#a colonised culture i would still be just as angry that i had to be displaced and put into unfamiliar land and also suffer religious trauma

[ashtrayfloors]

Confessions: My Father, Hummingbirds, and Frantz Fanon

Every effort is made to bring the colonised person to admit the inferiority of his culture... —Frantz Fanon

And there are days when storms hover Over my house, their brooding just this side of rage, An open hand about to slap a face. You won't believe me

When I tell you it is not personal. It isn't. It only feels That way because the face is yours. So what if it is the only Face you've got? Listen, a storm will grab the first thing In its path, a Persian cat, a sixth grade boy on his way home From school, an old woman watering her roses, a black Man running down a street (late to a dinner with his wife), A white guy buying cigarettes at the corner store. A storm Will grab a young woman trying to escape her boyfriend, A garbage can, a Mexican busboy with no papers, you. We are all collateral damage for someone's beautiful Ideology, all of us inanimate in the face of the onslaught. My father had the biggest hands I've ever seen. He never Wore a wedding ring. Somehow, it would have looked lost, Misplaced on his thick worker's hands that were, to me, As large as Africa. There have been a good many storms In Africa over the centuries. One was called colonialism (Though I confess to loving Tarzan as a boy).

In my thirties, I read a book by Frantz Fanon. I fell in love With the storms in his book even though they broke My heart and made me want to scream. What good Is screaming? Even a bad actress in a horror flick Can do that. In my twenties, I had fallen in love With the storms in the essays of James Baldwin. They were like perfect poems. His friends called Him Jimmy. People didn't think he was beautiful. Oh God, but he was. He could make a hand that was Slapping you into something that was loving, loving you. He could make rage sound elegant. Have you ever Read "Stranger in the Village?" How would you like To feel like a fucking storm every time someone looked At you?

One time I was At a party. Some guy asked me: What are you, anyway? I downed my beer. Mexican I said. Really he said, Do You play soccer? No I said but I drink Tequila. He smiled At me, That's cool. I smiled back So what are you? What do you think I am he said. An asshole I said. People Hate you when you're right. Especially if you're Mexican. And every time I leave town, I pray that people will stop Repeating You're from El Paso with that same tone Of voice they use when they see a rat running across Their living rooms, interrupting their second glass Of scotch. My father's dead (Though sometimes I wake And swear he has never been more alive—especially when I see him staring back at me as I shave in the morning). Even though I understand something about hating a man I have never really understood the logic of slavery. What do I know? I don't particularly like the idea of cheap Labor. I don't like guns. And I don't even believe White men are superior. Do you? I wanted to be St. Francis. I took this ambition very seriously. Instead I wound up becoming a middle-aged man who dreams Storms where all the animals wind up dead. It scares Me to think I have this dream inside me. Still, I love dogs—even mean ones. I could forgive A dog that bit me. But if a man bit me, that would be Another story. I have made my peace with cats. I am especially in love with hummingbirds (though They're as mean as roosters in a cock fight). Have You ever seen the storms in the eyes of men who Were betting on a cock fight?

Last night, there was hail, thunder, A tornado touching down in the desert—though I was Away and was not a first hand witness. I was in another Place, listening to the waves of the ocean crash against The shore. Sometimes I think the sea is angry. Who Can blame it? There are a million things to be angry About. Have you noticed that some people don't give A damn and just keep on shopping? Doesn't that make you Angry? A storm is like God. You don't have to see it To believe—sometimes you just have to place Your faith in it. When my father walked into a room It felt like that. Like the crashing waves. You know, Like a storm. This is the truth of the matter: I am The son of a storm. Look, every one has to be the son Of something. The thing to do when you are caught In the middle of a storm is to abandon your car, Keep quiet. Pray. Wait. Tell that to the men Who were sleeping on the Arizona when The Japanese dropped their bombs. War is the worst Kind of storm. The truth is I have never met a breathing Human being who did not have at least one scar On his body. Bombs and bullets do more than leave A permanent mark on the skin. I have never liked The expression they were out for blood.

There are days When there are so many storms hovering around My house that I cannot even see the blue in the sky. My father loved the sky. He was trying to memorize The clouds before he died. I confess to being Jealous of the sky.

On Sunday Mornings I picture Frantz Fanon as an old man. He is looking up At the pure African sky. He is trying to imagine how it appeared Before the white men came. I don't want to dream all the dead Animals we have made extinct. I want to dream a sky Full of hummingbirds. I would like to die in such a storm.

—Benjamin Alire Sáenz (x)

#poetry #benjamin alire sáenz #recently read #family #lineage #beauty #this fucking poem

[chaoticspacefam]

wonder if part of why the swtor jedi-sith conflict plays the way it does with “sith stans” and etc because the sith empire are functionally saturday morning cartoon villains - “murder and mayhem await!” compared to the more, i guess, believable evil of the republic/jedi following good ideals to bad conclusions and justifying war crimes

I'd certainly say it doesn't help things, you're right! I have...a lot of issues with the Jedi and their portrayal (especially in the Legends/SWTOR era), but I also recognise that a lot of that is very personal to me and that another fan might feel differently. Long, ranty post ahead so if that's not your deal, skip this one.

TL;DR: thinking critically about the behaviour of the Good Guys bad, I guess, since they're the good guys and you're obviously not allowed to use your own agency to decide something they do makes you deeply, viscerally uncomfortable.  And God help you if you disagree with anything they do and cite personal experience behind your (very justified) avoidance of that rhetoric/teaching, because Bad Things Justified If Good People Do Them and how dare you have different personal experiences and responses. If that's what you do, you're doing fandom wrong /s Also, bad writing choices of the writers themselves that perpetuate toxic, harmful viewpoints and/or stereotypes don't mean anything when said viewpoints/stereotypes are the Bad Guys because...Bad Guys Aren’t Supposed To Be People With Rights, Thoughts and Feelings Too, They’re Just Evil, (cringe)

Disagreeing with someone’s opinions is fine, but if you’re going to deliberately expose yourself to content you don’t like and then attack the person that is making the content because they made it and it upset you when you went looking for it....you are, in fact, the one at fault babes. No one is holding you hostage, you can block tags or unfollow a person (especially me. I really don’t care honest to god, if my posts are not your jam just leave. please.) if you hate what they post so much and are unable to just scroll past things you don’t like to stay for things you do. I’ve done it and will continue to do so, and my fandom experience is happier for it. Also, people are human and sometimes we’re tired and we make mistakes like we miss a trigger tag, and you are within your right to come to the person and point that out, but you are not within your right to threaten them because they made a mistake. Then you’re just a dick.

But I still wouldn't be the one going around (passive) aggressively attacking other fans for disagreeing with my opinions and again, this is based on personal experience, but I've seen a lot more of that stuff from "pro-Jedi" people who seem to be conveniently okay with shit like mass-genocide and cultural erasure because "the Jedi are the good guys and the (OT) Sith are fascists!"

I don't interact with the subsect of fans that do think "the (OT) Empire did nothing wrong hurr durr" unironically (and for good reason, I don't agree with that viewpoint either and the fact that half the time the "defence" of these other fans is "well you're pro-fascist then!!" lmao) but there's a very big gap between the OT Empire which is rightfully a mirror of fascism and dictatorial governments and I do, in fact, raise my eyebrows in heavy criticism and disdain at the writers of the TOR-era deliberately choosing to "justify" the ultimate end being said fascist Empire by making the Sith species (and as always I preface this by saying I am in fact white & therefore know I have priveledge and can only "relate" on a much shallower level as POC fans, but there are places where I do find them more relatable than the TOR-era Jedi which reek of conservative, pearl-clutching Christianity (which I spent way too much of my life having forced upon me by the bible-bashing Evangelists(tm) in my family) to me and I just don't have the fucks to give to spend time fixing something that's honestly traumatising for me to be reminded of):

-heavily Indigenous/POC-coded

-"tribal" and not in a properly-researched and respectfully portrayed sense but in a very deliberate "these people are savage and need to be colonised and "sophisticated" by the More Acceptible (Human) Dark Jedi" even though they had their own society, belief systems, and even had technology - just not in the "socially acceptible, conventional sense" I guess

-perpetuating this by adding slavery and all of that can of worms into the mix too, just to drive home the "evil and bad" prototype ig. I'm not even gonna speak more on this part because it just makes me angry.

-Deliberately giving them more "alien" or inhuman characteristics, which while by itself is not necessarily a bad thing, put it together with all the other things?? Big. Fucking. Oof.

-Were literally exterminated and the survivors selectively bred for ONLY the "bad and evil" traits for not agreeing with the Jedi's beliefs. Their own practises and beliefs were automatically "evil" and "wrong" just because they didn't want to "convert" (sniff sniff, Christianity, is that you?)

A direct quote for those who can't be bothered to click and read the link:

For nearly two thousand years, superstition, loyalty and sympathy were bred out as the two groups interbred, and qualities such as cunning, ambition and affinity to the Force were favored, which shaped Sith society over the centuries.[3][21][22] In the Sith Empire, as time progressed pure-blooded Sith were steadily bred out,[6] resulting in only a few pure-blooded Sith left in the Sith Empire by the time of the Great Hyperspace War.[13] Long after, the true species in the Empire were believed to have gone extinct due to the interbreeding process.

And conversely the Jedi:

-Deny young children contact with their parents, siblings and families from the moment their Force sensitivity shows (hmmmm. )

-Continually and actively support the condemnation and Exile of "imperfect" Jedi, hell, it's even pointed out on Wookieepedia, that any Force sensitive, even those who are not aligned to either faction, but that train with or follow teachings that are not Jedi Approved (tm) is labelled as a "Dark Jedi" by the Jedi Order

Although "Dark Jedi" originally referred to a Jedi who had fallen to the dark side, it could also refer to uninitiated Force-sensitives who received no Jedi training but began their careers under another Dark Jedi. Others were simply dark-side users who did not follow the teachings of the Sith or other dark side organizations.

because "oh noooo you do not follow the way of the Truth and the Light you horrible person how dare you defy The One True Correct Teaching, that makes you the Devil Incarnate no matter what" UGH.

-Continuously push the idea (very heavily) that Emotions Are Bad, which just creates a bunch of emotionally-stunted powderkegs unable to recognise, confront and deal with said emotions (and as I've said, I would know, I was one and maybe still am in some ways lmao) , then blames said powderkeg for exploding because they were never taught how to handle the emotions in the first place.

(Fuck "there is no emotion, there is peace", that's not how people work and never will be lmao)

I don't really know what else to say about this to be honest, because even though I've only been on tumblr about a year now, I'm already tired of this constant "I'm right, you're wrong" finger-pointing between those people in the fandom.

Cause to some of these "pro-Jedi" people it's an unthinkable crime to dare to have a different opinion to them and just want to be left alone, I guess. I've literally been attacked for saying "I don't like the Jedi and find dealing with their dogma too traumatising based on personal experience and trauma from my childhood so I'm going to avoid it but you do you"

I've had American Christians (tm) clap back to that with the ever-wonderful "LMAO bitch you don't have religious trauma, you didn't grow up in the bible-belt, stop trying to be edgy, shut up and go to therapy"

(all of this is sarcasm, for those who need me to spell it out for you. I'm still traumatised by the shit I went through and have to constantly check myself and my own feelings because of the toxic "habits" those teachings tried to push onto me as a child and I have zero tolerance and patience for your (not you, ssalmon, but the royal "you" as it were) victim-blaming abuse apologism "gotchas")

because 1) clearly American Christianity and the bible-belt are the only insidious and harmful subsect of Christianity and it's not like the concept of Evangelism as a whole is inherently toxic, harmful, and traumatising to those subjected to it right 2) Obviously there's a Stated Right Way To Be Traumatised and anyone who falls outside of that (Non-Existent) handbook is "faking it for attention" 3) bold of them to assume that curating my own fandom (and life) experience, and refusing to engage with things that trigger me, isn't something that I literally fucking learned in therapy lmao

Also, I find it funny how these are the people going around attacking people like me, who are literally minding our own motherfucking business, but then claim to preach “love and tolerism” and all this other bullshit. Karen, sweetie, only one of us is going around telling people they deserve to be murdered/stabbed for disagreeing with thier opinion about a videogame and pointing out that “hey, that’s...very yikes maybe don’t do that, step back and calm down” and it ain’t me (true story, this happened a couple of months ago and I don’t wanna dredge the post up because it’s very upsetting to think about) People are allowed to have opinions, and they don’t have to agree with your opinion just because that’s what you think, and the second that you sink to sending people death threats because they don’t share your opinion, you are, in fact, the asshole in that conversation.

It was even funnier because the person in question followed me first, I initially thought they were pretty cool so I followed back, then they threw a massive temper-tantrum and threw a bunch of very upsetting and triggering shit at me without my consent because I didn’t agree with them (I’d even put my opinions in tags on MY blog in an attempt to be courteous and not hijack their post with negativity, in hindsight perhaps I should have made my own post in the first place and I do acknowledge that BUT if that’s all they’d said I would have apologised and moved on, quite gladly, there was no need for them to explode the way they did at me for...making a mistake because I’m a stranger on the internet who didn’t know them & wasn’t a mind-reader and I happened to miss a trigger tag that I didn’t think of at the time lmao)

This post is getting awful long and rambly so I'm going to shut up now, but that's my take on it I guess, I hope that's what you were getting at and if it's not I apologise, I've been taking a huge step back and actively just avoiding any and all major posts related to this discourse as of a few months ago because it just infuriates and upsets me too much, it’s not worth the detriment to my mental health, I’m just here to make friends who are also hyperfixated on SWTOR and have fun vibing and talking about our characters, not get into one-sided morality debates with pearl-clutchers. 🤷

#swtor critical #fandom critical #jedi critical #tw: stabbing mention #tw: death threats #tw: genocide mention #elven rants #elven screams into the void #<< vent-y/ranty tags. block these + any specific faction/character criticals if you don't want to see posts like this #i think i've got all the triggers but if i've missed something just approach me like a normal human being and ask me to tag for it #and i will lmao that's literally in my blog's blurb but Some People can't read ig #🤷 #i'd even tag some of this as #purity culture bullshit #because imo that's what it boils down to in essence #''love and forgiveness the only morally good pure way to live hee hee anyone who does not do this exactly is Bad and Evil'' #i am begging you to find other braincells purity police. and then actually learn to USE THEM. please

[srwestvikwrites]

Privilege is the Haven of Thorns

I wrote this post the week George Floyd was murdered. I was angry, and tired, and confused, and increasingly more apprehensive in my capacity as a person and as a writer as I was drawn in to the immense whirlpool of the zeitgeist gripping the internet and society. 

It was such a complicated and emotional time. I was wracked with guilt at not going to the BLM protest in Madrid because we had just opened up into Phase 2 of the desescalada and I was scared of COVID. I was furious at the denial of individuals in my home country of Singapore who refused to believe that just because our race riots were in 1964 and not 2020 that it meant we had no more issues of systemic discrimination or privilege to challenge. I was exasperated and uneasy and inspired at having been drawn into a massive shitshow about race that rocked the Tolkien fandom within the same timeframe.

All of this made me question my place and my purpose as an author writing a story like Haven of Thorns. It doesn’t dwell on these issues, but it draws on them, in the same way that my life doesn’t linger on the colonisation of my home country or the country of my ancestors (India) and yet is irrevocably shaped by this history. 

Haven of Thorns was always going to be a story taking place in the strange rivers of colonial legacy. It is a story of drowned histories and ghosts that reside in the very stones of a city and demons that linger inside people who were happy enough to let them back in. All of it is pushed along by the current of time, where history is not stagnant but forces change. It is about war, and it is about subtle discrimination, and it is about what we choose to do when we’re so hung up on our independence story that we refuse to acknowledge the rot in our roots.

I’m reproducing the post as I wrote it all those weeks ago, even though there are better ways I could have expressed my thoughts, and indeed some of these thoughts have new nuances now as I have drafted pivotal scenes in the story. There are other things I’d rather have focused on. The haven of thorns is more than mere privilege now. And perhaps one day I’ll expand on that.

But for now, this is a historical record of what I was thinking as it was all going down and I was trying to decide what sort of story I wanted to tell in the world I lived in as the person I am.

_________________________________________________

I’m not going to be coy about the metaphor anymore. This book was always going to be highly political. It has just become even more political. I cannot begin to describe how apt and how heartbreaking it is to be drafting my novel right now.

Some context should perhaps be given as to the kinds of politics that are informing this story. I began outlining the earliest iterations of Haven of Thorns at the height of the European migration crisis. While migration itself is not a main theme of the story – and where it does feature, it’s from a rather inverted historical power dynamic – the backlash against it was always present in the telling of the tale. The rise of the European right terrified me. I had never experienced open racism before until one incident when I moved to Norway in late 2015, where I was lucky enough to have an ally at the time, though I never learned her name. I have seen far too many swastikas misappropriated from their holiness to represent hatred, spraypainted on neighbourhood walls in Trondheim, London, and Madrid.

