Ever heard of HP Lovecraft, Jim?

[Suu]

He's pretty much the godfather of macabre sci-fi. Cult of Cthulhu and all that jazz...Yeah well you see, his hometown is right here in the Renaissance City, Providence.

He saw things here that inspired him, if not terrified him, which is probably also why Edgar Allan Poe also spent a considerable amount of time on the hill as well. The city itself is possessed by a darkness and an insanity that only outsiders to it can truly see. Our good friend Howard Phillips Lovecraft was one of these outsiders.

We have an old asylum here in Providence called Butler Hospital, and there's a saying among the locals, "You know you live in Rhode Island when you or someone you know has been to Butler". Even Lovecraft's parents both spent time there. It's a creepy old place too, and word has it they still do shock therapy and labotomies...much like it did 150 years ago when it was full to the brim with the local psychos.

There's a lot of them here, Jim, psychos that is. They walk or stumble down the broken cobblestones Downcity and talk to themselves, muttering in archaic tongues that may or may not belong to that of the Elder Gods. For anyone who lives in one of the large Northeastern cities, this isn't terribly anything new, but at the same time, it's...different. They aren't the same. The looks on their faces, the glazing of their eyes, the stench of their hair gel and Dominican cigars as they wander the streets.

What did Lovecraft know? What did he see that others of his time in dingy Edwardian Providence didn't?



"The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

I see it. The ignorance of which he speaks...everyday.  Am I doomed to also be eaten alive by the insanity that grasps Providence? The impoverished and debt-ridden capital of the smallest state in America? Or will I triumph as he did, only to live the last year of his life in extreme pain, and alone? In my dingy Edwardian Providence home...

"I am Providence."

[Suu]

I forgot to mention that Providence does nothing to celebrate him. There is one plaque dedicated to him at Brown University, but other than that, it's really hard to find his grave in a cemetery way up on the Eastside, and the house he grew up in is long gone and replaced by a prep school and doctor's offices.

[Richter]

They can't celebrate him, Suu, because he jsut got it too RIGHT somehow.

Not to say that he was great.  He was OK, and he pulled out a few literary devices that were ahead of his time.  His use of foreshadowing, and referencing the indecribable may seem hokey now, but what HPL, Dereleth, and Chambers were up to was great proto sci-fi horror without flashy rockets or smiling heroes.  It was Greek tragedy a few decades before anyone had lost their Greek tragedy hangover form the last major binge (When they wrote it).  It was that daunting proposition that we were stepping into a brave new world of undersanding and discovery, that we would never udnerstand before it squashed us like annoying midges.

How do you celebrate that?  "Here lived the pessimist extraordinaire"?   "Here lived the reptilian bastard who saw the shit and decided to write fanfiction."?  I think there's an example there.  Jesus wept, Lovecraft laughed, and Erich Z. played on.

[Suu]

You know he's not under his headstone, right? It's something that his fans put there, but the Phillips family put it over an empty spot in the ground. Nobody knows exactly where his body lies in the family plot, but prior to the headstone his name is only mentioned on the large obelisk in the middle. This is probably for the best, considering some of the cultists have been known to try to dig him up on Halloween. Heck, I got yelled at the last time I was up there and put roses on his grave. The cemetery keeper said it was at the bequest of the Phillips though, not the cemetery.

For whatever reason, the family doesn't want him made a big deal. I'm sure this is for the best.

[Suu]

You know he's not under his headstone, right? It's something that his fans put there, but the Phillips family put it over an empty spot in the ground. Nobody knows exactly where his body lies in the family plot, but prior to the headstone his name is only mentioned on the large obelisk in the middle. This is probably for the best, considering some of the cultists have been known to try to dig him up on Halloween. Heck, I got yelled at the last time I was up there and put roses on his grave. The cemetery keeper said it was at the bequest of the Phillips though, not the cemetery.

For whatever reason, the family doesn't want him made a big deal. I'm sure this is for the best.

[Richter]

You're right.  I wouldn't let on where he was either, some crazy fuck would try rendering him down to extract his essential salts.  Tyson, who kept pretty damn true to Lovecraft in his version of the Necronomicon, spoke at length about all the fun stuff you could do with the remains of great sages.   

Or maybe it's just residual puritan musings.  Hell, these people took all the decor out of church, it would be an easy reach to not leave grave favors.  Those churches of theirs are DISMAL, BTW.  Stark featureless white, nothign to look at.  Takes a damn good sermon to make it worthwhile.  Makes me wonder how often I've been in church and actually WANTED to be there.

[Suu]

I know what you mean.

Took this one (and the others from this post) yesterday walking down the hill after a fruitless 9 hour shift. I had an angry day, so I did the hill BOTH WAYS. I know you've walked up Waterman St. If you don't expect that hill, it will break you, but I hit that fucker with a near run yesterday on my way in to work. Sure beats waiting for the damn bus.

[Doktor Howl]

Wow.

Suu, this kicked ass.  Please to put in Audio Book of the Dead?

[Kai]

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/4158/15313390437373142510548.jpg

I know what you mean.

