https://vernacularjournal.com Vernacular Journal Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:29:04 +0000 https://vernacularjournal.com en https://vernacularjournal.com/Anatomy-of-my-pile Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:48:02 +0000 Vernacular Journal https://vernacularjournal.com/Anatomy-of-my-pile Anatomy of my pile Lena Kamperi <img width="1080" height="1920" width_o="1080" height_o="1920" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a6090d37d4aa2607d3c1a8975e761757f9b1028a998ab40797224b2684355997/1000060096.jpg" data-mid="253713788" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a6090d37d4aa2607d3c1a8975e761757f9b1028a998ab40797224b2684355997/1000060096.jpg" /> <img width="1536" height="2048" width_o="1536" height_o="2048" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/36f43a213a71e152261a7731ccb27b5dd6776f29822ad3d01dc159f032a488e6/1000060013.jpg" data-mid="253713787" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/36f43a213a71e152261a7731ccb27b5dd6776f29822ad3d01dc159f032a488e6/1000060013.jpg" /> <img width="4096" height="4096" width_o="4096" height_o="4096" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8318eaa3c8299cf6a11bd5186758463f49d1a0809aa40dd5d2df5d2807e71cce/1000059434.jpg" data-mid="253713784" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8318eaa3c8299cf6a11bd5186758463f49d1a0809aa40dd5d2df5d2807e71cce/1000059434.jpg" /> <img width="3637" height="2433" width_o="3637" height_o="2433" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/40e41bbfc80c28a7758df03cbae51ba59d3438465817b0b9448d4638e08aa2b9/1000058626.jpg" data-mid="253713786" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/40e41bbfc80c28a7758df03cbae51ba59d3438465817b0b9448d4638e08aa2b9/1000058626.jpg" /> <img width="4096" height="4096" width_o="4096" height_o="4096" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/aa1d1e74805f7b43febc81ec3e51a89f817d0286a3b3aa69a180b50fa027be2c/1000059446.jpg" data-mid="253713789" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/aa1d1e74805f7b43febc81ec3e51a89f817d0286a3b3aa69a180b50fa027be2c/1000059446.jpg" /> <img width="1280" height="1810" width_o="1280" height_o="1810" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/061ccedbd8545f2ef5f7bd0105db60db6d5a095bfa03401f9ce32c9283fb317c/1000060140.jpg" data-mid="253713790" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/061ccedbd8545f2ef5f7bd0105db60db6d5a095bfa03401f9ce32c9283fb317c/1000060140.jpg" /> <img width="6144" height="6144" width_o="6144" height_o="6144" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/73041b907fa8ff5dadc8a863bcfa09b67467222d5e22042932a661976871337d/1000060111.jpg" data-mid="253713792" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/73041b907fa8ff5dadc8a863bcfa09b67467222d5e22042932a661976871337d/1000060111.jpg" /> <img width="1278" height="1596" width_o="1278" height_o="1596" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d70f33975185f416cc57d74bf17f8a086ac12081a171e2fc8c7f178d30c05918/1000059980.jpg" data-mid="253713791" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d70f33975185f416cc57d74bf17f8a086ac12081a171e2fc8c7f178d30c05918/1000059980.jpg" /> <img width="4096" height="4096" width_o="4096" height_o="4096" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/02f241a989d1ef0761d1fb32af353d25755f7953e81a6a9eb34cfa8b35926c93/1000059053.jpg" data-mid="253713785" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/02f241a989d1ef0761d1fb32af353d25755f7953e81a6a9eb34cfa8b35926c93/1000059053.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1397" width_o="1080" height_o="1397" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/db76012d33797fa4c8fc8fb919cb08fc5fba7c87993cff3ef254fec523da4387/1000058429.jpg" data-mid="253713795" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/db76012d33797fa4c8fc8fb919cb08fc5fba7c87993cff3ef254fec523da4387/1000058429.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1920" width_o="1080" height_o="1920" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/e2537c9377be21bfff5441a29c343b953a8e4064047f2b78fc1b7fc987616887/1000060103.jpg" data-mid="253713793" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/e2537c9377be21bfff5441a29c343b953a8e4064047f2b78fc1b7fc987616887/1000060103.jpg" /> <img width="1172" height="900" width_o="1172" height_o="900" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/01d6ad7b3f8443597558bd74747dfbefa221da09884d83ab3f150f4fde7df152/1000059661.jpg" data-mid="253713794" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/01d6ad7b3f8443597558bd74747dfbefa221da09884d83ab3f150f4fde7df152/1000059661.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1920" width_o="1080" height_o="1920" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/adcc32353456487be120a5b2f5f4e9a7b8d608c81010acd61973d67fa9a47253/1000060098.jpg" data-mid="253713798" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/adcc32353456487be120a5b2f5f4e9a7b8d608c81010acd61973d67fa9a47253/1000060098.jpg" /> <img width="751" height="938" width_o="751" height_o="938" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d08cfdf3f683418e97b26aa2f316c1ee1e4e930e8f47bfa09a7c01d8f3d1eacc/1000059381.jpg" data-mid="253713797" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/751/i/d08cfdf3f683418e97b26aa2f316c1ee1e4e930e8f47bfa09a7c01d8f3d1eacc/1000059381.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1920" width_o="1080" height_o="1920" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/1decb04bd440388586fb84c8ffb16138f5b267195873583f1dd9877b8a8d2ea4/1000060197.jpg" data-mid="253713824" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/1decb04bd440388586fb84c8ffb16138f5b267195873583f1dd9877b8a8d2ea4/1000060197.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1920" width_o="1080" height_o="1920" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/209f701426be288a412ee6bb1912e763e2710d15132ad8cbd28faa486d159489/lean.jpg" data-mid="253713826" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/209f701426be288a412ee6bb1912e763e2710d15132ad8cbd28faa486d159489/lean.