For many years, I likened racism and xenophobia and white supremacy to a contagion, even to possession (which may have been down to the title of this book I read during high school). My view on this has changed, now. For those raised into these ideas, sure, the demon metaphor may still apply. But for many, these corrupted values take root and fester because we allow them to.

The old first draft of Haven of Thorns was begun in the first week of November, 2016. I feel I have no need to elaborate on why this timing is significant. Globally, the sense of the triumph of ignorance and vitriol was palpable. Over the next few years, partially because I became more active on social media and partially because of the degree I was studying for, every day required exposure to injustices very often predicated on culture, ethnicity, language, and/or race.

Then in 2019 Singapore commemorated the bicentennial – our 200 year anniversary of being colonised. And once again I was confronted with the bizarre lack of acknowledgment of how blatantly race relations had been directed and segmented by the British, and how whatever the government line says, we have not bounced back from the wounds that gouged in our society. I interned at an NGO dealing with race relations, and it only illuminated what we’d rather cover up – the value judgements we make of people based off their skin colour, the god(s) the pray to, or the language they speak. When COVID-19 reared its head Singapore was lauded for their response, until it hit the migrant worker dormitories. That was a powder keg waiting to explode. And it is false and unjust to pretend that the conditions they are living in do not have their own origins in the petulant protests of those who unfairly profiled and characterised the workers and robbed them of better conditions, resulting in the tragedy that has taken place now.

Even climate justice and its link to ethnicity began to seep into the story, particularly during the early 2020 fires in Australia and how severely the Aboriginal peoples were affected.

As I write this post Minneapolis is up in arms, and Americans are out in the thousands across the country protesting for justice for George Floyd and the countless other black Americans who have been victims of the system and of police violence.

Growing from childhood to adulthood in the 2000s-2010s has meant growing up in a time when discussions about race, ethnicity, culture, and the legacies of our most backward perceptions and prejudiced notions have come to the forefront, both of activism and of violent action taken against others. How could I not be impacted, for example, by the horror of the massacre in Norway on 22 July? How could I not have felt the shadow of the War on Terror through the rampant Islamophobia in the media and in society?

The extent to which all these disparate ideas of politics and power and race and xenophobia and colonialism actually manifest in Haven of Thorns isn’t perhaps measurable in the amount I’ve discussed them here. But the core of this book is that the haven is privilege, and thorns are both the barrier of our ignorance and the spears upon which we sacrifice those who challenge it.  White privilege in the West. Chinese privilege in Singapore. Yes I fucking said it. To refuse to see that is privilege, in and of itself. One can feel hurt, to be associated with the violent ways these ideas manifest. Or, one can choose to acknowledge that feeling implicated by despicable acts is perhaps the spark to challenge one’s own biases.

This story is about breaking that thorn barrier and letting in the light, in all its unbridled blinding glory, to burn away the festering hatred we’ve allowed to take root in our flesh.

In the end an important theme in Haven of Thorns – perhaps the most important – is the power structures and prejudices that prevail when colonisation has ended, along with its associated forms of exploitation, and a state becomes self-governing. It’s about who remains in power, why they remain there, and what it means for those who do not have an equal share in that power. I’m not just talking about physical force. I’m talking about value judgments that disenfranchise people based on their inherent qualities. Things like language, religion, or skin colour. Having a voice and having the power to exercise and sustain what you advocate for are all very different things, and this is why these stories cannot be apolitical. A person’s life, their right to life, and their rights to liberty and equality should not be a matter of politics – and yet they are. Because politics is about power. And power is far too often exercised unjustly.

Blaming the old oppressor only works up to a point. At some stage, a country has to face what it has done and continues to do to itself, and whether they are going to choose to make collective, powerful, and perhaps jarring value changes for the sake of basic human rights and justice. After all, prejudice is learned. It can be unlearned.

While this tale focuses on the legacy of colonisation, these same principles lie behind the abuse of authority and the untended wounds of what has happened to the black community in America for centuries, itself founded upon ideas of racial superiority. The police brutality coupled with endorsement from the highest offices in the land is a horrific ugliness – but worse, is those who choose not to see it for what it is. Those who tweet #alllivesmatter. Those who say they don’t see colour. Those who question why race has to be dragged into everything. To quote Moses in Dreamworks’s The Prince of Egypt: “I did not see because I did not wish to see.” This is privilege. This is us inviting contagion into our societies and refusing to mask up and letting it kill us from the inside out. But unlike a contagion, this is discriminatory. That is the essence of it. The differential treatment is the point. If you question why people are burning and looting, why they aren’t being “peaceful”, why they don’t comply (they do – it doesn’t work, as anyone who watched the clip of the CNN reporter would know), why they are so angry – then you are in the haven of thorns. You just refuse to acknowledge it, because the only light seeping into your little puddle is filtered, screened, and you’d rather ignore the shadows cast by the thorns.

So many of the choices in Haven of Thorns hinge upon deciding whether to preserve or whether to overturn these vicious cycles of hatred. It’s so painful to see these struggles continue to be mirrored in the real world, happening to real communities at this very moment. Part of me wants to stop writing this, because I cannot begin to capture the true agony of what is happening, no matter how much I empathise. But another part of me knows that I am in a position of great privilege, and perhaps it is time I put my voice to something that truly matters. Add another line to the anthem that advocates for these deep-set value changes that we need to make on a domestic and an international scale.

In the first very first chapter of this story, the royal palace burns. It may just as well have been a police station.

#work:hot #irdiverse #privilege #race #fantasy #social justice #my writing

[sirenakhan]

The Burden of Skin

The Burden of Skin

By Sirena Khan

Copper and bronze, earth and sand— all beautiful in their own regard, yet when worn as skin, they are often disdained. This is because skin, the organ that holds our muscles, bones, thoughts and memories together, is a burden. History reveals that it was not always like this, but once it was, it stayed that way. Racism was and still is a contagious movement. Perhaps it will take another movement even more infectious to dismantle the first, something like Black Lives Matter.

With palms lighter than the rest of her body, Sarra opens her mother’s purse and scents of sweet jasmine and spices spill out. Amongst endless tissues and coins is a tube of whitenening cream, nestled like a secret. The lack of an ingredients list is omnious but not as ominous as the cream’s existence, the cream’s purpose.

“Mama used to scold me for playing in the sun, she was afraid I would darken. She tries to persuade me to use such creams but I could never. Do you know what they put into these things? It’s practically radioactive!”

Shame, colourism and racism; all deeply internalised within all coloured and otherwise communities. As tightly woven into the fabrics of society as Sarra’s cornrow braids were with each other. Some day she hopes for the embrace of thorough acceptance, but for now, she forces herself to be thankful for tolerance.

Madhumita is considered the most beautiful in her family. It is not her many degrees and accomplishmeents but her fair complexion which earns her praise from many of the elders. She sorely tells me of the first time she was racially vilified.

“He called me a gypsy, this big, white man,” she says incredulously, “that’s not even the correct slur. I believe that if someone wants to abuse someone else, it should at least be ethnically accurate. He should have called me a terrorist, or curry-muncher.” Madhumita is a lecturer, perhaps it was the teacher within her that sought to educate racism. Perhaps it was humour being one of the few tools she could use to cope. Sara understands. Many people of colour do. Such incidents of racism are not rare, but are also not always as blatant. Victoria Police, although showing a history of racial profiling and vilification in their official reports, assure others that not only is there no racism amongst their ranks, there is no racism dilemma at all within the force and in their dealings with the publlc. Despite their view, they agreed to initiatives to tackle racism such as the Police Accountability Project and the Diversity Recruitment Program, because the burden of skin is real. Whether they feel it or not.

Dania wears a hijab, it is part of her work attire as a counselor at the Islamic College of Melbourne. She feels the weight of this harmless, thin fabric constantly. Yet she recalls a time when wearing it did not feel like anything at all. Adjusting the cloth around her face, she tells me, “everything we feel has been imposed on us because of colonisation.” Dania is right. Things like skin and headscarves— there is a shame attached to them, a bullseye that came with conquering. Colonisers claimed land proudly, leeching nature and cultures of its resources and meaning. Teachings were changed to better fit the western narrative, peacefully matriarchal and equal societies became unravelled by patriarchy, women and cultural practises were sexualised to the point of fetishisation.

Although aware of the internalised racism that comes with colonisation and its aftermath, Dania shows me how she applies a homemade ‘remedy’ to her daughter’s skin. A mixture of lemon, milk and oats that is said to lighten the complexion. As she gingerly spreads the concotion over her toddler’s arms, she frequently compares her daughter to her much fairer son.

“I don’t know how he is so pale, we must have taken the wrong baby from the hospital,” like Sara and Madhumita, Dania tries to seek humour in her circumstances and she cannot be condemned for that. Even with her daughter’s obvious confusion and retaliations, and the dismay in Dania’s eyes. Racism breeds internalised racism and people of colour are the ones that suffer. The burden of skin is a curse imposed upon coloured children by others who idly live in their privilege of never having to carry such a weight. When this burden is noticed by the privileged, it is often skewed into something more heinous. Something succinctly encapsulated when Dania says she “can’t decide what’s worse, being called a paki or exotic. One leaves me angry and the other leaves me disgusted.” When this burden goes unnoticed, racist powers continue to flourish and society is left to deal with yet another George Floyd case. This sounds like a ‘beggars can’t be choosers’ predicament which Sarra, Madhumita, Dania and every other coloured person face.

Another thing that all three women had in common was their understanding that racism was not their problem to fix. The only people wo had the power to dismantle such a system are the very people who constructed it. Yet in order for that to happen, those people to acknowledge the problem. With global Black Lives Matter protests, social media blackouts and news coverage, the realisation of the extent of the issue is beginning to sink in for most but still, not all.

Australia is in a stasis. You will find acknowledgements of racism and colonisation everywhere. In plaques that read “We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the land” or “We acknowledge the Elders and honour their cultures and stories.” Acknowledgement is the first step in dismantling racism but once aknowledgement is achieved, many realise that it isn’t enough to change things. With overpolicing and incarceration rates unchanged for coloured communities, many might argue that these acknowledgements do nothing to actually address the harms that the Indigenous population face each waking and sleeping moment.

Australia has a gruesome colonial history, comparable to that of the United States of America yet there have been more white people protesting against face masks than for their coloured neighbours. Study after study shows the same findings; socio-economic status and social standing bear no weight, racism follows any individual of colour. Moreover, the consequences of racism are not simply hurt feelings. Policing, access to education and healthcare, mental health and employment oppurtunities are all affected. Society can be so adverse to people of colour that Sarra, Madhumita and Dania have all considered adopting ‘whiter’ names on job applications and dedicating hours of practise to gentrify their dialect. This tactic does little to quell racism in the recruitment process and racism in the workplace statistics.

Like an infection, racism has long since spread to all areas of society. The spread is so sevre that universities, governments, organisations, police and media outlets alike have staged multiple outcries and implemented various counterattacks to alleviate the racism and denial problem in Australia.

“There’s a shame around it; even my family don’t like to talk about it, colourism, racism, whatever,” says Sarra, “the denial and avoidance is on both sides.”

The subject is controversial and extremely necessary, but also hurtful. There is a trauma that’s often revisited for people of colour and for others, it can be plain uncomfortable. The discussion needs to be held though, because racism is more hurtful and more uncomfortable and tolerance is not enough.

“I do not want to tolerated, like some kind of annoyance. I want to be accepted and embraced, valued. I want to be respected,” Madhumita expresses.

Indigenous Australians barely make up three percent of the population, immigrants not even thirty, mixed just about twenty. These numbers seem appallingly low yet Australia is commended as being one of the most diverse nations. Some studies find though, that barely half of the Australian population actually appreciate diversity.

Denials, acknowledgements, statistics, protests, initiatives. They all show that Australia is knee-deep in racism, that the country is severely white-washed and that many of the people who have the power to change this do not care to. People of colour should not have to gather in the streets amid a pandemic to beg for equality and kindness. They should not have to politely protest to eradicate an issue that they did not even cause.

“It’s degrading,” Dania shakes her head, “they should be thankful that’s all we’re asking for and not revenge.”

When Dania says revenge, all of the experiences that Indigenous people faced comes to mind. The pillaging and thieving, slavery and assaulting, the unfortunately successful attempts to dilute the native population.

All that people of colour are asking for is the burden of skin to be lifted, nothing more. There is something very upsetting within it all. The idea of marginalised people having to ask to be treated with kindness and the realisation that treating them with kindness is not currently the default but a rare luxury.

[leotanaka]

death in paradise season 1, episode 3: liveblog and thoughts

what a way to start the episode!!!

dwayne’s date just getting up and running off. she looked terrified and i don’t blame her. 

fidel’s teacher drinking rum while he was teaching and thinking no one noticed... i love getting these little facts about the characters. 

“there’s more to life than life.” 

richard immediately dismissing and all but ridiculing voodoo... ugh!!! would it really kill him to just... listen and try to be respectful. 

i knew that scene was bad but.. MY GOD!!!! it was actually WORSE than what i remembered!

imagine being so arrogant, disrespectful, rude and just... everything else that richard is that he gets called out for his mindset in ignoring and trying to erase voodoo - their beliefs and culture and traditions and immediately turning around and being like, well you also had disease and colonisation and you got rid of them eventually and not realising how outright offensive it is to tell black people that their culture is the equivalent of disease and colonisation and they can get rid of their beliefs as well one day. 

“definitely the headmaster.” “hell yeah.” 

everything comes back to delilah

“i’m all fingers and thumbs. which isn’t good when you’re lifting prints.” 

i love this whole exchange between dwayne and fidel - trying to figure out who could be the killer if it isn’t the headmaster and both coming to the conclusion that it has to be him because everyone else is the nicest people they both know. 

You must have heard the story? It was a huge scandal. Nicholas Dunham found out his wife Delilah was having an affair. Must be 15 years ago now. Nicholas discovered the affair and confronted her. He begged her not to leave. No-one knows what really happened, but Delilah was such a sweet girl. People say she was torn between Nicholas and her lover. Both pulling her in different directions, until she couldn't cope any more. Then one night, she went for a walk across the cliffs and threw herself into the sea.”

why doesn’t richard just buy some bread and make himself like a tomato and cheese sandwich or something? surely mangoes and sweet potato aren’t the only food you can buy on the island. they must have shops. 

i still don’t get the point of this whole “richard not eating anything” story. was it only done because they wanted the people on the island to accommodate him and make him “british” food because he wasn’t willing or prepared to eat anything else? 

is that true? 

richard’s ignorance about voodoo *might* have been acceptable if they didn’t have act like their beliefs were the equivalent of colonisation and disease which, WHY WOULD YOU EVEN HAVE THAT MENTALITY IN THE FIRST PLACE???? and even his response to catherine explaining it... why did he act so irritated?

“if you want to kill someone, would you really do it in your place of work?” “the thought crossed my mind.” 

this entire scene summed up nicholas as a character so well! he won’t reveal his alibi on his own, he wanted to humiliate richard and camille in front of their boss and show them all how wrong they were. 

“he’s a difficult man. he likes to play games.” 

“He was OK one minute, but then he could turn, you know. I remember I got a new pair of football boots. It was my birthday, I shined those boots. Don't think I've ever been so proud of anything in my entire life. When we had our first school match, Mr Dunham came into the dressing room and he saw everyone gathered around admiring my new boots. Mr Dunham told me that I was being boastful and that was a bad thing. And so he took my boots away from me.”

dwayne hearing that dunham took fidel’s boots from him when he was a child and immediately being annoyed that they won’t be arresting him is honestly... #friendshipgoals.

every single person: “nicholas is a killer.” the priest: “nicholas is not a killer.” 

i am living for fidel’s “...but we’re so close to finishing.” and the look on his face :) 

dwayne is such a bad influence on fidel lol

the fidel/dwayne scenes in this episode are so wonderful to watch :) i really do miss their friendship. 

oh fidel... he spent 5 seconds relaxed, not worrying about the world before immediately starting to panic. as dwayne and everyone else says: “you need to relax.” he is just so highly strung - he acts like someone who is just... who lives on their nerves. 

richard calling his mother because harry was looking at him the same way his mother did. 

why wear all those clothes at night if you hot? 

the first time camille saw harry :) 

there isn’t anything on richard’s toothbrush lol

i really hate that they feel like they can’t reference or even talk about their beliefs and culture because the white guy in the room doesn’t want to hear it. 

the look on fidel’s face is amazing :) 

i really do feel for angelique :( she knew nicholas murdered her daughter and got away with it for years. there was no way to prove it so she killed herself, hoping to put him away for her murder instead. 

