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serenade-meow · 4 years

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Paul/Jane excerpts (within the context of Beatles’ details)

MEETING THE BEATLES:

On 18 April 1963 Jane did a photographic assignment for Radio Times at a concert called ‘Swinging Sounds ’63’ at the Albert Hall... When the Beatles came on stage she screamed. Jane met all four Beatles backstage – apparently all four were very impressed by her – especially George, it was alleged later – but she got on better with Paul. They were seen in public together for the first time shortly afterwards and from then on Paul was continually asked whether he was going to marry Jane. Paul even made fun of this in ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ when answered ‘No, we’re just good friends’ even before the question was asked.

— Richard Porter, Guide to the Beatles London

They invited her back to their hotel, the Royal Court in Sloane Square, before moving on to the Kings Road apartment of Chris Hutchins, a journalist.

The others left Paul alone in the bedroom with Jane, after a lot of winking. They set the evening talking about gravy and what was their favourite meal. ‘I realized this was the girl for me. I hadn't tried to grab her or make her. I told her, “It appears you're a nice girl.”’

‘They couldn’t believe I was a virgin,’ says Jane.

— Hunter Davies, The Beatles

[John’s masturbation comment]

Previously John, Paul, George, and Ringo had hoped to end their evening at the Ad Lib club, a celebrity hangout that had lately become a favorite late-night stop. But as the throngs of girls outside continued to wail, they realized they had better stay out of sight. [Chris] Hutchins invited the entire group back to his apartment King’s Road in Chelsea, so off they went, with two girls in tow…

Whether it was her cool confidence or her posh accent, something about Jane goaded John to direct his caustic eyes in her direction.

“Well. Let’s all play a question-and-answer-game!” He announced a bit too cheerily. Then he turned to Jane. “So tell us, luv, how do girls play with themselves?”

Silence. Jane’s eyes widened. Paul, sitting close to her on the floor, put his hand in the air, as if he could wave John’s words back into his mouth. “John! John!” he yelped. “Stop it. You can’t do that.”

John just smiled, peering intently through his glasses. “No, you can tell us. Come on. We all want to know, come on.”

Paul, looking aghast, shook his head vehemently. “John. For christsakes, John.”

By now Jane was climbing to her feet, muttering icily that it had grown quite late, clearly it was time to go. Paul stood, too, glaring at John while he helped Jane into her coat, saying he’d see her into a cab. The pair of them walked outside quickly, the door clicking behind them. It was late by then, already after midnight, and the dark London air was thick with fog.

The cultured, self-possessed Jane Asher may have intimidated John Lennon, but she was exactly what Paul had been looking for. When Hutchins looked out the window, he saw the Beatle holding the actress’s arm, walking into the midst. “And he never came back,” Hutchins says. “I just saw both of them disappearing down King’s Road.”

— Peter Ames Carlin, Paul McCartney: A Life

RELATIONSHIP:

[Paul on status]

Living in the Asher house gave me the base and the freedom and the independence. That, alongside all the other things, because I wasn't married to Jane. I was pretty free. I remember John very much envying me. He said, 'Well, if you go out with another girl, what does Jane think?' and I said, 'Well, I don't care what she thinks, we're not married. We've got a perfectly sensible relationship.' He was well jealous of that, because at this time he couldn't do that, he was married with Cynthia and with a lot of energy bursting to get out. He'd tried to give Cynthia the traditional thing, but you kind of knew he couldn't. There were cracks appearing but he could only paste them over by staying at home and getting very wrecked.

— Paul McCartney, Many Years from Now

[Jane’s concerns]

That’s typical Paul (wanting me to stay inside the George V Hotel with the band instead of going out by myself to see Paris). It’s just so silly of me to stay at the hotel. It’s just that he’s so insecure. For instance, he keeps saying he’s not interested in the future, but he must be because he says it so often. The trouble is, he wants the fans’ adulation and mine too. He’s so selfish, it’s his biggest fault. He can’t see that my feelings for him are real and that the fans’ are fantasy. Of course, it’s the trouble with all boys. When I first met the Beatles, I liked them all. Then, when I found out that I liked Paul more, the others became angry with me.

— Michael Braun, Love Me Do! The Beatles Progress

[Image wise, George didn’t stay angry with Jane, there’s several cute candid photos of them looking rather peaceful.]

[London Life]

The socially omnivorous Beatle profited from his Asher connection when the world wasn’t watching, too. For now Paul had entree into the cloistered world of old money… So many secret rituals to learn, so many hands to shake and stories to hear. “It was stuff happening that I’d only ever read of in books,” Paul said. “An overhang from Britain’s genteel past.”

John, stuck out in his golf-course home with his wife and a toddler son whose emotional needs he could never quite fathom, envied his partner’s more fast-paced urban life. Though the three suburban Beatles and their wives weren’t exactly stranger to the London nightlife, Jane clearly set a very different standard. “Jane was a teenaged film star so she was part of the glitterati of London before the Beatles even appeared,” NEMS employee and Beatle wingman Tony Bramwell recalls...

If the other Beatle couples bumped into Paul and Jane in London on a night off, Bramwell continues, it was usually a night club such as the Ad Lib or the Scotch of St. James. “Paul and Jane would be there, probably with some strange people. So you’d have a drink, and that’d be it. They’d be off.”

— Peter Ames Carlin, Paul McCartney: A Life

[The Turtles run into Paul, John, Jane, and Ringo]

Inside the speakeasy, all the girls looked like Twiggy, the iconic pixie-haired waif model whose London fashion had taken the world by storm. We must have walked past fifteen look-alike on our way to our next destination and we actually heard the Beatles before we saw them. It was like being in A Hard Day’s Night.

“Aw, come on John. Leave the candles alone. You’re gonna start a bloody fire in here.”

“I can’t see anything down here, Paul. It’s as dark as a hooker’s heart.”

And then, a female voice.

“Please, Paul. Don’t humor him anymore. This is getting ridiculous. I’m going to leave.”

Graham led us around the corner, where the Fab Four were hanging with their dates at a private table in the back of the room. Well, actually it was the Fab Three — George Harrison was not in attendance. The deal was, Lennon was actually under the table taking Polaroid pictures up the skirts of his female companions while Paul lent a hand. Ringo laughed at everything, and Paul’s then girlfriend, Jane Asher, was doing her best to drag him out of there. Dressed in Carnaby Street’s finest, the Beatles were dimly lit, and a halo of light illuminating their mop-top hairdos added just the right ambience to make this already bizarre scene more surreal.

Paul was ducking under the table himself now, helping his business partner illuminate the proceeding with his disposable lighter, and Jane was searching the booth for her coat as we approached them, with Graham in the lead.

“I’ll be leaving now, Paul,” Jane said through clenched teeth as she pushed her way out of the booth and stood there, staring him down.

“Hi, Jane.” Graham was friendly but she didn’t even acknowledge his presence.

“I’m going home, Paul. And I don’t mean your home.” She made her way toward the exit as we walked up in a pack. Jim Tucker actually grabbed her army to stop her en route.

“Hey, Miss Asher. Hi. My name is Jim Tucker and I worked with your brother.” He extended his hand, only to have her push him away.

“Piss off, wanker!” Jane just blew him off and brushed past us on her way out of the club. Jim stood there examining his hand for a long moment.

“Hey, guys,” Graham greeted as Paul frantically scrambled to his feet.

“Jane! Jane! Aw, come on, baby. We’re just having a little fun.” Jane kept walking.

— Howard Kaylan, Jeff Tamarkin, Shell Shocked: My Life with the Turtles, Flo and Eddie, and Frank Zappa etc.

[Vacationing and songwriting — Yesterday]

McCartney played it so often on the set of The Beatles’ first movie, Help!, that director Richard Lester once threatened that he’d throw the piano off the set if McCartney didn’t complete it. Lennon tried to help his pal with the song, but this was entirely a McCartney joint. Lennon's only contribution was the suggestion that the song title just be one word, but beyond that, he was just about useless.

After months of struggling with the creative process, the lyrics suddenly came to McCartney in a very unlikely (and very inconvenient) place: driving down the winding hills of Portugal, where he was on vacation with Jane.

“It was a long hot, dusty drive,” McCartney told Miles. “Jane was sleeping but I couldn’t, and when I’m sitting that long in a car I either manage to get to sleep or my brain starts going. I remember mulling over the tune ‘Yesterday,’ and suddenly getting these little one-word openings to the verse.”

McCartney and Asher were going to stay as guests in the vacation villa owned by his friend Bruce Welch, who was also a musician. When they made it to the villa, McCartney rang up Welch and asked him if he had a guitar. Luckily, there was an acoustic guitar in the house, which made the arduous songwriting process just a bit easier. It took two more weeks to nail the lyrics… and then there was more waiting to do.

— Jordan Zakarin, “Paul McCartney Came up With the Melody to One of the Beatles' Biggest Hits in His Sleep.”

[Thoughts on marriage]

“I enjoy acting. I didn’t want to give that up.”

“I know now I was just being silly,” says Paul. “It was a game, trying to beat you down.” At various times, one of them wanted to get married but the other didn’t. Jane says it was usually something happening with the Beatles, just when it looked all settled, which made her change her mind. Paul says it was her acting, although he agreed when the big tour of America came up that she had to go on that.

“When I came back after five month [tour], Paul had changed so much. He was on LSD, which I hadn’t shared. I was jealous of all the spiritual experiences he’d had with John. There were fifteen people dropping in all day long. The house had changed and was full of stuff I didn’t know about.”

His life is much quieter and more ordered now, since Jane returned. Paul, unlike the others, is very communicative about himself. He does talk everything over with Jane. She knows what he’s thinking.

“Another problem,” says Paul, “was that my whole existence for so long centered round a bachelor life. I didn’t treat women as most people do. I’ve always had a lot around, even when I’ve had a steady girl. My life generally has always been very lax, and not normal.

“I knew it was selfish. It caused a few rows. Jane left me once and went off to Bristol to act. I said okay, then leave; I’ll find someone else. It was shattering to be without her.” This was when he wrote “I’m Looking Through You.” Jane has inspired several of his more beautiful songs, such as “And I Love Her.”

— Hunter Davies, The Beatles.

[Chasing after Jane in Bristol] [Writing Eleanor Rigby] [Busy]

The other three Beatles had already moved out into the London suburbs, with lush gardens and rolling lawns, while Paul was in the heart of London in an old period house. When I complimented him on the house, and admired his possessions, he said: ‘People think we are not conceited — but we are’.

I then got him to explain where the words of Eleanor Rigby had come from… The name which first came into his head was a woman called Daisy Hawkins, ‘picking up rice in a church where a wedding had been’. He had no idea where that line had come from. In Bristol, where he had been visiting Jane Asher who was acting there, he was walking round and saw the name Rigby on a shop, and thought that would be a better name.

— Hunter Davies for the Daily Mail

[Magical Mystery Tour]

By 1967, McCartney was making experimental films, and he traveled everywhere with his video camera. While filming Jane Asher at Denver’s Civic Center Park, he was struck by an idea. It combined the randomness of his amateur films with the stories of the Merry Pranksters that he heard during his time in San Francisco and the mystery charabanc tours that took vacationers from Liverpool to Blackpool on a bus filled with beer and accordion players. Maybe the Beatles could create and film a mystery tour of their own.

— Scott Freiman, “Magical Mystery Tour: Some “Mysteries””

[India]

Brian Epstein’s death was a heavy blow to Jane. She, too, found comfort in the Maharishi: She went with Paul to Rishikesh and felt the experience to have been rewarding. With LSD banished, their understanding returned. Paul, at long last, made ready to commit himself. They announced their engagement at a McCartney family party on Christmas Day, 1967.

— Philip Norman, Shout!

[India]

When they got engaged on Christmas Day 1967, all these problems were in the past. Maharishi for a long time was the only little point of difference, although it was all amicable. Jane didn’t fall for him when the others did. She said that she and Paul together reach a spiritual state on their own. Paul wasn’t as committed as George and John, but still felt there was something there which would help him, which might answer his questions.

The questions he’s referring to are about the purpose of life, not about the Beatles. Paul has some well-worked-out views about the Beatles, their changes, and the future.

— Hunter Davies, The Beatles

BREAKING UP:

[John starts bringing Yoko to studio — meets Jane?] [Paul reacting]

Fully aware of the enormity, John implied it was just a one-off visit, because Yoko had been depressed and needed cheering up. ‘I had no idea what he’d told the others,’ she would remember. ‘I couldn’t understand why they kept asking me if I was feeling better.’ It being unthinkable for Lennon to enjoy a privilege that McCartney didn’t, Jane Asher soon afterwards found herself invited to her first Beatles recording session in five years with Paul. As his relationship with Jane began to peter out, he took to bringing along Francie Schwartz, the New Yorker working in Apple’s press office who’d recently caught his eye.

On 17 July, John once again showed off Yoko–now no longer dressed in shapeless black but tailored white–at the London premiere of Yellow Submarine. That evening, very noticeably, Paul had no Jane doing her usual royal duty beside him.

Three days later, on the BBC’s Dee Time program, she told host Simon Dee she was no longer engaged to Paul and that their five-year relationship was over. ‘I haven’t broken it off but it’s broken off, finished,’ she said. ‘I know it sounds corny, but we still see each other and love each other… but it hasn’t worked out. Perhaps we’ll be childhood sweethearts and meet again and get married when we’re about 70.’

— Paul McCartney: The Life by Philip Norman

JOHN: So it was always the family thing, you see. If Jane [Asher] was to have a career, then that’s not going to be a cozy family, is it? All the other girls were just groupies mainly. And with Linda not only did he have a ready-made family, but she knows what he wants, obviously, and has given it to him. The complete family life. He’s in Scotland. He told me he doesn’t like English cities anymore. So that’s how it is.

MCCABE: So you think with Linda he’s found what he wanted?

JOHN: I guess so. I guess so. I just don’t understand… I never knew what he wanted in a woman because I never knew what I wanted. I knew I wanted something intelligent or something arty, whatever it was. But you don’t really know what you want until you find it. So anyway, I was very surprised with Linda. I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d married Jane Asher, because it had been going on for a long time and they went through a whole ordinary love scene. But with Linda it was just like, boom! She was in and that was the end of it.

— John Lennon, interview w/ Peter McCabe and Robert Schonfeld. (September, 1971)

“I've always felt wary including Jane in the Beatles’ history. She’s never gone into print about our relationship, whilst everyone on earth has sold their story. So I'd feel weird being the one to kiss and tell.”

— Paul McCartney, Anthology

I've never particularly liked the idea of looking back; I'd rather look forward.”

— Jane Asher

#Jane asher #Paul mccartney #John lennon #quotes #I'm just a jealous guy #alternate universe where George one-ups Paul and dates Jane #it'd be short-lived tho #Jane and John disliking each other mood #mclennon

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bi-dazai · 3 years

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honestly i think i have a weird anger or cultural confusion where other gay and trans ppl are like much happier and comfortable to come out and shit and be open, but I've always had an extremely complicated relationship with it because it's always made me feel so isolated and lonely, even with other gay ppl around. and younger ppl especially will like go around coming out so frequently and meanwhile if I'm going to even tell you that I'm attracted to women I have to trust you 110% and that isn't something that comes easy.

I'm terrified of like. Wearing even rainbow goddamn socks because I'm scared shitless of getting bullied, or harassed, or even assaulted. Which is ironic considering I try to be quite fashionable in public but with being openly bi (let alone being openly TRANS) it's a complete no-no.

Like I think as much as I love being bi and nb at the same time I still despise it, I still think it's ruined my life. I have gender dysphoria about my chest whereas if I was cis I would be so happy with how feminine my body is. My first ever relationship with another girl at the moment being cut short by abusive homophobia fucked me up in innumerous ways, leading me to like...severe issues with the way i feel about sex and emotional attachment and touch.

And ofc there's the homophobia, like at this moment I'm probably leaning towards getting a fuckbuddy or smth over tinder but like a romantic relationship with another person is terrifying, like I'm insanely private w relationships even w men, I won't let us hold hands if I think too many people might see bc i have this stupid complex

There's more and more but my relationship with being Out is one where it's something that I simultaneously desire and despise, being Out is one of the most terrifying concepts I can think of and to me having someone refer to me as "they" and not as a woman is simply not as important as being safe, as not living in even more fear of assault.

And then all around me ppl my age (although usually younger) are all coming out to anyone and everyone like it's just casual, saying their pronouns like it's nothing. And first it's disbelief and shock because holy fuck, has everyone gone fucking mad?? Are we all so fucking stupid that we just forget the everloving fear homophobia strikes into you?? And then it's the jealousy, that these people have this comfortable relationship with their own gay/transness and enough trust to actually open up and tell a room full of strangers "please call me they not she". It's disappointment and anger in myself that almost 7 years after forcing myself to whisper "I'm bisexual" to the bathroom mirror in the middle of the night and then cry my eyes out because it felt like I'd been cursed, and probably over a decade since I'd started having sexual feelings about all genders, and an entire lifetime of having feelings for men women and others, after so long I'm still just a coward who sits and hates it all, who fears it all.

But then recently I've come to the realisation that the way I realised I was gay was a way that's kind of...dying out. That being the mostly offline way.

Don't take this the wrong way but I've found a lot of people go online and find this overwhelming amount of support and representation for gay and trans identity. You can argue validly this statement, but the context I use this in is comparing it to like. 2013. People were way less online. Being an online celebrity was a novelty.

At school there were dyke, faggot, tranny, etc, thrown around as if they were confetti. Jokes about "lesbos" and "lesbihonest" humiliated any girl who was too close to another girl. I grew up not just in Brisbane Queensland but in a town that was connected to the mainland only by two bridges - a landbridge and a humanmade bridge. The school was overwhelmingly anglo. Overwhelmingly right wing.

I realised I was bi with minimal help from Tumblr. I realised I was bi because I fell, hard, for my best friend. And then she liked me back, and our relationship was amazing. But the school found out. We held hands under the table, we found a quiet moment to kiss and everyone pointed and stared. We made out in the shadow of a building and turned to find twenty people watching gawkeyed, pointing, fascinated.

The entire time her mum was abusive, and massively homophobic. She blamed me for turning her daughter gay. She forced us multiple times to break up at the threat of violence. Eventually we did. We never talked about it. Our friendship never returned like it used to. It was awkward, tinged with sadness, regret, yearning and young love cut short.

It was traumatic, to say the least.

