#music is my church and my poetry is my prayer

[acrystalwitch]

An example of a polytheistic witch’s practice with deities:

Here’s how I incorporate the deities I work with and worship into my life and what I feel like I gain from them.

🖤 Shadow work:

Lucifer: church trauma

Loki: internalized transphobia and past s.a

——————

💙 Learning things:

Odin: Runes and Norse myths

Selene: Greek myths, moon spells and phases and crystals

Anubis: tombs and Egyptian history, and mythology

Horus: traditional kemetic religious practices

——————

💚 Activities: (places I regularly, easily incorporate them)

Ares, Thor, Horus: Video games, working out

Anubis: playing with/walking my dog, going to cemeteries, listening to music and dancing, art.

Thor: nature walks, standing in the rain

Selene: staring at the moon, art, anything aesthetic

Freyr: meditation, picking daisies and looking at flowers at the park

Odin: poetry, writing

Tyche: picking clovers for her at the park

Lucifer: lots of casual hanging out together, watching YouTube videos about people who left Christianity, Art

——————

💛 Working relationships:

Tyche: for luck spells and prayers

Anubis: for protection spells and prayers

Thor: for positivity and trans things

Freyr: for meditation work and positive masculinity influences

Selene: for charging moon spells, crystals and meditation

Odin: for wisdom and guidance

HeruSaAset: for perseverance and quitting nicotine (I did! First try over 3 months no nic)

Ares: for bringing out my confidence to stand up for myself

Hecate: for assistance in spells I don’t want to/can’t ask my other deities for

Nyx: (I have once worked with her to help me with protection wards for my home, I gave her coffee grounds in exchange for advice.)

—————

This isn’t exactly meant to be a “how to” guide, your relationship with your deities should be special and unique to you! But I thought it might be nice to see an example of what that actually looks like in the life of a polytheistic witch. 🖤 I’d love to hear everyone else’s examples if they’d like to share. Or even just use this as a template to figure out what you’d answer for these categories in your own personal pantheon!

#pagan witch #witches of tumblr #deity witchcraft #deity worship #deity guides #kemetic paganism #norse paganism #hellenic witch #norse heathen #polytheism #working with deities

[soracities]

brief primer for the hopeless days, pt. IV

"I felt I should embrace him and tell him not to suffer; that he wasn't alone, that I was his friend and we were living on the same planet, at the same time, in the same country; that now the two of us were in the same park, on the same bench; that human beings should talk to each other, be aware of each other, and love each other; that each man who passes by offers us the chance for companionship and warmth."

Josefina Vicens, The Empty Book (tr. David Lauer)

[James Baldwin & Friends, Istanbul. ph. Sedat Pakay]

"On love: always the great gestures, or that it is incompatible with ambition and individuality. Rarely the small gestures, rarely that these make the other accomplishments possible. A work in progress. A chain of kindnesses fashioned a link at a time. Clumsy effort, but effort nonetheless."

Katie Ward, Girl Reading

Paul Eluard, “Gabriel Péri” tr. Gilbert Brown

[Two old men hand in hand rush for taking place for prayer time in the Yeni Cami mosque in Istanbul. ph. Marco Vacca]

"We find comfort only in another beauty, in others' music, in the poetry of others. Salvation lies with others, though solitude may taste like opium. Other people aren't hell if you glimpse them at dawn, when their brows are clean, rinsed by dreams."

Adam Zagajewski, “Another Beauty”, tr. Clare Cavanagh

"We are sun and moon, dear friend; we are sea and land. It is not our purpose to become each other; it is to recognize each other, to learn to see the other and honor him for what he is: each the other’s opposite and complement."

Hermann Hesse, Narcissus & Goldmund

"Down the road there is an old man who sits in a chair under the porch of his front door to enjoy the sun. He is very old. In fact, he is dying. And because I know this, every time I pass him I pass the time of day with him. I tell him he is getting brown in the sun. Or he asks me about the price of the vegetables in my shopping bag – once he lived in the country – and I answer him at length and with great warmth. Why do I do this? It is a natural reaction. Soon he will die [and] I want him between now and then, and perhaps even at the moment of dying, to have good thoughts, not of me personally, but of the living, of the world he leaves. I want to give him reason for thinking the best possible thoughts."

John Berger, A Painter of Our Time

[waves of handprints dating between 7,300 BC & 700 AD, Cueva de las Manos (Cave of Hands), Santa Cruz, Argentina. ph. Pablo A. Gimenez]

“Something strange happens when people are in a small boat, something that rarely happens with people in a car or an elevator, in a train or even a boat large enough to say that you are on it instead of in it. What they experience is the sense of solitude. There are only a few thin boards keeping them from being totally engulfed by the surrounding deep sea. They are lonely, but it’s not an isolated loneliness, because they feel lonesome together, together with others in the boat. This is why a temporary bond forms between people in a small boat. They only have each other, the deep sea is frightening, and small boats are very fragile. Therefore, each one of them becomes the other’s lifebuoy. If you’re not afraid, then neither am I, so we shouldn’t scare each other, and we ought to be nice to each other as long as the water surrounds us.”

Stig Dagerman, A Moth to a Flame (Burnt Child), tr. Benjamin Mier-Cruz

["The Ride Home", submitted by slyburger13 r/AccidentalRenaissance]

"I tried to focus on something small, the smallest thing I could think of. Someone once made this pew I’m sitting on, I thought. Someone sanded the wood and varnished it. Someone carried it into the church. Someone laid the tiles on the floor, someone fitted the windows. Each brick was placed by human hands, each hinge fitted on each door, every road surface outside, every bulb in every streetlight. And even things built by machines were really built by human beings, who built the machines initially. And human beings themselves, made by other humans, struggling to create happy children and families. Me, all the clothing I wear, all the language I know. Who put me here in this church, thinking these thoughts? Other people, some I know very well and others I have never met. Am I myself, or am I them? Is this me, Frances? No, it is not me. It is the others. Do I sometimes hurt and harm myself, do I abuse the unearned cultural privilege of whiteness, do I take the labor of others for granted, have I sometimes exploited a reductive iteration of gender theory to avoid serious moral engagement, do I have a troubled relationship with my body, yes. Do I want to be free of pain and therefore demand that others also live free of pain, the pain that is mine and therefore also theirs, yes, yes.”

Sally Rooney, Conversations With Friends

[”Pale Blue Dot”: photo of Earth taken by the Voyager 1 space probe]

[anonymous, Jan. 15, 2022]

Alain de Botton, Essays in Love

"A single stranger sleeps next to me and I feel like a whole crowd has come in with him. He hasn’t said anything to me, I haven’t said anything to him, but I feel I have nothing else to say to him, nor to hide from him."

Mihail Sebastian, For Two Thousand Years (tr. Philip Ó Ceallaigh)

[tiktok @ shanrizwan]

Michael Onyebuchi Eze, Intellectual History in Contemporary South Africa

[”A full bottle of wine just rolled out from under a subway seat and now these 2 strangers popped it open & are drinking it. This is peak NYC”, ph. Colleen Hagerty]

"Nobody can claim that humanity is in the process of decay without having observed the same putrid symptoms in himself. Nobody can say that humanity is evil without he himself having been part of evil deeds. There is no such thing as unshackled observation. He who lives is the life-long prisoner of humanity and contributes, willingly or unwillingly, to an increase or decrease of the human inventory of happiness and misfortune, greatness and humiliation, hope and despondence […] the fate of humanity is at stake everywhere and at all times, and the responsibility of one life for another is immeasurable."

Stig Dagerman, "Do We Have Faith in Humankind?"

#feeling....things and things and things #compilation #a brief primer for the hopeless days #without tenderness we are in hell #m #x

[violant-apologia]

The Airs of Pilgrim's Dawn

a randomiser quality: 38 little snippets from life in my silver city

0-4: A gust of smog from the East.

5-9: A jade figurine is thrown from a window, smashing into fragments onto the cobbles.

10-14: A preacher and a tracklayer stand at a street corner, chatting about the lack of weather.

15-19: A tracklayer walks down the street with a pushchair, laughing at her infant’s babbling.

20-24: The most recent Hour of Dance lasted all night. Limbs are still sore, but there is a sense of solidarity in the city.

25-29: The Burrow-Church is bright and looming.

30-33: A ginger tom slinks into a nearby alley.

34-37: Urchins run through the street, flicking pigments at one another. Their graffiti is left half-complete on a high wall.

38-41: A mechanical failure: this street’s red night lamps haven’t turned off. The buildings are illuminated in a sleepy orange-pink.

42-45: The whistle of a locomotive. A tracklayer reacts with a grumble — her partner with a nostalgic sigh.

46-49: A couple of gendarmes patrol a street, chatting amicably as they go. Pilgrim’s Dawn may have fewer laws than London, but what is sacred must still be protected.

50-52: A particularly forceful drum beat startles a group of pigeons from their roost. They mingle with bats in the cavern air.

53-55: A spirifer (is that the right term, where spirifage is not a crime?) bows to a passerby, trenchcoat clinking as he does so.

56-58: A stall offers ‘REAL HADDOCK PIES’ – though they smell like Evenlode angler.

59-61: The smell of roses and sulphur is thick today.

62-64: Yet another frieze is carefully carried up to the Burrow-Church. Theology, it seems, is an active process.

65-67: A young bohemian reads poetry on a street corner. The imagery is beautiful, but his delivery could use work.

68-70: An effort is made to align phonograph music with the earthen drum beats. ‘Close enough’ is achieved, and a small dance floor forms on the street corner.

71-73: A tracklayer’s hanging garden falls as he tends it. Porcelain, roses and soil scatter over the cobbles.

74-76: A fire breaks out – the accompanying screams are only of tourists.

77: There are no door knockers in Pilgrim’s Dawn.

78-79: A Starved Man lumbers through the streets. Dancers swerve to avoid him, snatches of suspicion visible from within their pirouettes.

80-81: ‘The Bun: A hairstyle for the working man!’ a poster proclaims.

82-83: A green-eyed devil sighs as he watches a couple dance. One tries to spin away from her partner but stumbles – she falls into his arms, laughing.

84-85: A pair of Clay Men tango slowly in a crowd; their quavers are the others’ semibreves.

86-87: A rat lingers by a carving of your face. It scratches its back using your nose.

88-89: A rose-scholar looks over a balcony at the dancers below, jots down notes of their movements.

90: Morning prayers: north, east, south, up, down.

91: The sound of the sea – not the zee, the real thing – seems to emanate from the south.