“You see anybody can commit murder, murder's the easy part. But how to dispose of the body? That's where most murderers fail how they get caught.”

what a horrific and disgusting thing to do :( 

camille getting angry and upset over the brutality and humiliation that another black woman was subjected to. 

dinner to prepare? so he was eating more than mangoes and sweet potato? wait, he was talking about harry. 

“She couldn't have known the truth was in the bones. So where did that bit come from?”

DWAYNE BUYING FIDEL’S CHILD FOOTBALL BOOTS :))))) 

feeding a lizard cat food? that can’t be good. 

he looks like all of his christmas’ have come at once :) 

that was actually a really nice ending :) 

#death in paradise #kraina watches dip #dip rewatch

[bootlegvajrayana-blog]

Journaling

Last year: The visitation of Dakinis through my body, in the form of Yumi; that crazy witch! who haunts and loves me still in the aftermath of her blazing wisdom... ...of course, there is not exactly a ‘me’ left --> rather, there are memories and re-memberings, a sense of the aggregates of  Form (this body) Sensation, Perception,  Volition and Consciousness having become heaped upon with the karmic con-sequences of the sequential cons of karma.

The bliss of Samsara was exactly Awakening...

Now, there is a sense of my non-binary Being as a ‘stable’ sense of knowing, and of course this is exactly non-binary with confusion, with vacillation ‘between’ an ‘existing’ binary which needs neither navigation nor dissolution since it is already empty and not in the least bit located as Real, not in the least! *** After reading Jaron Lanier’s brilliant “Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” I finally went ahead and deleted my account last night. So technically, today, Monday 18th June 2018 would be Day 1 of being off of Facebook. Admittedly, I am struggling a bit more with the idea of getting off of Instagram; I had already been, for some time, weaning myself off of dependency on Facebook, though it lingered in the background as a place for my voyeurism (and as a catalyst for generalised chronic social anxiety; not because I thought others had it ‘better than me’ or whatever, but only in terms of encountering the Samsaric omnipresence of rage, and wounded resentments of my already multiply-marginalised friends... I was and am no longer convinced that it was healthy for my mental health OR for our longer term political survival, despite the clearly GREAT things about the medium (e.g. that the disparate rag tag group of us might be aggregated as a network of ‘friends’ in the virtual-ised safe space of my Newsfeed and/or particular Facebook groups).  Lanier’s point in his book on why we should delete our social media accounts boils down essentially to the argument that, in their existing form (particularly platforms like Facebook and Instagram), it is a zero sum game. Their business model is based off of mysterious algorithms that intend to keep their users hooked by fine-tuning our dopaminergic responses to what is shown on our feeds, while maximising the likelihood that we will click on advertising links that cater specifically to the triggered insecurities in ourselves. Given such a model, what has happened is the dangling of the carrot of ‘connectivity’ and ‘friendship’ and for that matter, the promise of popularity, a throng of fans supporting our own righteous causes, etc., while at the same time all of this being foundationally contingent on our giving our consent to being psychopolitically manipulated to remain on their platforms. Now of course, we can argue that this is no different from any other for-profit business. With one caveat: In the case of Facebook and Instagram, because of the nature of the technology, this necessarily selects not only for that which will give us the most instant pleasure, but also that which gives us the most anxiety; after all, it is the most outrageous kinds of things that will be most likely to elicit a click-bait kind of response; as a result, Truth is compromised, and knee-jerk paranoid reactivities are prioritised in terms of what ultimately gets shown through all our scrolls through...  Of course, I am writing here as a racialised queer person (as a 3rd culture kid of MalaysianChineseAustralian heritage) who was networked disproportionately with other folks who experience multiple interstices of oppression; The medium is the message --> In addition to already living challenging everyday experiences, Facebook exacerbates this by normalising a kind of ‘discourse’ in which the loudest, brashest, and most extremist forms of polemic, including of those on ‘our side’ are disproportionately represented on my feed... even if it is only to trigger my emphatically reactive disagreement ... This in itself is a ludicrous manipulation of our tendencies to ethnocentrism... *** In choosing to quit Facebook, I was not and am not intending to make a comment about its being ‘all bad’; I am genuinely scared and grieving some of the aspects of what was possible for me in communication and creativity as a result of my using Facebook (e.g. instant-shares and feedback around poetry, political thoughts, etc.) that I am unlikely to find any easy replacement for. Additionally, I am aware that professional opportunities have come my way in the past because of connections through Facebook, that will now likely diminish as I have chosen this particular bridge to burn as I consider my next steps in how I want to relate more healthfully in my own constructions of truth and meaningness... The mandala of my FriendList, already meticulously parsed out according to whether I would be comfortable outing myself as trans/non-binary/femme to them as particular individuals, or whether we shared religious proclivities, whether they were people of colour like me, etc. had become unwieldly, insofar as I noticed that I was spending more of my time giving my creative and intellectual labour away on Facebook for free (self-justifying this as being about the generativity of intrinsic motivation) than I was focussing on connecting with friends in real life, and outside of the quiet safety of my own home as I have been managing a ‘social transition’ (of my gender identity ... largely, in other words, in my own head, and mediated through the gazes of those who saw me as filtered through the internet).

I have chosen to quit Facebook, because I think, in part, I would like to figure out what it might mean to go through my transition without being further influenced by those particular algorithms which root any kind of egoic investment in the conditions of anxiety, precarity, and only illusory solidarities with ‘frenemies’ who seem more eager to tear down what is disagreed with, than to lift up what is good and offer constructive feedback for what might be improved... * To be clear, I do not think that these habits are inherent in the particular individuals who may have indulged most in this kind of rhetorical battling... Facebook itself has normalised a culture of paranoia in which perfectly rational actors are, in fact, perfectly rational by operating from a baseline of battle, poised for war. After all, when it looks like hundreds of real people are espousing vile opinions and perspectives that cause genuine harm to those who encounter them, it does take a kind of heroism to speak out and speak back, and shut it down as quickly as we can... right? ...Not if, of course, in the first instance, those hundreds of horrible perspectives are actually just amplifications of pre-existing tendencies, tendencies that may themselves find their way into the habits of those on ‘our side’ ... I found myself balking at the extent to which perfectly good people, ‘friends’ (i.e. colleagues, ex-colleagues, wider-networked folks, friends of friends, etc.) wounded by the pathos of imperialism, colonisation, racism, cishetpatriarchy and so on, started to engage in the very behaviours that we denounced in our political opponents: --> Bullying --> Exaggerated polemics --> Outright lying (i.e. making up ‘facts’ that are not facts)  --> Refusing accountability --> Tearing down those who try --> Calling on friends for money and business and then refusing accountability for exploitative practice I realised soon enough that there was no way any of this could be remedied through the medium ... It was the medium itself that was rewarding this --> After all, even if none of us genuinely like this, the culture of fear and paranoia it engenders creates a wolf-pack kind of situation, where it is the pile ons, the likes and the dislikes, the drama created, etc. that feeds Facebook its money, while those of us whose lives and mental health have been stirred up in addiction to the use of the platform itself are being mined for our habits of use (I am more likely to remain on Facebook if I am still-stuck angry with some shit-poster, for example, than I am if everything was already-resolved and I was already-happy with my life), and then being subjected to more and more information that would be targeted to trigger us in our (otherwise justifiable) angers and passions. *** I am only now beginning to realise how fucked up I have become from having spent so much time in my young adult life being molded by these terrible logics under neoliberalism. The paradox of capitalism, in this sense, is that I cannot now deny any of the good things that came from my use! I learned new vocabularies, was exposed to new perspectives, etc. etc. At the same time, I am now committed to engendering new ways of relating to others in my life, including investing more deeply in fewer friendships, so that I can be far less lonely and angry than I have been, and perhaps so I can stop viewing any potential friend from the perspective of how quickly I can tear them apart for something wrong they’ve done, and perhaps instead look them in the eye and allow my heart to melt a little bit before offering loving kindness that bolsters all of our humanity, in the service of a healing that is desperately needed, in this age of fascist precarities. 

#3ck #racism #buddhism #Facebook #social media #fasting #truth #dharma #love

[expatimes]

Abolish anti-Blackness: Hair and racism in South Africa

In September, popular South African health and beauty retailer Clicks sparked widespread anger after publishing an advertisement that reinforced Eurocentric beauty standards in a country still suffering the effects of its painful racist past.

The online advertisement, commissioned by TRESemme, a haircare brand under Unilever, portrayed photos of Black women with natural hair captioned by the words “dry & damaged” and “frizzy & dull”. While on the opposite side of the spectrum, it showcased white women with hair it called “normal” and “fine & flat”.

People were outraged; angry posts filled social media, crowds gathered to protest outside Clicks stores, and thousands called the company out for discrimination. Many others shrugged off the anger as just a “hair issue”, but the advertisement was much more than that. It was blatantly racist – a direct reinforcement of the anti-Blackness constructed by colonisation, that stripped Black people of their human dignity by positioning Blackness as “abnormal” in relation to whiteness.

This is something that stretches back to the 1600s when European colonisers used whiteness as the model of humanity and deemed Blackness as inferior – an idea that became deeply embedded in the minds of both Black and white people over the centuries.

The racism in the Clicks advertisement – just the latest public iteration of the messaging that Black women are forced to face on a daily basis – took me back four years to the #StopRacismAtPretoriaGirlsHigh movement, which I co-founded in 2016.

As Black pupils at Pretoria High School For Girls – a historically whites-only institution – we protested against the school’s racist policies, starting with its hair policy that favoured whiteness in its framing of neatness and professionalism.

The policy stated that all hairstyles had to be “conservative, neat and tied at the nape of the neck” while braids had to be “1cm in diameter”. No allowances were made for natural Black hair, like Afro hair, which was verbally prohibited by the headmistress at the time. “Afros and dreadlocks are not permitted in Girls High,” she had said.

Beyond the policies themselves, the enforcement of these rules had echoes of apartheid-style policing: Institutional white authorities – in this case, teachers – would use derogatory terms including the “K-word” – South Africa’s equivalent of the N-word – against Black girls, describing Black hair as “dirty, untidy, demonic, uncontrollable”, and likening it to a bird’s nest.

At the time, the school prohibited the use of Indigenous African languages by Black girls when speaking to each other. Informally, it also prohibited Black girls gathering in groups by asking us to disperse and accusing us of “conspiring” against the institution, and it clamped down on pupils addressing the existence of white privilege in the institution by giving us warnings, demerits or detention when we raised the topic of racism within the school. These were all issues our movement protested against.

Eurocentric norms

In the early 1990s, when South African schools first desegregated, Pretoria Girls High and many other white institutions opened their gates to other races. But the dominant Eurocentric culture of these schools was not so easily changed. Black children who walked into these historically white spaces seeking the “quality education” that was not afforded their parents’ generation, left carrying large amounts of trauma because of the unequal treatment, exclusion, and discriminatory cultural standards they were forced to endure.

When our movement called out the racist policies at our school and took it a step further to advocate for the decolonisation of South Africa’s wider basic education sector, the message gained traction with young Black people in schools across the country.

From wider discriminatory hair policies that ultimately force us to erase our Blackness, to the exclusion of our African languages in school subjects and recess spaces, to the Eurocentric syllabus which – starting from kindergarten – is the first form of indoctrination that socialises us to view our Blackness as inferior by teaching us that “skin colour” is “light peach” and showing us book characters who are mostly blonde and blue-eyed, the issues resonated with every Black child who has been subjected to harsh institutionalised racism at school.

This while the geospatial divides in South African education also reinforce systemic racism: Black schools in townships and rural areas are left to fall apart with inadequate access to resources, while historically white institutions prosper with first-class resources and prestigious physical and financial conditions.

And all of this has been allowed to take place in the “democratic” Republic of South Africa, which won some gains at the end of apartheid in 1994 – such as the exchange of political power and the erasure of racist laws – but has not yet eradicated the systems it entrenched.

‘Privatised apartheid’

Decades since the end of apartheid rule, and four years on from the movement at Pretoria Girls High, the Clicks incident again raises questions about why Black bodies continue to be disrespected and how a direct insult to Black lives is able to make its way to publication in 2020, in a country that is majority Black.

Sadly, the reality is that South Africa has deep unresolved socioeconomic racial tensions that stem from the negotiated transition from apartheid to “democracy” – a divide that has prevented it from fully arriving at the “post-apartheid” destination it promised in the early 1990s.

The system of apartheid that was once constitutionalised did not end just because the law changed in 1994. Instead, it was privatised and institutionalised – and its effects continue to negatively shape the lives of Black people socially, politically and economically. Although the political system was reformed, it means nothing without a shift in economic power and radical social change. Without the complete abolition of the systems apartheid created, the structures that separate Black people from equal opportunities, education, employment and access to wealth and land will continue to exist.

The Clicks advertisement is a glimpse of this privatised form of apartheid – a space where the system has not been completely annihilated, and where the racially exclusionary foundation built by the apartheid regime remains active in the corporate and education arena.

Systemic power in South Africa’s corporate sector still predominantly lies in the hands of white men. White people make up about 8 percent of South Africa’s economically active population, but occupy 65 percent of top management positions. In contrast, Black Africans who are about 79 percent of economically active people comprise 15 percent of top management positions, according to a 2019 report from the country’s Commission for Employment Equity.

After more than 400 years of historical white rule in South Africa, the dominant voice at the decision-making table is still white and, whether by default or design, still speaks to the interests of whiteness. Black women make up 36 percent of South Africa’s economically active population, a significant number that should see themselves present in corporate boardrooms and better represented in the decisions corporations make. Yet the publication of such a tone-deaf advertisement portrays the evident lack of Black female representation in the marketing sector and the mainstream beauty industry. If it were more diverse and inclusive, it would have been able to better reflect Clicks’s consumers – the majority of them young, Black women.

Accountability and justice

In response to the national outrage sparked by the advertisement, Clicks, TRESemme, and Unilever issued public apologies. However, those apologies were not accompanied by sufficient accountability, such as disclosing the names of those liable for the advertisement, dismissing the staff responsible, or disclosing the demographic representation of their companies’ boards – demands that were made by many activists, members of the public, and the opposition political party the Economic Freedom Fighters.

Unilever admitted publicly through its social media platforms that the advertisement was racist but still refused to name those responsible, which showed no will to hold those who perpetuate racism accountable for their actions. In a nutshell, what the company did was pure “damage control” for their brand, as their apologies were not accompanied by any real accountability.

Similarly, in the wake of our 2016 protests at Pretoria Girls High, there was no accountability by the educators who perpetuated racism and no justice for the pupils who were victims of the human rights violations that took place. Although there was an investigation into the school’s racist policies in 2016, then, like now, the outcomes worked in favour of the institution.

The investigation concluded that the policies were indeed racist, but what followed was a reform of the hair policy, rather than the complete abolition of the existence of a hair policy, as we had been calling for – since the mere existence of a “hair policy” allows room for discrimination by granting a handful of – usually non-Black – people power over the expression of Black African identity.

Meanwhile, the specific educators who enforced those racist policies and perpetuated racism were not held accountable for their actions. It was argued that pupils did not have substantial evidence of the racist incidents they reported – incidents which usually took place when pupils were left alone with the racist educator. In the end, the teachers’ identities were kept hidden to protect them.

In both cases, the school protests and the fallout from the Clicks advertisement, accountability by those responsible is important to help pave the way towards justice. Because without it, we allow direct insults to Blackness to be ignored, once again undermining the confidence and personhood that Black people have spent generations fighting to reaffirm.

Decolonise the system

Some have attributed the Clicks incident to the “unconscious bias” of the companies involved, in an effort to justify the advertisement. But the danger of naming it that means that those responsible are not held accountable, and we remain blindfolded to the harsh, long-lasting effects of colonisation and apartheid that South Africans continue to grapple with.

It is no surprise that racists persist in their harmful behaviour towards Black people since there are no harsh consequences or systems put in place to hold them accountable for their actions and to serve justice to victims of racial discrimination. This itself is as a result of South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy, a process which was not focused on the complete abolition of all systems architected by the apartheid regime.

As a result, South Africa is politically transformed; yet economically and socially, our systems continue to advance the lives of white people over Black people – granting them everyday socioeconomic privileges such as better access to opportunities, quality education, wealth and capital, employment, and representation in every facet of society from the workplace to the mainstream beauty industry to institutions sanctioned by the state.

Over the years, much of the response to racism has been reactionary. But in seeking to abolish the structures that disadvantage Black South Africans, we need to be actively anti-racist every day, working to build inclusive systems created by us, and for us which will advance Black communities in every aspect.

