Visitants

 That which is not seen. 

Presence Out of Context/Underworld

Message, January 21, 2026. 7:21 PM.

Question: If you were dreaming right now, do you think you would sense the presence of the you who was dreaming? The presence of your sleeping self?

If you could, do you think you would recognize yourself as that presence?

I ask because this evening, I was out in town. The sun was below the horizon, but the sky was still a luminous (if ominous) grey. The lights of the town suddenly seemed to become more distinct, more vivid, with a strange depth. Despite the people and the traffic and the shops all around, I could feel the miles of snowy landscape around me, like a sort of echo.

It all felt slightly unreal. Memories flitted through my head not quite at random - us standing outside the art museum in the November wind, you and me on that drive from Texas to the Midwest. Other, things, too. It all felt similar somehow.

It wasn't just cold grue, but layers of it, like layers of time.

The radio played "wrapped around your finger" and it all felt so haunted that I began to question it, the meaning of it. It was as if I were hearing the song in its proper setting for the first time, the proper context, which allowed me to detect an essence I'd never noticed before. Something liminal. What was it I sensed?

My stream of consciousness was like so:

Underworld landscape. What would it feel like if you were dead and didn't know it? Would it feel like this? No, not quite. We are not entirely ghosts. We are something else. Has the rest the world disappeared, has the real world been obliterated and left this shadowy world behind? No, not quite that, either.

And what was the eerie, nameless presence in the atmosphere?

When running through all the iterations of what this was like, I realized that it was most like a dream, but as seen from the other side.

As if I were in the dream without knowing that I was being dreamed.

Except for the nameless, eerie presence of something unknown. 

***

It's been a few days since this happened, and I'm still thinking about it. Would you recognize your own presence out of context? The remnants of your own energy in a place where you used to live? 

Or (as my husband pointed out) the presence of your higher self, the eternal self that already knows all? 

I told him, if that were the case, I could think of two times such an awareness could become evident: if your higher self intervened to nudge you in a necessary direction, or that you, in your physical existence, had become so nebulous that you began to blend into that other world. 

I still wonder which one I experienced. 

But I suspect I know. 

Oneirosphere

Pleased to announce that the Mothwing Collective are back at it, collaging the dreaming landscape, in 3 dimensions, this time. 

Or is it 4?

Or more? 

I will post more information as it appears.

In the meantime, keep dreaming. 

[Images, text and collage by Victoria Phantasmagoria and Mere Pseud]

Just After Midnight

12:20 AM on the second day of the darkest month of the year.
A chill runs through me, as if a shadow has passed over, or a door has been opened somewhere.

Outside, all is silent. The big dipper sideways in the northern sky.

Perhaps it's just the landscape breathing. Perhaps.

We'll see.

The Eve Of All Hallows

The costume was supposed to look like a black jaguar and not something reminiscent of The Wicker Man, but sometimes the landscape decides for you.

Happy Halloween.

The Edge Of Autumn

Just days before the equinox and blazing hot. Autumn merely a celestial notion.

I'd been expecting a package and news had reached my ears that it had been delivered that very afternoon. Fantastic. With hope in my heart, I walked down the road. 

It was the same walk I'd dreamed of once long ago, and though now I was wide awake in the sun, a subtle hallucinatory quality had  nevertheless begun to steal across the land. 

Most of the time, it's not so obvious that this place is on the edge of the desert. In the brutal last days summer, though, with no soft greenery to cushion it. a barren moonscape reveals itself. Layers of memory (it seemed to me) had become exposed like rocks jutting above the surface, the bleached and jagged bones of the earth. 

I remembered my father, my siblings and the neighbors we'd had, and the games we'd played, among the limestone outcroppings that had their own names and the dry creeks and river bed. The agave, a huge, old towering thing, reached its spiky leaves to the sky. The needly hooked tooth edges snagged my attention, the way things do when the world goes strange.

Yes, the landscape was feeling restive, and really, who could blame it? It had been a relentless season

I was halfway down the road and the wind was picking up. Shades of the old dream again, but this time the wind was scorching, hot enough to distort the air. It rattled and hissed and shook the trees. Soon, like the dream, it began to howl. 

No sooner had I reached the place where the two roads met than I felt it, that mysterious, indescribable sense of another reality overlapping my own. I stood there for a while, half-hypnotized by the spinning vents on top of old Mrs. Kirtchner's house, wondering what it was that I felt, and how to even talk about it. But all I could articulate to myself was that I was standing at the edge of Autumn.

Well, hang around a crossroad long enough and you are bound to discover something.

My package was in the mailbox. What was in it? Eh, just stuff. A red herring, as red as my dress in the equinoctial wind.

I walked back home, once again full of knowledge that was beyond me to explain

Vespers

After last week's grim visit to the eastward road, I found myself unsettled in a way I could not shake. The place had got into my bones, like a sickness does. The sense of dread grew and grew. Everything felt bad. I began to wonder if my life had any purpose besides fear and sorrow.

Yesterday, I realized I'd had enough. It had to stop. I longed for something, a piece of magic, some undeniable sign that a universe existed beyond this mood.

If a landscape had got me into this, it made sense that a landscape might get me out. I decided to go west this time. Things had always felt a bit friendlier out there. Maybe I could have a chat with the Genius Loci while I was as it. Ask if there was any meaning left in the world.

It was nearly as cold and no less cloudy than it was on the 20th, but somehow the light in that direction looked golden and warm. Perhaps it was a good sign. It was nearly sunset, though, so whatever I'd meant to do must be done quickly. Remote country roads are not the best place to be after dark.

I took a right and headed out on my journey. I wasn't sure how far I was going, but figured I'd know when I got there.

