who do you mean with pagans? It’s an exonym so do you mean everyone who is not a christian? Because that is an easy bar to pas, since history has been long and religions have been many. Did you have a specific culture in mind?

Edit: The point I wanted to get to, is that if we start looking around at historical cultural/religious practices around the world, it won’t take you long to find pretty questionable practices (from a contemporary humanist perspective) including all of the things you mentioned both in and outside of Christianity

Edit: You know what, you probably already know all of this, I guess the word pagans just tripped me up. Have a good night haha.

The average physics lab at uni.

If you don’t know about her yet, read a little bit about her life. It’s facinating! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christine_de_Pizan

I don’t have much to add, but I found your comment funny, lyrical and also a little moving :)

I reread it and I changed the penultimate line to include the specter. I thope that the added information will help readers solve the meaning of the bold lines, since the main POV is being asphyxiated and the other, unclear part/POV/subject is doing the strangling. But you would have to read it twice to get it.

I also removed some of periods to make the last section feel more stressful.

Lastly I removed the period from the first line to let it blend into the first stanza, indicating that the main POV and the specter are actually the same.

At the back of your mind

there is a specter.
Always stalking,
always talking.

Whispers of truths,
fires, famine, fear
too terrible to hear.

If I linger to listen,
It’s spell will find me,
it’s fear will bind me.

You see me everywhere.

It looms
in the rising spire,
over the forest fire.

It leers
from the dry riverbed,
where fish lie dead.

I’m getting closer now…

I’m pacing
heart racing.
All the distress
I can’t express!

All the headlines
missed deadlines
records reached
tipping points breached.

And then, I strangle you!

the guilt
asphyxiating me
the specter
asphyxiating me.

yeah I bet that you tried haha. I will admit that I didn’t try to find a better alternative. And at least you are god in this instance, so maybe the emphasis is not so bad.

Oh btw, the bold lines were supposed to be the specter.

Thanks for the feedback. I felt so bad after writing it. I considered not publishing it because I don’t want to make other people feel hopeless so I’m glad that it made you feel less lonely.

I will reread it tomorrow and see if I can workshop the perspective a bit. The guild was supposed to be guilt, but I already changed that.

Very relatable :)

But if you want feedback, I guess that I expected a rhyme to god at the end of the last line.

The internet?

Would you say that you need qualifications to form opinions about a topic? That seems quite restrictive, specifically for politics. Lots of people have and share political opinions without qualifications. You yourself just shared a political opinion, do you have qualifications?

The official response is “To be better prepared for a potential crisis” Gold closer to home is easier to liquidate. The unofficial speculation is that the national bank is worried that the US could easily disrupt the NL financial traffic, hence the move.

My 2 cents: They probably don’t want to signal complete distrust like France did in 1959, so they just withdrew some.

Local article on the topic: https://nos.nl/artikel/2629369-nederland-haalt-groot-deel-van-de-goudvoorraad-weg-uit-de-vs-en-canada

welcome welcome, do you know your way around?

yeah that is how it feels. makes me feel hopeless.

I don’t think that we should be wary of them. It is only natural that when the whole web is overrun by bots, these gated communities will pop up. It’s an easy way to keep a lot of bad traffic out, while a space for users to interact and be authentic.

And yes, I think the open web is truly over.

Made some slight edits:

Once upon the tapestry,
a pattern was born
to live and later die,
as by the template.

A new motif,
though, one of the many
six billion background patterns,
all blending.

In the gallery of time,
we are the only guests in exhibition.
Where are the future and past?
absent, unwoven and uncaring

the weaver,
who neither takes notice of our motifs,
as woven with the same thread;
we look too much alike.

Only we can see,
The now through the noise.
The meaning in our motifs
The beauty in the background.
The person in the pattern.

I accept this template,
this tapestry, this time.
But I will weave it,
and pull the threads myself.

By me,
Goodman

You are kinda right with the solutions. Another problem is that some people have no idea how bad candles and gas stoves are for the indoor air quality. Once I brought a quality gas sensor to a home where they cooked with gas and despite using ventilation they massively underestimated how much PM was still in the air. Depending on your situation, you really need to ventilate your house,

PM is not bullshit though and if you can prevent it you should prevent it. Because then you don’t need a hepa filter.

Source: Am asthmatic, have a gas sensor, work with exposure scientists.

Thank you for reading it and taking the time to tell me about it. Poetry has been such a meaningful outlet for me so it genuinely means a lot that you are engaging with my work.

I’m glad that it made you feel. Makes the dark forest a little brighter for me :)

And yeah I did mean that. Crazy how those things make it through. I just read over it, imagining the right word.

Thanks for reading :)