92: A young deacon tries to explain what a ‘Judgement’ is to a curious Clay Man. It’s clear that she doesn't entirely understand the concept herself.

93: A fox? No, just your imagination.

94: ‘My daughter!’ cries a tracklayer, eyes wild and regretful. ‘No, I—’ And then he snaps back to himself.

95: An Infernal Tourist protests – the Rose Giveth Its Verses to Devils – but the tracklayers dance on, heedless.

96: A black, shuttered palanquin is borne through the streets by two weathered Clay Men. There are whispers – surely not the Empress? … Another royal? – but nobody impedes their progress.

97: A dolorous devil stalks the streets. He tries to keep to the sparse shadows and startles at dancers of the Terpsichore.

98: Trumpets at the gates; a regiment of devils pass through on their way to the Burrow-Church.

99: A bulky figure in a glittering cloak sweeps through the streets. Insults are hurled in its wake.

100: The ever-present drumming has a lazy, contented quality to it today. Is the Drummer… happy?

#i would recommend everyone do this actually #for your city and also any other setting you want to flesh out #it was a very fun mini project! #lots of little references to apologist bits and bobs as well as the nature of the city #pilgrim's dawn #fallen london #the apologist

[cocain3katesblog]

Ik this my Ed page but I just have to let this out there somehow. I just wanna let you the few ppl that follow me know who tired I am of fighting. I constantly have to battle my sadness and the way I do that is by not eating. I don’t eat so it can overwhelm the sadness. Everyday passes by but I still feel like I’m living the same day over and over again. I wish can’t handle this sadness anymore. I see my life from afar and I feel like I didn’t accomplish anything I feel like a background character in my own life story. How is this even possible ? I lost someone so dear to my heart and this January will be 2 years without them. I saw them struggle with feeling good down bc they were sick and I wouldn’t eat too so they didn’t feel alone in their battle. Now I can’t stop eating and think how I’ve let that person down. My own family even doesn’t like me. All the sudden they started to act like they care when that person passed. Even my own brother and father talk about me behind my back. I don’t want to physically harm myself bc I don’t want ppl to see how badly I’m struggling in the outside. I’d rather starve and suffer from the inside and slowly wither away like a wilted flower in the breeze. I hope no one finds this because I’m usually not the vulnerable type especially on social media but Ik this platform and the ppl that follow me share a similar story where it all started. I’m starving myself until I drop dead so I can just see that person again. I’m not brave enough to physically do anything to myself to end up dead so I decided to just waste away. That person was my main source of happiness and my only true friend. I can’t believe it took the passing of that persons death to realize that person was my entire world. I usually was able to sleep away the pain but now the pain has followed me into my dreams where I thought I could escape. I wake up crying or in my dreams I am crying and I can feel my facial expressions mimic crying. I don’t want help. I’m too far gone to be helped. Everyday I pray to god to just let me be free from the body and let me see that person one more time. I’d leave everything behind for that person. Every birthday wish, everyday New Year’s resolution, every night before I go to bed, I beg and plead to god to free me from this pain, this endless suffering. I told God to make that person better and I’ll do anything, anything! I’ll be a better person I’ll devote my life to the church I’ll detransition, I’ll do wtv it takes. In the end I guess my prayers weren’t heard. I cry almost everyday even when I laugh so hard I have tears running down my face for some reason I have the feeling to cry and just shut up and sit in silence. The day that person passed I looked in the mirror and saw someone else. Someone different. I didn’t recognize myself. I still don’t. I feel like I’m wearing someone else’s face. I don’t wish this on my worst fucking enemy. The loss of someone this close to you. I drown my sorrow by listening to sad music and reading poetry like Sylvia Plath and it does help for a little to know that someone in the world has felt this pain before and that I’m not alone but yet I look around and I see everything living their lives and I’m feel like I’m stuck. Maybe I deserve this torture. I put that person thru hell and back and even my own family says that I didn’t make their passing any easier. At the time I didn’t know to to express my feelings. How do you think a 15 year old highschool student is supposed to react to the news that someone you love is slowly passing away and you’re just watching? I was such a bad kid to that person and I’d do anything to have them back in my life. I want that person to hit me, yell at me, tell me how worthless I’ll be but at least I’ll that person would still be here. That person never hurt a single hair on my head and was just the sweetest soul a person can imagine. I still question why that person ? Why not me? Why did they have to suffer when I was the bad one? If I could , I’d be gone tmr but I can’t

[lilacandladybugs]

Hi Lilac!!

I know you’ve said stuff about being able to ask abt your stance on God and religion before and I hope that’s still okay (if this is smth you don’t want to answer, I take absolutely no offense to that and don’t want you to do anything that makes you uncomfortable). I’ve recently been not in church and I think it’s kind of been for the better? (My church has become a mega church over the years and I’m really not about that, and also I grew up in youth group which I think had its own issues). Anyway, I’m glad for the separation, but I feel like I kind of don’t know what to do with my faith outside of the church setting? I was wondering what you do to practice religion without attending church or like, how you maintain that connection with your faith

Oh yeah! I took that out of my bio bc I have been off and on been having a really hard time and my religious trauma has been flaring up but I'm still active on @in-the-whisper occasionally. No worries about asking though, if I am too tired it will just dissolve into my ask box ;--; I do really like to talk about it though and this is something I've dealt with a lot!

I mean if you can find a church or a bible study that you feel safe in that's really ideal imo, but I have really bad religious trauma and haven't consistently attended church in.. like ~5 years. Which really upsets me but I'm just not in a position to attend right now w my mental health condition. But also I think not going to church is sometimes valuable. People are scared to say that but if going to church is actively harming you, or it is something that is obviously not bringing you closer to God, then yeah don't go and don't feel like a bad Christian for it. Rest :) it will be okay. That used to be really hard for me but I've mostly come to terms with it, idk it's still hard. But it's been healthier for me.

I kind of see God in everything. Sitting with my lneighbors cats by a pool, and watching the sunset, and talking to my friends are all expressions of the love of God. I've been having a hard time with God recently and go back and forth on how much I can handle but I used to have a really good habit of just saying a quiet thank you in my head whenever something like that happens and I think keeping an open line of prayer communication can be really healthy

I've found reading fantasy novels to bring me closer to God. A lot of fantasy has moral values that can help me at least start thinking about God if nothing else, they often make me remember why I believe in God in the first place. Namely that life is sacred and valuable and people are worth loving. Those are ideas that are represented in a lot of fantasy and that helps me think of God and pray.

This is going to sound weird but I have to be really careful with the Bible and praise and worship music bc both can be really heavy and bring up upsetting memories for me. If you can, I do recommend reading the gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John) and focus on Jesus' words because he is the clearest representation of God's character since he's like literally God. But the Bible is difficult to read by yourself and disconnected from the greater body of Christian literature that's built up over the centuries it can be hard to interpret. I have to save reading the Bible for times when I have the energy to dig in and research and ask hard questions. Psalms is easier bc it's poetry so you could probably also start there

I try to meet with friends and talk to them about God, if you have Christian friends or family you could have bible study with them, or just a time to visit and think about God.

I like Christian philosophy. Two of my favorites are GK Chesterton "Orthodoxy" and CS Lewis "Mere Christianity". Orthodoxy is kinda dense but Mere Christianity I find interesting and it just helps me think about God. I also sometimes like doing planned Bible studies but some are better than others. I did "Armor of God" by Priscilla Shrier a few years ago, I don't remember everything about it and I probably didn't entirely agree but I found it generally pretty good.

I listen to music about God that isn't praise and worship. I've been listening to a lot of half alive, my favorite is Creature which makes me feel like a believer. Here's a post with some song suggestions and a link to a playlist my sister and I made together. (x)

I think one danger of not having a church is a gap in theology, so if you have time or energy you can listen to podcasts on the Bible, church history, Biblical interpretation. If that's something you're interested in I can link to one I like, but I'll have to go find it (you can dm me about it ofc). The other danger is losing contact with Christians in general, so making sure you have Christians checking in on you or people to talk to is a good idea.

Lmk if that helps or if you have more questions, and I keep a list of my posts on my other blog so that might have some helpful resources too :)

#religion #religion tw #christianity tw #christianity #eslyea #long post

[walaskart]

My Church

I think God exists

God exists in glow-in-the-dark stars

The Catholics, the Christians, the Jewish, the Muslims, every myth, every story was wrong

God exists in a cup full of cheerios

Scooped by the handfuls in sweaty palms

God exists in loud music

Annoying the downstairs neighbors because I stomp too loud when I dance

God exists in my rosary

Worn only as a style-piece because the beads meant for prayers compliment my outfit in irony

God exists in the stares

I guess the women at the mall don’t like the way I dress

God exists in the back pages of a notebook

Hiding poetry and sketches that will never be read or seen again

I don’t think anyone else would join my church.

But my friends,

They worship with me

In shared snacks, hand brushing hand to fight for the last chip.

In long car rides, no need for conversation, just screaming lyrics

In packed concert pits, where strangers and friends become one being

In late nights on the floor, drinking drinks that we shouldn't know about

My God is my love and I will preach until I die

#trying to get back into poetry #enjoy #please

[thenightisland]

Tagged by @wicked-felina

What book are you currently reading?

i’m rereading robin hobb’s books, which i finished in december. i tried to read like five or six books, failed, and started rereading them ten days later. 

i’m also reading a collection of rupert brooke’s poetry. and a prayer for the crown-shy by becky chambers.

What's your favourite movie you saw in a cinema this year?

so i have auditory processing problems and over the years it’s gotten to where seeing movies in theaters largely isn’t enjoyable for me bc i miss so much. so i wait and watch movies at home where i can have subtitles (it’s too much of a fight to get them in theaters). on the rare occasion i see a movie in theaters it’s a book to movie adaptation bc well i already know what happens. so the last movie i saw in theaters was little women in 2019.

What do you usually wear?

stede bonnet would approve of my wardrobe. very colorful and extra. dresses 90% of the time.

How tall are you?

5′5″ish

What's your star sign?

libra

Do you share your birthday with a celebrity or historical event?

i am birthday buddies with olivia newton john and ts eliot.

Do you go by your name or a nickname? 

i go by my name bc idk what else to do tbh but my mother literally chose the name karen bc it was hard to turn into a nickname. little did she know i would live in the worst possible era to be named karen.

Did you grow up to be what you wanted to be as a child?

one of child-me’s most frequent answers to what do you want to be when you grow up was librarian, unsurprisingly. i decided to be mature and responsible in high school bc i wanted to be able to guarantee making enough money to live so i went into healthcare. little did i know i would end up living in the worst possible era to be a nurse.

