🧙🏻♂️ There is a reason they call it “the web”...
A reason they call it “the net”.
If you read but only one long-form article this week, make it “The Basilisk” by Paul Kingsnorth. It was published in Emergence Magazine about four years ago, and gosh it’s good. I don’t want to ruin any of it for you, other than to say the following.
- There’s an evocative efficaciousness to the epistolary style. It’s what I have long strived for in my museletters—though I often doubt this approach, as it is rare to see other examples of such in the wild. Thus, this story was a welcome beacon.
- The following passage might resonate with many parents (and partners, and friends): “Come on, Uncle Richard,” you said, “you know you haven’t come to terms with the twentieth century yet, never mind the twenty-first. They can’t go without them. They get bullied at school, they feel left out, they miss out on things. All that was bad enough before phones. No, you just have to try and keep a lid on it, keep it monitored. There are apps you can use. Ah, it’ s just…”—here you threw your hands up, grasped the back of the chair with them, looked at me as if you were younger and more open than you are—“It’s just that she’s only twelve,” you said. “I thought I’d have longer with her. I just feel … I feel like I’ve lost my little girl. It’s like I don’t know her anymore. It’s like she’s just—gone.”
- This story is one of the collected “Short Stories of Apocalypse”. It addresses one of the most pernicious and pervasive issues of our times in a manner that has deep mythopoetic sensibilities. That is: a refreshingly para-rational way to surreptitiously address the manifestations of our gestalt that cannot be addressed with mere rationality alone.*
* Though there have been many attempts to do so.
The Basilisk very much resonated with me. I know this because it has given me pause in my many moments, and altered the way I relate to the various portals I use. It may well have an effect upon you, too.