Tumblr in 2014, despite the cringe screenshots, wasn't actually mostly about LGBT positivity or whatever. I first saw the term bisexual on, if you can believe me, a quotev story in 2011 about a cheerleader and an emo girl who get together in a secret relationship. You were either gay or straight, or you had an exception. Bisexual felt right, though, for me, felt accurate, was accurate.

It was years of confusion and secrecy and guilt, peeks at other girls in the changing room that I couldn't help and I didn't understand why. Then it was months and months of anger and frustration at myself that I was feeling this way and confused about myself, and then when I said those words it felt like I was being torn apart. It felt like my life had fallen apart. I cried every goddamn night, I felt awful all the time.

At school the kids noticed. They noticed before I started dating my friend, they noticed the way I looked at her and they interrogated me about it. I'd claim up and down I had a crush on another boy - true perhaps, but it was a passing interest - and then they said they told him and analysed how I reacted. And then the interrogations continued for months because the gay girl was entertainment for them. Around me, as I walked between classes, had lunch, walked home, dyke dyke dyke faggot hahaha.

And then the relationship happened and then leelah alcorn happened and I learned what a trans person is. And sometime when I was fifteen I saw nonbinary begin to pop up, terms like genderfluid and nonbinary and they rang true like bisexual did, but the last time I went down a rabbit hole like that it ended in trauma, and another person got hurt. I didn't throw homophobia at her, but I felt and still feel responsible for it. I didn't turn her gay, but I made it obvious. I don't quite know how to say it.

I knew I was nonbinary, deep down. One day I decided to add that to my tumblr bio. Nobody gave a shit, just like nobody gave a shit when I said I was bi. But that was because I wasn't open about it even online. I couldn't talk about that stuff or I'd curse myself.

Time went on, I got more comfortable, collected fresh new traumas. My brother came out as trans. Around me, friends came out as gay and trans. But they kept coming out. They didn't stop at close friends and trusted family, they told teachers, their entire class. I didn't understand. Why the fuck would you put yourself at risk like that?? And I still don't. I said it was jealousy and anger at myself before, and maybe it is still a little bit, but now, it's just concern.

As I said, the way I realised I was gay is the rather old fashioned way - offline, through trauma, and almost entirely unenjoyable and traumatic. A lot of kids still go through that for sure. But the ones I see telling everyone over that they're gay or trans are, in my experience, not those ones. As the internet began to become more of a general use thing and less of a "only recluse weirdos" space, the online LGBT safe space began to expand into an audience bigger than before. Online, you were safe. Nobody knew your name, you were behind a screen. Homophobia was veiled, you could just delete a hateful anon, could just log off. You could put up your pronouns and people would use them because, well, ppl didn't really have any other identifier someone might use for your gender. So this positive uplifting atmosphere spawned for the most part. And instead of learning through confusion and rare chance encounters with random words and crying into the sink every night that you're gay, you much easier come across this content that tells you indepth what this is and that it's okay. And you think, well wow, that's me, and then...you know, I guess. Not denying there's some of the classic self hatred etc but...you have this safe space online to fall back on, and I cannot emphasise how much that has pushed the acceptance and widespread knowledge of lgbt people in the past 5 years. I didn't exactly have that space, and my realisation was through mostly real life channels, which were swamped at all sides by homophobia, at worst, abusive, at kindest, it would treat you like a sideshow attraction.

Being someone who arguably isn't old enough to brush this difference away with being an "older gay" but still having had a gay experience quite different to the majority in my generation (applying this to area as well) I have to say I'm confronted with this comfortableness other days have a lot and it's always jarring. I think also that while it's important and I'm happy that "younger" gays and transes have at least one good support network/space to fall back onto online, I do think it creates this kind of...dangerous other side, especially for those who go to schools that are LGBT positive and have families who are also friendly to that sort of stuff. I find that young gay teens are totally unprepared and unhardened for the fact that most people you run into in real life despise your guts for existing as who you are. And while we can make as many soppy gay narratives as possible about being honest about who you are and losing shame, we need to face the fact and teach young lgbt kids that being Out isn't just something you do as a ritual in being gay or trans, it's a brave thing and it's completely optional. And furthermore, most importantly, it's insanely dangerous.

I don't think that teenage, raw fear of the consequences of even the very concept of being Out has ever left me. Perhaps I have to thank the homophobic 14 yr olds who swamped me in slurs and trauma, because it's given me a survival sense that's kept me closeted so far you'd never get in.

But occasionally I'm tempted, particularly with my transness which I am only out to perhaps 3 people about, to venture into the world of telling people about yourself. I started a new uni semester and in a tutorial, the teacher handed out cards. We were to use it as a placard to write our names on it so the teacher would learn our names over the next few classes. And, if we chose...our pronouns.

I stared at that card for what felt like a million years. This has always been an ordeal. People don't know how to pronounce my name, even though it's a rather simple one. But pronouns? I'd never really told anyone those. Online, yes, and once when I was asked by a friend i was brave enough to say "any will do" but this - this wasn't the curated safe online space, this wasn't a one-time phrase to a friend. This was an open, permanent thing that would sit below me every class, declaring me to 18 other people. I wrote down "NATALYA", then beneath "she/". And then I stared some more. I felt like I was going to die. I felt like I was the biggest fool, because before I could stop myself I wrote "she/they". No "he", not yet. But...it was there.

At the end of the class the teacher collected the placards. I wanted to run back screaming, wanted to ask her for a new card so I could be safe again. But I didn't because I would look like a freak and a coward.

I still think it's stupid. I still think I've put some petty gesture that no one will ever respect (if they can call you she they won't ever call you they) above my own safety. The thing that really struck me was that it didn't feel good. The reason I wrote it like that, I believe in hindsight, is that I was curious what those other kids feel like, because it must feel good to declare that you're a tr*nny d*ke in front of the entire class, good enough to beat the stomach-lurching dread that precedes such an action. But it didn't. It just felt like an unnecessary risk. And it made me feel worse, like there was a target on the back of my head.

I think I could talk about this forever, about how so many kids believe coming out is this thing you're required to do to be a good gay, but it's not. It's stupid stupid reckless, and in my case it ends with you getting fucked over.

But Ive written for ages and gotten prosaic halfway through so I'm gonna shut up. Basically why the fuck do you guys come out to everyone like please stay safe instead of this it isn't worth it.

#tw d slur #tw f slur #tw homophobia #personal #i didnt hear much transphobia in my grade until towards the end of highschool #because nobody back then rly knew what a trans person was #also #long post #like REALLY long #t slur

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sarahsweden-blog · 6 years

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Ten Interesting Swedish Novels

1. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

It’s about Mikael Blomkvist, a crusading journalist recently at the wrong end of a libel case, hired to get to the bottom of Harriet’s disappearance . . . and about Lisbeth Salander, a twenty-four-year-old pierced and tattooed genius hacker possessed of the hard-earned wisdom of someone twice her age—and a terrifying capacity for ruthlessness to go with it—who assists Blomkvist with the investigation. This unlikely team discovers a vein of nearly unfathomable iniquity running through the Vanger family, astonishing corruption in the highest echelons of Swedish industrialism—and an unexpected connection between themselves.It’s a contagiously exciting, stunningly intelligent novel about society at its most hidden, and about the intimate lives of a brilliantly realized cast of characters, all of them forced to face the darker aspects of their world and of their own lives (Goodreads.com)

2. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson

Mikael Blomkvist, crusading publisher of the magazine Millennium, has decided to run a story that will expose an extensive sex trafficking operation. On the eve of its publication, the two reporters responsible for the article are murdered, and the fingerprints found on the murder weapon belong to his friend, the troubled genius hacker Lisbeth Salander. Blomkvist, convinced of Salander’s innocence, plunges into an investigation. Meanwhile, Salander herself is drawn into a murderous game of cat and mouse, which forces her to face her dark past. (Amazon.com)

3. The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

After a long and eventful life, Allan Karlsson ends up in a nursing home, believing it to be his last stop. The only problem is that he's still in good health, and in one day, he turns 100. A big celebration is in the works, but Allan really isn't interested (and he'd like a bit more control over his vodka consumption). So he decides to escape. He climbs out the window in his slippers and embarks on a hilarious and entirely unexpected journey, involving, among other surprises, a suitcase stuffed with cash, some unpleasant criminals, a friendly hot-dog stand operator, and an elephant (Amazon.com)

4. Willful Disregard by Lena Andersson

Ester Nilsson is a sensible person in a sensible relationship. Until the day she is asked to give a lecture on famous artist Hugo Rask. The man himself is in the audience, intrigued and clearly delighted by her fascination with him. When the two meet afterward, she is spellbound. Ester’s life is then intrinsically linked to this meeting and the chain of events that unfolds. She leaves her boyfriend and throws herself into an imaginary relationship with Hugo. She falls deeply in love, and he consumes her thoughts. Indeed, in her own mind she’s sure that she and Hugo are a couple.

Slowly and painfully Ester comes to realize that her perception of the relationship is different from his. She’s a woman who prides herself on having a rational and analytical mind, but in the face of her overpowering feelings for Hugo, she is too clever and too honest for her own good. Bitingly funny and darkly fascinating, Willful Disregard is a story about total and desperate devotion, and how willingly we betray ourselves in the pursuit of love. (Amazon.com)

5. Everything I Don’t Remember by Jonas Hassen Khemiri

A young man named Samuel dies in a horrible car crash. Was it an accident or was it suicide? To answer that question, an unnamed writer with an agenda of his own sets out to map Samuel’s last day alive. Through conversations with friends, relatives, and neighbors, a portrait of Samuel emerges: the loving grandchild, the reluctant bureaucrat, the loyal friend, the contrived poseur. The young man who did everything for his girlfriend Laide and shared everything with his best friend Vandad. Until he lost touch with them both.

By piecing together an exhilarating narrative puzzle, we follow Samuel from the first day he encounters the towering Vandad to when they become roommates. We meet Panther, Samuel’s self-involved childhood friend whose move to Berlin indirectly cues the beginning of Samuel’s search for the meaning of love—which in turn leads Samuel to Laide. Soon, Samuel’s relationship with Laide leads to a chasm in his friendship with Vandad, and it isn’t long before the lines between loyalty and betrayal, protection, and peril get blurred irrevocably. (Goodreads.com)

6. Let the Right One In by John Ajvide Lindqvist

It is autumn 1981 when the inconceivable comes to Blackeberg, a suburb in Sweden. The body of a teenage boy is found, emptied of blood, the murder rumored to be part of a ritual killing. Twelve-year-old Oskar is personally hoping that revenge has come at long last—revenge for the bullying he endures at school, day after day.

But the murder is not the most important thing on his mind. A new girl has moved in next door—a girl who has never seen a Rubik’s Cube before, but who can solve it at once. There is something wrong with her, though, something odd. And she only comes out at night (Goodreads.com)

7. My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry by Fredrick Backman

Elsa is seven years old and different. Her grandmother is seventy-seven years old and crazy, standing-on-the-balcony-firing-paintball-guns-at-men-who-want-to-talk-about-Jesus-crazy. She is also Elsa's best, and only, friend. At night Elsa takes refuge in her grandmother's stories, in the Land of Almost-Awake and the Kingdom of Miamas where everybody is different and nobody needs to be normal. When Elsa's grandmother dies and leaves behind a series of letters apologizing to people she has wronged, Elsa's greatest adventure begins. Her grandmother's letters lead her to an apartment building full of drunks, monsters, attack dogs, and totally ordinary old crones, but also to the truth about fairytales and kingdoms and a grandmother like no other. (Goodreads.com)

8. Echos from the Dead by Johan Theorin

On a gray September day, on an island off the coast of Sweden, six -year -old Jens Davidsson ventured out of his backyard, walked out into a fog, and vanished….Now twenty years have passed, and in this magnificent debut novel of suspense—a runaway bestseller in Sweden—the boy’s mother returns to the place where her son disappeared, drawn by a chilling package sent in the mail… In it, lovingly wrapped, is one of Jens’ sandals—sandals Julia Davidsson put on her son’s feet that very last morning. Now, with only a handful of clues, Julia and her father are questioning islanders who were present the day Jens vanished—and making a shocking connection to Öland’s most notorious murder case: the killing spree of a wealthy young man who fled the island and died years before Jens was even born. Suddenly the island that once seemed so achingly familiar turns strange and dangerous… Until Julia finds herself facing truths she never imagined—about what really happened on that September day twenty years ago, about who may have crossed paths with little Jens in the fog, and how a child could truly vanish without a trace…until now. (Amazon.com)

9. The Serious Game by Hjalmar Söderberg

Sweden at the turn of the previous century. Arvid, an ambitious and well-educated young man, meets Lydia, the daughter of a landscape painter, during an idyllic summer vacation and falls in love. Lydia, however, has other suitors, and Astrid is frightened of being tied down by his emotions. Trapped inside loveless marriages of convenience, they struggle in later years to rekindle the promise of their romance with bitter and tragic results (Amazon.com)

10. Hanna’s Daughters by Marianne Fredriksson

Anna has returned from visiting her mother. Restless and unable to sleep, she wanders through her parents' house, revisiting the scenes of her childhood. In a cupboard drawer, folded and pushed away from sight, she finds a sepia photograph of her grandmother, Hanna, whom she remembers as old and forbidding, a silent stranger enveloped in a huge pleated black dress. Now, looking at the features Anna recognises as her own, she realises she is looking at a different woman from the one of her memory. Set against the majestic isolation of the Scandinavian lakes and mountains, this is more than a story of three Swedish women. It is a moving testament of a time forgotten and an epic romance in every sense of the word (Goodreads.com)

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myfriendpokey · 6 years

Text

flat pak

i went to now play this last weekend and had a good time! there was a flatgames room, and a panel, and the latter made me think about some nightmarish circumstance where someone was questioning me about what the point of these things was. the three posts below are all pseudo-answers i sketched out.

1. i like how sexless videogames are, and how bad at representing humanity in general, i like that even hyperviolent games have this wistfulness about them, as if the only way they can grasp the human body is as it comes apart - in some provisional, stateless shape contained in but seperate from the game systems, a ghost, like those mysteriously elaborate and collisionless death animations the enemies in old shooters got before dissolving into goo. or as if they hoped the exuberance of their own approach was enough to break the carapace of the format and let something, anything, seep in from the outside....

the little guys in videogames are a gentler convention, but they're always on the verge of the same dissolution - the sketchiest of outlines, of features, a ball, a shape, with eyes and feet. like drawing yourself with your eyes closed - the crudest and most temporary kind of projection or self-fashioning. staring nervously and chomping as it waddles through the maze, eating things, breaking apart instantly when it bumps into someone, and given an equally temporary name such as walky or go-go. i love this dorkiness, this daydream of the body as a soap-bubble, so alienated that the slightest recognition feels like intimacy.

2. flatgames are 'flat' in the sense of projecting a multi-level videogame hierarchy into a single plane; the archetypical flatgame gesture is being able to walk across the textboxes. rather than systems they represent collections - collections of effects treated as independent of the wider process they'd ordinarily portray, which can then be grouped and moved around seperate from that process. so it's a personal, subjective format in the sense that the new groupings sort of mirror the groupings produced when various external effects are flattened into single moments of subjective experience, of memory. but it's also a personal format just because it's easy to use - because in many circumstances it's easier to just drag and drop text around rather than create a universal system that handles when and how it'll be displayed, as in all those unity horror games that have gui elements just sort of hanging around in space for you to bump into. and i think this is something that kind of grinds interestingly against the idea of videogames as inherently systematic, inherently good at portraying systems - like, in what way are they systematic when it's become easier NOT to be systematic? at what point do those "systematic" features become a mannerism, while the very easiness of bad game design means it starts to cleave more rigorously to the contours of actual material life and practice, to the way we really use computers rather than the ways we'd like to use them?

this is not to say systems don't exist. but their relationship with even the most system-y videogames is weird - to what extent are these games exploring a system rather than expressing a sense of systematicity, an aesthetics of system not dissimilar to those of puzzles, criticism, and the mystery novel? on one hand we know that a lot of systemic elements are hand-tweaked by developers in order to feel less jarring to our impression of the whole (dice rolls being the most common) - on the other we know from previous twitter threads about exactly these kinds of "cheats" that they can outrage players who learn they exist. which suggests it's not any specific quality or experience associated with a game system but the idea of systematicity itself that's being sold -- as indeed with the famous "100 hours of gameplay" tag, which does not express a type of content so much as a promise that this content has been regulated and formatted in ways which allow it to be sold in this very matter-of-fact way. the idea of systematicity as a deliberately conveyed aesthetic impression feels worth investigating, particularly given ten million youtube videos with names like "gun-shot teen DESTROYED with Logic" and "univeral reason under attack: why braingeniousmasculinist should be unbanned from club penguin" - evidently the impression of sanguine impersonality and indifference to the merely "personal" is a highly popular and profitable one online....

in a more material sense, too, we can query this systematicity. a videogame with handdrawn paper graphics is obviously not "de-mystifying" the process of making games, since the physical object had to be digitalised and cleaned up and imported and processed before it could be used. one of the stranger things in videogames is that naivete is a technological affordance - i can use crude handdrawn graphics because the computer has enough memory not to force me to compress it all into 8x8 sprites (unless i really want it to, as with deliberately limited bespoke engines). but at the same time it really is de-mystifying, because it emphasises the extent to which game development takes place at the intersection between multiple different areas of digital technology (not to mention human labour). 3d model textures can be paintings or photographs or heavily treated, processed combinations of the two - the photographs or paintings used can be original or purchased from various weird economies of commercial asset packs - the artistic coordination of those assets can take place over skype or similar with the reference of multiple other digital image files, scavenged from online to give an idea of the total look. i don't mean to suggest that these multiple intersections are so complex that they cease to be "systematic" - but i do think that grasping it as a real system also means coming to terms with the ways in which it can be structurally unsystemisable, like fredric jameson's description of globalization as "untotalizable totality". when the most important features of the discrete operations of a computer are that they take place at a scale and speed no human can replicate, recasting exactly those operation into a human scale can confuse more than it clears up [much like this post].

thinking about videogames more generally as revolving around not an inherent systematicity but rather an image of / desire for the same, around that imagination of systematicity which is bound up with consumer technology as a whole. i feel like at each moment in history this systematicity has some privileged form of social identification associated with it: i've lost count of the pulpy books i've read which had some villainous saint-just analogue, maybe one obsessed with clocks or measuring things, who imposes some cruel and rigid revolutionary "system" on the basically warm and laissez-faire vassals below... system as political imposition. but medieval writers might have connected the same sense of systematicity more immediately with that of the kingdom of god, with the underlying structure which makes those warm laissez-faire moments possible to begin with. sometimes system appears in media as bureaucracy and ritual, sometimes it's as a challenge to bureaucracy and ritual, galileo's "and yet it moves" or those movies where someone comes up with a brilliant new way to win sports matches or sell sub-prime mortgages against all the prevailing wisdom. on the basis of this extremely rough idea, what could we imagine being the privileged form that systematicity appears in the everyday today? not capitalism or high finance, which while systematic can also be too broad or naturalised to appear so in this immediate way... not politics, not the internet. but maybe ON the internet, and for me "system" appears most visibly online in the question of personal information and how it's tracked. all those notifications of websites using cookies clicked through, terms and amendments to terms scrolled past, online shopping histories suddenly reoccuring by ads for the same products you looked at appearing in the background of another site - all these are re-impositions, re-appearances of systemicity through the vague fugue of internet experience. and which pop up in the more public sphere as an ominous black site, with the full scope or implications sealed away behind byzantine layers of corporate procedure and nondisclosure. the sense of system here is one of intransigence, blockage - it's divorced from the idea that knowing the system would give one the power to change it, because here the system is exactly what makes that knowledge impossible in the first place. maybe that sense of the failure of systemic knowledge is connected to the world depicted in flatgames, in which that knowledge no longer exists - niall moody's "the craigallen fire" contains historical information and real places, but the words hang eerily across the digital picture as if unsure how to relate to it, as if coming from a long way away. but the movement away from representational systematicity is a move towards material systemicness, in the clarity and concreteness with which flatgames approach their own practice, so maybe we should consider this withdrawal as strategic - as an effort to build new systems, rather than being pulled into the daydream of the old.

