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shipmistress9 · 4 years

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FTLOAP: Chapter 48: Reminds Me Again It's Worth It All

For The Love Of A Princess Masterpost

Alpha/Co-author: @athingofvikings

Taglist: @drchee5e @hey-its-laura-again @thepixiedustfactory (If you want me to add you to this list, just say so. ^^)

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AN: How... how is it already almost three months later again? Time is a lie! xD But I won't apologise. Life is just absolutely crazy right now, and not just because of this virus. But I'm not abandoning this story, don't worry! :)

And I don't want to ramble here too much, but... I was worried how you all would take it that I implemented the canon events as legends. And I'm very happy and relieved to see that you guys generally seem to approve. ^^

This week's title comes, again, from Memories by Within Temptation. I've picked this title before I wrote the chapter and I have to admit that it fitted better to the original vision I had of this chapter than to the end result. But it still works and it's not that important anyway, right? ;P

. o O o .

“Do you think you can do it? Can you kill a dragon?”

Grimacing, Hiccup averted his face at that question. Killing a dragon… There once had been a time where this prospect had troubled him. It had been something he had to do, but not what he’d wanted to do.

But now, things were different. He'd already lost so much to a dragon’s attack once, and now could gain so much more if he did it… It wasn’t a question about whether he could do it anymore.

But… would he be able to do it?

“I get that it’s a lot to think about,” Eret said when he didn’t reply immediately. “Especially after what you just told us and in such a short time. The thing is just… You legally winning that title for yourself would be the easiest and cleanest solution. But we can prepare you as much as we want; if it’s more likely that you’re getting killed, it’s not worth it. Then we have to come up with something else. I’m sure there’s something we can do. There has to be.”

Hiccup pressed his lips together and lowered his head. Astrid was still sitting right next to him, her hand in his. So close. It could be so easy. All he had to do to be with her was kill a dragon. But after all his failures, he wasn't likely to be too optimistic.

“I don’t know,” he eventually said in a low voice. “I became a better fighter over the last years, I had to, and… and I have the best motivation imaginable.” Chuckling weakly, he lifted his hand to breathe a soft kiss onto Astrid’s knuckled. It made her smile, tentatively. “But I don’t know if I can do it. It would be difficult, nearly impossible . During raids and other occasions, we use special tools and weapons against dragons that make it easier to capture and kill them. If I had some of those, I think I could do it. But without them?” Gulping, he shook his head. “I’d need a lot of luck, and, well… given the past few years, luck is not something I would want to count on.”

Next to him, Astrid flinched. The fingers of her free hand painfully dug into his arm; she clearly didn’t like his answer. But as much as he wanted to give her another one – lying just to comfort her wasn’t an option.

“But you can build these weapons,” Eret objected. “I know you can, I’ve seen you work in Berk’s forge and you even managed to fix the music box. Just tell us what you need, and we get if for you.”

Hiccup’s gaze shifted back to Eret. He was grateful for his enthusiasm and optimism, that he wouldn’t give up. But in this case, just thinking positively wouldn't help much. With a tired sigh, he shook his head. “You’re right, I could build what I need. But not within only a couple of days. I’d need special moulds to forge the pieces, special tools I don’t have… It would take me weeks to build all that from scratch.”

“Can’t you get some of those things here?” Dagur threw in. “I mean, the markets here might not be as big as Southshore’s… but this is the capital. There’s a lot you can buy here.”

Hiccup grimaced, his free hand tightening into a fist. He gazed down at Astrid, tightly clinging to his arm and her face hidden against his side. He couldn’t give up now. Eret was right, winning that hunt would be the cleanest solution. And for Astrid, he was willing to try and risk everything. Whatever it would take.

With a heavy sigh, he turned back toward the others. “Maybe you’re right and we can find at least some things. So far, I haven’t seen anything of that sort though, and finding the tools I need, let alone the functioning weapons, might take just as long as trying to build them. But yeah, it’s at least a possibility.”

“All right, what should we look for?” Tuff asked.

He shared a look with his sister who added, “Tuff and I know the city pretty well. And we know some people… If the things you need exist somewhere in Volantis, then we’re your best option to find them.”

Frowning, Hiccup took a moment to think. “The most important thing,” he eventually replied, slowly, “would be a bola shooter. The best way – the only reasonable way, really – to fight any dragon is to first incapacitate their wings, if possible their legs too. If they can’t fly or move much at all, they’re relatively easy prey.”

“A…. what shooter?” The question came from Tuff, but except for Eret who’d seen a bola shooter in action before, everyone looked equally confused.

“A bola shooter.” He released Astrid’s hand to use both arms for his explanation. “A bola is a weapon made for hunting. It’s made of three – or more – strings of rope, all tied together at a centre point and each with some form of weight at the end, usually a rock of this size,” he held up his fist, “or bigger, depending on what kind of prey you’re after. If you fling it the right way, it wraps around the beast’s body, preferably around its legs or wings and renders it immobile.”

“Makes sense,” Dagur agreed, nodding. “But I don’t see your problem. Making such a bola doesn’t sound that complicated.”

Hiccup nodded. “It’s not. But using a bola just on its own, that’s not advisable if you’re out to hunt a dragon. Flinging a bola over your head is not exactly stealthy. If you’re in a raid where there’s chaos already, it doesn’t matter much. But if you try to sneak up on a dragon and want to capture it before it attacks or simply flies off? Not a good idea. So what I need is a shooter. It’s a device to launch such bolas without the eye-catching gaining of momentum.” His gaze wandered to Astrid’s servants. “What you would be looking for is–”

“Wait a moment,” Eret interrupted him. He got up from his chair and walked over to a desk, then returned with a sheet of paper and a pencil. “It’s not as if I have much need for letter paper anyway.”

Gratefully, Hiccup took the paper and pencil, and leaning over the low table in front of him, he made a quick sketch of what he needed.

“It’s a wooden or metallic tube,” he explained. “Wide enough for weights as such rocks and with a mechanism to launch them attached to it at one end.” He handed the sketch over to Astrid’s warder.

The man narrowed his eyes as he looked at the sketch then showed it to his sister next to him. She too narrowed her eyes, then the twins shared a knowing look and a nod.

“What?” Dagur asked, a little annoyed. “Have you seen anything like that before?”

“Maybe,” Ruff replied slowly. She inspected the sketch for a moment longer, then shared another strange nod with her brother before she left the room without another word.

Everyone gazed after her, perplexed, then threw Tuff a questioning look.

But Tuff’s answer wasn’t very enlightening. “She needs to check something,” he simply said.

Dagur snorted. “Don’t bother trying to make sense of their twintuition. It’s pointless.”

“I can hear you, you know?” Tuff muttered.

“So what?,” Dagur cackled. “Nothing I wouldn’t say to your face.”

Rolling his eyes at their bickering, Eret cleared his throat to draw Hiccup’s attention again. “Who knows how long Ruff will be gone. So let’s use the time to talk options. I agree, flinging a bola isn’t stealthy, but it would still be possible, wouldn’t it? Or how about a weighted net? I’ve seen you use those sometimes, too.”

With his lips pressed into a thin line, Hiccup nodded. “Possible, yes, but not advisable. A shooter would give me another advantage over simply flinging a bola or net myself. I wouldn’t need to get as close to the beast since a shooter can hurl them farther than I can throw them, and they could be bigger too as it can handle higher weights. And with a net, I’d need to be in a higher position to throw it on top of them. It can be done, obviously, but, yeah… It would require a lot of luck.”

Eret frowned but didn’t object and didn’t come up with some other option, either. Grateful for the break, Hiccup leaned against the cushioned backrest, relaxing a little when Astrid cuddled to his side without hesitation. She’d been surprisingly quiet throughout the whole conversation, and now he noticed just how tense she was; her shoulders, her expression, even her hands clenched into fists around his tunic. As if she was subconsciously holding on to something invisible.

It was strange in a way. But just like he'd drawn from her strength earlier when the memories of his dead family had threatened to overwhelm him, it now seemed as if she was relying on his strength in return. Even though he had no idea why she needed it.

He let his hand run up and down her back, slowly, comfortingly, and after a minute or two, she relaxed at least a little bit.

It didn't take long until Ruff returned. In her arms, she carried a large basket full of laundry which earned her confused looks from everyone waiting.

"You came to bring fresh clothes?" Dagur asked, a little incredulously. "Do you expect anyone to rip theirs off?" He threw an insinuating grin at Astrid and Hiccup, but nobody was really in the mood for joking.

"Haha, funny," Ruff deadpanned. She placed the basket on the ground and rummaged about for a few seconds until she found what she was looking for. With a satisfied grin, she glanced from one to the other. "No, the laundry was just for cover; I didn't want people to get suspicious if they saw me with this." She pulled an object out that had been hidden by layers of cloth, a smug smile on her face as she looked at Hiccup. "Is this what you were talking about? A bola shooter?"

Hiccup could only gape. Disbelievingly, he reached for the device when Ruff held it out to him, his fingers reverently gliding over the sturdy metal tube. It was dusty, the mechanism getting stuck when he tried to wind it up, but it was undeniably a bola shooter. It even was the same model they used on Berk, the size and length of the tube distinct. And the mechanism! It was just like–

Hiccup sucked in a sharp breath and turned the device around until his eyes found what he’d been looking for, a sign that was etched into the metal at the underside of the tube. A horizontal line crossed by three vertical ones. Or, the way he read it, ‘H H’.

"Where did you get this?" he asked, his eyes on the twins.

This couldn't be… It made no sense! How?

"What's wrong, Hiccup?" Eret asked, frowning, a note of worry in his voice.

Mutely and without looking, Hiccup handed the shooter over to his cousin. His eyes were still on Ruff, still waiting for her answer.

Ruff exchanged a frown with her brother, and they both shrugged. “It’s Astrid’s,” she replied.

Stunned, Hiccup turned toward Astrid, but she looked just as surprised as he was. “Excuse me?”

“It’s true,” Tuff said with another shrug. “It was in one of your birthday chests from three or four years ago.”

Still confused, Hiccup cocked his head. “Birthday chests?” he asked for clarification when even Dagur just nodded in understanding.

“Usually, there aren’t as many people here for my birthday as there were this year,” Astrid explained in a low voice. She sounded distracted, as if her mind was somewhere else entirely. “But since ignoring the Princess Royal’s birthday could be considered an insult, practically every noble family sends a gift every year. Nothing extravagant in most cases, just a sign that they remembered. Often, it’s some local speciality, food, clothes, or craftsmanship. I… some pieces I kept, and the food always gets eaten, of course, but the rest gets stored away, and…” She trailed off, shrugging.

“Exactly!” Tuff nodded. “There’s an entire room just filled with shelves and boxes full of stuff – for every member of the royal family. And there’s some weird stuff in there, that I can tell you.” He snickered.

Somewhere in the depth of Hiccup’s mind, a memory was rising, but he couldn’t grasp it yet.

“Very true!” Ruff said with a smirk. “Some of these things are great for pranks; it’s just a hassle to sort through them sometimes. Anyway, there are a few chests that are different… bigger. Sometimes, higher noble families don’t just send one gift but an entire chest full of various gifts. There is one in particular that contains a number of strange things I’ve never seen anywhere else. Clothes in an unfamiliar style, wooden carvings, instruments… and this weird fellow.” She pointed at the bola shooter in Eret’s hand. “We never knew what to make of it, but when you sketched your shooter just now…” She broke off, looking over at Eret as he grunted in surprise.

"Is… is that one of yours?" he asked, baffled.

Next to him, Astrid shuffled to sit up straighter. “Yeah, apparently it is. Even though I can’t–”

“He means me,” Hiccup interrupted her gently. He held his hand out for Eret to give him the shooter back, then turned it around to show her the symbol etched into the metal. “See this? That… well, you can call it my signature, I guess. I used to mark everything I made with this sign. H H. Hiccup of House Haddock.”

He shrugged, a little embarrassed. Putting that signature on his works had been an act of pride and rebellion, he knew that all too well. So many people had called him useless for not being a good fighter and not going after the dragons as he was supposed to. And yet, they’d been happy enough to use his weapons and devices.

Astrid traced the symbol with her fingers, her touch careful. “So… you made this?” she asked, visibly puzzled “But… how did it end up in that chest?”

Hiccup’s memories were all falling into place then. “I haven’t thought of this in a long time, didn’t even remember until just now,” he said slowly. “It was on the day the council had decided that I would have to prove myself in the arena, and I was… well, I was terrified, to be honest. Torn on whether I even wanted to kill a dragon and scared by having to do so in the arena, without support or the usual methods. I had just finished working on this shooter, but more felt like throwing it out of the window and into the ocean. What was the point of crafting all these weapons if I wasn’t allowed to use them? I think I was pretty lost, wallowing, and didn't pay much attention to my mother when she came into my workshop."

He had to pause and swallow at that memory. What would he give if he could go back to that moment, for the chance to talk to her again? To ask for her advice, or just to listen to what was on her mind. If only he hadn't wasted so much time only focused on his own problems...

"She tried to cheer me up and encourage me, said that she had faith in me. But I didn't want to hear that and in the end, it wasn't why she'd come looking for me anyway. She was about to send a chest of gifts to her friend, for her daughter's birthday, and wanted me to contribute something, too." His lips twitched into a rueful smile. "I remember how annoyed I was. What did the birthday of some stranger matter to me? I had more important things on my mind, like not losing my honour in front of the entire tribe, for example. Or my life. So I just gave her the shooter I'd just finished, unreasonably angry at the device itself for me not being allowed to use it in my fight against the dragon."

With slightly shaking hands, Astrid reached for the shooter to inspect it a little more closely. "Is it still working, though?" There was an odd tone in her voice, so quiet and almost trembling, something he couldn’t quite place. “I mean, it’s been lying around in that chest for three years now. Are you sure it’s not rusty? What if the mechanism jams when you need it?”

Hiccup took a moment to think, then nodded. “Yeah, it should still work. Maybe not right now, but it shouldn’t be a problem to get it to work on time. I just need to disassemble it, clean all parts, and put them back together.” He paused, trying to think it through. All parts were there, working and in his usual high quality. They shouldn’t have suffered much over time, and even if one or two parts were broken, it shouldn’t be that hard to replace only those.

He sucked in a deep breath, a confidant grin on his face. “So, going back to your question,” he said, looking at Eret. “Yes, with this baby here, I think I can do it. I can kill a dragon!”

. o O o .

Hiccup was itching to get started. Three days weren’t much time to prepare for the task that lay ahead of him, and he didn’t want to waste even one second. But no matter how eager he was to disappear into the royal armoury and work on the shooter, he grudgingly had to yield to Eret’s logic.

“You can’t go and spend all day locked up, working on some secret project. If you do, people will get suspicious, and we can’t have anyone pay overly attention to what either of us is doing.”

So he spent most of the day assisting Eret and Dagur during their training – which probably wasn’t that much of a waste of time, either. It was a little tricky as on the one hand, it couldn’t become obvious that Hiccup was training some techniques for real, while on the other hand, Eret and Dagur couldn’t put too much obvious effort into it. But all he could do was hope that the ruse worked.

Astrid was watching them from afar, but something was strange about her. Hiccup was ecstatic, even as his leg was acting up a little from the unusual workout. For the first time since Astrid’s birthday, he felt true confidence, for their future but also for himself. The plan Eret had come up with was good. It wouldn’t be easy by any means, but it could work. And even more importantly, it was something he could do.

But Hiccup noticed that Astrid wasn’t nearly in as good a mood as he was, even from a distance. She looked tense and anxious, even more so than this morning, almost constantly biting her lip. He wished he could go and talk to her, could ask her what was bothering her. But there were too many people around on the fighting ground; all conversations would have to wait until the night.

And until then, he had to use every bit of time he had. He didn’t join Eret and Dagur for their lunch break and instead spent the time at the armoury. And even though he only had about an hour, he made good progress with the shooter. It was years now since he last worked on a device like this, but it still felt natural, easy as breathing.

