this is all bullshit!

(basic)
name: lot
age: 21
location: pōneke, aotearoa

i stole the name lot from lot, the biblical person, but really it's for his wife's namesake. if you're unfamiliar with the story, here's my brief and lucid explanation:

lot, his wife, and his two daughters live in sodom. sodom is a lawless and wicked city. god sends two angels to destroy sodom. the angels plan to spend the night outside, but lot invites them into his home. the men of sodom surround lot's home and demand that lot unlock his door so that they can rape the angels. lot offers his two daughters to the men in place of the angels, but the men refuse. the men threaten lot, so the angels blind the men. because of lot's hospitality, the next morning the angels lead lot and his family out of sodom. the angels tell lot's family to flee without looking back. while fleeing, lot's wife looks back on the destruction of sodom. for this she is turned into a pillar of salt.

the idea is that looking back is lot's wife's unconscious admission that she didn't want to leave the lawless and wicked city of sodom behind. i can relate to feeling gratuitous sentimentality. there's this prose poem by eliza victoria which i think is pretty pertinent. it goes like this:

they found a pillar of salt outside the city limits, the shape neatly
preserved. a woman caught in the gesture of longing. those who found
her at first wanted to sprinkle her on the burned earth, the trees charred
beyond naming. they then opted on practicality and rubbed her onto
the flesh of gutted fish, poured her into soup, placed her in crystal
decanters on the tables of kings.

all who tasted her wished to go back. back where? they asked, and home,
they whispered. no matter how dirty, no matter how black, no matter
the many times the question was asked: how can you live here?

but this is mine, they said. this foul place. this is mine. and they wept for
the streets that no longer existed, the salt trickling down their cheeks.

more than anything i think i just enjoy the image of someone being turned into a pillar of salt. lot's wife's name is not disclosed in the bible, so i went with lot on a whim and it stuck. i feel it's necessary to eludicate all this because lot (the biblical person) 1) offered his daughters up for rape to a crowd of men and 2) was lured by his daughters into getting drunk and sleeping with them. i relate to neither of these facts.

if you know me to any degree of intimacy past 'stranger on the internet', then you probably know lot isn't the only name i use. really, lot is sort of of just internet moniker. my name is wells. when i was 11 years old my primary school teacher's name was 'ms. wells', and even though i didn't like her at all i thought her last name sounded really nice. so basically i stole that name too. i've toyed around with other names: dove, chess, fen (which just means 'human' in my conlang), llewelyn... some which i will omit mentioning...

one problem with the name wells is that it's considerably difficult to write out in any cool way in japanese. the we part of it gets phoneticised as うぇ: a pairing of kana which correlates with the readings of exactly zero kanji. initially i removed the sutegana quality of the ぇ so that my name was read as うえるず (which sounds fairly convincing), and i wrote it as 雨江琉珠. 雨: rain; 江: inlet; 琉: lapis lazuli; 珠: pearl... but i didn't like that it sounded a little strange. then i realised that the depricated kana ゑ was originally read as うぇ (now it is almost always read as just え), and some guy on hellotalk suggested the character 鶴 for the ず in my name. so for a while i wrote it as ゑ流鶴. 流: flow; 鶴: crane... no one ever read this correctly though (えるづるさん？), and i even had some guy get mad at me because he thought my name was annoying. what! so now i usually just write it as ゑるず (which i think is kinda cute because ゑ and る resemble one another, and then ず also has a little circle in it), or うぇるず. never in katakana though... never...

my current opinion on being 21 is that it's sort of a nothing age. some of my friends are terrified of getting older, even though they're only 18, 19, 20. i don't feel very old. many people my age are already graduating university, advancing in their careers, having children. i feel i'm being left behind, but i don't care. i can't imagine being 22 will feel any different.

pōneke (also known as te whanganui-a-tara, or wellington) is the capital city of aotearoa (also known as new zealand). it's population usually hovers somewhere just above 200,000, and migratory students comprise a significant portion of that. it's 'my city' only in the sense that i live here. i don't feel at home in pōneke, but i've lived here for so long that i now feel even less at home up north where i grew up. it's terrible to feel uncomfortable no matter where you go. i think a lot of people feel jaded about where they live, and it's true that i'm not exactly enthusiastic about this place, but if you come to aotearoa i do think you should visit pōneke. we have a beautiful waterfront, and there are a handful of interesting spots to check out. (the mark of mediocrity: it still sounds incredibly boring even when i'm trying my best as a resident to sell it.)

