story kind of pictorially
every mini monster drawn in 3D spinning freely on your PC
pulled in bits from what I'd draw when she would first tell me all these stories circa bedtime every night
under darkened covers I would scribble in pre-adolescent delight shoddy illustrations of the creatures hatched from eggs she laid in my imagination
and in the morning's light she'd find them strewn by my bedside and redesign them in her better-eyed perspective
to grow from crayon to pen
then they'd evolve beneath her hand upon the paper
to be incorporated forthwith in the next night's iteration of the story
after a bit (my ages 4-6) she realized soon her natural knack for it
her husband too—my dad—becoming quite enthralled by these little children's myths, too, if you believe it
he encouraged her to publish; she at first demurred
denying talent in her self vis-a-vis spoken words in forms resembling the best stories for kids i'd ever heard
though to be fair i was quite biased
first impressions mostly gross but i later began to comprehend the glory of the fact that she appreciated me—who she'd just met at birth—maybe more than i appreciated her
which was more than anybody else on this earth
her demurral soon became absurd, though, when her older sibling came to visit for the weekend
T: in the book biz her bro with the high-flying mohawk and the hottest fucking Oakley's he'd ever fucking seen in fucking Target
YE: can you believe the chrome sheen on these?
C: the glasses just the latest in a long slew of some mid-half-life crises
he 12 years older and always accorded more shit for his age over her but in there always needed more for it
his loop of moreness had led recently to extreme sports
parasailing and BMX water skiing ad infiniti etcetera
probably more into the gear than the activities themselves but anyway he overheard one bedtime the last stanzas
and was floored by the words, the second soul to be enamored of the world she had created for one little boy
the hopeless romantic in him, the hero he had hoped to be, engaged in creature capture with his nephew in that bedtime semi-vicariously
and but so saw as much thru his own eyes as mine the possibilities that lay in the ley lines she'd made to bind the magic
the way he viewed it though meant he was trying first to use it as a form of making moreness beyond his own self
as a stepping stone toward towers formed of torrid bones
viz, he wanted to make money
unfortunately this was his most potent approach to winning
buy them and deflate their egos
defeated by currency we become no longer people just bodies taught our values are not equal, or at least that they can be bought
ruthless dollar signs lurked back behind the curtains of his mind as he approached her
L: after i had gone to sleep
T: and he said
YE: excuse me sis but if i may be so bold i think those stories you are telling 'roy are verbal gold
i think it's a disgrace and/or a shame that your audience stops with him, tho;
think of all the kids who'd love to be told of a world as fucking rich and ripe and plentiful of magic beasts and arcane witchery
i want to give you here a golden opportunity
ER: is it selling out if you still keep it all in the family?
only a question that occurred to her in hindsight
for in that moment on that fateful night she was like blinded by the shine of it
infatuated as we'd all be by the fucking slew of possibilities
& the potential for more glory thru some simple stories
no holds barred yes she says, enthusiastically
and it's an overnight success
& just like that she's been addressed by Kirkus as the female teddy geisel, PhD
hailed by NYT as she who would bring back highest fantasy to all echelons of humanity
secretly she considered it more science fiction but the distinction mattered little (speaking genre-wise) if it sold well, which it did, so she listened to her publisher, her brother, when it came to things of the marketing sort
so they pushed it out (the team at L&D Publishing, marketing division) in a way that played up monster fights and downplayed the science behind it
which she could see the basic appreciation for for kids
less complicated than most types of wisdom was that of an elemental sort
fire torches earth
grass absorbs water
water quenches flame
there unfolded more convoluted versions of this loop but to an astute enough observer
L: like my mom was
ER: it was clear that this semblance of natural order reflected less than totally poorly the world as it's supposed to be, & therein was the crux of the appeal of her tales
a rub of: this is how it all is meant to work
meanwhile natural law & order thoughts aside, for these monsters people went berserk
L: & i had thought i'd loved them well enough, considered myself at 6 the top kingpin of this here monstrous world
but some folks wanted nothing but it
once introduced they only grew fanatic mental gardens for the beasties, all the more to show off what they got
T: how many books & accompanying floppy diskettes they could collect
hot and frenzied flew the copies off the shelves
it was a habit soon for some; they could not help themselves
once introduced they only grew in fruitless eon-long pursuit of it
not a new phenomenon, this flavor of phenomenal enthralling
the fearsome drive for chemicals more entrancing than what exists inside our head
we are not satisfied to be just us
ergo to extend into a world that smells a bit more magical than normal turns us normal beings into ones that hope more fervidly for more magic
our neurochemical levels get to pretend there is another energetic entity to draw from
but never satisfied are ours, these inner drives
there will always be more things outside
hard to describe this unwillingness to quit a thing
when it feels like it's what continues to keep you alive
