Tonight the projector hums like a tired cicada, and on the wall – shadows twist themselves into The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The film is over a century old now, yet it feels more alive than most things that breathe. Angles warp, streets curl like paper, and faces flicker between terror and trance. Everything looks as if it’s been drawn by a feverish hand that didn’t want to sleep.

Caligari, the carnival hypnotist, is a figure stitched from nightmares and theater curtains. His somnambulist, Cesare, drifts through painted alleys with eyes that know too much. You can almost feel the dust of 1920 Germany clinging to the frame – fear, guilt, and the weight of dreams gone wrong. It’s a horror film made before the word “horror” knew what it was.

What I love most is how unreal everything is, and how that unreality tells the truth. The crooked sets, the shadows shaped like claws, the distorted perspective – all of it feels like a map of the inside of a frightened mind. You can trace the lines of postwar despair in every corner. The monsters here are not supernatural; they are people who sleepwalk through authority and obedience.

Watching it now, you realize how quiet it all is. No screaming, no chase music – just painted dread. Cesare’s slow walk through the night feels like watching your own heartbeat creep away from you. And that twist ending, still sharp after all these years, whispers that madness might just be the truest storyteller of all.

Afterward I turned off the light and the room seemed wrong, tilted somehow. The lamp’s shadow bent the wall like it wanted to crawl inside. Maybe that’s Caligari’s trick – once you’ve seen his world, you start noticing how crooked your own furniture looks.

A masterpiece of dreams gone sour, a fairy tale that forgot to wake up. If you listen closely, even now, you can hear Cesare breathing behind the curtain.

(★★★★★)

Day 8: #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 – Lightning Lad ⚡️

Ah, the scent of ozone and wild ambition in the air tonight. The lab hums and flickers, somewhere between genius and madness – right where the best ideas are born. Our electric friend, Lightning Lad (you might recognize him under another name involving a certain Frankenstein), sits tall in his crackling throne, catching every spark like it’s a kiss from the storm.

Dr. Bright-Ideas over there is holding up his glowing goblet of voltage, shouting something joyful and half-mad – and who could blame him? The moment between “it’s alive” and “what have I done?” is a sacred one, worthy of celebration. The kind of thunderclap that wakes the bats and tickles the moon.

Maybe we all need a little of that energy – the charge that jolts us from the gray fog and gets the heart sparking again. A reminder that sometimes you are the experiment and the electricity, both.

💡⚡️#Drawlloween #MabsDrawlloweenClub2025 #LightningLad #SpookySeason #ItLives #ElectricMood
#mdc25d8 #doodle
#digitalmarkers

Graveyard stroll tonight, just me and the local ghoul again – tall fella, bones like a xylophone, hair doing its own haunted thing. He’s out there under a blue moon, gnawing thoughtfully on what might be last week’s femur, looking more contemplative than terrifying. A philosopher of the crypts, maybe.

The pumpkins around him grin wide, their candlelight laughter flickering across crooked stones. Bats loop lazy arcs overhead like punctuation marks in a ghost story. The ghoul doesn’t mind the company; he hums a tune between bites, something you might hear drifting through an old radio at midnight.

It’s not all doom and gloom out here – there’s a kind of peace to the chill. The trees are bare but listening, and even the graves seem to sigh in rhythm. The ghoul’s content in his way: unbothered, unhurried, eternal.

Sometimes I think he’s just reminding us – life’s short, bones are temporary, but a good night walk among friends (living or otherwise) lasts forever in memory.

#AutumnNights #GraveyardShift #GhoulFriend #MabsDrawlloweenClub
#digitalmarkers #roanokeva #mdcd7

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025

Day 6 of #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025, theme: Werewolf.

Tonight’s drawing glows in the colors of a dream – deep blue woods, bright moon, and a lone shape caught mid-step between beast and person. The werewolf stands under that big swirl of light like it’s both a curse and a calling.

Old stories say the change came with the moon’s pull, silver light tugging at whatever part of a person was wild enough to answer. Some say it was punishment for betrayal, others a gift for those who lived too close to the edge of the woods for too long. In some villages, the werewolf wasn’t feared at all – just pitied, watched carefully until dawn.

I like to imagine this one not hunting, but wandering. Maybe remembering what it was like to be human, maybe not wanting to remember at all. The forest looks still enough to keep its secrets, the kind of quiet where you can almost hear the heartbeat of the earth underfoot.

#mabsdrawlloweenclub #werewolf #roanokeva #backyardzoo
#doodle #digitalmarkers #mdc25d6

Last night I filled out my absentee ballot, the pen moving deliberately over the paper, choices made with care. This morning I went to the Salem post office and handed it directly to a postal worker, as I have done a few times before. There is a quiet ritual in it, a small act repeated, a trace of human connection in a world that often feels increasingly abstract.

I wish I could trust the processes more. The last decade has worn away my confidence in a competent paper trail, let alone one that is purely digital. The paper feels solid, tangible, but the machinery around it – sorting, counting, tracking – remains a shadow, and shadows shift with the light.

