#or that letters and words were something separate from the abstraction they become

[motsimages]

Best thing of having kids around is that you completely forgot the experiences they are going through. You may remember some detail or some moment, but very often, it's just not there. And then you spend time with a kid who is learning something and you go "I was like that too once, I did that mistake". You don't remember, but you know you must have walked that path in a very similar way.

[mothhball]

If There's No End

Pairing | Jonathan Crane x Reader

Warnings | DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT!!! MAJOR CHARACTER DE*TH – Reader d*es! ANGST, HURT, NO COMFORT, CANN*BALISM, do NOT read if any of this feels too uncomfortable!! Jon is very, very delusional in this, drugging, lobotomy, established relationship, again - CANN*BALISM. (tumblr wants me to censor this :'] )

Summary | Jonathan reminisces about your shared life and the day you found out his secret.

Words | 2.7k

Notes | Don’t yell at me for this, you’ve been warned! Not proofread, please don’t beat me up.

@kiss-me-cill-me welp, this is the cannibalism fic lmao bon appetit

Jonathan never thought he’d know guilt. But now that he’s hunched over on his knees, digging through the mud with trembling hands, he suspects that this might be it. His vision is still blurry. Has been for the past few hours. The tears have turned his world into a faded, abstract mess, like a child’s chalk drawings that are in the middle of being washed away by the rain. If it had been anyone else, he would have settled for the large dump of hazardous waste behind ACE Chemicals. But not in this case. Never in this case.

Jonathan never thought he’d grow to respect another person, but you crashed into his life with an earth-shattering intensity that nearly made his knees give out as soon as you turned to greet him. Hi. Two letters, one syllable. And it affected him in such a profound way that his ears still burn at the memory. Even during that first fleeting conversation, he felt as if the edges of his person began to become cloudy. Desperate to merge with yours until there was no end and no beginning to the two of you as separate people. Until flesh and bone and viscera were a shared commodity between him and you. A fever dream with the appropriate symptoms. Some nights he woke from a beautiful dream, a fantasy in which the two of you were irrevocably merged into one being. And on those nights, hot tears of disappointment and anger burned so harshly on his cheeks that he expected his sheets to sizzle where the drops fell.

It was love. It had to be. And when the universe finally relented to the prayers and wishes he whispered until his throat became hoarse, his life exploded with color. Fleeting glances and coy small talk managed to bloom into something more, something deeper and more intimate than Jonathan’s analytical vocabulary could ever fully explain. You loved him in a way that was entirely foreign to him. Unconditional and patient. You just… got him. Without even trying to. Your gaze traveled past skin and ribs down to his very heart and soul, and you didn’t turn away. But you didn’t know everything back then. How could you? He was so secretive about everything involving his studies. Sometimes, he couldn’t resist the temptation of monologuing about fear and its shackles on humanity. But that was all he was willing to share with you. He granted you a microscopic detail of the true extend of his passion. A laughably small excerpt of his obsession.

Jonathan never thought he’d know love. But you proved him wrong with every smile, every whisper of praise, every tender touch upon his skin.

He knows how cliché it is to claim that settling down with someone never occurred to him before he met you, but it's the truth. In a life that was filled with hurt and contempt, you were the first to take a chance on him. Undeterred by his sometimes standoffish nature and cold attitude, you pressed onwards until he cracked, revealing the mush that you've managed to melt him into.

A future with you was worth everything he had endured up to that point. The plan was to graduate, find jobs and get hitched immediately. He wanted to put his last name on you, give you a part of himself that you would take wherever you went.

The first two steps were already completed with him getting a PhD and a professorship, that he quickly lost again, somewhere in the middle. Aside from a few mishaps and arguments about his attitude towards his patients at Arkham, all seemed right in paradise.

Often, the two of you would lie awake at night, talking about your future while you played with his fingers. "I'd like to get married in Spring," you said. And he just nodded, already imagining your bright smile when he'd put the ring on your finger. On those nights, the urge to become one often overtook him, and he rolled on top of you to devour you in a different way. In hindsight, he should've told you. Given you a chance to see the true extend of his rotten soul. You already knew so much about him, yet you still wanted a life with him. You often said how much you craved the mundane with him. Lazy Sunday mornings, standing in line to get groceries, gossiping about your neighbors in the quiet part in the outskirts Gotham City that you wanted to move to. He should've told you about the toxin he keeps stashed away in his office, no more than 15 feet behind the pillow you rested your pretty head on.

He didn't dare to think about what could've been. No, he made the right decision. Surely.

He still remembers your wide eyes. The way the color vanished from your complexion as you turned towards him with his mask in your hands. He remembers how wrong the burlap looked, crushed between your beautiful fingers. You asked him to explain, even though you were already tearing up just by looking at him. Jonathan was always convinced that he could read you like a book, but in that moment, he doubted himself. And he panicked. From one second to the next, he lunged at you, putting you into a headlock that constricted the blood flow to your brain, and you wheezed and wailed for him to stop, but he couldn’t. If he let go, you’d let yourself be ruled by secondary emotions. Emotions like betrayal and heartbreak that threatened to overshadow the deep, deep love you felt for him. It was an act of mercy for both of you. So, he held you until your struggling stopped, and your consciousness slipped away. It always takes longer in real life than in the movies. And he cried with you. God, did he cry, soaking your hair with his tears as he choked you into a blackout.  

You were out for ten minutes. Ten agonizing minutes which he used to prepare for what needed to be done. Your happiness was his happiness, so he had to do something to take your mind off of the situation. Or any situation for that matter. He has never done this before, but the thought of desperate measures during desperate times, didn’t give him the opportunity to hesitate. A local anesthetic and a muscle relaxant would suffice, he decided as he rushed to gather the equipment. By the time you came to, he was already straddling your torso, leaning over you with fresh tears in his eyes. As you began to silently panic, Jonathan was quick to try and shush you. Oh, how it hurt him more than it hurt you. The lobotomy set was a Christmas gift from you. A tongue-in-cheek nod to the history of the profession he chose. It was fate. It had to be.

The tip of the ice pick-like instrument felt cold against your eye socket, and he clenched his teeth at the shiver that ran down your spine. His hands were violently shaking already, and your involuntary movements didn’t make it any better.

“Shh… shh… don’t move, angel… It’ll… it’ll be so quick, I promise.”

Another sob wrecked through his body as he lifted the delicate metal hammer.

“You need to try and sing for me, okay? Or hum. Or anything. I need… I need to know when it’s deep enough. Just try, angel. Just try, okay?”