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1920" width_o="1080" height_o="1920" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/0b899b1755754da5fe912615cf6962d3812142be84aa196fbf867f439b9d1958/1000059897.jpg" data-mid="253713796" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/0b899b1755754da5fe912615cf6962d3812142be84aa196fbf867f439b9d1958/1000059897.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1920" width_o="1080" height_o="1920" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/bfeebcc33246fc4edcef3ffd8c247608e365308985d27344910518e1f271cdc2/1000060156.jpg" data-mid="253713821" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/bfeebcc33246fc4edcef3ffd8c247608e365308985d27344910518e1f271cdc2/1000060156.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1920" width_o="1080" height_o="1920" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d0945cadb5217717ccf2fa065cab1281ccd1733ec0a8497710db424c45005424/1000060306.jpg" data-mid="253713823" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d0945cadb5217717ccf2fa065cab1281ccd1733ec0a8497710db424c45005424/1000060306.jpg" /> <img width="1080" height="1920" width_o="1080" height_o="1920" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7a945cdf8f781258d622e5929f39f3b4db11e4ee400a2dc720a7a79227fe4056/1000059406.jpg" data-mid="253713822" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7a945cdf8f781258d622e5929f39f3b4db11e4ee400a2dc720a7a79227fe4056/1000059406.jpg" /> https://vernacularjournal.com/cats Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:38:13 +0000 Vernacular Journal https://vernacularjournal.com/cats Cats Jesslyn Derksoncats here curl tailsagainst curbs, like pointingyou which way to go there’s community in this sunken city square, light swallowedby grunts across tables, jewel eyes green across continents &amp; dollar beer dancingin language you don’tunderstandwomen slinking in packsbetween buildings&amp; you on the cobblestones, sheddingyour whole lifestory to cats https://vernacularjournal.com/The-Stone-Lion-and-Shui-Si-Building Mon, 26 Oct 2026 20:09:40 +0000 Vernacular Journal https://vernacularjournal.com/The-Stone-Lion-and-Shui-Si-Building The Stone Lion and Shui Si BuildingYang ZefanAround 2019, I visited a friend in Dushan County, Guizhou Province, China, where he was working as a temporary teacher. He introduced me to the local cuisine: sour soup beef, grilled fish, and a kind of pan-fried dumpling made by pouring egg batter into a hot iron wok. The next day, he took me to see this building that left a deep impression on me. The stone lions in front of it stood over three meters tall, and the entire structure gave me an overwhelming sense of pressure. I had never seen such a bizarre Chinese-style building before—it wore the outer shell of traditional Chinese architecture, yet its framework was entirely modern. What made it especially striking was that it had been left unfinished: due to a break in the funding chain, only an empty shell had been erected, and construction never continued. We returned to the street near his school, where only one breakfast shop was open along the entire road. He pointed to a table on the corner and told me that just two weeks earlier, many construction workers had still been eating there. Because the funding had dried up, all the crews had withdrawn. We sat eating on a street completely covered in demolition markings—it felt incredibly strange. Many years have passed since then. I’ve heard that the county’s economy has improved somewhat, and some of the stalled building projects have been restarted. But I feel I will never forget the initial shock this extraordinary building first gave me. <img width="1080" height="1440" width_o="1080" height_o="1440" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9bb0d759dfbb0b037e370a26029a98daefa7691b0165e6bd79cdaf508950278c/0357DAD0F45E567B.AE58906A00000000.jpg" data-mid="253714197" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9bb0d759dfbb0b037e370a26029a98daefa7691b0165e6bd79cdaf508950278c/0357DAD0F45E567B.AE58906A00000000.jpg" /> https://vernacularjournal.com/Toledo Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:57:25 +0000 Vernacular Journal https://vernacularjournal.com/Toledo Toledo Edward Mullany One summer evening, after I’d gotten off the bus on which I’d been a passenger for so many hours that the bus itself had traveled through two or three states while I’d been asleep (and several other&nbsp; states while I’d been awake) before it had arrived in the city that for now would be my destination… and after I’d sat for a while on a bench that I’d found when I’d first entered the depot from the&nbsp; area where the bus had stopped, outside, when it had let me out and had taken on two or three new&nbsp; passengers (before starting back through the neighborhoods through which we’d come so that it&nbsp; could return to the highway on which, I imagined, it would continue in the direction it had been&nbsp; going), I decided, after looking around the terminal rather aimlessly, or absently, to see if anything&nbsp; was happening that might amuse me, or that I might be able to involve myself in, and not seeing&nbsp; anyone or anything remarkable…yes, I decided to sling my backpack over my shoulder and get up&nbsp; and go outside and try to find a bar in which to spend a portion of the money that was still in my&nbsp; wallet, which was easy to do, as the station was located in a depressed area of downtown, where bars&nbsp; tend to be (or anyway where, in my experience, bars often are), though the first bar I went into was&nbsp; just loud enough with people and with music that I turned around and went back out to the&nbsp; sidewalk before anyone had a chance to notice me, and walked a little farther until I found another&nbsp; bar that was on the