Outside, the sun lay soft across the streets, and a crow called from a nearby tree, its black silhouette stark against the sky. I went home with a gentle, uneasy satisfaction, aware that this small act is both mine and part of something larger, a signal cast into a system I hope, at least, will hold.

#roanokeva
#vote #votebabyvote #journal #absenteevoting

Day 5 – the forest sprite

There’s been a rustling in the leaves these last few nights – not the usual scurry of chipmunks or whisper of wind through the birch. Something else. A shape that doesn’t quite belong, but also doesn’t seem out of place in the way a dream isn’t out of place while you’re dreaming it.
Last night, under the round glow of a patient moon, I saw it: the forest sprite. All shag and shadow, glowing eyes like twin candle-flames tucked in a haystack. Standing among the trees as if it had been there longer than the forest itself, waiting for someone to notice. The kind of thing you glimpse just once before you start to question if you truly did.

It didn’t move toward me, didn’t need to. The air between us was enough – that hum of old stories and mossy secrets that live in the blue hours. A few leaves swirled at its feet, reds and golds catching moonlight like tiny lanterns, and then the woods settled again. Quiet. Watching.

If you ever find yourself walking alone beneath tall trunks and moonlight, and you hear a sound that feels more like a memory than a noise – pause. The forest sprite might be near, minding the forest, or maybe just curious about who still looks up to see.

(Autumn tip: bring an apple to leave by a stump. Old spirits appreciate the gesture.)

#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 #doodle #digitalmarkers #mdc25d5 #MabsDrawlloweenClub #forestsprite

Edit – weird animated versions sent to me from Tyler

The child’s room holds the hush of night like a jar cupping fireflies. Curtains drawn, clock tick steady, the small figure beneath quilts drifts toward sleep. Yet, each night lately, the air glows just so. Not a streetlamp’s trespass, not a passing car, but a presence – pale and luminous, shaping itself in the quiet. A figure, delicate as candle smoke, standing near the foot of the bed.

The child whispers to it sometimes, half-dreaming, half-brave. The voice trembles, but the figure only shimmers in reply, as if its language is light and hush. No rattle of chains, no cold grasp, just the calm insistence of being seen. Like a nightlight that chose to walk out of the wall.

Parents hear nothing, see nothing, only the child’s insistence of company. Yet the house feels different lately. As though the walls lean in a little closer, the floors sigh more often.

Is it memory shaped into glow? A loved one from the other side who comes to soothe? Or something stranger, visiting the thin place between dream and dawn?

The child sleeps again, haunted, but comforted. The luminous guest lingers, fading with the first gray of morning.

#doodle #digitalmarkers
#mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 #haunting
#mdwc25d4
#mabsdrawlloweenclub

Day 3 of #MabsDrawlloweenClub, the word is Witch.

Lore remembers witches as bridges – one foot steady on the earth, the other stepping into the unseen. They brewed teas for the feverish, knotted threads to guard travelers, whispered to seeds so crops would grow strong. Their owls weren’t just companions but guides, watching through shadow and veil while the witch read what their keen eyes revealed. Together, they walked paths most of us only glimpse in dreams.

The broom swept more than dust – it cleared thresholds, brushing out old fears so luck had a place to enter. The tall pointed hat gathered ideas like rain, marking the wearer as someone willing to look up and beyond. And those cloaks, stitched from midnight – reminders that mystery can be worn as easily as comfort, not something to dread.

I like the lore that softens the edges – witches not villains, but clever neighbors. Keepers of remedies and riddles, the sort who carry wisdom in their pockets and smile knowingly when the world tries to fit them into smaller stories.

Tonight it feels especially close – the window cracked, cool October air drifting in. A half-finished cup of tea on the desk. Owls are calling from the treeline, their back-and-forth sounding like an old conversation I’ve just stepped into. Easy to imagine a witch passing overhead, owl at her wing, making her night rounds. The sketch catches that moment like a quick Polaroid, a hint of what’s already out there if you look at the right time.

#MabsDrawlloweenClub #witch
drawlloween #mabsdrawlloweenclub #witch #owl #roanokeva

#drawlloween2025 #mdc25d3 #doodle #digitalmarkers

Today’s topic is my little striped familiar, padding the halls like a detective on assignment. Nose to the floor, tail aloft like a flag, she inspects each corner and doorway as though the secrets of the universe might be tucked behind the shoes or under the sofa. Chirps, mews, and soft trills punctuate her patrol – commentary offered as if I were her assistant rather than her audience. She has opinions about dust bunnies, it seems, and about the birds outside that dare to sing louder than she does.

Later, the tireless inspector curled herself into a puddle of fur on her back, belly to the ceiling, paws slack and whiskers twitching in dream-work. A low, steady purr rolled out of her like distant thunder. Every so often, she’d give a sigh that sounded like a page turning, completely surrendered to her nap. A creature of extremes: the restless explorer and the blissful sleeper, living both roles fully, without hesitation.

