Author | Lightnews

Noah Grey

@thatnoahgrey.bsky.social

1K followers 13 following 310 posts

A survivor who's done & been a lot of things. Quick intro pinned below; more @ https://manmadeghost.com/about/ on my dormant site. All photos & art I post are by me. He/they. Financially desperate. Donations @ https://paypal.me/manmadeghost very welcome.

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Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · Nov 24

My #intro: Artist, author, autodidact, bibliophile, coder, consultant, gay asexual, geek, humanist, musician, photographer. Helped invent social media a bit. Living with autism, grief, PTSD, disability, mental disorders & isolation. Always curious & always a survivor. Thanks for being here. 🙏

"A Handful of Rain" photograph/digital art by Noah Grey

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Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 7h

Patience
#poetry #blueskypoets #writing #bible #bookofjob #grief

"Patience" by Noah Grey: A poem meditating on the Book of Job, particularly the loss of his children. The poem is in free verse with frequent rhetorical repetition, and draws heavily from phrases and imagery in Job itself. (My deepest apologies, but this is a long poem and the Bluesky alt-text character limit is too short to allow me to post the text here.)

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 1d

Grey sweatpants are all I've liked to wear for most of my adult life. Jeans only when necessary outdoors, anything dressier only for funerals at this point. ;) But I'm an old *and* autistic, so...

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 1d

www.youtube.com/watch?v=wupT... 💙

Carl Sagan - Pale Blue Dot

YouTube video by carlsagandotcom

www.youtube.com

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 1d

Sonder / Scene From An Unfinished Film
#photography #photosky #cinematography #dublin #ireland #nightphotography #streetphotography #blueskyart #oc

"Sonder" aka "Scene From An Unfinished Film" by Noah Grey. A night crossing at a busy intersection in Dublin, Ireland, bathed in the glow of streetlights and neon, predominately blue with splashes of red.

To quote the definition of "sonder", from The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows, which coined it:

"You are the main character. The protagonist. The star at the center of your own unfolding story. You're surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit. Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years.

"But there in the background, faint and out of focus, are the extras. The random passersby. Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own. They carry on invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs, and inherited craziness.

"When your life moves on to the next scene, theirs flickers in place, wrapped in a cloud of backstory and inside jokes and characters strung together with countless other stories you'll never be able to see. That you'll never know exist. In which you might appear only once. As an extra sipping coffee in the background. As a blur of traffic passing on the highway. As a lighted window at dusk."

via https://www.thedictionaryofobscuresorrows.com/concept/sonder

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 1d

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made." — The Great Gatsby

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 2d

I let a few friends hear me play piano for the first time in many, many years. It's almost ridiculous how happy it made me that they liked what they heard.

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Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 2d

When Shall We Three Meet Again
#art #painting #selfportrait #mortality #grief
#impressionism #digitalart #artsky #blueskyart #oc

"When Shall We Three Meet Again" by Noah Grey. An impressionist digital art painting in blue-grey tones of three male figures seen in silhouette: at left, a boy; at right; an adult man; in the middle, an older man in a wheelchair — all three moving away together through an atmosphere resembling heavy rain and thick fog portrayed through densely layered textures, blurring their outlines into ghosts. (No meaning will be spelled out for this one.)

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 3d

I wonder how many flakes of that marble my lost SNAP benefits and impending loss of Medicaid paid for.

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 3d

As the end of the article indicates, it's most telling that they completely ignore the "Scouring of the Shire" chapter, which Tolkien himself made a special point of saying he considered an essential part of the plot. I'm one who considers it a failure of the movies to (more or less) leave it out.

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 3d

The Sanven Angel, Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis
#photography #photosky #indianapolis #indiana #b&w
#statuary #crownhill #cemetery #grave #halloween #oc

"The Sanven Angel, Crown Hill Cemetery, Indianapolis" by Noah Grey. A high-contrast B&W photograph of a weathered angel statue at the titular location. The stone figure bows its head in an ambiguity suggestive of deep feeling suspended in time, wings arched behind it like great, ageworn feathers frozen mid-fold. The angel's face is soft yet eroded, its downcast gaze heavy with grief and grace. Deep shadows cling to the folds of its robe and the curves of its wings, emphasizing the wear of the rain and the years. The intended mood is a play of light and texture to make the marble seem alive with memory — an emblem of mourning and endurance, both haunting and tender, standing sentinel over the silence of the graves. (And no, the statue isn't actually called The Sanven Angel — but *I* call it that partly for the sake of the song "Sanvean (I Am Your Shadow)" by Dead Can Dance, but mostly for the sake of my oldest friend @sanven.com, who first took it to heart, took me to it, and has been an angel in my life for over half of it and counting.)