same block but that was much quieter, and in which I was able to sit and have a&nbsp; beer without putting myself in the vicinity of too much mindless noise, and in fact ended up getting&nbsp; more inebriated than I’d intended to, so that after I’d paid my tab, a couple hours later, and had&nbsp; wandered outside and was walking again with my backpack in the direction of the river, which the&nbsp; bartender had mentioned to me, in conversation, was worth seeing, though he hadn’t suspected I was&nbsp; going to go there right away, this very night, I somehow got lost among the cobblestone streets along&nbsp; which stood, at the edge of the water, certain old piers that had been built years ago and that for a&nbsp; long time had been in disuse, and ended up sitting on the planks at the terminus of one of them, with my legs dangling over the wooden beams, listening to the lap of the waves against the pylons,&nbsp; and watching the moon come up in the sky (as well as in the reflection of the sky in the mirrored&nbsp; surface below), all the while trying to decide where that night I would sleep, though finally I did not&nbsp; decide so much as resign myself to remaining where I already was, because, when I thought about&nbsp; that option, or possibility (remaining where I was), I realized it was not unrealistic, given the&nbsp; circumstances of my life, which were somewhat new to me but not entirely unexpected, and&nbsp; discovered also, more practically speaking, that if I arranged my backpack beneath my head and&nbsp; neck, and closed my eyes, and did not move any of my limbs for a minute or two, I would feel as&nbsp; though, lying there, I was doing something that came naturally to me, or anyway that might have&nbsp; come naturally to me if I’d been the kind of person who would have no problem doing it, which,&nbsp; apparently, I was, or anyway was on my way to becoming.&nbsp; <img width="3330" height="2158" width_o="3330" height_o="2158" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/add39dc0ae8fa37b499fc0a51d64e71c3dd3ec893ecea917a7134323347194ae/Toledo.jpg" data-mid="253713897" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/add39dc0ae8fa37b499fc0a51d64e71c3dd3ec893ecea917a7134323347194ae/Toledo.jpg" /> https://vernacularjournal.com/Peaches Mon, 26 Oct 2026 20:21:01 +0000 Vernacular Journal https://vernacularjournal.com/Peaches Peaches Saige Lawson <img width="2502" height="3127" width_o="2502" height_o="3127" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/90ed4f16b6927dd676092c5120d59951bc88bd1b27dca415b2d42fcf56104d3f/IMG_5783.jpg" data-mid="253715132" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/90ed4f16b6927dd676092c5120d59951bc88bd1b27dca415b2d42fcf56104d3f/IMG_5783.jpg" /> https://vernacularjournal.com/The-Weightings Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:29:28 +0000 Vernacular Journal https://vernacularjournal.com/The-Weightings The Weightings Ashley Denny Petch #85. The smell of concrete after rain”&nbsp; This is my favourite entry from Michael Sorkin’s immensely satisfying list&nbsp; ‘250 things an architect should know’. It’s my favourite because I too love to romanticize concrete. Let me tell you why.&nbsp;Concrete is a magical material. It’s durable and strong and versatile. It’s expressive. Concrete is made from sand. It’s porous. It’s important to be porous. Concrete is the only building material that starts off as a liquid. It can be shaped and molded. And most importantly, it retains memory. It absorbs rain and releases the smell of earth, hence Sorkin’s recommendation.&nbsp; The Barbican Conservatory. Fallingwater. Christ the Redeemer. The Guggenheim. Imagine how these smell after the rain. Our world comes alive in concrete.&nbsp; #70. Shear and momentBut like all of God’s creatures, concrete is fallible. It refuses to stretch. It adores being compressed but it can’t handle being pulled apart. Little cracks appear and soon after it collapses.&nbsp;Architects and engineers have long-solved this problem by giving concrete an elastic, high-tensile buddy named steel. Steel is very stretchy meaning that it can be pulled or bent without breaking. For years and years, these architects and engineers have embedded steel bars directly into the concrete and thus, created composite material that handles the weight and bendiness. Now you are ready to build the Sydney Opera House, Habitat 67, the Hoover Dam.&nbsp; #171. The view from the Acropolis. Of course, concrete is an ancient material. But the ancient Greeks, with their ungodly amount of quarries, had little use for it. They were drowning in marble. It was the Romans who developed concrete on the massive scale that allowed them to make the Pantheon, their aqueducts and bridges. &nbsp;Modern Greeks, however, it’s fair to say are deeply acquainted with concrete, as a building material and a way of life. Athens is famously a sea of polykatoikias. And not just in the cities. In small towns and villages as well, concrete abounds.&nbsp; If you’re driving in Greece, let’s say from Thiva to Trikala, and you happen to look out the window, what do you see? Slow down. Try to look past the roadside shrines and olive groves.&nbsp;&nbsp; You see a house made of concrete. But this is not a normal house. It’s missing its top half. It’s waiting for a lid, the only thing we can see are the protruding steel bars facing upwards and standing at attention, expectant.&nbsp; You see one house like this and then another, and then more.&nbsp; Ok, keep your eyes on the road! You don’t want to end up a shrine on the highway, do you? #190. Strengths of materials (if only intuitively). These steel bars are called anamones (αναμονές). Construction-wise, they maintain the structural continuity of the house so that extra floors can be added later using a concrete slab called a plaka. The bars are made of steel (rebar), which keeps the concrete from cracking - eventually, when a new floor is added, they’ll be encased inside the newly poured concrete.