this was what these lil beasties did to people
latched on to their brains, plain and simple
vampires of any other name'd still suck the same
roughshod and steel-tiny toed run the imaginary fuckers—in manifold colorful forms, all 164 of 'em, a full rainbow horde—cross the corpus callosum of so many crania
it's more popular than popular opinion itself could measure: beastiemania a gravid all-encompassing craze
C: everyone is reading the series
keeping up in chapter book installments w/the tales of these kids and their monstrous retinue
the streets flood—heaping waves of people soaked in pandemonia—every day the latest issue gets released
over 1998 there are 15 books published, approximately one every 3.5 weeks
the reception only increases exponential- & self-reflexively
the more they are read the more people will read them
the perpetual meta paradox of phenomena propagating more phenomena in and of themselves, and eventually a kind of bullshit comes
K: how does she do it??
C: thought pieces start to wonder where the churn comes from
L: how Joanna 'Boss' Black née Dolle (i.e., my mom) can without end turn out stories for a populi intent on consuming them as soon as ink gets blown dry upon the leafy canvas
E: how she paints the pictures just barely quicker than they can—what readers ravenous—take them in and burn the glass electric fixtures lightly cranial
ingrain them like any sacred pattern can be if prayed hard enough upon
there unfolds a crazéd marveling at the craze itself,
all the papers blogs and tweeters love to point out,
desperate reporters forging paths thru forests for the sake of making trails;
saying nothing so important that it could've been avoided
adding noise to the polar vortex forthwith
it all turns out unimportant anyway, b/c the boss doesn't waste time reading other people's takes on what she writ
keeps on keeping on, purely focused on her words and shaping wending ways thru them for the kids to investigate
L: this is how she does do it—avoiding earfuls of bullshit
instead she spends her time embedding morals in the trees like hidden flags that wave only if you stare deep enough into the forest
meanwhile in turn for her faithful service the public love was unrelenting, of course
C: these mini mirabilia of digital creations causing infinite elation to those committing heart and soul and all else that might fit
this description's getting rambly so the pointy gist is:
YE: people fucking loved this shit
undying, without reasonable end in sight
after all, the possibilities were endless
we made sure these monsters spawned and hybridized more often than less
so when the time came and the digital era beckoned w/its daintily electric little fingers
our advertising team made sure to listen to (not that their ears had to strain too hard to hear) those calling for an app as constituent aspect of the Li'l Beastie Experience ©
a new flavor of reality to add and spice up all the in-depth feelings they've already committed to the fantasy herein
ingenious, then, it was seen to be by an in-house genius here @ L&D (these a-holes pop up everywhere, it seems to be; intelligence transmutating like a virus)
T: to make the app in essence just that the kids (of all ages) dived into the flat-out stories which the boss had written
they stick to the basic simple capture and half-asséd growth of the monsters qua prisoners by bare-bones manipulation of the steps the user'd taken
trick them ostensibly into walking around for their own fitness' sake but in fact the GPS was more attuned to what they walked by, what was viewed thru camera's eyes
what offered itself as an advertisement to be taken for a fiscal ride
providing mounds of data (unbeknownst to user) to the big corporate cloud in the sky
while they scampered fro' here to there
monsters popping up everywhere, the algorithm made sure
L: and like all beasts before it this one only added to the chorus of love screaming at the poet
her work was everywhere
T: she was whelmed for a day-long moment
when she realized upon the application's release date (2016, august 8th)
her creation had metastasized far beyond what she'd intended to make
and now she'd found herself a world where kids found heaven in her words
(x1000 for the pictures, per each)
rendered speechless was she, mute w/ stupefaction at what she'd accomplished
till the 8th rolled in she curled up on the couch anxious
unsure what to write now, now that kids could make their own adventures
find the monsters w/o her help—shock and awe reigned thru the house
L: i was away at school, and dad was out on Sunday patrol
for the special parade in her honor, sponsored by L&D
T: but she texted in under pretenses of faux sickness
(supposedly unable to vocalize due to a hoarse throat,
but really it was shaky-nerve induced laryngitis)
to avoid the public pressure she felt suddenly unfit to deal with
after four hours on couch huddled she tried to get up and write but
that wasn't happening
so she snuggled up and tried to get over herself
that wasn't happening
she turned TV on to no avail—all channels were tuned in to the parade
she turned all lights off and tried to shiver out her frigidness
tried to write under cover of darkness
but the pen kept escaping her grip
she cried briefly; realized the folly of it; quit and popped a motrin
hoping to pass out and sleep away the worthless self-commotion
it kind of worked; she nodded fitfully off; napped throughout the day
woke up right before her spouse came home
played off sickness as a passing zone thru which she flew
the feigned flu thing never exposed as ruse
but it started to come true two months later
emulation by reality of fiction: her body turned traitor
as if aiming to make up for the lies she had told
E: there are no rainbow monsters around; your tales are candidly false!