Jonathan’s voice was as shaky as the grip on the instruments. But by God, he had to do this. He had to keep you by his side. His other half, his future, his everything. The vessel of every passion and love he poured into you. You just stared up at him through watery eyes, unable to open your mouth anymore, so you settled for humming. It was a nonsensical melody, a mish-mash of several nursery rhymes without a title. The first strike of the hammer against the orbitoclast caused an incredible pressure to spread in your skull, and black spots settled in your vision as the tip of the instrument breached bone. The crack was nauseating, but you couldn’t even struggle. Jonathan’s breathing became heavy, and he wheezed out a sob that sounded like it came from a dying animal when he saw the blood that began to fill your eye. But he had to continue.

“Just like that. Just like that, angel.”

With trembling hands, he prepared himself for the second strike, but he underestimated the adrenaline that his blackened heart was pumping through his veins. Something went wrong, his sweaty hands slipped off the equipment, skewing the angle of the pick when he hit it. And he hit it hard. Immediately, your humming stopped and turned into stuttered noises. A bead of clear fluid dripped from your nose, rolling down over your lips. This wasn’t blood.

The crushing realization that he messed up caused Jonathan to freeze entirely. Cerebrospinal fluid was leaking out of your nose at a quick rate, sending him into a blind panic. He tried to pull the pick from your eye, causing even more damage to your precious brain. A brain that was meant to love, not hurt. But here you are, wasting away before his very eyes. You’re suffering beneath him like a bird that hit a window in a curious attempt to explore. And you did explore.

Back in his childhood, he once found an injured crow in the shade of the family house. The poor thing was twitching and bleeding, much like you are now. Jonathan remembered the crushing emotions that he felt when he looked at the animal. And he also remembered the feeling when his grandmother put it out of its misery by crushing the crow’s head under her shoe like it was nothing. Like it was nothing. You weren’t nothing, but you still deserved that brand of mercy.

He doesn’t remember how he did it. Whether he wrapped his hands around your throat or injected you with enough muscle relaxant to put you down. In fact, he doesn’t remember much of the first night of complete silence. When he emerged from the blur, his throat felt raw from sobbing, and his eyes were swollen and red. He had left the room that contained your body immediately, fearing that he’d catch fire from stepping into a place that had been consecrated by the death of an angel. Eventually, after he had bitten his lips bloody and used up every tear in his eyes, he dared to face you again. And God, were you still so beautiful. And as ashamed as he was for thinking this way, there was also a positive to this. A big one at that. You would always be his. No one else would ever get the privilege of seeing your eyes or hearing your voice again. You truly belonged to him in every way. And as he stepped over to kneel besides your body and take your hand in his, he actually smiled. It was just the two of you. Like you always planned.

It was a grueling process. To strip skin from flesh, and flesh from bone. But he was patient. Patient in the same way that you were with him. Patient in a tender, saccharine way that made his insides squirm as if he was infested by maggots. But the only parasite inside of him was love. That's how it works, right? You can never truly get rid of it.

Once the bones were clean, he had to step back for a while. The impending loneliness made him stumble into the bathroom to vomit into the toiled bowl. For a good 30 minutes, he sat there. Doubled over and white-knuckling the porcelain. There was no disgust involved. Just fear. God, he was terrified of being alone again. Terrified of truly losing the one thing he couldn't breathe without. And as he sat there, heaving like a dog, he found a solution.

He ate your heart first.

Every bite, every mashing of teeth against teeth was an act of love. He had to pause a few times, chuckling at himself for his choice. How cheesy it was to go for the heart first. But how could he not? Even Jonathan wasn't immune to symbolism. It wasn't about taste or texture. It was about the growing sensation of having his stomach filled. Of having his hunger satiated by forming an everlasting connection with you. You would never be wearing his wedding ring, but you'd be with him forever in a different way. You'd be his until the day that he died. And even then, he hoped, your spirits would be so entangled that there was no way of separating the two of you. Maybe you'll get reincarnated as one soul together.

Over the course of three weeks, he forced himself to consume as much of you as he possibly could, setting the table for two since you were there as well. It always started off tame. He tried to savor the feeling of becoming one, but at some point, his composure always cracked, and he ate your body like he was a starving animal trying to fill the never-ending pit inside of him. The part that hurt him more than anything, though, was crafting a story. In the process of keeping you to himself, he had to ruin your reputation.

It was easy for others to believe. Of course, you would leave Jonathan for someone else. Most people in your small circle secretly never believed that this relationship would last. It was easy to make them believe something they had already expected to happen at some point. In this crafted lie, you went off to live with someone else, far away from Gotham. But in reality, you were always here with him. Beneath his skin that now became your own.

Jonathan never thought he’d feel peace. But now, that he has finished digging this hole in Gotham Central Park, he thinks he’s gotten pretty close. It has started to rain a few minutes ago, but he’s not bothered. In his mind, it’s your doing. Your loving attempt to wash the sin and guilt from his body. Because you know the depths of his devotion, know the intend behind his actions. This isn’t the first hole he has dug since the two of you became one. But it’s the final one. Back when he was confronted with the reality of what to do with your bones, he decided to do what you would want. You always were the romantic in the relationship, so he decided to leave your remains in places that were significant to the both of you.

His hands aren’t shaking anymore, as he pulls the plastic bag that he brought closer to himself. The material shreds quickly as his fingers tear through it, and he pulls it open to reveal the last pieces of your previous body. A tender smile spreads over his face as he reaches into the bag to pull out the bones of your fingers and wrists, remembering how he tore off the flesh and skin with his teeth. Your loving touch would always be with him. Carefully, he lowers everything into the hole he dug before he turns to the final piece. Tears of relief well up in his eyes as he gazes upon the empty sockets of your lovely skull. With the caution and gentleness of a mother setting down her newborn, he places your skull into the earth, whispering promises of everlasting love under his breath. This isn’t the end. Far from it. Once he wipes his eyes with his sleeve, he notices something else. It takes a moment to dislodge one of your molars from your jawbone, but Jonathan eventually manages. The piece of ivory bone almost seems to glow in the dim light that’s being casted by a distant street lamp. It’s your tooth. You share his now, so there’s no need for it anymore. But it’s one last piece of your smile.

And in a final act of completion, he swallows it.

[reflectedthings]

5839-1304-24xG

[what if people lived in the worst mall you ever saw and it was also in space]

The notes they gave me are sparse. A string of letters and numbers, some keywords, a brief description of the tragedy coached in the most clinical terms I can imagine. 5839-1304-24xG, off-planet, single community, no survivors, maintenance issue, avoidable.