&nbsp;In Greek, the word anamoni translates to "waiting" or "standby." Anamones is the plural: the waitings. A man from Karditsa once told me that this is what locals call these unfinished structures scattered across the landscape. I think that’s beautiful.&nbsp; &nbsp;So why are these houses left like this? Why leave the top floor unfinished, open to the elements and waiting? &nbsp; <img width="1600" height="1200" width_o="1600" height_o="1200" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/23633a714950e53299d6e961e52d9bf1a5c9177e4114442fb9b76791783e113b/dscn56101.jpg" data-mid="253821109" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/23633a714950e53299d6e961e52d9bf1a5c9177e4114442fb9b76791783e113b/dscn56101.jpg" /> <img width="1248" height="832" width_o="1248" height_o="832" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7090c673549eecae816099a85f9403163250cb92bff70bfd33acbcbe3333792a/DSC_0682---Edited.jpg" data-mid="253821127" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7090c673549eecae816099a85f9403163250cb92bff70bfd33acbcbe3333792a/DSC_0682---Edited.jpg" /> #102.&nbsp; Many ideas about what constitutes utopia. There is a persistent urban legend that homes are built like this to cheat the tax codes—that residents don’t have to pay property taxes on "unfinished" buildings, so they leave them exposed on purpose. And while it’s true that an unplastered shell with no electricity gets a heavy tax discount in Greece, most rebar is less about dodging the state and more about pausing until the next child, or the next paycheck, arrives. The main reason is familial: these homes are built to expand as the family grows.&nbsp;It goes like this: your parents have a plot of family land. They build their house and reserve the promise of a second floor for YOU, the daughter, for when you grow up, get married, and start a family. Then another floor gets added when YOUR daughter gets married - and it’s chelonas all the way down. Or up, I should say. Until the PASOK government under Andreas Papandreou formally abolished the mandatory legal dowry system in 1983, providing shelter for a daughter was an urgent social imperative. Traditionally, parents were expected to provide not just linens or jewelry, but a home. The groom provided the income; the bride’s family provided the shelter. Building upward on existing foundations was the most economically viable way for working-class families to fulfill this heavy obligation. #72. How the crow flies.But what if you were blessed with a stinky family of only boys? Well then, no matter. Perhaps the ground floor would be reserved for the eldest son, and the floors above for the younger sons. Alternatively, you could pour the plaka, the concrete slab and expose some rebar on both sides and in a line down the middle, to signal that each son gets half the plot to build upward.&nbsp; But what if the prodigal son or prudent daughter flees Greece? The anamones stay, built strongly enough to send a message all the way across an ocean. You have a place to come back to. You own a piece of the sky here. Don’t tarry. Come back and you can start your real life.&nbsp; There are other reasons of course. A grandma needs to be moved in. A cousin, an uncle. It’s not prescriptive. In all cases, the concrete is left unfinished because someone loves a person who may one day need it. An expression of generosity, but also an expression of expectation.&nbsp; #92. Sentence structure Back to the waitings. Ana-mones. Mones, Moni in Greek is to ‘stay’, to ‘abide’, to ‘dwell’. Meno stin Athina. I live [stay] in Athens. Out of moni, we get the words Monastery (a place of abiding) and Monk, and from its latin cousin manseio, we get Mansion, Maison and Manor. From there, we get remnant [re- (back) + manēre (to stay). Literally: To stay behind] and permanent [per- (through) + manēre (to stay). Literally: To stay through to the very end]. It’s a rich root to feed on - what does it mean to abide, to stay, to dwell? &nbsp;Ana means to go up, to repeat. Ana+moni: We abide, we stay upwards. to wait.&nbsp; Ypo means under. Ypo-moni: We bear under the abiding. We endure. We are patient. Epi means upon. Epi-moni: We stay upon. We persist. We insist.&nbsp; Para means next to. Para-moni. &nbsp;We stay beside. We stand on the threshold of what's next. The eve. Pros means toward. Pros-moni. We go toward the place where we’ll stay. We yearn. The anticipation of a wish fulfilled.Όλα αυτά — παραμονή, υπομονή, επιμονή, προσμονή, υπάρχουν για τις αναμονές. Where we live, how we wait, what we endure. In five prefixes, we understand how a language quietly maps the boundaries of home, expectation, and desire.&nbsp; #83. Accidents must happen.Waiting is an existential condition. It forces us to confront uncertainty and mark time, however we choose to measure it. Henri Bergson, famed French philosopher and nemesis of Albert Einstein, believed time couldn't be understood by math or science alone. He distinguished between rigid clock-time and durée (duration): the unpredictable flow of time as we actually experience it. Scientific time doesn't endure; it’s the inner life of a human being that acts as a true unit of duration.&nbsp; In L'Évolution créatrice, Bergson introduced the élan vital, which he defines as an inherent, spiritual life force driving all organisms to grow and evolve. As Bergson put it: “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, and to mature is to go on endlessly creating oneself.” I like to think of it as entropy’s friendly opposite.The élan vital is the necessary, unpredictable movement of your life. It is the very force that reacts against what the anamones are built for. How can you change, mature, and endlessly create yourself if you aren't allowed to leave? Your family builds a concrete monument to stall the élan vital - to force life in a specific, predictable direction. You will come back. You will marry. This patch of earth is where you belong. They tether you to Karditsa. Grow upwards only. For Bergson, true living meant placing oneself inside duration, experiencing freedom as constant movement. I would have loved to play Boggle with him.