The house feels more alive with her in it – every echo chased, every corner warmed by fur and sound. She’s a reminder to be curious when awake, and utterly comfortable when it’s time to rest. #catlife #familiar #purringmagic 🐾Today’s topic is my little striped familiar, padding the halls like a detective on assignment. Nose to the floor, tail aloft like a flag, she inspects each corner and doorway as though the secrets of the universe might be tucked behind the shoes or under the sofa. Chirps, mews, and soft trills punctuate her patrol – commentary offered as if I were her assistant rather than her audience. She has opinions about dust bunnies, it seems, and about the birds outside that dare to sing louder than she does.

Later, the tireless inspector curled herself into a puddle of fur on her back, belly to the ceiling, paws slack and whiskers twitching in dream-work. A low, steady purr rolled out of her like distant thunder. Every so often, she’d give a sigh that sounded like a page turning, completely surrendered to her nap. A creature of extremes: the restless explorer and the blissful sleeper, living both roles fully, without hesitation.

The house feels more alive with her in it – every echo chased, every corner warmed by fur and sound. She’s a reminder to be curious when awake, and utterly comfortable when it’s time to rest. #doodle #digitalmarkers  #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 #familiar #purringmagic 🐾 #mdwc25d2 #mabsdrawlloweenclub

🍂✨ First of October arrives quietly in the mountains, carrying that delicate shift in the air that makes you pause at the door and just breathe. The edges of the  Blue Ridge catch the morning sun like a slow flame, tinged with gold and faint rust, while the fog lingers low in the valleys, stretching and yawning like it just woke up.

Crows gather in the oaks, chattering over squirrels that fuss at them from fenceposts. Woodsmoke drifts from chimneys, curling into the scent of damp leaves underfoot. At the market, baskets are heavy with apples and pumpkins, and every corner seems dusted with cinnamon and laughter. The sidewalks feel slower somehow, as if October whispered, “Take your time. Notice everything.”

By evening, the mountains pull a quilt of shadow over themselves. The air sharpens, crickets hum a slowing chorus, and stars spill across the sky like salt across a black table. A deer rustles just beyond the treeline, an owl calls from somewhere farther, and the night smells of smoke and damp earth. Inside, blankets wait, mugs steam, and the last light of sunset turns the ridges red and gold, like the mountains are holding onto summer a little longer before winter comes.

October in the Blue Ridge is both mystery and embrace – inviting you to wander in its colors and quiet, then gently nudging you back toward the warmth of home. 🍁

#BlueRidge #OctoberWhispers #AutumnMagic #october1 #mabsdrawlloweenclub #spookyintro #mabsdrawlloweenclub2025 #doodle #roanokeva #mdwc25d1

Skunky bonanza!

Last night turned into quite the skunk gathering. Four adults came through, each distinct, each with their own way about them. King was there – unmistakable, with that white crown on his head set against a mostly black coat. He always carries himself like he knows he’s the monarch of the yard.

Two of the others looked to be rowdy brothers, full of energy and not much patience for quiet. They chased one another across the grass in little bursts, zig-zagging and stomping, like a midnight game of tag. Not mean-spirited, just that kind of rough-and-tumble play that makes the night feel alive. The last one brought up the rear, calm and measured, more interested in sniffing at the leaves than joining the chase.

They didn’t all arrive in one group, more like a shifting parade – one appears, another follows, then the sounds of rustle and shuffle move off into the dark. By the end, it felt like the yard had played host to a skunk council, King watching over his rowdy brothers and the quiet one who lingered.

#skunks #backyardvisitors #rowdybrothers #nightwatch #kingwithacrown #roanokeva #backyardzoo

Rain is easing into mist this afternoon. Another envelope from Lowe’s, their “exclusive credit offer,” all bold letters and promises of savings. They want you to think it’s a golden ticket, but the shine wears off quickly. The fine print is the trick—high interest, too many strings, and not much protection for the folks who take the bait.

The in-laws learned the hard way. Their wallet was stolen, and before they knew it, about two thousand dollars in charges were racked up on that card. Reported it immediately, but Lowe’s credit has no purchase protection to stand behind them. No help, no shield, just the bill to pay. Feels less like a helping hand and more like a trapdoor.

So the flyer goes in the recycling, not in my wallet. A reminder that not every offer is meant for us. Sometimes the safest bargain is to walk away.

#lowes #credittrap

Back yard visitors tonight: two stripe-tailed acrobats bouncing under the stars. They circled, darted, and spun, like they were practicing for a midnight parade. A tumble here, a playful shove there, tails puffed out like feather boas.
I couldn’t help but laugh quietly from the porch.

Who knew skunks could look so delighted just being skunks? The little duet made the yard feel like a stage, and I was the lucky audience.

#backyardzoo #skunks #roanokeva #nightlife

https://lmstudio.ai/