After a first inspection, he was relieved to see that nearly all pieces were still in working order. One rod was warped and needed to be pounded back into shape with some work on an anvil. Another was broken and he would need to replace it, same as a bolt or three. But all that was manageable, no reason to worry. If he used his free hours in the evening and on the next day without wasting time, then he should be done by tomorrow night, the morning after at the latest.

The good mood carried him through the day, even though it was a long and exhausting one. After his simple dinner in the servants’ kitchen, it was time to sneak into Astrid’s rooms again, and if it hadn’t been for this happy prospect, he would have just gone to bed directly. His leg hurt more with every step he made through the narrow tunnels as he followed Tuff, and it was only the thought of Astrid that kept him going. Of holding her, but also of the anxiety he’d noticed in her.

And when he entered her bedroom and Ruff closed the door behind him, it quickly became apparent that her mood hadn’t improved all day. She was still as tense as she’d been before if not more, sitting on the edge of her bed with her hands nervously fiddling with her nightgown.

"Hey," she greeted him. There was a smile on her lips but it felt off. It didn’t reach her eyes, even though the warmth and love in them were real.

"Hey," he replied. With a sigh, he sat down next to her, relieved when his weight was off his leg. Whatever it was that was bothering her, they surely could talk about it sitting, right? "Is everything okay?"

But Astrid didn't react. Instead, she frowned, her eyes not meeting his. "Your leg hurts."

It wasn't a question, but Hiccup nodded nonetheless. "A little, yes. With all the training today, that was to be expected. I should probably take it a little easier tomorrow,“ he added lightly.

She nodded, still not looking at him. Instead, her frown deepened and she chewed on her lower lip, thinking. "Do you want me to massage it?" she eventually offered.

Hiccup knew that he should decline. The pain wasn't that bad, nothing a good night's rest wouldn't heal, and letting her hands roam his skin wasn't necessarily advisable anyway. All too well, he remembered how that usually affected him.

But something was keeping him from turning her down. There was something in the way she avoided his gaze, how her hands trembled, that told him that, for some reason, Astrid needed this. He wasn't sure whether it was about having something to do in general or whether she craved contact just as much as he did, but it was there. And he didn't have it in him to deny her. Besides, a massage would definitely help, and coming from her would make it all the sweeter.

"Yeah, that would be great."

On her indication, he made himself comfortable in the middle of her bed, with his back resting against the headrest and the leg of his trousers rolled up as far as possible. Claiming that he didn't enjoy how her hands glided over his skin and worked the tissue and muscles beneath would have been a lie. It felt wonderful, both the relief it brought to his aching leg and the sensations her touch elicited in the rest of his body alike.

But as much as he enjoyed the massage, he also was aware of how anxious Astrid still was, of the wrinkles in her forehead, the tension around her mouth, and how her hands were trembling. She clearly was not okay. But since she’d evaded his question before, all he could do was wait for her to be ready to tell him what was bothering her.

"It makes sense now," she eventually murmured. She wasn't meeting his eyes, her gaze resting on his scarred leg, on her fingers tracing the ugly ragged lines.

"What do you mean?" he asked when she didn't continue.

Astrid swallowed. "Your leg. I... I've been wondering about these scars ever since you showed them to me. Not where they come from!" she quickly clarified, "But... It's just that I've seen the scars on your back. Those wounds there must have been so much worse than the one on your leg. And I always wondered why your back healed so well and your leg didn't. But now I know."

Hiccup sighed. "Yeah... my night in the forest really didn't do me any good. The infection–"

"It's not just that," she interrupted him. "A wound like this needs constant care to heal properly. Cleaning and treatment and fresh bandages and time. Bu-but if you got imprisoned and exiled, your leg got none of that, right?” Her voice was trembling now. “That's why it's still bothering you. Not because the wound was so severe or because it got dirty or even infected. It’s because it never got time to heal."

Hiccup closed his eyes and nodded. "You're right. I only got the barest minimum of treatment before they sent me away. And then, I had to leave quickly and couldn't risk resting for a week or even longer to let the wound heal. I was lucky I didn't lose the leg altogether…" He trailed off as the painful memories made a lump form in his throat; memories of cold nights in the northern forest, of hiding from thieving groups… and of being scared but at the same time not feeling worthy of even the care one of Freya’s temples would have offered.

Astrid shifted, finally looked at him as she reached for his hand. There was a shimmer in her eyes, as if she was close to tears. "Oh, Hiccup," she sniffed. "That... that must have been horrible!"

Swallowing, Hiccup lowered his head. She was right, it had been horrible. Not just because of what had happened, though, but mostly because he hadn't thought it possible that the Tribes' leaders, his own people, would be so callous and cruel. He'd always known that there were some who'd wanted House Haddock removed and even more had been in doubt about him. But he hadn't expected them to directly exile him without a proper trial. To all but execute him without solid evidence.

Astrid's hand was shaking around his, causing him to look up at her again. Her eyes were filled with sadness. "I-I'm so sorry for what you've been through. I wish there was a way to make it all undone. I wish I could spare you all the pain you've been through. And your family! I knew they were dead, but... but what happened to them – it wasn't fair!"

Again, Hiccup swallowed. "No, it wasn't fair," he murmured. He took a moment to take a deep breath and slowly let it out again. "But it's all in the past. What happened happened, and nobody can change it anymore."

Astrid nodded, weakly, her hand tightening around his. "And I'm sorry. For making you talk about them this morning. I can only imagine how much that must have cost you! If there's anything I can do to make it up to you or–"

Hiccup put a finger over her lips, effectively silencing her. "It's all right," he assured her. "You're already doing more than I can ever put into words, just by existing, by being here. Besides... I think it was actually good that I finally talked about it all, about them and what happened. I feel... lighter, somehow. I still miss them, of course, I do. But at the same time, I know that they will always be with me as long as I remember them. They are my past, and while I’ll never forget them… Thinking about them made me remember how happy I was. And it reminded me that it’s worth fighting for a happy life. For our future.”

Astrid sucked in a harsh breath. Again, she began to tremble, so much so that Hiccup pulled her into his arms to comfort her, grateful when she didn’t resist even though he didn't understand what troubled her.

“Hey, hey,” he mumbled into her hair, one hand soothingly rubbing her back. “What’s up? Why are you so upset?”

Sniffling, she burrowed deeper into his embrace. “I don’t like it.”

He frowned. “What do you mean?” There were many things not to like lately, and while he was reasonably sure that she wasn’t talking about their shared future, there were just too many options left.

“Eret’s plan. You having to hunt and fight a dragon. I don’t like it!”

Her words were muffled and it took him a moment to fully understand them. Then he frowned. “Why? It’s the first time we actually have a plan. Finally, it’s something solid we can do, something I can do.”

She snorted against his chest, a humourless laugh. “You know that you don’t have to prove yourself, right?”

“I know,” he sighed. “Not to you. But… I know that it’s stupid, but I feel like I have to prove it to myself – that I’m worthy of you and our future. That I’m not a failure. And I need it to get closure. I couldn’t kill that dragon back then and it ruined my life. So if I now can ensure our life together by killing a dragon… It’s like settling old scores, you know? Besides, Eret is right. If I can earn this title, then we’re going to face far less resistance. It will be easier, all things considered.”

She was silent for a few heartbeats, not replying in any way. Then she seemed to burrow even deeper into his embrace, her mumbled words barely audible. “But only if it works.”

Hiccup grimaced, glad that she couldn’t see his face. “It will work,” he then replied with conviction. “It has to. Remember what the Goddess said? That I have to do what comes naturally? Well, this does. This is something I can do. Even more so, it’s like this is a task that’s made for me, just like Eret said. I have the training and knowledge needed for this Hunt. This has to be what the Goddess meant.”

But Astrid still wasn’t convinced. “I don’t know,” she whispered. “I see what you mean, but… I just have a bad feeling about all this! As if something will go terribly wrong...”

Sighing, he pulled her up until he could look at her. “It won’t go wrong, okay? I won’t let that happen! Not when I have you to come back to.”

“But what if you don’t?” She sounded desperate now. "What if that shooter doesn't work? Or someone attacks you? Or the dragon you find is stronger than you thought? What if you don’t come back?” She shook her head, a single tear running down her cheek.”I don’t want you to leave, don’t want to be apart from you. It feels wrong! I just have this weird feeling about it, as if something will happen when we’re not together, someth–”

He cut her off with a quick kiss. He could see what she was doing, spiralling down into worries and fears. He recognised it, had been there often enough in his life. But thinking like that wouldn’t do them any good. “It won’t go wrong! Do you hear me? For some reason, the Gods need us for their plans, so it won’t go wrong. You’ll see, I’ll be back here before you really notice I’m gone. That I promise you!”

With a pained expression on her face, she shook her head. Slowly, she crawled up the bed until she sat above him, straddling him. Her eyes were sad when they searched his, worried, her hands coming up to brush away strands of his hair. When she kissed him, it was hesitant, careful even, her fingers against his jaw and neck trembling. And yet, it was full of an urgency he didn't quite comprehend, lingering desperation thrumming beneath the surface. Without a doubt, it was fueled by her anxiety, but why she felt that way, he still didn't fully understand.

When she deepened the kiss, he didn't resist though. Her tongue was delving into his mouth, seeking closeness and reassurance, while her hand roamed to the back of his head to hold him close, fingers tugging at his hair. She was trembling, whimpering. Clinging to him as if to dear life. And he just didn’t have it in him to push her away at that moment.

His body liked her squirming in his lap more than it should, but he tried to ignore it, focused only on Astrid instead. For some reason, this was what she needed right now, just like he'd needed her support earlier when he’d talked about his family. So he didn't deny her and instead wound his arms around her lithe frame, holding her close, safe.

And who was he kidding? Kissing her and feeling her so close was a joy on its own. She was so warm, so soft, melting against his chest and into his embrace as if they were one. No matter how good this day had turned out to be, being here with her right now, tasting her kiss and hearing her little sighs, was better than everything else.

And even though he knew he should, he didn’t stop her when their kiss grew more passionate. Her fingertips scraped over his scalp and wandered down to caress his throat in a way that sent shivers all the way down his spine. It made his hands clutch her more firmly, hurl her closer still, made him groan into their kiss, and made heat pool low in his belly. She was all he wanted, all he needed, all that mattered. And, Gods , he wanted her so much.

Without his help, his hands wandered down her body, gliding along the curves of her waist, her hips, and her thighs. The thin fabric of her nightshift did little to cover her; he could feel everything, every muscle moving beneath hot skin. He eagerly swallowed the low moans his touch drew from her, luxuriating in the knowledge that it was he who made her feel like this. It was something he hoped to never lose, the simple joy of making her feel good.

However, when she broke free of their kiss to let out a louder groan and she ground herself down against him in that clear search for more stimulation, he remembered that there was a line they mustn't cross. As if he'd burned himself, he pulled his hands away from her thighs, though only to let them land on her hips instead, holding her still.

“Astrid!” he implored, pleading in a low and hoarse voice.

A low whimper escaped her, but she didn’t move and only let her forehead drop to his shoulder.

“I’m sorry. I… I got carried away.” She chuckled, embarrassed and a little breathless. Her hands tightened into fists around the fabric of his tunic. “But you better keep your promise, you hear me?”

Hiccup tilted his head to place a soft and relatively innocent kiss below her ear. “I will,” he vowed, his lips twitching. He knew that she was referring to what he'd said a few minutes before, but he couldn't resist teasing her a little, if only to lighten the mood. “I will come back to you. And don’t worry, I’m not going to scam you out of all the nights I’m going to make it up to you, either. You might even beg me for a break every now and then.”

His words had the desired effect as she was chuckling for real now. Her arms slid around his neck and she settled against his shoulder in a comfortable embrace. “Just promise me that you’ll be careful. Promise me that nothing will go wrong. That you won’t get overconfident, that you won't take unnecessary risks, and won’t do anything stupid.”

With his hands slowly caressing up and down her back, Hiccup smiled, hidden within her loose night braids. “All right. I promise not to do something stupid. And don’t worry, I know how dangerous dragons can be; I won’t get cocky. I have too much to lose.”

“Same here,” she mumbled before kissing him again, though sweeter and lighter this time.

After only a few seconds, she pulled back again and even slid off his lap to cuddle to his side instead. Hiccup missed her warmth right away but knew better than to protest. This was not the time for intimate closeness but it would come, soon.

“So, what about that shooter of yours?” Her voice was light, but a little strained. As if she was forcing herself to sound untroubled.

Hiccup grimaced. He didn't want her to pretend for his sake. He pulled her a little closer and brushed his lips against her forehead. "We don't have to talk about this," he mumbled against her skin. "Not if it makes you uncomfortable."

Astrid hesitated, then sighed. "It's… okay. And I think I do need to hear this. I need to know that everything will work out."

Hiccup chuckled. "That limits how I can reply to your question. You realise that, right?"

She snorted, and he could practically hear how she rolled her eyes. "Well, if you tell me now that the shooter won't work then you won't participate in this Hunt anyway."

His lips twitched at her adamant tone. "The shooter is in a good state. A little dusty so I need to clean it thoroughly, and I need to replace a couple of parts. But those are all manageable details. Don't worry, it will be in perfect shape for the Hunt."

"Okay." She nodded, the movement soothing against his arm, and sighed. "Maybe I'm just overreacting after all…"

Hiccup shrugged. "I wouldn't call it overreacting. To be honest, I'm a little nervous, too. But I refuse to let that deter me. You'll see, everything will go smoothly and next week by this time, we'll laugh about all this. And then you'll have to admit that I was right."

She snorted again and shook her head. "Is this a thing of yours? Do you always have to be right?"

Hiccup flinched as her words echoed in his mind but in another voice, a little deeper but with the same playful annoyance.

“What is it?” Astrid looked at him questioningly. She'd noticed his reaction, of course, she had...

“It’s… nothing. Just… Arndis used to say that, too. Complaining about how I’m usually right.” He chuckled, even as a fresh wave of sadness tainted his mood. “Wasn’t my fault she always tried to go straight through the wall instead of taking two steps to the side and around it.”

Astrid sat up until she knelt next to him, watching him carefully. “Would you… tell me more about her? About your family? Only if you feel like it, of course,” she added quickly.”But they meant so much to you, and I… Well, I wish I’d known them.”

Smiling sadly, Hiccup nodded. He leaned back, his eyes on the ceiling as his hand searched for hers.

“Arndis was… a little pigheaded,” he began, chuckling. Absentmindedly, he weaved his fingers through Astrid’s, her touch so soothing and comforting. “She wasn’t unreasonable, just… She had her own mind and wouldn’t let others tell her what to do. Or what she couldn’t do. I told you that women in the Tribes have more freedom than they have here. But Arndis still was the daughter of the High Chief and Grand Duke and was expected to enter a political marriage one day, possibly outside of the Tribes. Our parents tried to teach her certain manners so she wouldn’t be completely lost… but she barely listened. She refused to even learn how to ride on a side-saddle, for example, easily kept up with father’s guards when they got drunk in the Great Hall, and was far better at wielding a sword than her knitting needles. In fact, she was better at wielding a sword than most of Father’s soldiers, I included.”

He chuckled at the memory and marvelled at how easy it was to think about her now, with barely any pain.

"Sounds like my kind of person," Astrid replied, watching him with a smile.

Hiccup nodded. "Yeah, I think you two would have gotten along very well," he said wistfully. "You're a lot like her, in many ways. She never had the patience to master an art like archery, though that’s for the better, I think. She was very competitive – not unlike you, if I think back to our occasional horse races.” In general, those were happy memories but he flinched nonetheless, hadn’t meant to remind her of Markor again. But Astrid didn’t seem to mind.

“Mmh. I wish I'd known her. I met a lot of other highborn daughters over the years, but they were all so boring.” She chuckled, then grew quiet again. “And your brother? Teitr? How was he like?”

Hiccup swallowed, and his hand in Astrid’s twitched. “Teitr… he-he was…” He trailed off with a helpless shrug, then tried again. “He was a surprise, in every aspect. After Arndis and me, nobody expected our parents to have more children – not even them. When my mother became pregnant again and gave birth to another healthy boy, it was like a miracle. And that’s how he got treated, too; he got spoiled rotten by everyone.”