It’s the avoidable part that gets me. How do you define that? What criteria do they have for what makes something a regrettable tragedy, instead of a unavoidable one? Are they not all dead either way?

The scientist showing me around gave me the abstract of the situation, the facts they’ve found all compiled into a single narrative of destruction: a moon base, populated by the rich who wanted off-planet when things started to get unpleasant there. Records indicate the base operated as intended for a few decades, but as inflow of new residents and new resources stalled, the operations equipment began to need more and more repairs it was deemed too expensive to justify.

Root cause of the destruction: failure of an airlock in the maintenance area, leading to violent depressurization of a room containing essential equipment.

Horrified, I asked if that meant that they’d lost all their air. The scientist said yes, but that the real issue was the violent drop in temperature which had a cascading effect on their systems, one shutting down after another.

The real answer is that everyone had enough time to know they were going to die, and not enough time to do anything to prevent it.

Walking the halls is at once the most luxurious and most horrifying experience of my life. We start in the residents area, where the agency’s off-shoot transport created the discovery link. The first room is a lovely, wide open space—an indoor park with a small pond in the center, plants and benches all around the area, and a huge skylight looking up into open space. I can see the Earth, or at least what I presume is the Earth—it’s dark, and the small sliver I can see, where the sunlight hits, is covered in a layer of reflective clouds.

I look away. The park is a more pleasant sight, though barely so. The pond is completely empty, water evaporating into the vacuum that the base has become. The plants that remain have been desiccated, long dead and completely withered. The human bodies—well. They look much the same.

“You didn’t move them?” I ask, trying to avoid looking at the nearest example; a figure wearing jogging clothes that lies next to a sealed door, along with two other figures that seem to also have been trying to escape through the same passage.

“We’re just here to record,” says my guide, laying a hand on my shoulder and ushering me along. “This way; you need to see the epicenter.”

We walk through several hallways and down a surprising number of stairwells. The halls are all ornately decorated; some have plush red carpet and gold light fixtures and rows of residence doors that reminds me eerily of a dozen different hotels I've stayed in, others are more open and lined with open-concept offices or shops. One is a skybridge, where a thin layer of glass and steel is all that separates those who walk it from the bare, open desolation of the moon.

They have street signs, which I focus on more thanks to them being slightly above eye level than due to any real interest in what they say. Some are major cities back on Earth, some are references to the stars or the solar system, others are names I don’t recognize but my guide says are to thank major investors in the project.

The base itself is a maze. There are maps at every intersection and stairwell—at least according to the lettering on the blank, burnt-out panels—but I doubt I’d be able to find my way around even if they were still functional. Instead, I stare at the back of my guide’s protective gear and start coming up with the words to describe how massive and hollow and strikingly claustrophobic this empty shell of a place feels. I try to imagine it as it would have been, how the figures now lying scattered and terrifyingly preserved would have looked living their lives, but I can’t. There’s an air of unreality to it all, even as I step over the detritus of the lives that once lived it.

It becomes clear, eventually, when we get to the epicenter of the issue. One stairwell begins in an office block that is slightly more cramped than the others and ends in much dingier room lined with pipes and burnt out led panels, a sudden transition not unlike stepping backstage in a theatre. There’s rust on the pipes and stains on the walls and rubber mats falling apart on the floors, the wear and tear necessarily for the luxury above us.

These hallways are narrower, more uncomfortable. The further we walk along them the more signs of destruction I see; wires hanging loose, pipes pulled from the wall, glass lying shattered on the floor. Eventually we enter a large hanger-type room. One wall is completely gone; a large round door that presumably one stood in the center of that wall can be seen in the distance. The hanger itself has been completely trashed with the sudden depressurization; vehicles lying on their sides, storage scattered every-which-way and pulled out onto the surface.

Compared to the silent devastation of the rest of the base, this blatant destruction comes as a relief.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” My guide asks, and she points to various parts of the hanger. There is the original flaw in the design that routine inspections should have caught but didn’t. There is the part of the backup oxygen system that froze over. There is the electrical fault that killed the grid and didn’t turn the backup generator on in time. Over there is the temperature indicator that relied on another system that also got lost somewhere in the cascade.

I can’t follow all the details, but I don’t really need to.

“I think I’m good,” I say, cutting her off. “I have what I need.”

“It’s all in the report anyways,” she agrees. “Quite fascinating, really, when you see the mechanical details next to the memos breaking down the decisions by the people in charge.”

I just nod. I think I know what they mean by ‘avoidable’, now. That doesn’t make anything I’ve seen any easier to grapple with.

What a waste.

*

After, when I submit my preliminary description to the agency for review, the director who hired me swings by for a chat.

Can you flesh it out a bit, he asks, quick to clarify that they liked what I did, they just wanted a little more… connection, to what I’d seen.

“Each off-shoot is its own world,” he says, excited, face lit up with his passion for his work. “We want to emphasize that, how close and yet how far each of they are to the world that we know.”

It’s important, he clarifies, for the agency to be able to show the real impact of its work to the public.

The next off-shoot they’d like me to write about will have a team headed there next week. They look forward to seeing what I make of it.

[theresattrpgforthat]

Hello! I’m looking for a game where you play as dying gods in a world that has mostly forgotten them. Do you know of such a thing?

Thank you!

THEME: Dying Gods

Friend, I am holding your hands lovingly. How did you manage to ask about a very specific game that I designed? 

(Don’t worry, it won’t just be shameless self-promotion).

Forgotten Gods, by quinnntastic.

you are gods.infinite, all encompassing,Forgotten.

Forgotten gods, trapped,adrift in the cosmos,left behind by a societythat no longer wanted you.

but you weren't Forgotten alone.

~*~

FORGOTTEN GODS is a game about otherness and clutching each other tightly in the face of the uncaring.

write letters to each other. remember who you were, who you are, who you will become. 

This is a single-page, slightly abstract, epistolary game. It gives your characters a beginning set-up: that you are gods, forgotten by your people, who have only each-other to talk to. A game that works very well for two players, it’s a great start for pairs of friends who may find it difficult to keep in touch across time zones. There is very little in terms of game structure; however, if all you need is a premise by which the two of you can write little pieces of fiction for each-other, this might be a neat little place to start.

If you bought the TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Texas, or the TTRPGs for Trans Rights in Florida bundle, you already own this game!

Mischief by Moonlight, by Mint-Rabbit (me!).