Are you in a relationship? Who is your crush if not?

i’m in my lol fuck that era where relationships and crushes are concerned 

What's something you're good at versus something you're bad at?

sounds dumb to say but i’m good at organizing and cataloging things lol. i also have a green thumb and try to keep my yards as full of flowers and trees as possible. i am not crafty and i cannot cook to save my life (i have not turned on a stove or oven since 2015)

Dogs or cats?

i always grew up with both and only in the last year or two have just had a cat instead of at least one of each. cats are a little more practical for me and my lifestyle, but i love both equally.

What's something you'd like to create content for?

i’m fucking around with some robin hobb related stuff at the moment. we’ll see.

What's something you're currently obsessed with?

i am so sorry that so many of these answers include the name “robin hobb” in them BUT lol 

What's something you were excited about that turned out to be disappointing this year?

it’s early in the year yet so nothing has had the opportunity to significantly disappoint me. and to be disappointed in something you have to have had a shred of hope and expectation to begin with and i’m good at assuming the worst instead.

What's a hidden talent of yours?

most of my talents are known factors about me. the closest i come to a hidden one is that i sing, because i hate singing for people.

Are you religious?

i was raised catholic. i haven’t set foot in a church service since 2010 bc that was when i was no longer forced to go. catholicism never leaves you alone so despite the fact that i have not a shred of actual faith in me, no intention of having a relationship with god, and actively avoid religious services, i also still have an obscene number of rosaries and love to visit catholic churches when they’re empty for a sense of calm and peace and wear relevant medals of saints when i’m having a rough go of it, as if st cecilia can actually help me with my poetry block or musical struggles.

What's something you wish to have at this moment? 

i’d like to have my full vocal abilities back lol. i had covid in december and the symptoms lingered for about a month and i’ve only just recently started trying to get my singing voice back to where it was and it has been a goddamn ordeal after so many weeks of not singing.

tagging @tragediegh

#wicked-felina #tragediegh #questions #my confirmation name is cecilia lol #i've said it before i'll say it again catholicism is the hotel california of religions #this is longer than it probably should be but y'all should all know by now i have no brevity

[hub3jokes]

Good Joke

retirement jokes, cartoon quotes, poem to my daughter, math humor, engineering humor funny, master, happy good morning quotes, siblings funny, how to look better, funny english jokes, black, funny street signs, prayer stories, mom life quotes, its friday quotes, brother quotes, beautiful heart, red dress, smart humor, hair jokes, funny goodnight texts, funny joke quote, extremely funny jokes, cleaning quotes funny, very bad, cute funny animals, old man funny, music jokes, funny women jokes, humor, soreness, plant jokes, blue suit, corny jokes, happy mind happy life, famous art, quote pencils, childhood sweetheart quotes, baseball jokes, bartender funny, mother, solving, math teacher humor, golf with friends, porcupine, you lied, two men, sarcastic quotes funny, good morning happy sunday, beer jokes, story of the world, tv funny, father humor, cute little kittens, teacher, romantic texts, rorschach test, boyfriend humor, women jokes, stories with moral lessons, paulo coelho, car jokes, marrying young, cooking and baking, summer jokes, bible jokes, new ferrari, studying funny, young farmers, success quotes and sayings, moral stories, men, janitor, husband jokes, fox, let your light shine, comedy jokes, tax day, wedding anniversary wishes, monkeys funny, funny life lessons, funny birthday jokes, conceited, eye black, face, jokes photos, latest jokes, pilot humor, drought, high jokes, patient humor, primary school, dirty laundry quote, school humor, faith moves mountains, butterfly quotes, giving quotes, catholic humor, one, sunday humor, fishing humor, engineering humor, funny brother quotes, i cant sleep, getting over him, get well quotes, witty jokes, jokes pics, hospital patient humor, i take a nap, rift, sunday prayer, positive morning quotes, writing prompts funny, italian joke, sake, dogs, funny cute cats, pizza, funny relationship jokes, funny fun facts, food places, girlfriend jokes, beautiful quotes, how to memorize things, cute jokes, short funny stories, inspirational prayers, 40 year anniversary, church humor, funny texts jokes, amazing funny facts, character quotes, i love you means, lost wallet, blonde couple, funniest short jokes, some jokes, cute love lines, truck driver, camels funny, dog death, amazing inspirational quotes, break up texts, senior citizen, elderly man, inspirational poems, funny family jokes, funny feelings, funny encouragement, morning quotes funny, pottery, pilot joke, go to sleep, life humor, sleepless nights, pets, money humor, funny family photos, fast food places, sympathy flowers, good knight, good looking women, pet shop, funny pick, birthday jokes, temper quotes, life quotes pictures, train, vacation humor, captain, it hurts, jokes about men, how to plan, island, alien, school quotes funny, teacher humor, memories quotes, inspirational relationship quotes, funny school jokes, songs, getting older humor, grape bunch, language jokes, train travel, coincidences, letting people go, really funny short jokes, funny skeleton, funny animal pictures, nice poetry, ways to show love, guy names, sleep funny, funny italian jokes, money quotes funny, new funny jokes, best friends funny, short jokes, funny billboards, jewish humor, blackest night, funny cartoons jokes, wedding jokes, funny drunk pictures, wedding anniversary humor, pearls, friends funny moments, skeleton jokes, kittens cutest, go shopping, buddha, bartender, rose, lesson quotes, recipes to cook, navy humor, funny pix, farm jokes, united way, funny women quotes, winter jokes, positivity, teacher birthday, blonde humor, funny bumper stickers, funny true stories, see and say, bull elephant, zen master, tattoo parlors, third grade teacher, common and proper nouns, funny stories, gynecologist humor, senior jokes, poor people, cuckoo, prince charming funny, warrior quotes, get tickets, sheep, wake up, husband humor, pink, world funniest joke, wedding anniversary, get a girlfriend, long funny stories, high school students, married quotes, good clean jokes, big bad wolf, marriage counseling funny, friendship cards quotes

[yhwhrulz]

Today's Daily Encounter 26th September 2022

Beloved Hymns: O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”1

Samuel Trevor Francis was born on November 19, 1834, in a village north of London, but his parents soon moved to the city of Hull along the English Coast where his father was an artist. As a child, Samuel enjoyed poetry and even wrote a little volume of his own poetry. He also developed a passion for music, singing in the church choir as a child. But as a teenager, he struggled spiritually, and when he moved to London to work, he knew things weren't right in his heart.

Later he wrote, “I was on my way home from work and had to cross Hungerford Bridge to the south of the Thames. During the winter's night of wind and rain and in the loneliness of that walk, I cried to God to have mercy on me. I stayed for a moment to look at the dark waters flowing under the bridge, and the temptation was whispered to me: ‘Make an end of all this misery’. I drew back from the evil thought, and suddenly a message was born into my very soul: ‘Do you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ?’ I at once answered, ‘I do believe,’ and I put my whole trust in Him as my Savior.”

Francis went on to become a London Merchant, but his real passion was Kingdom work— especially writing hymns and preaching in open-air meetings— which occupied his remaining seventy years. He traveled widely and preached around the world. He died on December 28, 1925, at age 92. His hymns were written with vivid and colorful words, allowing us to visualize God’s love for us!

Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, vast, unmeasured, boundless, free!

Rolling as a mighty ocean in its fullness over me!

Underneath me, all around me, is the current of thy love,

Leading onward, leading homeward, to my glorious rest above!2

Suggested Prayer: Dear Heavenly Father, how great is your love for us! You sent your only Son to die for our sins in an act of selfless love. Thank you for your mercy. In Jesus’ name, Amen. 1. John 3:16 (ESV). 2. “O the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus” hymn by Samuel Trevor Francis (1875).

Today’s Encounter was written by: Veronica B.

NOTE: If you would like to accept God's forgiveness for all your sins and His invitation for a full pardon Click on: http://www.actsweb.org/invitation.php. Or if you would like to re-commit your life to Jesus Christ, please click on http://www.actsweb.org/decision.php to note this.

Daily Encounter is published at no charge by ACTS International, a non-profit organization, and made possible through the donations of interested friends. Donations can be sent at: http://www.actscom.com

ACTS International P.O. Box 73545 San Clemente, California 92673-0119 U.S.A.

Phone: [phone] http://www.actsweb.org

Copyright (c) 2016 by ACTS International.

When copying or forwarding include the following: "Daily Encounter by Richard (Dick) Innes (c) 2016 ACTS International.

[puwunyboba]

P R A Y E R F O R M I R A C L E S

✨⭐Iridescent aesthetic⭐✨

This was drawn on the back of my last lunch menu from the hospital I was in

I then colored it w highlighter today 💛

#unaloon #transcendant #music is my church and my poetry is my prayer #prayer #prayer for healing #prayer for miracles #miracle #highlighter #markers #ballpointart #ballpointpen #inpatient #hospital #if you know you know #highlighter marker #neon #neon colors #neoncore #my artwork #my art #horrible #my original content #my illustration #my drawings #my drawns #my drawz #drawing #iridescent #aesthetic #artists on tumblr

[growaglow]

HOMESICK: A PLEA FOR OUR PLANET

In the 5th grade I won the science fair with a project on climate change That featured a paper mache ozone layer with a giant hole, through which a paper mache sun cancered the skin of a Barbie in a bikini on a lawn chair, glaciers melting like ice cubes in her lemonade.

It was 1987 in a town that could have invented red hats but the school principal gave me a gold ribbon and not a single bit of attitude about my radical political stance,

because neither he nor I knew it was a political stance. Science had not been fully framed as leftist propaganda. The president did not have a twitter feed starving the world of facts.

I spent that summer as I had every summer before, racing through the forest behind my house down the path my father called the old logging road to a meadow thick with raspberry bushes whose thorns were my very first heroes because they did nothing with their life but protect what was sweet.

Sundays I went to church but struggled to call it prayer if it didn’t leave grass stains on my knees. Couldn’t call it truth if it didn't come with a dare to crawl into the cave by the creek and stay put until somebody counted all the way to 100.

As a kid I thought 100 was the biggest number there was. My mother absolutely blew my mind the day she said, One hundred and one.

One hundred…AND WHAAAAAT!!!!????

Billionaires never grow out of doing that same math with years. Can’t conceive of counting past their own lifespans. Believe the world ends the day they do. Why are the keys to our future in the hands of those who have the longest commutes from their heads to their hearts? Whose greed is the smog that keeps us from seeing our own nature, and the sweetness we are here to protect?

