Tag: writing

Collapse chats & diaries, DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Ecology of the absurd, Featured blogs, sites & lit works, Germany, Popular & established authors

The hottest day

!Epic Tomorrows

By Tadzio Mueller; originally published in German on the blog Peaceful Sabotage. Republished with permission.

Dear people,

It’s Saturday, June 27th, 6:27 a.m. I’m sitting in the kitchen, a small pot of green tea beside me, my laptop on my lap, writing these lines. This isn’t my usual routine; when I work on a Saturday, I usually don’t start until 10 a.m., after I’ve had a bit of a lie-in and finished reading the morning paper in bed. But today is supposed to be one of the hottest days in Germany since records began. Yesterday, a weather station in Saarbrücken recorded 41.3 degrees Celsius, the highest temperature ever measured. Today, this record will likely be broken; 39 degrees Celsius is forecast for this afternoon in Berlin, the highest temperature I’ve ever experienced in Germany. Neither my office nor our apartment has air conditioning, and I’m under pressure to finish this book, so here I am at 6:46 a.m., already hard at work, because it will simply be too hot from midday onward. It will be too hot to work, too hot to think, too hot to tell stories. It will simply be too hot for everything. End of June. In northern Germany, not in Ecuador.

And this heat wave is just the beginning. The world’s oceans are warmer than ever before, or at least not within the context of a stable, human-friendly climate. In the Pacific, the “Godzilla El Niño” is gaining momentum, and in the North Atlantic, the “cold blob” is causing alarm, already influencing the monsoon in India and representing the first clearly visible sign of the coming collapse of the AMOC, which will one day trigger a climate catastrophe of its own in Europe. When? We don’t know, but the date is getting closer and closer since I started reading the studies on the subject.

It’s the last weekend in June, normally a weekend packed with festivals, Pride marches, village celebrations, and whatnot – and news is pouring in from all over Germany that most of them are being canceled this weekend. My good friend and fellow collapse enthusiast Scully wanted to go to the Christopher Street Day (CSD) in Ilmenau: canceled because of the heat; I had considered going to the CSD in Bernau with Wolf, like Scully, to make sure there were more of us there than potentially disruptive fascists: canceled because of the heat.

Yesterday, the hottest day in Germany since records began, roads collapsed, people died, and Berlin felt like a ghost town; nobody wanted to be outside, nobody wanted to be in the sun. About an hour north of Berlin, the left-wing alternative music festival Fusion is taking place this weekend, as it always does at the end of June. Around 50,000 hedonistic holiday communists are partying there exuberantly for several days, a significant number of them drunk, stoned, or high on amphetamines. I myself spent many a sleepless night there in my younger days. For several years now, I haven’t gone to Fusion myself, but every year when I’m not there, I experience FOMO, or ” fear of missing out .” Someone else might be having more fun than me.

This year I’m not worried about missing out. This year I’m worried that people will collapse there in droves, possibly even die of heatstroke. I’ve read *The Heat Will Kill You First * and * Ministry for the Future *; I know how, in extreme heat, our bodies dissolve in on themselves, how our insides turn to scrambled eggs. I’m afraid of the heat, and this year it will reach up to 40 degrees Celsius at Fusion. I’m afraid that people will simply die a miserable death while partying because, as a society, we’re just not prepared to live in *Hothouse Earth *, as an influential paper described it a few years ago.

It’s Saturday, June 27th, 6:28 a.m. Today will likely be the hottest day in Germany since records began. And tomorrow the record might be broken again. As the well-known meteorologist Özden Terli reminded us in yesterday evening’s news: we are emitting more greenhouse gases, not less, and as I predicted a few years ago, the more the climate catastrophe escalates, the less we care about climate protection.

It’s Saturday, June 27th, 6:29 a.m., and the last report on Deutschlandfunk radio before the 6:30 news is about the lack of civil defense in Germany. I didn’t hear everything; it’s still early, and I’m just making my green tea. A middle-aged man is asked when he last experienced a siren alarm: he replies that it must have been quite a while ago, perhaps 40 years? I promise myself I’ll listen to this report again later; maybe I’ll find a few more good quotes in it.

Quotes that are supposed to prove something? That I woke up on June 27th in a different world than the one I described in the last chapter. A world where “disaster preparedness” is something to be ridiculed, something to be dismissed as “fascist prepperism” with all the self-assurance of those who have never had to react to a disaster themselves. A world where it’s becoming increasingly clear: disasters are coming, in fact, they’re already here. You can prepare, or you can’t—but if you don’t, then things are going to go wrong.