The “norm” and standard of whiteness was historically used as a tool to plant self-hatred in Black people – and its effects have been long-lasting. Even in the 21st century in a South Africa “freed” from the physical shackles of apartheid, the country is still governed by elements of white aesthetics and dynamics of anti-Blackness.

This raises the urgent need for decolonisation as a means for Black South Africans to free ourselves psychologically and reclaim our identities. We have been socialised to be reliant on white approval, which has led to our continuous support of white entities and businesses like Clicks, which serve no purpose in empowering and uplifting Black people and our identities. But we can make a change by placing emphasis on supporting Black businesses and calling for the complete abolition of the man-made, socioeconomic systems of racial inequality that exist as a result of apartheid, and continue to disadvantage Blackness while advancing whiteness.

The Clicks advertisement is much deeper than just a “hair issue”.

It is a glimpse at the systemic racism that exists in South Africa today, and a reminder that it is time to abolish the systems architected by apartheid, and no longer just reform them.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

. #world Read full article: https://expatimes.com/?p=15289&feed_id=22051

#Africa #ArtsandCulture #BlackLivesMatter #Opinions #Racism #SouthAfrica #Women

[thisisheffner]

Stormzy: UK is '100% racist' and Johnson has made it worse | Music | The Guardian

Stormzy has said Britain is “definitely, 100%” racist and that this has worsened under Boris Johnson because his comments have emboldened people with racist views.

The grime artist, who has just released his second album, Heavy is the Head, made the comments in an interview with the Italian newspaper La Repubblica. When asked if Britain was still racist, the musician said “definitely, 100%” even if it was “hidden”.

“It’s like: ‘Oh no, we’re not racist’. But there’s a lot of racism in the country,” he said. “The difficult thing with the UK is, as you said, in Italy it’s a clear problem, whereas trying to explain that Britain is a racist country [to a British person] is the most difficult thing ever. They think: ‘No, it’s not. Stormzy you’re successful. Look at London, there’s loads of black people …’ It’s a more difficult case to fight.”

Stormzy said the prime minister was a “figurehead” whose actions had made it more acceptable to say racist things in British society. “If the top person can openly say this racist thing – the ‘piccaninnies’ remarks, ‘watermelon smiles’, comparing Muslim women to a letter box – if that is our figurehead, the top man, the leader we have to follow, and he openly says these things, he encourages hate among others.”

He said since Johnson had been in office the situation had deteriorated, with people who hold racist views feeling emboldened to express them in public.

“Before, people had to hide their racism. If you felt something bad about about black people, about Muslims, you had to shut up. Now these people have the confidence to come out in public to say everything. This is scary to me, that scares the shit out of me.”

Stormzy, whose real name Michael Ebenazer Kwadjo Omari Owuo, said he would have to carefully consider whether or not he would accept an honour such as an MBE or OBE if offered one. He said it would be difficult to accept an honour “because of the British empire”, but that his mother would be proud if he was offered one.

“It’s got a very dark history. You know, Britain colonised everywhere. It’s something I’d look into and decide in case of.”

Stormzy has been a vocal critic of the Conservative government, and Johnson in particular. His single Vossi Bop contained the line “Fuck the government, and fuck Boris”, which became the slogan of a campaign aimed at unseating him at the recent general election.

This week he was criticised by the TV presenter Piers Morgan for telling a group of children at his old primary school in Thornton Heath, south London, that Johnson was a “bad man”.

Morgan tweeted: “He shouldn’t have done this, and shouldn’t have been allowed to do this.” Stormzy responded: “The kid asked me a question and I replied truthfully, nothing wrong with that Piers lol.”

In the buildup to the general election, Stormzy gave his support to Labour, signing an open letter to the Guardian along with several other cultural figures that backed the party’s pledge to end austerity. In later tweets he described the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, as being the first man in a position of power who is “committed to giving power back to the people and helping those who need a helping hand from the government the most”.

He was also involved in a Twitter dispute with the Conservative MP Michael Gove who quoted his lyrics and criticised his decision to back Labour. Observers said a white, middle-class politician imitating a young black grime MC on social media was the equivalent of “Twitter blackface”.

During his headline Glastonbury set in June, Stormzy wore a stab vest with a union flag on it, designed by Banksy. As he performed the words “knife crime” appeared lit up behind him, and there was an excerpt from a speech by the Labour MP David Lammy on the issue. Lammy tweeted that Stormzy had used the performance to “speak out about the injustice of young black kids being criminalised”.

In the Repubblica interview, Stormzy explained how his style and approach to music had changed. “Now I am rich, I no longer live in the dark streets of Croydon, I am no longer as angry as before,” he said. “Everything changes and so you look for a new voice. But the important thing is always to be honest with yourself.”

Stormzy is the latest high-profile black British cultural figure to say they would consider turning down an OBE or MBE. The spoken-word artist and podcaster George the Poet said he rejected an honour earlier this year because of the “pure evil” perpetrated by the British empire. The poet, whose real name is George Mpanga, told the Guardian the honours system needed a dramatic overhaul.

“If you can get me – a child of Africa, whose grandfather died in exile as a result of British meddling in Uganda, whose great-great-grandfather resisted the British invasion of his country – to accept an MBE, what would my descendants make of that? What would my ancestors make of that?” he asked. “It’s not fair that in order to accept this accolade, in order to accept this recognition, I have to submit to that interpretation of empire.”

Stormzy’s new album went to the top of the streaming charts when it was released on 13 December, with several songs appearing in the top 40 singles charts.

This content was originally published here.

[consolatione]

There is still light

I lie in bed looking at the windows. The nights are still light, but they are getting darker. It's easier to notice the change now that we only come to the country side on the weekends, driving up the coast on Fridays after work, arriving late. Soon it will be pitch black and we won't go here anymore, the house is too cold, and we are selling it to afford to move permanently to some place outside of the city. I can't wait. But I will miss this place, miss going for a morning swim. Miss the house. Miss the cobbled path we made.

In a few weeks, it will be pitch black at this hour, but now as I listen to my son go to sleep, the curtains are backlit even if it is quite late. As he gently snores and drifts away to his childhood dreams, I dream my dreams. I dream of this place. I dream of the place we will settle down in. The hunting season has started, and I dream of that too. To go out early in the morning and sit still waiting as the day breaks. To take care of the game and to cook it with chanterelles and eat it in the company of good friends. I dream of hiking, of going on a long ski trip, to sit around a fire in the winter, to smell of smoke and drink coffee made in a sooty pot.

He sleeps. I go outside and stand beneath the 100-year-old trees that are dark silhouettes against the starry, deep blue sky, and I listen to the strange chirping of the tawny owls, a sound that is very un-owl-like. The Norwegian neighbours are singing. I long for singing at a party with friends too, even if I doubt anyone but my kids long for my singing in return.

All these dreams are of quiet, connected places, and I scurry between them in my mind as if I was in a hurry. Maybe I long for them because I have lost them and have to recreate them. They are mine when I can make them mine, when I can buy their luxury. These things that feel like the most natural thing.

I have spent the day speaking about tech and devices. Thinking about things that should marvel us. I'm not marvelled. Instead I think of paths in the landscape, paths made by man's feet. Over lifetimes people have walked over landscapes, carving their journeys into the ground, even forcing trees to bend their branches so that they grow crooked. These are runes carved by walking, their stories quietly span millennia. The old oak stands witness.

This is Modernity, I think. To ever long for quiet. To be captured by the new, to make a commodity of that which is natural. The man who desired everything, and got it, only to find himself missing wanting itself. Not that I think all that is modern is bad, nothing is ever just bad. If it were, we would get rid of it. We are not victims of Modernity, we are spellbound by it. It's a drug. A spiral.

I read what is said about me. Getting messages from friends who understand. They sigh. I sigh. I tell them I don't care, but I can't help but getting angry anyway, so I postpone writing back. Nothing good ever comes from responding in anger, and anyway, every word I write feels sordid, dirty. Why should I have to reply to such nonsense? I remind myself that they are the voices I wrote about in the Taiga, voices that have no meaning unless you grant them meaning. I wish I had that old poetry collection here, so I could remind myself of those words. They still make sense to me, they paint an inner landscape.

I know how this sounds, I know how any reply to my detractors sounds too. Its dramaturgical. It has an almost Aristotelean dramatic structure to it. I have tried before to explain things prosaically, to explain how Modernity has caught us. My views put into words for people that are stuck in the loop. I remember telling the story of the freedom of the serfs in Russia. They had lived their lives in captivity, but were mostly left alone. They saw their masters a few times in a lifetime perhaps, the rest of the time they lived as they always had. Sang their songs, cooked their food. Toiled. It was a hard life at someone else’s mercy. Then they were freed, millions of illiterate people who for thousands of years had stayed in one place were let go, only to be mangled by industrialism, where Modernity was ready with her ideologies. ‘Escape this!’, she said, and they did, only to find themselves in yet another trap. And just a few decades earlier there had been life that made them humans beyond their destitution and serfdom, something that made things bearable. Expelled from the land they used to be bound to, they had instead looked to employment, and their new masters had clocks for them to punch and quotas to meet. Trying to escape that, they were caught in starvation, brutalism, the anonymity of urban life and the most savage wars. And then, they ran from that into atomisation. Someone thought out a new structure for society, perfect in the minds of ideologues. Straight lines, like borders on a map drawn by colonialists, far removed from the fabric which is actual life.

I tried telling their story, but in Modernity there is no fire to sit around and talk. A fire reduces the pedantry of the listener. Humans have listened to stories like that since the dawn of time, until the stories became archetypical and everlasting. I think that maybe we evolved to listen attentively and without hostility around a fire. But in Modernity we refuse to listen. ‘Would you rather we had serfs?’ ‘No.’ ‘Would you rather we had feudalism?’ ‘No.’ ‘You are suspect anyway.’ ‘I guess.’ You are missing the point. It’s the elk that flees that is driven towards the cliff, not the one that isn’t scared and calmly keeps his head with him. I am not sure the analogy holds up. In any case, the serfs ended up running from poverty and the injustice they knew, into a machine that ground them down and supplied them with an ideology that could only ever make things worse. They were played. In the new economy they were outdated, needed elsewhere. They were told they had to fight for freedom. The old structure which kept them up had to go and they ended up in Modernity’s battlefield.

At one time we were all tribes, tied together by blood. The biggest unit we could muster was that which could organically be upheld. Then arose the centralised state, cracking down on tribal allegiances and social structures, replacing them with institutions. It became possible to organise bigger groups of people, nations. Those who couldn’t make the transition were dominated by those who could. Tribal life was sometimes brutal, but they were never powerful enough to eradicate or colonise. To form a nation state, the kings had to change the structure of society, replace cultures, traditions with institutions the state had control over. Sometimes go to war with people who held on to their local loyalties, whose life wasn’t improved as they were forced to give up power. The nation states were necessary and over time some grew into peaceful, welfare states. Then a new power manifested itself. It had learned how to conquer, it had to attack the social fabric and undermine the institutions in place. Even the demography. The state itself was to be put under the thumb and relinquish its powers. Power, it was decided, should move farther away from people and into the hands of international courts of law; away from the troublesome nation states and demographic hegemonies. Smash it. In with the new. Just one more sacrifice and we’ll reach utopia. Give us the power to rule you and we’ll give you… nothing. Panem et circenses. The bank will own your house, your car, your institutions will lack power and only remain to uphold the bureaucracy to manage it all. You will not belong to anything, you are free, your family bonds are only contractual and temporary. You are an atom. Free as long as you do not rattle the cage.

My grandfather fought in WWI. He detested the generals after that and came close to joining the communist party, only to realise they were just as likely to send him to the slaughterhouse. He chose to bear his demons himself, or so I am told. Taking long walks. Maybe drinking too much. These people that stand before me now are fighting for their own disenfranchisement. They want the super state. They want to give up their institutions. They will get into a rage and froth at the very idea that maybe it isn’t the best of ideas to forever change the demographics of a country. They are marching again, throwing their hats into the air. We’ll be back in time for Christmas. This war will end all wars.

I get defensive, and I really shouldn’t. There's a fire in the fireplace and a stream of smoke rises across a starry sky. You never see the shifts in colour on the night sky in the city. I shouldn't be defensive, because that only means I have already failed to explain. Again. A trap. 

The very participation in the debate is a trap. To not participate is the only thing that you can do, and hope there are those who see what you do anyway. To win is to do something else that is outside of their reach. To win is to build. To win is to take those who understand and make something that speaks by existing alone. Then I see that is what we do with these arts as well, but as soon as they are done, Modernity wants it. Demands it. And it uses the same fools it always has, those who find their truths in ideology and tell themselves they are the Good ones. Fighting the Good cause.

Is it too late? There’s not even a silver slither by the horizon. I need to calm down, enjoy the luxury of normality offered on the weekends until we can build something strong enough to withstand whatever this is, while he sleeps and dreams his childhood dreams.

No, it is not too late. I still believe in that which is the essence of being human. To write runes with your very life. To refuse to be caught in a loop and instead build on the love for that which is peaceful and connected. We will not be atomised.

#traditionalism #Peace #quiet #Love

[fullfillmyfantasy-blog]

Respect the Slav

 I am Polish with a bit of Tatar blood. I strongly identify as Slavic and have genuine affection for any Slavic nation, but mostly I am Polish and so proud to be. I find it kind of hurtful how we are perceived in the Western nations and how we are depicted in mainstream media in America. I feel rejected both by the white community and the opressed community of People of color. Of course by no means Slavs are POC and by no means we have it as bad, but actually anyone who isn’t of Western European descend has it hard. Nevertheless we are painted with the same brush as those Western Europeans simply due to our race, but we’re not the same.

Have you ever notices the way Slavs are depicted in mainstream media in USA? Let’s start with the fact that you don’t really see other Slavic nations than Russians. I know that Russia is the big bad of the US generally, but not ever Russian is a villain or a villain-turned-hero. There are tons of amazing people. NOT EVERY RUSSIAN IS EVIL. Their authorities are evil, but the Russians are not. For example, look at the Russians in the MCU. First of all, we’ve got Natasha. As much as I love Scarlett Joahnsson and I am aware that she is of Polish descend, there are so many talented Russian actresses who could have got the role, yet as far as I’m concerned no actual Russian was even considered. Second thing is while Natasha is a Russian protagonist she despises Russia. Her homecountry is everything evil when it comes to the character. She doesn’t show young Slavs that being Slavic is cool. The rest of the Russians in the Universe are villains. Let’s start with Ivan Vanko. Again, Rourke is not Russian nd he doesn’t have ANY Russian or Slavic blood. The accent was terrible, the character was absolutely despising. While his motivation was weak it kind of made sense until the reveal that Anton Vanko was practically a leech. So yeah, evil runs in the Russian blood I guess. Russians in Captain America? Okay, I don’t have a fucking idea what went on there. The Russians captured Bucky and experimented on him, yet he’s a Hydra asset? Hydra was a Nazi organization and it makes no sense since the Soviets actually had a lot to do with defeating Nazis. Both were evil, but they’re not the fucking same. Actually Nazis hated Slavs almost as much as Jewish people and by the time “The First Avenger” takes place historically the Germans had already blocked Leningrad, so the Soviets would never work with them. Let’s take a look at “Arrow” now. We’ve got plenty of Russians here. Except they all are shady gangsters with good intentions only for themselves. Yeah, the brotherhood and severe loyalty in Bratva is depicted, but it’s still a criminal organization. Got to mention that they actually cast David Nykl who is Czech Canadian (so he’s Slavic) in the role of Anatoli, yet Kovar is played by a Swede. I’m in the supehero fandoms, so most of my examples come from there, but I guess you get the idea. I can’t recall many other Slavs with prominent roles in American mainstream media apart from Sophie and Oleg from Two Broke Girls and don’t even get me started on those. The Hollywood also didn’t care enough to cast somebody of the right ethnic background for the role of Nikola Tesla who was Serbian (so a Slav) with David Bowie playing him in “The Prestige” and Nicholas Hoult in the upcoming “The Current War”. Have you heard of the movie “The Zookeeper’s Wife”? It’s about the Żabiński family who hid Jews in the Warsaw Zoo during WWII. Yet the main roles of Polish people again went to actors with nothing Slavic about them.