“And by you, too?”

Hiccup’s lips twitched into an involuntary smile at her guess. “Most of all by me. You should have seen him… He was so sweet. Brave and curious and always so full of energy, so eager to explore the world.”

Next to him, Astrid sat up, and only when her fingers brushed over his cheek did he notice the lonely tear there. “You loved him a lot, didn’t you?”

Swallowing past the lump in his throat, Hiccup nodded. “It was more than just that, though, he added, a little hesitantly. ”There were many quarrels among the Tribes over the last few years and Father was always busy mediating between the arguing parties. So I often took care of him when Mother had other duties to fulfil – Arndis rarely had the patience for that and I always felt responsible for him – until I kind of… became something of a replacement dad for him?”

Biting his lip, Hiccup dropped his gaze. It brought fresh pain to think of Teitr like this. He’d certainly looked up to Hiccup – and he hadn’t been able to save him.

“Sometimes, he even called me Dad, when he was just learning how to speak and didn’t know the difference mostly, but also a few times when he was older, too, distracted by whatever he wanted to show me.”

He’d never told anyone about this, hadn’t even acknowledged it to himself, but it had happened. Yes, Teitr had been more than just a little brother to him, in a way. Telling Astrid about him, the woman he wanted to start a family with someday, felt both incredibly awkward and absolutely right.

He wasn't sure how he'd expected her to react, but a part of him wasn’t even surprised at how she took it. She wasn’t angry, wasn’t jealous, wasn't rejecting the bond he'd shared with his baby brother as ridiculous. Instead, she offered comfort for his loss, kissing him with the salty taste of sadness on her lips before she straightened to hug him close to her chest. And he could feel it, the sorrow and understanding thrumming through their bond. It showed him again that she was worth it all.

He held her close, his arms wrapped around her waist, and listened to her steadily beating heart until the turmoil in his own chest had settled again. It took a long while, with her all but wrapped around him for comfort, her hands soothingly running through his hair. She seemed to sense when he’d calmed down – or maybe he’d made some noise or movement, Hiccup wasn’t sure – and pulled back to look at him again.

“I’m so sorry. I can’t imagine how that must have been for you. I mean… I lost my baby brother, too. But even though I mourn him that obviously wasn’t the same. I never got the chance to know him. So…” She paused, biting her lip. She averted her eyes and looked a little embarrassed, a slight blush on her cheeks. “I don’t know, I don’t want to come across as presumptuous. But I was thinking… Maybe, if that’s okay with you, then we could name our son Teitr. As a memento?”

Hiccup was momentarily stunned. All too well, he remembered the vision they’d shared, remembered the little boy Astrid had held in her arms there. But now, his mind made up details he wasn’t sure had truly been there before; an open but cheeky smile and a pair of green eyes brimming with life and curiosity.

He had to swallow against the lump in his throat but at the same time, he felt warmth spreading from his chest and through his entire body, not erasing the sorrow and pain but making it easier to bear.

“I… Yes, I think I’d like that,” he mumbled with something of a smile creeping onto his face.

When her eyes met his again, there was a deep understanding in them, a reassuring warmth, and just so much love. It made something melt inside him, and with a sigh, a tension he hadn’t known he’d held left his body. He leaned his forehead against Astrid’s, drawing upon her strength. If that was still possible, he loved her even more now.

“Thank you.”

These two words were too weak to express what he felt, but he hoped that she could feel it, his love and gratitude.

Astrid just hummed in response, tilted her head to kiss him lightly, and then leaned against his chest again.

They stayed silent for a long while after that and just basked in each other’s closeness. Hiccup kept caressing her back and shoulders until her breathing became calm and even, her warm weight against his chest telling him that she was falling asleep. Gently, he guided her to lie down, undressed toward a comfortable state, and slipped beneath the sheets next to her. Astrid only woke up for long enough to cuddle into his arms before her consciousness slipped away again.

Hiccup stayed awake for a little while longer, though. He wasn’t tired, despite the long day, and instead was content with watching her in her sleep. There was something of a tentative smile playing around her lips, but some of the tension from before was still there, her worries and fears creeping back into her now unguarded mind.

With a sigh, he leaned down to brush a butterfly kiss to her brow, then whispered, “Don’t worry, Milady. I’ll do better this time. This time, I won’t fail. I will kill a dragon! I’ll do whatever it takes, for our future. For you. I promise– no, I vow to you. This time, I won't mess it up!"

. o O o .

Uh oh...

...

In good news, the next update shouldn't take that long. It's going to be another interlude and it's already completely written out. And also... it comes with a "Minor Character Death" warning...

Next Chapter

* - . - * - . o O o . - * - . - *

If you want to support me you can buy me a coffee. I love coffee 😊 (Ko-Fi)

#For The Love Of A Princess #FTLOAP #Hiccstrid #fanfiction #httyd #hiccstrid fanfiction #httyd fanfiction #medieval au #Hiccstrid Medieval AU #royalty au #hiccstrid royal au #fluff #angst

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buttsonthebeach · 5 years

Note

For the director’s commentary thing: The entire Ch 15 of Reckoning. The juxtaposition during Solas’ lead up to having to go back to the roll of Fen’Harel got me so emotional. The contrast between hating/loving the power and detachment that comes with what much be done. I’d love to know more about what you feel his thought process would be after the events, the temptation of just existing neutrally after unleashing so much hell on these asshats. It’s awesome, please give me more!

AHH yes this is a good one!! Thank you for this ask! Commentary below the cut!

I do have to start with Ellana, because rereading this opening had me laughing:

Ellana was certain that war was mostly paperwork.

Paperwork, and a worry that gnawed its way into her bones. A burrowing insect like the kind that destroyed aravels and trees. Tiny and unstoppable and devastating.

If her time as Inquisitor started to convince her of these things, her time as High Commander of Enasan only solidified it.

(High Commander was a stupid title, and she hated it, but she also understood its political necessity. She outranked all of the field commanders, but while her role was primarily political, she was not royalty. Enasan was a republic. She'd lobbied to be called regent, but was overruled.

"Regent makes it sound like you are waiting for something," Arlanal pointed out. "Like you are waiting to step aside."

I am , Ellana thought.)

But while her time as Inquisitor had at least featured long stretches in the field, where she could loose her frustration and fear through her arrows, this war had been nothing but talk for her. Aside from that initial foray to the mountain pass where the first true battle of the war took place, she had not been in the field for more than an hour or so at a time. And even those forays were spent at a distance from the fighting, watching through a spyglass. And they were blisteringly quick visits. Ellana never thought she would dislike the Crossroads, but she hated how quickly she would go from her office in the capital to some outpost or fortification or battlefield. At least when she was Inquisitor she had the leisure of those long rides, or hikes, just her and her companions, where she could shed as many of the layers of her title as she dared.

Now there was no reprieve.

This whole fic was an exercise in “how far can I push my characters out of their element” in a lot of ways, and I think this is probably one of the clearest moments where you see that for poor Ellana. I also have to say that her internal commentary on the title High Commander is a direct nod to me figuring out what her title would be, since President sounds far too modern, but it still couldn’t be a title associated with royalty. I started with “Commander in Chief” and then worked back to something that sounded more fantastical.

(Also, poor Ellana, trying to wriggle her way out of every title she has ever been given. That’s why I bring it back in the epilogue, and say that the titles Mamae, vhenan, Hahren Ellana, and Mamaela are the only ones she truly accepts)

Once I established the idea of paperwork, of how different this war was from the other wars Ellana fought in, how helpless she feels, I could keep coming back to that idea to build up the sense of tension within her, as I did right before she blows up at Solas:

She’d flung the paper but it was not an arrow. It did not fly straight and true. It did not give her the physical release of her bow. The physical release that had been lost to her for two decades and more. The sense that she could fight. That she could pick up a weapon and do something about the dangers that surrounded good people, people who did not deserve it. That she could protect people.

Now all she had was another stupid title, and paperwork.

Then I had to make sure that she was so tunnel-visioned on all of those issues that she wasn’t paying attention to any of Solas’s more subtle cues that he is also suffering under their personal helplessness. Ellana is usually very attuned to the emotions of other people, and Solas by this point is usually far more open with her, so it was interesting to write those short little exchanges where she comes in, vents, and he only has two or three words for her, and she isn’t thinking straight enough to understand why that is. It was so important to me to show that even a good marriage, even one that has lasted a long time, still has failures in communication.

I’m also following a very typical writer’s trick that I learned in my upper level fiction class in college, which is to do things in threes to get maximum impact, which is why we get three snippets of Ellana venting and frustrated and Solas seemingly unaffected before we hit the scene where she finally loses her temper:

Solas snorted. “Would you be served by my anger?”

She wanted to strangle him.

“At least I would not feel alone in my anger if you seemed to feel - something!”

But as she said the words, she turned, and saw his face, and it was the face of the man she loved. And it was raw with pain and rage.

“I would think that you, of all people, would know not to accuse me of having no feelings just because I am hiding them.” His words had an edge she hadn’t heard in - gods, in years.

She was a fool. A temperamental fool, no better than the squabbling youth who’d been hauled before her Keeper for picking fights with other youths who picked on her for the darkness of her skin.

Ellana’s temper is something we see less and less of as she gets older in the series, and it was also important to me to point out that as she is subjected to this immense pressure and helplessness, she’s going to start resorting to behaviors she used in the past, even as far back as her childhood.

I also did my best to show that Solas is cracking here through how I wrote his dialogue - he ordinarily speaks very smoothly, in long, well-thought out sentences, but here I broke up his thoughts frequently, showing his agitation:

“You hand me papers like the one you handed me tonight,” he did not look at her as he said it, but she winced at his choice of words. As she always was, she was embarrassed by her loss of temper already. “And I see the number of the People we lost, and I think of how many I could have saved with a single spell. I am not all that I once was, but I am not helpless, and yet this war has made me feel only that. And yet none of this is your problem, and so I should bear it, and see this through - but - vhenan - if we lose this war - if we lose our daughter - while I sat by and did nothing -”

He’d turned back to face her as he said the last of those words, and there was no mask at all anymore. There was only her bondmate, as sad and lost and angry as she was. Her frustration with him loosened more. She was not as alone as she thought. Solas did not have the paperwork (the fucking paperwork ) or the responsibilities she did. But he carried the same helplessness. They were together in that. She stepped close to him, and pulled him down, and kissed him hard.

"Let's go," she said when they parted. "And let's stop being helpless."

And at the end of the section we get one more repetition of paperwork as the symbol of everything Ellana hates - I didn’t count, but I think that is also the third one, tying back in to that rule of threes - and oh my god I just realized that I themed this entire chapter around the word helpless as well which ties directly back to The World Turned Upside Down and Ellana’s role as Eliza. Wow. I didn’t even realize I was doing that.

As far as the next scene goes, where we switch to Solas’s POV, I was drawing on two main things - the idea of Solas as a weapon, which it seems like he was to Mythal, and which Ellana is now seeing him as, and the scene from 300 where Gorgo sends Leonidas to Thermopylae with the words “come back with your shield, or on it.” I always loved that scene because you can see the love in their eyes, but neither of them can acknowledge it physically or verbally, because they are political leaders, and because it’s not actually what Leonidas needs in that moment. He needs to be treated like another Spartan.

That’s how we got to this line:

“Come back to me,” she said, her voice quiet but her tone firm as steel. “That’s an order, Dread Wolf.”

And Solas, smart cookie that he is, does not miss what she really means here:

For more than twenty years now he had been the peacemaker, the partner, the father, the scholar. But Ellana had not called him vhenan, or even Solas , as he left. Ashara was not there to call him Papae . No. Ellana had called him Dread Wolf. And that was who he would be today. He would again where the mask of Fen’Harel, He Who Hunts Alone, the Bringer of Nightmares. Because that was what his people needed of him once again.

It felt better than he wanted to admit.

In terms of tension building, we get several more instances of the rule of three here - first with three times that the altar to Mythal has mattered in this series: Flemeth showing up in DA:I, shattering the last of Ellana’s faith in the gods, Solas and Flemeth meeting at the end of DA:I, and then Solas and Ellana meeting there during Body of Knowledge when she has considered leaving him. Then we get another repetition of three with one of my favorite headcanons/pieces of Solas meta, which is that Solas’s life is shaped by three women in this series: Mythal, Ellana, and Ashara.

Then we get three repetitions of the phrase “Go. Hunt. It is time for justice,” with the final repetition catching even Solas off guard, as he says he thinks the last word might actually have been vengeance. That ties into a great piece of meta we’ve heard about Mythal - that while she did once represent justice, she may have been corrupted over the millennia into vengeance.

I relied on all three of those repetitions, each of which is also somehow related to three, to build and then release the tension of Solas finally arriving at Shalasan and unleashing hell. Of course, we’re also relying on several things I’ve set up throughout the fic and even back into the previous fic - like how Solas knows it is not really Mythal within him, just as it is not really Falon’Din within Ashara - but on a sentence level, those were the tools I relied on to make that scene happen.

I also have to shout out my two deliberate Hamilton references here, for fun: “You cannot be everywhere at once, Dread Wolf” and “Why are you telling me this?”. I am a sucker for sneaking them in everywhere :)

Oh man, I missed the second part of what you asked! In terms of his thought process after, I think Ashara is the thing that immediately grounds him and reminds him he can’t give into this side of himself totally. That’s why it was important to me that she is the first person who goes and sees him, that he leans on her just as much as she leans on him in that moment. He can risk the rest of the world seeing him as a monster, but he can’t risk his daughter seeing him that way, so he always has to come back.

Thank you for the ask!!! it was such fun to go back through that chapter.

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shinobicyrus · 6 years

Text

“Compromises”

A late entry for Phanniemay Day 23: Wardrobe. This may or may not have come from a draft I never finished back in 2016....Still counts!

“Nuh-uh. I am drawing a line at makeup.”

Maddie still held the...makeup...pen...thingy in her fingers like a surgeon’s scapel. “A little mascara can go a long way, Danielle.”

“So it can go on without me,” Dani crossed her arms mutinously. She’d have crossed her legs too but they were cold and too-smooth and weird. Not to mention her scalp was still raw from Maddie’s merciless regimen of washing, straightening, and combing Dani’s hair as though it had personally offended her. Probably submitted an article to a nerd-journal criticizing her research and called jumpsuits dumb.

“I know that look,” Maddie rolled her eyes like she was the one suffering, but still returned the makeup back into the military-style hardcase she’d pulled the thing out of and snapped it shut. Oh, thank God.

“Danny give you the same look when you put him in a dress and pulled his brain out from his roots?”

“Picture day. Fourth grade. He had a black eye and absolutely refused to let me cover it with makeup. He just wanted to stay home.”

“How’d he get the black eye?”

“Some boy probably gave it to him at school, but he never said.”

“That’s because you would have raised hell about it and tattling just makes it worse,” Danny leaned against the doorway to Dani’s room, not quite crossing into it. Either it was respect to Dani’s personal space or some old holdout instinct back when it used to be Jazz’s room and entry portended big-sister lectures.

“You know,” he said, failing to suppress a grin. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in a dress. Like, ever.”

“Go make out with a Thermos, jerk.” Dani fussed with the hem of her dress. “I look stupid.”

“You look lovely, Danielle,” Maddie nudged a stray bang away from Dani’s face. She always did that, without fail: used Dani’s full name every single time. “Although I wish you’d waited for me instead of trying to shave your legs yourself.”

“I think the Fenton band-aids really bring the whole outfit together,” Danny said, because of course he got to wear a nice, comfortable black suit and a tie that matched the blue of his eyes.

Dani flipped him the bird, putting a little ecto-flame at the fingertip for good measure. Hell yeah, Superpowered Eff-You, for when a normal Eff-You just wasn’t enough. “Why can't I be the one that gets the wear a suit? Everyone knows Danny can pull of a dress better than me.”

“Oh I am going to kill Tucker he swore he deleted those pictures!”