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Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 4d

Asking people what *their* best ideas are to harvest them for my own kindheartedly insatiable curiosity.

...oh, wait, is that one taken? ;)

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Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 4d

I'm up to 5'10", but I'm gigantic if you count the bear on my head.

A careworn brown teddy bear wearing a red bow tie. Unfortunately, most of his tie is blocked by whatever he's sitting on.

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Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 4d

I never understood why people think it's so awful to "vote for the lesser evil". Uh... because you get *less evil*? And in the present case, a *metric fuckton* less evil?

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 4d

Christ Church Crypt, Dublin, Ireland.
#photography #photosky #statuary #christchurch
#dublin #ireland #crypt #grave #halloween #b&w #oc

"Christ Church Crypt, Dublin, Ireland" by Noah Grey. A montage of four high-contrast B&W photographs depicting marble effigies from the crypt beneath the titular cathedral. Each frame captures a different expression of grief or repose carved in stone. In the upper left, a veiled figure presses a hand to its face, frozen in eternal weeping. The upper right shows the muscular torso of a reclining body, the marble smooth and cold, draped with folds of fabric that resemble heavy mourning cloth; the bottom left is the head of that same figure, laying with head bowed in something like rest or surrender. The final image, at bottom right, portrays a serene face turned upward, eyes closed beneath a carved veil, caught between anguish and transcendence. The lighting is a ghostly chiaroscuro, the intended mood being one of suspension between light and shadow, life and stillness, yearning and sorrow. (For fellow James Joyce lovers, once again, Christ Church gets a shoutout in Finnegans Wake. Read https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/christ-church-cathedral-dublin for more about that and other curiosities of the crypt for this Halloween eve.)

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 5d

Bleeding heart and proud of it. 👋

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 5d

I've been planning & poking at a memoir of the early days of being online (I started in 1985, before the web was even invented, and blogged since '94). Don't know if I'll ever have the strength to finish it, but this is a great snapshot of what the gold rush days were like.

Phil Gyford @phil.gyford.com · 19d

I wrote about what it was like to go online for the first time 30 years ago. How hard and complicated it seemed, and then how amazing this entirely new world was. Including some extracts from my 1995 diary.
www.gyford.com/phil/writing...

My first months in cyberspace

Recalling the difficulties and wonder of getting online for the first time in 1995, including diary extracts from the time.

www.gyford.com

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Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 5d

Thanks for the mention.

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 5d

That's wonderful to hear, thank you so much 🙏

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 6d

It's also a way of affirming that you're inherently worthy of *being* helped, acknowledged, cared for. Which is what makes it so damned hard for me to do, but <fillintheblank> help me, I'm trying.

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 6d

My sister/caretaker just got back from our local food bank. Thank you *so* much to everyone who's been volunteering and donating food to help all of us caught in this cruel insanity. Your spirits helped heal ours today. 🙏

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 13d

I rely on SNAP. My state has announced it's halting SNAP if the shutdown continues past Oct 27. We're *already* living on the bare minimum of food and having to pick-&-choose necessities, and I have a ton of meds I need to take with food daily. I thought I couldn't get any more afraid, but I am now.

jenn m. jackson @jennmjacksonphd.bsky.social · 13d

I want more people to care that SNAP benefits are being cut off on November 1. 40% of SNAP beneficiaries are children. This is callous and vile.

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Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 6d

🫂 My sister's waiting in line at a food bank as I type this.

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 7d

Look around and around and see angels in the architecture. 🫂

Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 7d

The very fact that it's a benefit to our neighbors/society is *the very reason* they hate it. They're terrified that someone is winning who's reclaiming socialism from being a dirty word, and is showing that the capitalist nightmare they've constructed doesn't *have* to be the only way we can live.

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Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 8d

I want a shot at redemption. Don't wanna end up a cartoon in a cartoon graveyard.

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Noah Grey @thatnoahgrey.bsky.social · 8d

They're taking away our SNAP benefits in November because of the shutdown, & we've been struggling to survive enough as it is. For now I've resorted to adding a paypal tip jar link to my profile.

Hope you'll be okay. 🫂 This is not shameful for either of *us*. We know who the real shame belongs to.