You are small gods, stolen away by colonizers inside the everyday items of those whom you loved. Your artifacts have been repainted, refurbished, and reconstructed until you hardly resemble your former selves, and you have found yourselves among other relics, closed up in glass cases,  temperature-controlled archives, or stuffed on top of a collector's shelf. 

However, some small remnant of your old magic remains. It is not grand or powerful, and it doesn't last nearly as long as it used to, but it's enough to do something about your current situation - whether that be haunting the museum, aiding other small spirits, or moving your artifacts to a different location. 

Mischief by Moonlight is an ode to all of the artifacts sitting in places like the British Museum that have no right to be there. You play as small deities, separated from the peoples who venerated them, bound to everyday objects that a museum has put on display. You’ve been separated from nearly everything and everyone that gave you power - but you haven’t diminished into nothingness. 

This game uses the VRBS system, by David Garrett, which consists of assigning action words to your characters, along with three tally-boxes per word. Failure will propel your character forward in that each failed roll allows you to either add a tally to a verb of your choice, or to add a new verb to the list of things your character can do. Your small gods will navigate different rooms of the museum, in an effort to help out other deities, haunt the staff, or whatever else your heart desires. 

If you like random roll tables, easy-to-learn rules, or if you just like the idea of poking fun at the British Museum, this game might be for you!

The Dying of the Light, by Keith D Edinburgh.

You are a God. 

For millennia, you have been worshipped faithfully, your powers striking awe into the hearts and minds of your followers. 

But something is changing. Your Followers have heard of a new way. The Age of Reason is dawning. Can you keep the flame of your divinity alive in the face of this unknowable threat?

The Dying of the Light is a one page roleplaying game for 2 or more players.

This game is only one page, and carries a simple collection of rules. It uses d4’s, d6’s and d8’s, and tracks the popularity of gods over a century. There’s not a lot of flavour for this game, so I think it might be a good companion to a larger game, especially if the game decides to check in on the world (and the effect the Gods have on it) over large periods of time. Otherwise, your group might have to work a bit to add a larger story - describing each act of the gods, inserting events that cause followers to fall away, etc.

[hamsterboos]

Shining in the Darkness

I've had to rework this plot about 3 times because I started this earlier this year and then restarted it a few weeks ago and then re-restarted it yesterday lmao I hope you guys like it