&nbsp; #132. Fear. No one is happy about this, least of all me, but it’s time to talk about Heidegger. This is because he made a vital distinction between Erwarten and Warten. Erwarten is inauthentic time: expectation. It treats the future as an object to be secured, a calculated event. Warten, by contrast, is waiting in a pure state of being: allowing the future to unfold as it will. Heidegger tells us to “Wait, but never expect” If Heidegger had been a Greek villager, he would tell us that these anamones don't wait; they await. They cannot simply Warten because they have been lovingly poured with an embedded Erwarten.I imagine Heidegger would want to play Risk with Bergson and me. We would politely decline, for obvious reasons. <img width="683" height="911" width_o="683" height_o="911" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fe61d96eebe3e46fc3e9ec7fd39d1ee06a3ee50358ffd73ff27fe3eee890dd2b/IMG_3913.jpg" data-mid="253821111" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/683/i/fe61d96eebe3e46fc3e9ec7fd39d1ee06a3ee50358ffd73ff27fe3eee890dd2b/IMG_3913.jpg" /> #147.&nbsp; The idea of too far.We are perpetually er-waiting. For something better. For something new to happen. For a break. For more money. For a daughter to change her mind. To stay put. To make a home where you were forced to. What good is a dowry if you can’t see it standing there, waiting in the sky? At my most uncharitable, I think of anamones as part of a long tradition of sad men building things for women to live in: Rapunzel’s tower, Daisy’s East Egg mansion, Danaë’s bronze chamber. An architectural trap laid with the best intentions is still a trap.&nbsp; #148.&nbsp; The idea of too close.Sometimes, here in Athens, when I’m cooking dinner, or having a drink with friends or walking alone, a spiky happiness strikes me, and I recognize it immediately as the relief of being far away. The pressure of constructing a life directly atop the foundations of those closest to me would have been volcanic. I couldn’t do it. I won’t! And besides, no one asked me to. I’m still learning how to navigate the physical closeness that makes a family function here. My mother-in-law recently offered to travel across the country to stay with me during a minor surgery. My sister-in-law casually stroked my cheek because I stumbled through a joke in poorly spoken Greek. This embodied nearness&nbsp;makes me feel overwhelmed and deeply grateful in the exact same breath. I think my anamones are facing downwards, or sideways. Or they're frayed. I don’t want anyone to wait on me to build something. I refuse to abide.&nbsp; &nbsp;#226. Concrete finishes. What I haven’t said about the rebar is that it’s terminal. Pure concrete, left to its own devices, can last virtually forever - see the Pantheon or the Colosseum. The steel embedded inside that gives it tensile strength is susceptible to atmospheric betrayal. It corrodes. It expands, it reacts to seawater, to snow, to C02. It rusts, forcing the surrounding matrix outward until it breaks the concrete apart from within.I don't think it’s too obvious to say that most humans struggle with uncertainty. We’re not built for it, physically or emotionally. The ancient Greeks had the oracle of Delphi. We have waiting rooms. But the Pythia never offered a blueprint - she offered riddles, left to interpretation. She understood that a guaranteed future is a contradiction in terms. To expect absolute certainty is to invite corrosion.&nbsp; Concrete left waiting too long destroys itself. We cannot escape the tragedy of the material. <img width="1215" height="911" width_o="1215" height_o="911" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d94b35a71451f2ceec62c0c81498db73479d96f854e3f3b7e4e221855ce0c02b/IMG_1953.jpg" data-mid="253821112" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d94b35a71451f2ceec62c0c81498db73479d96f854e3f3b7e4e221855ce0c02b/IMG_1953.jpg" /> https://vernacularjournal.com/Silverfiskarnas-sprak Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:30:32 +0000 Vernacular Journal https://vernacularjournal.com/Silverfiskarnas-sprak Silverfiskarnas språk Pravasan Pillay I picked up the Swedish-English dictionary from the dusty shelf. It was my third week in Stockholm, where I had moved to for a new position, and I was browsing at a secondhand store near the central subway station. I checked the price on the back cover. It was cheap. I needed a dictionary for my Swedish lessons, which I had started attending on weekday evenings. The lessons weren’t a work requirement but, since I was going to be based in Sweden for two years, it made sense to learn a little of the language – even though most Swedes spoke excellent English. I paid for the dictionary and took it back to my small, rented apartment in Kista, a neighbourhood that was home to many expats. I left it in a bag in my hallway, and quickly forgot about it when an urgent assignment landed on my desk at the office. A few weeks later, on a Saturday, I finally took the dictionary out to check a phrase (“Ingen reklam tack”) I had seen on stickers placed on most of the apartment doors in my building. It was while I was paging through the dictionary that an index card fell out. The card was filled with neat, cursive handwriting and was in Swedish. I made out a word here and there, like “jag” which meant “I”, but I still didn’t know enough of the language to make any sense of it. I was, in truth, more distracted by the tiny and not so tiny holes that were peppered throughout the pages of the dictionary, which had clearly been made by insects. I hadn’t checked the condition of the dictionary at the store so I couldn’t really complain. There were also burrows in some parts