I have been quiet here on the blog as of late. That is due to a variety of reasons. One of the more recent ones is that, the past two weeks, I ventured forth on a road trip with my wife, going first to visit my in-laws in Colorado and then on to visit and … Continue reading “The Night Before”
Author: Joel Caris
Former publisher and editor of Into the Ruins, a quarterly magazine of deindustrial science fiction, Joel Caris is an author and essayist who cuts across genres, engaging elements of science fiction, magical realism, horror, weird fiction, and literary fiction. Recurrent themes in his work include ecology, environmentalism, farming and gardening, appropriate technology, mythology, polytheism, the occult, and more. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kate, and can be found at joelcaris.com.
In the Quiet
One of my more enjoyable outings when I was a child was to the library. If my memory holds, my mother would drop me off at the main branch near the downtown core and leave me be to partake in its literary glory for an hour or two. It was not a beautiful building by … Continue reading In the Quiet
The Forgotten Cemetery
The cemetery spread still and quiet at the edge of the old field, at the verge of a thin forest. It straddled the two as a transition, a place of passing, and in some ways it seemed as though it tied together the forest and field into one great cycle of being. The field lay … Continue reading The Forgotten Cemetery
Our Proper Place
We are not very important. We do not stand astride the world. We do not sit at its peak. All of evolution does not lead to us; only a very tiny sub-branch of it does. The artifacts we create as humans are not the pinnacle of achievement or the goal of all life. Our particular … Continue reading Our Proper Place
Power Down
One of the articles of faith I have held for a long time is that we are not, collectively, going to deal with the troubles of our future willingly. We are not going to reduce our energy and resource usage in an effort to mitigate the worst impacts of ecological destruction and climate change, or … Continue reading Power Down
Notes From an Ice Storm
There is an ethereal beauty to nighttime snow. White and encompassing of the world, it captures all the available light of the dark and reflects it back out: into and through windows, against neighboring buildings, onto the clouds above. It turns the world into a film set lit for a nighttime scene, with that strange … Continue reading Notes From an Ice Storm
Lengthening Days
A few weeks ago I set off on a late afternoon walk. I wandered our neighborhood for over an hour, looping along our gridded streets and enjoying the fresh air, the sun out and shining on a bright winter day. As I headed for home just after five o’clock, I realized that despite the hour … Continue reading Lengthening Days
The Land Speaks
I have noticed in my writing that often I build a story around a particular place or landscape. It’s the story’s foundation, so to speak—in the literal sense of a founding. I start with a thought of a particular place—the first farm I worked on, the Arizona desert, the Lost Coast, the forested surroundings of … Continue reading The Land Speaks
The World as Mystery: Life, Here and There
There is an idea I’ve held in my head a long time, from the time when I was a child. It is that the universe is a very large place, holding an impossible number of stars with an uncountable number of orbiting planets, and that therefore there must be other sentient life in the universe. … Continue reading The World as Mystery: Life, Here and There
In the Distance: A Fragment
Back in the spring of 2019, a scene came to me. At this point, I honestly can't remember what triggered the idea. Often scenes come to me when I'm reading something else, something that inflames some inner creativity. This may have been that, or perhaps it struck me otherwise, out of the ether, tied to … Continue reading In the Distance: A Fragment
Joel Caris - author, essayist, and publisher 