3. part of the pleasure, for me, in making flatgames, was the sense of feeling able to postpone indefinitely some kind of mechanical reckoning - the feeling of being able to use pacing and visual structure to ward off the dread that any minute now i'd have to settle down and make a real game. in a weird way it connects to what i enjoy about very fussy, technical games - grinding in an rpg means deferring the point at which you actually have to begin playing the rpg, both in the sense of being challenged and in the sense of actually having to sit down and learn all the systems, just as savescumming your way through megaman 3 is to giddily skate around the dread prospect of actually playing megaman 3. there is no point where you have to work out what happens if you die or walk off the map, there is no point where you have to say to the player "okay, you have to focus now". the horror of paying attention and the joy of not having to! a moment of those moralist rituals held in temporary suspense, as if time itself has frozen and you're free to walk among it, underneath paused mechanisms that would ordinarily be crushing you... and the awareness of that suspense somehow makes your own delicacy greater, as if one of the machines you wandered through was your own life, and you could hover precariously inside it... a soap bubble, the merest bug-eyed phantom, newly christened something like walky or go-go....

[image credits - street fighter iii: second impact - pippols - space fantasy zone - marchen veil - bandits 9)

#flatgames #writing #vg.#pippols

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nitewrighter · 6 years

Text

The Helper

It’s May the 4 and that means Star Wars AU!!! Here’s a short ficlet I’ve had sitting in my drafts a long time where my socially stunted Jedi and my touch-starved Mandalorian smuggler from Wake make out.

---

He glanced over at her, elbows resting on the table, her mouth hidden by her interlaced fingers and her brow furrowed. He took a sip of his drink and broke his eyes away from her and cleared his throat.

“You’ve…uh… been really quiet since meeting Lian and Naash,” he said, looking into his glass.

“What?” she did that thing where she blinked a few times but it was all…fluttery. Shit, he had a problem. Her blinking at this point was cute. “Oh—sorry…I’m fine. Just… thinking.”

“Thinking about…?”

“They really love each other, don’t they?” she said.

“Oh yeah they’re freakin’ hopeless. Stuck to each other like serenpeds on purrgils.”

“I can tell,” she said. She was quiet for a long while longer and Val took another sip of his drink.

“I’ve never kissed anyone on the mouth before,” she said finally. Val choked on his drink and coughed for an awkwardly long time.

“Seriously?” his voice was half a croak when it came back to him, “You never…? Not even with…?”

“Cyp?” she said the name and it still made his stomach lurch. She glanced away, “I kissed him on the cheek. Nothing beyond that and then he…” she trailed off and took a drink herself. She was quiet for another long while before saying, “What’s it like?”

“What, kissing? I dunno, it’s…weird. It always weirded me out how like… well not every planet has it, but a lot of planets do, and it’s freaking wild how like, you see it cropping up in all these different species—-”

“What’s it like for you?” she said, fixing those big spooky eyes on him.

He reddened. “I—well… it depends on who it’s with.”

“You’ve kissed a lot of people?”

“Not like…a lot a lot…I mean….a decent amount. Enough to know that it’s always going to be a little different each time.”

Her brow furrowed thoughtfully and she glanced back at the table and rested her chin in her hand, “I see…”

Val chuckled a little, “Well hey, if you’re really that curious, me and probably more than half the galaxy would be more than happy to—-” he stopped himself. Her eyes were still fixed on him. He realized at some point in their conversation he had broken a sweat.

“…show me?” she said, trying to guess where his sentence was going.

Val swallowed hard and then forced a laugh. “Yeah, sorry—-Corellian Brandy and all the craziness from the past couple weeks must be catching up with me. That was dumb. Forget I said that,” he said, moving to take another drink.

“It’s not dumb,” she said and he nearly choked again. She awkwardly scooted her chair closer, “It’s a valid suggestion. Worst case scenario, I’m awful at it, it’s dreadfully embarrassing, and we agree never to bring it up again…which…will likely happen anyway.”

“Yeah I mean it doesn’t have to mean anything,” said Val with a shrug.

“So you’re all right with it?” said Aria.

“Yeah. Like I said, happy to show you,” said Val.

Aria paused for a long while again before saying, “Okay,” she exhaled and reached forward and put one hand on his shoulder and one on the side of his neck. She started leaning in but then glanced down and got up to an awkward half sitting-half-standing position to move her seat forward a bit underneath her more with her foot before sitting down again and Val snickered. She shot him a look and he tried to keep from snickering again but just ended up snorting.

“This is hilarious for you, isn’t it?” she said, repositioning her hands so that the one on his neck was weaving into his hair.

“No, it’s just—-I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone put so much thought into…” he trailed off as she managed to shove his head forward with one of her hands and then closed the distance herself and her mouth was on his. He wasn’t sure how long it lasted. His heart was pumping too fast in his ears to actually gauge time right. It wasn’t bad, at least for a first timer. Not really awkwardly or unpleasantly mashing her face into his, but definitely not knowing exactly what she was doing, mostly taking cues from him with varying degrees of success. Her mouth was only slightly open, but she soon had to wrap one arm around his shoulders so her neck wasn’t craning upward too painfully. The back of his own neck was kind of starting to ache from having to look down to kiss her. And just like that she was breaking away from him and running a hand through her hair. She pulled away from him and settled back into her seat.

She was flushed but she took a sip of her brandy. “Hm.”

“What?” said Val.

“That was interesting.”

“Good interesting? Bad interesting?”

“I don’t know yet,” said Aria.

“Well I mean…you can’t really judge the whole concept of kissing on one time. I mean it’s never that good the first time. I mean you can’t let yourself overthink it too much. It’s like that Force you’re always talking about. You just gotta,” he awkwardly interlaced his fingers in front of him, “like…connect.”

Aria laughed slightly, “It is not like the Force.”

“It’s totally like the Force!”

“The Force is a field of energy flowing throughout the universe binding all living things together it’s nothing like—-” Aria cut herself off and looked thoughtful again.

“It is, isn’t it?” said Val.

“Shut up, I’m thinking,” said Aria, glancing off with her brow furrowed. Her eyes flicked back at him. “Stop looking like that.”

“Looking like what?” said Val.

“All smug,” she said. Her voice dropped low, “I connect with all living things in the galaxy on a level you can barely comprehend!”

“No one’s saying you don’t,” said Val.

“Stop smiling like that,” she said, folding her arms.

“Am I making you uncomfortable?” Val asked, his grin fading.

“No, you just—-“ she pursed her lips and then took another sip of her brandy, “You just think it’s so funny that I’m bad at participating in…in… uncivilized mating rituals!”

Val broke into a chuckle at this, “Hate to break it to you, Aria, but this stuff is kind of the backbone of civilization.”

She flushed again and frowned and glanced off and Val rubbed the back of his head.

“Look…I’m not…laughing at you. I don’t think you’re dumb. I don’t think it’s that funny that this stuff is so… alien to you,” he glanced down at his glass, “I guess what I do think is funny are the mental hoops you’re willing to jump through rather than admit that the whole…” they didn’t like saying Jedi in public so they would just use the first letter to talk about it, “…‘J’ thing has made connecting with people really weird for you. You think it’s something you can approach like… like one of your ruins that you study or a lightsaber technique.”

“Oh, and you’re not weird about connecting with people?” said Aria.

“Me? How am I weird?”

“You seriously don’t think I notice when you flinch or blush or stutter or choke on your drink? Or what prompts that?”

“Look, you’re changing the subject—-this isn’t about me—”

“It is though. You’re acting like the expert in all these things just because, I admit, it’s largely unexplored territory for me, but touch and connection are far from small deals for you.”

“What?”

“I mean—I was your bounty. I could have solved all those problems with Korbo for you if you had been willing to give up a stranger, a stranger from an organization you were raised to distrust, even hate, but you didn’t.”

“I thought we agreed a long time ago that that was because I’m not a complete asshole,” said Val.

Aria smiled but then that smile faded, “How long would you spend in space when you were smuggling?”

Val shrugged, “I don’t know—-time is weird in space. And hyperspace makes it weirder. You don’t really bother keeping track, you just try and get to your destinations as fast as possible.”

“But you would be all alone for hours or days in space,” said Aria. He really didn’t like how concerned she looked.

“Stathas-class freighters don’t need copilots,” said Val.

“It’s not about copilots. It’s about company,” said Aria.

“Okay so… yeah. Things get a little quiet,” said Val, shrugging again, “You get used to it. It’s nothing compared to being told all that ‘there is no emotion, no attachments’ stuff when you’re a little kid.”

“Can’t argue with that,” said Aria. She calmly put her hand over his on the table.

“What are you doing?” said Val.

“I’m just touching your hand. It’s not a big deal, is it?”

He knew even if her body temperature matched that of a human’s, he wouldn’t be able to feel the warmth of it through his gloves. The back of the hand and the backs of the fingers on Mando armor gloves were plated with a flexible thermo-plasteel meant to protect the hands from overheating blasters and the flamethrowers some gauntlets came equipped with, as well as protecting the hands and maximizing damage to the enemy when throwing a punch, but the weight of her hand on his was affecting him more than he’d like. “No,” Val said stiffly, “It’s not a big deal.”

“Oh good,” said Aria, then moving to interlace her fingers with his and squeezing gently.

“You think you’re making a point?” there was more of a shake in his voice than he anticipated. He wanted to yank off the glove. He wanted to feel her hand. He wondered how often he had felt her skin on his—there was the kiss, obviously, but before that? His mind fell back to the dim memory of escaping from Korbo’s ship together, her hands on his bare torso, using the force to keep him from bleeding out from that blaster shot.

“You tell me,” she said, leaning her chin in her free hand, “I can let go if you want—”

“No,” Val blurted out and felt his face burning and his stomach drop. He looked up and noticed a slight smile pulling at the corners of her mouth and half-instinctively tore his hand out of hers. She released him more easily than he would have liked, thin fingers spreading and letting him go at the slightest pull away. “What was that? A mind trick?” he said, holding his hand and curling his fingers slightly.

“No, they don’t work like that. And we… established a long time ago that my mind tricks don’t work on you,” said Aria.

Val bit the inside of his lip and then huffed and finished off the last of his drink. Aria laughed a little.

“Oh now I’m the hilarious one,” said Val with a roll of his eyes, he paused, “I never said I was an expert, you know.”

“You’re not hilarious,” she said, then paused, “I mean, you can be but…” she laughed again, “No it’s just… I can’t believe I got you more flustered by touching your hand than you got me flustered by kissing me.”

“Well you’re the monk…” said Val, then muttering, “It’s not like I was even trying, anyway.”

“What?” said Aria.

“I mean—not that you’re not—-Look I wasn’t going to just go hard if its your first kiss—-”

“Hard?” Aria raised an eyebrow.

“Well yeah it’s not as if I’m going to go all Moons of Passion on you—”

Aria broke into a sputter of giggles at the mention of the holo-opera. “Moons of Passion?”

“Look it was your first kiss, I figured you should be the one to take the lead or whatever!”

“You don’t even try and then you say, ‘oh it always sucks the first time?’”

“I didn’t say it sucks!” said Val, then paused, “Wait, did it suck?”

“You’re asking me that as if I have a point of reference!” said Aria.

“Look, you want me to try?”

“Yes, I would prefer if you don’t treat me as this…this… breakable…thing! I’m not some—some withering lyris! I’m a bloody J—”

He cupped his hands to her face and kissed her then, mostly because she was about to say the ‘J’ word a bit too loudly, and probably no small percentage due to the fact that together they had taken down half a bottle of Corellian brandy. Maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to ignite the Mandalorian spirit of, ‘Oh you think I can’t do this? I will fucking do this,’ in regards to a person he really admired and, if he was being completely honest with himself, had probably developed stronger feelings for than he had anticipated. Being cut off mid-sentence she made a small noise into his mouth, then immediately wrapped her arms around him with surprising strength, not affectionate so much as, ‘Oh, you think I can’t handle this? Try me.’ Then the back of his neck and his shoulders were aching again because yes, of course she had to be nearly a full head shorter than him, but no, he wasn’t going to let that bug him and cut things short again and ended up wrapping his arms around her waist and under her and pulling her into his lap, which he half-regretted since it was entirely too forward for only a second kiss but also didn’t regret because fuck you, Aria, try and tell me I’m not trying now. Aria was not intimidated at all, and met him with equal aggression despite having only a limited experience and arsenal for affection.

It was another long several seconds before it hit Val hard how long it had actually been since he had actually held or kissed someone like this. It had been depressingly long. And suddenly it fell from aggressive to tender. He was holding onto her, kissing her neck, the suddenness of the movement making her breath catch in her throat before it fell warm against the side of his face. His lips fell upon the point where her neck met her shoulder and he contemplated leaving a hickey there until he felt her fingers trace under his chin and tilt his head up to look at her. He wasn’t sure what to make of her face. She was searching his eyes, but he didn’t know what she was looking for. She put a hand on the side of his face and his hand went up instantly to hold onto hers, to keep it there. Then she closed her eyes and kissed his scar. That stupid scar from Korbo’s freighter. Why? He wanted an answer but at the same time he didn’t. He just brought his mouth to hers again and she met him with that same tenderness that he didn’t 100% know what to do with but sure as hell didn’t want to lose.

He pulled her close—-until the center of gravity for the chair they were now both occupying fell backward and Val actually had to break away to grab the table so they didn’t both spill onto the floor, and then pull forward so that their seat was on four legs again. The near-fall broke Aria out of it as well and he could smell the brandy on her breath as she actually fully gauged what had happened, breathing hard. She was staring into him with those big spooky eyes, then glancing down and realizing she was still in his lap and awkwardly pulled away.

“Sorry—“ Val said.

“No—-that—-that was enlightening.”

“I mean sorry I—uh… I cut you off—”

“I mean I nearly said J—” Aria caught herself and then scratched at her temple. She cleared her throat. “Well…that…was…um…” her hand flailed blindly behind her for her seat until she found it and she plopped into it and then polished off the last of her drink and pressed her hand to her forehead, “That was…Is—is that how you kiss everyone?”

“Nah, you know it um…like…like I said it varies from person to person,” said Val.

“I-interesting…” she said.

“Good interesting or—”

“Good. Good…interesting…” she awkwardly clapped his shoulder then grabbed the bottle of Corellian brandy and poured herself another glass and took a long gulp. She cleared her throat. “Thank you for um…for showing me.”

“Yeah,” Val awkwardly raised his glass which he realized was empty to her, “That’s…that’s me. The helper.”

#my ocs #star wars AU

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paganchristian · 3 years

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My girl cat. I still like to write and think and talk about my cats almost like they are still alive, because it feels like that is healing to me. In some way, I feel they are still alive in another realm. I can remember them, and keep their memory alive. It doesn’t have to feel so painful anymore now that I’m learning the lessons that I had to learn about how to live without them and how to adjust and how to see how overburdened I was (and in many ways still am) anyway so maybe I sometimes wonder if I should have another pet when I really think I was allergic to them, and as much as I love pets and they’re like family members, but maybe I need to heal my own life and spend a lot of attention on my daughter and her upbringing, maybe not having a pet will help me focus more on that, because I used to spend so much time with my cats and sometimes it felt like a respite from the stress and confusion, including the overwhelm and confusion of motherhood, and my cats would wake me up in the middle of the night so that I didn’t get enough sleep, and I was allergic and I wasn’t able to do as well in some ways in my life,... maybe because of all that, and so on, anyway,... There’s many ways to see it, but I am happy to bring back the happy, healed energies and feelings around them and all the memories I can.