There was a time when this road was almost as familiar as my own. Childhood friends lived here once. Old signs still marked the place of lovers' meetings. But that was long ago, and the memories of it squeezed my heart. So much time passed, so many people gone. There's a certain loneliness that comes to a tourist spot when the season is over, a sort of silence, and this road is no exception.

In all the times I'd come, there is one day that stands out in my mind. It was all autumn silence then, too, the mist, the color, the leaves and the rocks. Even the river was hushed. I was suffering a broken heart that day, the kind that never really mends. The radio was playing Peter Murphy's Cuts You Up and suddenly it all made sense. A haunted hour and a haunted song. I'd never forgotten it.

This came to mind as I was driving, that teenage heartsick ache. Time seemed to slide out from under me. I didn't intend to be maudlin, but suddenly I was desperate to hear that song again. It was the right sort of day for it. But unless I could call music from the air, it wasn't likely to happen. 30 year old alt-rock doesn't have much place on the radio.

At the fork in the road, I took another right. Here was the stone gate at the first crossing, marking where Susan used to live. There was the winding drive that once lead to Melissa's home. We used to hang out there, Missy and Teal and me. We'd sit on the river bank, the canyon echoing laughter.

I was beginning to feel overwhelmed. The whole point in coming here had been to quietly listen to the landscape, but the further I drove, the more I was stricken with old memories - this house, that cliff, that bend in the road. I was losing the thread.

The sun was going down. I pulled into a gravel lay-by to park and walked down to the water. As I did, the red leaf of a sycamore floated down and seemed to hover motionless in front of me far longer than it should have. I thought, well, then, this must be the place.

 

I sat and listened, and watched the sunset colors on the water. All was peaceful. I saw no visions nor heard any voices, only the sound of the river. Still, I did not feel alone. Then somehow I knew it was time to go, so I got up and -somewhat regretful to leave - went back to the car.

When I got in, I don't have to tell you what song was playing on the radio, do I? That it was Cuts You Up by Peter Murphy? Because of course it was, and you may have seen it coming but it was an complete and utter shock to me. And that's how I knew, with absolute certainty, that my strange, silent prayer for meaning had been heard.

Maybe it seems like a little thing, but it was much more than enough. 

Sometimes it's enough to know that someone is listening.

The Landscape Dreams Uneasy

It's that time of year when the horrors begin to creep. Not the thrill of Halloween or the romance of falling leaves, but the cold landscape sleeping.

If you can call it sleep.

You can feel trouble gathering out here in the country, between the lowering skies and the rocks that jut out like bones. It's not personal, it's just November, and the Goddess of Thorns will not make it easy.

In the cities, it's safer. All those people and the lights and the shops. You can ignore the hostility that seethes beneath the surface, the landscape that wants rid of you.

It's tired. It's had enough. If you listen closely, you can almost hear it moan. It's not personal. You mustn't think I haven't tried to be friends. But I was born here - I know it like my the back of my hand.

The bleached grass, the bone chill, the grim specter of the sleeping earth.

It always makes me sick to my stomach, this feeling. It gives me the cold grue and no mistake. Yet I tried not to fight it today, tried to see what it would teach me.

In my mind, I could see miles of limestone and windblown earth, swept by overwhelming dread.

I never did like the sight of those hills in the distance.

There are certain cold days when the clouds are low and the atmosphere wraps you like a blanket, safe from the landscape's uneasy dreams. But not today. Most definitely not today.

Days like today are the thorns and spines and psychic wounds that come with the dying of the year.

November Night

My previously mentioned experiment to lower my anxiety levels was having excellent results - I'd only had one serious anxiety attack in a week, which is a great improvement - but having my psyche in (apparently) better shape brought out an old nemesis. Quite suddenly, I'd fallen ill with what seems like a total body breakdown, some systemic illness erupting in assorted peculiar ways. Conversion disorder, anyone?

On one hand, it hardly matters if this is my unconscious way of expressing self-hatred through illness. The fact is I'm ill, in pain and life has become extra difficult at the moment. Naturally it's very worrying (and oh so convenient, smirks my punitive super-ego). When one is beset by illness and worry, it's damn nigh impossible to take the necessary steps toward self-improvement. Which, obviously, is what's on the other hand. Of course there is a chance that I'm simply ill and the timing was purely happenstance - there is a chance, but I know my neurosis, and I'm not buying it.

Still, I'm dedicated to finding a solution. I am determined to work my way toward some type of  inner peace. If joyfulness is too much to ask, then contentment is perfectly acceptable. I'll keep working at it, even if I feel I'm falling apart.

That isn't the point of this post though. What I came here to say is quite different, really.

Before I became ill, there was this one night - the tenth of November, I think it was - the weather was warm, the sky was lowering and grey. I'd felt well and strong enough to take the dog for a walk. It was sunset and we went the long way, since it was that sort of evening. Silhouette birds swooped low over trees and there was a sprinkling of rain every now and then. There was a feeling of walking upon the crust of the earth - which of course we always are, but really feeling it, you know, walking atop this ancient and marvelous place. The beauty of even the ragged rocks is apparent at times like these. The hills and creeks seem to contain some ineffable secret.

At home, the boys had got hold of a projector and were playing with it on the lawn, shining pinpricks of light at the house and trees. They laughed so much, chasing around in the surreal landscape they'd created.

I consider myself fortunate that happiness, when it does come, seems to come for no particular reason. There is no set criteria of events that must be met; I know from experience that such criteria would never be met. Instead it comes at random, perhaps triggered by some confluence of factors impossible to define or maybe nothing at all. Again, it hardly matters. There was nothing special about November tenth, except that I was happy for half an hour. Because it was random, it could happen again at any point. Therefore there is a reason to keep going. I don't dare give up, because happiness could suddenly appear with no warning. It's worth it to keep going. When those fleeting moments of happiness do appear, I wouldn't miss them for the world.