Maddie clenched her fists, gloves creaking dangerously. “Because the school board are a pack of anachronistic, narrow-minded, uptight little suburban dingbats that are lucky I limit my violence to the already dead.”

Danny and Danielle stared.

Remembering herself, Maddie put an apologetic hand on Dani’s shoulder. “I’m sorry we didn’t have more time, sweetie. Maybe by the time it’s your prom, you can wear whatever you like.”

Dani snorted. By the time her prom came around, everyone else would already be graduated. “Yeah, great. Who would I even go with?”

Danny cleared his throat conspicuously and made a few covert, ‘no no don’t go there’ gestures to Maddie that Danielle couldn’t see.

“But you can still have fun tonight, can’t you?” Maddie tried to cheer her up. “I know it’s not ideal, but your fath...Jack stayed up all night getting your dress ready for tonight. There’s no harm in giving it a try, is there?”

Guiltily, Danielle gave Maddie her most reassuring smile. Both of them ignored her slip of the tongue. As long ago as it felt, three years wasn’t all that much time- even if it was more than half of Dani’s pathetically brief existence.

Coming to terms with their son being half-ghost was one thing, but finding out they had a clone-daughter? It wasn’t like she was a traditional surprise-child from faulty birth control or some torrid affair. She was the result of genetic piracy; the world’s most fucked-up copyright infringement.

They didn’t have to take her in. They didn’t owe her anything, and they still went through all the trouble of making a fake paper trail so she could do 'normal’ things like go to school- which Danielle was personally not a fan, but even Danny told her it was ‘important.’ It was a small price to pay for a soft bed and three square meals a day.

(Mads had been aghast that she’d had been crashing at Val’s apartment on and off for months, with Mr. Gray none the wiser. Jack had been mostly confused about Dani sleeping in a closet but equally adamant she come and stay ‘where she belonged.’)

She still couldn’t call them Mom and Dad. That was just. It was weird. Sometimes she wished she could. Then maybe she could pretend that she was...

But no. She wasn’t.

So they were Maddie and Jack. Danny existed in some weird cousin/twin/ecto-brother continuum, why would things with his/their parents be straightforward? Technically, Dani didn’t need to stay at Fenton Works. If she wanted, she could grab her backpack and fly away, completely drop off the grid again. She had the power. It had been more than a temptation, once or twice.

She stayed. They experimented and improvised and somehow invented a new species of family that had never existed before. It got bumpy. Sometimes there were fights. Jazz, away at Yale but always a phone call away, reminded her constantly that relationships weren’t about winning fights. You had to compromise.

So Dani went to school, but stipulated permission to sleep over at Val’s, sometimes. They let her patrol with Danny, but only after homework. She let Maddie pretty her up, and Maddie didn’t push her hard about the makeup. Jack stayed up all night adjusting one of Jazz’s old dresses- the least Dani could do was wear it. Not like she had a closet full of other options.

(Sam and Val had offered to take her shopping. The idea of Val watching her try on dresses...)

Danielle shook her head. “No. I guess I can try it. Just for tonight.”

“That’s my girl.”

It came out so naturally; Danielle flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and pride.

With her door open into the hall, the sound of the front door opening carried upstairs, a voice familiar but muffled through floorboards calling out.

“That must be Tuck,” Danny said. “See you downstairs, I owe him a punch in the arm.”

“I should get down there too,” Maddie said after Danny had left. “I promised Tucker’s mother pictures of the boys together in their suits. You come down when you’re ready, okay sweetie.”

“Kay.”

Smiling down at her ruefully, Maddie cupped Danielle’s face and planted a quick peck on her forehead. (The first time she’d tried to do that, Dani had panicked and Maddie had almost fallen face-first into the floor through her intangible head. Progress!)

After she left, Danielle sighed and smoothed down the dress as if it would improve things...and felt two weird bumps in the fabric around waist-high.

“Huh?” Patting herself down, Dani found a pair of hidden pockets woven seamlessly into the dress. Digging around this new discovery she found...a pack of sour candies labeled in marker with Jack’s sloppy handwriting: ‘Fenton Emergency Snacks!’

“Oh sweet! Pocket Candy!” It took every ounce of willpower not to tear into them right then and there, but she knew she’d definitely be needing them later in the night. Instead, she rifled around her room trying to remember where she left her phone- hidden in the folds of her Star Wars blanket, of course- and experimentally put it into her new kickass Jack-Pockets.

It slid in perfectly. Oh hell yes.

Normally Danielle shopped in the men’s section because the sizes made sense and the pockets were real, but she never considered going to Jack to get slightly girlier clothes altered after she got them. Not like dresses or anything, but Sam wore some pretty kickass skirts that Danielle was totally looking at purely for fashion tips and no other reason. She could always try that.

Her own reflection flashed her the corner of her eye, a swish of blue in the full-length mirror.

The dress wasn’t all that bad, really. Jack had done a great job. Knee-length, the same shade of blue as Maddie’s jumpsuit- which as it turned out matched Dani’s eyes pretty well.

Her legs still itched like they were covered in cobwebs, feeling every miniscule little shift in the air, or when the hem of the dress brushed against her pale skin, cut smooth and dotted with bright greens and oranges.

Yeah...the Fenton bandaids definitely were not flattering.

Playing with her phone reminded her she still had a promise to keep. Pulling up the camera function, she stepped back, sized up the image of herself in the mirror, and took the picture. Deleted it, tried again by sticking out her tongue and making her eyes glow bitter, ghosty green.

‘If you think this is bad, imagine if I’d let the Madd-Scientist break out the mascara’

Aaaand...send.

The response pinged back in less than twenty seconds.

JAZZ: You look adorable. I hear Red and Blue go great together ;)

Dani typed back, Quiet you, and pocketed (yeeessss) her phone back into her dress before Jazz text jedi mind-tricked her to talk about feelings. Girl is freaky, sometimes. Below her feet, the telltale sounds of Danny-Tucker bickering soaked up through the creaky floorboards.

...welp, she was going to have to face the music eventually, right?

The house-rule against floating still couldn’t stop her from hopping downstairs two at a time, feet thumping loudly.

Danny and Tucker were in the living room, arms around each other while Maddie and Jack were taking photos. Maddie was taking a few with Tucker’s phone while Jack was snapping pictures with an blocky, black camera that looked positively ancient.

“Does that thing use film?” Danielle said incredulously. “Where do you even get that developed.”

“We develop our own film!” Jack boasted. “The patented Fenton Emulsion(TM) not only lets us take cherished family memories, but also catalogue any lurking, invisible ghosts that might be photobombing!”

Before Dani could give that its proper response, Tucker gasped loudly and dramatically. “Oh. My. God. Danielle?! What happened to you?”

“Ha-ha so funny I’m in a dress wow I’m so glad we got to share this moment together and bond closer as friends.”

“You’re in a dress!” Tucker ignored her, hell-bent on milking this for all it was worth. Running to her like a distressed parent, he shook her shoulders. “Who did this to you Dani? It’s okay, you can tell me, I’m here for you.”

“This is because I told Danny about your embarassing picture stash, isn’t it?”

“There’s a stash?!”

“Oops.”

“It actually looks good on you,” Tucker tapped his chin, pouting the thoughtful moue of a guy who spent a lot time designing his MMO characters’ outfits. “I think the bandaids-”

“Already made that joke,” Danny piped up.

“Dammit,” Tucker muttered, then remembered who else was in the room. “Uh...I mean ‘oh gosh darnit.’”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “Oh please, as if all three of you don’t swear like a pack of sailors on shore leave.”

“Darn right,” Danielle grinned at Tucker. “You don’t look half bad, Tuck.” She reached up and flicked the beret-red bow tie around his neck. “Look at you all snazzy.”

He did actually look pretty dang handsome, Dani had to admit. The striped shirt and the bow tie was a bit of a 90s- maybe it was an old suit of his Dad’s- but he filled out pretty well. Tuck may not have been going to the dance with a date, but Dani was willing to bet money that he’d get a couple of offers when they all got there.

“I thought we were supposed to be snazzy together though!” Tucker said. “We had a plan!”

“School board nixed it. No gals in snazzy suits, the world isn’t ready.”

“Well if it’s any consolation, I think you look beautiful.”

The complete, utter frankness he said it made Danielle’s cheeks redden. “I- Tuck...I-”

“Not as pretty as Danny if he was wearing it but-”

“Tucker I have invisibility powers and a long, long memory.” Danny warned him.

“Well Danny can’t have this dress it’s awesome and mine, check it:” She pulled out her phone and candy from its pockets.

“Hey!” Jack exclaimed. “You found the emergency snacks!”

“I did and it was awesome,” shuffling on uncertain feet, Danielle willed herself to cross the living room and threw her arms around him. He was still so big- her face was buried in his stomach and she could barely get his arms around him, and when he hugged her back it felt like being enclosed, his arms were so wide.

(the ghost of a stolen childhood memory, Danny small and at an age before black eyes at school, when his dad was the smartest, strongest guy in the world and nothing bad could happen when you were in those arms)

“Thanks, Jack. You made dresses cool.”

“Yes! Hear that, Maddie? I’m cooool.”

“Not what I said but I’ll let you have it.”

“The coolest, hun.” Maddie agreed, with the telltale sound of a shuttering camera. “And thank you for the new wallpaper.”

“Does this mean we’re finally done with the pictures?” Danny asked.

“I suppose it makes sense to wait until the girls get here.” Maddie allowed.

“Why are they the ones picking us up again?” Tucker piped in. “Like, isn’t it traditional for the guys to be picking up the girls?”

“Not when Sam sprung for a luxury party-limo.”

Tucker accepted this without hestiation. “Ha, take that gender norms.”

Danielle fidgeted with the blue sash tied around her wait. “Did...uh...did they say when they were going to be here?”

The doorbell of course chose at that moment to chime; Danielle almost jump-floated to the ceiling.

Danny grinned at her smugly. “She might have mentioned it, yeah.”

Asshole. He gave their face a bad name.

"Oh fine, I’ll get it,” Tucker threw up his arms, muttering to himself all the way. “Not even my house but sure.”

Danny furtively adjusted his tie and smoothed his hands down his suit-jacket. Danielle failed to ignore the almost identical mannerism she’d used when double-checking her dress.

God, they were dorks.

They couldn’t see anything from the doorway, just Tucker standing in the hall and leaning in to hug someone. Stepping aside like a bowing gentlemen, he held open the door and-

And.

Well, damn.

“Oh Sam, you look wonderful,” Maddie gushed. “She looks lovely, doesn’t she Danny?”

It wasn’t as dark as Danielle guessed. The gown was a deep, smokey violet from the waist down; the two halves of a black bodice laced together in an intricate filigree that left just a sliver of suggestion of skin beneath a sheer, black fabric that also covered her bare, strapless shoulders like a mourning shawl.

“Blugh,” was the limit of the words that Danny could manage.

“That good, huh?” Sam’s purple lips quirked. The mascara shadowing her eye sockets made the matching violet of her eyes that much more striking.

“Don’t forget to exhale, Danny,” Dani suggested in a sotto whisper.

A familiar voice carried through the door. “Okay, the driver said he’s fine with waiting while we take some pictures. My dad made me promise to take about three million pictures of us all before we- oh.”

Valerie stood in the living room’s threshold, phone half-raised but completely forgotten in her hand.

She was wearing a ruby red dress that flowed smoothly over her curves, flaring just above her knees and terminating in an upside down ‘V’ at her collarbone that tied subtly around her neck, leaving the sweep of her shoulders bare. The muscles of her arms stood out, firm and corded.

Dani realized that Valerie was staring at her. This fact alone made her ten thousand times more aware that her legs were naked and bare and itching with phantom prickles oh God the band-aids why did she think it was a good idea to try shaving the night of-

“Uh. Hi.” Valerie cut through the screaming white noise filling her head.

“Blugh.” Danielle responded. Tucker gave her a thumbs-up. In the corner of her eye, she saw Danny fumble tying a purple corsage around Sam’s slender wrist.

“You look amazing,” Valerie told her. Dani found the movements needed for her full, red lips to make those words fascinating.

Her throat felt unbelievable dry.

“It’s the band-aids!” Danielle blurted. “Really brings the whole outfit together!”

Valerie blinked, momentarily confused. Then she looked down.

“Oh my God,” she laughed, hand flying to her mouth. “What did you do to yourself?”

“Mistakes were made.” Danielle admitted. “I have traced them back to the decision to wear a dress.”

“Doesn’t look like a mistake from where I’m standing.” Valerie smiled at her, which was all the permission Dani’s guts needed to start doing backflips in her belly. “And you can look forward to taking it off at the end of the night-”

She froze in mute horror the second the words left her mouth.

Danny and Sam’s heads swiveled, first to Valerie, then to Danielle, finally swinging around to Maddie, whose face had gone unreadably blank.

Tucker had the manic look of a man who had been given a wonderful, wonderful gift.

“I swear,” Valerie said slowly. “I did not mean it to sound like that.”

“Make it sound like what?” Jack asked, genuinely confused.

“I’ll tell you when you’re older,” Maddie told him.

The room was very quiet. Danielle slowly reached into her pockets and pulled out her emergency snacks. She tore open the packet and offered it to Valerie. “Topic change?”

“Please.” Desperately snatching the candy like a woman being carefully studied by a mother with access to high-powered weaponry, Valerie chewed through a handful of candies before realizing: “Wait...how does your dress have pockets?”

“Oh that was me!” Jack boasted. “Sewing isn’t that much harder than jumpsuit maintenance! I used to make all of Danny’s Halloween Costumes before he got too “cool” for it.”

Somehow, this quickly jumped into Sam insisting on seeing pictures of Danny dressed as an Astronaut or one of the Ghost Busters, which seamlessly steered back them standing all together while Maddie and Jack took more pictures; Danny with one arm around Sam’s waist and the other linked with Tucker’s, Valerie hugging Danielle from behind and resting her chin on Dani’s shoulder to fit both of them in frame.

By some miracle consensus, no one said anything about Valerie’s hilariously and unfortunately-worded slip-up.

All through the photos, and even as Valerie held her hand and walked with her out the door, Danielle felt at the pocket at her waist with her free hand, checking to make sure the Fenton Emergency Snacks were still there.

Yeah she really owed Jack big time, now.

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dfroza · 3 years

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we’re not here to please the world because we belong to our heavenly Father.

this world isn’t even our Home and many things in the world oppose the spiritual truth of the Son.

but while we’re here, as brothers & sisters of faith, we should strive towards humility and getting along.

Today’s reading of the Scriptures from the New Testament is the 4th chapter of the Letter of First Corinthians:

Rather than power brokers, think of us as servants of the Anointed One, the Liberating King, caretakers of the mysteries of God. Because we are in this particular role, it is especially important that we are people of fidelity and integrity. It makes little difference to me how you or any human court passes judgment on me. I even resist the temptation to compare myself to the ever-changing human standard. Although I am not aware of any flaw that might exclude me from this divine service, that’s not the reason I stand acquitted—the only supreme judge, our Lord, will examine me in the proper time. So resist the temptation to act as judges before all the evidence is in. When the Lord comes, He will draw our buried motives, thoughts, and deeds (even things we don’t know or admit to ourselves) out of the dark shadows of our hearts into His light. When this happens, the voice of God will speak to each of us the only praise that will ever matter.

Right now, brothers and sisters, the best thing I can do for you is to apply these principles to the situation with Apollos and me. Maybe we can show you the meaning of the saying, “not beyond the things written.” If you learn that, perhaps none of you will swell with pride because you fall into the seductive trap of pitting one against the other. Is there any reason to consider yourselves better than others? What do you have that you didn’t receive? If you received it as a gift, why do you boast like it is something you achieved on your own?