I will write about her eventually but there is also something to me that feels special about not hurrying to express what does not flow, but what is so special and unique, powerful and sacred to me. In fact also there is something special about not expressing what is wonderful to myself but that I feel others wouldn’t necessarily get. Because sometimes when I express and share things special to me, others don’t get it or don’t care as much, not that much,... And I think that somehow I might feel that, even if they don’t talk to me, but if energy affects you then I might feel it. And sometimes it feels to me that I do feel it. And that it kind of diminishes things somehow. But other times, though I feel like it’s different, and I feel like I reach a point where I can share without it being diminished much if at all, not enough to really hurt me or take away from my meaning and joy and confidence and energy and focus and whatever it is that I have bout this thing,. And when it is one way or when it is another, that depends on something, a feeling, hard to describe. Maybe a more intuitive thing, but also a lived experience kind of thing, where I see that when I follow this kind of feeling and intuition then I get these kinds of results. And it also has a lot to do with the atmosphere I’m sharing it in, the kind of people who might see or hear or read or whatever, what I’m doing. So I think that some people and some situations are more likely to end up having some kind of negative effect on me. Maybe their negative, deflating opinions are more likely to affect me with their energy. But other situations and people, it’s not that way so much if at all. Maybe it’s just a trial and error thing for me to see how I seem to feel when I do certain things in certain places and situations, and that tis how I “intuitively” know, partially or mostly by first trying and seeing different things. It’s often been in the past that I would put things out there on the internet where people could read them on a blog and at first I didn’t notice anything negative from it but over time I began to feel this negative energy, draining, anxious, intrusive, attached, worried, fixated, as if someone was making negative energy cords or just projecting, getting too in my business, and too reactive and too hungry for more or worried, and yes, often, belittling or misunderstanding. Sometimes it really felt to me like it dragged me down emotionally, mentally, burst my bubble of enthusiasm. I had to recognize it and stop putting things out there on the internet in those places. I now use prayer to help me and I think that it does. I used to use the help of deities, but now I use a different type of prayer. The help of my deities helped me in the past, and it included a variety of deities including Hindu as well as Christian deities, but now it seems to work better with the particular prayer I’m using, all the time, and that is like I don’t know how it does it but it seems to be very protective in many situations, including with my husband, my family, strangers and people on the street or online. Not that it all goes perfectly, and it’s not just protecting me either, but helping in the harmony between myself and others, and what I can do to help them in their lives. But I think it also depends on the attention, the mindset, values, emotions and deep-seated beliefs you have (even beliefs you have that you’re not conscious about having). If you have the right mindset and beliefs and feelings, then it works much better.

Anyway I was going to write something about how I want to be able to be there, to share, to care, to offer help and ideas and advice if they want it, or take it or leave it, for my family member, since they do ask for advice and input and ideas. But I want to do all that in a really detached, low-stakes way. So somehow the picture of the mirror with my cat facing away from me made me think of this. I want to have this approach with my family, with religious groups and spiritual beliefs, and I want to have this approach with potential friends if I ever even try to make real friends. I have to first know that the person or church or the belief system, whatever, that it’s someone or something that is unlikely to ever hurt or misunderstand or reject or abandon me too badly, or else I have to feel that I have gained so much from the whole interaction that I will leave still much richer, and able to feel I have not lost, that there is not that much to lose, because I’m still fine to know the truth of how they’d reject me, how those opportunities would close, etc. And so, the image of looking at someone in a mirror, while turned away from them (from the view of my cat), that seemed to fit. I could always just look right at my own reflection if the world in which I inhabit is so much more full and vital and overflowing and alive than whatever it is they would try to reject me with. So that is what I was thinking of.

I’ve felt this way in the past when I did a little bit of speaking before a class or whatever, and I was so fired up about what I was talking about, introvert though I am, that I just didn’t even really care and hardly saw the people I was talking in front of, and was just wrapped up in my own speech, and the world around me felt like it just dissolved. And another time I really felt like i had a rapport with the audience, somehow, and I felt their feelings, I held their gazes, as I looked around the room and I felt they were really touched and inspired by me. And even the professor also commented on that and told me that I was a great speaker, and knew how to really connect with the audience and create synergy. But in high school I also recall my teacher once telling me that I seemed incredibly nervous and she was concerned and the funny thing was I didn’t actually feel nervous, and I thought I had been in my own world of inspiration and confidence, again, but she though I was consumed with anxiety. Hmm.

Anyway, just some thoughts. I think it might be good for me to remember this idea, and act on it, somehow. How to make a situation where I can share but it is so distant, that I can turn into myself if they don’t care, if they don’t want what I have to offer, if they’re not interested, and it won’t feel too harmful and they won’t reject me too much , because like in the case of my relative, for example, and in the case of my daughter, there is so much in common, so much love, so much closeness, that even if they really do not like what I’m saying or care or relate or understand, I know they will not be too rude and abandoning or rejecting, they’ll just wander off to their own thing, mostly, .. And especially if I put my ideas in some format where they can easily do that, like say, a blog, maybe, or I some other thing where I can turn into myself and tune out the world, as I am fed upon my own ideas, and happy to talk to myself, write to myself, say what I want or need, regardless of if anyone else is listening or if they care or not at all. A blog or something else, maybe occasional letters, just not too much, letters that do not require a response at all,... to try to share and care and advise my family? Can it be done? Maybe. I mean, really why not? As long as I can let the blog just morph into a self-revolving project of helping and learning for my own self if the sharing, interactive aspect doesn’t work as I might have hoped. Since I’ve done that before with other blogs, not sharing with my family but just putting them out in public, and they turned out to be totally self-revolving, self-help type things, why not this too? Much of what I’d like to share with my family has a as much or more value for my own self or even for the hope and possibility of sharing with someone else out there in the world if even if not my family. But my family won’t criticize too badly if they don’t feel too burdened and too obligated to listen or respond at all. It won’t deteriorate our relationship since they can take it or leave it and it won’t be like with other friends where we tried to share so much and felt unable to say too much is too much or I’m bored with your passionate interests, or I’m drifting apart from what once held us so close. If we start and continue with this really detached, low-stakes kind of distant way of interacting, then whenever this has served its purpose (or if it never has a purpose after all), it can be let go of without a lot of painful raw edges, attachment, expectation, awkwardness and the habit of acting like we care, the rituals of interaction and expecting that, bonding and growing fixated into those patterns as if it’s “our time together”, that can’t then be challenged without disrupting the relationship. And if they didn’t like it they would maybe give me some little critiques at worst, nothing too bad and our friendship, our strong family relationship will continue pretty much as strong as it ever was.

And if I had a person who I could feel that way about, when trying to “make friends” or whatever, it wouldn’t be the same, because of course then I’d be making new friends, as I’m speaking of it here, not just continuing a strong relationship with family. But even then I wouldn't’ want to interact, unless they had shown me enough of what made me convinced they would understand, respect, relate, care, accept, etc so much of what I say and would not be cruel, callous, selfish, towards me for just trying to share things in this take it or leave it way (like really why would it be so hard to not just be respectful of people who openly share things in a take it or leave it way? But it seems many people would be rude and intrusive in such a situation if their values, their views, etc were too different. They would take your vulnerable sharing and use that as an opportunity to try to hurt you. So I would have to know that our values, views and our personalities and ways of doing things and ways of relating were similar enough. Then I could be like, ok, if you want to get to know me, the deep me, my passions, values, insights, ideas, and what I want to offer the world, what I’d like to share with others, what makes me tick and what would make me want to be a friend to someone, what friendship means to me, just look at my blog. Haha That sounds weird and yet I think with the right person it could work. And if they really did like what you had to say and what you had to offer, they could respond and if not, they could just not respond much or at all. And if they only respond a little and then drift off or start to feel distant and negative about it all, then you can just return to the mirror of self-reflection, again, but only as long as you have always kept it very self-referential all the whole way through. None of this deep attachment and involvement, more like I’m making a speech and you can comment, then you can drift away or become critical and I don’t feel like my best friend is leaving me after we were so close and had so much deeply in common. I don’t feel that because it was only ever this kind of thing where I gave a speech and you comment, and we’re friends and our friendship is strong enough with or without the speeches or rather, you’re a respectful person and if we don’t become lasting friends, that respect is strong enough with or without friendship, so I don’t feel desecrated, used, and discarded,... Because that is how I usually end up feeling with people who I share my deepest feelings with. Even when I don’t share my deepest feelings I usually get terribly hurt by people if I let them get close after just sharing somewhat deep feelings.

So they have to share enough of themselves before I’ll share myself at a deeper level, kind of like my family has shared to much of who they are that I can now trust their respect. I t how do you have that with friends and people who aren’t family? I am not sure but the same way I’ve gotten to know my family this deeply, somehow maybe it can be shown in others without getting too vulnerable to they unfairly attack and abandon me like so many others. I am asking God, because it feels maybe this was an answer to something from God, but I’m not sure,... Maybe it was. Maybe this idea of how to relate to my family member was given to me from God. Maybe the idea it could be applied to potential other friends and belief systems and whatever is also an idea from God. If you start out strong and independent enough, and distant enough, and stay that way, nothing can reach in and take too much from you, especially if the ways they can and would try to reach you aren’t too vulnerable in ways you can’t bear. You have to know what kind of vulnerability is comfortable and acceptable for you. I guess some can handle a lot more rejection and invalidation and misunderstanding than others and it depends on the person, their history, their traumas, their remaining support system and coping methods, their identity, how strong their identity is, and so on.

Another question that I’d have about all of this is, really, how to or can you, can I, make all this feel like an exchange? And since it is take it or leave it, you don’t have to respond, then how might it still be able, or could it still feel like an exchange? Because in the past when I would blog, even though I got no comments, likes nor any followers, for some of these blogs, it felt strangely like it met some of my deepest, most unique, hard-to-meet social needs. Not all, and I needed my daughter, and God, and books, and reading and divination and what not to help me feel more seen, less alone, and more loved and interactive and healed by others too.

But another funny thing was that when I blogged often it would seem like the guidance from spirit and the healing and good luck I got were better. i wondered if the energy of any readers was somehow helping (even if I didn’t have followers or commenters, maybe silent lurkers? But then I had negative psychic effects too so it was a mixed bag, and sometimes I felt like my prayers and guidance was better when it was kept secret, totally private, which is something you oftentimes hear in spiritual beliefs - that to tell something to others diminishes the power and the more secrecy the better. I think based on my own experience, it depends, sometimes it may be one way and sometimes another for different things and different audiences. Now on my my new spiritual path I still keep much to myself with my prayers and it does seem to have better results thus, these days, because I feel like I have finally tapped into a source of power that doesn’t let me down as much as my spiritual powers and deities did in the past. I rely more on God, less on the public effects of sharing and the unusual coincidences that seems to ripple out in my world).

But blogging met so many needs I felt were unmet before I blogged, and after I kept on trying to stop blogging, for various reasons, I’d b drawn back once more because of those needs I felt deprived of when I didn’t blog. What was oftentimes weirder still was that it seemed to create these kind of visions of people in the past, but that has faded away, and I really think that maybe I was connecting with energy and that the energy created the visions. That is not to say the person was actually interacting with me but maybe their energy somehow did and it presented itself to me as a person. Anyway, for whatever that might be worth, it created these visions that were socially fulfilling to me, and felt like real friendships, or sometimes love, astral lovers. Although I also had the problems going on with psychic cords, so it was a two-edged sword. Though even after i stopped having the visions of people much anymore, I still found blogging to be a socially satisfying endeavor and expression, often more so than real interactive social exchanges. Perhaps what I needed more was to connect to my own deeper self, however to do that in the context of a social, public setting, because I needed to feel that what I was saying was worth saying, deserved the right to be said, was ok to say out loud where others could see and hear it. The way my brain seems to erode thoughts if they’re not shared with others, even though I want to hold on to them. Something about the public, social interactive or potentially interactive (not too interactive in reality, just potential. haha).. something about all that stuff makes my brain focus, and think better, and hold on to thoughts that would just slip off like memories of dreams, and fade away or get blurry and inarticulate otherwise.

Maybe anyway, blogging could feel like a social exchange, though, back to that,... It could feel like a social exchange, the same way, with family or potential friends who I trust enough to let them interact if they so choose, or take it or leave it if not. And how can that feel like an exchange, if what they are giving to me in return i feel like I have to respond to, the way most people respond to social gestures, and they’re normal that way so I would feel like I have to do that? And I’m not sure, but it’s a question, a thought, that I pose to God, hey God, please fill me in on the details on this, if you will, if this is your idea you are leading me or trying to lead me or if you are just leading me on stepping stones jumping from one possibility to another to spark thoughts till I get the real clear ideas of what will really work, then I wait for that. I make no assumptions including not assuming it’s you that’s telling me or giving me these ideas. But if it is, then God, please I will pay attention and if you show me I’ll try to see what you show, as I feel it’s not just some passive thing, and I will at least ask and pay attention. I do think I’m meant to play a part in my own life instead of just let it happen to me as God deems without me trying to see and plan and interact with God for guidance, like many Christians often seem to suggest when they hear the complexity of my prayers and guidance seeking from God.

Speaking of that, I feel like maybe when I blog it’s just like it’s making the social and thought mechanisms in my mind, heart and soul and intuition and subconscious and memories and whatever all stir up and activate, and maybe that has something to do with the guidance that I get, maybe it has something to do with the visions I get too. What if the visions are some kind of repressed part of my subconscious or something, some part of myself? What if the insights that let me recognize the right symbols and messages, in the guidance, what if that is also activated this way? What if? Or maybe I am manifesting it, or maybe God is manifesting it, but some reason God wants me to use or needs me to use blogging to have this effect, because my brain is trapped inside, under layers of something that can only be excavated with social environments (socially distant, socially potential but not really interactive, like these mostly if not totally unnoticed blogs, even in particular?).

Then what if I have to go through a particular mechanism to make them surface and interact and become clear, lest they’re lost in the mist? What if it’s not like the things that many new age people said to me, that I just have to willingly open and tap into my own insight but instead I really must go through elaborate particular processes to finally tap in my insights in the form of visions that appear outside me? Whether these things are really outside me or a manifestation of my own mysterious power that has to be activated by some strange and subtle means, some particular ritualistic precise and complex methods, well, what does it matter really? If the point and purpose and role and result is it helps me, I can do it this way, I can’t have the same results any other way? I have tried. So that is all that matters, do what works then.

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greyias · 6 years

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Taking a bath together for Theron and Grey :D

Oops! This isn’t a holiday piece! But it is the last of the “acts of intimacy” prompts that have been sitting in my askbox since August. Sorry for the delay, Nonnie! I’m apparently a really slow writer.

Just a little follow-up piece to a previous ficlet, because apparently after that brief fit o’ angst these two needed a little fluff.

There were apparently some perks to having a Mystic as a friend when on Voss, especially when traveling there on the say-so of one. Less hassle through customs, getting your pick of speeders, and also apparently, getting the royal treatment at the local establishments. Theron was going to need pass along his thanks to Sana-Rae when they got back to Odessen. The Pel-Ki Hot Springs were not as frequent a travel stop as the Shrine of Healing, but still saw plenty of visitors even in the time of the Eternal Empire. Most of the offworlders, and a few Voss as well, had given them the stink-eye as they were escorted past the long waiting line into one of the private rooms normally reserved for citizens.

The lobby area had about a dozen signs reminding offworlders of all of the intricate and various rules for the springs: no clothes, no loud noises, no splashing, and several emphatic variations on no hanky-panky. Of course, that probably wasn’t much of a problem over on the public side of the springs, as the pools over there were completely natural and unfiltered, and the stench of sulfur wafted out into the lobby anytime one of the doors to that area opened. That wasn’t the case over in the private baths. Set back in a dimly lit area of the sanctuary, the filtered pools were painstakingly and lovingly carved into the architecture and provided a much more relaxed and pleasant experience.

Theron leaned back into one of the seats that had been carved into the large pool’s greater structure, the warm water coming almost up to his collarbone. Like all of the amenities, it had been designed with much taller individuals in mind. He was a decent height for a human but when standing next to a Voss, Theron looked almost stunted. He sent a curious glance over to his companion, who at almost half a foot shorter than him, had found a much shallower ledge to perch on.

Grey was glancing around the darkened room curiously, eyes continually straying to the Voss attendant at the far side of the room who was paying the offworlders very little mind at the moment. He watched as she shifted uncomfortably, trying to cross her arms and legs in a way that preserved some propriety, and felt a small tinge of guilt at her obvious discomfort. He’d wanted to wash off the remnants of the tombs they’d been exploring all day, the ancient grime seeming to settle into every crack and pore. He’d practically leapt at the chance to visit the springs when one of their guides had mentioned them in an offhand comment about their healing properties. The bruises that the Jedi had acquired from their close encounter at the last set of ruins they’d been exploring were nowhere near serious enough for a visit to the Shrine of Healing, but a nice long soak in hot mineral water definitely wouldn’t hurt.

She caught his eye and he tilted his head at her, partially in question, partially in invitation. She flushed some, and gaze never straying from the bored Voss who had not glanced at her even once, glided through the water to join him near his deep perch. The attendant might not have had any interest in the naked woman underneath the water, but Theron himself couldn’t tear his gaze away. It was nothing he hadn’t seen countless times before, but it was a sight that had yet to grow old for him. He felt a familiar lick of heat start up low in his belly, and the sudden flush spreading throughout him couldn’t be completely blamed by the steam rising off the surface of the pool.

The water gently lapped against his chest as her motions made small waves, sloshing inelegantly around them as she came to rest next to him.

“He’s not looking, you know,” Theron joked quietly.

“I’m not… worried about that,” she shot back, but the way she hugged her chest with one arm as she tried to find a relaxing position in the deep water said otherwise.

“Sure you aren’t,” he teased. “Besides, I don’t think you’re his type. He probably likes them blue and much taller.”

“Is that a height joke?”

He hummed noncommittally as his fingers ghosted along her spine, a shiver running across her skin in their wake. Her eye roll at him was half-hearted at best, her body unconsciously drifting closer to him at the brief contact. He kept up the action, partially just because she was close enough and he loved the silky feeling of her skin underneath the mineral water, but also as a small reassurance that she was still there. The adrenaline rush after her brief disappearance had faded, but it had stoked unpleasant memories that took much longer to lock back away.

He decided to distract himself in the best way possible, by ignoring it completely, and instead leaned in close to whisper in her ear. “You’re my type, though.”

“I thought you said you wanted to come here to relax.”

“This is relaxing,” he insisted even as his fingers followed the line from her spine down, dipping much, much lower.

Her eyes flew back to the Voss attendant, who seemed more interested in stacking and folding towels than the clear improprieties happening underneath the surface of the water. “You’re going to get us kicked out of here.”

“Nah,” he said lightly, “I’m observing the ‘no shouting’ rule.”

“That’s not what I meant,” she huffed, “and you know it.”

He couldn’t suppress his grin at the annoyed expression she fixed him with. One day ruffling her out of that serene Jedi facade would lose its charm, but today was not that day. “I’m not splashing either.”

“You are impossible.”

He quirked a brow. “If I’m so impossible why haven’t you gone back to your lonely little ledge over there?”

“It’s just warmer over here,” she insisted, and then dropped her voice further. “And also this is a better hiding spot.”

“I guess it’s good that Sana-Rae’s connections got us access to the private room then. Would you have even been able to set foot in a pool full of strangers?”

Her eye twitched as she clearly started imagining the scenario. “I just feel so… exposed.”