that obscured words, but, all in all, the dictionary was still relatively usable. I discovered that “Ingen reklam tack” meant “No advertising please”. * A month later, I opened the dictionary to check up a term on my lease, and the index card fell out again. By now, I had attended enough classes that the words didn’t seem so strange anymore. It was a Sunday afternoon and I had nothing to do, since I still hadn’t made any acquaintances outside of the office. I decided that I would try to translate the card using the dictionary and a basic vocabulary workbook that had been handed out in class, which I had found useful. It took me about an hour but I managed to translate the entire card, with only one word giving me difficulty. The short text was titled “Silverfiskarnas språk”. It – bizarrely – claimed to be a lexicon of a silverfish language, and consisted of a few lines of commentary; a list of words and their meanings; and some examples of sentences. It read: “The silverfish language contains five sounds, which are produced by their minute stridulations on surfaces. “srrr/srrr srrr – i/we sjiii – eat ssss – danger kssi – food ssaa – absence “srrr/srrr srrr sjiii kssi – i’m/we’re eating food srrr ssss kssi – i’m hungry kssi kssi – there’s much food ssss ssss – there’s much danger “I spent two years studying this colony, before it began to die. I moved the survivors to my copy of Finnegans Wake. I learnt their language by means of close observation, my dreams, and field recordings using intricate homemade instruments.” The note was signed, “HC, 99-01-23”. I thought the text was fascinating. It was obviously written by an unwell person, but I, nevertheless, found myself repeating the five silverfish sounds until I had memorised them. The syntax in the examples also seemed simple enough to extrapolate and make my own sentences. The thing I was confused about was the “ssaa” sound. HC hadn’t used it in an example. What was meant by “absence”? A negative particle such as “not”? Or did it mean “death”? Or the holes the silverfish left behind? I spent the rest of the afternoon cleaning my apartment while speaking broken bits of silverfish to myself, like “ssss kssi” when my stomach began to rumble. Later that night, I carefully turned every page of the dictionary to see if I could find a silverfish that HC had perhaps missed. I didn’t want to admit it out loud but I wanted to try and speak to it. * At the end of my stint in Sweden, on the day before I was leaving, I took the dictionary back to the store I had bought it from and donated it, along with my other books. I tend to travel light. I kept HC’s index card, however, even though I now considered myself fluent in silverfish, and didn’t need it as a reference. It was more of a memento. During those years in Stockholm I continuously searched the book shelves of charity and secondhand stores on my weekends for copies of Finnegans Wake and, later, other works by James Joyce. But I never found the colony or another card from HC. I sat on the plane the next night, on my way to a new position and a new apartment in Amsterdam. It was a bumpy flight, and I constantly hissed “ssss ssaa” under my breath each time we hit a patch of turbulence. As soon as we landed safely in Schiphol I rewarded myself with a few small pieces of paper torn from the Dutch-English dictionary I had bought the week before. <img width="3280" height="4832" width_o="3280" height_o="4832" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/fc85df8964814df955dcbfe3619cd1a60e1b2a89fc3132319f840cf5551b219e/thru-the-moods2mb.jpg" data-mid="253713707" border="0" alt="&quot;Through the moods&quot; by Gary Cummiskey" data-caption="&quot;Through the moods&quot; by Gary Cummiskey" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/fc85df8964814df955dcbfe3619cd1a60e1b2a89fc3132319f840cf5551b219e/thru-the-moods2mb.jpg" /> https://vernacularjournal.com/Urban-Forest Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:29:04 +0000 Vernacular Journal https://vernacularjournal.com/Urban-Forest Urban Forest kvpi like to be mad. mad at my next-door neighbor, mad at the corporate-run grocery stores, mad at the weather, at chronically online culture, and at the circumstances that make me&nbsp;weak. you see, i can’t name these circumstances because naming them would make them real.&nbsp; the tiny forest down the street also has a reason to be mad. the roots beneath it ache under the weight of used tires, fast food wrappers, broken containers, discarded shoes and jackets and underwear, but the creatures who call it home adapt.&nbsp; i am a creature in an urban forest and i, too, was forced to adapt. i play in my sandpit, poking pebbles with a stick. building castles is for the wolves, i’m told, and i’m a raccoon in a rusted keg, hiding from the rain. <img width="4896" height="3264" width_o="4896" height_o="3264" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/7703b3974db2db04a970a15964649d57a2e06d9886499aac11e7abd27fc52b39/AfterlightImage-1.jpeg" data-mid="253820868" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/7703b3974db2db04a970a15964649d57a2e06d9886499aac11e7abd27fc52b39/AfterlightImage-1.jpeg" /> <img width="4082" height="2724" width_o="4082" height_o="2724" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/d08c0d168726ff8814f09c5be646dfad8f9aa9dbcca585872adbdf0079f9741d/AfterlightImage.jpeg" data-mid="253820869" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/d08c0d168726ff8814f09c5be646dfad8f9aa9dbcca585872adbdf0079f9741d/AfterlightImage.jpeg" /> <img width="4834" height="3222" width_o="4834" height_o="3222" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/3b2d485f1c8614c1a42e365b0c8431f5af0f6113b821170269923c06126d1e6c/DSCF1085_Afterlight_Afterlight.jpeg" data-mid="253820870" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/3b2d485f1c8614c1a42e365b0c8431f5af0f6113b821170269923c06126d1e6c/DSCF1085_Afterlight_Afterlight.jpeg" /> <img