I could rant more on this, but I actually want to mention one more thing. Dear People of Color, as I said we are not opressed like you, but please do not paint us with the same brush as those actually responsible for all the awful things that happened in America to your ancestors. And I am talking as A POLISH PERSON here. Specifically Polish person. We are not your enemy. We never colonised Americas. We never had slaves there. While your ancestors were slaves (actually the term “slave” derives from the word “Slav”, because Slavic people were often kept as slaves in Arab Spain in ninth century), mine were living in a non-existent country since it was literally stolen away from us by Prussia, Russia and Austria. For 123 years there was no independent Poland, Polish culture was opressed and depolonization was crazy. Yet we managed to survive. We fought for our freedom. One of our national heroes is actually also a national hero in US. His name is Tadeusz Kościuszko. If you haven’t heard of him, you’re missing out. He was a prominent figure in American Revolution. There’s actually a story that while he was in Philadephia, the leader of Little Turtle came to him and Tadeusz gave him guns with guide to use them against anyone who would want to conquer Little Turtle. Then he came back to Poland to fight for his own country which was being torn apart by their neighbours.

There’s also the story about Poles in Haiti. Let me start things of with saying that many Poles viewed Napoleon as a way to regain freedom. It kind of worked since the Kingdom of Poland came to existance, but don’t think it was any kind of independent coutry. It still belonged to Russia. Napoleon exploited the Poles in his army, seriously. He didn’t actually give a damn about us. So he sent them to help subdue the Haitian Revolution. As you may or may not know, the revolution was successful. Want to hear the story of the Poles’ role? Well, it’s simple. When they arrived there and saw that the Haitians fight for their freedom just like the Polish, they decided to actually help them. Not immediately, but it didn’t take them much time. They saw the Revolution as paralell to the Polish situation back then. Jean-Jacques Dessalines called the Poles (AND I’M LITERALLY QUOTING HIM THERE): “the White Neg***s of Europe” with was actually regarded a great honour. The Poles who fought there aquired Haitian citizenship and you can still find their descendants on Haiti. 

And the WWII. Oh, the WWII. It all started in Poland which was still weak. We actually existed as an independent country for only 20 years when Hitler attacked us. It’s no mystery that our allies (Great Britain and France) didn’t give a damn about us and didn’t help Poland at all. I could talk and talk about the Poles in the WWII, because our role was HUGE. Let me just say that Poland was the only country were hiding Jews was punished by death, yet so many Polish people (count in my greatgrandparents) still did it. Of course not every Pole was a saint back then and some actually did horrible things, but majority of Poles really helped the Jews. Just check which country has the most citizens who got the honorific of Righteous Among the Nations. (Spoiler Alert: it’s Poland) Poland is actually the only country and Germany conquered back then where they couldn’t form a SS force, because most of us would rather die than fight for the Nazis. A Pole, Jan Karski, risked his life when he was smuggled into the Warsaw Ghetto to gather information. Actually when he reported those to Western leaders, they pretty much didn’t give a shit. Polish officer Witold Pilecki voluteered to go to Auschwitz to gain information on the camp. And please, NEVER say “Polish death camps”. The death camps were never Polish. They were on our territory which was taken from us by force.  Poles also fought in Britain (Polish pilots in Battle of England anyone?) and in other parts of the world. After the war ended no one gave a shit. Roosevelt and Churchill easily sold us to Soviets, so we actually became dependent on Russia yet again. We regained our independance in 1989 and were actually the first nation to break the communist regime. 

We’re no saints and the country is a mess right now. There are tons of rasist, homophobic and sexist people among us, but a lot of Poles actually fought for basic human rights for everyone, for freedom, for justice. We may be a mess, but if the times are hard, we’ll come together and fight for ourselves and for each of you, because in the end we’re all people, we all deserve the same treatment and opportunities. 

So what I wanted to say by this rant? I wanted to kindly ask POC not to paint every white person with the same brush and to not think that we’re the same as your opressors. We are not your enemy, we never were. I wanted to kindly ask opressed POC not to erase the beautiful Slavic cultures by saying that “white people have no culture”. I get you’re angry with your opressors, I can fully understand it, but it is hurtful for me as a person who doesn’t really identify with the Western culture.  I wanted to demand Western white people for more respect towards other cultures, also those of other ethnic groups of your own race. Slavs are the biggest white ethnic group in Europe, yet they are neglected and stereotyped. 

#slavic #rant #slavic culture #slavic people in mainstream media #xenophobia #slavophobia #polish #polish people #polish history #diversity #white people #white people have no culture #not all white people are the same #equality #polish pride #im probably gonna get shit for this #unpopular opinion #im such a special snowflake #social justice #white culture

[maribelvela]

ad altiora imus

we strive higher

INVOLVED → a client, her son, a “businessman” TIME FRAME → over the course of a few weeks in mid 2014 LOCATION → El Paso, Texas SUMMARY → A little threat, a little crime, a little wreck, a little deed. Something better forgotten and never to be confessed. lmao it’s 2236 words

I DIDN’T MEAN FOR THIS SHIT TO GET SO LONG. 

TL;DR maribel could be sued for law malpractice, perhaps even something criminal. after a crime boss requests the deportation of someone who witnessed a murder, maribel tries to keep her integrity together until her son is put in harm’s way. her mother instincts flare up, risking her professional reputation, she sends an innocent boy home. all in the name of motherly love and keeping your job, i guess. 

SCENE → 9AM. Dream Defenders HQ.

Maribel always approved each case that came in before it could be taken up. While it was easy to try accepting them all, she took it upon herself to vet and examine each for potential. Like every morning before, Maribel was at her desk reading through a mountain of files and summaries prepared by her employees. As the woman in charge, her own desk wasn't grand but it was separated from everyone else. She could have the privilege of privacy and quiet, but the taps of productivity were still heard. Hearing people work made her feel secure. 

Her secretary knocked and opened the door. "Ms. Vela, Mr. Santos is here for his appointment." Maribel froze, the page she was turning slipped from her finger and slowly landed. She peered over her reading glasses. "Gilbert Santos?" She knew the name.  The secretary nodded and spoke before Maribel could respond further. "I'll send him in." 

Uh, Maribel didn’t confirm that he could enter. 

His footsteps made Maribel uncomfortable, loud and obnoxious. She could only dread as to how he would talk like. He wasn't a large man, a willowy figure who couldn’t have been taller than 5′8″ but his presence took up so much space — not counting that strong waft of cologne. It made Maribel want to puke because it smelt like rotten bergamot orange. Mr. Santos put his jacket where Maribel had hung her scarf. He made himself comfortable in the seat before her desk, settling until he was still as a stone. Maribel's disposition mirrored him, yet her head pounded intensely. He leaned forward with his hands holding the chair's sides. "You're the one defending Skinner Martinez, aren't you?"

How did he know? Maribel broke their gaze, by shutting her open file and tidying the space immediately in front of her. "We're handling Ernesto Martinez's asylum claim, yes." She paused, looking back at him and raising her voice. "I can't discuss this with you. I can confirm that he's my client but whatever you’re here for, this is the most I can reveal." She sighed before standing up, walking around her table towards the door. “I’m sorry, I’m not sure why you’re here. I don’t need your likes around here so you can just head on—” Her babbling was interrupted by a thump. She turned around to see a thick envelope on her desk. Santos had sly smile. 

“Open it,” he said, before throatily chuckling. His voice was raw yet suspiciously smooth. “You’re looking at it like it’s your dead cat.” 

The two held each other’s stares once again. Oddly enough, both had ancestors dating back to Spanish Texas. They were channeling the intensity of two gun-wielding duellers. Maribel could never foresee the lawlessness of the Wild West manifested in her sleek modern office. Here she was, like the Vela forebears who defended their property against bandits like Santos. 

“If you’d stoop as low to give me ca–”  “Open it,” Santos growled. She wanted to get rid of him, but she felt reduced. It disgusted her. Maribel obeyed, if that’s what it took to rid him. She ripped the envelope open, expecting to feel dollar bills but she froze as her fingers touched glossy paper. Photographs. She took each one out, laying them in front of her. 

There was her fourteen year old son at the mall with his friends.  There was her husband on his morning jog in the park, alone.  Another shot of both having conversation outside a Starbucks. 

Gilbert knew who her family was and where they were. She couldn’t even think of how these shots had been taken: they were close distance, not far away. Their subject — her loved ones — didn’t notice anything. 

Maribel was too scared to look in Santos’ direction. She heard his voice, as he narrated each image. “Ms. Vela, you’re a smart gringa.” She raised her eyebrow. That was uncalled for. Before he could continue, Maribel mouthed under her breath. Hijo de puta. “And very direct too. Listen carefully. I want Martinez out of here. He’s trouble.” 

Son of a bitch. It was stuck in her throat. He had choked her without laying a single finger. Gilbert Santos grabbed his jacket and left. Maribel’s hands curled into fists that didn’t let go for a while. 

SCENE → 12PM. Dream Defenders HQ.

“Hey, Maribel, my lunch break might be a bit longer today. Justin and I want to try the new place around the corner.” Her secretary had most of his body hidden behind the door as he nonchalantly reported his tactical retreat. Maribel wanted to snarl. He couldn’t avoid her. 

“Rob, don’t go just yet.” The young man tensed up. “You better give me an explanation of this morning’s guest because what happened today was absolutely inexcusable.” Gilbert Santos did not have an appointment and the encounter had thrown off her focus for the rest of the day. 

Rob finally exhaled. Please breathe. Instead, he panicked. “It’s difficult to say no to a man like that. Ask anyone out there, he bust right in like he owned the place. He probably does. They call him–” 

“I know his street name, something like tiburón, shark. And his name is Gil, like gills on a shark. He’s a loan shark.” The concept was cringeworthy if it wasn’t so terrifying. “You think I don’t know this? You think I want an actual dangerous criminal under my roof?” She didn’t mean to push her frustration on the secretary. After all, she was becoming undone just like Santos probably intended. But it made her so angry, that someone like him could penetrate her organisation and just barge in like that, demand something from an honest non-profit like that. She huffed. “Why do you think he was asking about Martinez?” 

As much community engagement Maribel did, she could never be truly a part of who she served. Her staff were mostly locals, perhaps people she’d helped in the past. They knew the status of migrants better than she did, by their sheer experience. Rob was one of them. 

“He’s such a leech. My parents couldn’t get a loan for their store so uh, he approached them. God, he has ears everywhere. How could he know? Anyway, like so many others, my parents were victims to his crazy interest until—” 

Maribel interrupted her employee again. “But Ernesto doesn’t have any debt. Santos would have nothing on him.” That was certain. They worked for free but Ernesto “Skinner” Martinez had pride and savings, insisting on paying. 

“Maribel, Ernesto’s sister was shot in San Antonio last week!” Maribel put her hand up and narrowed her eyes. What? She wasn’t being rude. She had been consoling her client when he came in bawling. It was just an exclamation to her, not an explanation from Rob. He was displaying severe nervousness and struggled to further explain. “I know he came in all lamenting and shit. Okay, I heard from some people that he was there when it happened. He didn’t want to tell us because he thought it would, uh, jeopardise or ruin his application.” 

That didn’t make any sense. But obviously that’s why services like Maribel’s were needed with all this misinformation. Maribel dismissed Rob for his lunch. She flopped in her desk chair. Fuck. That’s when it started to sink in. Why couldn’t this just hit her like a wave, swift and done with? The implications of everything just collapsed on her instead, slowly burying into her conscience.

She opened the door of her private space and looked out at her team, some were still working. These were the people building her empire. When Gilbert took a shot at her heritage, he wasn’t wrong. She wasn’t a full, indigenous, Mexican. Her mother was Catholic but still European: Irish mother and peninsular father. Maribel’s father, like most Mexicans, was mestizo but that didn’t mean their family could recall their culture. As much as Maribel would’ve loved to claim one. There was a time when teenage Maribel adored civilisation. Ever the aspiring Classics major, studied Greek myths philosophy and quoted Latin phrases for fun. She decolonised her mind soon enough. The wonders and legacy of the Aztec was a civilisation. She had the blood of its empire regrettably, alongside the Spanish colonisers but still, only an Aztec descendant could have the passion and drive she had. This NGO’s office? This organisation was her own Templo Mayor. She was Mexican, no matter what that puta insisted. Gilbert Santos had the gall to cherrypick her ethnicity but was willing to con and deport a fellow Latino. This was chaos, not civilisation. 

SCENE → 2AM. Maribel’s suburban home. 

Maribel slammed her car door shut. Her son followed. She took out her mobile and dialled. “Rob, get here now. My house.” The lights were still on when they entered. Maribel’s husband (her second one) was watching a late night talk show. 

“What happened? What did the kid do?” Maribel’s son widened his eyes as if the man had insulted her mother. He really didn’t. He was there when Maribel received a call about her son being at the police station.  “I did nothing. We got jumped,” her son snapped. “Who the fuck holds some teens at gunpoint?” Getting robbed in central El Paso. That wasn’t right. Maribel’s husband sat up straight from his slouch, apologised and offered some comforting, if useless, words and reprimanded him about his language. 

Maribel had bells inside her head ringing. When they sent her down to the station, she had to be there while they questioned him. Lucky kid, with an attorney as a mother. As he recounted the incident, she picked up on some features of the crime. They were familiar. Her son was privileged and surrounded by enough affluence to not know it. But, anyone within Gilbert Santo’s vicinity would recognise it all immediately. She couldn’t believe it. The son of bitch would target a fourteen year old, one exiting the movie theatre in a decent neighbourhood with his friends. Santos was beneath sub-human. 

“Why would you even go into town that late?” Maribel had put her stuff on the kitchen counter. Her son was pouring himself some juice. He almost over-poured with Maribel’s piercing interrogation. She was a chill parent, not one that yelled. Maribel wasn’t even angry when she found the bong in his room.  “Why are you and him both riding my dick like this?” He shouted, before storming off with his juice. She wasn’t going to bother confronting him. She couldn’t blame him for being on edge, close to death even. 

Maribel’s second husband walked past him. He found Maribel teary-eyed and hunched over as both hands pressed on the counter. Her hair was all over the place. She had a wild look in her eye. At the same time, he knew her well enough to know that cogs were spinning inside that mind. She was overthinking, running out batteries like the machine she was. He started to rub her shoulders. “Not now. Work is bad too.” Maribel said immediately. Come on. Relax. He was in his pyjamas yet Maribel didn’t even change out her work clothes. The heels could’ve slain her by now. He stroked her hair, her neck, moved his hands down to her hips before wrapping them around her.  “Human warmth works in times of distress.” Cute, but they weren’t penguins. Albeit she could have let loose, let her own damn husband love her, care for her but, no...

That was the moment Rob stormed in, having rushed over since the phone call. “Your son let me in, he doesn’t seem too–” Oh. As he saw the intimacy of his boss and her husband. “Should I wait outside?” Maribel slipped out of the embrace, flustered. She kissed her husband good night and sent him off, leaving her and Rob in the kitchen. They were both visibly uncomfortable. 

“He’s done it. You know what this means,” Maribel spoke, once she knew she heard her husband go upstairs. Rob nodded, already opening files on his tablet computer. “Martinez has a solid case for asylum, Maribel, torture claimant and all. You want us to get rid of all that? Send him back?”

“Or you want us Ernesto to die for being a witness, Rob?” 

Gilbert had made it very clear. It was Ernesto Martinez or her son. 

SCENE → 2PM. USCIS Building.

She met Ernesto outside. He said that ICE were hanging round his neighbourhood. He couldn’t wait until they didn’t scare him anymore. He entered illegally, but that didn’t mean he was a bad person. The USCIS would take a while to respond to his claim, but if all they did what they usually did, they were unlikely to accept it. 

Rob and Maribel had done their best, that is, done their best to be bad at their job. They didn’t give enough details to advocate, only enough to fill the blanks. Ernesto would never know. Ernesto trusted his existence in her organisation. They knew what the officials wanted to hear on their forms. People knew that their efforts were never 100% guaranteed. But Maribel knew what she was doing, right? All they could do was wait for the system to hopefully work. 

She wished Ernesto luck and entered the building to meet another client. All she smelt was rotten orange bergamot. 

#@luna where are your replies? GREAT QUESTION #this is what happens when i drink too much black coffee #this fucked me up #I AM SECONDHAND STRESS FROM MARIBEL #omfg bitch gilbert santos scares the fuck outta me #if u want a visual: her second husband looks like alfonso herrera he is a complete rip of hernando from sense8 #froy...gutierrez...as son.....because..... #niko pepaj as rob(erto) tbh #and poor second husband??? he would've got pretty shitty by the end of their marriage #but he was a genuinely good guy in this piece #a better father than their biological one #oh my fucking god i miss writing prose #this really was only supposed to be four paragraphs max #idk how to cut this down #milv (selfpara)

[lykegenia]

The Things We Hide Ch. 5

The Southern Water Tribe stood for a hundred years against the Fire Nation, indomitable until Sozin’s Comet tipped the balance in Fire Lord Ozai’s favour. Now, as planned, the South is decimated, Chief Hakoda is a puppet on his throne, and Princess Katara is a political prisoner held in the Fire Nation capital to ensure his good behaviour. But Ozai has little time to gloat. A vigilante masquerading as the Blue Spirit is causing unrest among the people, rebel ships still hound his navy, and right under his nose the South’s most powerful waterbender waits with the patience of ice to strike at the very heart of his empire and bring it crashing down.

