Floer homology, psychic violence, and Appalachian time loops
esoteric / historical / mathematical / autobio MEGATHREAD on how I discovered that high-energy human sacrifices distort spacetime and create time loops, trapping peoples and cultures in repeating cycles
I started thinking about this 5 years ago when I moved back to Appalachia, where my ancestors had lived since the 1780s. Driving the moving van home with my dad, we repeated the journey he had made in the 1970s, but he was uneasy, agitated, & afraid, blaming it on my driving.
I won’t get into the details of unloading, unpacking, etc, but the next day we were looking at some brush by the woodline at the edge of my yard. We saw this, pokeweed:
It’s a somewhat pretty weed, but toxic. My dad spontaneously launches into a memory from his childhood in the 1950s—my grandfather, an abusive alcoholic, was in AA, but would frequently relapse & go on benders. My dad recounted a vivid memory of being left in his father’s truck
behind a VFW in an alley while his dad drank—there was pokeweed growing all through the alley and its smell made him nauseous and sick.