width="4488" height="3006" width_o="4488" height_o="3006" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/a325183ba48bff07022f274207dbe56410331019554195bfae6c0720d4cb689c/1.jpg" data-mid="253821059" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/a325183ba48bff07022f274207dbe56410331019554195bfae6c0720d4cb689c/1.jpg" /> <img width="3264" height="4084" width_o="3264" height_o="4084" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9ef2c010314715c8dbf2f4dd07f15318ae36f5338c48fdd30437c0f01e1c5916/AfterlightImage-3.jpeg" data-mid="253823082" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9ef2c010314715c8dbf2f4dd07f15318ae36f5338c48fdd30437c0f01e1c5916/AfterlightImage-3.jpeg" /> <img width="4100" height="2732" width_o="4100" height_o="2732" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6b4ca2fb151aa7f27125f9e395fbabd8d6f233afd3abf16212f2056299a79f23/DSCF2820_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight.jpeg" data-mid="253820871" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6b4ca2fb151aa7f27125f9e395fbabd8d6f233afd3abf16212f2056299a79f23/DSCF2820_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight.jpeg" /> <img width="3946" height="2628" width_o="3946" height_o="2628" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/8a7e791d7d0e168cfaa0dabcdd47f4d2d281f81fa82c9e1f92ab23c18495257d/DSCF2834_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight.jpeg" data-mid="253820872" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/8a7e791d7d0e168cfaa0dabcdd47f4d2d281f81fa82c9e1f92ab23c18495257d/DSCF2834_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight.jpeg" /> <img width="3264" height="4084" width_o="3264" height_o="4084" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/9ad75b7652747f8bf59a93cc3debc887ae4db9dfe111b469f1b067f70495003b/AfterlightImage-2.jpeg" data-mid="253820867" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/9ad75b7652747f8bf59a93cc3debc887ae4db9dfe111b469f1b067f70495003b/AfterlightImage-2.jpeg" /> <img width="4828" height="3222" width_o="4828" height_o="3222" data-src="https://freight.cargo.site/t/original/i/6f84daeb9b78ee117e8a7e7c003291aea93ad0d59e58850ad443a075093b5e3c/DSCF2840_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight.jpeg" data-mid="253820873" border="0" src="https://freight.cargo.site/w/1000/i/6f84daeb9b78ee117e8a7e7c003291aea93ad0d59e58850ad443a075093b5e3c/DSCF2840_Afterlight_Afterlight_Afterlight.jpeg" /> https://vernacularjournal.com/Fairytales-and-Growing-Up-On-False-Narratives Mon, 26 Oct 2026 19:43:46 +0000 Vernacular Journal https://vernacularjournal.com/Fairytales-and-Growing-Up-On-False-Narratives Fairytales and Growing Up On False Narratives Virginia Reebs Once upon a time In a land far, far away. Isn’t how real life actually begins. The eternal quest for Happily ever after, Til death do us part Setting the stage for disappointment. Because life doesn’t end on horseback with My knight in shining armour, riding off into the sunset. Reducing human nature into archetypes. Clear-cut morality making it easier to know right from wrong. Naively expecting good to always triumph over evil. Believing I was a damsel in distress, waiting for my Prince Charming. That true love’s kiss would rouse me from dreamless slumber. Star-crossed lovers seeking an Antidote for the spell; The key to unlock the curse. My whole life waiting for that moment to begin. Searching the world for that magic kingdom where enchanted forests hide fantasy castles with turrets and staircases to nowhere. Giant beanstalks reaching into the clouds. Evil step mothers and wicked witches, genies to grant me three wishes. Brave knights on noble quests Heroes slaying dragons in my honour. Sword fights and other tests. With talking creature companions and Fairy godmothers as my guides. A rags to riches tale of love and adventure. Where everyday is a romance and youth is eternal. But the land of make believe was never meant to be; The disenchantment of reality. Expecting life to imitate perfection. Comparing against an impossible ideal. And growing up means learning that narrative was a fiction. The psychology of linguistics: My reality at the mercy of language. Alienated without words to express alternative lifestyles. Archetypes and fairytales reducing the complexity of life into cookie cutter outcomes of how a life should be lived. As an adult, I’m learning new vocabulary. I learned the terms “mimetic desire” and “hemeisis”. That these stories serve as roadmaps to living a culturally acceptable pre-scripted life. That I’ve come to internalize traditional societal values that I don’t even believe in, yet still feel the need to justify my life choices against. It dawns on me that I’ve been performing my whole life—Auditioning for a role in this play that I want no part of. My actions dictated by the belief that this was the only script available. Now I’m half way through the second Act and trying to figure out who I really am, what I really like and what I want out of this life. I’m picking up the pen to write my own narrative. The empowering rebellion of agency and laying claim to my life. There is a terrifying freedom in the awareness that no one is coming to save me. It’s too bad that the Disney princesses always got more airtime than She-Ra. https://vernacularjournal.com/The-Ghost-of-Route-6 Thu, 29 Oct 2026 22:21:07 +0000 Vernacular Journal https://vernacularjournal.com/The-Ghost-of-Route-6 The Ghost of Route 6 Sam Backlund-Clapp BREAKING NEWS: YOUNG FEMALE IOWA NATIVE FINDS MOOSE ANTLERS IN THE ATTIC THAT UNTIL THIS AFTERNOON WAS (POORLY) TAPED OFF FROM THE REST OF THE HOUSE, FINISHES OFF UNSUCCESSFUL SEARCH FOR CHILDHOOD BOOK SERIES WITH ACCIDENTAL IMPALLATION JUST IN: YOUNG FEMALE IOWA NATIVE SUBJECTED TO EITHER GROUNDBREAKING REVELATION REGARDING SUBLIMISTIC NATURE OF HEAVEN AND HELL OR UNFORTUNATE UNMONITORED GAS LEAK STAY TUNED REGARDING: YOUNG FEMALE IOWA NATIVE SEEMS TO BE HURTLING AT BREAKNECK SPEEDS TOWARDS