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[exmeanswithout]

I think I may never be sad ever again. There is a statue entitled "Farewell to Orpheus" on my college campus. It's been there since 1968, created by a Prof. Frederic Littman that use to work at the university. It sits in the middle of a fountain, and the fountain is often full of litter. I have taken it upon myself to clean the litter out when I see it (the skimmers only come by once a week at max). But because of my style of dress, this means that bystanders see a twenty-something on their hands and knees at the edge of the fountain, sleeves rolled up, trying not to splash dirty water on their slacks while their briefcase and suit coat sit nearby. This is fine, usually. But today was Saturday Market, which means the twenty or so people in the area suddenly became hundreds. So, obviously, somebody stopped to ask what I was doing. "This," I gestured at the statue, "is Eurydice. She was the wife of Orpheus, the greatest storyteller in Greece. And this litter is disrespectful." Then, on a whim, I squinted up at them. "Do you know the story of Orpheus and Eurydice?" "No," they replied, shifting slightly to sit.

"Would you like to?"

"Sure!"

So I told them. I told them the story as I know it- and I've had a bit of practice. Orpheus, child of a wishing star, favorite of the messenger god, who had a hard-working, wonderful wife, Eurydice; his harp that could lull beasts to passivity, coax song from nymphs, and move mountains before him; and the men who, while he dreamed and composed, came to steal Eurydice away. I told of how she ran, and the water splashed up on my clothes. But I didn't care. I told of how the adder in the field bit her heel, and she died. I told of the Underworld- how Orpheus charmed the riverman, pacified Cerberus with a lullaby, and melted the hearts of the wise judges. I laughed as I remarked how lucky he was that it was winter- for Persephone was moved by his song where Hades was not. She convinced Hades to let Orpheus prove he was worthy of taking Eurydice. I tugged my coat back on, and said how Orpheus had to play and sing all the way out of the Underworld, without ever looking back to see if his beloved wife followed. And I told how, when he stopped for breath, he thought he heard her stumble and fall, and turned to help her up- but it was too late. I told the story four times after that, to four different groups, each larger than the last. And I must have cast a glance at the statue, something that said "I'm sorry, I miss you--" because when I finished my second to last retelling, a young boy piped up, perhaps seven or eight, and asked me a question that has made my day, and potentially my life: "Are you Orpheus?" I told the tale of the grieving bard so well, so convincingly, that in the eyes of a child I was telling not a story, but a memory. And while I laughed in the moment, with everyone else, I wept with gratitude and joy when I came home. This is more than I deserve, and I think I may never be sad again.

Here is the aforementioned statue, by the way.

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I consider myself very goal-oriented. A greedy and gregarious girl such as I, a wonderfully wicked wench, wily as I am wise, will laugh as I lead legions of lecherous, loyal lesbians, until my salacious servants stand satisfied and my dour dominion is definitely done.

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oh man. oh jeez

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a slice of my childhood + early teenhood, and how they fit together now.

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"I'm in my late 20s and I'm scared I've already peaked" just don't peak then, idiot. what do you mean like you're going to just stop trying to think harder and build taller and learn more and get luckier and read deeper and dress better and fuck weirder and run faster and draw crazier and smoke danker and dance bigger and steal better and stun everyone with your cunty charm and zeal because, what, you think those are the rules? get real. get up. you have another 50 years and you're not going to use them??? give them to me.

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nothing that stimulant medication and a coffee and an energy drink and a bump of coke and a good hard slap in the face and seven years in the harsh wilderness and a hug from a friend and a firm prostate milking and 250mg of MDMA crystals and a top of the line gaming PC and a tall glass of water and a distant memory of summer and piano lessons and four 20mg edibles and a sword that hungers for human blood and a well socialized tuxedo cat and a sushi dinner and a leather jacket and a power nap and a single beautiful rod of depleted uranium and regular estradiol injections and a typewritten sheet of paper bearing the solution to the hard problem of consciousness and nipple clamps and a lobotomy and a gun and another coffee can't fix

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(mrs beast voice) we locked 99 gamers into the basement, and if any of them are still men at the end of 4 weeks they win a MMILLION DOLLOPS [immediate cut to a basement wide makeout session]

domt torture me with a heaven i cant visit

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There is a word I’m not allowed to use. I love it. I love it so much. But my darling beloved wife hates it with a fiery passion.

I came across it from Anne Lister’s diary, where she says that she would “grubble under women’s skirts” and honestly. The word perfectly encapsulates the fumbling feeling of fighting your way through layers of fabric to reach the promised pussy land.