June 27, 2026, is one of the few days I’ve experienced that truly feels like this: like a world on the brink of collapse. A world where everything is falling apart. A world that, in a crucial sense, is coming to an end. And this is casting its shadows. Shadows that many are still ignoring. But the exciting and dangerous thing about heat is: it’s hard to ignore, and expensive. So we now have a brief window in which we’ll talk about heat waves, climate collapse, and civil protection. The window will close again quickly because of our society’s tendency to deny the truth. But perhaps it will stay open long enough for me to finish my book about collapse and preparing for collapse. Cognitively, that would be stupid, because heat makes you stupid. But symbolically, it would fit. And stories are all about symbols. So here we go : the world is ending, this book will soon be too, let’s wrap it up, people.

With diligent but heat-worried greetings,

Yours truly, Tadzio

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Exclusive to COTW, Letters to the editors, Popular & established authors, South Korea

Letter from Jo Eun Young to Matthew, COTW editor

!Epic Tomorrows

Dear Matthew,

I hope you have been doing well.

After returning from Europe, I took about a week to recover from jet lag and regain my energy.

For this journey, I printed fifty copies of our leaflet, and I was able to leave forty-eight of them at bookshops along the way.

My first stop was the conference in Siena, where I shared the leaflet with professors and several students in Korean Studies. They were genuinely interested, especially in the translations, and I promised to send them the original Korean poems after returning home.

After Siena, I visited Florence and Rome. The experience was quite different from my visit to Lisbon in 2019.

In Lisbon, I felt warmly welcomed. Perhaps it was because Fernando Pessoa is celebrated throughout the city, with bookstores and shops proudly displaying books and souvenirs inspired by him. It felt like a city that embraces its poets.

Florence and Rome, however, felt different. After returning home, I found myself reflecting on why.

First, Florence and Rome are much more tourism-oriented cities than Lisbon. Perhaps people naturally saw me as a tourist rather than as a writer.

Second, I wondered whether my limited English, together with being an Asian visitor, made communication more difficult.

Third, many of the bookshops I visited also operated as cafés, restaurants, or bars, which may have made it less practical for them to introduce or display independent literary projects.

Because the leaflet was written in English, one bookseller—who I believe was probably a staff member rather than the owner—suggested that I should instead visit bookshops specializing in English-language books.

In Florence, every bookshop kindly accepted my leaflet. In Rome, one bookshop politely declined. It appeared to be one of the busiest bookstores in the neighborhood, and the staff explained that any decision to display printed materials had to be discussed and approved at a staff meeting.

I cannot say that I was enthusiastically welcomed everywhere, but I also realize that this expectation was my own. If even one person becomes interested and a genuine connection begins, I will consider this journey worthwhile.

Most importantly, this small adventure was meaningful because I was able to share a leaflet that we created together—you, the illustrator Han So-jin, and I. Thanks to this project, I wandered far beyond the usual tourist destinations and explored the small streets and independent bookshops of Florence and Rome.

Back in Korea, I am currently teaching as a professor while also working with a local cultural foundation on a project interviewing independent neighborhood bookshops. Looking back, from March through August, I have been on a continuous journey through local bookshops in both Korea and Europe.

Thank you, Matthew, for accompanying me on this journey through your work and encouragement.

Now many projects are waiting for me again.

I hope to spend this summer working, reading, writing, and loving.

With my sincere gratitude,

JO EUN YOUNG

P.S.

I’ve been documenting this journey on my Instagram (@bella_joeun), if you’re interested.

Popular & established authors, SHORT short stories, South Korea

The Memory Pawnshop (Everyone Remembered Him Except Me)

!Epic Tomorrows

By Hyoungshim Choi; Hyoungshim Choi is one of the most popular authors on COTW. After this piece, try her excellent short story, Tongue.

In the shop tucked away in the corner of the alley, there hung a heavy atmosphere. A grey-haired man stared intently at an old set of scales, placed on a display stand. The reading, steeply rising, eventually came to a stop. 

—You hit the jackpot with this one. 

The eyes of the man in the jeweler’s loupes gleamed keenly. 

—Please give me a good price for it.

I mumbled, as if pleading. The man carefully removed the device that was connected to my head. You’d have thought this device for stimulating the brain might have gotten some upgrade by now, but he was sticking to the old ways. However, he was a veteran with a great many clients, reliable. He knew indeed how to distinguish valuable memories and extract them without damaging them. He was famous in particular for implanting memories neatly and noiselessly. While the man priced my memory, I, after hesitating several times, found the courage to open my mouth. 

—I’m here today to propose a very special deal.

This place where precious memories are bought and sold is called the soul’s pawnshop. I’m a regular here. Mainly as a seller. The memories I sell are to do with romance. Some people might call it love, but I just call it romance. So people call those who do this kind of work, like me, the prostitutes of the soul. As the name suggests, it’s not a particularly well-regarded job.  