A CRISIS OF FAITH AND PERSONHOOD THAT IS BY ALL MEANS UNPREDIDENTED, A LEVEL NOT OBSERVED SINCE THAT OF GILGAMESHWe will now return to our original programming. Yesterday upon return from the Marcus Cinema—(which is, I’ll politely call it annexed in the Coralville Mall between the Children’s Museum and the ice rink, accessible from the outside through a glass door moronically defiled with a sign that reads across the top mall opening hours and, below, instead of the hours, has a QR code which you must scan (after connecting to the mall WiFi, of course) in order to access the mall opening hours) wherein myself and Mother went to a Studio Ghibli screening (My Neighbor Totoro, if you’re curious) and she surprised me with some newfound adventurous rulebreaking trait that people like herself typically find late in adulthood by pulling out two raspberry dark chocolate bars from her tiny purse shortly after the lights went darker—we were discussing, on the drive home, the imposition of ‘skylines’ onto the natural world, which interfere grievously with an individual’s capacity to view and appreciate a sunrise or sunset. I regaled her with my woes about the horizon line being obstructed from every neighborhood I lived in over there, and surely every neighborhood I’ll live in for the foreseeable future, unless, of course, somewhere in West Brooklyn grabs me by the ankle and pulls. This conversation was brought on, predictably, by the sunset we were at present driving directly into, the car on the empty open highway which spilled towards us like a tongue, leading directly into a blazing gaping hole—or, a bug bite, an overripe tomato, a crown, a knife wound, an albino pupil—I could go on and on listing auto-constructed epithets for the Iowa sun, which is, as far as I’m concerned, the brightest, reddest, fattest sun there is.&nbsp; &nbsp; The brightest, reddest, fattest sun there is was doing a spectacular job of showing off the rural landscapes. I slouched further towards the window, having to peel my face off by the time we reached the driveway—watching the lull of the land, a solid whisper, a mound, what a word, mound—fat voluptuous hills rising and receding like someone’s sleeping chest. Anyone who didn’t grow up landlocked can’t fathom the lack of proximity to water. To this I say, I have the ocean, the whole raging golden thing, right in my backyard. The corn is lovely and seductive in the way it sways and blows, sleepily giving spectators in cars a marvelous show, but the wheat—the wheat like molten gold, like a gob of spit from Midas, a body of water the gods themselves would hesitate to dirty. This land is land and water. This agricultural ocean has fed generations of red blooded Americans and non-Americans alike. It’s calm and quiet most of the time, the thick shag of growing stuff like a blanket, easing the earth to bed—but it isn’t without nightmares, doesn’t go long without tubes of wind and terror descending from a blackened sky, which spreads across the Truman-Show-level-of-picturesque blue—so clear it’s almost pointy—in clouds resembling soot smudges, God spilling his inkpot, letting it drip off the table for a second to remind the gold carpet of mortality. At this we let the adrenaline carve us a smile and squat in the ditch, watching the havoc wreak its rhythm.&nbsp; &nbsp; From the car window, the dusk shed enough shadow across the world that I could see dust—from the gravel roads running parallel to the interstate—billow up all by itself, hovering over the rows of corn like an environmental ghost. Mother postulated it might be fog, made possible by the impossible humidity percentage (Iowa’s summertime gimmicky catchphrase amongst the locals is Iowa: air you can wear), the levels only increasing with the encroaching evening. One wakes up in the morning and can step outside into a different kind of local ocean—bare feet on the grass makes a sound too wet to feasibly mean Midwest. The dew is cold, somehow, and always rises in thick layers of fog (which always looks like steam) off of the stretches of grass. In the slopes carving down on either side of the interstate are lush spreads of wildflowers, the most common array of colors in the Southeast region being yellow, pinkish-purple, and blue. They creep up the side of the hills, sometimes all the way to the field fences, depending on the farmer’s pesticide use. The flowers are always the first thing I smell from the airport parking lot, the dense, syrupy air so solid it almost coats the inside of your lungs. It can be nauseating to the virginal nose, but it’s one of the only scents I know how to miss.&nbsp; &nbsp; In the evening, I wash off the pollen and aerated dust in the shower with the broken fan and terrible water pressure. John Mayer propped up on the plastic ledge waxing philosophical about missed trains and megacolossal citylove that cracks your brain in half. I calmly watch the drain. I know I can’t stay here forever, and I know I’m in for something ridiculous and character-building and hopefully not devastating (but if it is, I at least pray it’s in the right way). For a while I’ve intentionally staved off the inferiority complex charmingly named rural-Americans-who-leave. It’s been a long time since I’ve apologized outright for being from where I, well, am from, despite holding the private opinion that it’s actually maybe the best place in the world, at least for those of us interested in divinity, humanity, buzzing gas station lights, monarchs, people who are both nice and kind, the sky, aphrodisiac qualities in the weather, creative inspiration, etc. It’s been a long time since I’ve apologized outright, but it’s hard to keep it out of my voice, especially when being prodded into the corner—I told him this, a long time ago, appealing to the only part I was unsure of, the only area I thought might be a blind spot, in terms of stripping completely and totally naked and still being, well, accepted.&nbsp;