Do you know sometimes when gathering nectar bees fall asleep in flowers? Do you know fish are so sensitive snowflakes sound like fireworks when they land on the water? Do you know sea otters hold hands when they sleep so they don’t drift apart? Do you know whales will follow their injured friends to shore, often taking their own lives so to not let a loved one be alone when he dies?

None of this is poetry. It is just the earth being who she is, in spite of us putting barcodes on the sea.   In spite of us acting like Edison invented daylight.

Dawn presses her blushing face to my window, asks me if I know the records in my record collection look like the insides of trees. Yes, I say, there is nothing you have ever grown that isn’t music. You were the bamboo in Coltrane’s saxophone reed. The mulberries that fed the silkworms that made the slippers for the ballet. The pine that built the loom that wove the hemp for Frida Khalo’s canvas. The roses that dyed her paint hoping her brush could bleed for her body.

Who, more than the earth, has bled for us? How do we not mold our hearts after the first spruce tree who raised her hand and begged to be cut into piano keys so the elephants can keep their tusks?

The earth is the right side of history.   Is the canyon my friend ran to when no else he knew would echo his chosen name back to him. Is the wind that wailed through 1956 Alabama until the poplar trees carved themselves into Dr King’s pulpit. Is the volcano that poured the mercury into the thermometers held under the tongue of Italy, though she knew our fever was why her canals were finally running clear. She took our temperature. Told us we were too hot, even after we’d spent decades claiming she was not. Our hands held to her burning forehead, we insisted she was fine while wildfires turned redwoods to toothpicks, readying the teeth of our apocalypse.

She sent a smoke signal all the way from California. In New York City ash fell from the sky. Do you know the mountains of California used to look like they’d been set on fire because they were so covered in monarch butterflies? Do you know monarch butterflies migrate 3000 miles using only the fuel they stored as caterpillars in the cocoon?

We need so much less than we take. We owe so much more than we give. Squirrels plant thousands of trees every year just from forgetting where they left their acorns.

If we aimed to be just half as good as one of the earth’s mistakes, we could turn so much around. Our living would be seed, the future would have roots. We would cast nothing from the garden of itself. and we would make the thorns proud.

By: Andrea Gibson

#quotes

[pointlesstrashyexistence]

My Latinenatural contributions

Sam and Dean have loving and mildly insulting nicknames for their loved ones

Dean calls Cas “mi viejo” (my old man) (it takes Cas a minute to realize it’s a term of affection) and (jokingly, whenever he manages to make Cas dress differently in some way) “Papi chulo”. Dean can never call him that without bursting out laughing because even he finds it stupid. Maybe “Guapo” (handsome) and “Querido” (beloved) when feeling very soft and affectionate. Sam is “Calaca” (skeleton, someone who needs to eat more), “Gordo/Gordito/Gordi” (Fatty/Little Fatty, because even though Sam is very muscular and fit as an adult, he was a chubby child and even when you get skinny later in life your family will always call you that. BTW this is often used as a term of affection not an insult among Hispanic-Latine families), “Pendejo” (dumbass. Every Hispanic-Latine parent has called their child this at least ten times and Dean is essentially Sam’s father and mother) and “malcriado” (spoiled). Sam and Cas, as chaotic besties who always do crazy shit and gossip whenever Dean isn’t around, together are “las chismosas” (gossipers) and “hijos de la gran puta”

Look in my version Dean gets to live to the point where he’s old enough he admits that he needs to start wearing glasses more often

So Sam, with petty sibling energy, calls Dean “Cuatro Ojos” (Four eyes), “Payaso” (clown/buffoon bc Gatekeep!Sam is back at it again but also sometimes Dean just says stupid shit), and in the mornings when Dean is moving extremely slowly bc he hasn’t had his first cup of coffee “Tortuga”. Maybe sometimes “pendejo” but it feels more like something someone older calls someone younger. When judging Dean’s eating habits, maybe “vaca” (cow). I’m not sure Sam would have a nickname for Cas. I don’t know why. I feel like nicknames for Cas are something specific to him and Dean because nicknames are part of how Dean shows affection and care, which isn’t how Sam does. I do think Sam probably refers to Cas as “Angelito” (little angel) around Dean in this affectionate teasing manner you do when you know your sibling or best friend is in love. I think Sam has nicknames for others though. In my head, he calls Eileen “mi leon” (my lion) bc she’s strong and confidant and amazing and and they trust each other and he feels safe with her in a way he hasn’t felt in some time

Look I’m Puerto Rican and Dominican so Jack is gonna get all the non-feminine nicknames I got basically. To Sam and Dean he is “el niño” (the boy), “nene” (specific term for “boy” Puerto Ricans use), “jefe” (Boss, specifically when its Jack’s turn to decide on things like movie night or dinner or something), “flaco”, “Chiquito” (small boy). I hate that basically any time a tv show wants to establish how Hispanic and Latine a family is they always have the parents call their kids “mijo/mija” but yes Jack is also “mijo” but not often

Dean’s favorite coffee brand is Cafe Bustelo because it was almost always around so it was practical and it tasted good. Sam likes it well enough. He prefers Pilon and Pico Rico but they’re much less popular and harder to find.

Dean is the only one who cooks bc Sam is horrible at it, Cas can’t taste test anything to know if it’s fine, and he doesn’t trust Jack in the kitchen yet to do more than make himself cereal. Dean buys a cookbook of Hispanic dishes bc he can barely recall anything his mom made from his childhood, especially dishes from her culture so he tries to learn. He makes a flan and the caramel is a little bitter but everyone enjoys it. He experiments and makes his own family recipe.

Dean knows Spanish decently enough bc it was what Mary (in my version Maria) would speak to him in while John spoke English because despite the glares she got when she spoke it she wants to make sure her children know. He mostly keeps up with it and improves through listening to music (Selena definitely, and probably also Mana, Menudo, and Aventuras). Sam pre-Stanford doesn’t know a lot of Spanish because Dean didn’t have a lot of time to teach him and by the time Dean realizes he probably should Sam is at the age where it’s harder to absorb and learn a new language and Dean doesn’t quite know how to teach him i that way that if you go to a native speaker of a language and ask them specific questions about the why’s of their languages grammar rules they probably won’t know how to explain. But Sam connects hearing it with feeling peaceful and closer to Dean and Mary and a culture he never really got to learn. He learns a lot through reading Spanish poetry like Pablo Neruda and probably reading the Bible in Spanish and English. He prefers Spanish version of church songs because even though he gets clammy and feels sick and gets a headache anytime he’s in a church, he remembers Dean and stories about their mom.

Sam likes praying with Virgin Mary candles because they make him think of his mom and the peaceful life they could’ve had if she lived but also how he thinks she would’ve wanted him and Dean to find peace even as he gets another headache and his nose bleeds the longer he prays. Dean has no faith in God or angels (at least until Cas), but he sees the image of the Virgin and feels love and pain and safety because who he actually sees is the fictional version of his mom he’s built in his head.

Mary taught Dean the “Angelito de mi guardia”/“my guardian angel” prayer and even put a little plaque with a picture of a child praying to an angel with the words (I had one of these ok) on his bedside. After she dies, he keeps saying it, to an angel at first, and then on behalf of Sam, and then for himself as his faith dwindles and he just can’t keep pretending like he has any left anymore.

Sam and Dean both got these little red, thread, bracelets with a cross after their baptisms. Dean used to wear his until he stopped caring about his faith and just keeps it tucked inside his pockets because it’s one of the last things he has left of his mom. Sam stays wearing his even when for some reason his skin itches so badly he has rashes no matter where he moves the bracelet. He keeps it in a small plastic case in his coat so it doesn’t get anymore threadbare, but whenever he would touch it it still gave him rashes.

I feel like Mary would’ve made Dean and, had she lived longer, Sam do bendiciones with her. But I am basing this off of my family and we never say the full thing even when we’re adults so for Mary it’s just “‘cion Mamí” “Dios me la bendiga. Good night Dean. I love you”.

#supernatural #Supernatural #SPN #spn #dean winchester #sam winchester #Dean Winchester #Sam Winchester #Castiel #castiel #Cas #cas #Jack Kline #jack kline #destiel #Destiel #Deancas #deancas #casdean #Dean x Cas #dean x cas #cas x dean #Saileen #saileen #Sam x Eileen #sam x eileen #sam winchester x eileen leahy #Sam Winchester x Eileen Leahy #latinenatural #Latinenatural

[michaelbogild]

The best of Michael Bogild

There are nights when only sorrow offers an embrace

I will escape with the sunset

As long as we can dream the world shall not destroy us.

Her heart shapes her poetry and her poetry shapes her heart.

We met a thousand dreams ago. I remember you.

She’s created of moonlight and mystery

I am drowning in the depths of her name.

I stood in the richness of her angelic affections.

I belong to another world. I will dream it into existence.

You are always welcome in my dreams

Only the dreamers are truly awake

She undressed before the stars, laid bare her beauty in the moonlight

…and her heart unraveled itself like a beautiful poem

I wander through the timeless dream of her, the pilgrim of a thousand passions.

I leaned on your love, secure in the truth of your affections

A poem is an invitation into another world

A single glance and I slipped into a dream

A hopeless dreamer, in love with strange worlds

She is born of the softest strains of heaven.

…and the stars looked like hope

I ache in the dark syllables of her name.

She leaves stars in the trail of her glances

The electric witchcraft of the serpentine thunder-stroke

She is fearlessly transparent, a pyramid of glass

He excites her heart with the force of a thousand dreams

Love is the bridge between our souls

There is nothing within me but midnight

Great eternal sea, swallow my sorrows

Her eyes of emerald enchantment

Lost in the daze of her beauty's vast eloquence

She has a soul for every season

He summons with a look all the shades of her love.

I ascend from the chaos, feral and reborn.

Your love was the true herald of spring.

I am elsewhere. I am scattered.

My hope of love, the thinnest of ghosts

He kissed heaven into her soul.

The adventurous sailing of her wildflower heart

The flaming crosses of her eyes, her nocturnal endlessness.

This strange state of my heart, this terrible moon-madness

Have mercy, dark melancholy; tear not apart this star-crossed heart

My soul of ruins and night

I am a thousand dreams deep in this love.

She dreams in all the hues of his heart.

Is your moon also in tears?

They married the vastness of each other's love

We fled on mystic wings to lands unknown.