Word Count: 1699

Read on AO3

Rowaelin Month Masterlist

Day 13 of Rowaelin Month Prompt: Florist/Tattoo shop AU

~~~~~~~~

“Ugh,” Aelin groaned, “look at them pretending to be all high and mighty with their all-black, emo, punk tattoo shop.” She turned away from them in annoyance, instead taking in the bright and beautiful flowers around her.

“I mean, I hope you didn’t expect a tattoo shop to be all sunshine and rainbows,” Elide laughed as she wiped down the counter where bouquets were made.

Aelin sent her a withering glance. “You’re only saying that because you’ve been staring at Mr. Tall-and-Dark ever since they started moving in.”

Elide sent her a sweet smile in response. “As if you haven’t been staring at Mr. Tall-and-Blond? Plus, this is the perfect opportunity to go get that tattoo you’ve been talking about for ages.” Elide gasped and suddenly pointed the rag at her, “You should go by and give them a welcome present! It’ll brighten that dreary place up too!”

Aelin glared at her, “Don’t you have some work to do?”

“Uh-huh, sure, kick your favorite cousin out for having such a brilliant idea.”

Aelin rolled her eyes at her, “Aedion’s going to take offense to that. Technically, you aren’t even my cousin.”

“I don’t care, and Aedion can suck it,” Elide cackled. “Go get them one of the potted plants. Probably a succulent or two, since it doesn’t look like they can keep anything else alive,” she said as she walked into the storeroom to take inventory.

Aelin sighed as she turned back around to watch the two men wipe down the clear glass panels and windows of the store. Her floral shop, Kingsflame Florals, was right across from The Cadre, a tattoo shop that was apparently opening tomorrow, and she was understandably frustrated at how everytime she looked out her own shop’s glass panels, she saw the dark and gloomy exterior of The Cadre. There was enough darkness in her own brain over the last few years after her parents had passed away that she didn’t exactly need to see it constantly as soon as she looked out of her shop, but Aelin also knew that it was strictly her problem and that she really couldn’t take it out on the shop owners.

Elide was right, though. The only decent thing about the entire place was the fact that there was a Mr. Tall-and-Blond, except his hair glinted so brightly under the sunlight that it looked almost like platinum silver. Even from across the street, she could see his muscles rippling under his black shirt as he wiped down the windows, (this man did not care about the burning sunlight, and she had no idea how he could bear it), and Aelin could see the vague swirls of a tattoo down his arm and on the back of his neck. If she was being honest, she wanted to go see the design up close, maybe get some inspiration for what she wanted, but did she really want to deal with all that doom and gloom?

As she chewed on her lip, she decided that maybe her parents were worth facing that - and she would never admit it, but Elide was onto something with giving them succulents -, and so she turned back around and picked up one of their potted succulents that was there especially for the store. Aelin grabbed their water sprayer, gave it a few spritzes, fluffed her open hair, smoothed down her blouse, and walked out the store.

“Hey, neighbor,” she called out as she crossed the road. Aelin was definitely feeling slightly intimidated by how black everything was, but she could deal. She was out of her emo-depressed phase after her parents had died, and a black tattoo shop couldn’t change that.

The dark-haired man wasn't there, but the man with the silver hair turned around, and she was weirdly excited to realize that he had bright green eyes. It was like a surprise of sorts - the man who seems to prefer black had silver hair and green eyes, exactly the opposite of his personality. He was incredibly attractive, though. Gorgeous eyes, pretty hair, sharp jawline, and the tattoo swirling up his neck, almost creeping up his jaw.

“Hello,” he responded, a slight tilt to his words thanks to an accent. Aelin blinked at first, trying to remember how to breathe again because holy crap, the man was suddenly even more attractive, and this was so not fair.

She put on her best, charming smile as she responded, “Welcome to the street. Your shop looked a bit too doom-and-gloom so I decided to bring over some flowers from my shop!”

He raised an eyebrow as he looked at the plant in her hands. “Doom and gloom?”

“Well, yeah, your entire shop is black, which is quite an achievement honestly. How do you make something so dark when the front part of the shop is entirely glass which lets all this sunlight in?” she joked, but from the way his lips turned down into a scowl, she figured he didn’t exactly share the same sentiments.

“It’s a tattoo shop,” he stated in a manner-of-fact tone, “so yes, it’s a lot of black.”

“Um, right,” she awkwardly responded, her bravado effectively gone, “I just wanted to come by and give you a succulent to keep at the desk. I’m Aelin, by the way, I own Kingsflame Florals.”

He looked down at the plant again before looking back up at her. “I figured you owned the shop, but I’m Rowan. You can come in, if you want, and show me the prime location for that so it doesn’t look all doom-and-gloom.”

“You’re not going to let that go, are you?”

“Not at all,” he responded with a wry smirk on his face. He opened the door to the shop, and she followed him inside, immediately blasted with the cold air from the air conditioner.

She took the chance to look around the shop, and she was taken aback by the variety of designs posted around the walls. There were the simple designs like flowers, birds, dreamcatchers, and butterflies, while there were also insanely intricate designs of swirls and lines that created abstract art and distinct images, and all of it was just pure talent.

"These designs are beautiful," she breathed, setting the succulent down near the computer.

"Thanks," he replied, leaning an arm against the desk. "Interesting?" he asked, and Aelin could tell from his expression that he expected her to say no.

"Yes, actually," she replied with satisfaction as she watched Rowan's eyes widen slightly. "My cousin says that your shop opening up here is a prime opportunity for me to get the tattoo I've been talking about for ages."

"What’s stopping you from becoming our first customer then?" Rowan asked. Aelin shrugged.

"Lack of inspiration, I suppose?"

"Any ideas about what you want it to be?” Aelin shook her head, to which Rowan continued, “A reason behind getting the tattoo might help with the overall design.”

"We're not that close for me to share that part of my life with you."

"Really? I'd say these past five minutes makes us best friends," he spoke, leaning into her, mischief shining in his eyes.

Stifling a snort, Aelin rolled her eyes. “You should already know my tragic backstory then.”

“Same for you, Ms. Flowers,” he responded.

“No, but you see, I never claimed to be your best friend.”

“Ouch, that hurt,” he responded, a hand covering his heart with fake pain. Aelin’s lips quirked upwards at that with the realization that they had been leaning into each other during that entire conversation, and she was flirting with this man. She hadn’t even noticed how dark everything around her was because within that darkness was this man with bright green eyes that reminded her of pine trees from back home and silver hair that glowed like the moon,

“Fair enough,” she laughed lightly. “It’s for my parents. The shop was actually my mom’s idea for something to keep them busy after they retired, but they, uh, died in a car accident a few years ago. They never got to open it, so I did,” she said, looking out the clear panels to her own shop. It was years of hard work and pain, but she’d gotten through it. “I always wanted to get a tattoo, but now it’s more for them.”

She looked back at Rowan and was surprised to see that there wasn’t any pity shining in his eyes. No, it was understanding and compassion. He understood her decision, and it wasn’t something a lot of people were able to relate to. They would simply pass it off as a nice gesture she wanted to do, but it went deeper than that. It was a way to ensure she would never be separated from her parents, and from the way Rowan had let himself smile genuinely in front of her, she knew he understood.

“The tattoo you were staring at earlier,” he started, pointing a finger at his neck, and Aelin flushed realizing that she hadn’t been as subtle as she thought she was, “is about my wife and daughter that had passed away, also in a car accident. I understand your need to connect to them, so how about I draw something for you? You can take a look at it and make any adjustments as needed, but I can help you start off with something.”

Aelin looked at him, and she slowly exhaled a breath because maybe this was exactly what she needed. “Okay. I wanted it on my ribcage, if that works?”