“We can leave if you really want to,” he reminded her.

“But we just got here,” she hedged, “and the water does feel nice…”

He bit back on his automatic response of that not being the only thing that felt nice, although he was pretty sure she read that unspoken sentiment in the way his fingers kept dancing lightly across her skin. The fact that she was leaning slightly into the motion told him that she wasn’t opposed to his touch, but in deference to her protests he shifted his attention a little further north of the equator. Some of the tension released from her shoulders, but he noted the brief flash of confusion and disappointment. Huh, perhaps she was more concerned with the lack of complete privacy than breaking the rules. Would wonders never cease.

“So I take it all that galaxy saving before now didn’t provide much time for visiting the local hot spots?”

“I encouraged my crew to take breaks,” she said hesitantly.

“Oh, just your crew?”

“Well,” she hedged, “they would ask—”

“They? Or Doc?”

“Okay, mostly Doc, but still, it was hard to justify relaxing and unwinding with how much was at stake. Especially during our first trip to Voss.”

Theron quirked a brow at her, reviewing his mental history of her file. “Was that right after…?”

She nodded solemnly, and his fingers stopped the gentle stroking to rest his entire hand firmly on the small of her back. He didn’t need to mention out loud the time she and her crew had been held captive in the then-Sith Emperor’s fortress, nor what she’d been forced to do while under his control. Even all these years later, it was like a fresh wound — or maybe just a reopened one, considering who had taken up residence in her mind while she’d been frozen in carbonite.

“It was easier to keep busy too. Trying to stop Vitiate’s ritual… it gave me something to focus on.”

He pressed his lips together, wondering if this was one of those moments where he should let her talk, or where she wanted to think about other things and would appreciate a distraction and change of subject. He was saved from having to guess as her gaze broke away, drifting to the darkened carvings etched into the dimly lit architecture.

“Do you think I should have?” She spoke after a long, quiet moment.

“Should have what?” he asked cautiously.

“Taken a break. Stopped to appreciate things in the moment.”

“I think,” he said, reaching up with his other hand to brush away the bangs falling into her face, “that you did whatever felt right at the time. And there’s nothing wrong with that.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” she muttered, mostly to herself, “if it was worth it, considering how everything turned out.”

He tilted his head, trying to figure out where this was coming from. “What do you mean?”

“He was off in Wild Space,” she said quietly, “building up yet another Empire. The body I struck down was just one of his vessels. Now I’m another. Or was. I… still don’t know what happened out in those woods on Odessen.”

Like usual, Theron didn’t really have the answer for the deeper issues of the Force, fate, or the big questions in life. All he had was everything in front of him, which included one frowning Jedi Master. He didn’t even bother glancing at their attendant to see if he was watching, Theron just leaned forward and planted a light kiss on her nose.

“Sorry,” she flushed, “just thinking aloud.”

“Nothing wrong with that,” he said quietly, “if that’s what you want to do.”

“I think I’d like to relax?” It was said hesitantly, as if she wasn’t sure she was allowed to actually admit that aloud. “You would think as a Jedi I’d be able to do that.”

“There’s a difference between meditation and relaxation,” Theron teased lightly, “and you don’t really have the gills for trying to meditate underwater.”

“Who says I’d be underwater?”

“Well, your height for one.”

He quirked a brow and her mouth dropped open slightly in mock indignation. Seizing the opportunity, he surged forward capturing her lips in a kiss, and while being careful of her bruises, used his grip on her back to pull her into his lap. The sudden movement made a small splash, and her eyes immediately went to the attendant, who it was possible was just asleep at this point. Did Voss sleep with their eyes open or shut? He would have consulted the HoloNet for that answer, but was far more preoccupied at the moment.

Having her this close sent a thrill straight down his spine, desire pooling in his gut as he deepened the kiss. With her current position, there was very little doubt to the state of his own arousal, and as he broke away, he saw that a deep flush had spread far beyond her cheeks.

“This really isn’t the place,” she said breathlessly.

“Then consider it a preview,” he said, voice low, “for when we get back to our room. If you’re interested in continuing this particular… conversation.”

Somehow the blush in her cheeks darkened further, sending another rush of heat through him. This time it definitely couldn’t be blamed on the steam. “I think I’d like that.”

To Theron’s credit, his smile was only a little feral. “Me too.”

“Although we do have almost an hour left,” she said, “it seems like a wasted opportunity if we leave now.”

“Some things are worth waiting for,” he agreed. “Besides, I still need to teach you how to relax.”

“Why does that sound a little like the blind leading the blind?”

Theron rolled his eyes, and even if she did have a point, he wasn’t going to admit it aloud. She shot him a shy little smirk of her own before readjusting her position until her back was pressed against his chest and her head was resting against his shoulder.

“This work?” she asked a bit dubiously.

“It’s a start.”

The reply might have been sarcastic, but the sting of it was taken out by him threading their fingers together and resting his cheek against the top of her head. Between the warmth of the water and the feeling of her skin pressed against his, Theron felt his tension and stress begin to fade away. While not a natural inclination for either of them, they both slowly began to relax and settle in, letting the rare moment of peace stretch out.

#swtor fanfiction #theron shan x jedi knight #Theron Shan #Jedi Knight/Hero of Tython #otp: adorkable #oc: greyias highwind #Anonymous #once again Theron tries to test the boundaries of my self-imposed T-rating for this blog #thanks Theron #swtor #fanfic #greyfic

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athyrabunlord · 7 years

Note

Yoshi and Riko 16

“If you want, we could go together?” [Prompt List]

A/N: Aaaand I got carried away again XD;;; Loosely based on SIF’s Angel Set, with some Guilty Kiss tooWords: 1,610

“Checking up on Yohane-chan again?”

Riko quickly hides the binoculars under the cloud pillow, ready to deny it. One glance at Mari’s knowing smirk tells her that it’s futile to argue. Sighing, she sheepishly takes out the binoculars again and resumes her observation.

“Now now, don’t ignore me, Rikocchi~! Talk to me.”

Riko scowls but refuses to answer.

“Riko. How is she?”

Mari’s playful tone now gains a soft quality, the same concerned tone that she uses whenever she inquires about their former friend. Riko’s hand subconsciously tightens on the binoculars as she tries to keep her voice from trembling.

“Yocchan is doing alright. She seems to be having trouble with rain, and various odd misfortunes keep happening to her but overall… she’s doing alright. She’s happy.”

The pang in Riko’s heart is somewhat soothed by the sight of the raven-haired girl, grinning and chatting with her two friends.

“That’s good to hear.” Mari gingerly lies down beside her and reaches for the star pillow. Riko glances at her friend, watching the latter whimsically play with the fluffy cushion. Mari then switches her attention to the open book between them, eyes glinting in recognition at the cutesy demon caricature on one of the pages.

“You know, you could go visit her.”

“I can’t,” Riko says immediately, reflexively. She’s toyed with the idea countless times, to just enter the mortal realm and speak to Yoshiko. But no, she must not break the rules. She must not endanger Yoshiko, not when she’s already suffered because of her once.

She cannot sin again.

“Yes you can,” Mari smiles, appearing rather exasperated. She nudges the star pillow against Riko’s face, giggling when the latter blushes at her next words. “After all, you still love her, don’t you?”

“I-I…”

“It’s okay,” Mari’s majestic angel wings spread behind her as she stands up and gazes at her with resolution. “I’ll help you, both of you. Last time… I was only able to help you, while Yohane-chan…”

Riko closes her eyes, unwilling to recall the painful memories. “She’s not one of us anymore, Mari-san. She’s a mortal now. She doesn’t remember me, and she doesn’t have to. She’s perfectly fine there-”

“But you’re not fine.” Mari’s voice is low, half-pleading and half-irate. “You may think her fall from Paradise is your fault, but I’m just as guilty as you. I could not save her then, and if I continue to let you be like this, it would’ve put her efforts to waste!”

Taking a deep breath, Riko also unfolds her angel wings and gently places the binoculars to the side. “…you’re right. I should do something, instead of just moping around. I’ll go see Yocchan and… well, perhaps afterwards, I’ll finally be able to move on.”

“Don’t be so pessimistic, Rikocchi~” Mari winks, holding out her hand. “You’re going to the mortal realm, ne? It’s where life is full of shiny possibilities!”

Riko returns the smile and places her hand in the blonde’s.

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“I’ll see you tomorrow, Ruby, Zuramaru!”

Yoshiko waves her two friends goodbye as they part ways at the intersection. Humming, she skips down the road and tries not to dance along too. Today is the day! After a long time of searching, she’s finally found the perfect spot to do her ritual.

She knows that she’s different than everyone, that she’s special with hidden powers. She’s a former Angel who fell from heavens, one must have committed a terrible sin and was thus cast out from Paradise!

This is the only explanation for her string of bad luck and her dreams about this exotic realm above the clouds!

No one, not even her parents, believe in her identity as a fallen Angel. While her two best friends are supportive of her, she could tell that they do not believe her either. That’s fine, all of this shall finally come to an end when she opens the portal connecting the two realms!

Her excitement, however, is dampened by the series of misfortunes that delay her journey. A bird that flew by poops on her shoulder; when she goes to clean up the mess in the public washroom, the pipe bursts and drenches her like a rainstorm; after drying herself with a spare towel she always brings in her bag, she stumbles into a deep puddle that she swears wasn’t there moments prior.

“Why does this keep happening to me!!” Though irritated, she is also unnerved and frustrated. Her karma seems to be worse than usual today. Is the divine power really that reluctant to let her achieve her goal?

The ache in her heart, something she’s gotten so good at ignoring, churns fiercely as if to reflect her predicament. Whimpering, she crouches and covers her head with the towel.

“Are you okay?”

Yoshiko wipes her tears away as discretely as possible and pretends to be drying her wet hair before peering up at the stranger. The pretty girl appears to be her age, maybe a bit older, and she has cascading burgundy tresses and a pair of warm amber eyes. She looks oddly familiar, though Yoshiko couldn’t place her anywhere in her memories.

She wants to reply with ‘do I look like I’m okay’, yet she finds herself shrugging. “Yeah, I’m fine, I’m used to this.”

The stranger’s inquiring gaze coaxes her to elaborate. “Bad things tend to happen to me. Heh, I’m probably cursed.”

Rather than the dismissive reaction she usually receives, the taller girl simply crouches down beside her. “How so?”

Maybe it is the stranger’s sympathetic voice, or the fact she genuinely sounds intrigued, for Yoshiko finds herself sharing her life story, about her being a fallen Angel, and her theory on opening a portal that connects the two realms.

“Erm, you probably think I’m weird huh?” She folds her arms in embarrassment, unprepared to have the stranger’s complete attention.

“Not at all. I think it’s very interesting. Who’s to say it’s not true?” The girl has a distant look as she gazes at the sky. “So… you’re on your way to open this portal?”

“Yeah. I found this obscure, abandoned park in the woods over there. My instincts tell me that must be the place!” Yoshiko clenches her fists and lowers her head. “But, I’m kinda nervous. Like I said, the bad luck is worse than usual, so maybe something terrible will happen if I really go there…”

“If you want, we could go together?”

Yoshiko blinks at the girl, both startled by her kindness and a strange prick in her mind. Suddenly, images of places she has never visited before flash across her vision, like an old broken movie.

Paradise was infinitely wide, full of countless places still unexplored and unknown to even the most ancient of Angels. Therefore, she considered it an amazing feat that she managed to locate an ethereal garden, where its exotic flowers felt holy enough to purify any onlookers. As mesmerized as she was, she also sensed a foreboding aura and that compelled her to leave the area in haste.

However, she’s been unable to get the garden out of her head and her heart yearned to explore it again to her heart’s content. She was unsettled by that foreboding aura and thus hadn’t acted until now. Finally making up her mind, she sought the opinion of someone she deemed special above all others.

“If you want, we could go together?”

“Are you sure? Like I said, I sensed something off about the place-”

“More the reason to go with you.” The other Angel’s gaze was unwavering. “You shouldn’t go there alone.”

Unable to turn down her crush’s offer, Yoshiko agreed and brought the burgundy-haired Angel to the Secret Garden. They explored the breathtaking place together, admiring its beauty and relishing its soothing ambience. That foreboding aura was nowhere to be felt, for she was so blissful to be in the company of the person she loved, far away from the scrutiny of others.

There, beside a spring of crystal-clear water, she confessed to her amber-eyed companion and kissed her whole-heartedly. Before the other Angel could respond, the water abruptly turned murky and a heavy fog descended upon them. Intangible ropes, seemingly made of shadows, burst out from the fathomless spring and flew towards them.

Yoshiko managed to push her loved one out of the way before she was captured and her senses became muffled. Even then, she could see that the Secret Garden was crumbling and that several Angels have arrived at the scene. She could feel a shiny presence reaching for her.

“No, save Lily! She shouldn’t have to suffer with me!”

She acknowledged what was happening to her. She had sinned after all, so her punishment was to fall, to fall from the heavens and into the mortal realm. This was all her fault, and hers only.

Let her beloved Lily stay in Paradise.

The dark ropes pulled her down into the abyss and she knew no more.

“H-Hey, are you okay?”

Yoshiko blinks, shaking her head and breathing raggedly. “Lily…”

The burgundy-haired girl flinches, her eyes widening. “What did you just say-?”

The overwhelming sensation alleviates like a deflating balloon and, with it, the images vanish into thin air. Yoshiko furrows her brows and rubs her temple. “Nothing. I just… no, it’s nothing. Anyways, you said… you want to come with me. Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.” Those amber eyes are determined and just a little bit hopeful. “You shouldn’t go there alone.”

Yoshiko grins and takes her hand. “Yoshiko. Tsushima Yoshiko. Thanks for keeping me company.”

“Riko. Sakurauchi Riko,” the girl’s smile is just as pretty as the one in the fading memory. “Pleased to meet you… Yocchan.”

#anon ask #prompt list bliplet #yoshiriko #yohariko #athyra writes #AngelSet AU #maa this could have more content/details but #this is only supposed to be a bliplet DX #abrupt ending? but I'd like to keep it open and ambiguous #030 I had fun writing this #I could've just written about them going to comiket together but nooo #gotta do a whole new AU OTL #anyway my brain power could only handle one ask today xD;;#will continue tomorrow 0/

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jewishandmore · 4 years

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Judaism in "Do it ourselves"

Yom Kippur Morning 5781 Monday, September 28, 2020 Temple Beth Zion, Buffalo, New York by Rabbi Jonathan Freirich

What a year.

2020, 5780 the year just past going into 5781.

It doesn’t look like it will let up any time soon.

Look at our world, our country, our city, our community, our Temple family.

You have risen to the occasion. You called everyone in our community multiple times when we first started this shut down journey on Friday, March 13. Do you remember? You organized yourselves in making sure that every TBZ member heard from someone more than once.

Knowing that we entered uncharted territory the people of our Temple Beth Zion family have over and over again come together to support the synagogue and each other. Just listen to a few of the amazing volunteer-initiated efforts that have started during this time, and this list is in no way exhaustive:

Chiavetta’s chicken fundraisers; a new initiative this year.

The innovation of lending out prayer books for the High Holy Days.

Special gifts for every member in honor of the High Holy Days.

The whole Sunday Palooza, including food drive and recycling drive.

Distributing individual Religious School packages to each and every religious school student and family.

Feast Before the Fast just yesterday.

A High Holy Days brought to you through an amazing production team led by our volunteers, and coordinated by the Ritual Committee of volunteers who manage every aspect of honors and service lay out and came here in advance to record Torah and Haftarah readings and blessings and English readings and the Kol Nidrei message and announcements.

Creating and participating in a whole new way of worshiping and connecting, many of us are now more connected than ever before because we have overcome mobility obstacles and figured out how to Zoom across generations and distances.

Broadcasting Jewish music today on WNED Classical - again led by the efforts of volunteers.

Joyful occasions and commemorations, B’nei Mitzvah and celebrations of life, ways to build community and family that we had never explored before, all while navigating the challenges facing all of us as individuals and a world, supported by all of you who continue to show up with kindness and compassion and support TBZ more enthusiastically than ever. This past Shabbat was our first Saturday morning since August 1 without a Bat or Bar Mitzvah or Rosh Hashanah - all of you have been participating to support all of these celebrations.

Sisterhood, Brotherhood, Gift Shop, Sukkah, Task Forces and our constantly devoted Board of Trustees, committees overseeing our finances, and always innovating on how we will enter a new future as an organization in our Jewish community, preserving and improving our wonderful buildings, seeking new models of collaboration, and so much more - most of you have no idea how many hours our volunteer leaders devote to TBZ and there’s no way to list all of them or all that they do.

Generosity in these difficult times - all of you continue to figure out ways to give of your time, talent, and treasure to make TBZ into the warm, welcoming, and hamishe place that so many depend upon.

Patience and enthusiasm with our team as we figure out technology and remote gathering and innovate and improvise, building the plane as we fly it - thank you all so much for sticking with us. You have comforted each other and found new ways of “being there” for each other even when we can’t actually share space and time and hugs.

In all these ways and so many more, you have shown every member of Temple Beth Zion that we are first and foremost a community of caring people, compassionately engaged with each other to build and maintain the fabric of interconnectedness that is Judaism, that improves and maintains our lives through all the principles of our ancestors applied with love and care.

In all of this, you volunteers and leaders of Temple Beth Zion, you embody the teachings of our tradition. The way we behave at Temple Beth Zion follows the first teaching of the Torah about building community - we model ourselves after Abraham, the first of our ancestors, who demonstrated that caring and compassion are expressed first of all through hospitality. When all of you have led through welcome, you have followed Abraham’s model.

Here is a story emphatically showing just this from the Talmud, discussing what we are allowed to do for the sake of hospitality.

The Talmud starts:

One may move baskets of produce on Shabbat for guests and in order to prevent the suspension of Torah study in the academy. Rabbi Yocĥanan said: Hospitality towards guests is as great as rising early to go to study. And Rabbi Dimi from Neharde’a says: Hospitality towards guests is greater than rising early to study, as it teaches: For guests, and only afterward: to prevent suspension of Torah study. Rabbi Yehuda said that Rav said on a related note: Hospitality towards guests is greater than receiving the Presence of God, as when Abraham invited his guests it is written…

And here is the full story from Genesis, chapter 18: 1 Now God was seen by [Abraham] by the oaks of Mamre as he was sitting at the entrance to his tent at the heat of the day. 2 [Abraham] lifted up his eyes and saw: here, three men standing over against him. When he saw them, he ran to meet them from the entrance of his tent and bowed to the earth 3 and said: My lords, pray if I have found favor in your eyes, pray do not pass by your servant!