('favorite')
color: green
terrestrial animal: monkey
aerial animal: dove
aquatic animal: seal
arthropod: ladybird
plant: clover
food: dumplings, sandwiches, hotpot
weather: rain
season: autumn

i want to preface this section and the next by admitting that i have a hard time deciding on a 'favorite' anything. these are simply things that i like. please don't read too much into any of it.

green is a color i like to see when i am out in the world. if i'm going for a walk of my own volition it's going to be somewhere i can see lots of green. strolling through the greys of a city is not something i enjoy. i often pass time by exploring street view on google maps, and i feel happy when i move forward and see the coverage switch to summertime. green is also the softest color to my mind.

monkeys...

seals (no seal emoji in this font *sniffle*) are super, hyper, ultra, ultimate, deluxe, perfect, amazing, strong, cute, beautiful, galaxy, baby, 無限, 無敵, and 無双.

if you look at this site's domain, it should come as no surprise that doves 🕊 have been brought up. i'm returning to the bible here with the story of noah's ark. here's another brief and lucid explanation:

god decides that the world has become corrupted. god chooses one good man, noah, and tells him to build an ark. noah builds an ark and has one male member and one female member of every species in the world enter it. noah and his family enter the ark as well. god sends rain for forty days and forty nights, killing everything that isn't within the ark. while the ark is afloat, noah sends a dove from it. the dove returns, meaning there is no land yet for it to live in. noah waits for seven days, and then sends the dove from the ark again. this time the dove returns with an olive leaf in its beak, meaning the waters are lowering. noah waits for seven more days, and then sends the dove from the ark again. this time the dove does not return, meaning it found land to live in.

i find this story really appealing. i'm sure you're aware that the image of a dove presenting an olive sprig has since become recognised as a symbol of peace. i like peace (lol). i also think doves are gentle-feeling birds, and that they're very pretty. knowing that they keep the same mate for life paints them in my mind as birds full of love. the idea behind the domain 'doves.rest' is that the place noah's dove landed when it finally found land is the 'dove's rest'. i hope perusing this website brings you some peace.



i really love pork and cabbage dumplings 🥟. i like to make my own submarine sandwiches 🥖 with greedy quantities of deli meat, thin slices of cheese and radish, lettuce, spinach, red onion, and hot sauce. there's a malatang hotpot 🥣 place in my city which i go to occasionally. you can buy crab there.

i have this this short poem i wrote ages and ages ago which is sort of shoddy but which i think of still:

it's funny how i needn't much
a roof to quell the marching rain
and a meal
but i'd also like someone nice
to light my smile

being inside when it's raining is the best thing ever... i love watching it fall beyond a window, hearing it beat down from above. getting caught outside in the rain is obviously not quite as nice (where i live this is a very real danger at any moment). but the times when it rains are very precious to me. there are few things that bring me more joy than drinking a warm drink and listening to the rain 🌧.

i said i liked the color green, so maybe it's surprising that i chose autumn 🍂 as my 'favorite' season. the truth is that i dislike summer and spring because sweating is one of my least favorite things to do. winter is also nice, but the colors of autumn are very beautiful, and its temperature is the most agreeable to me. as a child it was only a short walk from my house to my grandma's, and a portion of that was through a grove of all sorts of trees. now whenever i think of autumn i can only think of walking through that grove. the pedestrian image of autumn is that it's a fairly quiet season, but i think its perceived silence is deceptive. leaves make noise when they drop from their branches, when they land, when they're stepped on...

('favorite' part 2)
book: the picture of dorian gray, demian, the sailor who fell from grace with the sea
song: love zukkyun, the herald, dog pound
movie: all about lily chou-chou
poem: saint judas
videogame: the binding of isaac, the witness, oldschool runescape