ai – By Autumn Rain

My divorce came with the sense of being excommunicated for falling from grace. There’s something romantic about that, as if I were the servant of a petty god who found disfavor with me and cast me out to tread upon mortal ground, and now here I am picking my way along a rocky hiking trail as a warm October wind smacks me in the nose with dead leaves. Not every moment can be cinematic.

I hiked until my fear of heights kicked in, and while I’m logically certain that my feet were solidly planted on the ground, I couldn’t stop the light-headed notion that every footstep was perpetually sliding towards the edge and my inevitable death, so I turned around and headed home, much to my dog’s relief. He’s not a fan of windy heights either.

The thing is …

My AI art set up was dependent on that grace from which I have fallen. Unfortunately, my posts about how to generate AI art are the most popular, go figure.

The depressing part is that it’s not like AI art even meaningfully existed until a couple of years ago, yet now I feel the loss of it deeply. No more character portraits. No more setting the scene. No more visual supplements for my writing. At least not the same way that I used to.

I could download Stable Diffusion et al, but at the moment it doesn’t feel right. I’m too busy relearning how to be mortal … free from the gaze of my petty god.

Perhaps instead I’ll go back to my roots. I’ll channel the energy of that 17-year-old who’s Creative Writing teacher advised her to express all of her emotions through writing, and all she needed was a gel pen and a notebook.

We can save the fancy technology for the editing phase.

Meanwhile, I’ll have to figure out how to draw traffic to my blog without all the fancy keywords and visuals.

poetry

The Ballad of the Sludge Slayer

April 22, 2025April 21, 2025 Autumn

In the kitchen once calm, but now full of dread,
The sink stood still, the water dead.
No swirl, no gurgle, just murky despair–
A clog had settled deep down there.

Boiling water surged with might,
Baking soda fizzed in a noble fight.
The plunger danced, the bubbles rose,
But still the foul drain dared oppose.

With rubber gloves and battle cry,
Our hero braved the pipe’s dark eye.
Unscrewed the trap with fearless hands,
And found… it clean–yet still it stands!

Then came the tool, long coiled and mean,
The mighty snake–a plumbing queen.
It dove into the depths with grit,
And struck the sludge where it did sit!

Twist and turn, slurp, a thunk–
The serpent pulled back slime and gunk.
The drain gave way, the water flew–
A flood of triumph breaking through!

So raise a pouch of Capri Sun high,
And toast beneath the clean-piped sky.
For legends aren’t just born–they’re made,
Where clogs once lurked and courage stayed.

I unclogged a stubborn blockage in the kitchen sink, while consulting ChatGPT about how to go about it. Then, because I was feeling pretty proud of the achievement afterwards, I asked ChatGPT to write a poem for me about our venture.

art, poetry

Winter’s Grace

January 15, 2024 Autumn

The snow falls, soft and pure
A blanket of white, covering the earth
The skies above, dark and cold
But beneath the snow, the earth has grown rich and bold
The trees are bare, their leaves have fallen
But beneath the snow, the earth is swelling
The roots reach down, deep in the soil
Preparing for the spring, when new life will unfurl
The winter air is crisp, and clear
And in the snow, there’s beauty to be seen
The silence of the snow provides a place
To listen to our thoughts, and hear our dreams
The winter’s grace, it fills our world
With peace and serenity, unbound
And when the snow melts, and spring is here
We know the earth, will once again sing clear.