Chapter 1 on AO3

Words: 3048 Pairing: Zuko x Katara Chapter Summary: In the aftermath of the attack on the harbour, Zuko tries to find answers to who the mysterious waterbender is, and what she wants.

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Scrolls littered the long table in the royal library where Zuko had sat researching since even before the palace servants were awake. Every scrap of parchment on the Water Tribes the Fire Nation had archived lay in front of him in haphazard piles, from treatises on waterbending to collections of scholarly notes, but all they told him was how woefully ignorant his people were about those that lived at the ends of the world. Most of the accounts were second-hand or hearsay, and those that weren’t tended towards the sensational, and were so old that they offered nothing useful anyway.

Blearily, his rubbed his eyes and pulled yet another yellowed scroll towards him. This one was a military report written by a Lieutenant Sangon. It was about thirty years old, stained by saltwater, and told of the capture of a Southern Water Tribe ship.

Liuyue Twenty-sixth Day

In the night we came upon a bank of dense fog incongruent with the weather fifteen leagues off the shore of Whaletail Island, and knew our enemy lay within its depths, though not how many ships ranged against us. Captain Mei-Lin ordered a return to the commonly sailed patrol route, but by dawn the fog overtook us. General quarters were called, but as visibility lessened the captain decided to proceed with engines cut and fires doused so we would not give away our presence. It is well known the water vessels run on the wind and the currents they themselves manipulate, so I think her hope was we would run on the current before them.

The captain bid me consult our charts against compass and last known position in case they planned to sink us on shoals, but, reassured we were in deep waters still, she surmised their tactics would be more traditional icebergs and overwhelming waves. Our elite Cormorant Squadron stood ready to defend our sides and blast away ice attacks, while the ammunition for the prototype pivot trebuchets were readied with pitch and spark powder.

The Water Tribe attack came estimated an hour before sunrise. Our only warning was the crack of ‘lightning ice’ that froze the propellers solid, before two Southern Tribe ships breached the fog off our port stern.

Zuko found his fingers creasing the edges of the paper as he read on, only too able to imagine the fear those firebenders faced against enemies who could encase them in ice or send water whips out of the sea to pluck them to their doom. Only the unexpected power of the then-new deck mounted trebuchets had kept the ship from being totally lost, as the shot loaded into them had been designed to shatter and spread explosive flame on impact – more than a match for the flammable wooden hulls of the Water Tribe.

In the end, one of the enemy ships had sunk with a gaping hole in the starboard keel, and the other had suffered a lucky shot that brought down the mast and all but snapped the vessel in two. Lieutenant Sangon described the aftermath with unprofessionally graphic detail, but Zuko hardly noticed.

Under my orders the hands followed procedure in taking account of the casualties and clearing the deck of the debris from the forward trebuchet. The fog around us cleared enough to allow the sun to filter through, and it roused heartiness in us all. The light let us spot a figure among the flotsam of the destroyed ship, a young woman in the garb and war paint of a waterbender, though through my glass I saw her bleeding heavily from a wound on the scalp.

Thinking to create some return for the tragedy of Captain Mei-Lin’s death, I ordered the boat out, and the girl was brought back in chains, to many jeers from the men in the crew. Their display left a sour taste in my mouth, for all she had tried her best to kill us all not moments before.

I conclude my report with a note on the waterbender’s condition. It is lucky we picked her up in such an incoherent state, otherwise it is certain she would have followed the example of her captured brethren before we could begin to question her. Her wounds have been treated, but for her own safety and ours we are keeping her drugged with wortroot, which has the added bonus of supressing qi should she manage to shake off sleep.

We estimate Gaolong Harbour in three days, and will submit our guest to the port authorities at that time.

In my own hand

Acting Captain Sangon Zushin

Rubbing the back of his neck to ease the ache, Zuko sat back, tapping his fingers against the table. The report mentioned the Southern waterbender had her face painted, and that in the attack some of the crew were killed by strands of water rising from the ocean like the tentacles of a giant squid-topus. Although this was the best corroboration he had found so far, it was still a tenuous link to what he had observed two nights before at the docks.

Rumours had already begun to gust around the capital. Witnesses to the disaster swore it was the work of angry spirits; Officials scoffed and said it was an act of sabotage, committed by a group of rebel benders intent on destroying the lives of helpless Fire Nation citizens. Only time would tell which story the people would take as truth, but already the harbour swam with offerings of flowers and rice thrown down to try and appease whatever god was powerful enough to destroy three ten-deck troop carriers single-handed.

As for Zuko, he knew with certainty the woman the Blue Spirit confronted that night was human. This raised more questions than it answered, however. Was the saboteur alone or did she have a network of hidden waterbenders helping her? And if she did, why attack at night? Such power as she demonstrated would have made short work of any soldiers sent to stop her, so was it merely convenience that she had waited until the docks were quiet, or was it conscience? Considering the scale of the disaster, very few of the ships’ skeleton crews had been killed in the attack, and more than one report mentioned feeling the waves push them onto the breakwater, heavy armour and all.

Zuko groaned and buried his face in his hands.

“Prince Zuko?”

“Yes?”

The elderly librarian shuffled forward, a new stack of papers in his arms. “You wanted the tactical reports from the Southern Conquest.”

“Ah, thank you.” He pushed out of his chair so he could relieve the old man of his burden. “You know you could get one of your assistants to help me.”

“No, I could not,” the librarian replied, waving his prince’s concerns away. “It would dishonour you to have one of those bumbling children getting in the way of your research. Besides, it does these old bones some good to get about a bit.” He wheezed a laugh and cracked the stiffness out of his knuckles. “Might I ask what all of this is in aid of, Prince Zuko? I haven’t seen you this studious in years.”

“I’ve had other things to think about,” Zuko replied testily. “Do I need a reason?”

“Of course not, of course not.” The librarian held up his hands in good-natured surrender. “Just tell me if you require anything further.” He shuffled off again, leaving Zuko to his alcove and his privacy.

The biggest problem, the prince observed wryly to himself as he flitted through the newest stack of documents, was that nobody had any real clue about the capabilities of waterbenders. Every naval report spoke about them with a sort of reverent fear, and it had taken the power of Sozin’s Comet to finally bring their society to its knees, but there was no empirical value set on their abilities, either the range or the volume of water an individual could manipulate at any one time. He supposed that reflected the subtle nature of their element, but the Fire Nation’s lack of knowledge had more to do with lack of subjects – captured waterbenders never lived for very long.

Still, he found it difficult to believe one person could be powerful enough to cause so much destruction - apart from the avatar, of course. His uncle would have known. Once, before everything went wrong, Iroh had encouraged Zuko’s curiosity about the other nations. He had said understanding other cultures was the true key to bringing peace after conquest, but then Lu Ten had died at the siege of Ba Sing Se, and the once revered Dragon of the West had betrayed his own men, ordering a retreat when they could have pressed on and assured victory. When the soldiers rebelled, their general had been caught in the blast of the Avatar’s power, his body torn apart by the elements.

Official records left out the true circumstances of Crown Prince Iroh’s death, but afterwards Ozai made it clear to his son that an open-minded attitude towards the other cultures of the world would no longer be tolerated. Iroh’s weakness in the face of the cursed avatar became a lesson in the perils of mercy.

But the avatar was far away in the Earth Kingdom, the last of the Air Nomads alive and well, busy stirring up rebellion against Fire Nation colonisers. The bender he encountered at the harbour was definitely not an Air Nomad, and there was no mistaking her shape underneath her clothes. He felt his cheeks warm at the memory and fisted his hands on the table to try and regain control of his fire. Royal princes did not become flustered at the mere thought of beautiful women, especially ones who were such a threat to shipping.

Was she beautiful, though? Under the war paint, did she have dark skin like that of others of the Water Tribe? Was it smooth and soft, or chafed by sea winds? What shape were her lips? He hadn’t been able to see the colour of her eyes in the darkness, but they were fierce.

He groaned again and pinched his fingers to the bridge of his nose.

--

The lattices of Katara’s private chambers were all open, but no breeze could be tempted in from the baking garden. If anything, the scorching heat of the sun had only increased since the day before, as if trying to squeeze the last moisture from the earth before the arrival of the winter rains. The still, dry air made Katara fidget under her sweat-drenched sheets, her fever slow to cool.

The influence of the full moon and the rush of her own daring had allowed her to destroy not one but all three of the ships moored in the harbour. Even in her delirium she remembered the savagery of her joy at being able to unleash her full power and strike at the heart of her enemy. She felt again and again the scream of tearing metal as she smashed the Ryujo against the breakwater, only now the tremors lanced through her body instead.

At the time she hadn’t realised how much energy she was using, too busy focussed on the flow of water in her hands. Afterwards, though, when she dragged herself back through the dimming streets, she had felt the tug of fatigue slowing every step as if stones pulled at her feet.

She woke sometime the next afternoon to the caress of healing water on her forehead. Linara sat over her, the healer’s smooth face scrunched in concern as she tried to map the splintered lines of qi through Katara’s body. Hama stood at the foot of the bed, her hands framed into rigid lines as she froze the air into powdery ice over her charge’s wrists and ankles. That was how she remembered the hours, in snatches of consciousness as shadows from the window trailed across the room, with her guardians working in seamless, unending tandem to bring her back from the dark.

Now, Katara sat in a pile of cushions with the vile taste of some reviving tonic lingering at the back of her throat. She focussed on separating the dank flavours to work out what they forced down her throat, because the alternative was having to look Hama in the eye.

She had never seen the old woman so angry.

“What were you thinking?” the old general demanded. “It’s a blessing you weren’t seen – or captured! What do you think would happen to our people, to all our well-laid plans, if they find out it was you who destroyed those ships in the harbour?”

“I couldn’t sit by and do nothing! Those ships were going to take soldiers to the Earth Kingdom, and now they can’t,” Katara retorted. She glanced down at where her hands lay in her lap. “And nobody caught me,” she added sullenly. “So they aren’t going to find out it was me.”

Ham sniffed. “And how will you explain your current state when the guard comes to interrogate us?” She threw up her hands. “You never think things through! Always impetuous, always taking on more than you can handle. They’ll be looking for waterbenders, girl.”

“General, please,” interrupted Linara. “This can be saved for another time. Katara needs rest.”

“She needs sense knocked into her. Where’s a glacier when you need one.”

“I’m sorry, Sifu,” Katara mumbled as Hama turned to stomp out.

The general hesitated in the doorway. “No you’re not,” she grunted. “You’re pleased with yourself. I hope you still are when all of our sacrifices come to nothing.”

Katara watched her teacher cross the garden and round a corner towards the kitchens, the blue-clad form shimmering under the intensity of the sun. She bit her lip. Everyone had risked so much for her, and Hama was right: the lives of too many people depended on her staying in the good graces of the Fire Lord as a political hostage, too demure to be a threat and too important to be thrown away. To be found out as a waterbender…

Tomorrow, she would make a proper apology, when exhaustion no longer clawed at her bones and made her head swim.

Linara tactfully chose that moment to replace her healing water, running her fingers along the rim of the turtleshell bowl she had received when she attained the rank of Master Healer. At twenty-five, she was one of the most gifted students in the school, hand-chosen to be part of Katara’s entourage, to protect the young princess in the polar bear-dog’s den, and to keep the skills and talents of the Southern Water Tribe safe, hidden in plain sight in case Hama’s plan failed. The bone beads threaded into the locks at her temples clicked as she kneeled once more at Katara’s bedside.

“All that bluster is just worry for you,” she said kindly. “The general’s actually quite impressed. We all are.”

She lay her hands against Katara’s fevered skin, one on her abdomen while the other smoothed a healing glow along her legs and down over her feet. Tension eased out of the Water Tribe princess, resignation settling in its place.

“Dad’s going to be so angry when he finds out.”

“He may be angry that you put yourself in danger,” the healer calmly replied. “But nobody can deny how far this will set back the Fire Nation war effort. Each of those ships was worth two thousand soldiers at least, and now it’s unlikely they’ll get to the Earth Kingdom in time to relieve the soldiers already there. Mark my words, it’s a gap that’ll be exploited. If there’s anyone who can make the most of this, it’s -”

“Don’t remind me,” Katara interrupted, burying her head in her hands. “That’s another person who’s going to be mad at me.”

The healer grinned. “Not looking forward to Mimi’s next letter?”

“No.”

“It might not be so bad. The Fire Navy will be short three of its biggest assets until they can replace them. That’s at least six months of unchecked piracy. The Third Fleet will be busy.”

Katara pushed herself out of her pile of cushions, gnawed by an unexpected concern. “And how many people will be worked to death to get new ships ready in six months?”

Linara’s hands paused against Katara’s skin, her smile hardened into a frown as she brought her fingers up to touch the carved pendant at her throat. The once-beautiful image carved in the mother-of-pearl was marred by a deep, deliberate scratch.

“That’s not our problem.”

“Isn’t it? It’ll be my fault.”

“There’s more suffering in this place than any one person could hope to change,” Linara snorted. “Don’t make yourself responsible for a society where the nobility break the backs of peasants to avoid stepping in the mud.”

“But -”

“If you want to help them, see this through. Care if you must, but remember you’re the only one who will.”

They lapsed into silence, Linara’s thoughts her own and Katara’s wandering back to the moonlit pier and the man with the twin swords who had confronted her there. At the time, she had been too surprised to notice much more than the glint of moonlight on steel and the gruesome mask leering through the darkness, but when the guards stole his attention and allowed her to get away, she had looked back. He moved through them with perfect control, chaos poised by discipline. Her father’s troops were well trained, but she had never seen anyone fight like that. His black clothes were loose, made of material that wouldn’t rustle as he moved, but Katara could imagine the lithe muscles beneath. He would not be bulky, like Water Tribe men used to hauling fishing lines, fed a steady diet of fish and meat. Was he a native of the capital, or somewhere else? What colour were his eyes? Most importantly, what had he been doing at the harbour that night?

“Katara?”

She blinked and found Linara watching her.

“Are you alright?”

“I was just wondering…” Katara paused, finding the right smokescreen for her interest. “I heard some of the Fire Nation soldiers talking. You’ve been to the market. What are people saying about a man in a blue mask?”

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Deserts are too large but I love them.

!!!TRIGGER WARNING!!!: FRANK DESCRIPTIONS OF HISTORIC ABUSE, DOMESTIC VIOLENCE, FGM, C-PTSD, BIPOLAR, DEPRESSION - Please be careful about this post if you are not well or if you might be triggered by discussions of the impact of past abuse or any of the elements listed above. I don't want to censor myself but I also don't want to harm anyone. Take care of yourself.

-

Deserts are too large but I love them.

Part 1.

-

I think back sometimes to my younger days. I came from somewhere, right? I must have.

But which where?

I was born out of place and wearing the wrong colour in the frozen North, then dragged back to a semi-arid Motherland where I still didn't fit despite being brown, then to the land of the colonisers and back and forth between these 3 vastly different places over 30 years. Snowy coniferous forests to dry deserts and monsoon rains to demure farmland and mossy national parks. It would be safe to say that I have never lived anywhere for longer than 9 consecutive years, more often a lot less.

I fit in nowhere, I got on with no one, and I've left so many people behind that I'm no longer the same person. I've left who they thought I was behind too. I wouldn't be surprised if some folks thought of me as the dead. I may as well be.

Even leaving my family of origin was not enough to feel safe. I still look over my shoulder expecting to be hunted.

Why shouldn't I jump at every shadow, question every person who speaks to me and acts friendly? I don't know you. I don't know what's crawling in the back of your head and hiding in your heart. My trust has fossilised and is now hard-won. It's too valuable to give away, too expensive to be honestly shared. I expect you to let me down.

I don't belong to anywhere and I don't belong to any one. My accent can sometimes be the only indicator that I am an emotional nomad.

-

I feel shame coming from so many directions, mostly from myself but also from others around me.

My first shame was waking in the night hearing my Parents fight. I must have been 3, no older. I remember feeling like the world was ending because I was listening to things I shouldn't be hearing, sounds that even I understood I should never have known about. I remember that was the first time I started to grasp that something was amiss around me. Something was not right... I was only aware of a thick sensation of dread arising in me out of nowhere, for no apparent reason, overwhelming in intensity. From a look or a sudden movement or the dropping and shattering of glass. I would closely watch adults around me because I never knew when the scary things would be happening. That is how I learned hyper-vigilance.