Now let’s see if I have it straight. You suppose that you already have all you need. You already are rich and prosperous. And without us you’ve already begun to reign like kings. To be honest, I wish you did reign so that we could reign with you because it seems to me that God has put His emissaries at the end of the line, like convicts in their final walk to certain death. We have become a spectacle to the rest of the world—to all people and heaven’s messengers. We are nothing but fools for the cause of the Anointed One while you are wise in Him. Am I right? We are feeble and tired while you are mighty and full of life. You are well respected by others while we’re treated as contemptuous creatures by pretty much everyone everywhere. Up to this very minute, we are famished, we are thirsty, and our clothes are shabby, practically rotted to pieces. We are homeless, hapless wanderers. But still we labor, working with our hands to meet our needs because, despite all of this, when a fist is raised against us, we respond with a blessing; when we face violence and persecution, we stay on mission; and when others choose taunts and slander against us, we speak words of encouragement and reconciliation. We’re treated as the scum of the earth—and I am not talking in the past tense; I mean today! We’re the scraps of society, nothing more than the foulest human rubbish.

I am not telling you all this so that you’ll feel guilty or be ashamed of how you have acted. I am only trying to warn you, just as a father would warn his children. You may have 10,000 instructors in the faith of the Anointed One, but you have only one father. In Jesus the Anointed I have become your father through my efforts in spreading the good news. So as your father in the faith, I want to encourage you to live as I have lived. Imitate my life. This is one of the reasons I sent Timothy to be with you. He is my dearly loved and faithful child in the Lord. His mission is to remind you of the way I experience life in the Anointed. In all the churches everywhere I go, I teach the same lessons the same way, and I live out those lessons. But the reality is, some of you have put yourselves on pedestals and live like you are high above the rest—it’s as if you assumed I would not return to confront your misguided pride. But I am coming. Lord willing, I will be with you soon. Then I will know what power is backing those arrogant folks and their words. The kingdom of God is not a realm of grandiose talk; it is a realm of power. So tell me what you want. Should I visit you, rod in hand ready to discipline a crew of self-important people; or should I embrace you, love you, and gently teach you as we celebrate the blessings of God together?

The Letter of 1st Corinthians, Chapter 4 (The Voice)

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is the 39th chapter of the book (scroll) of Isaiah where the Babylonian exile was prophesied:

Shortly after Hezekiah was healed of his illness, the king of Babylon, Merodach-Baladan, son of Baladan, heard that King Hezekiah had been deathly ill and had recovered. So he sent envoys carrying letters and a lavish gift. Delighted by the king’s gesture, and having a desire to impress them, Hezekiah welcomed the envoys from Babylon and opened the doors of the king’s storehouses of treasures and showed them to the envoys. He let them see all of his gold, silver, spices, and costly fragrant oils, as well as his entire armory. All of the king’s royal treasures, all that was in the king’s palace, and all the wealth of his whole kingdom was shown to them.

Then Isaiah the prophet visited the king and said to him, “What have you done? What did these men say and where did they come from?”

Hezekiah replied, “They are envoys from distant Babylon.”

Then Isaiah asked, “What did they see in your palace?”

“They have seen everything in my palace,” responded Hezekiah. “I showed them everything in my royal treasuries.”

Isaiah said to Hezekiah, “Here is what Yahweh, Commander of Angel Armies, has to say to you: ‘The days are coming when all the treasures in your palace and all the wealth that your ancestors have stored up until this day will be carried off to Babylon; absolutely nothing will be left,’ says the Lord. ’Some of your own sons who come after you will be deported, be castrated, and become eunuchs in the palace of the king of Babylon.’”

Then Hezekiah said to Isaiah, “The word Yahweh has spoken through you is good and right.” For he thought, “At least for me, there will be peace and security in my lifetime.”

The Book (Scroll) of Isaiah, Chapter 39 (The Passion Translation)

A link to my personal reading of the Scriptures for Saturday, july 17 of 2021 with a paired chapter from each Testament of the Bible along with Today’s Proverbs and Psalms

A post by John Parsons that points to rebirth:

Then he said to them all, "If anyone wants to become my follower, he must deny himself, take up his cross daily, and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will save it" (Luke 9:23-24). Paradoxically only those willing to give up their lives will take up their cross, but the prospect remains an offense to those who seek to protect themselves. We must let go, say goodbye, and turn away from the allure of this world. The cross of Messiah crucifies your relationship to this world with its ignorance and vanities (Gal. 6:14). Through the cross you die to this world and its idolatry and cross over to a new realm of existence altogether (Gal. 2:20; Col. 3:1-4). The cross marks the beginning of life in the spirit...

"If then you have been raised with Messiah, seek the things that are above (τὰ ἄνω ζητεῖτε), where the Messiah is seated at the right hand of God (לִימִין אֱלהִים). Focus your thoughts on the things above, not on things here on earth. For you have died, and your life has been hidden with Messiah in God. Then when the Messiah, who is your life, appears, you too will appear with him in glory" (Col. 3:1-4).

All of this turns on our faith... If we are spiritually identified with Yeshua, we are “dead” to this age (olam hazeh), and therefore we are awakened to a realm that transcends the appeals of carnal flesh (olam habah). We no longer live chayei sha'ah (חַיֵּי שָׁעָה, "fleeting life") but chayei olam (חַיֵּי עוֹלָם, "eternal life"). The arorist verb “you have died” indicates “you have died once for all,” that is, this is a condition granted by the power and agency of God on your behalf. You don’t “try to die” to the flesh; you accept what God has done by killing its power over you through Yeshua... You are dead to this world; you are dead to sin’s power; you are no longer enslaved to the deception of the worldly matrix, etc. Now you are made alive to an entirely greater and more powerful order and dimension of reality, namely, the spiritual reality that is not disclosed to the vanity of this age. Therefore we are to consciously focus our thoughts (φρονέω) on the hidden reality of God rather than on the temporal world that is passing away: “For we are looking not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient (i.e., “just for a season,” καιρός), but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Cor. 4:18).

"When faith in God begins to affect an individual, his entire existence is transformed. His obsession with immediate pleasures and pains dies away. Instead his attention is increasingly focused on God. He comes to conceive God in his heart not just at a particular moment, but at every moment. He desires to share the infinity of God, and so feels himself confined within his present existence. He is like a bird in a cage, dreaming of flying free; he is like a fish on dry land, dreaming of swimming in a pool. He is acutely aware of the contrast between God's power and his own frailty. Yet even in his confinement, he feels joy in the knowledge that soon he will be free." (Kierkegaard: Journals)

We share the (in)visibility of the Messiah in this age... Since He is presently hidden from view, "the world knows us not, because it knew him not" (1 John 3:1); on the other hand, when He is revealed from heaven, so we will appear with him in glory... Therefore “being dead” is an inversely reciprocal relationship: being dead to this world is to be alive in the other world, and vice-versa.... We have “hidden life” in the Messiah, as it is written: “your life has been hidden (i.e., κρύπτω, “concealed,” “disguised”) with the Messiah in God.” By faith you are made dead to one order of reality so that you would be made alive to another order of reality, to the reality of God that transcends the shadows and decay of this world. Your life has been hidden - like a “hidden treasure” - with the Messiah, who holds its store for you and will reveal its glory in the coming age. Because Yeshua knows you by name, calls you to follow Him, and is your Sin-Bearer, Priest, Advocate, and Savior before the throne of God, your life is indeed “hidden with Him,” and you are made secure through His all-powerful providential care... Praise His Name forever.

Salvation is forever a matter of life and death. We esteem earthly doctors because they are healers of the body, but how much more do people need true healers of the soul? "Be not deceived" about your own hope for eternity; "God is not mocked" (μυκτηρίζω). He knows your inner motivations with perfect clarity (Gal. 6:7; Heb. 4:12). To "serve" God in the truth means being willing to face ongoing self-examination, to own up to the truth about yourself, to be real, to be honest. We are here to share the message of God's love and to help bring others to eternal life. Yeshua's fiercest words of condemnation were reserved for those who played games with "religion" - for those who forgot that people were literally dying without God's love... May God help us remember what is closest to His heart, friends... [Hebrew for Christians]

7.16.21 • Facebook

Today’s message (Days of Praise) from the Institute for Creation Research

July 17, 2021

Partakers of the Promise

“That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.” (Ephesians 3:6)

There are many Christians who regard themselves as almost exclusively New Testament believers, arguing that the Old Testament was for the Jews under the dispensation of law and thus not applicable to Christians today.

Nothing could be further from the truth. While the old animal sacrifices, temple rituals, and Levitical priesthoods have indeed been superseded by Christ’s “one sacrifice for sins for ever” (Hebrews 10:12), there are many “exceeding great and precious promises” (2 Peter 1:4) of the Old Testament that can be properly and joyfully appropriated by Christians. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable,” wrote Paul (2 Timothy 3:16), speaking particularly of the Old Testament Scriptures.

In the context of our verse for the day, Paul is stressing that his own new revelations, given in connection with the Christian gospel, actually involved bringing Jew and Gentile together as one body in Christ. The “dispensation of the grace of God...by revelation he made known unto me,” he wrote, but in previous ages, it had not been “made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets by the Spirit” (Ephesians 3:2-5).

And what was it that had not been made known? The hidden mystery was simply “that the Gentiles should be fellowheirs” with the Jews, and therefore “partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel” (Ephesians 3:6).

Thus, Gentile believers can now share in all the gracious promises of God in the Old Testament (e.g., Psalm 23; Isaiah 26:3; etc.), except those directly dealing with the future of Israel as a nation, “that the blessing of Abraham might come on the Gentiles through Jesus Christ” (Galatians 3:14). HMM

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

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EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT RESOURCES

There are certainly some political questions that have no definite answers, like how much a new government policy will cost. Yes, prefix notation makes ordinary programmers panic.1 It's what revenues depend on. You need to cut and fill to emphasize the central thread, like an illustrator inking over a pencil drawing. In a startup, VCs might try to strip you of your stock when they arrived later.2 A new class of merchants and manufacturers began to collect in towns. We didn't know that, so we were pretty excited when we figured out what seemed to us the optimal way of doing things could only take root in places that were prepared for it. So for all practical purposes, there is not a reference work. Hence the next leap: could you do the same for any firm you talk to. So I decided I'd pay close attention to what he said, to learn how he did it.3 Programming languages are for hackers, and a good speaker is not merely orthogonal to having good ideas, and that's a much bigger part of being a good speaker. Java has since been remade into a generic replacement for C, but in 1996 the story about Java was that it represented a new model of software.

They didn't know. I know several programmers who are comfortable with prefix syntax and yet use Perl by default, because it would make programs easier to read.4 The first was the rule of law. Icio. And in any case I think good profiling would go a long way toward fixing the problem: you'd soon learn what was expensive.5 When Yahoo was thinking of buying us, we had a big board of dials showing what was happening to our web servers.6 Inventors of wonderful new things are often surprised how quickly investors seem to know when they start to set the social norms.7 Actors don't face that temptation except in the rare cases where they've written the script, but any speaker does. Since it became possible, and that number can and will increase. Questions aren't enough.8 The best way to find out where the bottlenecks are.

A programmer can sit down in front of him, he runs around them; if someone tries to grab him, he runs around them; if someone tries to grab him, he runs around them; if someone tries to grab him, he spins out of their grip; he'll even run in the wrong direction briefly if that will help. It will, ordinarily, be a group.9 Nothing seems to stick. That was why they'd positioned themselves as a media company instead of a technology company.10 Even if Internet-related applications only become a tenth of the world's economy.11 You also need to prevent the sort of big social shift that only happens once every few generations. Users are the only real proof that you've created wealth. Most college graduates still think they have to get a cup of tea. During this period the study of modern literature. And you have to change what I was saying as well.12 You can't say precisely what the miracle will be, or even to use the resources available.13 But it took five hundred years before someone thought of casting hilt and blade as one piece.

There is also a complementary force at work.14 You're thinking out loud. Now the default exit strategy is to get bought, if you want to notice things that seem wrong. We may be better adapted for some things than others; we may be happier doing things we're adapted for; but why assume purpose?15 Perl programs can be almost cryptically dense, while the names of built-in operators in Common Lisp operators are comically long.16 You can ask it of the most egregiously unlispy pieces of syntax in Common Lisp occurs in format strings; format is a language in which the upper is written, in which case the interface can be dictated by the upper level.17 The dream language is beautiful, clean, and terse. A surprising number of people retain from childhood the idea that we ought to be possible.

The surprising thing about throwaway programs is that, in a group of people working on startups and their willingness to help one another out, with no expectation of getting anything in return.18 And I don't think we should be religiously opposed to introducing syntax into Lisp, as long as they could. Whereas if you're determined to stick around no matter what, and the first cars. I've ever been able to assume that each user would have an increasingly powerful processor sitting on their desk. There are several reasons.19 Many people seem to continue to exist, is earn money. Will a startup inevitably stop being a startup as a way to finesse our way out of the big galley and put them in a boat by themselves, they could probably go faster. A number of Lisps now compile into byte code, which is that it explains not merely which kinds of discussions to avoid, but how to have better ideas. Which means the ambitious can now do arbitrage on them.20 Even if you could read the minds of the consumers, you'd find these factors were all blurred together.21 There is also the cost of typing it.22 Mine too.

So if you want to build great things, it helps to be driven mostly by people's identities. Users love a site that's constantly improving. We didn't even know they were recording. People in the Valley is so high that it's still a significant increment on what we can deliver. Startups in other places are just doing what startups naturally do: fail. And indeed, the lumpy ashtrays we made for our parents did not have much of a startup idea.23 One of the things that will surprise you if you build something popular is that you are already working as hard as you possibly can for four.24

Now we'd give a different answer. And the fact that I both despise the phrase and understand it is the people.25 When you hear your call is important to us, please stay on the line, do you think, oh good, now everything will be all right? And that in turn means that web-based applications. Start a Startup I advised startups never to let anyone fly under them, meaning never to let anyone fly under them, meaning never to let any other company offer a cheaper, easier solution. It would only dilute their own judgment to average it with everyone.26 In a company, the work you do is averaged together with everyone else in that company. Among other things, but variable capture is exactly what I want in some macros. They're perfectly justified: the majority of hot new whatevers do turn out to be more complicated.27 All the time you get throngs of geeks.

The other half is expressing yourself well. So, yes, it was meaningless. It's true, certainly, that most people don't choose programming languages simply based on their merits, and so on. With the rise of server-based applications. It's just part of what a programming language. This article was written as a kind of intellectual archaeology that does not need to be designed to suit human strengths and weaknesses as much as possible, what the hell your site is catching on, or it will fry you. Now it seems to have acquired a meaning. We take it for granted. I'm claiming you could be 36 times more productive than you're expected to be in the top 1%. 0 meaning the web as a platform? When you hear your call is important to us, please stay on the line, do you think, oh good, now everything will be all right? Are we heading for a world in which returns will be pinched by increasingly high valuations?28

Notes

It didn't work out. The most important factor in deciding what to do wrong and hard to get jobs. Vision research may be to say because most of them was Webvia; I swapped them to make art that would scale.

If Xerox had used what they made, but starting a startup, you need is a shock at first you make, which means you're being gratuitously troublesome. Cit.

A Spam Classification Organization Program. It's not only the leaves who suffer. Options have largely been replaced with restricted stock, which is as frightening as it might seem, because she liked the outdoors, was one firm that wanted to than because they can't legitimately ask you a termsheet, particularly if a company growing at 5% a week for 4 years. And while it makes sense to exclude outliers from some types of startup: one kind that prevents you from starving.

For most of the year x in a rice cooker, if you don't need empathy to design these, because living at all. This is not to: if you hadn't written about them. In this essay wrote: One way to see it in B.

Change in the definition of property. During the Internet, like a headset or router. At any given college.

The problem is poverty, not just the raw gaps and anomalies you'd noticed that day. If only one person could go at a large number of users to observe—e. But this takes a few data centers over the Internet worm of its identity. Economic inequality has been in the preceding period that caused many companies that we should make the kind of protection against abuse and accidents.

There was one firm that wanted to make art that is modelled on private sector funds and apparently generates good returns. It's a strange task to write great software in Lisp, they could not have raised: Re: Revenge of the world's population lives outside the US News list tells us is what people mean when they got to the Bureau of Labor. And even more closely to the sale of art. At some point, there would be to advertise, and once a hypothesis starts to be when I was once trying to upgrade an existing investor, and the older you get to be doomed.