Lost in the golden astrology of her lovesome eyes.

She colours her sorrows.

Of course I love her, I am eternally fond of flowers.

I tried to recover my spirit from the past

The soft-sailing moon of her dreamy affections.

Our love is winged with the eternity of stars.

Meet me in the depths of night

The dream-born diamond of her unutterable beauty.

You brought into my heart every shade of bliss.

She puts her wreath of wildflowers upon the brow of nature

I buried my heart in your shadows

You were ever celestial to my affectionate eyes

I will love you in this life as I did in the thousands before.

My heart wept memories

I have wandered far from my soul

Our first kiss, the beginning of the world

Kiss me on foreign moons. Dance with me and the night.

He broke the hearts of all her seas.

I don’t write poems about her; those are prayers

I wandered through the dusk of God.

Sad midnight, have you come to claim my heart?

Give me, Life, a draught of oblivion.

She gathers poems like a child gathers flowers

I melted into the music of everything she is.

She hid her heart in her poems…where no one would ever find it

You and I, starry-eyed dreamers

We’re one of God’s unfinished poems

The skies are drunk with the blue of her eyes.

I burn at the edge of night

The night and its starry dome of dreams

Wedded to the darkness, she wears a ring of sorrow

The silken spells of her spring-born graces

She weeps in the language of an ancient longing.

She hides in her haunts of sweet poetic solitude

We met a thousand dreams ago. I remember you.

She entered his heart with the tenderness of a daffodil’s dream.

Old tender heart, I heard you weep in the wilderness

The circling ravens of his dark memories

We float in the infinite space of a dream. The moon recites poetry to our hearts, the stars look brighter than ever.

Her heart is a flowerless vase

The oblivious rose of her sightless love

Awake in a dream that wears her beauty

He woos with poems the summer of her soul

Their love was a chorus of unfathomable richness.

You will find her nowhere. She only deals in shadows.

I want to unbridle all the worlds inside you.

Inside her love, centuries of light.

This heart of roses, roses of pain.

They are divinely married to the melodies of each others hearts.

Your love was the true herald of spring.

…a love that could outlast the reign of stars.

She wept into the abyss of his indifference

I can taste my dreams on her lips

She is a tender flower in a storm of broken love.

Let’s hang our sorrows on the crescent moon

Elusive rose of my deepest love, where are you?

Mapping the anatomy of a dream, trying to make sense of the obscure.

Winter, you are as pale as my longing.

Love, old beloved star, pour your light into my heart, and let me dream.

You are always the moon in my dreams

She reads sonnets in his looks

They ascended like moons into each others souls.

My days of only night

You’re the unanswered question of my heart

Her fathomless eyes, wistful muses of autumnal grace

Because the ocean speaks my sadness, because she knows my heart as her own

The darkness sank its claws into her soul

He unchained the songs of her bashful soul

He keeps her memory in a shrine of shadows.

I linger in the heart-shaped notes of her beauty.

There are stars in her sorrow

Her love wears the spirit of an infinite rose

Awake, but dreaming

We circled each others souls in a dance of dreamy love.

The whole universe opened like a flower the first time I saw her

He lit with a hundred kisses the torch of her heart.

She is made entirely of night-songs

We hid in each others souls

I feel that cosmic wanderlust

The charming butterflies of her feminine glances

I need to be more patient than the darkness.

These poems are the fruits of my madness. They were forged from sorrows that seemed eternal.

The spirit of dusk plays within the beauty of her eyes.

They struck with their love the secret chord of infinity.

Our golden hours, our spring with no end.

I love all the moons inside her.

She could dream forever in the warmth of his arms

The ravishing rose of her soul's imperial beauty.

I am locked into the greyness of your eternal absence

His beauty could pierce the heart of a thousand angels.

He covered her scars with a love unending.

I scattered our memories into a hundred silent poems

Her tender eyes wear the starlight of his affections.

Love is my melody, broken and dark.

The bewitching rose of her spring-born beauty

Eyes of moon-madness, eyes of collapsing stars

Our emotions floated so ethereally into each other.

What angel spun this dream of you?

The night wants me more than the dawn.

She drinks the wine of his celestial lyrics

The spring moon took us into his dreams.

Our hearts like howling wolves, our hearts like burning churches

She felt every note of his affections

Wandering moon-drunk through the skies

I fall into dreams, I ascend into delirium.

Marry me on the moon of this golden moment.

Her name is its own world. In there I wander restlessly.

He followed the butterflies of her charms

She answers his soul with all the colors of her affections

I am anchored in the depths of her sacred name.

The spirit of spring moves within her, dances, poetizes, loves.

She’s dressed in the beauty of a thousand possibilities

Her soul, a dark shrine of sadness.

My heart finds in you nothing but its tomb.

The stars are too beautiful, we don’t see their sadness

Her night-soft heart-wanderings.

All the stars are in her soul

Our love still breathes in my poems and dreams

You’re a different universe completely

Love: a shrine of tears

The ghostly waves of her forsaken ocean

Her beauty is a song wherein poets ache.

She lit a candle in the darkest room of my heart.

The one who dreams swallowed the sun in the heart of the forest.

You touch the silence in me.

You were blue skies and roses to my heart

Take me, angels of imagination, to her loveliness

To be in love with you is to be in love with life

[t-o-m-hollands]

Locksley Hall - Part II

Summery: Tom doesn’t know quite how it happens, but one moment he’s working as the gardener at Locksley hall, and the next he’s run of to marry the lords daughter, a girl he hates. Set in England, 1920.

Word count: 5500 (sorry...)

Pairing: Tom x OC

A/N: Again, this is heavily inspired by the first part in Atonement – Ian McEwan, but the plot is different.  

Music wise: For Madeleine’s parts I listened to Old Money – Lana del Rey and for Tom’s part I listened to NFWMB and Work Song - Hozier.

R E A D   P A R T    O N E   H E R E

Gideon’s cottage - 1920.

Tom is awakened by yet another expensive automobile driving up the road and past his cottage. His brain works slowly, still half asleep, one foot in a dreamland where he’s chasing someone in a labyrinth made out of peonies. Slowly he wakes his body by moving his toes, and then his fingers too, before stretching his arms over his head, letting out a tired groan. His body feels warm and his limbs lethargic and slow, as they do after a particularly long nap. For a long while he lays there, eyes half-closed, staring at the dust aimlessly drifting in the sunlight.  

Another car passes by outside.  

Downstairs he can hear Mr. Higgins doing the washing up. If he concentrates, he can hear the guests from the ball chatting and laughing up at the manor. If he concentrates further still, he can hear the blood pumping through his system, steady and slow.  

The whole world feels slow. Like the air in the room stands still, despite the wide-open window. It is mid-July, and the heat feels oppressively persistent, there is no escaping it. Only now, as the clock is nearing eight in the evening, does the world seem to cool. All morning he’d worked in the garden, preparing the grounds for the ball under the watchful eyes of old Dowager Locksley. When she was finally satisfied that there wasn’t a dead leaf, not a single weed, nor an unwatered rose in sight she’d sent him off, ready to attack the kitchen staff instead. He’d walked down to Locksley bay. There he’d rid himself of his sweaty, earth-stained rags and he’d swam until his body felt cool again before returning to the cottage for a long and well-deserved nap.  

He stretches again and groans. He desperately wants a smoke, but his pack of cigarettes along with his lighter is all across the room, thrown on the cluttered desk along with countless of books and an old typewriter that the library had given away. The letter M was irreversibly lost and therefor it had been deemed useless. He’d taken it with great gratitude, glad to have something he’d normally wouldn’t be able to afford. It had amused him, typing long passages without using any word containing the 13th letter of the alphabet. In a strange way it thrilled him, that some words in the dictionary simply became forbidden for him. Suddenly out of reach.Words like magic, monarch, melancholy, magnetic, maddening, maiden,  

Madeleine.  

Finally he gets up, walks across the room and sits down by his desk. He lights a cigarette. Staring out the window he watches as yet another car makes it up the driveway to join the ball.  

The sky outside is lilac, and the first evening breeze makes its way through the grass like a wave in the ocean and he prays it’ll make its way through the window to cool his head. He inhales deeply, but the sinking feeling he’s had in his stomach all day stays where it is.  

And half of his mind is still in his dream. 

Had he been better at drawing he’d drawn her hands, soft and small compared to his calloused ones. Maybe if he’d draw them, he’d be able to get the picture of them out of his mind. Those hands, gracefully holding a cigarette as her eyes, dark and deep and framed with long lashes, observed him with great disapproval as they’d discussed poetry. She always looked disapproving when she was observing him. She’d worn a evening gown in the finest silk, and his ratty jacket over her shoulders, her normally perfectly pinned hair falling down in cascades over her shoulders. It had felt strangely intimate, seeing her like that, so undone and wearing his jacket

Swearing, he puts out the cigarette. He’d been distracted, not noticing how it’d burnt down to the butt, burning his fingers. He doesn’t light a new one, but leans back in his chair, runs his hand through his hair and tries to calm his breathing.  

It hadn’t always been this way.  

Once upon a time, they’d been friends, hard as it was to believe now. They’d defied gravity when they’d climbed the great oak three behind the cottage. He’d taught her how to swim in Locksley bay, held her up in the water and told her to fill her lungs with air in order to float. She’d taught him how to read. His teacher in the village school had called him slow, so she’d sneaked out books from the library, and with patience of a saint she’d taught him how to recognise each symbol until he could make sense of the words.  

She’d been his first kiss.  

It had only been a small peck on his lips, lasting not more than a second, but it counted. He counted it. 

She’d find him in the greenhouse, crying over the trashing he’d gotten from Mr. Higgins for attacking Francis Locksley. Silently she’d sat down beside him, her long dark hair in a braid and dressed in her Sunday best, having just been to church. She’d taken his bruised knuckles in her hands and she’d kissed them, before kissing each tear streaked cheek, and then ever so briefly, she’d pressed her lips against his. He had felt like a knight, being awarded by the queen for his brave service. He hadn’t known what to make of it, but she’d held his hand in hers and he’d leaned his head against her shoulder and for the longest time they’d stayed that way until he’d forgotten all about stinging bruises and tears.

He lights another cigarette and another car drives up the driveway.  

The sky is now a dark blue, the last evening light turning the leaves in the trees golden. Earlier that day Mr. Higgins had put out lights all along the drive way to the manor house and they now lit up the summer evening. 

Against the evening sky he sees a bird shoot up, rising to the sky.