L: this is what she told me as to how it occurred
i think it's a disgrace and/or a shame that your audience stops with him, tho;
think of all the kids who'd love to be told of a world as fucking rich and ripe and plentiful of magic beasts and arcane witchery
i want to give you here a golden opportunity
ER: is it selling out if you still keep it all in the family?
only a question that occurred to her in hindsight
for in that moment on that fateful night she was like blinded by the shine of it
infatuated as we'd all be by the fucking slew of possibilities
& the potential for more glory thru some simple stories
no holds barred yes she says, enthusiastically
and it's an overnight success
& just like that she's been addressed by Kirkus as the female teddy geisel, PhD
hailed by NYT as she who would bring back highest fantasy to all echelons of humanity
secretly she considered it more science fiction but the distinction mattered little (speaking genre-wise) if it sold well, which it did, so she listened to her publisher, her brother, when it came to things of the marketing sort
so they pushed it out (the team at L&D Publishing, marketing division) in a way that played up monster fights and downplayed the science behind it
which she could see the basic appreciation for for kids
less complicated than most types of wisdom was that of an elemental sort
fire torches earth
grass absorbs water
water quenches flame
there unfolded more convoluted versions of this loop but to an astute enough observer
L: like my mom was
ER: it was clear that this semblance of natural order reflected less than totally poorly the world as it's supposed to be, & therein was the crux of the appeal of her tales
a rub of: this is how it all is meant to work
meanwhile natural law & order thoughts aside, for these monsters people went berserk
L: & i had thought i'd loved them well enough, considered myself at 6 the top kingpin of this here monstrous world
but some folks wanted nothing but it
once introduced they only grew fanatic mental gardens for the beasties, all the more to show off what they got
T: how many books & accompanying floppy diskettes they could collect
hot and frenzied flew the copies off the shelves
it was a habit soon for some; they could not help themselves
once introduced they only grew in fruitless eon-long pursuit of it
not a new phenomenon, this flavor of phenomenal enthralling
the fearsome drive for chemicals more entrancing than what exists inside our head
we are not satisfied to be just us
ergo to extend into a world that smells a bit more magical than normal turns us normal beings into ones that hope more fervidly for more magic
our neurochemical levels get to pretend there is another energetic entity to draw from
but never satisfied are ours, these inner drives
there will always be more things outside
hard to describe this unwillingness to quit a thing
when it feels like it's what continues to keep you alive
this was what these lil beasties did to people
latched on to their brains, plain and simple
vampires of any other name'd still suck the same
roughshod and steel-tiny toed run the imaginary fuckers—in manifold colorful forms, all 164 of 'em, a full rainbow horde—cross the corpus callosum of so many crania
it's more popular than popular opinion itself could measure: beastiemania a gravid all-encompassing craze
C: everyone is reading the series
keeping up in chapter book installments w/the tales of these kids and their monstrous retinue
the streets flood—heaping waves of people soaked in pandemonia—every day the latest issue gets released
over 1998 there are 15 books published, approximately one every 3.5 weeks
the reception only increases exponential- & self-reflexively
the more they are read the more people will read them
the perpetual meta paradox of phenomena propagating more phenomena in and of themselves, and eventually a kind of bullshit comes
K: how does she do it??