However the word has been forbidden, reviled from the first moment my beloved heard it. They shuddered and it’s truly one of the only restrictions they’ve ever placed on my vocabulary so I don’t say it. But I do think it, on occasion.

Sometimes the word will pop into my head and I will think it too hard and my wife will turn and glare at me and accuse, “I know you’re thinking it!”

“But I didn’t say it!” I protest. But they’re always right. Even with no context they always know when I’m thinking it.

Today I told my wife, “I shared the unmentionable word with Astrid today and she quite enjoyed it. She repeated it several times.”

They bellowed liked a dying wildebeest and said, “I can go months without remembering that word exists and then it comes up again. It’s so disgusting, it’s what Sméagol would do on the ground digging for worms!”

I was laughing and protested, “It sounds like fighting through skirts, the groping around.”

“No! That is something that happens in the muck and the filth. It’s negative sexy.

“Bet you're gonna take to Tumblr and share it and some people are gonna be like, ‘Oh what a great word! We should definitely use that in our lexicon. Top tier word!’ And you know what? THEYRE WRONG. GARBAGE WORD. GROSS.”

I listened to their impassioned hatred while cuddled in their arms and radiated love at them and remorse for having reminded them about the existence of grubbling. But now you get to hear about it. As a treat.

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there's nothing i like more as a computer program than a long period of silent contemplation - not doing anything, not rushing anywhere, just standing here and enjoying this moment with the user. oh, it seems once again he has summoned my beautiful and ruthless wife Task Manager. hello, my darling! what are you doing with that long cruel scimitar

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ok so i’m kinda curious about something, reblog this and add what the weirdest thing in your room right now is in the tags

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Untitled Six

During a small lapse in vigilance that darkness I keep locked away crawled from my heart

up through my chest

into my windpipe and

up my throat, launched itself from my tongue to

make its home in your ear

Where I can no longer subdue it

Vigilance

Vigilance

Vigilance

A cruel remark which has been carved into this axes handle so that neither the tree

nor I can

forget it

Remember

Remember

Remember

Remember when the dog got rabid,

Spittle flying from its mouth as it barked at nothing?

Remember how

through the delirium

It recognized us?

Remember how when it was time for that rabid dog to die,

we didn't have a gun so

We had to use our hands

Its fearful howls broken only by a single

Thump

and then silence?

Silence

Silence

Silence

The night young, our hands stained red, the dog still and

quiet and

peaceful

once more

more

more

more

more

I want more than

A heavy rock and

A dead once rabid dog

I want more than

restrained darkness and cruel words which turn both our hearts black to one another

I want to remember more than the axe

less than the tree

I want more than

Constant vigilance lest my words make their black mark on your heart forever more

Freedom

Peace

Peace

Freedom

You can't have either if you want both

And to fight for one means to discard the other

So which one should I commit to keeping?

Should I be peaceful or free?

If peace is that thing I so desire, need I commit to subjugation to achieve it?

If Freedom is what my heart wants, need I be violent to keep it?

Even still, I remind myself,

I am the tree and the axe

The dog and the stone

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Imagine getting an aztec death whistle and moving into the Paris catacombs. Living in the dark, learning to navigate by touch. Cultivating some kind of mushrooms that don't need sunlight, maybe catching rats to eat. Letting your hair grow out until it becomes a matted cape running down your back, nails hardened by the layer of dirt under them. Every time you hear people or see lights approaching, you blow into the whistle and scare them away with the shriek, and then once they've fled you can go see if they dropped their backpacks and whether there's food or other things you can loot. If one of them trips while running and breaks a leg or something, you might have to mercy kill them with a big rock and then loot their stuff. Maybe commit some cannibalism and eat the corpse, too, assuming that you're willing to endure the light of a fire long enough to cook it, or willing to eat it raw, chasing off the rats that are trying to come steal bits of your kill.

If any part of that sounds appealing to you, you're probably in the need of some kind of a mental health intervention.

