Flesh: Weird and great

It’s hard to describe the narrative style of David Szalay’s Flesh, except maybe to say it’s unsettling? Other reviews describe it as ‘sparse,’ which I guess is a nod to the matter-of-fact descriptions and the abrupt changes to our protagonist, István’s, life. Like between two paragraphs he murders a man (accidentally?) and then in the gap between chapters goes to prison or war or or or.

I…

Flesh: Weird and great

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you have no life in yourselves.

John 6:53

flesh computer

Drew this based on a conversation i had with a mate when we were discussing how some scientists got a cluster of human brain cells to play doom or smth like that

not only am i cute inside and out , i am also a poet

flesh sketch

i’m not even real

A drawing i did. is supposed to be a flesh creature around a tower

I haven’t drawn that much lately, but i would like to. I’d be happy for some recommendations on what i could draw. I can’t draw people.

growing pains by michaela stark @ dirty looks: desire & decay in fashion, oct 2025

Are you so sure that The Flesh is “gone”?
That IT suddenly, out of the blue, “vanished” “without a trace”?
Don’t forget.
Firstly, those born to crawl cannot fly.
Secondly, the Fleshly residue is forever.

“Faith [in Christ Jesus] is our victory that overcomes the world, the flesh, and the Devil.”

Robert W. Kellemen

Paul teaches us not to grow in grace by dependence on our own power, works, or our flesh…

In Galatians, he wondered who had bewitched the saints in Galatia. Having been saved by faith apart from human effort, why were they now trying to sanctify themselves by works–through the power of the flesh, through human self-sufficiency?

As we’ve seen in Colossians, Paul wonders what human philosophy has taken captive and deceived the saints in Colosse. Having been saved by faith, why would they attempt to live their Christian lives based on rules, rituals, regulations, and self-righteous works?

In Philippians, Paul makes it more personal, using himself in his illustration of the wrong way to live the Christian life. Speaking to “brothers” (Phil. 3:1), that is, to believers, he warned them not to have confidence in the flesh. If anyone could have confidence in the flesh, it would be Paul… However, Paul counted all his human efforts, both for salvation and for sanctification, as loss, as rubbish, literally, as camel dung. Good for nothing. Human effort, apart from God’s power, is worthless for sanctification.

Knowing how not to live out our sanctification, Paul informs us how to grow in grace. What is powerful enough to produce the final product envisioned in progressive sanctification? “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection… becoming like him in his death” (Phil. 3:10). To grow in grace, to become conformed to Christ’s image, we need Christ’s resurrection power!

~ Robert W. Kellemen

some more practice!

flesh(-ish?) under the cut

im not all that good at drawing blood/flesh but i wanted to work on texture more. this took. way too long

Great, all I wanted was to be forgotten in a damp, dark place where I could finally die, away from human eyes.

Hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing, just feel.

Do you smell the earth?

does anyone ever get that feeling where they wanna peel off all their skin and see what’s underneath? it might just be the gender dysphoria :p

have a picture of my cat

Underbelly, Nicole Homer

Wouldbelove, do not think of me as a whetstone

until you hear the whole story:

In it, I’m not the hero, but I’m not the villain either so let’s say, in the story, I was human

and made of human-things: fear and hands, underbelly and blade. Let me

say it plain: I loved someone

and I failed at it. Let me say it another way: I like to call myself wound

but I will answer to knife. Sometimes I think we have the same name, Notquitelove. I want

to be soft, to say here is my underbelly and I want you to hold the knife, but I don’t know what I want you to do:

plunge or mercy. I deserve both. I want to hold and be held.  

Let me say it again, Possiblelove: I’m not sure you should. The truth is: If you don’t, I won’t

die of want or lonely, just time. And not now, not even soon. But that’s how every story ends eventually.

Here is how one might start: Before. The truth? I’m not a liar but I close my eyes a lot, Couldbelove.

Before, I let a blade slide itself sharp against me. Look at where I once bloomed red and pulsing. A keloid

history. I have not forgotten the knife or that I loved it or what it was like before: my unscarred body

visits me in dreams and photographs. Maybelove, I barely recognize it without the armor of its scars.

I am trying to tell the truth: the dreams are how I haunt myself. Maybe I’m not telling the whole story:

I loved someone and now I don’t. I can’t promise to leave you unscarred. The truth: I am a map

of every blade I ever held. This is not a dream. Look at us now: all grit and density. What, Wouldbelove

do you know of knives? Do you think you are a soft thing? I don’t. Maybe the truth is: Both. Blade and guard.

My truth is: blade. My hands

on the blade; my hands, the blade; my hands carving and re-carving every overzealous fibrous

memory. The truth is: I want to hold your hands because they are like mine. Holding a knife

by the blade and sharpening it. In your dreams, how much invitation to pierce are you? Perhapslove, the truth is: I am afraid

we are both knives, both stones, both scarred. Or we will be.

The truth is: I have made fire before: stone against stone. Mightbelove, I have sharpened

this knife before: blade against blade. I have hurt and hungered before: flesh

against flesh. I won’t make a dull promise.

wrote this at 1:49 am as i waited for the wet towel to hydrate my sunburnt back

Oh it fills you up like you wanted it, oh yes it does. You even ask for it nowadays, it’s so much better than the emptiness taking all the space in your guts. It has the shape of an old CRT, and the weight of all the books you need to read. The margins are getting thin though, you can’t even write anymore, stuck at home with a gnawed pen and your soaked college ruled, black lines and a blank stare. The double wide feels so cramped and humid, just like the tight wet sheets you just ripped yourself from, you wonder how dryness feels. Don’t you feel all your stuff brushing your skin each time you move ? Opal statue made in a lab, empty on the inside, surrounded by candy wraps, no man ought to lay a hand on you, no one is allowed to watch. You beg for the fill, and it is given to you, quick bursts of letters in an off white color, you watch the images, you read and learn, searing the faces in your mind, you’re not empty anymore, you’re filled with death, guilt and gore.