C: thought pieces start to wonder where the churn comes from
L: how Joanna 'Boss' Black née Dolle (i.e., my mom) can without end turn out stories for a populi intent on consuming them as soon as ink gets blown dry upon the leafy canvas
E: how she paints the pictures just barely quicker than they can—what readers ravenous—take them in and burn the glass electric fixtures lightly cranial
ingrain them like any sacred pattern can be if prayed hard enough upon
there unfolds a crazéd marveling at the craze itself,
all the papers blogs and tweeters love to point out,
desperate reporters forging paths thru forests for the sake of making trails;
saying nothing so important that it could've been avoided
adding noise to the polar vortex forthwith
it all turns out unimportant anyway, b/c the boss doesn't waste time reading other people's takes on what she writ
keeps on keeping on, purely focused on her words and shaping wending ways thru them for the kids to investigate
L: this is how she does do it—avoiding earfuls of bullshit
instead she spends her time embedding morals in the trees like hidden flags that wave only if you stare deep enough into the forest
meanwhile in turn for her faithful service the public love was unrelenting, of course
C: these mini mirabilia of digital creations causing infinite elation to those committing heart and soul and all else that might fit
this description's getting rambly so the pointy gist is:
YE: people fucking loved this shit
undying, without reasonable end in sight
after all, the possibilities were endless
we made sure these monsters spawned and hybridized more often than less
so when the time came and the digital era beckoned w/its daintily electric little fingers
our advertising team made sure to listen to (not that their ears had to strain too hard to hear) those calling for an app as constituent aspect of the Li'l Beastie Experience ©
a new flavor of reality to add and spice up all the in-depth feelings they've already committed to the fantasy herein
ingenious, then, it was seen to be by an in-house genius here @ L&D (these a-holes pop up everywhere, it seems to be; intelligence transmutating like a virus)
T: to make the app in essence just that the kids (of all ages) dived into the flat-out stories which the boss had written
they stick to the basic simple capture and half-asséd growth of the monsters qua prisoners by bare-bones manipulation of the steps the user'd taken
trick them ostensibly into walking around for their own fitness' sake but in fact the GPS was more attuned to what they walked by, what was viewed thru camera's eyes
what offered itself as an advertisement to be taken for a fiscal ride
providing mounds of data (unbeknownst to user) to the big corporate cloud in the sky
while they scampered fro' here to there
monsters popping up everywhere, the algorithm made sure
L: and like all beasts before it this one only added to the chorus of love screaming at the poet
her work was everywhere
T: she was whelmed for a day-long moment
when she realized upon the application's release date (2016, august 8th)
her creation had metastasized far beyond what she'd intended to make
and now she'd found herself a world where kids found heaven in her words
(x1000 for the pictures, per each)
rendered speechless was she, mute w/ stupefaction at what she'd accomplished
till the 8th rolled in she curled up on the couch anxious
unsure what to write now, now that kids could make their own adventures
find the monsters w/o her help—shock and awe reigned thru the house
L: i was away at school, and dad was out on Sunday patrol
for the special parade in her honor, sponsored by L&D
T: but she texted in under pretenses of faux sickness
(supposedly unable to vocalize due to a hoarse throat,
but really it was shaky-nerve induced laryngitis)
to avoid the public pressure she felt suddenly unfit to deal with
after four hours on couch huddled she tried to get up and write but
that wasn't happening
so she snuggled up and tried to get over herself
that wasn't happening
she turned TV on to no avail—all channels were tuned in to the parade
she turned all lights off and tried to shiver out her frigidness
tried to write under cover of darkness
but the pen kept escaping her grip
she cried briefly; realized the folly of it; quit and popped a motrin
hoping to pass out and sleep away the worthless self-commotion
it kind of worked; she nodded fitfully off; napped throughout the day
woke up right before her spouse came home
played off sickness as a passing zone thru which she flew
the feigned flu thing never exposed as ruse
but it started to come true two months later
emulation by reality of fiction: her body turned traitor
as if aiming to make up for the lies she had told
E: there are no rainbow monsters around; your tales are candidly false!
L: this is what she told me as to how it occurred
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