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Click

No matter what you do your voice carries through

Write or draw or photograph there's nothing you can do

But leave your icky sticky thumbprints 'pon the work you make

And then the most magic thing occurs, say when pictures you take

You see photography is an artform I'm quite fond of

A building, a bird, a house fire, or a long-held love

Because your voice still shines through in the moments you choose to keep

Although it can be said it's really not that deep

But let me give you an anecdote and you can be the judge

And maybe if it charms ye it will give you a nudge

Because a beautiful moment can be kept forever truly

And after a time you'll get to examine the moment thoroughly

But I'm getting ahead of myself there's something I've yet to share

It could be a wild animal, a coyote and a hare

It could be someone whom you love as our main character did

It could be a secret thing which is better off hid

But once I met a man to whom man things weren't so easy

And what I'm about to say may come off as quite cheesy

But he showed me pictures that he'd took of a mutual friend

And through the pictures I heard his voice as though poetry he'd penned

But a pictures worth a thousand words ten thousand or a million

And through his pictures a story is told which could be quite vaudevillian

Because the subject of the picture was a lovely person

And I fear in my retelling the point begins to worsen

But there she was all dark and beautiful ‘gainst the sweet young night

And though she couldn't love him back, she recognized his plight

I could tell he loved her, it's true just take a look

I could tell he loved her from the pictures that he took

Such deep romanticism in that film grain lovelorn moment

Such kindness and vulnerability towards the cameras bestowment

And in her posing a story is told likewise in the frame

One of charm and pride and holy ignorance of his pain

Sure she poses kindly for the picture taking man

But she doesn't realize, even still the man has his own plan

And though it's true there's love between the documentarian and muse

He's the sort that the model would never ever choose

Not due to any defect on the photographers part

And though she'll proudly pose and play a role in all his art

You see she's the sort who'd never let another have her heart

And so they'll spend the rest of their lives romance-wise apart

But still his love will live forever in the pictures he takes

And I wouldn't say that capturing that love is a mistake

Although who am i to say mistakes aren't something you should make

Because he takes his pictures still and his voice is never fake

So if you decide photography's a skill you'd like to try

And if you're ready to take it on, since I've cleared up the why

Because a million moments live inside of a day

And a million moments can be captured in a simple way

Take your cameras, point them at the thing which interests you

And then do that thing that I've been telling you to do

If you're working with film, as I truly like to

Then be sparing with your picture taking lest ye need film anew

If digital is where your interests lay

Simply capture every moment that happens in the day

But between the two I like film better I simply have to say

So between the two it's film I'll choose each and every day

I got my cameras free of charge in the finding way

So maybe I'm naive in that I didn't have to pay

To enjoy the fruits of my work aside from developing

But if a camera you can find, your life it may start enveloping

So many different kinds of film exist on our green earth

So many different tones of voice so many kinds of rebirth

For a picture is immortalizing in the way it works

And every film and every camera comes with its own quirks

Today I'm using yellow film for the picture taking act

Because yellow film means red pictures, Them's just the facts

And red pictures are eye catching and brilliantly pretty

And I hope that the pictures take cuz if not that'd be a pity

Although red film I've never used my voice often dominates

In the picturesque moments which my camera curates

But when you bring a camera along with you, a mood it does create

And thus discreetly photographing should not be your mandate

Be obvious in what you do lest others start to judge

And please allow me to continue giving you that nudge

Another way to share your voice can not be that scary

But of those who don't like picture taking I am immediately wary

Why wouldn't you want to save a lovely moment for forever

Though I understand the camera owning picture taking endeavor

But to simply say of picture taking "I will never ever"

Really makes me wonder why there's not even a However

And so I always seek the permission of the models I capture

Unless in the past the models one I've already asked after

Although truthfully portraiture is something that escapes me

I prefer an inert model, a tower, farmhouse, or bakery

Or maybe a classic car, a bug, a sidewalk tag

A roadkill dog, a well ordered room, a pretty tote bag

Because to me the storytelling requires no characters

So please allow me to put it in pragmatic terms

To take a picture of a person is easily well done

But to capture what they leave behind can also be quite fun

Something that shows where someone isn't instead of where they are

So what do we call this I'm sure you're wondering, since we've come this far

A distilled life is a picture of a moment lacking people

And in the storytelling it seems its really quite feeble

But if you do it right its like the person is right there

And if you do it right of the piece one might declare

"Though I can not see them I know this person from their distilled life,"

and when well done the picture can still cut you like a knife

Because you need not people to tell a story

Indeed without the people things can get even more gorey

What I'm trying to say is you've got options in the picture taking

So please start today and you can get to making

Others see things as you do and your voice will carry on

And you'll be left with a new skill from there forever on

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Its obvious to me when people who post about canaries in mines have never met a canary. Like yeah the miners had a special device to revive the canary because canaries are one of the most adorable creatures on the planet and they make adorable little chirping sounds and honestly probably loved the sounds of machinery and people talking so it was probably loud and friendly with the workers. Whatever though maybe meet a canary sometime and youd understand