#year: 1972

[motownfiction]

bravery

Everybody’s always commending Daniel on his bravery.

He remembers the first time somebody said something. He was five years old, and it was the first trip to the dentist that he could remember (and the first that he could remember dreading). His mother told him about it a week in advance, and for those seven days, he wouldn’t stop asking about cavities and drills, drills and cavities. He brushed his teeth three times a day and refused the bubblegum Will wanted to share with him at the park. When it was all over, and there were no cavities or drills, Daniel’s mother scooped him up into the biggest hug he could remember. She held him close and called him my brave little boy.

To this day, he’s not really sure why it stuck with him.

Years later, when his parents finally divorced (and his father made it clear he no longer wanted anything to do with the kids, no matter what some document from the courts said), Daniel’s mother and sister, Lola, cried all the time. They thought no one could hear them, and maybe it’s true that they couldn’t hear each other. But Daniel could hear them. He could hear them all the time. He used to take a deep breath, slowly enter one of their rooms, and ask if there was anything he could do to help. Mom always refused (“It’s not your job to take care of your mother,” she’d say, and most of the time, she’d hold herself to it.), but Lola always took it. She’d ask Daniel if they could go to Abby’s Diner and split a milkshake, the vanilla one that Abby would sprinkle Oreo crumbs on top of. They’d sit at their favorite corner table for two hours at a time, sometimes three, talking about their father and what a mess he was, how they missed him, how they were grateful that he was gone. Nobody ever understood the contradictions better than Lola.

One night, when they were getting ready to leave the diner, Lola wrapped Daniel up in a hug. It sent him right back to that day in the dentist office, ten years before. He knew what Lola was going to say before she could get out a single sound.

You’re so lucky, Daniel, she said. You’re so lucky to be brave.

Daniel thinks about that evening a lot. Often enough so that he brings it up today, in his weekly therapy session. His doctor asks why he thinks he keeps coming back to it. Daniel asks if it’s supposed to be one of those things you forget about, like what you had for lunch on the third Tuesday of February in 1982. His therapist says no, but she adds that it’s interesting he mentions 1982.

“I guess I didn’t want to have to be brave,” Daniel says. “I think … I think every kid deserves a little time to be afraid. But with my sister … and my mom … everything they … we … were going through … they needed somebody to take it.”

“Take what?” his doctor asks.

Daniel doesn’t have an answer. He looks down at his hands in his lap.

My brave little boy.

You’re so lucky to be brave.

“I don’t mind being brave,” he finally says. “I think it’s done me more good than bad.”

“But?”

Daniel sighs. He still doesn’t know. And if he does know, then there aren’t words. None of the right ones, anyway. Words are good at approximating, but not much else.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Is that OK?”

His doctor doesn’t say anything. Daniel understands.

She wants to see if he’s brave enough to answer it on his own.

(part of @nosebleedclub january challenge -- day xi!)

#drabble #writeblr #ch: daniel deluca #ch: linda deluca #ch: lola deluca #year: 1972 #year: 1982 #year: 2023

[mieczyhistory]

Christmas Eve 1972 by Don Luce

It’s    Been        a          Bleak             December

With    Nixon’s       B-52           Bombers               Bringing

Messages    of            Peace            Peace            Peace            Peace            Peace and Hanoi goes up in flames and I wonder what has happened to my friends there. 

#from both sides now: the poetry of the vietnam war and its aftermath #year: 1972 #vietpoetry

[copperbadge]

As I think most people do, I look at the year's end as a time for taking stock and evaluating life. I'm sure my ancestors, with the same rampant ADHD that I have, who regularly spent winters cooped up with their entire social network, were rethinking their life choices round about this time every year. I'm sure their loved ones deserve an honorable mention for allowing them to live long enough to eventually produce me. But the point is, I get the idea of using the quiet time between harvest and sowing to really contemplate life.

I don't make New Year's resolutions anymore, though. I was never that into them but the last one I made was to see more live shows and lectures, really get out in the world and experience in-person culture more. That was December of 2019. Seems like tempting fate to ever make another resolution after my last one was legally thwarted by a global pandemic.

These days I prefer to pick themes for years, guided by happenstance. A few years ago when I knew I could afford some home remodeling, I called it the Year of Upgrade. 2022 was the year of Completing Things. (Ironically "completing" the first shivadh novel led to a BUNCH OF STUFF MORE TO COMPLETE.) 2023 didn't really have a theme but I was dealing with a lot so the breathing room was kind of welcome.