The Torah uses very few words, so let’s expand them a little. God is seen by Abraham while Abraham is sitting at the entrance to his tent. Then, Abraham looks up and sees three men, and leaves God’s presence in order to greet the new visitors and offer them hospitality.

This is the interpretation that the rabbis of the Talmud use as they continue: Abraham requested that God, the Divine Presence, wait for him while he tended to his guests appropriately. Rabbi Elazar said: Come and see that the attribute of the Holy One, Blessed be God, is not like that of flesh and blood. The attribute of flesh and blood people is such that a less significant person is unable to say to a more significant person: Wait until I come to you. While with regard to the Holy One, Blessed be God, it is written: “And Abraham said: Adonai, if now I have found favor in Your sight, please pass not from Your servant.” Abraham requested that God wait for him due to his guests. [BT Shabbat 127a, Koren Talmud Bavli, The Noe Edition, Shabbat Part Two, Commentary by Rabbi Adin Even-Israel Steinsaltz, page 249]

When we are dealing with people, it is difficult to ask a more important person to wait while we go and attend to the needs of a less important person. It’s the right thing to do, but it is difficult. With God it is different. When hospitality and taking care of the needs of others arise, even if God is right there talking to us, then God will wait while we take care of other people.

The Talmud tells this story about Abraham to make sure that we understand just how important it is to welcome the stranger and attend to the needs of those around us.

And all of you at Temple Beth Zion understood this even before I brought forward this story. You understand that the life of a community is about the people in our community. You understand that we don’t communicate that by telling people how important all of you are, we communicate that by showing up for each other, by making it clear that we know that caring actions speak clearly. You have spoken clearly this year. The plans you continue to make for the months to come, with all the uncertainty around us show that you will continue to speak clearly through your actions that the people of Temple Beth Zion, the Jews of our community, and the people of Western New York are so important, that sometimes we have to ask others to hold on while we welcome and care for one another.

Thank you.

And of course, thank you to our whole TBZ team.

The whole team of us who work with and for you so appreciate the Temple Beth Zion mission. When we partner like we have, we become so much more than the sum of our parts. We accomplish something truly holy - we build a community that cares.

In the early 1970’s “Do it yourself” Judaism was made a big thing by the publication of “The Jewish Catalog” by the founders of the Havurah movement - empowered Jews who felt that formal Jewish life was lacking for participation and doing by Jews. The 2020 update, nearly fifty years later is that Judaism is “Do it ourselves”. Each and every one of you has taken up the banner of doing Jewishly together, taking an action that makes a difference for more than an individual, putting our community’s well-being first.

We may speak of the number of families who belong to Temple Beth Zion, but we don’t really act like we are multiple families. We are one Temple Beth Zion family, and we have been doing Judaism for ourselves for a long time. The crisis our society has encountered over the last six months has only brought forward the spirit that has inspired Temple Beth Zion for generations: we build a “do it ourselves” Judaism every day of the year.

On this day, as we are re-energized and reminded by the words of our sages and our prophets, that empty fasts and rote rituals are not what God demands of us. All of you at Temple Beth Zion can be inspired by your “do it ourselves” energy that you have already exerted - you are the people who will help make 5781 a better year. You are the community that will continue to care for each other. We do for ourselves because, in these words inspired by Hillel the Sage:

“If we are not for ourselves, who will be for us?

If we are only for ourselves, what are we?

If not now, when?”

We are the ones who will make the improvements we need.

We will confess and atone, remember and re-energize, and take up the task again as we enter a new year ready to continue caring for one another and doing Judaism for ourselves.

May we all inscribe ourselves for a better year in the Book of Life that we all write together.

L’shanah tovah.

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glittergummicandypeach · 4 years

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The Absence of Public, Visible Mourning Has Weakened Our Ability to Fight COVID | Religion Dispatches

In May, when the US hit 90,000 Covid-19 related deaths, the Washington Post, published a piece decrying the lack of public mourning from the President and his administration. When we reached 170,000 Covid-19 related deaths, CNN published a similar call. As Americans, some of us have been touched by death personally during the pandemic, but for many more of us, Covid-19 deaths are abstract and impersonal. This is what made Kristin Urquiza’s voice so powerful during the opening night of the Democratic National Convention as she described her father, a Trump voter, whose “only preexisting condition was voting for Trump.”

Hovering over the pageantry of the convention was the fog of death and a deep anxiety that we, as Americans, may not be able to muster the collective will to tackle this challenge. But it also offered one of the most widespread moments of collective, public mourning, which can serve as a catalyst for taking the pandemic seriously.

In my own life, Covid-19-related death has been absent. It was only recently, when a former student died in a tragic accident, that I realized how removed death has been from my experience. He was the son of friends; his mother is the head of my children’s school. The death of a young person, especially one with exceptional promise, would be a tragedy on any day. Given the grim backdrop of the pandemic it felt especially cruel. Our community is devastated. My wife and I have found ourselves regularly dissolving into tears. The death has unleashed four months of loss.

We learned of his death midday on a Monday and by that afternoon our community was gathered on Zoom—over 250 tiny boxes of grief—many from our synagogue, but many streaming in from around the world. Despite its ability to transcend geographic boundaries, Zoom offers little comfort. We couldn’t embrace or offer each other solace. It’s hard to have a sense of the collective when you have to scroll through pages of faces. My rabbi, a master at building community, asked us all to unmute and listen to each other’s pain. Grief-stricken, we sat as different viewers’ breathing or sobs broke in randomly over others.

Until news of my former student’s death, Covid-19 had been an extreme inconvenience. I was frustrated from having to look after my young children while trying to work throughout the spring. I was disappointed that my son, a rising kindergartener, would miss out on important social and emotional development milestones in the fall. As a Bay Area resident, I’ve been sheltering-in-place since early March. It’s been annoying and depressing, but we’re incredibly fortunate. Death and mortality—even unemployment—have been absent from our Covid-19 experience.

Mourning activities offer us access to each other’s pain and lead us to reflect on the need to alleviate suffering more broadly. As we moved into the formal mourning period, the social distance barriers to performing these rituals only served to amplify our distance from one another and minimize their effects.

This was especially challenging for an encumbered, tight knit, Orthodox Jewish community like ours. These rituals are intentionally procedural. In the face of loss, discomfort, and confusion, the ritual act provides a structure to navigate our surroundings. In Ritual and Its Consequences: An Essay on the Limits of Sincerity Adam Seligman, Robert Weller, Michael Puett and Bennett Simon identify that ritual, in its rote doing, allows for dissonance and contradiction. Ritual, they explain, creates an “as-if” subjunctive of the world that could be. But in ritual’s repetition one becomes comfortable with the gap between the attempts of ritual and the reality of the world.

Of course, during the pandemic, we’re unable to perform these rituals as usual. There’s a lack of dignity to all aspects of this new COVID reality—even the darkest most formal moments of grief. While the Zoom memorial service allowed upwards of 1,000 people to participate from around the globe—including one speaker, a well-known head of an Israeli Yeshiva and another, the deceased’s roommate, an observant Muslim now back home in Karachi—for us, the sanctity was punctured by my children running in to ask for lunch and the sounds of the neighbor mowing his lawn.

The shiva, the seven-day period when mourners sit (in chairs low to the ground) and receive visitors, was limited to family and a select group of friends. Visits were pre-scheduled, 25-minute slots for one or two family units at a time. Shiva is about showing up and being there, more than doing something. The interaction is scripted. One isn’t supposed to offer a greeting to either the mourner or fellow visitors, you should not speak to them until spoken to, just be there as a comforting presence. Upon departing, one bids farewell with a scripted line in Hebrew, “May the Omnipresent comfort you among the rest of the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.”

Shiva in this new reality, demands what Seligman et al identify as sincerity, which tries to close that gap of ritual towards some notion of “authenticity.” They write:

Sincerity often grows out of reaction against ritual. It criticizes ritual’s acceptance of social convention as mere action (perhaps even just acting) without intent, as performer without belief… The sincere mode of behavior seeks to replace the “mere convention” of ritual with a genuine and thoughtful state of internal conviction.

When available, sincerity allows us to express ourselves in meaningful ways. But sincerity requires authentic emotion, something that’s only possible when one really means it. Shiva provides the space for dissonance when one can sit in the company of friends and strangers, and just continue to be, through the lulls of conversation, anguish, and pain. Gathering provides much needed collective quiet and non-verbal interactions. The moments of connection born out of boredom and awkward silence.

When acts of mourning are filtered through Zoom or bounded by a tight schedule, the comforts of ritual wither and we’re rushed to transform the experience into a sincere moment. Shiva and other scripted mourning rituals allow those who aren’t sad, who may not have a direct connection to the deceased, to be drawn into the communal project of mourning as social beings.

Through these experiences, behaviors of social connectivity emerge which strive to alleviate suffering. Around the mourners a network of informal helpers feed people, take care of children and make sure that, even while dealing with death, life can go on. These activities draw the community into the mourning process, reverberating through the layers of connection, helping to ritualize a commitment to human dignity.

Maimonides, the great 12th century legalist and philosopher, understood accompanying the dead and comforting mourners as embodied practices which manifest the Biblical command to love the other as yourself (Mishna Torah, Laws of Mourning 14:1). It’s through these rituals that one communicates dignity and the value of life. It’s through these activities that the community, individually and collectively, engages in catharsis that can lead to societal transformation.

In encountering this lone, accidental death, I realized how protected I’ve been from our national tragedy. Our inability to mourn together isn’t just emotionally challenging but reflects the larger political challenge of this moment. The absence of death in real, visible public ways, with ongoing public mourning is a central cause in the lack of collective commitment to defeat the virus. Our lack of collective mourning reflects a broader disengagement from death throughout the pandemic.

The number of deaths is a rolling tab, a new national debt, scrolling at the bottom of the TV screen. There are no funeral marches, no mass services at cemeteries. The images and sounds of death are absent from our news media. It’s too dangerous for a camera crew to enter an ICU ward. How might the airing of choking, coughing and strained breathing, like war footage, change our national discourse?

Three weeks later, my community is still numb. When I run into a friend on the street, we break into tears; the loss is still palpable. But the pain has only dulled because we’re not able to be in the places where we lived with this young man and his family. It will be quite some time before I get to see his father standing in his normal spot again in our synagogue sanctuary. I’m not able to inhabit a public life that offers regular reminders of his absence. We’re not actually coming to grips with the loss, it’s simply out of sight.

And this is a single reflection of our national existence. There are now over 150,000 families, developing networks of pain and suffering wrought by this national tragedy and this administration’s indifference.

During a presidency defined by border walls, travel bans, and caged children are we surprised that we’ve ended up confined to our homes, disembodied faces in Zoom memorial services? We desperately need mechanisms for public mourning, for our collective grief, so that we may take seriously the deep challenges our country faces.

This content was originally published here.

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mysongfortheasking · 6 years

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So This is the New Year

I’ve tried to make “resolutions” more than once in my life. I never stick to them. “This year, I’ll work out at least three days a week.” And by April, I was losing money to the gym membership I never used. “This year, I’m going to be a vegetarian.” That lasted a whole three months, until I gave into the temptation that spinach and mozzarella stuffed chicken provided. “I’m going to go to bed much earlier this year.” As soon as my next college semester began, I was back to thinking that being in bed by 12:30am was an accomplishment. “Punctuality is a goal: I’m going to be fifteen minutes early to everything I ever go to this year.” Well…I at least managed to screech in right on time.

After countless failed resolutions, I decided the best thing for me to do was to instead take time to reflect on the previous year, and see what I had experienced, what those experiences taught me, and how I could carry those lessons into the coming year. So around this time every year, I sit back, think on the previous 12 months, and write about how I have changed, what I have learned, and how I will move forward. (For some weird reason, I am missing 2017, but if you want, you can read my post from January 2016 here.) So without further ado, here are my 2017 reflections:

2017 was a big year for me. I finished my Bachelor’s. I started graduate school. I moved back home, then moved into an apartment. I started a new job in a work atmosphere I had zero experience in (which was retail, if you’re wondering). There were lots of big transitions and changes in these last 12 months. And sometimes, in those times, I found myself frustrated and stressed beyond belief. But stress comes with any type of change and transition (whether it be a good or bad one), and moving on is a natural part of life. So although 2017 was a tough year for me, it was a good one.

In the midst of all these huge adjustments, I learned a lot about myself. One major thing I learned about is the value of self-care (which I posted about in greater depth a few months ago--click here to read it). But perhaps the most important lesson I learned in 2017 is one that goes hand in hand with the idea of self-care, but is a bit deeper and a lot scarier. This last year, I learned the value of vulnerability.

I was the type of person who never wanted to ask anyone for help. I thought asking for help meant I was weak or broken. During some of the crazier moments of 2017, I started attending a church I found and fell in love with. At first, I would go to service, partake in the routines and rituals, and leave. A lot of times, I would go eat lunch alone, drive back home, and binge watch Law and Order for the rest of the day. Although the church itself brought me a lot of peace, I knew there had to be something more. But something inside me was afraid. Afraid that if I got too close to these strangers, someone might take advantage of me or not care or judge me.

At some point in time, I realized I was in desperate need of genuine human connection. So I joined what is called a “Life group” (which is just a churchy term for a small group of people who get together once a week). I was really hesitant at first, because I didn’t want to join a “Bible study” group or some type of “mini-church.” Others had asked me to join “life groups” in the past, and I always said I was “too busy,” or “too tired,” or would attend one for a while and then slowly fade away. I had a thousand different excuses and reasons for isolating myself, but it all came down to being afraid. I eventually decided to ignore my past failures and join one anyway. I told myself if I didn’t like it, I would just quit going. The truth was, I desperately wanted to belong. I don’t think I even knew it then, but I just wanted authenticity. I wanted to be a person with other people.

I ended up joining a group that started as a “dinner group.” Once a week, we went to a member’s home, and had dinner. There wasn’t a lot of religious talk or Bible reading or prayer. It was just a bunch of people getting to know each other. And (somewhat to my surprise), I loved it.

Our group then evolved into what we call “The Tribe.” It was through The Tribe that I discovered Brene Brown and her TedTalk on vulnerability. In it, she says:

“What we are doing with vulnerability. Why do we struggle with it so much? Am I alone in struggling with vulnerability? No... We live in a vulnerable world. And one of the ways we deal with it is [to] numb vulnerability...The problem is that you cannot selectively numb emotion. You can't say, here's the bad stuff. Here's vulnerability, here's grief, here's shame, here's fear, here's disappointment. I don't want to feel these. You can't numb those hard feelings without numbing the other affects, our emotions. You cannot selectively numb. So when we numb those, we numb joy, we numb gratitude, we numb happiness. And then, we are miserable, and we are looking for purpose and meaning, and then we feel vulnerable, so then we [numb those feelings] And it becomes this dangerous cycle...

But there's another way...This is what I have found: To let ourselves be seen, deeply seen, vulnerably seen, to love with our whole hearts, even though there's no guarantee...to practice gratitude and joy in those moments of terror, when we're wondering, ‘Can I love you this much? Can I believe in this this passionately? Can I be this fierce about this?’ Just to be able to stop and...say, ‘I'm just so grateful, because to feel this vulnerable means I'm alive.’ And the last, which I think is probably the most important, is to believe that we're enough. Because when we work from a place, I believe, that says, ‘I'm enough,’ then we stop screaming and start listening, we're kinder and gentler to the people around us, and we're kinder and gentler to ourselves.”

(I know that’s a lengthy quote, but the entire talk is beyond amazing. Do yourself a favor and watch the whole thing here.)

I watched that video because some Tribe members suggested it. And as I watched it, I broke and cried alone in my car. Because that was me. I was the queen of numbing feelings, of hiding behind myself, of going through the cycle over and over. I decided that I would try and be more open and vulnerable with others. And then the opportunity arose.

Once a month, The Tribe has “story night.” At Story Night, we gather around a fire in the back yard, and two people share the story of their life. Not necessarily every single detail from birth to the present, but rather, a story of how they struggled through something and overcame. And in the month of December, my turn for story night came around.

I knew an entire month ahead of time I would be sharing. And for four weeks, I struggled with what I should tell. I had stories that I “didn’t mind sharing,” things that almost everyone knew, things I could say, “Hey look, I overcame this.” But there was something so unsatisfactory about that. It felt like I was taking the easy way out. Because I had a story in me that I had never shared before, that no one outside of myself (and my therapist) truly knew the whole of. And even though I was terrified, I knew it needed to be told.

The night of “Story Night” finally came. I (somewhat intentionally) went last (taking as much time to procrastinate telling my story as I possibly could). Public speaking never scares me (in fact, I’m one of those people who loves it), but when my time came to speak, I was literally shaking. I had brought my guitar, so I sang two songs, the whole time thinking to myself, It’s not too late to change your mind and tell something easier. But when I finished playing and began talking, I forced myself to share my story. Because despite the fear running through me, I knew it needed to be shared.

At the end of it all, I said, “So that’s it. I feel like we should share stories where we truly overcame and won, and maybe this isn’t a story like that. Because, to be honest, I'm still dealing with all of this. It still hurts. It still makes me hate myself a little bit. But I’m working through it, and I’ve gotten better, and someday I’ll be able to say that I truly got over it and came out on top.”

In that moment, one of the fellow Tribe members spoke up and told me, “You say that, but as I listened to you play and sing and then share your story, there was so much strength. When you played, I knew whatever you were going to share would be amazing. And it was. And you say that you haven’t overcame, but by sharing this and sharing yourself, I think you’re already there.”

I broke. The support and love I felt that night was unreal. Afterwards, more than one person came to me and encouraged me. One girl approached me and said, “I am going through the exact thing you talked about, and your story helped me realize I’m not alone.”

It was that night that everything became real to me. Vulnerability became more than a word. It became more than “a good TedTalk topic.” It became more than something I heard people say they had. That night, it became a part of me. I grew stronger than ever. I knew that night that I wasn’t alone. That being open and honest wasn’t wrong or weak. That night, I truly grasped that being vulnerable is one of the strongest things we can do.