“Yeah, of course, just be aware that you will have to at least take your shirt off,” he teased, and Aelin was so shocked that she barked out a laugh.

“Wow, Rowan, at least buy my dinner first.”

“Happily,” he replied.

Aelin sent him a bright smile, and she knew that she was never going to live it down from Elide that she had gone to the tattoo shop with the intentions of giving the grumpy men a succulent and had instead left with the man’s phone number and a beautiful tattoo design amazingly created with Old Language letters and a Kingsflame flower.

[tabletoptrinketsbyjj]

Trinkets, 39: Interesting baubles, semi magical objects and items touched by mystery.

An umbilical cord in a neat wooden box, lined with velvet. The cord itself has small, glassy eyes over its surface.

A disc of black iron four inches across and almost an inch thick, set with raised sigils around the edge, one side having a leather cover held in place by a strap. If the cover is removed a spiraling set of sigils is revealed, each like a twisted spider and there is something deeply unwholesome in the way they hold the eye and seemed to writhe. Touching the sigils underneath the cover creates feeling of extreme pain as if the disc was white hot iron. The feelings dissipate the second the disc isn’t making direct contact with skin.  

An iron bracelet shaped like a coiled serpent with rhodochrosite eyes.

A simple looking box made of plain, unstained and untreated pine boards. The box is two feet high, three feet wide and one foot deep, and has horrific pictures of undead silhouettes burned on the outside of it. The lid is attached by a simple brass hinge and bears foul necromantic symbols. Inside, the box holds ashes that look suspiciously like cremation remains.

A roll of old bandages that has been inked with strange pictograms.

An unusual standing lamp made of brass sporting a vented wheel over top of its wick and a number of crystal chimes along its outer edges. When lit, the rising hot air from the flame slowly turns the wheel which has a number of outward reaching pins which strike the chimes creating soothing tinkling noises, while the light refracting from the crystals creates a rosy glow. While much more suited for an upscale pleasure den, the lamp is sturdy enough for travel if carefully wrapped in fabric beforehand. The lamp will burn for six hours on a flask (One pint) of oil.

A pewter goblet with dark and rancid blood lurking within. The lip is black and caked where it appears others have tasted from it. Scratched deep into the pewter are the words "Taste My Fear."

A vest fashioned from the hide of a large darkhaired ape.

A gallon jug of thick smoky glass wrapped in braided twine. The container is filled with a potent liquor strong enough to strip paint from wood. Only the eldest brigands of the wildlands know the secret to distilling a libation so pure. The devout have no need of drink, but vagabonds always thirst for more. One who consumes this superior moonshine feels they can take on the world and is filled with resolve.

A demonic gnoll totem of gold and silver coins hammered and nailed into a chunk of wood topped with a sheep skull.

—Keep reading for 90 more trinkets.

—Note: The previous 10 items are repeated for easier rolling on a d100.

An umbilical cord in a neat wooden box, lined with velvet. The cord itself has small, glassy eyes over its surface.

A disc of black iron four inches across and almost an inch thick, set with raised sigils around the edge, one side having a leather cover held in place by a strap. If the cover is removed a spiraling set of sigils is revealed, each like a twisted spider and there is something deeply unwholesome in the way they hold the eye and seemed to writhe. Touching the sigils underneath the cover creates feeling of extreme pain as if the disc was white hot iron. The feelings dissipate the second the disc isn’t making direct contact with skin.  

An iron bracelet shaped like a coiled serpent with rhodochrosite eyes.

A simple looking box made of plain, unstained and untreated pine boards. The box is two feet high, three feet wide and one foot deep, and has horrific pictures of undead silhouettes burned on the outside of it. The lid is attached by a simple brass hinge and bears foul necromantic symbols. Inside, the box holds ashes that look suspiciously like cremation remains.

A roll of old bandages that has been inked with strange pictograms.

An unusual standing lamp made of brass sporting a vented wheel over top of its wick and a number of crystal chimes along its outer edges. When lit, the rising hot air from the flame slowly turns the wheel which has a number of outward reaching pins which strike the chimes creating soothing tinkling noises, while the light refracting from the crystals creates a rosy glow. While much more suited for an upscale pleasure den, the lamp is sturdy enough for travel if carefully wrapped in fabric beforehand. The lamp will burn for six hours on a flask (One pint) of oil.

A pewter goblet with dark and rancid blood lurking within. The lip is black and caked where it appears others have tasted from it. Scratched deep into the pewter are the words "Taste My Fear."

A vest fashioned from the hide of a large darkhaired ape.

A gallon jug of thick smoky glass wrapped in braided twine. The container is filled with a potent liquor strong enough to strip paint from wood. Only the eldest brigands of the wildlands know the secret to distilling a libation so pure. The devout have no need of drink, but vagabonds always thirst for more. One who consumes this superior moonshine feels they can take on the world and is filled with resolve.

A demonic gnoll totem of gold and silver coins hammered and nailed into a chunk of wood topped with a sheep skull.

A shard of a mirror that shows strange shadows in its reflections.

A bizarre, metallic lump of iridescent crystals of concentric geometric shapes expanding outward in rough steps. Knowledgeable PC's can identify the mineral as bismuth.

A small silver dish inscribed with a smiling moon that will fill with fresh milk or food when placed in front of kittens, orphans, and kindly old half-blind men.

A black glass orb eight inches in diameter, that appears to have octopus tentacles that reach to grasp the inside of the sphere. Often, they separate, revealing one large cephalopod eye.

A steel mirror set in a fanged maw of iron.

A mask made from white ceramic in the round shape of a cherubic human child’s face. The lips are painted bright red and the hair deep black. The eyes are blank and empty.

A one gallon cask of Well Wishes Whisky that has a smooth finish and a warm, golden scent. This whisky is distilled from an ancient wishing well and rumor has it that the liquor grants people luck when drunk. Knowledgeable PC’s have heard that it is especially popular among students at the Wizard Academy during exam time.

A mage’s rod made of the smoothest black wood. It stands about three feet in height and had a base of five inches or so. At the top held by four intertwining pieces of silver ivy is held a crystal orb.

A set of pewter tankards, five in all, which have various pictures of historic castles and their coats of arms. On the back of each tankard is a verse which, if deciphered, will reveal a ribald and amusing fact about the holders of the coats of arms.

A small leather pouch, about the size of a book. Unfastened, it reveals inside several sheets of fine writing paper, a wooden stylus, a wax tablet, two quills and a pen-knife plus a small bottle of ink. A careful examination of one of the sheets of paper will reveal that it bears the impression of what was written on the sheet above it (now long gone). This will be the first half of a letter that gives some tantalizing hints regarding a mystery of the DM’s choosing.

A tall, black hat of a witchfinder, inside the hat is sewn the name Erasmus Pottingley.

A roughly circular slab of obsidian an inch thick, or thereabouts, and just the right size to be cradled comfortably in one's palms. Roughly shaped around its circumference, though one broad side is simply stone-pecked to a slightly convex, pitted surface the other has been polished to such a high degree that the surface is unblemished as still water. Perfectly smooth, the polished side can act as a fine (If dark) mirror. Those who peer into the silky smooth reflective face of slab long enough, however, see floating within the midnight depths a rendition of the starry skies in smoky points of light. Focused on the zodiacal constellations, these tiny dark "stars" change with the day and the seasons in perfect step with those in the sky above.

A small idol made of bone and crimson gems of unknown nature. It represents the blackened skull of a horned ox with six red eyes that seem to gleam slightly in the dark.

A burlap sack in which is stored a 2d4+1 days’ worth of trail rations. The foodstuffs take the semi-appetizing form of sparrow jerky which has been pressed into small cakes of many thin sheets. Each cake is wrapped its own linen cloth for travel.  