Shortly after that, I have another memory which I have gone over many times, unsure if it was deliberate or accidental (or whether intention even matters). My father placing an iron on the back of my right hand around the age of 3 or 4, as he was ironing his shirt. I still have the scar, like a horizontal crescent or a smile without eyes. I remember that it hurt a lot but that I was not allowed to cry. I remember that he apologized and I got to have my way for a little while as a reward for not crying too much; there was also a sense that crying too much would invite adult anger. That is how I learned to suppress my tears.

There are moments of love and caring interspersed with moments of utter dread and confusion. My mother took me abroad one day - there's a picture of little me chasing pigeons in a certain square in London but I no longer have the image, only the memory - and when we came home again for whatever reason, my father was very nice and made us scrambled eggs with ketchup which I usually wasn’t allowed. This happened once. I remember hoping that things were okay now, that he did love us and there would be no more hurts and weeping in the night. Of course that was not the case. That is how I learned to divide myself and think 2 things at once (hope for peace but prepare for danger).

More or other feelings of shame are attached to the years I spent in kindergarten.

I was very good at holding my pee in because I often had to at night, but for whatever reason one day at kindergarten I was stuck and had to pee in my pants at the time. I remember feeling so ashamed because I didn't know what to do and I didn't want to tell anyone because I didn't want people to be mad at me. I hid my pants and tried to lie about what had happened, but a kindergarten-adult figured it out and I remember feeling shocked that they were nice to me and didn't hurt me. That is when I understood that kindergarten was safe but home was not. I wonder now as an adult if they knew or suspected something wasn't right. I wish they'd said something. 

I remember my Mother coaching me on what to say to the kindergarten-adults if I had bruises on my arms or legs and they asked about it. I didn’t quite understand why or what the big deal was at the time, but I remember being confused that my Parents didn’t like it when I lied to get out of trouble. The fact that they fully expected me to lie to get Them out of some form of ‘trouble’ (because they behaved as though they had done something naughty) proved that lying was a reasonable tactic to use any time I wanted to avoid some consequence. That is when I learned to lie effectively and on the fly, and even to believe in my own lies so that they became what had actually happened. I used this power whenever I needed it, and my Parents were often the target of those lies. Frankenstein kid.

Whilst still in kindergarten, around age 4-5, I was forced to take part in a  ceremony which was religious in origin but not at all serious or intense - a lighthearted tradition. The nice kindergarten adults would not let me sit it out and I didn't know how to explain that me doing this would lead to beatings at home because I was being disobedient to my Parents’ God, Allah. The nice kindergarten adults thought I was just being shy. I was not. Predictably, when the little ceremony was aired on local TV I got beaten at home because I took part in something I didn't have the agency to decline doing, being only 4 or 5 years old. This is when I learned that logic doesn't work on the Parents. This was when I started getting angry.

Curiously, I was given my only ever birthday party at 5 years old. Never before and never since.

Fast forward several years until I'm between 7 and 10 years old. Home is still wrong and still unsafe. I was sent home from school one day with a Letter to my Parents. I felt like I was having a heart attack. I gave it to my Mother first because she was less antagonistic and her beatings were not so severe. I saw in her face that it was Serious Business and it turns out it was. We hid it from my Father, that it was an Appointment to see the school Psychologist. My Mother hissed at me that I was not to disclose anything and not to tell anybody what was Going on At Home or 'They Would Take Me Away'. Ever the pragmatic kid, I asked where I would be taken away to and how this process worked. My Mother was not happy and went to great lengths to describe how awful it would be if 'They' took me and broke up my family and how everyone would be hurt and deeply sad and that this would most definitely be My Fault. I didn't want to hurt her and siblings did I? I didn't want to betray them to the foreigners in whose country we lived and who threatened to destroy our culture and values at every turn, Did I? When I went to the appointment a few days later I remember feeling absolutely terrified that I would single-handedly cause the doom of my family and so I said nothing, admitted to nothing and just sat there suffering. When I went home to give my report, my Mother looked relaxed and pleased with herself and I realised that I had been played. That is when I learned that my Parents would use me if it suited their needs and I began to stop trusting them. I became more angry and mulled over the event for a long time, and to this day I regret not saying anything to the psychologist lady.

I remember my Mother whining to me around this age about my Father and how horrid he was towards her. I remember looking at her, deeply disgusted and disturbed. I simply said to her "Why don't you leave." (I knew what divorce was as I was a voracious reader). I don't remember what she said to me but whatever it was I must not have been too impressed.

This was also the age around which my migraines and stomach aches began. I think I must have been stressed the fuck out. I spent days lying in bed, unable to move or talk much. I’m sure I faked some days so that I would be left alone in blissful solitude, free to read a few books and not have to talk to anybody or justify why I wasn’t being a Good Student and in school. Those were the only days I knew peace.

-

Suddenly we moved to the desert. Not all of us, just Mother, Siblings and me. Father would remain behind, nobly sacrificing his time with his family to do...??? Nobody told me, but I wasn’t impressed. I remember telling people we were leaving and nobody understood why. I couldn't understand it myself. I said goodbye to childhood friends, not fully understanding that I would never see them again in my life, and got dragged away to someplace without explanation or justification. This is when the last of my trust in my parents began to erode.

We moved into the desert.

By this time I was a maudlin child, prone to fits of anger, stealing and acting out. Coming to Africa (I won't disclose where) was not fun. We landed on a sunny afternoon in the worst heat I have ever experienced and shortly after we arrived, I became deathly ill from something in the water. I spent long days with an IV in my arm, staring out into a featureless desert with distant ruins so degraded they looked more like natural formations than old building. The desert was beige and dry and far too large. I stared at it for days, weeks, perhaps months. I was feverish and delirious with nightmares and simmering, barely contained rage. I couldn’t speak the language very well. It was an isolation.

Eventually I recovered but something had burned away with the long fever I had experienced. I became angrier and more pitiless than ever before. I think I was depressed, looking back now, but at the time I felt empty. I was someplace strange, with no friends and with no Home, where every day felt the same and looked the same and where everyone who came to observe the foreign girl judged me to be a false, defective, wilful, not-quite-right girl. I looked like them, I had the same skin colour (too dark for some) and face but some ill-defined thing was wrong with me. I stared too much, I talked back too much, I was never agreeable and I always stood my ground. I also still didn’t speak the language very well. I remember some relation slapping me in the face the first time she met me because I "should be cooking and cleaning". Bitch, nobody taught me how to! I never forgave her and hated that bitch forever after, glaring at her anytime she came near. My Mother seemed shocked at my behaviour but overall ignored me as she finally felt she was home and had her people around her, including a housekeeper. It was the fucking time of her life. For me however, this time is when I learned that my needs were unimportant to everyone around me so long as I stayed silent and out of the way, so long as I did what I was told and kept to myself. And so I did, getting to know myself and learning how to care for myself so that I could remain sane and functional. I learned to finish tasks or just plain ignore them when I didn’t feel like I wanted to comply, but above all, to keep to myself.

I spent days sitting on the roof of our house or roaming the city. There was no electricity, no video games and no TV, no school... those days were the emptiest days I had experienced yet. I just existed, day-to-day, my boredom punctuated by flurries of violence and intense fear. People chased a man into our house one night and took him away by force; they were armed and we never heard anything about it. Unfocused gangs of feral boys roamed the neighbourhood, to be avoided like the plague because they were ‘not nice to girls’, a euphemism for sadistic violence and possible rape. One day I stood at the corner of our street and saw an actual tank moving in the distance, followed by large groups of people and armed soldiers and eventually the abrupt, clacking noise of bullets being fired. I was told this was a ‘protest’ and that it had gone ‘unusually well’. Another time a baboon broke into the house, terrorised the maid and escaped with a good portion of our dinner. Nothing made sense; there was constant chaos outside and inside the house; and of course the usual chaos of my Parents and their toxic, unpredictable behaviour. Father would ring the house at all hours of the day, constantly, mad with paranoia and constantly on edge, easily angered. We had to have 3-4 phone lines installed because he would call, check, wait a while and call again. He constantly checked on everything, cross-interrogating me, the siblings and then Mother. Eventually, She would retire to a room and close the door behind Her. I felt pity for Her then, but the pity would dwindle as I left and enjoyed the rest of my day. You can imagine this behaviour became worse when mobile phones became available about a decade later. Looking back, this seems to be evidence of some deep paranoia, mistrust and perhaps projection/subconscious realisation that we were all much more happy without him around.

-

I became less and less trustful, more and more tight-lipped, and began spending more time teaching myself things like cooking, cleaning, writing and how to care of my growing body. I insisted on being enrolled into school and resumed my education, I was growing away and trying to separate my emotions from what was around me to preserve the integrity of my own mental health. In essence, I lived alone within the family home, preferring to spend time by myself and to learn the life skills I needed so that one day, somehow, I could get away. Getting away became more than a dream, more than a nice fantasy; it became a singular obsession, the one goal towards which I directed all my energies. I made the mistake of talking about it openly, of laughing about it and enjoying the look on people’s faces when I said that this is what I was planning to do with my life. That shortly I would be heading out of there; that I would take the first chance I could get to get the fuck out of there and never contact any of them again.

Perhaps that’s where my Mother got the idea to do what she did then. Perhaps She didn’t like my flirtations with the neighbour boy, didn’t like me becoming independent, confident and growing away from the rest of them. Perhaps She got pressured into it. I don’t know. Whatever her reasoning, She planned to do something to me that I still to this day never expected from Her. Where I was always expecting to receive the most harm from my Father, I realised in hindsight that I should have been wary of Her. My Father got a polished and false version of me - my Mother saw and heard my truth and demonstrated that she found me to be intolerable. So she betrayed me.

She planned and organised for me to undergo FGM. I think I was 12 at the time. I will not go into the details of it in this post, suffice it to say that it was extremely traumatising and I was far too old for this to happen. My power was taken away, I was stripped of agency and my confidence was completely shattered. It was all done by a group of women including her; surprisingly, not only were no men involved in the process or plan, my Father had no idea (he claims but I kinda believe him) that this was going to happen. The sheer depth of her betrayal sent my anger into overdrive. An unimaginable 2 or 3 weeks happened. Like the last time I was seriously ill, I spent time confined in bed, unable to move, delirious and experiencing nightmare after endless nightmare. This is when I stopped trusting in anybody completely. This is when my plan to escape became a grim mission in life. I never again spoke to my Mother without contempt in my voice. I did everything in my power to continue my solitude and my need to be independent manifested itself in every way possible, down to not asking for the slightest amount of help.

FGM broke me deeply, but it also made me cognisant of the power and vulnerability of my sex. I became more acutely aware of gender, of the power imbalance between the women and men in the society where I lived. It brought home to me how vulnerable a woman can be in the world (some areas of the world were and remain far more dangerous than others). I saw how women were vulnerable at home and vulnerable outside the home. 

I also embraced and enjoyed my own sexuality, feeling a deep connection to myself in that way and fighting back against the shame that everyone wanted to indoctrinate into me. I didn’t give in even though that was the tougher path, even though it took every ounce of my strength and power to remain myself and keep myself from disintegrating. 

I spent long stretches of time on my own. I was deeply damaged and took solace from the silence of the desert, the emptiness and timelessness of the arid land. I sat and contemplated my past and my future. The desert was hot and everything within it was very pale, stripped of colour by the stark, heartless sun. Yet it was not empty of life - here a small lizard crept by, there a large turtle trundled along moving deceptively quickly, soon a small moving rock on the horizon. Goats and camels came and went. People were distant dots on the landscape. I walked through the desert barefoot, looking for answers or for relief from pain but there was no reply. The desert could not take my pain away but it was large enough to accept it. The desert was large enough so that I was a small, safe speck within its expanse. I could scream, shout, fling things around and lie in the dirt, and I could watch the sun go down and the Milky Way slowly rise to take its place.

Deserts are too large, but I love them for it.

#triggering topics #triggering content #abuse #tw cptsd

[joneswilliam72]

The 405 meets Stella Donnelly: “sometimes you can only really tell something in video or art or music”

Stella Donnelly is hard to pin down. Ever exuberant and cheerful in public, she has an unseen dark side that comes out in her music. It’s easy to take her as a light-hearted person on the surface, but the topics of her songs belie the exterior, showing that she has wells of anger, self-criticism and harshness hidden behind her brilliant smile. This is what resonated so deeply on her debut EP Mechanical Bull a couple of years ago, and something which has grown even bolder and more pronounced on debut full length Beware of the Dogs, which is out this Friday.

Fortunately for me, Donnelly’s bright persona was well intact on the January morning that we met, with no signs of her having come off a plane from Australia the day before. Speaking at hyper-speed throughout our chat, we managed to cover a wide range of topics that are addressed by her on her record, from Australian nationalism to heartbreak to her parents. Even when we did come to speak about the less pleasant things that she discusses on Beware of the Dogs, she maintained a positive attitude, laughing or looking to a brighter future as she explained her thoughts.

If you haven’t already caught the Stella Donnelly bug, then hopefully the below chat will give you the primary infection, before the release of Beware of the Dogs really drives it deep into your system.

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I was a little surprised at first that you'd recorded with a band, since the Mechanical Bull EP was just you and guitar, what made you decide to do that?

Well I initially was planning to do it just me and guitar, but then the more that I wrote the more that I needed a bass line in that bit, or the more I just imagined the textures of different things. I tried to really make sure that I only used the band if I needed it, so you can hear that there's a lot of songs on there that are solo still, but I felt that I was ready. I tried to work with bands a long time ago for my stuff, but I don't think I had the maturity to be able to articulate what I wanted from people and how I wanted it to sound. But the band I have is so amazing.

How did you end up with them?

They're all my best friends! Jenny, George and I played in a punk band together, and Talya, my drummer, her and I played in a grunge band together back in the day - that's Boat Show and Bells Rapids. So we all played in various outfits together, so I knew that we could tour and I knew that we could be around each other. I mean, essentially, when you're choosing someone to play with it's who you can get along with the most, I think that should be the first port of call in choosing someone, and they're just the most beautiful people and we have the biggest laughs. They were such a joy to have around the studio. Having someone to bounce my ideas off is so valuable. They were great.

Did you practice before the studio?

We did, we spent two weeks at my house just jamming these songs out. But I actually wrote a lot of the album whilst I was recording it. We had all these other songs we were going to record, but after everyone would go home I would just stay in the studio with the piano or the guitar and continue working on things, and then I found myself writing all these new songs and ditched a lot of the old ones and put these new ones in. They felt so much more synonymous with where I was at at the time.

Which ones are they?

'Old Man', I kind of came up with the first piece of 'Old Man' a year ago, but then that came together as a whole new thing. 'Tricks' I wrote on the fly, 'Beware of the Dogs' I wrote in the studio, 'Allergies' I wrote the day before the album was finished and recorded the day after I wrote it, and 'Bistro'... yeah probably half the album was written as I was going; I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Well you've listed a number of my favourite songs on it, so I think it's definitely a good thing. What's happened to those other songs that got replaced?

They're all still kind of in the works, but a lot of them I felt were old songs that I was like "I don't know if I've got enough songs to do an album so I'll put those in it," that kind of mind-set of feeling a little bit rushed to do it, but they might see the light of day one day - maybe not... hopefully not.

What about the inclusion of 'Boys Will Be Boys', which was on the EP a couple of years ago, was that your decision?

It was a suggestion from a friend of mine, and I think I was having a good day that day because I just kind of went for it, maybe on another day I would've been like "nooo." But I'm really glad I made that choice because unfortunately that song still needs to be sung, as far as I'm concerned. I feel like not enough is being done, but the #MeToo campaign is not over, it can't be over yet because things haven't been fixed properly. I feel like the more people that hear that song the better, not that I'm claiming to be the anthem of the #MeToo movement at all - in fact there are people out there who are saying it better than I am - but if I can help and be part of that then... that's why I included it. And I still really feel that song, I feel the other songs [from the EP] a bit too, but 'Boys Will Be Boys' still really upsets me, it's still relevant with me and where I'm at.

And there's plenty of songs on the album that tie in with the theme, like 'Old Man'. Once you wrote that song did you know it would be the lead single?

No! I knew that it was the cheekiest track, I knew that it was going to be called inflammatory, but once we got it all done and did all the drums and everything I fell in love with it, I loved how it came together. I'm really happy that it's come out first, because I'm still saying what I need to say.

The vocal's quite vicious, although you call it cheeky, there's a little bit of anger too.

Definitely. I guess because it's surrounded by that sweet sounding music... it's definitely angry, but it's a bit more reflective than 'Boys Will Be Boys'; it's looking at what's happened, and written post-#MeToo, whereas I wrote 'Boys Will Be Boys' when no one was talking about it. I've written 'Old Man' more in the way of "things have changed and are you gonna change with it or not?"