All of this is not brag about myself and say, “Look at what I did.” This is in no way saying I have reached some ultimate goal. In fact, I’m positive this is something that I will probably continue to grow in for the rest of my life. But that night, sharing my story was a huge leap of blind faith and trust for me. Faith and trust in the people around me. Faith and trust that they would see me as a fellow human among other humans. Faith and trust that they would still welcome me with open arms and say, “You are one of us.” It was truly a risk. But it was a risk well worth it.

I don’t do “resolutions,” but going through all of that in 2017 made me realize that I can actually be a better person for others around me when I recognize and am honest about my own faults and flaws. Asking for help makes me a better friend to others when they need the same. So in 2018, I will continue moving forward in openness and vulnerability. In being human with other humans. I am by no means perfect. Neither is anyone else. So instead of pretending like I am, I have learned that it’s much stronger of me to simply recognize my imperfections and turn my weaknesses into strengths the best way possible: by becoming genuinely connected with others around me through our own humanity. And that lesson isn’t something I should only apply in 2018. it is something I will continue to strive for and carry on for the rest of my life.

#humanity #connection #vulnerability #brene brown #human connections #love #new year #reflections #life #stories #personal

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whittlebaggett8 · 5 years

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Tucker Carlson refuses to apologize after tapes surface of him calling women ‘primitive’ and comparing them to dogs, Defence Online

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Tucker Carlson speaks onstage through Politicon 2018 at Los Angeles Convention Centre on Oct 21, 2018 in Los Angeles, California.

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Abundant Polk/Getty Photos for Politicon

Recordings resurfaced by Media Issues for The us Sunday evening discovered Fox News host Tucker Carlson evaluating women to canine, contacting women of all ages “primitive,” and defending polygamist cult chief Warren Jeffs, amongst other things.

In a statement, Carlson refused to apologize, contacting his statements “naughty,” and inviting individuals that disagree with him on to his exhibit.

Persons are evaluating Carlson’s statements to individuals from Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017 that stifled his career.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson is in sizzling drinking water immediately after the progressive media watchdog Media Matters for The usa revealed recordings of call-ins from Carlson to shock jock radio plan “Bubba The Love Sponge,” which at first aired involving 2006 and 2011. The recordings aspect Carlson making a lot of degrading statements about women, calling them “primitive” and comparing them to pet dogs, and defending the now-convicted child sexual abuser Warren Jeffs.

In a assertion, Carlson refused to apologize, indicating, “Media Issues caught me indicating anything naughty on a radio display extra than a 10 years back. Instead than express the standard ritual contrition, how about this: I’m on tv each and every weeknight live for an hour. If you want to know what I consider, you can observe. Anyone who disagrees with my views is welcome to come on and make clear why.”

The contents of the tapes are diverse. They go over every thing from Warren Jeffs to sexual intercourse work.

The tapes deal with a large array of subjects, with Carlson critiquing the overall look of quite a few gals, contesting the prosecution of Warren Jeffs, and calling women “primitive.”

In many clips, Carlson appeared to draw a distinction involving little one marriage and boy or girl rape.

“The rapist, in this circumstance, has made a lifelong dedication to dwell and just take care of the individual, so it is a minor different. I suggest, let us be straightforward about it,” Carlson argues about marriage, right before clarifying that he’s from the apply.

In a clip dated to 2009, Carlson is listened to defending Warren Jeffs, who was awaiting trial at the time on sex crime charges connected to his organized polygamist cult, that allegedly arranged marriages involving grownup men and underage ladies. Jeffs was suspected of managing the group from jail, but the case was at some point dismissed mainly because two alleged victims backed out of testifying. In 2011, Jeffs was convicted on two counts of child sexual assault and sentenced to existence in jail.

In the tape, Carlson claims, “here’s my position: If a male wants to be polygamist, which is type of his business.”

When pressed about the age of the kids included, Carlson responded, “He’s not accused of touching anybody he is accused of facilitating a marriage between a 16-12 months-previous woman and a 27-year-previous man. That’s the accusation. Which is what they’re contacting felony rape. [crosstalk] Which is bullshit. I’m sorry. Now this guy could be [crosstalk], may be a kid rapist I’m just telling you that arranging a marriage concerning a 16-year-outdated and a 27-year-previous is not the exact same as pulling a stranger off the street and raping her.”

Read through far more: Tucker Carlson curses out Dutch historian who accuses him of currently being a ‘millionaire funded by billionaires’ in an unaired job interview

Carlson went on to look at underage polygamy to gay relationship, arguing, “It’s disgusting! I consider the faith is preposterous, I assume it’s a cult, I consider it is absolutely immoral. But which is not the point. The query is, two inquiries — a single: Is this male one particular of the leading 10 most harmful individuals in The united states? The solution is no, unequivocally no. And two: If you are, like, for the government butting out of the bed room and for gay marriage, and for the correct of strip golf equipment to function unimpeded by governments – how accurately can you be from polygamy? On what grounds are you versus polygamy? I really do not get that.”

In other segments, Carlson specifically attacked and critiqued the visual appearance of unique females.

In 2010, Carlson claimed now Supreme Courtroom Justice Elena Kagan is “never going to be an desirable woman.”

“I really don’t like [Kagan] and I wouldn’t vote to ensure her if I ended up a U.S. senator. But I do sense sorry for her in that way. I come to feel sorry for unattractive women of all ages. I indicate it is nothing they did. You know, she didn’t. Nobody deserves that,” he explained.

Carlson utilized language he has critisized other Tv set hosts for making use of

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TBS

In 2006, Carlson called Tv set host Alexis Stewart “extremely c–ty.” The exact year he termed Ariana Huffington “a pig.”

The Fox News host earlier railed comedian Samantha Bee for employing the c-phrase through one particular of her segments on her clearly show “Full Frontal.” In a May perhaps 2018 airing of his “Tucker Carlson Tonight” plan, Carlson termed the term “actually degrading” and explained he did not know of a male who would use the identical language.

Carlson has also built common statements about girls, in 2006, indicating “You just need to be peaceful and type of do what you are told,” when speaking about political conversations with women of all ages.

In 2007, Carlson compared gals to dogs, stating, “they’re incredibly primitive, they’re simple, they’re not that tricky to understand. And one particular of the points they dislike a lot more than anything is weak point in a guy.”

Carlson resolved other topics, which can be study in total below.

Some are evaluating the recordings to these that remaining Milo Yiannopoulos mired in scandal

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Drew Angerer/Getty

A number of reporters have compared the recordings to individuals that mired far-ideal pundit Milo Yiannopoulos in scandal and in the end paved the way to his resignation from Breitbart and the termination of his ebook offer with Simon & Schuster.

These comments from Tucker Carlson are the variety of point that finally tanked Milo Yiannopoulos. https://t.co/reSe0P4jyN pic.twitter.com/VPQwkCF7JL

— Osita Nwanevu (@OsitaNwanevu) March 10, 2019

There’s one particular area in which Tucker Carlson is, essentially, generating the heterosexual version of the intergenerational argument that ruined Milo’s career as a public intellectual, and it is not even Close to staying the most perverse of the transcripts cited in the short article. https://t.co/XQokC9tmA9

— Ron Hogan (@RonHogan) March 10, 2019

In 2016, Yiannopoulos defended specific sexual interactions among children and older people, declaring “there are undoubtedly people today who are capable of providing consent at a younger age, I definitely take into consideration myself to be 1 of them.” In 2017, Yiannopoulos obtained big backlash for the reviews, which at some point paved the way to various deal cancellations with the temperament.

Others have pointed out the evident irony of the tapes, noting that Carlson routinely employs historic critiques utilizing previous statements in his individual do the job, and has focused individuals for getting “creepy.”

Tucker Carlson practically ran a section on *Friday evening* attacking Joe Biden for a little something he stated in 1975, but yeah go off https://t.co/cgC01vtIC6

— jordan (@JordanUhl) March 11, 2019

.@TuckerCarlson – And you have the audacity to simply call me “creepy”? You are a entire dirtbag. Regular hypocrite. We are about to obtain out if @FoxNews has any decency expectations in anyway. 13 yrs aged! https://t.co/dG8XkvEV6x

— Michael Avenatti (@MichaelAvenatti) March 11, 2019

The post Tucker Carlson refuses to apologize after tapes surface of him calling women ‘primitive’ and comparing them to dogs, Defence Online appeared first on Defence Online.

from WordPress https://defenceonline.com/2019/03/11/tucker-carlson-refuses-to-apologize-after-tapes-surface-of-him-calling-women-primitive-and-comparing-them-to-dogs-defence-online/

#Fox News Channel #Media Matters #News #Tucker Carlson

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papermoth-bird-blog · 5 years

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Mexico: The pals in Playa del Carmen.

I’ve never related more to being a person of Baltic bloodlines, than I have being in Mexico. Between my pale skin & the heat-- I have to take super extra precautions so I don’t exhaust myself. Even though I am doing my all time adult-best at wearing sooo much sunscreen, I am clearly not drinking enough water. Yesterday I kinda paid for it & was feeling quite ill. Man, I feel like I constantly have to have water in my hand just to keep up. I do realize I’ve never really been to a climate like this, and so, I suppose there are some adjustments to be made. Especially having lived in the Maritimes for over 6 years- where it rarely reaches temperatures close to 30. The remedy for me has been fruit- any and all fruit- as much as I can at all times.

Katie & I spent our first few days taking it easy under the scorching heat. Both of our hair grew so big in curly, It would have stirred jealously from any 80s hair band. We ate at a cute little taco place the first nice. There was a man with dreads who pulled up right beside us and started loudly serenading us as we tried to eat. It was kinda funny in the end. For some reason I decided the thing to do was get a margarita- because “when in mexico”. With one sip I now fully realized any remaining affinity for alcohol had vanished from my system entirely. I am simply not interested in any kinda way. So I gave the massive thing away.

When we got back to the apartment, Ramin (katie’s friend that we were staying with) was home. Ramin is like this big, tan, German Aquaman type human. He works as a scuba diving instructor, and so, has moved/traveled all over the world doing so. Katie & him had met in Guatemala years ago, and managed to reconnect in a few different locations over the years since then. He is friendly and open minded- yet still intimidating in the way Germans can be sometimes.

The next morning we woke to Eli making his strange little cat noises at us from outside the window. We had to go get him because the apartment has like four different key/lock situations to get into. A bit excessive- we decided. On a side note- there seems to be so much fear mongering in/about Mexico, specifically geared towards tourists. It really is difficult to tell whether that is warranted in any kind of way. I tried not to listen too much, knowing how fear works & spreads. That being said, I was being safe & cautious & paying attention to my surroundings always. If not for “stranger/danger” purposes, certainly for the fact that drivers here are absolutely chaotic (although maybe not as bad as South America).

Eli & I went to a cute little cafe called cafe choux choux, eager to get out of the house. We stayed there a long while partaking in many breakfast items & some fancy lemonades. Even the fancy places here and still affordable, even for someone on a budget like me. The cafe was clearly the place that a lot of ex-pats gravitated to. The group that sat beside us flickered between speaking spanish, then english, then french, then german, depending on who came up to greet them at their table. We stayed for a long while, basking in the atmosphere & playing on our computers.... and mostly waiting for Katie. We wandered over to another cafe called BiOrganico & had some lunch. Katie & I then wandered off to explore the market area of Playa Del Carmen.

We were in search of a few things neither of us had- sun glasses, sun screen, shorts, sandals. OKay- I know that seems like almost everything you need for a trip to Mexico, but to be fair I had absolutely no idea when I left for my trip that I would end up here. Happy that I am, but my bag was not packed according to that. Actually even looking at the wool sweaters in my bag gives me the heebie-jeebies. I can try my best to set the scene of Playa to the best of my ability- but I should perhaps preface it by saying that at one point, this was a natural paradise. First there were small rental houses, then hotels, then bar and bars and bars. These days there are McDonalds & Subways & Forever21s. Which feels weird, of course. It’s one of the most rapid & evident gentrifications I’ve ever witnessed. But in many ways, I realize my complicit behaviour in all this- I probably wouldn’t have ended up here without it. Although it’s probably what I least enjoy about it. As you walk down the street everyone is trying to sell you something- of course they are- Tourism is basically the only driving industry out here. Especially being a woman, you get all kind of weird comments like “You need this” “don’t get lost” and the most classic “Do you need a Mexican Boyfriend.” Katie was obviously quite angsty with all the comments. I tried my best to tune them out & live in the happy little peaceful world in my head.

The plant life is beautiful & so too are the birds. In playa del carmen, however they are groomed & tamed in a more manicured way. Woven in amongst the huge heaps of concrete jungle that has been superimposed on the jungle paradise of the Yucatan Penninsula. I won’t say it truly overwhelmed me, having just spent so much time in much bigger cities. I understand how it could, though. Especially with the added trickiness of the language barrier (though many folks do speak english). Katie & I continued to stroll around, stopping in to buy water at many points. We dared not sit down, mostly because the public benches were metal (WHY). We wandered over to get groceries and ate more tacos. Eli & Ramin both joined us- all of us sweating profusely, slowly stripping down into half-dressed states. Not in a sexy way. In a very, very sweaty way. Which was especially pleasant considering the extremely feeble water pressure in the apartment that made showering a challenge.

We woke early in the morning on the 3rd day. The early morning is the most reasonable time to go out, without a doubt. By 10am it is already quite hot & doing anything other than chilling out, is less appetizing. We walked over to the beach to greet the rising sun & went for a swim. While wading in the growing waves, Eli told me all about the cheap healthcare here. He said loudly that I should try to get contacts here. I agreed- that would be great! Not two minutes later, as we laughed about something else, I suddenly got hit in the face with a big, aggressive wave. I felt my glasses fly off my face & over my head. The water was particularly thick with grey & seaweed. Though we combed through the water. There wasn’t much hope. It seemed the comments earlier about contacts had been taken as a dare from the universe. So I bumbled around without glasses back to the apartment to fetch my extra pair.

Eli and I went to the glasses store later that day- he speaks Spanish which made the interactions a bit easier to manage. Although the two places we went to didn’t have my prescription in stock. It would take five days to get them, so we decided it was best to wait until we got to Tulum to get them. But I have to say- I didn’t quite realize how much more affordable medical treatment is in mexico. For my contacts- the exam was FREE and three months worth of lenses were 48 dollars. I now understand medical tourism. It isn’t like it’s sketchy either. All the places we went to were clean & professional & so so friendly. Despite my blindness, the whole experience wasn’t stressful in the least.

I will say I could feel Katie getting stressed. I mean I think it was a lot of things. Her personal life as of recently, has been super emotionally complicated. As she also had a bout of skin cancer not long ago- the sun has been stressing her out. She’s been staying in the apartment a lot as to how avoid it, but also I think she still feels overwhelmed by the “spring break” vibes in Playa. The apartment is small, and so at a certain point we certainly started to bug eachother in ways. It came to a head when we were supposed to go down to the beach for Danielle Moore’s ritual. She had wanted me to take more leadership in regards to it. I wanted to give her her space as she had clearly been in a grumpy mood all day. On top of that she refrained to the fact that she felt weird about the ritual all day. It resulted in us being entirely cross with each other at the beach, ducking between tipsy strangers & me eventually crying out of frustration. We decided it didn’t feel right to do a scared ritual in an emotion state like that. On top of that, we clearly had some stuff to talk through & so we went home and did that. We came to a place that felt nice, which was relieving for sure. Katie & I have never fought like that. I’m really glad we can still talk through it. We decided to do it in the morning- the beach would be empty then & we would both be cooled off (physically and emotionally).

It did actually feel like that was the way it was supposed to go. We were mostly silent throughout the whole ritual, though we started it with a prayer- one we learned from the ashram. We made a mandala in sand with the flowers we bought & other materials we found on the beach. Then we sang a few of Danielle’s favourite songs. Doing the ritual felt so private in an internal world kind-of-way, but connected to all the friends & communities that knew her & loved her. Being a way from the physical communities felt difficult. I did what I could to stay connect & support the effort. I spent some computer time a talking to others organizing & fencing some tech-difficulties when the page went down. It was powerful & healing to feel connected in the small ways during this time. And to see so many talking power & inspiration to making the world better after such a terrible event. Mostly though, my attempts at support were done out of love- for Danielle, but also for Kluane. I wanted to be able to do anything I could support her in the ways she was grieving & working through that grief.

Earlier that morning- even before the sun was a a light deep in the horizon, Katie woke up to call Klu as she boarded her plane in Winnipeg. Klu herself said she was surprised she found it so difficult. Kluane has always been an avid & regular traveller, but I too of course understand that the circumstances of airplane travel have changed so much. Especially considering Klu was leaving from the Winnipeg airport, the same Danielle had left from only days earlier. My heart ached for the situation- but I knew that she was well taken care of. The flight attendants all knew & supported her throughout her journey. Katie went to the airport to pick Klu up, after we ate breakfast together at a downtown cafe. It was good for us to take time apart for a few hours & also I knew Katie would be there for Klu. Apparently when Klu came out, she was wearing a big Christmas sweater complete with Reindeer & Holly, as well. I love that through anything- these two women in my life still find anyway to make us all laugh.

After quite a bit of waiting, tidying & other bits and bobs on my end, the crew eventually returned to the apartment, ready to move onto Tulum. They picked up a fellow traveller named Geoffroy from Montreal & so we all piled into the car with all our luggage, cranked the AC and headed for the highway.

On the drive we all talked about love & life- of course. And caught up with eachother in the ways that aren’t always easy over technologies. We listened to country songs on Katies phone between checking directions- as the sux cord wasn’t working in the car. When we finally got to Tulum, we spent a lot of time in the grocery store, where Eli eventually met us. I am still amazed at how inexpensive all the food is here. I thing that Eli kept reminding us all of was that Mexicans love their sugar. I guess I didn’t really realize how much until I tasted some of the items. I was desperate for a bit of ice cream in the car and so we Mcgivered one out of a lid & I ate pretty much a whole pint to myself.

We rode around for a short time trying to connect with a few friends before getting to our house. There were some funny moments that involved various chain reactions of annoyed-ness. “I think he’s annoyed I’m annoyed at him” Eli said as we chased after Alex’s speeding car. As we sat waiting for Eli, Klu and I got a little over excited about a particularly lovely old chevy truck that we enthusiastically jumped out of our car to take a picture with, before realizing the owners of said truck were right there. We share a love for this one particular Femme-Queer instagram account called @Truckslutsmag. One day, we said we will be on it. That day is not now however- haha. Later, on our way to our house at long last, this truck full of Mexican tradesmen speed alongside us on the highway, pointing at us & the car. We didn’t know what the heck was happening, until we finally put the dots together that Katie’s phone was not in fact in the car, but instead on the roof of the car as we speed down the highway. We agreed something strange & silly was in the air. It seems there seemed to be a resistance that had built up, that hadn’t been there until this week. I suppose mercury is in retrograde, but I’m sure there is more at play for whatever reason.