A cherry-wood box carved with arcane symbols of conjuration and binding. The interior is covered with scratches made by small claws. Knowledge PC’s can deduce from the nature of the magical runes that the box is meant to trap and contain an imp so that it can be become a mage’s familiar.

A fine pine box bound with a leather strap. Inside are five hand rolled cigars. They smell of spice, toasted almonds, and honey. They look quite expensive.

A small ivory box, carefully engraved at all sides. It depicts scenes of a nobility: feasts, dances, a marriage, and peasants tending fields. On the inside, it is divided into small square compartments. They were probably meant to store makeup or perfumes, yet none remain. It might have been part of noble bride's dowry.

An old but seemingly undamaged piece of abstract art containing a pattern designed to befuddle the viewer's brain.

A floor tile with a footprint on it that reads: "Step here to summon Balog." The tile is slightly charred.

A cheap wax seal stamp, depicting a generic shield shape.

A light woman’s coat with the emblem of a gryphon embroidered to the back of it.

A black obsidian crystal sphere filled with a dark inky fluid. Inside the sphere is a small white dodecahedron with black text on each of its faces. The sphere gives off a faint divination aura.

A pewter brooch with a galloping horse embossed on it.

A silver turtle shaped locket with a black opal shell. Inside the locket is a picture of somebody's loved one.

A scabbard of black ash and bronze decorated with a sneering bearded face with tourmaline eyes. It is suitable for longsword or similar straight blade.

A large tapestry depicting an ancient battle with tentacled monsters.

A missing poster with the image of a well dressed Minotaur and his children. It reads, “Hyam Hyrule. A loving, kind and down to earth family man. 200 gold reward to whoever can find him alive.”

A candle made from the grisly, severed hand of a hanged criminal, if lit it is believed to help people remain undetected as they enter an abode.

A soft cloth handkerchief on which is a limerick, written in blood: There once was a man with one sandal. His appetites most couldn't handle. He stalks the streets hunting souls. Cooks their feets over coals. And writes limericks about being a cannibal. A soft cloth handkerchief splattered with blood.

A scrap of parchment that reads; "It is done. Meet me in the graveyard at dawn, near the crypt."

A fine doublet of incredible intricacy and beauty, with a pattern of nymphs playing in a garden along the back.

A beautiful painting of a late autumn lake in the forest. The longer you look at it, the more mesmerizing it becomes. As you stare, the leaves on the trees seems to jostle in the wind, the lake seems to breathe as water, and the clouds seem to drift ever so slightly into the sunset, like a portal into a perfect glimmer of peace. The only curiosity is a sad old man with a gnarled crown sitting upon a small bench, not quite in the foreground though impossible to ignore. He seems to loom over the lake, and is vaguely familiar… He seems to weep, giving the painting a sense of loss and sadness, as if this world so perfect was dying with him.

A boldly colored quartz the size of a pigeon’s egg, etched and painted in such a way that when it is placed to one’s eye in the light, they see a clever but naughty image of a beautiful person in the nude.

A baby’s blanket made of the finest cloth. It was kept in a mothballed container for years. It smells faintly of mint, as if someone meant to store it for a very long time.

A durable, clear glass bottle filled with ashes and a note. The says “These are my wife's ashes. She always wanted to see the world but spent her life looking after me and our children. Please take her with you on your travels, we'd both appreciate it”.

A spiked red leather dog collar with a steel dog tag on it that  reads “Murderface”.

A sadistic violin that no matter how much it’s tuned, will always play terribly. The instrument seems to want to annoy and bring misery to as many people as it can. If anyone ever starts to actually enjoy the out of tune music, the violin will change to a different worse sound, ensuring no listener ever brought joy by its sounds.

A fist-sized glass bauble with beautiful coruscating colored lights inside.

An iron gorget with a large peridot in the center of it.

An ancient cup, now cracked and chipped, that was carefully carved out of a single large block of translucent red amber.

A simple framed painting of a figure leaning back in a chair, it's face shrouded in shadow.

A small, black, triangular stone, about the size of a human's fist. Engraved in the center is a spiraling mark.

A perverse and gaudy replica of a cleric's mask. When this facial covering is worn, the spirit feels nebulous, boundless even. The vast distances between each being dissolves, revealing a vision of the world beheld by a thousandfold eyes.

A censer filled with perfumed incense that can be held or hung from chains. The sweet smell wafting from this censer hides a poisonous reaction within. Knowledgeable PC's will know by the style of the stylized inscriptions that cultists used these burnt offerings to confuse and confound their senses. In a state of rapturous delirium, they behold obscene truths and righteous falsehoods.

A crudely made jack in the box child’s toy constructed from unfinished unpainted pine carelessly hammered together with varying sized of nails. The crank is a rough twist of metal bound with a length of burlap over the handle. On the front of the box, burned into the wood are the words “Turn the crank, close your eyes, and pray to the gods for a pleasant surprise.”

A stone tablet with fine holes drilled through it that seem to be arranged in some sort of pattern.

A bracelet of bone beads carved into skulls, the eyes are polished jet.

A brass monocular telescope, etched with decorative markings, but due to poor maintenance, stuck in its collapsed state.

A wooden peg-leg in the shape of a dragon's leg complete with splayed-toed clawed foot tipped with hooked claws of iron.

A shipwreck in a water-filled glass globe. At the bottom is a massive kraken with tentacles up through the water. The ship is in big pieces that float with different levels of buoyancy. There are tiny sailors that float and sink to the bottom.

An incredibly life-like sandstone statue of a cockatiel.

A chipped and cracked porcelain tea cup with a rose and leaf motif marked with a stamp on its bottom in an unknown language.

An agate scarab the size of a human palm with writing in Mulhorandi that reads "Even in death, I serve".

A brass and crystal hourglass that when turned over plays softly tinkling chimes as the sand passes through it for the unit of time known as a "song", lasting a minute or two.

A seemingly normal conch shell. When pressed to the ear, faint sounds of surf and wind, rustling palms and crying gulls can be heard. The area around the listener's ear is specked with sand afterwards.

A pair of carefully wrapped baby shoes, never worn.

A silver holy symbol sculpted to resemble a shining sun. Such an image is sometimes used by clerics and paladins not associated with any particular deity. The amulet is small enough to be gripped in one hand and a religious bearer can feel that it contains the divine spark of a truly holy object.

A gilded acorn containing a feather, a tuft of fur and a fish tail.

A one gallon cask of The Nine Hells, an alcoholic beverage that's traditionally served in tiny flasks. The drink is a very potent brew of vodka, extra-strength peppermint, pure capsaicin extract and garnished with a single drop of wolf's blood in each serving.

A violet shawl that twists and melds with the darkness, becoming as black as coal in even the faintest shadow.

A swirly mahogany wand that changes to a different color every night at midnight.

A copper chalice engraved with a geometric pattern.

A wooden jeweler box with copper detailing.

A simple chunk of flint broken off of a larger rock eons ago by natural forces. A closer inspection, however, reveals one edge of the rock has been carefully napped down to a razor edge, while the opposite side has been shaped into a crude handgrip. Small, primitive figures of deer, wolves, and bears are etched into the stone. The carvings sometimes appear to have changed places of their own accord, though they never move while being observed.

A brass statue of a winged wolf with quartz fangs.

A copper candle holder shaped like a galloping horse.

An embroidered silk tablecloth edged with lace.

A set of sheet music for a lost operetta composed by a respected composer.

An ornate scabbard set with agates of multiple colors.

A wooden flute from a birch tree from the feywild that sprouts small leafy branches.

A golden cloak clasp in a pattern of knotted vines covered in small leaves.

A large musical horn carved from the tusk of a mammoth and decorated with gold bands.