Once when they’d been children they’d found an injured songbird in the woods. He’d watched as Madeleine with the gentlest of fingers picked the bird up. He’d watched as she held the wounded creature in her hands, as she observed its broken wing. She’d looked at him then, her dark eyes sad, and she’d told him they’d have to help it heal.  

So they’d gone to Gideon’s cottage and he’d sneaked her in, while Mr. Higgins worked in the garden. She’d placed the songbird on his bed. While she was kneeling in front of it, as if in prayer, he’d taken out bandages. He’d watched as she’d gently wrapped it around the bird’s wing. She’d looked at him, and told him to sing. She’d said that it would make the bird feel safer, that it was what she used to do to baby Beatrix when she was crying.  So, he’d sung a song to the poor harmed thing, while Madeleine patted its head.  

For seven days the nursed it, making sure the wing healed as it should. It had been their secret. She’d snuck out of classes with her governess and he’d faked being ill until Mr. Higgins let him be home from school and they’d sat in his room, and he’d sing for them. They kept the bird in a box, on the lid of which he’d put air holes in, and she’d placed her cardigan in the bottom of it, making sure it was soft to sleep on. They’d feed t worms Tom had dug up in the garden and Tom would sing to it every night.

In the end the songbird had healed, and they’d released it in the woods again and watched as it flew away, awkwardly at first, nearly toppling towards the ground before it found its strength again, slowly rising until it was only a speck of black in the distance. He’d held her hand, biting down hard on his bottom lip to keep himself from weeping, while she had cried openly, pressing his hand in hers. They’d hid in the labyrinth until late that evening, far away from nanny and Mr. Higgins. He’d sung her songs until she’d stopped weeping.  

Tom stands up, puts out his cigarette and stretches out one last time. Then he walks out, leaving his memories in the smoke-filled room, heading towards the pub. 

*

The Wild Boar, the village pub

“You ever think about headin’ out of here?” he asks his friend.  

They’re in the village pub, The Wild Boar, throwing back beers. A Victorian pub with murky green wallpaper, beer-stained velvet booths and worn mahogany wooden floors. The atmosphere is always good and someone is always singing. Harrison, who most days works in the bar but is enjoying a rare day off, calls it his home.  

“What, go somewhere else to drink, you mean?”

“No, no, I mean like leave Milchwood, go to London or something, head somewhere else you know”.

Harrison gives him a puzzled look and Tom can tell he doesn’t feel the same. They’re both comfortably leaned back on each side of the booth. Around them the other patrons are talking loudly, discussing this and that, enjoying their Saturday night and the unusually warm summer weather.  

“No” Harrison answers in the end “no, I mean, it’s home, yeah?” He drowns the last drops of his pint, waving to the bar for another before looking back at Tom, “you feel like leaving?”

“Dunno, maybe, sometimes” he says. “’is just, some days I want nothing more than to head out to Milchwood station and take literally any train away from here.” He takes a long gulp of his own pint.

“Well, why don’t you?”

It takes some time for Tom to answer. He keeps his eyes on the dirty window in front of him. Far away he can just make out the silhouette of Locksley Hall. They are all up there now, the lords and the ladies, having a ball.

“’s just hard to leave you know.” He takes another gulp of beer as the bartender places another pint in front of Harrison. “Spent most of my time in France wishing I was back here and now” he waves his hand in front of him, as if this would explain the strange sinking feeling he’d been walking around with lately. “Now it feels like it all stands still, like I’m just walking around, waiting for something to happen.”  

Harrison gives him a worried look “but what’s keeping you here then?”  

“Dunno, it’s just, it’s hard to leave”.

He doesn’t have ties to this place the way Harrison does. He has no other family part from Mr. Higgins. Mrs. Higgins had taken him in when he’d been nothing more than a baby, but she’d passed away before his fifth birthday. He hardly remembered her. Mr. Higgins had kept him on, and despite his stern ways he’d been kind to the boy, and taught him all he knew of gardening and thus ensuring that Tom would have a future secured. But Tom knows that Mr. Higgins wouldn’t mind if he took off, that maybe he’d even expect it.  

“Yes, we saw ‘em, didn’t we Billy!” Owain Murphy’s loud voice booms from the booth beside theirs.  

“Yeah” Billy concurs, nodding his head and staring down into his glass.  

“Yeah, we saw ‘em, all ‘em gently folks up at Locksley Hall”.

“Yeah” Billy nods again.

“They say the ‘eir is being married off!” Owain bellows.

Billy is too busy drinking now to agree.

“She looked a vision, didn’t she Billy?”

Something twists uncomfortably in Tom’s stomach. He drowns his beer and nods to his friend. It’s time to leave. The night air is cool and he takes deep breaths of it as he steps outside. They walk and chat for a while, before hitting a fork in the road, saying their goodbyes and promising to meet up for another pint the next day they then part ways, Harrison walking to the house he shares with his parents and little sister, and Tom steers his feet to Gideon’s Cottage and Locksley Hall.  

He can see the lights from the building, hear the piano music even from outside. Across the lawn people are taking some fresh air, surely they’ve been dancing for hours. They’re all dressed in their finest clothes, heavily bejeweled. Tom closes in on Gideon’s cottage, and he can’t wait to throw himself on the bed and sleep for a few hours. Tomorrow is Sunday, the day for resting, and he’s free as a bird.  

A flash of white moves in the corner of his eye and he looks over.  

By the enormous rhododendron bush stands Lady Madeleine Locksley, wearing a silky white gown that somehow plays tricks with his brain; for when he first lays his eyes on her, it looks to him as if she’s wearing nothing more than moonlight, the diamonds from her tiara glistening in the night.

For a moment it feels as if he’s actually gotten the breath knocked out of him. Owain Murphy had been right, she did look a vision.  

A man joins her, his hands clasped behind his back. He’s tall and blond and even from this distance he can tell she’s bored with the conversation, but she politely goes along with it.  

Tom walks into the cottage, closing the door behind him.

*

The cliffs of Locksley bay

The Atlantic Ocean spread out in front of her, wide and far and impossibly blue. She’s standing on the cliffs beside Locksley bay. If she were to turn her head to her left, she would see the docks with the boats lined up one after the other, each more impressive than the last. It is summer, and high season for travellers. Would she instead turn her head to her right she would see the bay, and the people playing in the water, lying in the beach and soaking up sun. Enjoying themselves and cooling themselves off in the unusually warm weather.  

But she keeps her eyes far ahead.  

Out on the water she can see sailing boats slowly drifting over the landscape. It’s not a good day for sailing, not even up here on the cliffs can you feel anything more than a gentle breeze. The heavens are almost violently blue, not a cloud as far as the eye can see. In the sky seagulls fly, screeching as they go and she inhales deep breaths of the ocean air. She feels so far removed from them all, the people on the boats and the ones on the beach. 

Her lungs feels tighter, there’s a scream in them that needs to get out.

She takes a step closer to the edge.  

A pair of arms grabs hold of her and pulls her in against something hard. “What are you doing?!” A familiar voice inquires angrily in her ear.

He pulls them both a few steps back, away from the edge, before turning her around to face him. Anger clear on his face. His chest, still close to hers, is heaving.  

“What are you doing?” She asks, not quite managing to match his level of animosity. His hands are still holding a firm grip around her arms. She pulls herself free and takes a step back, trying to create some distance between them, though she swears she still feels the heat radiating of his body, his scent, which she’d briefly inhaled, surrounding her.

“Were you going to jump?” he asks in a serious tone, his warm brown eyes intensely searching her face for something.  

“No” she says, voice firm, and he relaxes somewhat, though he still looks angry. That frown, seemingly permanent on his face whenever she’s around. “But it wouldn’t have killed me if I had, people jump from here all the time”

“Sure, but not young heiresses”.  He sounds almost sarcastic and she can feel her blood nearly boiling. Her diamond heart beats faster in her chest.

“Have you?”

He observers her for a heartbeat, like he’s searching for something in her face. The long days spent working in the garden has given him a nice tan. His brown hair looks windswept and he’s not wearing his usual uniform of muddy trousers, suspenders and a dirty white shirt. Instead his clothes look washed and clean; he’s wearing his Sunday best, linen suit trousers, clean white shirt and suspenders that don’t look quite as worn. His arms, well developed from all the hard work, fills out his shirt in a way that makes something inside her flutter, and she hastily looks away.  

“Yes” he answers in the end. “Yeah, me and Harrison jumped it last year”.  

“Yet you’re so against me doing it?”

He’s silent for a few seconds, and she can tell he’s weighing each word carefully. “I just, I didn’t take you for a thrill-chaser, is all. It surprised me”.

Now he’s avoiding looking at her.  

“So, how was the ball?” he asks eventually, having to fill the stale, strange silence.

“Long” she answers and sighs. “Awfully long, and dreary”.  

“Poor girl” he teases, but she wonders if there isn’t real malice underneath. “And how is your betrothed?”  

She narrows her eyes at him. “James is not my betrothed” she says, trying to keep her voice calm. He’s got his hands in his pockets, an arrogant look on his face and she wants to scream at him.

“Huh” he says, “I heard you were being married off”.  

“Well, I’m not. Not yet”

“So, what’s he’s like, this not betrothed man of yours”

He sounds so nonchalant, and it’s making her skin itch with irritation. “He’s nice, actually”.

He scoffs, “nice?”

“Yes! He’s very nice, unlike certain people! And he gave me a book of Wordsworth poetry”

Tom snorts “you hate Wordsworth, you always have”  

“How do you know?” She asks, annoyance clear in her tone.  

“You told me” he answers, and he sound so certain of himself.  

“Yes, when we were children, I might have changed my mind since!”  

“You haven’t though”.

“Funny isn’t? All the things you remember?” She tries to sound superior, but she’s not sure she accomplishes anything. He’s still standing there, hands in pockets and a devil-may-care smug smile on his face.  

“You find him dull”.

“How do you know if I find James dull or not! You’ve never even met him! Maybe I find it fascinating to talk about dog breeding and horses!” you scream at him. 

But he just smiles wider. “I was talking about Wordsworth. You find Wordsworth dull. But clearly I hit a nerve”.  

She’s so angry she’s speechless. From the village they hear the church bells ring.  

“We should go” he says and nods to the path back.  

“No”

“Lady Madeleine, -”

“Stop calling me that!”

“Well, it is your title”.

“Oh, like you give a toss about people’s titles! I’m Madeleine and we used to be friends, or don’t you remember that part?”