The house we are staying at it so beautiful. The outside is the most perfect eggyolk yellow colour. The rest is painted in warm oranges & reds, with details or light blue, white & dark wood colours. The main room is open concept (although it doesn’t carry acoustics well). There is so much space- we almost immediately went on to plan how we could come back & stay here with more friends in the future. Every room has a balcony. The roof top is easily accessable & oh so perfect for dance parties. The property has pretty flowers & desert plants nestled in beside the pool & house itself. When sitting by the pool, all sorts of birds come swooping in- especially these beautifully delicate flying swallows. Swiftly after dropping our bags in our respective rooms, we jumped in the pool naked. ...Only to later discover the owner of the house has security cameras all over the place. We laughed for a second, but promptly messaged him to see if he could turn them off while we were here.

So far, I have managed not to get burnt. Which is a win for sure- seeing as I tend to burn extremely easily. I haven’t spent that much time in the city of Tulum itself, although I did go into town to get my contacts. The town of Tulum already feels much more low-key (in the SPRING BREAK kinda-way) than Playa del Carmen felt. The vibe is much more bohemian- health/healing type-people & shops. I mean it is strange though, it has that gentrified feel to it too though. Fancy pantsy, tourist/ex-pat places sit right next to little shacks held together with ropes. It’s an interesting experience in that way.

That being said- at the house at least- I haven’t felt more “I’m on vacation” feels since starting this trip. It feels weird to do nothing. I guess I’m enjoying it- but not more than I do doing stuff. I worry that I will loose my motivation to do anything at all. The heat has made me groggy & I’ve been falling a sleep in various places. That being said, I’m feeling more reclusive- Katie & Eli have gone to various ecstatic dance events- but I don’t feel terribly social.

Having contacts has been a game changer though! Being able to see without anything on my face has felt really freeing. Although, I am still not great at putting them in & taking them out. But there is so much potential with having them! I can go in the pool & put my head under water without worrying! I can wear any costume I want without being confused! Also, so some reason I feel it is suddenly more appropriate for me to get a really weird hair cut. The world is my oyster, really. It may seem over dramatic- but after being bound to glasses for over a decade, to have my face back in my possession is freeing.

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nofomoartworld · 7 years

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Hyperallergic: Twelve Reasons Why the Chainsmokers Are Failing at Love

As the most infamous and possibly the most successful new group in America, the Chainsmokers offer a clear lesson in how white men can remain relevant in an increasingly diversified pop landscape: through self-erasure. The EDM duo’s chart hits throughout 2016, leading up to “Closer,” the monster earworm that spent most of last fall atop the Billboard Hot 100, epitomized a widespread practice in which often male DJs hire often female singers to lend their tracks content and charisma. Tracks such as “Rozes,” “Don’t Let Me Down,” and “All We Know” inhabit an established corporate style sufficiently, slickly, and anonymously. The electronic surface is so smooth that the perky plaints of singers like Daya and Phoebe Ryan disappear right into it. Adherence to the broadest of EDM pop conventions functions less as selling point than admittance badge; pretty polish, aching melodies, drops that sway rather than crunch — voila, songs perfect for filling dead space on the radio, even if they suggest only a generalized style without approaching a particular one. Such is the appeal of the blank slate. As for “Closer” itself, its chart success appears to have convinced the Chainsmokers, at heart studious entrepreneurs on the lookout for statistical affirmation, that they’d found the paradigm for their subsequent career. Their full-length debut, Memories… Do Not Open, out since April, lives in the shadow of their greatest hit.

As public figures, the Chainsmokers fascinate in their odd disparity between art and persona. Andrew Taggart (the cute one) and Alex Pall (the smart one) give interviews to Billboard and Rolling Stone where they strike various absurd poses for the camera, including one marvelous shot in Billboard in which they stand waist-deep in a pool in their t-shirts and jeans, holding glasses of beer while spouting quasi-parodic approximations of so-called locker room talk that I won’t quote here, so as not to upset delicate sensibilities. They present themselves as pop radio’s very own “tech bros,” as Billboard’s Chris Martins puts it, covertly sincere young men who party hard and spend too much money on luxury goods while working obsessively to refine their business model.

But their hits, unobtrusive as dance songs and nebulous as love songs, could have been generated by any artist, or algorithm, with any persona, in any state of mind; what they lack, at the very least, is a spirit of enjoyment that one expects from nominal party animals. Sleek nullities like “Rozes” and “Don’t Let Me Down” exist in a referent-free vacuum: bland genericism can’t be reliably traced back to the lab that engineered it. Perhaps one might look for fingerprints in the reflection of the synthesizer polish, but these songs are purposefully anonymous — the sung chorus’s subservience to the instrumental drop decentralizes the singer, while midtempo caution and mildly glowing synth textures decentralize the drop. As for the elusive, centered subject — the Chainsmokers themselves — they’re gone, their presence hardly evident in the songs at hand. Even when Taggart takes the mic, he’s such a nothing singer that he fails to evince even the slightest hint of personality. They’ve established a brand through public relations; their music needn’t follow suit.

Their breakthrough hit, which is also their only fabulous song, 2014’s “#Selfie,” stands as an anomaly in their catalog for its energetically abrasive beat and spoken vocals. Over spritzy, crunchy, percussive synthesizer bounce, a delightfully narcissistic young woman played by Alexis Killacam recites a monologue consisting of exaggerated stereotypes meant to indicate the shallowness of clubgoers, California girls, or both: “After we go to the bathroom, can we go smoke a cigarette? I really need one. But first, let me take a selfie.” Whatever their intentions (who cares?), and however immature and/or sexist the song may be, it reads as a love letter — adolescent boys mocking adolescent girls to mask jealousy and admiration. Behold Frank Zappa’s clumsily cruel “Valley Girl” done with love. However tiresome her bubbly cadence, the details of her life do sound like fun: dancing in the club, drinking with friends, and eventually going home with her crush. The song projects not scorn but rather an amusing defense of clubgoers, dance music, and a species of shallowness that may also be a species of fun. At the time, the song was misread as merely contemptuous of its subject and dismissed as a novelty single by critics who didn’t understand that such a categorization needn’t amount to dismissal. Then the Chainsmokers stuck around, longer than most artists behind so-called novelty singles. Their subsequent series of increasingly dull hits, exercises in crafted electronica whose glistening keyboard whooshes and muted hooks ostensibly stand in for eroticism (in “Rozes” especially), functioned as a solemn corrective to the frivolity of “#Selfie.” Then came “Closer”, Andrew Taggart’s first time as a singer in a duet alongside guest star Halsey, and their career trajectory, along with modern romance itself, was forever changed.

The dirty little secret behind “Closer” is that the insufferable ex Taggart can’t help repeatedly crawling back to symbolizes hookup culture itself. Don’t believe the literal reading that the song concerns two people. Taggart, whose mild croak renders him an everyman figure, and Halsey, whose fuller, more enthusiastic cry tastes like liquid sugar by comparison, meet in a hotel bar and rekindle the flame of days past, while a feelgood keyboard hook occupying the drop position sets a defiantly celebratory tone. The repeated proclamation “We ain’t ever getting older” might have been a slogan of fist-pumping triumph, but there’s a melancholy to it, for to never get older means to never mature, which means to never find your one true love and settle down. A whole generation of young people’s anxieties about intimacy, casual sex, and commitment informs “Closer,” to the extent that it fails to parse if Taggart and Halsey are viewed as individuals: the song’s hysteria exists on a scale too grand for one couple. Rather, “Closer” concerns an endless hookup cycle that doesn’t satisfy but keeps beckoning because breaking the cycle is hard and the alternative, prolonged intimacy, is scary. The pretty hook offers nominal catharsis, but it’s bittersweet; to pump one’s fist during the drop in “Closer” is to acknowledge one’s erotic life as frustrating, impersonal, scripted, and insufficient. If the platitude about millennials participating in casual sex while secretly hating it holds any truth, then Taggart and Halsey are its avatars, standing in for whole generational attitudes; as singers they scream past each other and fail to connect, doomed to fuck a repetitively steady stream of anonymous ciphers for the rest of eternity.

Likewise, Memories… Do Not Open articulates the romantic anxieties that supposedly plague affluent, heterosexual millennials, and perhaps fratboys most of all. “Break Up Every Night,” in which Taggart “don’t wanna wait until she finally decides to feel it” so he “build[s] the bridges up again,” sums up an album whose midtempo electroballads affirm every idiotic cliché about young people, technology, social media, narcissism, casual substance use, casual sex, and the collapse of traditional dating — it’s as if Andrew Taggart and Alex Pall have read every incoherent thinkpiece on the internet about their own generation and internalized said thinkpieces in a weird ritual of guilt and self-hate. Imagine one of those plaintive and/or smug Odyssey listicles explaining Twelve Reasons Why Millennials are Failing at Love, translated into its album equivalent. Look, I’ll write that listicle now:

1. We’re scared to settle down (“The One”).

2. We’re individualistic and goal-driven, at the expense of our partners’ needs (“Break Up Every Night”).

3. We party too much and do too many drugs (“Bloodstream”).

4. Wealth and access to technology makes many of us egocentric, and that means we’re insensitive toward our partners and their needs (“Don’t Say”).

5. We hold out for too long, because we grew up watching Disney and superhero movies and have unrealistic expectations (“Something Just Like This”).

6. We’re scared to define our relationships past the casual stage (“My Type”).

7. Sex with strangers becomes routinized (“It Won’t Kill Ya”).

8. We care about our image on social media more than we care about real relationships (“Paris”).

9. We can’t commit to one person (“Honest”).

10. We’re materialistic and brand-conscious (“Wake Up Alone”).

11. We make excuses to avoid dealing with our feelings (“Young”).

12. We have a horrible weakness for triumphalist sentimentality and EDM power ballads that diagnose our perceived generational maladies (“Last Day Alive,” also the whole record).

Whether or not these spurious criticisms apply — to individuals? to a whole generation? meaning whom? maybe just the Chainsmokers? or their fans? — they make for a tedious, self-defeating album, dotted with songs that keep fussing over their own failure to have a good time. “Break Up Every Night” spirals around glowing, percussive synth stabs with winning energy, while “It Won’t Kill Ya” sways alluringly over cautious piano chords during the verses and woozy airhorn during the drop, but mostly even the upbeat songs go through the motions on autopilot. Perhaps juicier beats would do the trick, but the Chainsmokers’ brand of EDM softcore, lightweight keyboard yearning in processed pastel shades, produces drab ear candy with sickly clumps of sugar inappropriately concentrated in single spots. Strummed guitars and plucked pianos are integrated smoothly and hardly make a difference. Nor, paradoxically, does the thematic focus relieve their anonymity. Working squarely within the guidelines of current radio convention and consequently confining themselves within a tighter box than is actually necessary to achieve airplay, these are punishingly generic songs, perhaps because speaking for a whole generation involves the widening and hence blurring of one’s scope. Taggart’s eagerly clumsy drawl and Emily Warren’s smoky croon suggest roles too composite to reveal any character of their own; Coldplay’s Chris Martin on “Something Just Like This,” while intolerably sincere in much the same way, at least sounds like himself. To further dilute the record, they don’t even include “Closer,” leaving the hookless “Paris” and the honorably, expediently soaring “Something Just Like This” to remind listeners that yes, indeed, they are a frequent radio presence.

Memories… Do Not Open would be an object lesson in the perils of universality and the blank slate, if it hadn’t topped the Billboard 200. Positive market feedback ensures the production of more music like this in the future. Taggart and Pall hold up a distorted mirror to their audience, showing fans the ugliest versions of themselves. I wish American consumers didn’t identify, as they say.

Memories…Do Not Open (2017) and Closer (2016) are available from Amazon and other online retailers.

The post Twelve Reasons Why the Chainsmokers Are Failing at Love appeared first on Hyperallergic.

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amyhendle-blog · 7 years

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Don't wish a day away.

Anxiety! That bastard A word. Who suffers from that overwhelming feeling? Where you feel your breath becoming shorter, you feel like leaving the house is the biggest task in the world and the thought of facing the general public.... oh mate. The absolutely overwhelming feeling of thinking you're the only person you know with this issue and that everyone else life is so great and normal. The games your mind plays with you, causing you too stress over things you can’t control and the ridiculous scenarios and questions you are constantly thinking about. It can be so bad sometimes that it is paralysing, and trying to explain how you feel to someone who just doesn't get it becomes even more infuriating. Everyone has a different story and different responses and emotions to certain situations; this is just mine.

That comment "You always look so happy" is five words I hear when I confide or explain to someone how I am feeling, which to be honest I always try to be as happy and positive as possible. I guess social media in this present day plays such a major part of our lives, people only see what you want them to see, you at the beach with your dog or going out clubbing with your friends; but people are to afraid to post how they are really feeling sometimes and in all this we can really lose our organic self.

If you were to look at my instagram feed you would see a twenty-five year old woman, that loves her dogs and cat, has the most supportive and amazing partner, the most fabulous and beautiful group of friends and family and a love for a quirky quote every now and then. Don't get me wrong, I love my life and I love sharing things on social media just as much as the next person and really enjoy the positive posts, seeing what my friends and family are up to and also keeping connected with people. But what social media sometimes does not portray is the struggle behind the pictures, the fake smile in the photo, or the subliminal message on a quote.

I just hope that this blog helps young women and men to understand mental health and to not be afraid to talk about it. After speaking to some of my girlfriend's and finding they have or do suffer from some kind of mental illness, it has really encouraged me to share my journey and to let people know you most definitely aren't alone. I have most definitely come a long way in the past three years but the early days of my struggle were very difficult and I did not know how to cope or felt comfortable enough to speak about it, as I thought in doing so I would hurt my family who was going through the same pain; or be criticized.

For a great part of my life, almost 10 years I have suffered with anxiety; had tried multiple coping mechanisms but nothing seemed to work until one day I met the most amazing woman, a counsellor; Julie. (which inspired my studies at uni majoring in Social Work) and my partner and I also bought a dog named Reign, when my struggle with flashbacks and anxiety was becoming more frequent and harder to manage, this one small dog honestly helped me more than I can ever explain. I moved away from my family 2 years after mum had her stroke and this was when the flashbacks started, which I will discuss in an additional post.

In this "blog" I hope to inspire young women, or men to face their inner struggles head on, to not be afraid to tell someone you're struggling and to be whole heartedly honest with yourself. In 2013, my mental health would start to make a significant decline, so here is my story.

Mum.

Have you ever met a woman so full of life, that the instant she walks into a room you are filled with absolute content and happiness. A woman who not only inspires people to do better and be kinder but always puts others before herself. A woman; who does not eat meat and has been an active vegan for the best of 20 years, who would wake up before sunrise to train women in her gym and then go to work as a teacher aide with children; as this was her passion and a woman who’s love for her daughters and grandchildren is indescribable. Well this woman is my mum.

December, 2013.

My whole life changed. What I knew about my life would soon be over, the freedom of doing what I wanted, when I wanted and putting myself first would be lost, and my sisters and I would soon have our role as daughter's reversed. My mum went in for a routine operation, a clean out of her right shoulder which would see her only staying in private health for one night, a minor operation. GUT instinct; how many of us have these churning gut moments when something doesn’t feel right? Mum did. The morning of her operation my sister was dropping mum off, as she went to get out of the car she turned to my sister and said she didn’t want to go through with it something just felt off. Calming her worries she then went into the hospital, the operation was a success and we even joked about her instincts that night when she was perfectly normal. I saw my mum straight after work that day, she was sitting up right chatting away discussing my work day and how she was feeling, she felt great and the pain meds were doing their job. I left her when her sister my Aunty arrived to visit, little did I know when I kissed my mum that afternoon our ritual ‘Hendle Two Kisses’ that it would be the last time I would see her as herself.

The next day.

Oddly, I hadn’t received a good morning text from my mum, rang her phone and didn’t get an answer so I rang my sister Jodi who was on her way down to pick mum up. It was 12:30pm I was out for lunch with work friends when I had missed calls from my sister, multiple calls with her urgently telling me to get to the hospital as soon as I could. I raced back to work, spoke to my boss who let me leave and raced to the private hospital. As the elevator doors opened all I could hear were screams from my eldest sister in a nearby room. I ran into the room to find multiple doctors and trainee nurses surrounding my mum. To cut an extremely difficult incident to reflect back on short my mum convulsed for almost 3 hours whilst losing control of her body, the function to understand the simplest of demands and began to become paralysed on her left hand side. My mum was misdiagnosed which almost resulted in her not being here today.

The day after.

Mum was relocated to the Base Hospital, I sat in the ambulance as she was transferred as a terrified and confused girl who just turned 22 years old. It would only come to light in 2016 when talking with my sisters about the events that happened that night, that I was actually in the ambulance with mum, something my brain had hidden from me which I would soon find out later was due to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Once my eldest sisters and I arrived at the hospital the head nurse in the Emergency Room confirmed what we knew all along that my mum had suffered neurological damage. As she was misdiagnosed earlier and re-assured she would wake up perfectly normal. This was now a reality that we may lose our mum, they took her for a scan while she was still under sedatives to stop the fitting, while she was in for scans I asked my sisters to explain to me what a stroke was and what this meant for us. A while later the curtain opened and in walked the doctor on call for the emergency department who started with an apology, as soon as he opened his mouth my sisters started to break down. He told us what had happened to mum and that if and when she did wake that she would have severely impaired speech and ability to walk and function normally ever again. I can still remember this all being a blur to me, I sat there listening but not retaining any information it was like my body had shut down. It was so out of body. All I could do was stare at mum and beg for her to wake up, my sister left the room to call my dad who was on his way down to us, as he had gone home earlier due to the doctors at the initial hospital promising that mum would wake up fine. I sat beside her and ran my fingers through her hair, letting her know I was there.

Journey.

Days later when mum was stabilised they began to wake her, and our worst fears had been realised. She was no longer able to talk, walk or even smile. The woman that was my best friend was now a stranger. For a long time I was in denial, we had a long road ahead but when it is your mum you would go to hell and and back to get her better. This moment; would signify the start of my mental health declining without me even realising.

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