This year it's been oddly less abstract but also more symbolic. I've been seeing a lot of mushroom imagery towards the end of the year and a TON of fire imagery -- perhaps more "heat/light" than fire, lots of candle/cookfire/forge stuff, but basically open flames as they involve creative transformation. I joked it was a year of flaming fungi to a friend and she said, "well, fire can't kill them in a way that matters either" which struck me.

I think 2024 may involve being very durable in the process of changing. Worrying, but then again are we not always on some level worried about my fragile mortal husk? I definitely am. I took some powerful (legal, medically supervised) relaxants the other day and I think I sprained a muscle in my calf from moving my leg after just...not being tense for an hour. I hurt myself by relaxing.

I know eyelids aren't supposed to twitch like this, I'm taking potassium about it, it's fine.

I did just get a clean bill of health, though. Blood tests show I'm super normal except in ways we already knew I was weird (personality, skin ph, etc).

I like to think of it as spiritual durability, anyway. Physically I'm the manifestation of a hapless gesture, but emotionally I'm a mushroom on fire, yelling encouraging threats as I speed past. Where am I going? Mind your business. Why am I screaming encouraging threats? I'm a mushroom on fire. Why, is it not working?

Anyway, happy new year. Mind how you go, my fellow flaming porcini. I'm off to cook a pot roast, tell some fortunes, and berate some ghosts.

#sam has adhd #new year #new me #in my exciting new presentation as the most metal poster in a midwestern head shop in 1972

[redlenai]

silly joke based from this tweet

#supernatural #spn #castiel #dean winchester #devilman #ryo asuka #akira fudo #that meme of tv vs book #ngl its fun spn is a tv show while dvm is originally a book #so this dumb meme fits them perfectly #angels in trenchcoats being silly and gay over bisexual righteous men #1972-1973 were gayer years than 2008-2020

[moog-enthusiast]

devilman doodling and some shitposting

#devilman #devilman manga #devilman 1972 #devilman 1987 #devilman OVA #ryo asuka #akira fudo #miki makimura #read all 5 volumes in the span of a couple hours and i really enjoy these characters #they’re goofy af!!! #love the 1987 OVA from what i’ve sent of it so far too #i’ve seen the first part and i plan to watch the other parts soon #i like ryo a lot why is satan a 17 year old blond twink? i dunno! it’s funny though

[d1sp4ru3]

#THIS LOOOOK !!!! #his influence and effervescence #jack nicholson #1972 #this was the same year he did marvin gardens #HIS RANGE

[vintagewildlife]

#do you love the color of the encyclopedia? #this is where my addiction started... i first found them 20 years ago and was instantly hooked #1972 #1970s #Encyclopedia of the Animal World (1972) #fave

[atomic-chronoscaph]

Woodstock and Snoopy are making plans for a New Year's Eve Party - by Charles Schulz (1972)

#charles schulz #the peanuts #woodstock #snoopy #new year's eve #70s comic strips #comic art #cartoon art #seventies #1972

[motownfiction]

contained

Sam is an expressive kid. From the time he learns to speak (early, too early, what twelve-week-old looks his mother in the eye and says, “Hi?”), he’s theatrical. Everything is a performance, complete with a soliloquy and a musical number. He doesn’t just feel things. He becomes them. Sam runs hotter than anyone his parents have ever known, and by the time he’s five years old, it’s clear that’s not going to change. He’s always going to be the kid who grabs his father’s guitar and makes up songs about girls in European cafés (“And she ordered a croissant! / And her name was Madeline!”). And at home, Sam is great fun. Maggie and Mike always say they don’t need to turn on their television when they have a son like that. But they know.

Sam’s starting kindergarten soon.

And if he goes to kindergarten acting the way he does in his living room, the other children are going to eat him for breakfast.

So they tell him to keep it contained. Any time he wants to sing and dance, they say, he just has to wait. Not all the time. Just at school. As soon as he gets home, he can be as loud and as silly and as theatrical as he wants to be. But at school, he can’t do any of that. At school, Sam has to keep himself contained.

They say it’s because they don’t want him causing disruptions for the other students. Sam believes it until he’s a little older, and he realizes he’s different.

Over the years, he comes back to that talk he had with his parents before the first day of kindergarten. He thinks they were just trying to help. They’d never had children before he and Sadie were born, and they didn’t want any of them to ever be bullied. Sam gets it. He gets the intention. It’s just that he also still feels the aftershocks – the anxiety, the hurt.

