Mourning the way we lose things quietly, without ceremony
This morning, I watched the last possession I had of my father’s be lifted by a garbage truck. More on that later.
A few weeks back, I interviewed Murph on St. John’s Eve. More on that too.
After we hung up, I drew a tarot card: The Star, upright. I thought it was a gibe from a deck of cards growing a sense of humor—July was predicted to be the Star card reversed: A sad and empty vessel.
The next morning, perhaps summoned by my eyeroll, I pulled up Amazon on a television and hit play on a show I fancy as a sort of divining rod (I believe most things can be). Media is just another stage for spirit and sometimes coincidence is generous. There are variables to life even in isolation if one is reflective.
It was a documentary—though some scoffers are dubious—and the key figure in the group narrative contemplates tearily that all of the best, most meaningful connections with whom he’s acquainted come through phenomena, or times of “high strangeness”. Saying exactly the thing my soul—whatever that means—needed to hear.
Weirdos matter.
That the ones who look beneath the ordinary end up shaping the world in ways for which they are never credited. How can one but count the blessings of many strange friends across time and space and internet?
Topsy-turvy Murph
Before I wax on about synchromysticism, let me introduce the attached video interview—an unfocused, sprawling convo among friends, more like—that I was lucky enough to record the night prior to that ear-catching revelation, conveyed by pixels and soundwaves.
I sat down on St. John’s Eve with
, prolific writer of The Strangeness Kit, with stories featured in the anthologies The Midnight Vault (‘The Thing in the Box’) and Blood in the Yolk (‘A Feathering’) (both 2025), and contributes ‘P3nt3c0st’ to our own forthcoming The Curious Post vol. 1: Forbidden Fruit (2025—back the special edition Kickstarter now for a gorgeous edition chalk full of special features).‘P3nt3c0st’ is a short story which tells the tale of an isolated dark web reprobate. The account meanders down decidedly murky paths, the MC finding himself on his own revelatory ritual initiation—gone wrong? You decide.
You should know: Murph as a trickster spirit. He admits it and I believe him. Mutable signs run amok across his devilish chart, and his manner of breadcrumbing truths across time and text feel like casual hexwork. (That’s a compliment.) In our interview shared above, Murph drops “steganography” and Kneecap in the same conversation (correctly predicting a “Kneecap Summer”, I’m screaming), and self-identifies as “mercurial”—I even think I saw his little winged boots. I know it goes against popular wisdom, but I assert: Believe the trickster the first time. 🖤
Glitter Dirge/Sacred Joke
One more recommendation among the many I could make for Murph’s work would be the two-part ‘The Blue Canary’ (1 & 2) penned (typed?) alongside sometimes-collaborator
.I don’t know how to talk about it cleanly (nor do I want to). Kiriko, the central figure, is not me but she might know me or any of us. A tidy life that leaves her hollow, a sharpened loneliness severing her sense of self. Even the desperate, bacchanalian joy of finding people—strange people—who see you. The story dips into seductive, cultic tones. But there’s also tenderness in the space where a forgotten woman becomes radiant with her wonderclub weirdos. Who wouldn’t relate a little?
The story dips into seductive, cultic tones. But there’s also tenderness in the space where a forgotten woman becomes radiant with her wonderclub weirdos. Who wouldn’t relate a little?
Kiriko is, in many ways, the Star reversed: glowing in secret, misread by her family, waiting for someone to sing her back into being. That final refrain (no intense spoilers)—“Fuck them,” or maybe just a whispered wish for a different life—is honest. Kiriko doesn’t need safety, she needs strangeness and song. There’s a specific horror in being a woman made invisible in her own home, who has to whisper her desire for more until someone—anyone—says: “Yes, come sing with us!” That transformation, slow and sparkling and unnerving, is worth the journey. Kiriko’s ache is real and her metamorphosis is terrifying.
Murph and James Worth have written something dangerously beautiful here. May it both unsettle you and entertain you.
A belated thank you
, , and many others for tuning in! Join me for my next live video in the app. If you want to help our forthcoming project, please shelf/save/”want to read” Forbidden Fruit, and go follow our darling authors.My Little Dirge About Time (a personal aside)
This morning, I watched the last possession I had of my father’s get lifted by the garbage truck. A cedar hope chest, stripped of century-old veneer and glue by my own hands, product of my own sweat. One I had lovingly sanded through many grades of sandpaper over days and oiled by hand to recondition. I let phases of the moon and various planets guide the timing over the last few years, taking pleasure in the slow progress. Stained it a custom, faded pink the color of faded blood.
But my progress had stalled. It languished in the basement the last year or so in Michigan; A place slowly grinding me down with a landscape of teasing, not-quite weather. Not quite enough snow to snowshoe or feel wrapped in. Not quite so humid as to be tropical.
Humid enough that the stability of almost a hundred years’ history in that wood was undone.
‘I was busy,’ I told myself before the warped lid, exploding from its secure fit and hinges in the sweat of the subterranean space, bucked in agonized micromotion away from its frame. Even the curve of the now-domed lid was beautiful—it reminded me of the precision of my father’s carpentry, the roof of structures carved from snowbanks taller than me in my childhood in Maine. Things he taught me.
This morning I stared at the screw jutting out from the smooth lid at an odd angle—placed there to secure its structure in its final pilgrimage from underground cavern to the curb. Violent. Hurried. Without care. I briefly stood there, thinking about the honor and quiet dignity of time one pours into something so rarely these days. But it was something that he loved, cherished. I honored that love with effort and time, but it wasn’t the thing that I loved.
It was him.
I can’t beat myself up for putting it in the basement. For the pool water of the neighbors that seeped into the space beneath the frost line this year, changing the condition of the air. But if I do continue to beat myself up about putting the project on hold for so long (I will), I will learn from it. I’ll take the intent and the spirit of the project planned to rehab my father’s cherished item and I’ll apply it to something else. There are carefully chosen things—brass fittings, handles, a lock, chest liner, oak green men medallions—all staring at me from the corner, begging to be used in a new iteration of this planned, occult object.
Anything I choose to do will honor the memory an the lessons of the imperfect man, searching for perfection.
Because I’m still his. And there’s nothing I can do to change that.
We are reliquaries of strange light, even when we feel like ruins. If you're out there—yes, you—I see you. I believe in the power you carry. Especially if warped by time. “Warped”, here meaning: honed, shaped, and crafted with care, even when the care came late.
Maybe a Star shining upside down or sideways.
Important Strangers on the Internet
Please enjoy ONE OF THE BEST conversations we’ve had so far on the podcast, (lucky episode #13) full of chortles and silliness, because I’m so grateful for my internet bestie,
and this weird path we’re on. 🖤 This is the ENTRY-point, the session 0, of me introducing J.R. to the cult of Hellier, and we initiate her weirdo soul into the transformative, cavernous depths of the contradictory High Strangeness.Subscribe, leave a comment about your own alien abduction or high strangeness b.s., and watch season one, episode one of Hellier (free, YouTube & Amazon), and tell your besties how much you appreciate them.
Until next time,
Nico
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🔗 I only recommend creators who light up my brain. Check them out here.
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