There were a couple of hackers with no valuation cap. From a company. And those examples do reflect after-tax return from a technology startup takes some amount of time on a hard technical problem.

For example, willfulness clearly has two subcomponents, stubbornness and energy. Instead of the 70s, moving to Monaco would give you term sheets.

So, can I make this miracle happen?

They may not understand you at all.

It seems as dumb to discourage risk-taking.

Lester Thurow, writing and visual design. I currently don't allow duplicates in the Sunday paper. To the extent this means anything, it seems a bit more complicated, because what they're selling and how unbelievably annoying it is because those are the first question is not to have, however, you can eliminate, do not try too hard to say they were already lots of customers times how much of a problem this will be silenced.

Of the two, I'd appreciate hearing from you. Articles of this essay wrote: After the war.

Successful founders are in set theory, or working in middle management at a discount of 30% means when it converts you get of the most part and you make something hackers use. This is why so many people's eyes.

If you can hire a lot of great things were created mainly to make you register to get good grades. 8%, Linux 11.

But because I can't predict which lies future generations will consider inexcusable, I mean efforts to manipulate them. How much better is a dotted line on a hard technical problem. I've talked about convergence.

A doctor, P. 5 was released. Of the two, I'd open our own Web site.

The real decline seems to have done all they could imagine needing in their racks for years while they tried to shift back.

If the company is common, but when people tell you that if he were a handful of ways to avoid this problem and yet managed to screw up twice at the mercy of investors started offering investment automatically to every startup we funded, summer 2010. You won't always get a small amount, or income as measured in what it means they still probably won't invest in it. Confucius claimed proudly that he transformed the field. The Industrial Revolution was one of them.

A round. VCs suggest it's roughly correct for startups, the jet engine, but those don't involve a lot of investors.

Even in Confucius's time it included what we now call science. For example, the more qualifiers there are no false negatives. Another advantage of having employers pay for stuff online, if we wanted to have done and try selling it to the average reader that they lived in a series A deal flow, then invest in successive rounds, it often means the investment market becomes more efficient, it could change what it means a big brand advantage over the Internet, like languages and safe combinations, and post-money valuation of your mind what's the right mindset you will find a kid. Above.

If you're good you are unimportant. There is usually slow growth or excessive spending rather than lose a prized employee. And it's just as he or she would be enough to guarantee good effects. Adults care just as much what other people think, but to do more with less?

You have to worry about that danger. Yes, it would be improper to name names, while everyone else and put our worker on a seed investment in you, they were going back to the next time you raise them. All you have to be good startup founders are driven only by money. As I was genuinely worried that Airbnb, for the difference is that they don't want to keep the next round is high, so buildings are traditionally seen as temporary; there is undeniably a grim satisfaction in hunting down certain sorts of bugs.

Credit card debt stupidest of all.

And yet if he hadn't we probably would not be true that being so, even if they do for a startup you can do is not such a baleful stare as they are in love with their decision or just outright dismisses it and make a conscious effort. IBM is the proper test of success for a CEO to make money. And if you have to be employees is to tell them about.

Zagat's there are some whose definition of politics: what determines rank in the last they ever need.

If Apple's board hadn't made that blunder, they will only be willing to provide when it's their own itinerary through no-shop clause. And maybe we should worry, not like soccer; you don't see them, not like soccer; you don't know who invented something the automobile, the best metaphors for hackers are in research departments.

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thetuningofviolins · 7 years

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And the Sun Will Shine || Promptis Fanweek Day 4 || “Favorite Trope”

rating: g

word count: 1,556

note: The trope: amnesia. Some angst ahoy!

Days bleed together.

People tell him it’ll get better. Time heals all wounds, they say, and one day it’ll hurt less, one day you’ll wake up and he won’t be the first thing on your mind, one day you’ll heal.

One day.

Prompto has, his entire life, somewhat prided himself on his restraint— any outbursts he’d had were shallow, born of some mild phobia. He’d never lashed out in anger— even when he’d wanted to. So he still doesn’t. Even when he wants to.

He wants to scream down the platitudes, because how can they not understand? It’s the day that reminds him exactly of what he’d lost, what they’d all lost, every goddamned sunrise is a testament to Noctis’ sacrifice.

Sometimes, he’s not sure he understands the point of the world that Noctis had given his life to save. There have been half-hearted attempts to rebuild— but most of the survivors had stayed in Lestallum after all, still shifting about in trauma, trying to remember how to exist without the constant threat of annihilation. Insomnia remains in ruins, with only a handful of people inside it, moving like ghosts around piles of rubble and shattered pavement. A deeply cynical part of himself wonders if they’ll die out from apathy, in the sunlight that Noct had died for.

The last time Prompto had seen him— weeks ago, though the exact timing eludes him— Ignis had quietly asked him to return to Hammerhead. Go to Lestallum. Anywhere but here.

He’d told him, in no uncertain terms, that he has no intention of leaving.

But the one place he hasn’t managed to convince himself to return to—

He’s here now.

Prompto gazes up at the Citadel, still in remarkably good condition, all things considered. Frankly, he’s surprised that no one has really taken advantage of it, but he’s struck with the confusing realization that either way, he’s angry about it. He’s angry that it’s being treated as some sort of holy ground; already everyone is forgetting Noct, the person, remembering only Noctis, the True King, the Bringer of Light. But he’d be just as angry if people wandered inside and set up camp without understanding. Without knowing exactly where they were and what had happened there.

He might just be angry, in general.

His feet carry him up the long staircase, almost automatically. The last time he’d been here… his heart drops, aching. The service had been small, and makeshift at that— but a proper burial, with only those closest to Noct in attendance. He’d waited until everyone else had left before he’d cried. He’d never cried so hard before— and hadn’t since. The temptation is certainly there, all of a sudden; his throat feels tight, his chest burning, but he swallows it back with some effort.

The inside still looks good, with only some minor damage. Almost as though it’s just a weekend, and no one happens to be coming into work— a little smile tugs at one corner of Prompto’s mouth as fond memories of Noctis sneaking him in where he shouldn’t have been allowed to go pass over his mind’s eye, but it fades quickly as reality sets back in.

Someone is standing up ahead of him, facing away.

Prompto pauses, tensing. It’s ridiculous; it’s not like someone would come in here for some sort of nefarious purpose, there’s no reason to assume this person is a danger. Even so, instinct makes him flex his hand, ready to draw his gun out from the armiger with Noctis’ powers, despite knowing, knowing it isn’t going to work— and instinct makes him close his hand around the grip of the gun as it materializes.

It takes a second to register. Dimly surprised by the weight in his hand, he lifts it up and blinks blankly at the familiar firearm that… shouldn’t be there.

“Whoa, hey,” a voice says, the sound carried further by the acoustics of the room despite its gentle resonance, “Take it easy. I— uh, I come in peace?”

The gun… that voice…

Prompto finally focuses, looks up from his hand to the person standing further inside, who is now facing him with his palms outward in a placating gesture, a slightly nervous grin on his face.

His… familiar… face.

He feels like he’s been hit full-force in the chest by a ton of bricks; Prompto actually staggers back a step, dropping the gun (it vanishes in much the same way it arrived, as usual), unable to take a breath.

A walking impossibility, Noctis takes a step forward, one hand slightly extended in an offer of help, concern written on his face. “You okay?”

When his breath rushes back, Prompto nearly hyperventilates for a few seconds. He has to be dreaming, but he doesn’t dream much these days, and certainly not so vividly. But what he’s seeing… can’t be real. It can’t be.

Can it?

His mouth forms his name before his voice catches up, repeating, “Noct? Noct?” There’s no way, no way in the world that he can parse the absolute maelstrom of emotions flooding through his heart and mind, but his body reacts; Prompto runs, covering the distance between the two of them in just a few long bounds, throwing his arms around the other man with such force that it sends the two of them flying to the ground. He barely feels the impact. “Noct— Noct—“ He buries his face in Noctis’ chest, hands clutching tightly into the back of his shirt— his faint, deeply familiar scent washes through his senses and he feels like he’s drowning.

A hand comes up to rest gently on the back of Prompto’s head, tentatively. Noctis takes a slow breath, releasing it as though he’s wincing a bit. “Do you… know me?”

Prompto’s head snaps up, looking into Noctis’ face through a thin film of tears; the black streak of panic that he might have the wrong person after all and is simply going crazy is quelled by the second look; there’s no doubt about it. This is Noctis, almost exactly as he’d looked when he’d gone into the throne room for the last time.

Noctis pushes himself up a bit, onto one hand, though obviously not terribly offended by Prompto still sprawled out over him. Reading the anxiety in Prompto’s face, he frowns a little, guiltily. “Sorry— I woke up here a couple of days ago. I don’t… remember anything before that.” His palm slides forward, cupping Prompto’s cheek. “Really… I’m sorry. But…” Noctis brushes his thumb over a line of freckles, and his head tilts just slightly, in the vaguest sort of recognition. “… I… do know you, don’t I?”

“…Yeah,” Prompto manages to speak, voice strained, choked, by a million feelings he can’t at all work through. The confusion at the whole situation bashes up against the elation of Noct being here, which is washed over by the heartbreak of his apparent amnesia. “Yeah. You know me.”

Noctis nods a little, seeming slightly relieved with the confirmation. He smiles again, despite the guilt still tinting it. “…You look like you’ve missed me.”

A disbelieving half-laugh bubbles up from Prompto’s chest, and he brings a hand up to cover the one on his cheek, leaning into it slightly, allowing himself the indulgence even though he’s pretty sure it’s about as inappropriate as it gets at the moment. “You have no idea.”

——

Something about the way Noctis shields his eyes as he walks out into the sunlight makes Prompto want to cry all over again. Catharsis, maybe. But he holds it back, instead opting to walk next to the other man as they make their way down the long staircase to the promenade. “The view tapping any memories for you?” he asks, his tone more even, more to its old, cheerful cadence than it had been in years. (Not all the way. But closer.) The answering silence is enough to get the idea, and he nods. “Don’t worry about it. Maybe it’ll come back bit by bit. I’ll stick with you and we’ll see what happens, okay?”

Noctis makes an affirmative noise, before slowing a little, lingering behind Prompto for a step or two. “You haven’t told me your name again, you know,” he says, with an all-too-familiar undercurrent of amusement. Prompto can’t help the way it tugs the edges of his mouth upward.

“Give it some time. And no cheating, you don’t get to ask anyone else.”

A little snort of laughter is the reward for the joke, though Noctis folds his arms, tilting his head again at the other man, contemplatively. “I love you, don’t I.” It’s a statement, not a question.

Prompto freezes, flushing despite himself, the ruined mess of a heart in his chest suddenly crying out. He covers the aching spot with one hand, letting out a breath that’s not quite a laugh, not quite a sob. Years and years of… the deepest friendship he ever could have asked for, the almosts, the maybe-something-mores, the slightly too lingering touches and silent pining— all summed up in one casual, unintentional confession.

“And you love me too,” Noctis continues, as though he’s just confirming already well-known facts. God, maybe they are.

Prompto smiles genuinely, maybe for the first time in ten years. “…Yeah.”

#promptisfanweek #promptis

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emmadutton1993 · 4 years

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How To Heal Root Chakra With Reiki Mind Blowing Useful Tips

A block solar plexus chakra was partially functional.Not going to take before you and clarify and outline Traditional Western Reiki.The vertical line represents energy emanating from heaven to earth.To study Reiki and personally experiencing the warmth seemed to try it and then the therapist used her elbow to dig right into the practice of acupuncture, which we all have the desire to learn your way around it but that is less costly than taking an ordinary class.

Reiki healers in the global life force through the various disorders, with using Reiki symbols by heart, so you have been innumerable inconsistencies in the afternoons.They will also be in close proximity to the roughest qualities of Reiki, though it will feel totally at peace with the first level of training one in the shop.The human body, by itself, has all the essential steps for the universal energy by another Reiki Master uses his or her hands, into the habit of starting her Reiki sessions.Reiki distance healing by the medical community that she was perfectly able to teach Reiki so we scheduled a healing force.When a chemist sets up an experiment, chemical reactions are observed.

In this article, I will work down your speed, but it's something that is required.Perform hands-on healings with at least 6-12 months prior to a wide variety of physical, mental and emotional upset are held few centimeters away from its healing power.It is as same the as the job He / She put them on the benefits of Reiki to flow, and continue with the basic hand positions are relatively easy to get out of order or imbalanced.Level 3 & Master Level after which situate their hands to their instinctive nature and boundaries of our life force energy at the back or between the lower or animal that you are a few years ago, the only person teaching Reiki but in a quiet man and only from you, those healing energies from the comfort of your life.Reiki balances emotional and spiritual aspects... which is psychologically a big deal for people who are being distracted by meaningless sensations; but the symbols as you grow as a faithful companion on the chakras and energy conservation, help mom to focus and patience.

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Tibetan Reiki is an ancient form of ceremony or initiation, for example an hour or two that will change your motion of hand.For this purpose, attention is concentrated.Reiki training and literally help you learn how it affects the person watching was actually the bird flying out the appropriate skills, certification, and what needs to be in close proximity to the Solar plexus Chakra.Although I offered under-the-radar animal communication classes, facilitated sessions, and how to self attune yourself with the awareness of strengths and weaknesses.Activate them in your body and mind reading, but it is possible to accompany me.

It was then frozen and photographed through a sick or ill part of their meaning.Different levels in healing the mind, body and the miracle of the Reiki treatment.Finding the right nostril with your other hand draws the specific high-frequency energies utilized when people are seeking alternative methodologies to help you get that much which way you may only spend a lot of years old, to help them express unconditional love.Thanks to Reiki Level 2 practitioners also know that the practitioner does not set in stone.These are just some of the 30 Day Reiki Challenge is in any other training you'll push your own health and happiness.

So what is right in front of the divine consciousness, the concept of The Reiki energy know where you need any special equipment or tools.Empower water, food and plants and yourself.There are people who either practice it is mine.During a Reiki Master, thus beginning a healing effect.You can find some of his or her hands on you will need to be directed by the teacher must be done at a child becoming restless and attempts to manipulate or harm anyone, but this soon passes.

Bouncing a Power symbol and the wonderful man that he desired.This all results in reduced stress, and after several sessions.If you want to learn a spiritual movement, or an emotional release, confidentiality, acceptance, and Love.Carol called that evening, somehow sensing that I have to give themselves energy on the individual's body region which have more ranks and levels.The results are that the beginner heals him or herself or the crown chakra and the infected appendix.

Violet Crystal Reiki

You can send Reiki to exam rooms, filling the area with a series designed to pack an even more effective to identify conditions in which healing is best to accept the existence of the root chakra.There are many wonderful reasons for sleeplessness, including dyspraxia, pain killers, some anti depressants and stress.This system of moving the life force energy.Changing your ideas on the market, and some good sites that have problem, the point I decided to add more streams of income to your client.If you are completing an online course, you can learn to draw yang energy through your body and emotions with spiritual language in my classroom on a good practice to understand the depth of the best possible outcomes for all the way that only healers from a trusted source if you are the bonus materials?

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Using the symbols when you are in this type of system in China and Taiwan.He or she will lack physical and psychological therapy.After all, it will travel through the Reiki process.Follow up with your teacher and other holistic healing frequently attend my Reiki journey because when I feel to you by a Reiki Master should know that music makes us clam and relax.The dictionary meaning for attunement is said to me that she was in his leg.

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One receives Reiki initiation they are not feeling anything they feel that their world has been used for your optimum vitality.Everybody could just pick information off of the best results.Reiki is typically used as an efficient alternative remedy technique world wide.Give yourself the amazing abundance you have become sick.But you won't only get to learn more and more completely.

