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Carrion Luggage
Carrion Luggage
 
Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem.
This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it.
It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans.
It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier."
I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination.
September 9, 2025 at 10:08am September 9, 2025 at 10:08am
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Sometimes I find articles actually related to writing. This is one of them, from Big Think:
People sometimes look down on fantasy — not the prize-winning, metaphorical magical realism kind, but the kind of fantasy that has swords, sorcery, and dragons.
I contend that all fantasy is metaphorical.
The snobbery of those who look down on fantasy has a long pedigree — so much so that, in 1947, J.R.R. Tolkien felt the need to defend the genre in his work, “On Fairy-Stories.”
I can understand, to some extent, the snobbery. The popular stories could be legitimately bad. But the true lit-snobs don't even give it a chance.
To enter Faërie is not to enter a world of simple make-believe; instead, we perform an act of “sub-creation,” in which we form a world within our wider “reality.”
So that's what the slightly clickbaity title refers to. A bit disappointing it's not about making the perfect hoagie. I suspect that to many writers (even me), that's old news with a new headline.
When we sub-create a world, we “make a Secondary World which the mind can enter.” This world has its own internal logic, laws, and systems.
Well, I just always called that "using one's imagination," but if it helps to think about it that way, why not?
We see, feel, and live in this world in a way far beyond the words on a page can alone provide. We color in background details and add sights, smells, and wonders that go beyond the narrow bounds of the words in the book.
Yes, that's worldbuilding. Most writers do that to some extent; at the very least, they're creating a world much like ours but which doesn't contain the same characters. Fantasy / SF writers take it to extremes.
Then there's a section about Beowulf, but I'll only comment on the last bit of it:
It says that no matter what monsters we face, we shall overcome and live on. We shall not be defeated.
And that's part of what I meant up there when I said all fantasy is metaphorical. Even the pulpiest fiction can be metaphorical—if often clichéd.
Books of all sorts are escapist. Fictional narratives and made-up characters define a novel.
The article goes into this a bit, but I don't think "escapist" should be a dirty word. |
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I think there is still more evolving to do. And who knows, maybe a new species will take over as top dog, and humans might even become extinct.
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