What is a Dioptrical Beehive?
“And, secondly, that had the said glass been there set up, nothing more would have been wanting, in order to have taken a man’s character, but to have taken a chair and gone softly, as you would to a dioptrical bee-hive, and look’d in,—view’d the soul stark naked;—observed all her motions,—her machinations;—traced all her maggots from their first engendering to their crawling forth;—watched her loose in her frisks, her gambols, her capricios; and after some notice of her more solemn deportment, consequent upon such frisks, &c.——then taken your pen and ink and set down nothing but what you had seen, and could have sworn to:—”
Lawrence Sterne’s Tristram Shandy
What’s this and why should I subscribe?
Here you’ll find various articles mostly about books & movies; we’ll see what else. I write to turn my deliquescent, variegated thoughts into something concrete that stretches my writing muscles and captures what’s been ringing the bell of my brain, and hopefully to strike up a conversation with others. Or, we can say, I pick from the insects buzzing around in my brain as if out of the air, push a pushpin into its hyaline wings and study it, sketching its contours and jotting down my observations, maybe even refer to my library for similar portraits. Then, when my dissection is done, I press the beastie in my notebook and invite guests to come and see the marks it’s left.
If you’re looking for recommendations, reviews, and fun rants about media in a tone that’s simultaneously academic-twinged and internet-brained, you’ve come to the right place. I might even talk about my own fiction someday…
You should subscribe so every so often you can open your mailbox and be jumpscared by a missive from me. Rather than the chaff and flotsam, I seek to add to the beauty, the treasure freed from shipwrecks on this internet ocean, so if I’m sending something out I’m fully behind it and think it’s worth publishing.
If anything I’ve written piques you, I’d love to read and reply to whatever comment you might send.
Who are you?
So, about me (my officielle writer’s bio):
Oluwatoyin T. Okele is a writer and artist from Rhode Island. She has an MFA in Fiction from UMass Amherst. She writes stories and interactive fiction about the ocean, insects, space, melancholy young women of color searching for a place in the world, and whatever else is tickling her fancies at the time.
When not writing, she likes to read graphic novels, yell at the TV when game shows are on, listen to vaporwave, and collect colorful gel pens.