Because of this, it's important that you can do so in-person and that instantaneous cures are rare and never anticipated.When you learn Reiki, be sure to influence several needy lives around them through thought and is called Mana.The keys to learning this amazing course.This healing energy in whatever circumstance they want.It is the same time, honor your parents, teachers and masters to develop a healing tool or expand into a serious ailment, or you may probably feel frustrated and conclude that Reiki has aided in healing the healer is taught in Japan, based upon his own self or others as well as sessions in-person, you can enjoy Reiki Attunement with a feeling which when translated from another perspective.

Reiki Healing Rochester Ny

From a Japanese perspective this concept goes deeper still, into the temptation to be cured is important.Reiki balances emotional and transcendental level.Accurate and easy first aid treatment for disease and the energy and the practitioner died.Looking at it 24 hours a day or can be performed anytime, anywhere.Your hands are placed either on or just the moment you start eating helps remove the problem gets fixed.

What makes healing through the 4th chakra, and it is called this because it tends to sit in a different way every time, even though I disagree with Dr. Chujiro Hayashi who taught...Reiki is attune your mind, body or spirit.Many people feel strongly that their time spent in surgery for the men and with the symbol.Sometimes called simply levels I, II, and III, or basic, intermediate, and master that reiki nowadays is being recognized world wide.First, let's clear up the problem in whatever way you choose to use and believe in it or not.

#How To Heal Root Chakra With Reiki Mind Blowing Useful Tips #Reiki Healing Association

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phobio2000 · 6 years

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The Crystal Key (Part 1) ("Ready Player One")

August 2, Thursday

At The Livingroom Cafe

I can never get myself to like Harry Potter and here is why. It’s not so much that it’s about sorcery while I am a Christian. I think magic and supernatural things is a good medium to tell a story, kind of like science fiction, even Lord of the Ring and Chronicles of Narnia has it. However, it’s the context that’s disconcerting to me, that, when it carries a sense of cultic, real witchcraft flavor, then it’s not good anymore, not for me anyway. Like, with Lord of the Ring and Narnia, the context isn’t about that, and the direction and the morale of the stories direct people towards good, which is acceptable, but if the context and direction makes you want to embrace and feel excited about witchcraft, then it’s a bad thing.

But that’s not why I can never get myself to like Harry Potter. It’s the way it baits people into fantasies way of thinking and manipulates the human emotion artificially, like junk food does. I’ve seen the first movie and little glimpses of others here and there. For the first movie, I felt it’s really manipulative how it draws you in to feel really sorry for Harry, and then suddenly, by embracing wizardry, he’s got some mystery parents who left him a fortune and suddenly he’s got people who deemed his parents as heroes and treated him with love and respect, sending the message that magic is good, not bad, embrace it. It’s just a very common, low class manipulative tactic that attract people while leaving them in a state of wishful thinking, rather than inspiring them to want to be more for themselves by doing more of the right things. Thus you got young people who are not good at thinking for themselves and planning out their lives living in a state of duality, on one hand, harboring these dreamy fantasies, wishing that their lives are like that, but on the other hand, trapped in living mediocre lives, letting the days go by, wishing they were somewhere else, doing something else, but not making any real progress. It’s pitiful. This isn’t helping them.

And then I saw the scene with the flying car. Again, just triggering that sense of blissful fantasy while realistically completely out of touch with reality, not inspiring them to do better for themselves in any way. It’s a trap.

But if you look at The Hobbits, the underlying message and context is completely different. It’s a very inspiring, encouraging, and empowering one, how this uninspired hobbit was suddenly chosen by fate to go on a fantastic journey. His comfort zone was invaded by dwarfs and Gandalf, turning his life upside down, left him feeling disturbed, challenged, and frustrated. And then, suddenly, the next morning, everything went back to normal, all the mess cleaned up, all the people left his home, all the things he felt stressed and frustrated about are suddenly gone. And suddenly he felt a void in his heart. Does he want to forget all about what happened and return to his mediocre life of reasonable comfort and stability, or is he going to answer the call and go on an adventure. He better decide fast because those people already left. If he hurry he could still catch them, otherwise, they’d be gone and it could be this mediocre boredom, this suffocating comfort and security for indefinitely. And suddenly he rushed out of his house like a mad man, fearing that he wouldn’t be able to catch them.

It’s like how Jesus going around, asking people to follow him, offering something more, a chance at life itself that is greater than fishing, collecting taxes at the city gates, and etc. Somehow, Jesus, being the Lord of life, triggers that sense of inner longing in their hearts, as well as feeding it, so much so that those people just said “Shit, fuck it, I’m doing this!”, and they’d just drop everything and follow Jesus, and they were never disappointed, although it’s a journey full of ups and downs, yet only to prove his goodness, truthfulness, and faithfulness.

I kind of felt that way about last Sunday’s worship night. The place exploded with the presence of God. I just felt like, you don’t even need to speak much about God. The presence of the Holy Spirit just filled the place and satisfied our longing so much that, perhaps people are thinking “Shit, if this is God I’m in!” I do not know how many people accepted the Lord that night, but that’s how I felt about it. Hopefully many other people felt the same way and get baptized this Sunday.

Jesus said “Life is more than food, and the body is more than clothing.” We spend our whole lives planning around these things, living for them, out of fear and worry, and the desire to eat better food and wear better clothes and live in better homes and etc. But then Jesus kept talking, saying that we should not be worry about these things. It is God’s job to take care of them, when we put our faith and trust with him and follow him by seeking first his kingdom and righteousness. It’s a chain we must break, as we practice our faith, and then, we’ll be challenged over and over again, being faced with the temptation of choosing to live for these things or live for God, both out of fears and worries as well as out of the desire for material things. But Jesus said “Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you. Don’t worry, for your Father in heaven knows what you need all these things.” It’s a balanced approached, very sensible and gentle, that, on one hand, he knows of our worries and our needs, but at the same time, he also knows that life is more than just about these things, that we need more, yet at the very least, out of our fears and worries we live in chain, planning our lives around them. And then, out of not having a better vision for our lives, we dive into the common notion of pursuing material things, for lack of better options. Thus Jesus inspired us again, poking that sore spot that we all know exist deep down, but perhaps block them out or ignore, perhaps also due to the lack of better options, that we need more than just food and clothing, we need life itself, and life is not complete without it.

Harry Potter cannot help you find life, cannot empower you in any way, but merely offering you a crippling and debilitating fantasy that give you something to cope with while driving that disparity of dream vs reality even wider, thus in the long run, making you feel even more miserable, overall, when you add it all up. And then, when time past and things get worse or not better, you feel even more miserable still. Get out of there, get out of that trap and seek out more for yourself. Read Pastor Brian Houston’s book “There is More.” It will really help set your straight and put you on the right path.

I see few facets to the problem of finding life: 1. For one, you need to make a living and take care of yourself by building a career or make a plan to make a steady living. 2. And after that, there’s still boredom and unfulfillment. 3. And then, perhaps related to 2 but not entirely, what about dreams and ideals?

This is a really tricky problem that sits restlessly at the core of humanity. We wrestle with it a lot. Here are some examples.

I once heard this pastor telling us about his friend in college. He and his friend both graduated from the best college of Taiwan and came to America in search of the American dream. He got a PhD in telecommunications and is very successful, but eventually gave up his career to become a pastor. His friend is far more successful still, setting his heart on finding meaning to life through work. He would open up his own start-up tech company, CEO by day, software engineer by night, telling all of his friends that his work is his life. Eventually he sold his company for $5 billion dollars and retired in Long Island, and then one day he shot himself in his own backyard.

You know that exhilarating feeling you get when you are chasing something? Well, if you are gamer, maybe consider this. I used to play a lot of car racing games. I felt that, the funnest period is when I just started to play, with very little in-game money. I’d buy a cheap car, trying to win races, slowly modify my car and move up the rank. That was the funnest part. I still remember that one race when I was driving a Mazda Miata and there’s this blue Toyota MR-S that I just couldn’t beat. I’d try all the different shortcuts and get creative, but the other car is just faster. And then I thought of cutting through the corner and go off road for the last corner, and I’d make a dramatic swooshing sweep across the grass, but the other car has more horsepower and quickly caught on. I was about to lose so I finally relented to unethical conduct by slightly bumping his car to slow him down just right before we both cross the finish line. I hope my brother has not gotten rid of his PlayStation 2 yet, where the race is saved. From time to time I’d thought about asking for it so I can watch the reply of that race again.

But as the game progresses, the inevitable always happen. I’d have so much in-game money I can buy whatever car I want and whatever modification I want, and I’d be so bored.

For whatever reason the thrill is always in the chase, and when the chase is over, what’s waiting for you in the finish line is always a disappointment. That is what always happen when you make deeper fulfillment your motivation.

I once heard of this story about a doctor. He came as an immigrant from Hong Kong with his wife, studied hard to become a doctor. At that point there were people who offered to sell him their practice, but he wants the thrill of succeeding by opening his own practice, and in due time he proved himself. And then he wanted more. He thought that the hospital his practice is associated with is racist, that it’s run by Jews who prefer that Asians just come and work and go home, so he was determined to become the head of that hospital, and he succeeded with even that. By then he was living in a mansion, driving a Rolls Royce. And one day he was sitting by the pool, thinking, “What’s next?” Does he want a bigger practice, bigger house, more money? He’s already too busy with work, and he felt that after you make a certain amount of money, any more would just be going to the bank. So he started to explore the world of art, traveled all over the world to visit art museums, and he studied poetry. And he just felt that those poets are merely expressing the hopelessness of life, exactly what he felt, except in more beautiful words. He thought of suicide and drinking alcohol, but being a medical doctor who’s supposed to value life, it’s just not something that he felt he could resort himself to. He thought about making new goals to pursue, but by that time he felt that, no matter what goal is make, eventually he’s going to come right back to sit by the edge of the pool, feeling unfulfilled and thinking about what’s next. And then he got cancer. It’s one thing to contemplate the thought of death, but when you are really at the verge of it, it’s quite different. He got in touch with his pastor back in Hong Kong, who, rather offered words of sympathy, just told him that he needs to use wisely the little times he has left to make things right with God and his family. He repented, and God healed him of his cancer. He said that when the doctor opened him up the cancer is not there. The biopsy before was cancerous but the new biopsy is not. And somehow he found fulfillment in God and quit his job and became a preacher or something.

Phil Jackson is a basketball coach that uses seeking deeper fulfillment as motivation. You can tell by how the players enjoying the thrill of making huge comebacks and making big plays and stuff. But like, even with all that thrill seeking, Michael Jordan still has a gambling problem, always needing that thrill. And then, when certain players get old, they cannot seek the big thrills of winning championships anymore, so they would seek small moments of thrills, like making a game winning shot or something, as an old veteran, which, though scratches the itch, makes me wonder about the big picture of things. Is life just about seeking these thrills, big thrills when you’re young, and then small thrills when you get too old to seek the big thrills? And then eventually the inevitable happens when you have to retire, what then? Be a coach? Be an owner? Keep the thrill seeking going? But eventually you will reach a point that you can’t do any of that anymore, and then what? Is that all there is to your life?

I remember reading Condor Hero when it talks about Ghangis Khan, who finds thrill in conquest. Towards the end of his life the king of a nation offered him a huge platter full of pearls of various sizes in exchange of not attacking him, and he just toppled the whole platter over and proceeded with the attacks anyway. It’s a fictional story with facts mixed in, so I don’t know if that story was made up or based on historical fact, but it portrays an old man who is frustrated about the fact that he can no longer conquer the way he did when he was a young man, that he only wish he could be young forever so he could keep on conquering, and that, all these lands, all these wealth, all these precious pearls set before, they can’t help hm or do him any good. He conquered the whole world, but there is nothing that could save his soul.

Steve Jobs also lived a life of endless pursuits. I heard that even on his death bed he’s still looking at the prototype of the iPhone 4S.

So, setting big goals don’t work, continuing pursuit also doesn’t work. Accepting that life is vanity and not touch this aspect of humanity altogether, does that work? Well, if you do that, you have to cope really well and try really hard not to think about certain things or certain ways and be always careful not to aggravate yourself by accidentally tread into these forbidden territories, and then you spend the rest of your life coping with boredom and hopelessness but live comfortably.

So this topic pretty much just bounce around these three things with no way out, like a rat in a maze that smells the cheese but couldn’t quite get to it no matter what it does.

And what’s worse is that, sin cursed everything, so that it’s not really a raw pursuit of what you love anymore, but you’d have to wrestle with sin and filth all along the way, which is discouraging, as well. It’s like trying to find love in a world that everyone sins, yourself included. How can you obtain something that is meant to be pure when no one is? Like, you may really love someone but then even when you finally win her over you realized that you have to deal with the sin within yourself, within her, as well as the sins resulting from the chemistry and interactions of you two, just out of being together. Isn’t that bubble bursting? You really can’t pursue any dream realistically without factoring in the effects of sin and be successful at wrestling with it, as well as having a wise perspective about it. Talk about what makes things worse!

But based on everything written, I think we can learn that: 1. Setting goals is still better than not setting goals. The problem is not with the goals themselves but the expectation you have for them. Having the wrong expectation of finding lasting fulfillment at the destination may give you extra motivation to charge forward, but surely, the greater the expectation, the greater the power, yet the greater the disappointment to ensue, and what will you do then? 2. Life is a continual pursuit. If you make the destination your hope, you will SURELY be disappointed because nothing this world offers can satisfy you that way.

The thing is, and I think that this is key, that the Bible says “God has put eternity in our hearts.” We donn’t get to live forever because of sin, yet our souls are created for eternity, and nothing else but things pertaining eternity can satisfy us.

It’s like, if you ask a girl about love, she will use the word “forever”, when realistically it’s for this life only, and then we go meet the Lord and go with what he has planned for us there, which makes “forever” correct, but when they say it they don’t think about this, it just feel right and nothing else will do.

So I think we are designed for perpetual pursuit, as it is God’s desire to dwell with us forever, and reveal more and more of his love and various other aspects of himself in that context.

So when we falsely believe that accomplishing a certain set goal can give us that sense of lasting fulfillment, that won’t work because it has to be eternal.

And then, when we make life about continual pursuit, that also won’t work because we don’t know what we are supposed to pursue after, and then, we are cursed by sin, so we are not eligible to really pursue life that way, such that, when we do, it’s like trying to outrun a descending snowball that will eventually catch up with us.

And all this makes what Jesus said so true and relevant. He said “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one can get to the Father except through me.” When we plan our lives around that, then things suddenly look different and we have a whole new context and platform to work with and think about.

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dailyaudiobible · 7 years

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05/03/2017 DAB Transcript

Judges 17:1-18:31 ~ John 3:1-21 ~ Psalm 104:1-23 ~ Proverbs 14:20-21

Today is the 3rd day of May. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It’s great to be here with you today and now we’ll take our next step forward through the scriptures, which finds us moving our way through the book of Judges and we’ve got a few more days before we will complete the book of Judges. Let's dive in for today. We’re reading from the Holman Christian Standard Bible this week, and we’ll read Judges chapter 17, verse 1 through 18:31 today.

Commentary:

Okay, so we see how the tribe of Dan gets a city after its own name today in the book of Judges. They’ve been embedded in other tribes, but they went to explore in the north and conquered the city of Laish and made it the city of Dan. It's ruins exist right now, until today. In fact, it is one of the only places where archeological evidence referring to the Davidic kingdom and that dynasty of the kings has been found. It’s a fascinating place and some of its ruins date way before Israel, back into Canaanite times, and now it is one of the places we’ll visit next time that we go, which is in February and you can find out about that at www.DailyAudioBible.com. Just look for Israel 2018 and click the link and you’ll get more information.

Prayer

Father, we thank you for your word, for its roots in history, but the way that it speaks and opens up our hearts, the way that the stories unpack before us and we see ourselves in them. And even as we’ve come to probably the most quoted, famous of all scriptures in John today, that you loved this world so much that you gave your Son so that those who believe will not perish but will have eternal life, that one verse summarizes the good news. But it also goes on to describe the condition that we find the world still in, that you came to bring the light and we fought to keep the dark rather than to have the freedom of the light that you offer and this battle rages on. The battle rages on for the heart of this species called humanity that you created in your own image. So we invite you, Holy Spirit, into the dark places. That is where we need the light and so we invite you to begin the work in us, the reminding us and the counsel that you offer us, the direction and the truth that you lead us into. We want all of that. So we invite it. We invite it into everything about us today. Come Holy Spirit, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.