I’ve been doing this for almost 5 years now. The first time I sold a memory was when I had just left the childhood care facility. Since I had nothing, I decided to sell off the memories of what I wouldn’t exactly call my first love. When I sold one of these memories for the first time, I experienced a miracle where my body felt lighter. Perhaps selling that memory had taken some of my darker childhood memories with it. Those memories had been woven into the background of my first love. It’s somewhat regrettable that the memories cannot be removed completely even when they are supposed to be, since some traces are left behind that might be considered as afterimages. In any case, I got into this work because of the lightness of heart I got from sloughing my dark memories, and because I was attracted to the fact my experiences went for a pretty high price to the wealthy.

Memories sold in this manner are sometimes used for basic construction of virtual reality, and if there are people who want to make these memories more vividly their own, then the memories are transplanted after undergoing some slight processing. The kind of people who buy the memories of people like me, I was told, are the ones who are unwilling to experience things in this busy world by putting their own mind and body under stress but who still would like to indirectly have those experiences. Of course, there is no reason to undergo all the sorts of hardships that people like me have to, people who have no place to stay, no parents, and no proper social protection. Plus, they are busy competing to survive in this high-tech world, nor can they afford to use up their mental and physical energy struggling to have and maintain romantic relationships. People who have been closely managed from the time that they were a fertilized egg and have to live their best lives are different from those like me who were conceived and born naturally and have to deal with all sorts of pain and diseases. That is to say, I am of the lowest caste in this society. 

—How was the person you went out with this time?

Anna, sitting next to me in the waiting room, asked me while we were waiting for our memories to be transferred to the computer simulation. Anna looked at me with her face all swollen up. She must’ve come here to sell the memory she acquired from staging some tear-jerking melodrama.

—He was okay. Very much so.

I choked up as I responded.

—What does he do?

Anna asked, still wiping away her eyes.

—Space explorer. He went all the way inside a black hole and managed to escape, just about.

—Sounds fun. How did you meet?

—At a space communication club. I became friendly with a man who lives on Planet Titan, and he invited me over to his.

—That’s cool. Then why did you break up?

I could not give an answer. I always used to think of Anna as a silly goose, immersed in self-pity and overly sentimental. But this time around, I was the one crying. In an attempt not to cry I ground my teeth, but the sound of my choking up still escaped. Anna looked at me astounded, then, without words, she wiped my eyes with her sleeves.

As I sat there, the memory surfaced with painful clarity. Once again I was aboard the shuttle, staring through the window at the familiar black sky and starlight. The afterimage of Ian, disappearing into the darkness beyond, was still vivid. Looking at the blue Earth slowly nearing, I touched the empty seat next to mine.

The last night on Planet Titan, he handed me two tickets to Earth. With the words that he wanted me to be with me forever. Except for the check-in process being strangely slow at Titan Space Station, everything went smoothly. That is, before Ian pressed the emergency evacuation button with the terrorist in his arms. For a long time after the spaceship departed from Planet Titan, Ian and I could not sleep at all because of our expectations for a new life. As the passengers went into hibernation for the long journey to Earth, a terrorist tried to force his way into the cockpit. We were just about to go into hibernation. I had absolutely no clue that it was going to be like this when Ian quietly rose and wrapped his arm around the terrorist.

They put him as missing. The terrorist had already broken the security camera in the cabin before he tried to force his way into the cockpit. I, the only witness, testified at the top of my lungs to his heroic sacrifice, but nobody gave ear to what I had to say.

My memories with him—these, I really did not want to sell. I wanted to remember him for long (for a long time / forever) and I wanted to miss him until the day I died. But I had to sell my memories, so at least I could make other people remember him for long (for a long time / forever)

First, I made up my mind to sell all of my memories that might be worth any money except for the scene where Ian, nestled within the emergency evacuation capsule with the terrorist in his arms, disappears into the starlight. Recollections of my mother, faceless and remembered only as warmth deep down in my memories, all the way up to him proposing to me. They were worth pretty good money, for they were ones I had intended not to sell and to cherish for a long time. But then, I placed a very special order with the owner of the soul pawnshop. I asked him to simultaneously insert the scene into the memories of a great number of people—the scene where Ian escapes into space with the terrorist in his arms to save the lives of hundreds of passengers. We agreed that I would pay for this with the money I earned from my memories.

Lying on the memory-harvesting machine, I felt my left arm. On it, I had tattooed Ian’s name. For I wanted to be left with it, only this, even though all of his memories would be erased. Soon enough, the machine lit up. I closed my eyes.

—You may come out now. 