Took this one (and the others from this post) yesterday walking down the hill after a fruitless 9 hour shift. I had an angry day, so I did the hill BOTH WAYS. I know you've walked up Waterman St. If you don't expect that hill, it will break you, but I hit that fucker with a near run yesterday on my way in to work. Sure beats waiting for the damn bus.

You're both right. That's not a church. Thats an old stone building, but hardly a church. Who could glorify any greater being in a building as stark as that? It's like they tried to strip all art from life, the art that the Tangled Bank embodies and we draw from for inspiration.

This is a church:



Or this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Cologne_cathedral_at_dusk.jpg

The creators might have been under a specific religiously misguided vision of grandure but at least they took it too the wall! What is in people that makes them want to strip art and beauty from their lives and make their surroundings into some uniform blandness; its the inverse of the Tangled Bank, almost as if they're rebelling against the complexity of the natural world by turning their surroundings into blah and stripping it all of feeling until a church becomes a bland building without color, without complexity, without the much needed myths lining the walls, without our collective humanity exposed and elevated. Even muslims, who have taboo against human images, litter the walls with symbols, with colors and language. It's like experience no longer matters, they are already dead, in limbo, waiting for "the promised land". Even the quakers, who make their meeting houses with plainess in mind, build places of great beauty, with color of wood and stone, and it is a pleasure to be in.

If god is so great to have granted us minds to behold beauty, then why is it the devil to behold it?

[hooplala]

What's the name of that font in the OP, Suu?

[BadBeast]

We have an old asylum here in Providence called Butler Hospital, and there's a saying among the locals, "You know you live in Rhode Island when you or someone you know has been to Butler". Even Lovecraft's parents both spent time there. It's a creepy old place too, and word has it they still do shock therapy and labotomies...much like it did 150 years ago when it was full to the brim with the local psychos.

There's a lot of them here, Jim, psychos that is. They walk or stumble down the broken cobblestones Downcity and talk to themselves, muttering in archaic tongues that may or may not belong to that of the Elder Gods. For anyone who lives in one of the large Northeastern cities, this isn't terribly anything new, but at the same time, it's...different. They aren't the same. The looks on their faces, the glazing of their eyes, the stench of their hair gel and Dominican cigars as they wander the streets.




We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age."

I see it. The ignorance of which he speaks...everyday.  Am I doomed to also be eaten alive by the insanity that grasps Providence? The impoverished and debt-ridden capital of the smallest state in America? Or will I triumph as he did, only to live the last year of his life in extreme pain, and alone? In my dingy Edwardian Providence home...

"I am Providence."

Sounds like Arkham Asylum. *shudders*

[Suu]

What's the name of that font in the OP, Suu?

Badaboom, I believe. 1001freefonts.com.

Wow.

Suu, this kicked ass.  Please to put in Audio Book of the Dead?

Thanks Dok. Feels good to be writing again (wait til you guys see what other shit I've been working on. OHO!) I'll crosspost it there.

[Adios]

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/4158/15313390437373142510548.jpg

I know what you mean.

Took this one (and the others from this post) yesterday walking down the hill after a fruitless 9 hour shift. I had an angry day, so I did the hill BOTH WAYS. I know you've walked up Waterman St. If you don't expect that hill, it will break you, but I hit that fucker with a near run yesterday on my way in to work. Sure beats waiting for the damn bus.

You're both right. That's not a church. Thats an old stone building, but hardly a church. Who could glorify any greater being in a building as stark as that? It's like they tried to strip all art from life, the art that the Tangled Bank embodies and we draw from for inspiration.

This is a church:



Or this:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Cologne_cathedral_at_dusk.jpg

The creators might have been under a specific religiously misguided vision of grandure but at least they took it too the wall! What is in people that makes them want to strip art and beauty from their lives and make their surroundings into some uniform blandness; its the inverse of the Tangled Bank, almost as if they're rebelling against the complexity of the natural world by turning their surroundings into blah and stripping it all of feeling until a church becomes a bland building without color, without complexity, without the much needed myths lining the walls, without our collective humanity exposed and elevated. Even muslims, who have taboo against human images, litter the walls with symbols, with colors and language. It's like experience no longer matters, they are already dead, in limbo, waiting for "the promised land". Even the quakers, who make their meeting houses with plainess in mind, build places of great beauty, with color of wood and stone, and it is a pleasure to be in.

If god is so great to have granted us minds to behold beauty, then why is it the devil to behold it?

THAT'S NOT A CHURCH, IT'S A MONUMENT TO MANKINDS STUPIDITY.

[Kai]

Oh fuck THAT noise.


Suu, your OP was awesome, thanks.

[Requia ☣]

http://img708.imageshack.us/img708/4158/15313390437373142510548.jpg

I know what you mean.

Took this one (and the others from this post) yesterday walking down the hill after a fruitless 9 hour shift. I had an angry day, so I did the hill BOTH WAYS. I know you've walked up Waterman St. If you don't expect that hill, it will break you, but I hit that fucker with a near run yesterday on my way in to work. Sure beats waiting for the damn bus.

It looks like old military barracks.  Not joking, cut down the steeple and it'd fit right in on the vacated parts of Fort Douglas.