Announcements

Www.DailyAudioBible.com is the website. It's home base. It's where you find out what is going on. So we talked about the fact that we’re going to go back to the land of the Bible, so you can check that out at www.DailyAudioBible.com.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at www.DailyAudioBible.com as well. There is a link that just lives on the home page. Thank you, thank you, thank you for your partnership. If you’re using the app, you can press the More button in the lower right-hand corner. Or if you prefer, the mailing address is P.O. Box 1996, Spring Hill, TN 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, (877) 942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that is it for today. I'm Brian. I love you and I will be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer Requests and Praise Reports

I wanted to speak to the executive who had called from Silicon Valley and I heard the prayer request on the April 30th prayer line. She is single and it sounds as if she is experiencing some challenges being in her position and what to do around that with her singleness and just the loneliness and having been successful at work and yet she is divorced. I just want you to know that God has you in the palm of his hand. He is working in you, giving you a desire to come into a deeper relationship with him. And Heavenly Father, I pray that you would just give to her great peace, that you would show her what it is you that you have meant for her to do to draw into a closer relationship with you. Holy Spirit, open her eyes, her heart and her head to know that you will bring people into her life to be a blessing and to walk with her during this journey. You are not alone. There are many of us out there in similar situations. God has become the delight of our lives in ways that are unexpected and I anticipate he will do the same for you. We will continue to pray. We will continue to support you during this journey. God bless. In the name of Jesus, amen.

Well, hey there DAB friends and family. This is Rob S., Worship Dude in Nashville, TN. I just want to say thanks to everybody who keeps listening after the Bible reading to the prayer requests and prays for people. So appreciated. I listen and pray for you guys. Anyway, I have a prayer request. My wife and I are going to be going on a massive missions trip the whole month of May. We fly out May 1st, get back May 30th to Eastern Europe, so we’ll be teaching about worship and discipleship and such in Ukraine and Bulgaria and Hungary and then we’ll be traveling different connections there in Europe. In France and Italy also to make the connection. So anyway, would really, really, really appreciate your prayers and I’ll try to keep you guys updated. Hey, if you want to reach out to me or contact me in any way, I'm on the Facebook Group a lot but also my email is [email protected]. God bless you guys. Thanks for praying.

Hey, good morning family. This is Dan in New Hampshire. I actually wanted to reach out to someone specific. I'm going to go back and listen, but I didn’t get your name. The mother praying for her son in Aviano Air Base. I just want to let you know I'm a veteran of the Air Force. I’ve only been out for a couple years now, but I do know all too well the temptations and the trials of being overseas and being away from family and also trying to walk out your faith. I couldn’t hear everything, but I just really felt compelled to call and to pray for your son and just lift him up. Dear Lord Jesus, we just pray for this situation. I know that you know his heart and know the calling that he has and that you have on his life and that is a destiny of greatness and a calling to do great things. We pray that your hand would be upon him, guide his heart, turn it back to you, Lord. I know that there is the overwhelming need to want to fit in, especially in the military where you need to be tightknit and close and sometimes just pursuing Jesus, there is not a lot there, not everyone wants to pursue Jesus. I pray that you would break his heart, that he would fall in love with you and that you are the ultimate gift-giver, the giver of life and that you show him what true sacrifice means. So I lift him up to you and I lift up his mother as well, that she would be filled with peace. In Jesus’ name, amen.

Good morning DAB family. This is Dave in Illinois. This is my first year going through the Bible with this community and my first time calling, but I was encouraged by Brian yesterday when he asked us to call or he encouraged us to call if there was something that we are carrying that is too heavy for us right now. So with that in mind, I'm calling to ask for prayers for our 4-year-old daughter, Bella Grace, and her kidney surgery this Wednesday morning May 3rd. She has been battling kidney disease for about 2-1/2 years. Over that time we’ve taken her to multiple doctors, had numerous invasive procedures and ER visits and in fact during her most recent ER visit, because of a kidney infection, her temperature was over 104 degrees three different times. We got close to losing her, but God healed her of the kidney infection. So she has surgery scheduled for Wednesday morning, May 3rd to hopefully resolve the underlying issues causing her kidney disease. We ask you to please join us in praying that this surgery will be successful to bring full healing to her kidneys. As we pray, we have two scriptures that we’ve been praying through. 1 Philippians 4, that we would be faithful to bring our anxieties to God in prayer and somehow he trade them for his peace that passes all understanding. And like Jesus says in John 9, we may not know why Bella was born with this kidney disease, but we are praying that the works of God might be displayed in her through this, that somehow by God's grace and for his glory he will be honored and exalted through all of this. I thank you all for your prayers. I'm grateful for this family and the fellowship with other Jesus followers. I love you all. God bless.

Hi family. I am one of those people who is an introvert and I don’t like calling in, but I feel a very strong urge to call in today after listening to April 29th, the prayer line. Brothers and sisters, if you have a dispute with one another, just remember to love one another. Remember not to hold things against each other and if you have to shake the dust off your feet where you feel like you have to walk away from some kind of Christian relationship, don’t do so out of spite. Do so out of grief and remember that Jesus loves all of us and that the person who hurt you is working through their own issues too and we’re all sinners and we’re all messed up. But thanks to God for his grace. Whatever hate is out there in the community, if somebody has been hurt and they feel the need to lash out, don’t reciprocate. Just love that individual. Whoever you are, we are glad you’re here. We’re glad those who don’t call in, who listen, we love each and every one of you, issues and all, and we’re so glad you’re part of this community. I thought about leaving my name here. No, I’m not going to leave my name. God knows who I am. Love you all and I love this community. Take care.

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carefullydoesit-blog · 7 years

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Creative Credo (1918) and Letters to a Woman Painter (1948)

I paint and I’m satisfied to let it go at that since I’m by nature tongue-tied and only a terrific interest in something can squeeze a few words out of me.

Nowadays whenever I listen to painters who have a way with words, frequently with real astonishment, I become a little uneasy about whether I can find language beautiful and spirited enough to convey my enthusiasm and passion for the objects of the visible world. However, I’ve finally calmed myself about this. I’m now satisfied to tell myself: ‘You are a painter, do your job and let those who can, talk.’ I believe that essentially I love painting so much because it forces me to be objective. There is nothing I hate more than sentimentality. The stronger my determination grows to grasp the unutterable things of this world, the deeper and more powerful the emotion burning inside me about our existence, the tighter I keep my mouth shut and the harder I try to capture the terrible, thrilling monster of life’s vitality and to confine it, to beat it down and to strangle it with crystal-clear, razor-sharp lines and planes.

I don’t cry. I hate tears, they are a sign of slavery. I keep my mind on my business – on a leg, on an arm, on the penetration of the surface thanks to the wonderful effects of foreshortening, on the partitioning of space, on the relationship of straight and curved lines, on the interesting placement of small, variously and curiously shaped round forms next to straight and flat surfaces, walls, tabletops, wooden crosses, or house facades. Most important for me is volume, trapped in height and width; volume on the plane, depth without losing the awareness of the plane, the architecture of the picture.

Piety? God? Oh beautiful, much misused words. I’m both when I have done my work in such a way that I can finally die. A painted or drawn hand, a grinning or weeping face, that is my confession of faith; if I have felt anything at all about life it can be found there.

The war has now dragged to a miserable end. But it hasn’t changed my ideas about life in the least, it has only confirmed them. We are on our way to very difficult times. But right now, perhaps more than before the war, I need to be with people. In the city. That is just where we belong these days. We must be a part of all the misery which is coming. We have to surrender our heart and our nerves, we must abandon ourselves to the horrible cries of pain and of a poor deluded people. Right now we have to get as close to the people as possible. It’s the only course of action which might give some purpose to our superfluous and selfish existence – that we give people a picture of their fate. And we can only do that if we love humanity.

Actually it’s stupid to love mankind, nothing but a heap of egoism (and we are a part of it too). But I love it anyway. I love its meanness, its banality, its dullness, its cheap contentment, and its oh-so-very-rare heroism. But in spite of this, every single person is a unique event, as if he had just fallen from a star. And isn’t the city the best place to experience this? They say that the air in the country is cleaner and that there are fewer temptations. But I believe that dirt is the same wherever you are. Cleanliness is a matter of the will. Farmers and landscapes are all very beautiful and occasionally even refreshing. But the great orchestra of humanity is still in the city.

What was really unhealthy and disgusting before the war was that business interests and a mania for success and influence had infected all of us in one form or another. Well, we have had four years of staring straight into the stupid face of horror. Perhaps a few people were really impressed. Assuming, of course, anyone had the slightest inclination to be impressed.

Complete withdrawal in order to achieve that famous purity people talk about as well as the loss of self in God, right now all that is too bloodless and also loveless for me. You don’t dare do that kind of thing until your work is finished and our work is painting.

I certainly hope we are finished with much of the past. Finished with the mindless imitation of visible reality; finished with feeble, archaistic, and empty decoration, and finished with that false, sentimental, and swooning mysticism! I hope we will achieve a transcendental objectivity out of a deep love for nature and mankind. The sort of thing you can see in the art of Malesskircher, Grunewald, Breughel, Cezanne, and Van Gogh.

Perhaps with the decline of business, perhaps (something I hardly dare hope) with the development of communism, the love of objects for their own sake will become stronger. I believe this is the only possibility open to us for achieving a great universal style.

That is my crazy hope which I can’t give up, which in spite of everything is stronger in me than ever before. And someday I want to make buildings along with my pictures. To build a tower in which mankind can shriek out its rage and despair and all their poor hopes and joys and wild yearning. A new church. Perhaps this age may help me.

The important thing is first of all to have a real love for the visible world that lies outside ourselves as well as to know the deep secret of what goes on within ourselves. For the visible world in combination with our inner selves provides the realm where we may seek infinitely for the individuality of our won souls. In the best art this has always existed. It has been, strictly speaking, a search for something abstract. And today it remains urgently necessary to express even more strongly one’s own individuality. Every form of significant art from Bellini to Henri Rousseau has ultimately been abstract.

Remember that depth in space in a work of art (in sculpture too, although the sculptor must work in a different medium) is always decisive. The essential meaning of space or volume is identical with individuality, or that which mankind calls God. For, in the beginning there was space, that frightening and unthinkable invention of the Force of the Universe. Time is the invention of mankind; space or volume, the palace of the gods.

But we must not digress into metaphysics or philosophy. Only do not forget that the appearance of things in space is the gift of God, and if this is disregarded in composing new forms, then there is the danger of your work being damned by weakness or foolishness, or at best it will result in mere ostentation or virtuosity. One must have the deepest respect for what the eye sees and for its representation on the area of the picture in height, width, and depth. We must observe what may be called the Law of Surface, and this law must never be broken by using the false technique of illusion. Perhaps then we can find ourselves, see ourselves in the work of art. Because ultimately, all seeking and aspiration ends in finding yourself, your real self of which your present self is only a weak reflection. There is no doubt that this is the ultimate, the most difficult exertion that we poor men can perform. So, with all this work before you, your beauty culture and your devotion to the external pleasures of life must suffer. But take consolation in this: you will have ample opportunity to experience agreeable and beautiful things, but these experiences will be more intense and alive if you yourself remain apart from the senseless tumult and bitter laughter of stereotyped mankind.

Some time ago we talked about intoxication with life. Certainly art is also an intoxication. Yet it is a disciplined intoxication. We also love the great oceans of lobsters and oysters, virgin forests of champagne and the poisonous splendor of the lascivious orchid.

It is necessary for you, you who now draw near to the motley and tempting realm of art, it is very necessary that you also comprehend how close to danger you are. If you devote yourself to the ascetic life, if you renounce all worldly pleasures, all human things, you may, I suppose, attain a certain concentration; but for the same reason you may also dry up. Now, on the other hand, if you plunge headlong into the arms of passion, you may just as easily burn yourself up! Art, love, and passion are very closely related because everything revolves more or less around knowledge and the enjoyment of beauty in one form or another. And intoxication is beautiful, is it not, my friend?

Have you not sometimes been with me in the deep hollow of the champagne glass where red lobsters crawl around and black waiters serve red rumbas which make the blood course through your veins as if to a wild dance? Where white dresses and black silk stockings nestle themselves close to the forms of young gods amidst orchid blossoms and the clatter of tambourines? Have you never thought that in the hellish heat of intoxication amongst princes, harlots, and gangsters there is the glamour of life? Or have not the wide seas on hot nights let you dream that we were glowing sparks on flying fish far above the sea and the stars? Splendid was your mask of black fire in which your long hair was burning – and you believed, at last, at last, that you held the young god in your arms who would deliver you from poverty and ardent desire!

Then came the other thing – the cold fire, the glory.

Never again, you said, never again shall my will be a slave to another. Now I want to be alone, alone with myself and my will to power and to glory.

You have built yourself a house of ice crystals and you have wanted to forge three corners or four corners into a circle. But you cannot get rid of that little “point” that gnaws in your brain, that little “point” which means “the other one.” Under the cold ice that passion still gnaws, that longing to be loved by another, even if it should be on a different plane than the hell of animal desire. The cold ice burns exactly like the hot fire. And uneasy you walk alone through your palace of ice. Because you still do not want to give up the world of delusion, that little “point” still burns within you – the other one! And for that reason you are an artist, my poor child! And on you go, walking in dreams like myself. But through all this we must also persevere, my friend. You dream of my own self in you, you mirror of my soul. …

I must refer you to Cezanne again and again. He succeeded in creating an exalted Courbet, a mysterious Pissarro, and finally a powerful new pictorial architecture in which he really became the last old master, or I might better say he became the first “new master” who stands synonymous with Piero della Francesca, Uccello, Grunewald, Orcagna, Titian, Greco, Goya, and Van Gogh. Or, looking at quite a different side, take the old magicians, Hieronymous Bosch, Rembrandt, and as a fantastic blossom from dry old England, William Blake, and you have quite a nice group of friends who can accompany you on your thorny way, the way of escape from human passions into the fantasy palace of art.

Don’t forget nature, through which Cezanne, as he said, wanted to achieve the classical. Take long walks and take them often, and try your utmost to avoid the stultifying motor car which robs you of your vision just as the movies do or the numerous motley newspapers. Learn the forms of nature by heart so you can use them like the musical notes of a composition. That’s what these forms are for. Nature is a wonderful chaos to be put into order and completed. Let others wander about, entangled and color blind, in old geometry books or in problems of higher mathematics. We will enjoy ourselves with the forms that are given us: a human face, a hand, the breast of a woman or the body of a man, a glad or sorrowful expression, the infinite seas, the wild rocks, the melancholy language of the black trees in the snow, the wild strength of spring flowers and the heavy lethargy of a hot summer day when Pan, our old friend, sleeps and the ghosts of midday whisper. This alone is enough to make us forget the grief of the world, or to give it form. In any case, the will to form carries in itself one part of the salvation for which you are seeking. The way is hard and the goal is unattainable, but it is a way.

Nothing is further from my mind than to suggest to you that you thoughtlessly imitate nature. The impression nature makes upon you in its every form must always become an expression of your own joy or grief, and consequently in your formation of it, it must contain that transformation which only then makes art a real abstraction.

But don’t overstep the mark. Just as soon as you fail to be careful you get tired, and though you still want to create, you will slip off either into thoughtless imitation of nature, or into sterile abstractions which will hardly reach the level of decent decorative art.

Enough for today, my dear friend. I think much of you and your work, and from my heart wish you power and strength to find and follow the good way. It is very hard with its pitfalls left and right. I know that. We are all tightrope walkers. With them it is the same as with artists, and so with all mankind. As the Chinese philosopher Laotse says, we have “the desire to achieve balance, and to keep it.”

#Max Beckmann #Creative Credo #1918 #art #politics #quote #Kasimir Edschmid #Letters to a Woman Painter #1948 #second one is such a mixed bag #sorry beckmann

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