There is something ghastly and sinister about Kielce at night.
The darkness of a scantily lit, poorly maintained city. Silhouettes of sinister nightly walkers. Lost dogs and garbled noises, strange smells and whispering winds.
Reviving my interest in an old writing project.
Conversation
This region used to be a nexus of witchcraft and pagan rituals.
Even the name, Świętokrzyskie, is a classic Christian renaming of a pagan nexus.
You can still feel it in the air, here. Hidden, but not forgotten.
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The film of civilization is worn thin here, straddling the land with a disturbing, quixotic desperation.
Things here don't quite work as they should. Shapes don't quite cohere. Walls don't quite stand. Time doesn't quite pass.
And more than anything, it is so, so dark here.
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I fear this last point won't be properly understood without some elaboration.
I'm from a place where for half the year, the sun barely rises. Long, dark winters of at best twilit conditions.
Still nothing like Kielce at night.
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One of my meditation techniques has the effect of putting me in a state of high symbolic resonance.
Ordinary senses take on a new layer of emotionally valent semantics.
I don't do this much in Kielce. Don't like the feeling of eyes on my neck, the suggestive gnashing of teeth.
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Walking here thus sensitized, I feel an ache in my spine like after a hard collision to the back.
Normally only feel such intimations of malice in truly vile places, like Catholic churches, or business parks.
Replying to
I can't even imagine what someone here would see, were they to go out alone, in the dark, tripping on acid.
That being said, I think I'd like to write it.
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