Any time he shows a little bit of himself in a brand new place, he feels a little ashamed. Like no one likes someone with that much personality … like no one asked for him to be so bright, so loud, so much. He tries like hell to keep it contained, just like in kindergarten and first grade and high school and when he first walked into community college. He tries so hard to shut himself up for an audience that doesn’t know what to do with him, that didn’t ask to be put in the same room as him in the first place.

Sometimes, it occurs to him to leave these people in the dust. That he doesn’t exist for them. That they don’t really care what he does.

But it doesn’t last long.

It makes him really easy to fall in love with. He has these little overtures of greatness, followed by some truly moving crescendos. When he stands in the middle of his living room and sings all the words to “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show” in his best Neil Diamond impression, the right people can’t help but love him. Sam knows. He watches it happen. He watches it time and again. And every time it starts to feel different, every time he’s pretty sure he’s lost the lid and doesn’t care, he hears his mother’s voice in the back of his mind.

Take it from me, Sammy. People don’t like people who run hot for very long.

And he pulls away. No one sticks around because Sam won’t let them. He knows he’s exhausting. He’s too bright, too loud, and too much. So he cools down for them. Wonders if that will make it better. It never works. In the end, they always move away. In the end, they always say they wish he’d fought for them.

After Valerie moves to Philadelphia, Sam thinks he should have learned by now. He’s twenty-nine, and he’s supposed to be better than this. More mature.

But he never learns.

Just keeps it contained.

(part of @nosebleedclub december challenge -- day xx!)

#drabble #writeblr #ch: sam doyle #year: 1972 #year: 1996

[flowerbloom-arts]

You know it in your heart, you know it, you know it, you know it deep in your spirit, yet you refuse.

You refuse, with your vile hatred and disgust, that Sniff would be the Onceler.

#moomins #moominvalley #art #sniff moomin #moomin sniff #onceler #onceler 1972 #moominvalley 2019 #shin moomin #I did this bc the og Lorax and Shin Moomin came out the same year #then I HAD to make a 2012 Onceler x 2019 Sniff just because (and they're both 3D reboots) #crap post

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Lamborghini Espada Series 2, 1972, by Bertone. Another of the cars that formed the 60 years of Lamborghini selection at the London Concours. Designed by Marcello Gandini, the second series Espada was introduced at the 1970 Brussels Motor Show and became the biggest selling Espada series with 575 made. Since the Espada was discontinued in 1978 Lamborghini have never made another grand touring 4-seat coupé

#Lamborghini #Lamborghini Espada #Lamborghini Espada S2 #1972 #V12 #Bertone #marcello gandini #grand tourer #London Concours #60 years of Lamborghini #60th anniversary

[tazmiilly]

the journal says that j3 was being written in 1983 and for some reason my brain hates that so much. I'm in so much denial about it. it's 1981 to me. and then ford gets portaled in 1982. to me.

#ignoring whatever the book says #to me it was 10 years exactly between ford and stan being separated and 30 years exactly between ford going through the portal and returnin #1972->1982->2012 #my brain just likes that better #need a tag for consuming media

[beatleswings]

WINGS. 1972. Photo taken by ROBERT ELLIS.

#i was gonna remove the part with the caption there but lmfaooo it's too funny i had to keep it. fashion icons #also notice denny (laine) is wearing the same pink shirt like paul and linda and many years later stella did lmfaooo #i love them #paul mccartney #linda mccartney #denny laine #denny seiwell #henry mccullough #wings #paul mccartney and wings #1970s #70s #1972 #non edits

[desertangels70s]

My beloved Carly Simon record that is originally from 1972 is ruined because the old owner loved it so much and played it constantly.

#carly simon #it's sweet to think that somebody loved it so much #it was only $3 but I rescued it <3 #it was originally from 1972 which is so cool #i love finding records that came out during that year #vintage records

[searchsystem]

Otl Aicher / National Olympic Committee (NOC) / Munich 1972 – Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year / Printed Matter / 1972

#otl aicher #national olympic committee #noc #munich 1972 #merry christmas and a happy new year #printed matter #1972 #typography

[bobdylan-n-jonimitchell]

Joni Mitchell "You Turn Me On, I'm A Radio" accompanied by Neil Young & The Stray Gators—Archives, Vol. 3: The Asylum Years (1972-1975).

#Joni Mitchell #Neil Young #The Stray Gators #Neil Young & The Stray Gators #You Turn Me On I'm A Radio #1972 #1970s #Audio #Joni Mitchell Audio #2023 #For The Roses (1972) #Joni n Neil #Archives Volume 3 #Archives Volume 3: The Asylum Years (1972 1975)