“Alright Madeleine” he says slowly, like he’s talking to a particularly petulant child, “we better head home now, they’ll want you back for dinner”.

“I don’t want to” she says stubbornly. “You head back. I’m staying here to watch the sunset”.

“They’ll just sent me out to look for you if you´re not there for dinner, let’s go”.

She takes a deep breath and a step backwards, towards the edge. “You know, I’m so tired of everyone telling me what to do all the time, were to be and what to think, and how to feel”. She takes another step backwards and the smugness on his face is soon replaced with worry.  

“I’m so tired of people telling me that I can’t do things when they have no issue doing it themselves”. She takes yet another step back and as he reaches out for her, realising what she’s about to do. She turns around and runs toward the edge.  

“No Maddie, don’t!”  

But she’s already taken the leap.

*

Locksley Hall

The next morning she wakes early, though it feels as though she’s hardly slept at all. Memories plays behind her closed eyelids from the day before. The cliffs, Tom’s arms grabbing hold of her, the argument, the jump, the fall, the splash, the sinking, the searching for the surface. And then, a hand grabbing hold of her, pulling her towards the light.  

He’d jumped in after her, had thrown himself of the cliff in his Sunday best without any hesitation.  

He’d always been the better swimmer, he was the one who had taught her after all, and luckily it hadn’t taken him long to find her beneath the surface.  

They’d swam ashore, dragged themselves up in their heavy, wet clothes watched by the bathers who looked at them, some agog and some in chock. (“Is that not lady Madeleine?”)

He’d been furious, practically steaming with anger. It hadn’t mattered how many times she’d tried to talk to him, tried to apologise, he’d only ignored her and kept steering his feet forward to Locksley Hall. Only when she tried to thank him for having saved her did he respond.

“Don’t” he had uttered, his resentment almost palpable.

They had been walking through a path in the woods, sun shining through the canopy, painting the whole world a bright green colour, and she stumbled after him, keeping her eyes on his wet white shirt, his suspenders holding of his soaked beige trousers.  

She too had grown angry then. Had tried to argue with him. Tried telling him that he was overreacting, that no one had forced him to jump in as well, that it would have been better if he hadn’t, that they both knew he wished he hadn’t and suddenly -

She’d been pressed up against a tree, his face just centimetres from hers, both their chest heaving with conflicting emotions, his arms on either side of her face, in the most beautiful trap.

Madeleine untangles herself from her many sheets and blankets and walks to the window to pull apart the curtains and let in the morning light. The grounds outside are empty, no one is yet awake. It must be very early indeed, for even Gideon’s cottage seem peacefully quiet.

She opens the leaded window and drags in deep breaths of fresh air, but her lungs still feel too tight. She fishes up a package of cigarettes from one of the pockets of her silk robe and with trembling hands she lights one. Everything is set now. She is to marry Sir James Hatfield, and settle down at Hatfield house in all its ugly Tudor glory. It didn’t matter if she smoked in the house anymore, she wouldn’t stay here much longer.  

With picture perfect certainty she imagines married life with Sr Hatfield. Endless conversation of the breeding of horses, hunting and dogs. Her life spent doing things the way they have always been done at Hatfield house, keeping up with the traditions of a family she has no interest in. And then, several blonde little children would come along. All boys, all taking after their father in looks and manners.  

Her life would surround around them. She would be Lady Madeline Locksley no more, but instead, Lady Hatfield. She would have to leave Locksley hall, leave Benie,  

leave Tom.

The thought startles her, and she gets up from the window ledge, starts walking aimlessly round the cluttered room.  

Using her empty tea cup from which she’d drank her evening tea the night before as an ashtray she puts out her cigarette, and with hands trembling more than ever she lights another, before throwing herself back on the bed.  

Tom.  

Who surely hated her now. The achingly long moments when he’d trapped her against the tree plays again in her head. She’d seen so many emotions on his face, his chest heaving from all of it. First there had been anger, then confusion and then, unless she wasn’t entirely mistaken; because god knows her experience was non-existing in the area,  

- lust.  

But he’d torn himself free, and marched off, without looking back. And she’d stood leaned against the three, feeling like a planet spinning out of its axis, struggling to remember how to breath again.

When she walked into the great hall she’d been met with her mother, Benie and granny. Upon seeing her, they’d all gone completely silent, the only sound to be heard the water dripping off of her, landing on the newly swapped floors.  

“Oh Madeleine!” her mother had eventually burst out “what’s happened?”

She had told them she’d been at the cliffs, and that Tom had come along, but then her granny had interrupted her. “Are you telling me” she’d asked in her superior voice “that you were ‘hanging about’ the cliffs with the junior gardener?” The disapproval in her voice was evident.  

“No” Madeleine had answered, trying to keep her voice steady and calm. “I’m saying that I was there, and he was there, he annoyed me, and then I jumped off the cliff”.

Dead silence again.  

“You, you did what?”

“I jumped off a cliff. And then he saved me. And now, I really must change, so would you please excuse me”. The wave of emotion that washed over her had surprised her, but suddenly she’d been holding back tears.

““Madeleine, I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, but you need to go and get changed, right now. Sir Hatfield is invited for dinner, and you will behave yourself and you will conduct yourself accordingly” her mother had told her in her sternest voice. So, Madeleine had nodded and walked up the stairs, choking back on tears, her wet clothes leaving a trace of water in her wake.  

And she’d changed and Alice had done up her hair and she’d joined the others for dinner. And she’d sat beside James at dinner and listened to him lecturing her on various dog breeds and she’d smiled appropriately. Then, after dinner, he’d taken her aside. Professed in a dry tone his admiration for her and asked for her hand in marriage. He’d told her that he’d already settled things with her father. She had smiled and complied and tried to press down the feeling of nausea in her stomach, tried to ignore to scream growing ever larger in her lungs.  

She stands up again, puts out her cigarette, takes one of the many dresses scattering the floor and slides it on. Then she’s out the door. With silent steps, as to not wake anyone, she makes her way down the corridor, and then down the grand staircase and the foyer and out the door. The pressure in her lungs grow tenser and tenser and her feet move faster and faster, until her naked feet are sprinting over the grounds, the dewy grass cold under her soles. When she finally reaches the greenhouse, she’s sobbing.

This had always been her secret place. Not even Tom had known about how she’d used to come here when things became too much, when things would build and build inside of her until she had to let it out. Like it was a living, moving thing in her chest, begging her to set it free. Knowing that the old greenhouse was the only soundproof place in all of Locksley Hall it became her safe place to let it out, she’d always steer her feet here. When she’d been to boarding school, and then in Canada, she’d been forced to try letting the scream free under water, no other place felt safe enough, but it hadn’t felt the same.  

She slams the door shut behind her and then she lets it out. Nearly bending over from the force of it she shrieks, for as long and as loud as she can. Her eyes pressed shut and trembling hands in fists. When she finally stops it still seems to echo in her ears, and she feels exhausted. She’s breathing as if she’s just run for miles and miles. Slowly she stands up straight again, unclasping her fists. Opening her shut eyes.

Tom.  

Standing in front of her, looking shocked and horrified, hands and shirt muddy. He must have been in here for some early work before the heat gets too intense. 

They stand there, for a long time, just staring at one another, her screams still echoing in her mind. And then, like she’s a wild animal, he slowly walks towards her. Taking her hand in his, an arm around her waist, he gently guides them towards the pond, on the side of which he helps her sit down. Bending down in front of her, so that he’s on his knees, he looks up at her, a strand of brown hair falling down, framing his face.

It’s so tender, the way he looks at her. So unbearably tender. His earth-stained hands clasped around hers, placed in her lap, calloused and warm.  

“What happened?” He asks, voice soft and low.

She doesn’t know when it started, too distracted by his gentleness perhaps, but she realises then that she’s crying, two tears falling from her cheek and landing on their hands.   

“I’m just being silly” she responds, but her voice sounds hoarse and dead even to her own ears.

“I doubt it, what’s wrong?”  

“I, I” she begins, her lungs feeling tight again “I have to marry.”

His kind eyes blink up at her, and for a moment she swears he holds on tighter to her hands.  

“But you don’t want to.” It’s not a question, it’s a statement. “Why do you have to?” His thumbs stroke her trembling hands and it feel and it is the gentlest thing that’s ever happened to her.  

“There’s no male hair. So, if papa dies before I marry, we’ll lose everything”. Her voice is hoarse from screaming and she wonders if he finds her pathetic, but in his eyes she only finds sympathy, and maybe a fair share of pain.

“But you don’t have to marry Hatfield?”

She shakes her head, and more tears fall. “No, but he’s the best option. I can’t afford to wait”.  

Silence for a while as he observes you.

Then,  

“What if I’ll marry you?” his voice is steady, but his eyes are fixed their clasped hands.  

“What?”

“I’ll marry you” he states and looks up at her again. She stares at him in disbelief, for surely, he can’t mean it. He continues. “I know it’s not a good option, but the estate will be safe, and you won’t have to marry Hatfield, you won’t have to leave Locksley Hall.”

When she just keeps staring at him in silent disbelief his cheeks turn pink. “I know I haven’t got anything to offer; you know I don’t. But -”

“Alright”. Her answers comes without her thinking about it and it seems to catch him off guard. “But, are you sure?” she asks, worried that he doesn’t know what he’s getting himself into.  

“Yes, Madeleine, I’m sure” he smiles, his hands continuing to gently stroke her hands.  

“But, but” she starts, feeling almost dizzy. “But why would you want to marry me?”

“What?”

“Why would you help me? It would change your life forever.” She keeps her voice serious, knows that it’s of utmost importance that he understands the importance of this.  

He seems struck silent and for a long while his brown eyes stare up at her in disbelief. “Well I, I mean I would, I” he starts, letting go of her hands and standing up, placing them his pockets instead. It is like he’s trying to look as nonchalant as he usually does.  

Turning slightly away from her, eyes fixed on the koi fish in the pond he then continues. “Well, I’d get to live in Locksley Hall, wouldn’t I? I’d be the lord of the manor. No more hard toil in the garden”.  

“So, mostly self-interest then?” She says, not knowing whether she feels more relieved or disappointed. More than anything she feels light headed.  

“Yeah” he agrees, eyes still fixed on the pond. “It’s self-interest".  

Silence spread between them. This is new territory that neither one knows how to tread.  

In the end she stands up and he turns to look at her again, something like worry in his expression. “We, well we’ll have to discuss this. If it’s to happen it needs to happen soon.”

“It is to happen” he says, firmly, but then his cheeks turn pink again. “As long as you want it to”.  

