Joshua Grady
Stories (8/0)
Tota Vita Mea
I am looking, looking at a photograph. I am looking at a small, insignificant photograph in my hand losing my mind. I cannot begin to comprehend what I see before more. I am losing grip of all my understanding. How can a photograph have such a hold on me? On my heart and my mind, my emotions and my memories? I know that the photo is not of something within my own human experience. It is separated from me. Foreign, entirely. Yet, in some way, I feel as though I have seen this photo a thousand times in a thousand lifetimes. In some way, this photograph is the link between my present self and a spiraling table of my former selves, spinning heavenward into nothingness. For what reason, in what conceivable way, could a trivial, simple photo bring to me such a damning sense of incompleteness and infinity? Nostalgic loss and existential promise?
By Joshua Grady2 years ago in Fiction
September's Palette
Black was the sky when the day began its slow crawl towards night. Black was the blanket that twisted and knotted itself around my shivering husk as I slept. Black was the car that I sought refuge in, sleeping inside of to shelter myself from the biting winds of the highlands of Wyoming’s unforgiving wilderness. There was a beautiful calmness in the air; I remember that. Though I slept very little, and my back was as twisted and bent as the blanket was that covered me, I felt little other than calmness and the quietness of the morning. Stepping out of my car only briefly to unfurl my twisted legs, I was met with a harsh gust of wind that woke me up better than any cup of coffee could. The soft blue glow of my watch read 4:26. Good morning. I returned to my car and began driving, leaving behind my little patch of dirt that served as a good and stable home for the night. Black was the abyss of the night that pushed back against my headlights as I drove on. Black was the hauntingly vast sky above, and black was the road that stretched on and on below me. I drove for hours through this empty, starless galaxy. No moon guided me, and no stars flickered above me. Through blackness, I cut and fought forward, and through emptiness, I voyaged on. What was once open flatland soon became a mountainous terrain. The road rose and fell through the mountain ranges, as though I was a lonely black ship on a dark and haunted ocean. I felt as though I was being swallowed up; my car a lump of coal, the world before me a large and lightless fire. I drove on through the night as the glow of my watch showed time marching on and on and on. Good morning, my dear sweet Wyoming. I praise what I have been granted to see: September’s beautiful palette.
By Joshua Grady2 years ago in Earth
An Open Letter to Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau. Prince of the Transcendentalists. The self-insinuated ringleader of an army of disobedients. A desirer to live deliberately and a hopeful bride to a life of nature, self-reliance, and self-sufficiency. I write directly to you with all the knowledge of my self-centeredness and self-seeking. I must make this about myself because I could not possibly attach these feelings onto the heart of another. For all that I am worth, and with all of my words that well up inside me, I must place on you a flowing river of thoughts that I have only saved for you. This is my gift and you are the sole receiver, you quiet man of Walden Pond.
By Joshua Grady4 years ago in Poets
The Thirteenth Hour
He approached the temple slowly; as it was the only speed he was able to muster. All of his appendages trembled and ached in pain, as the pains of these last few days were too much on his small, plump frame. He had been through hell and back, and he had the scorch marks to prove it. He looked behind him at the only friend he had ever known. With eyes that had carried the weight of a thousand sorrows, he gave a slight smile, knowing that what he was about to do must be done.
By Joshua Grady4 years ago in Horror
Honey
I love the silence. The absence of all noise around me, all but maybe the occasional chirping of a bird, or the quiet shift of my feet on rock or grass as I sit in my own silent world. It is only in nature and nature alone, that I find what it is I am continuously searching for. It is only with the heavy thickness of a valley meadow, or the thin, whispering atmosphere of a rocky peak, or merely the dampness of a forest floor after a fresh rain as if the earth itself was filled like a sponge with the waters of the heavens, thus dulling out all the noises, all the distractions; the entire cacophony is still.
By Joshua Grady4 years ago in Psyche
Thirteen Ways to Look at Neptune
I. In many of his stories, HP Lovecraft would mention Neptune and the species of creature that inhabited it. In “The Whisperer in Darkness,” Neptune is referred to as “Yaksh” and is inhabited by mysterious beings. No one quite knows what these creatures look like precisely, only that it was the brain of one of these creatures, combined with “Three humans” and “six fungoid beings who can’t navigate space corporeally” that comprised the contents of the Mi-go’s brain cylinder. Later, in “Through the Gates of the Silver Key,” the creatures of Neptune are described as “hellish white fungi.”
By Joshua Grady4 years ago in Poets
The Sunset Chaser
The world is quiet. The streets are empty, and the world is constricted with silent tension. Each morning we awake with news on the current spread of the virus, and each evening we go to sleep, with images of new stories and data sheets and charts dancing around in our heads. The world is silent outside of our doors, and we do what we can to be okay every day, both physically and mentally.
By Joshua Grady4 years ago in Families
An Open Letter to Carnival
I was born mere footsteps from the ocean. No matter where I go, where my feet find their footing, or where my existence is found, I know that I am a child of the sea. I gravitate towards the water in ways only found in men lost in desert sands, clawing through grains for a single drop to ease their scorched throats. I magnetize to the sea, I am drawn to it in ways that confound me. That is why I feel betrayed by what you represent in this world.
By Joshua Grady4 years ago in Wander