The machine stopped and I woke up. As always, my head was hazy. A finalized bill was waiting for me at the cashier. As I was about to step out of the pawnshop having picked up the papers, the owner said wistfully that the new memory-transplant program is astonishingly good. I just smiled at him, not understanding what he meant. My eyes teared up as I was pushing the glass door, strange. The owner’s countenance bidding me goodbye was dark. The door closed behind me and the sight of the street caught my eyes. The sun was shining brightly. The sky was as clear and clean as it’s ever been. A strange man was smiling on the big news billboard erected at the end of the street. His face seemed somehow familiar.

—We all shall remember his noble sacrifice for a long time.

The news anchor was struggling to keep under his control the emotions surging within him. I thoughtlessly put my hands into my pockets and walked up to the end of the street. Anna, recognizing me at the far end, smiled brightly. Tears, whose meaning I could not understand, kept flowing from my eyes.

DIARIES & MEMOIRS: COUNTRIES A-Z, Ecology of the absurd, England, Exclusive to COTW

Building Silent Haven: Chapter Three

!Epic Tomorrows

Featured image: ‘Aerial View’ 1996, acrylic on board

In 2000 I found a studio, housed within and named after an old Chocolate Factory, where the plan was to house 100 artists. It was a walk across the park from my flat and near to the allotment! I was creating my little natural world in London! I was the first artist in and my work became freer. I painted, sculpted, crafted, and made clothes, mostly from recycled materials.

‘Red Still Life’ 2000, oil on canvas

I came across a leaflet for a residency at Dorland Mountain Arts colony in California, applied for it and was accepted. Somehow, I made the money to go and so I made drawings of an ambitious painting I wanted to do there. I tentatively bought a huge roll of canvas thinking that I could cut it down when I arrived if it was too big.

In March 2001 I arrived at Dorland and I was shown to where I would be staying for the next month. Wow! The Retreat was sensational. It sat nestled on a remote hillside with fabulous views all around. It was a massive building with a canvas roof and windows which showed the moon coming up at night. The wood burner was the only source of heating and I had never lit a fire in my life. I soon learned and became an expert.


The Retreat

Robert, a permanent resident showed me inside the house and when he got back to the front door, he said “oh, and there is this…” He lifted a pole at the side of the front door and the whole front wooden wall opened out onto a concrete balcony. The amazing thing was, there was a massive drawing board attached to this wall and it was exactly the size of my canvas! Needless to say I didn’t cut it down and I spent the whole month painting outside.

Front wall, living space, and communal dining room

‘Past Life Present’ 2001, oil on canvas

My work had got bigger and bigger over the years, from tiny black and white graphics to this, a massive, colourful oil painting on canvas. It is about a vision I had of me and my relationships to people in a past life as Native Americans. The other people in the painting are from my present life.

I met a beautiful man called Ben at Dorland, who made amazing sculptures in wood. We hung out together throughout the month. I realised later in the month that I had fallen in love with him, but he had a girlfriend so I never told him. Keeping my feelings to myself was hard. When I left Dorland, I got onto the Greyhound bus and began to feel ill. I felt like I was having a heart attack. I was getting up to ask the driver to take me to a hospital when I instinctively pulled out a piece of paper and pencil and started writing. I wrote a 46-verse love poem about Ben on the bus and when I had finished, the pain in my heart had gone.

Dorland was an amazing break from my madness and gave me the motivation and energy for the beginning of a new life.

Ben

Ecology of the absurd, Featured blogs, sites & lit works, FLASH!, Popular & established authors, USA

Butterfly Farm

!Epic Tomorrows

By Nina Hart: This story originally appeared in the book of short stories, Somewhere in a Town You Never Knew Existed Somewhere

It had been years since she’d been to the butterfly farm. She had to stop going because the butterflies were too beautiful. She would sit and weep as their soft wings skimmed overhead and grazed her tiny ears. Their grand wings veering wide in flight and showing her prints like African batik.
       She didn’t like being the one who always cried, sitting on the bench and looking down and over to the side. She was trying to hide the tears that rolled out like curling butterfly tongues. The butterflies didn’t know she was crying for them. They were too busy landing on velvety flowers and sucking sweet liquids out of squeaky golden stems.
       The last day she spent at the butterfly farm was the day she cried the most. She was sitting on a bench and she was talking to them. She told them they were “sweet and gentle” in a very loud voice, which surprised even her. Suddenly a slow-moving man wearing dirty beige cover-alls and holding a heavy glass jar began to walk toward her. He came and took her four favorite butterflies. She didn’t know how he knew. He stuffed them with his rough hands through the top of the jar and quickly screwed on the lid, their tiny wings wilting. Dogs barked and birds screeched and the sky turned grey with sadness. Some big bowl of hunger grew up in her and puffed her size up to the clouds. Swollen hands moving like giant wings. Her love was that big. She took the man’s bulbous arm and threw it behind his back and arrested him and took him back to the pork farm and the butterflies now sit on his shoulder and eat from dog bowls for all the rest of their days.