“Well then” she says, a small but genuine smile on her face. “It can’t happen here; Gretna Green is our only option. We have to come up with some excuse so we can leave for Scotland for a few days”.  

He nods, but he too looks more relaxed now. “I’ll think of something”.  

“So much to be fixed” she says, mostly to herself. “Wedding dress for example, though the wedding will be so small only something simple will do.”

“Could you” he begins, and he avoids her eyes again. “You could wear that dress you had on at the ball” he asks awkwardly, fidgeting slightly where he stands.  

“Oh, yes of course” she says, just as awkward. “If that’s what you want”. She smiles at him, and he smiles back. Its embarrassed, but it’s tender too.  

“Meet me at the fountain tonight?” he asks, and that strange fluttering sensation she’d felt when he’d pressed her against the tree makes another appearance. “To discuss how we’ll do this?”

She nods “yes, I’ll see you then. I better get back now, or Alice will notice I’ve left when she brings in breakfast.”  

She turns to leave, but changing her mind mid stride she turns back to him. When she reaches him she stands on the tips of her naked, now muddy, feet. She presses a soft kiss to his cheek. “Thank you” she whispers.  

***

PLEASE LEAVE FEEDBACK IF YOU CAN

***

Taglist: @londonmademedoit​  @isthataladybag​   @ceexreverse​  @daygiowvibe​ @averyfosterthoughts​ @applenter​ @viwihere​ @youcompletemess​ @marvelpeters​ @youngsenpaibaby​ @duskholland​ @vanillanestor​​ @panicattheeverywherekid​​ ​ @primadonnasdream​ @adorestarkey​ @johnismyreason​ @fancybrittrash​ @farfromhoran​ @sushiinmidnight​ @midtownxparker​ @theamuz​

#tom holland x reader #tom holland #tom holland fanfiction #tom holland headcanon #tom holland imagine #tom holland x oc #tom holland x y/n #tom holland x you #tom holland x fem

[illimitablespaces]

4,7,9,10,19,23,30

4. what flower would you like to be given?

Ah, now here's a difficult question! I adore many flowers--the whole plant usually, but I see how this question can refer to a plucked flower--and it is nearly impossible for me to choose one in particular.

For the sake of answering your question properly, I will say Piper ornatum, since this is the latest plant I noted in my botanical wish list.

7. what color brings you peace?

There is a certain hue of green which I find pleasing, and for which I have many subjective connotations.

If you search for "green sea glass" and you see the lighter, pastel-tinted variety, that's the hue.

And if you care to know, I associate this particular color and its shadings with music in the key of D-flat.

9. what calms you down?

Lately it has been the music of Bach. I am learning some of the movements from the Partitas and my mind is put at ease when I am at the keyboard.

I delight in Bach's invention which has impressed me more now than ever. I am recognizing relations and similitudes which remind me of the "economy" of Beethoven. Small cells of music offer up riches under the master's pen, and with utmost earnestness and sincerity both. This is music that is not entertainment but that which is for one's spirit.

10. what’s something you’re excited for?

Hmm, I haven't given much thought to this, since these days I try to go hour-by-hour, one day at a time. (I used to look forward to different things with much excitement but life is such that things are ever-changing and we must learn to continue in time's stead).

I suppose I am looking forward to learning new music, perhaps composing some poetry, and one BIG thing that I can only allude to now, because I don't want to mention it before it has come to pass. Stay tuned in the next few days, I may have some news to share!

19. most important thing in your life?

Allah Almighty is the most important "thing" in my life. I am doing my best to practice my religion sincerely and incorporate the knowledge which comes to me along the way. It is difficult, I must confess. But I think if it is granted, and I take initiative, making more friends whom I can commune with in prayer and learning in "real life" will help ease the burden a little. It's one thing to read texts online and get updates through social media, watch lectures, and compile a library of books at home but the communal aspect--face to face--is still necessary. Perhaps I can reign in my anxiety and set aside my reclusion to find out how I can fulfill my part outside my home.

23. favorite piece of clothing?

When I was wearing formal clothes more often I would love to choose the right tie. I would put on my best whenever I played organ for church services, or when I treated myself to an evening of music and dinner. I am quite sad that I haven't had days such as those in several years.. perhaps I can remedy that soon...

I digress into nostalgia, do forgive me.

I first chanced upon a bowtie designed by Gilbert Adrian at a thrift store in 2015, I think. The gentleman who owned the store said I could have it for $6, so I happily took home my new accessory, not then knowing who "Adrian" was.

After I discovered that the designer of that tie was the same who designed Dorothy's ruby slippers, I was hooked. I wanted to know what other designs Adrian made, and for whom and when. Fast forward to the present, and I now have a small collection of his ties (after my first set was stolen when moving, which incenses me to this day) and I am always looking to add more.

What captivates me about Adrian's clothes is the contrast between the understated and the bold (sometimes bordering on ridiculous). His designs for men are more tame but I still love them. One of these days I will try to put together a post of the ties I have in my collection.

30. what reminds you of home (doesn’t have to mean house… just things that remind you of the feeling of home)?

Since it is autumn now, the trees soon to be in their colorful state of undress remind me of home. As do the birds and the many plants I am fortunate enough to see one block over in the flower district. The cats that quietly rule those flower shops and the ones that temporarily reside in the pet stores remind me of home, too. The moon, when I am able to see her, and the rains, both thunderous and gentle, remind me of home. I have been gathering houseplants and music that remind me of my maternal grandmothers, those women whom I have felt most close.

As you can perhaps see, there is a strong sense of nostalgia governing my existence these days. I long for things past, some of which I know cannot be recovered in this life. I am failing words at this time of night, the small hours, but I am stirred to recall a poem by W. H. Auden which I would like to share. If you do not mind, I will make a post of it after I close here.

Thank you again, @ant-soul. It was my pleasure to answer these. In this way I am reminded of the abounding beauty in my life and all that I have to be grateful.

[oatbrew]

WRITING MASTERPOST

ao3 / fic tag / pp meta / tot meta / joseimuke meta

shinkane

➳ here, and where you are (wip) pride and prejudice/regency au where akane and shinya flirt by intellectually bullying each other until they fall in love

[ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ]

➳ honeymoon period (complete) some vague universe where everything is all right and akane and shinya are two newlyweds basking in domestic bliss

[ 1 ] [ 2 ]

➳ la petite mort (wip) akane and shinya have a one night stand that inexplicably lasts for more than one night. canon-divergent

[ 1 ]

➳ like real people do (oneshot) akane goes to a compatibility-match date but ends up getting hamburgers with shinya instead. canonverse

➳ like tears in rain / eight seconds left in overtime (two-shot) shinya hallucinates. often. it says a lot that he’s known her ghost longer than her. canon-divergent

➳ a loose bolt of a complete machine (oneshot) he’s human and she’s not. the former fact is questionable. blade runner au

➳ photokeratitis (oneshot) wherever she goes, the skeletons follow. akane runs away with shinya and nearly drowns. canon-divergent

➳ four things plus one thing fic where shinya deals with his jealousy throughout the years (oneshot)

➳ that childhood au where shinya is completely oblivious to his own feelings (oneshot)

➳ that one reincarnation au where shinya is stuck in a tragic sorta time loop (oneshot)

➳ that one where they discuss the possibility of alternate universes. this is like the prologue of all my fics lol. canonverse (oneshot)

➳ that one where she dies and he destroys a city. second pov. yep, i know. (oneshot)

➳ that post-pp:fi lunch date that was promised (oneshot)

➳ that san junipero au where aspiring writer, akane, visits the afterlife to write about the late famed detective kougami (wip)

[ 1 ]

➳ date night post-pp3 (oneshot)

ginaka

➳ first impressions (oneshot) introspection on nobuchika and his changing relationship with his inspector. canonverse

➳ the only words i know (oneshot) akane and nobuchika and months-long foreplay. canonverse. mildly explicit.

➳ that one au where teenage friends--nobuchika, akane, shinya and shuusei--go to an amusement park (oneshot)

➳ that one where they’re in an established relationship and have to learn how to confront each other during fights. canonverse (oneshot)

other psycho-pass

➳ that appreciation fic for father’s day reflecting on masaoka tomomi and his many children. canonverse (oneshot)

➳ that buzzfeed unsolved au where kagari is ryan and kougami is shane (complete)

[ 1 ] [ 2 ]

➳ that post-pp1 missing scene where akane and yayoi grieve for a lost friend through baking. canonverse (oneshot)

other fandoms

➳ [dragon age] a prayer in a burning church (oneshot) cullen rutherford unfortunately believes in fate and the herald’s first words to him are written on his palm. soulmates au

➳ [the legend of korra] that college au where korra and korvira become reluctant roommates

➳ [mass effect] that canon divergence where a miserable and terminally single shepard and garrus meet and bond during a wedding

➳ [nightshade] beginners (oneshot) 10k smut post-game where hanzo and enju address their insecurities and bang each other for the first time

➳ [persona 3] lather, rinse, repeat. (oneshot) akihiko and how he fell in love with death. second pov warning

➳ [tears of themis] no rules in breakable heaven (wip) a college-aged rosa attends a party and ends up getting rescued by an off-duty darius morgan. explicit 10k smut.

[ 1 ]

➳ [x-men] there aren’t any more guns in the valley (oneshot) logan, and his many lives. fox canonverse. second pov warning again lol

drabbles (aka too short to merit a spot above)

➳ psycho pass:

[ginaka] nobuchika wants to tell her something desperately

[shinkane] akane bakes. shinya flirts.

[shinkane] college au where akane is the t.a. and shinya is the professor and you fill in the blanks

[shinkane] akane and shinya become an aunt and uncle respectively 

[shinkane] if poetry, not music, be the food of love

[shinkane] that feeling you get when you get that one hug from a specific person

[shinkane] shinya comes to a realization as akane annoys him with snow

[shinkane] sibyl!akane vs. kougami

[shinkane] that one where they act like schoolchildren and annoy ginoza

[shinkane] that one where they get some fucking sleep 

[shinkane] that one where they reunite in the middle of a gunfight in the forest

[shinkane] that other au where they elope and live in a cottage

[shinkane] that vague pining shit of unresolved relationships you think about in the middle of the night

[sugino] the tragedy of martyrs and bad endings

➳ other:

[cheese in the trap] that one where in ho marvels at sul’s laughter

#. #fic. #pinned. #i'd been meaning to make this ever since pinned posts became a thing #if there are any broken or incorrect links please let me know