What kind of feeling do you get from the progress of the #MeToo campaign?

It makes me cautiously optimistic. I definitely feel like the pendulum has swung back a little bit, but I think conversations need to be more inclusive, with everyone in our society. The #MeToo movement felt really strange and eerie, and I think as long as these conversations remain between all the genders, and stay calm, I think it'll be good.

I think music has had a lot of impact in the movement, there have been a lot of songs that have really pushed that message to the forefront of public consciousness.

Absolutely. I feel like sometimes you can only really tell something in video or art or music; sometimes it's the more subtle things that you can't really get through in just a Facebook post or chatting to people. Someone like Julia Jacklin really manages to tell these really subtle nuanced stories in her songs; 'Body' and 'Head Alone' both do that. It's a complex thing she's talking about, it's in a relationship sense, and she manages to get that across.

Camp Cope did that too - a lot of it's coming out of Australia.

Camp Cope, yes, definitely! They just say what they need. Julia's a bit more subtle in the way she does it, but Camp Cope just go out and yell it, and that needs to be yelled, things like that. 'The Opener', within Australia that song has done so much good for female artists and non-binary artists. Super grateful for Camp Cope.

Let's talk about 'Beware of the Dogs', the title track of the album, you said that was one of the ones you wrote in the studio; how did it end up as the title track and where did that metaphor come from?

I wrote that song about the Australian psyche and the overall atmosphere that we have around Australian pride and Australian nationalism. Australia is a very racist country, and a say that from a very privileged platform of being a white Australian, I acknowledge that my privelege allows me to say that. In our political system and in our media, in everything it's just drenched in this kind of racist ownership of Australia. We've essentially abolished so much of our ancient culture, that's 60,000 years old, if not more, and not only that but our immigration policies - Trump complemented our Prime Minister on our immigration policies, so I don't know what that tells you. It's a fucking nightmare essentially.

So I wrote that song just about the taste in the mouth of many Australians, and this divide, but obviously from a very privileged place. 'Beware of the Dogs' is kind of about the politicians. Not to rag on all politicians, not all politicians are dogs.

What about the chorus image "there's an architect setting fire to her house/ all the plans were there but they built it inside-out."

Yeah, it's like there were all of these incredibly detailed and complex systems that our indigenous people had in place to preserve the land, and they know so much more of where we live than we will ever know - our sunburnt bloody white arses - so essentially it's like they've built this thing and we've come in and completely turned it inside out. I'm sure that any places that have been colonised can relate to that.

You mentioned that Camp Cope just say what they need to say, but I feel that you do that sometimes too.

Yes... Yeeeeaaaahh... [laughs].

'U Owe Me' is one, 'Tricks' as well. The people you're writing about in these songs will recognise themselves if they hear it.

Yes [laughs]. Absolutely, I hope they do. But that comes with a little bit of "oh god what have I done?" and mum and dad going "Stella! What are you doing?? Stop causing trouble!" But they obviously support me and all of that, and I got it from them anyway, so it's their fault. But yeah 'Tricks' is definitely in a similar vein; it's very Australia-centric in that way, and making fun of people who have Southern Cross tattoos, which is essentially a nationalist pride symbol, I guess you could compare it with the Confederate Flag, it's like white Australian pride. I'm just trying to playfully pull the piss out of that "culture" (I say that with inverted commas).

Does it feel good to write a song like that?

It does! It really does! Sometimes when I'm playing it on stage I'm like "I hope no one in this crowd has a Southern Cross tattoo," but at the same time this is why I wrote it, so I've gotta deal with it. It's a funny feeling. When you're writing it in the safety of a studio or your bedroom it doesn't feel that crazy, but then all of a sudden it's getting played on radio you're like "oh shit, didn't think that one through, but that's alright."

But there's some heartbreak songs on here too. You have to have that side too.

Absolutely. That was a tough time when I was recording the album, I had kind of a relationship break down, and during the whole album process a lot of those songs were written as I was going through that. There is this narrative throughout of that taking place. It was really handy for me, doing the album, because I could really process things day to day, and I didn't really want to go home, so I spent a lot of time in that place.

As brutal as you can be to others, you can be that brutal to yourself as well.

Oh yeah definitely. I deserve it.

Like in 'Mosquito' you're not just a mosquito but a "malaria mosquito."

Yeah [Laughs]. Yeah, that's pretty harsh.

I really like the production on 'Mosquito', as that is essentially just you on guitar but there's a lot of atmosphere too, was that your idea?

Thank you for saying that, I'm actually quite proud of that song. I was listening to a lot of Adrianne Lenker at the time, she had just put out 'Cradle', and you could hear that she did this natural reverb on her voice where she was humming the melody of what she was singing, just humming it in the background, and it sounded like a plate reverb effect, so I thought "I'm gonna give that a shot." So thanks Adrianne! I'll send you some royalties for that... Then I just decided to harmonise that, so I made a bit of a wall of sound there, then I added a little double bass thing right in the last bar and some piano. It was really fun creating that little song, so I'm glad you like it.

I just saw Adrianne last week. It was incredible.

Oh my god, isn't she incredible?

I've rarely seen someone look so natural with a guitar in their hands.

Yes, she's one of our best guitarsits in this day and age. [Big Thief] played in Australia without Buck, and she had to take those solos and those parts and she just shone, it was amazing.

You were doing a lot of travelling last year, was that the inspiration for 'Lunch'?

Yes. Once I'm actually away I feel really great, and once I'm on the road I really enjoy it and I feel really lucky. But that week before I leave I really struggle, it's that transition. I often get it when I get home as well, I feel a bit detached, it takes me a couple of days to sink back into that comfort of being around everyone again. I guess it's about that anxiety. I also have a bad fear of flying, so the idea of having to get on 24-hour flight to get anywhere... That song's really emotional, I still get emotional now listening to it and playing it.

I'm curious about the line "you cry like an army."

That's just kind of I guess trying to present an idea of masculinity that isn't always toxic or hyper-masiculine.

And for an album that has so much attitude and fun, the last 2 songs are quite a heavy way to end. Was that intentional?

No... I don't really know... it just kind of all fell into place that way. 'Watching Telly' is quite heavy. I wrote it in Dublin on the day of the vote on the abortion laws. I happened to play in Dublin that day; I got there and all these signs were there, it was really intense. Thank god they voted the right way. But that brought all of that up; Australia has really interesting laws about abortion, it's based on what state you're in, and a lot of our states are still catching up on our human rights and those sort of things. I thought I felt I needed to write something about that.

It's a true story then?

Yeah it's based on my experience when I was 20 and having to go through something like that. It was weird bringing all that stuff back up, because I'm 26 now and having to go back to that, but I felt like I hadn't really processed that event in my life.

And the album finishes with 'Face It', which is another break up song.

Yeah, it's just another break up song [laughs].

But although it's obviously sad, you still finish the album with a joke.

Yeah you've got to, you gotta release the tension a little bit, loosen the string.

You mentioned your parents earlier, and one of my favourite parts on the album is when you sing about your mum being a punk.

She really is.

Is she a big influence on you?

She is, but in such a way that you wouldn't think. My dad is a musician and a music teacher, and my mum's a nurse, but mum is a punk in a really sweet way. She grew up in Wales and went to nursing college in London, and at 24 she went to India. She's a punk in a really sweet motherly way; she doesn't have piercings or anything like that, she's like the OG punk in that she really does her own thing. She sets a good example, she took my sister and me to women's marches when we were young and those sorts of things; she's a really caring punk. I love my mum.

And your dad?

Dad is the best. He did stand-up comedy for a while, playing guitar, and he's where I've got my fearlessness of being able to say what I need to say. When I play dad a song he'll go "oh god, oh god Stella, oh no you're gonna get sued," and then a week later he'll call and be like "ah it's a great song, I would have done it, well done." I'm always like "dad I got it from you!" He helped me actually, I changed a few words in 'Beware of the Dogs' that saved me; I was initially gonna say "Catholic fucks" but I changed it to "pious fucks," which is a bit better because there are a lot of beautiful Catholics out there - and I went to catholic school so I knew I was going to get into trouble for that.

We have to mention the front cover of the album, another picture of you in a kind of awkward position, is that becoming a theme now?

[Laughs] Yeah, probably. I don't think there's any other option for me, I think awkwardness is the aesthetic. A lot of people think that person's trying to feed me an egg, which I think is really funny, but it's a bar of soap. I really wanted it to seem like it's a bigger thing, it looks like it's a movie with subtitles, and I wanted it to seem like it was part of a bigger conversation. We were shooting a lot on Super 8 and trying a lot of things; I definitely wanted the subtitles. I don't think my eyes are even pointing in the same direction in the photo, they're kind of half way through looking at something. That was the vibe I wanted to give off, that it was moving.

Are you excited to see it on a 12" sleeve?

[Gasps] Yes! I'm excited and nervous. I realised that I'm not wearing any clothes in the photo - in real life I was! I had a top on and jeans and shoes, but now I've gone "oh, fuck! I'm naked on that!" I just have to accept that. I'm cool with it now.

To finish I always like to ask are there any books or music or anything you'd like to recommend?

Yeah! Jenny Hval's book Paradise Rot; it's super erotic but it's a really really great book. I was reading that a lot at the time. I was listening to Adrianne Lenker's solo record at the time, I was listening to a band called Her's - they're great! Since then I've read a book called Flights by Olga Tokarczuk, she's a Polish writer who's incredible. All of these recommendations I got from Lucy Dacus by the way, I'm just essentially regurgitating her genius. I just wanna shout out to Lucy Dacus. What else? I'm actually watching Twin Peaks for the first time at the moment.

Do you watch any stand-up?

I was watching a lot of James Acaster at the time; he's so funny. When he tried to play ‘Auld Lang Syne’ on this tiny thing, I don't think I've laughed so hard, I had tears running down my face. I love how he doesn't need to take the piss out of women or other people to be funny, he does it in such an intelligent way. He's just an incredible comedian. I love him. And Wanda Sykes, always, she's the best.

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Stella Donnelly’s debut album Beware Of The Dogs is out this Friday, March 8th, on Secretly Canadian.

from The 405 https://ift.tt/2UpuDjC

[jshoulson]

Today’s Poem

Confessions: My Father, Hummingbirds, and Frantz Fanon --Benjamin Alire Sáenz

Every effort is made to bring the colonised person to admit the inferiority of his culture... —Frantz Fanon

And there are days when storms hover Over my house, their brooding just this side of rage, An open hand about to slap a face. You won’t believe me

When I tell you it is not personal. It isn’t. It only feels That way because the face is yours. So what if it is the only Face you’ve got? Listen, a storm will grab the first thing In its path, a Persian cat, a sixth grade boy on his way home From school, an old woman watering her roses, a black Man running down a street (late to a dinner with his wife), A white guy buying cigarettes at the corner store. A storm Will grab a young woman trying to escape her boyfriend, A garbage can, a Mexican busboy with no papers, you. We are all collateral damage for someone’s beautiful Ideology, all of us inanimate in the face of the onslaught. My father had the biggest hands I’ve ever seen. He never Wore a wedding ring. Somehow, it would have looked lost, Misplaced on his thick worker’s hands that were, to me, As large as Africa. There have been a good many storms In Africa over the centuries. One was called colonialism (Though I confess to loving Tarzan as a boy).

In my thirties,   I read a book by Frantz Fanon. I fell in love With the storms in his book even though they broke My heart and made me want to scream. What good Is screaming? Even a bad actress in a horror flick Can do that. In my twenties, I had fallen in love With the storms in the essays of James Baldwin. They were like perfect poems. His friends called Him Jimmy. People didn’t think he was beautiful. Oh God, but he was. He could make a hand that was Slapping you into something that was loving, loving you. He could make rage sound elegant. Have you ever Read “Stranger in the Village?” How would you like To feel like a fucking storm every time someone looked At you?

One time I was At a party. Some guy asked me: What are you, anyway? I downed my beer. Mexican I said. Really he said, Do You play soccer? No I said but I drink Tequila. He smiled At me, That’s cool. I smiled back So what are you? What do you think I am he said. An asshole I said. People Hate you when you’re right. Especially if you’re Mexican. And every time I leave town, I pray that people will stop Repeating You’re from El Paso with that same tone Of voice they use when they see a rat running across Their living rooms, interrupting their second glass Of scotch. My father’s dead (Though sometimes I wake And swear he has never been more alive—especially when I see him staring back at me as I shave in the morning). Even though I understand something about hating a man I have never really understood the logic of slavery. What do I know? I don’t particularly like the idea of cheap Labor. I don’t like guns. And I don’t even believe White men are superior. Do you? I wanted to be St. Francis. I took this ambition very seriously. Instead I wound up becoming a middle-aged man who dreams Storms where all the animals wind up dead. It scares Me to think I have this dream inside me. Still, I love dogs—even mean ones. I could forgive A dog that bit me. But if a man bit me, that would be Another story. I have made my peace with cats. I am especially in love with hummingbirds (though They’re as mean as roosters in a cock fight). Have You ever seen the storms in the eyes of men who Were betting on a cock fight?

Last night, there was hail, thunder, A tornado touching down in the desert—though I was Away and was not a first hand witness. I was in another Place, listening to the waves of the ocean crash against The shore. Sometimes I think the sea is angry. Who Can blame it? There are a million things to be angry About. Have you noticed that some people don’t give A damn and just keep on shopping? Doesn’t that make you Angry? A storm is like God. You don’t have to see it To believe—sometimes you just have to place Your faith in it. When my father walked into a room It felt like that. Like the crashing waves. You know, Like a storm. This is the truth of the matter: I am The son of a storm. Look, every one has to be the son Of something. The thing to do when you are caught In the middle of a storm is to abandon your car, Keep quiet. Pray. Wait. Tell that to the men Who were sleeping on the Arizona when The Japanese dropped their bombs. War is the worst Kind of storm. The truth is I have never met a breathing Human being who did not have at least one scar On his body. Bombs and bullets do more than leave A permanent mark on the skin. I have never liked The expression they were out for blood.

There are days When there are so many storms hovering around My house that I cannot even see the blue in the sky. My father loved the sky. He was trying to memorize The clouds before he died. I confess to being Jealous of the sky.

On Sunday Mornings I picture Frantz Fanon as an old man. He is looking up At the pure African sky. He is trying to imagine how it appeared Before the white men came. I don’t want to dream all the dead Animals we have made extinct. I want to dream a sky Full of hummingbirds. I would like to die in such a storm.

#Today's Poem #benjamin alire sáenz

[watermarginhk-blog]

Hong Kong’s Identity Crisis

ESSAY

For city dwellers of hyper-colonised, hyper-commercialised Hong Kong, the spiritual aspects of these stories remain alive only in ancestral memory, to which many of us have lost our connection. Today, dragonboat is largely known as a competitive water sport. Its most visible participants are often whiteskinned and bank-sponsored. It would be dishonest to say that there is nothing left of our spirituality, magic, history and tradition. Even in the most suffocating corners of the urban centre exist doorside altars still fresh with incense ash. Just last week, I ate at an East-meets-West-food-truck-themed restaurant down a side alley of 蘭桂坊 and upon exiting, noticed a little altar glowing under the takeaway menus. Housed within the altar were a pair of golden statues—土地公 and 土地婆—a hedge of incense sticks and bright, juicy oranges either side of the wine cups. I wondered who prayed there and what harvests they would report come 秋報, if they did at all.

Before this year, these altars were invisible to me. The one deity I knew by name was 天后— though I had never visited her temples, only the MTR stop. Western capitalism and its grandfather, European colonialism, have been very effective in their continued decimation of traditional culture. Although there is no magic in this violence, they seem to have cast some sort of spell, or more accurately, a curse. We have been stripped bare and force-fed incongruous value systems, and almost no one can remember who we were before we started forgetting ourselves. I am afraid that if we keep on along this production line of grasping at empty identities, we will lose ourselves fully and irrevocably.

We are surrounded every day not by each other, but by ghosts. We are depleting our souls trying to catch up with capitalism, trying to survive this bizarre society it has built with our very own hands. We have been convinced we must look to our colonisers in the West and the North for answers, for a sense of identity, but we are looking the wrong way. Most days, I resign myself to believing there is no escape—from feeling uprooted, from time-theft, from addiction to technology as distraction, from constant and growing pressure, from the deafening chug of billions of cogs of which I am one faulty part. On a clear-minded day, I recognise that the angry person who shoved me on the train who I shoved back is exhausted from living this reality, too. I become more certain that waking up means reviving my connection to who I am—my culture, my ancestors, our history—to the knowledge that good dragonboat drummers beat to the rhythm of their paddlers, not the other way around. The problem is: How do we wake up without having properly slept the night?

Image: Steve Onion

#ESSAY