A brass lever nutcracker with head shaped like a bird of prey.

A drum made of dark oak and covered with hide from a giant elk with drumsticks carved from antlers.

A wand made of a sturdy ash. Each end is seamlessly reinforced with bronze.

A black chunk of obsidian that is roughly a round shape and has no sharp edges. Looking into its cloudy depths one can see an almost infinitely receding sea of gold, white, and blue flecks of colour. When held, the bearer will swear that he can hear the sound of perfect silence, the call of the infinite void...

A large forest green tapestry bearing a symbol stretching across its length switched in gilded thread. Its accented with white and red and all along its hem is a complicated mantra of magical sigils and signs.

An angular carved crystal vial holds a thin light blue liquid. The crystal vial feels chilled to the touch and when let sit for long periods of time it forms crystals throughout the liquid that quickly dissipate when disturbed again.

A porcelain disk painted with a detailed representation of the God of Random Domain.

A map to a series of underground tunnels with an area marked ‘tentacle-head’.

A set of sheet music for a popular folk song adapting it to tablature needed for a three-handed mandolin player.

A staff that more resembles a long and skinny marble column with white pearls embedded along its length. When used as a cane or walking stick, the wielder's step feels sturdy and secure.

A sturdy cloth backpack made of high quality cotton, adorned with exotic feathers and pretty cross stitches.

A small, framed painting of a castle, the details of which (The number of towers and parapets, the banners flown, siege weaponry on the battlements, and similar features) change subtly when no one is looking.

A crumpled map of Corvid Commons marked with the entrances to the hidden shrines of the Shrouded Lord.

A bewitched slip of paper which, if placed on the bark of a tree, reveals in writing the species of that tree.

The deed to a mysterious abandoned house in the Dreamers’ Quarter, wrapped around the brass key to the front door.

A fashion magazine, Rich Filth, describing the latest trends for the ultra-wealthy, including the most recent Slimewear, Cathedral Chic, and Roachdress looks, as well as even more outré fashions such as “Patching," which involves magically transplanting patches of flesh (Usually taken from corpses) to one's body in peculiar designs.

A taxidermy wolpertinger (A hybrid of rabbit, bird, squirrel, and deer) native to Mooncalf Valley.

A blackened diamond corrupted in a failed resurrection attempt.

[samueldays]

Remarks against Liberalism

(in large part open letter to @mitigatedchaos​ and his ideas of liberalism)

Abstract: 

A while back I posted “and there is another systemic complication that classical liberalism rests on a knife-edge between "let the underclass suffer" right-libertarianism on one side and "needs more social programs" left-liberalism on the other” in a chat, which miti took as a good criticism, and I made a note to expand it later. This is my expansion, presented as three main theses.

Liberalism is unstable. It is particularly vulnerable to wokism.

Liberalism is tiny. It exists in a narrow band between sweatshop libertarianism and welfare leftism.

Liberalism is in part a mirage, resulting from projections of a superstructure without its fundament.

These are interlocked theses, but I will try to set each of them out on its own.

Liberalism is unstable.

One of the liberal ideas is a sort of market competition. Products, goods, services, arguments, ideas, professionals and so forth should have to compete on their simple merits. Not on their bloodlines, not on their credentials, not on their personal traits, not on government subsidies, not on regulating competitors out of existence, and absolutely never on violence. The market, including the famous ‘marketplace of ideas’, is a public space where everyone gets to offer their goods and everyone gets to make their own purchases.

A first source of instability in this idea is second-order markets. The Apple App Store, for example, banned Gab. In theory consumers could choose to buy a non-Apple device if they wanted Gab; in practice there’s lock-in and transaction costs and transfer friction.

Second is various degrees of monopoly power. Partly, this is second-order markets but worse. Imagine if Apple could effectively ban apps or sites from most of the Internet. Partly, it allows for cross-market influences as well, to deny important services to people transacting with disfavored outlets.

The intuitive fix is “Regulate the megacorporations into not doing that” but then you’re quickly off into regulatory leftism, and this sort of regulation is one hell of a drug. Alternatively, authoritarian rightism, if you come at it from a punitive more than contractual angle.

Racial discrimination is another example of instability. The original arguments for affirmative action were very moving when they said that a level playing field was hardly “fair competition” to a group that had to start the race so far behind, if you’ll excuse the mixed metaphor. The development of affirmative action gradually turned into increasing degrees of wokism and racial quotas and black privilege, with no clear dividing line.

(Personally, I think the Civil Rights Act was unconstitutional. How far back do you want to repeal?)

Liberalism seeks to have equality of opportunity, not equality of outcome.

But the moment one man seizes opportunity better than the next, by whatever that man will almost certainly start trying to pass on some of his superior outcome to his children, giving them superior opportunities! A trivial example, perhaps, but one that compounds and repeats a million times.

(Again, these theses are interlocked; I will address inheritance in both the other points from different angles.)

To maintain liberalism against inheritance, then, one slides easily into State-funded schools and State-managed curricula and State-guaranteed opportunities, thereby ceding a different part of liberalism. Nor is there a strict delineation between equality of opportunity and equality of outcomes. If one man is born 30 IQ points smarter than the next, in what sense can they be said to have equal opportunity? The law in its majesty forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, etc.

Wokist claims find purchase on liberalism in part because wokism is not conjured from thin air, it is aggressively expanding liberal precedents. Laws against voter intimidation lead to “Silence him, he’s triggering me”, alternate exam formats for the blind lead to educational videos being taken down because they’re not captioned, laws against overt racial discrimination lead to laws against thinly veiled racial discrimination lead to laws against disparate impact.

Liberalism is tiny.

I struggle to think of better terminology for this. Being tiny is not by itself a mark against an idea; there may well be a short sweet spot on a long spectrum of policy.

But there seems to me to be something about liberalism that is historically contingent as well as small; it’s a moving target as well as a hard target; it’s in some respects like being a “moderate” between leftists and libertarians when last century’s moderate is by now an extreme libertarian. To quote Moldbug,

Moderation is not an ideology. It is not an opinion. It is not a thought. It is an absence of thought. If you believe the status quo of 2007 is basically righteous, then you should believe the same thing if a time machine transported you to Vienna in 1907. But if you went around Vienna in 1907 saying that there should be a European Union, that Africans and Arabs should rule their own countries and even colonize Europe, that any form of government except parliamentary democracy is evil, that paper money is good for business, that all doctors should work for the State, etc., etc.—well, you could probably find people who agreed with you. They wouldn’t call themselves “moderates,” and nor would anyone else.

The center is tiny, the fringes are endless.

Again I come to the matter of inheritance. What is the liberal position on the acceptable degree of hereditary privilege? Why is this the position that gets called ‘liberal’? How many millions of dollars can I leave to my son, at what tax rate? What if I put them in a NGO? How many millions can I spend preparing the way for him before I die? Will you respect contracts that people swore to my as-yet-unborn-son?

It’s not that I think you haven’t thought about this. It’s that I have a hard time seeing your surely carefully considered opinions on this subject as something that can be turned into a mindset or an idea separate from you. Do you have a Liberalism separate from Mitigatedism that other people can hope to converge on? Convergence is harder for things that are tiny, which is a reason why I use that word.

Liberalism is in part a mirage.

Liberalism (as historically read) for nobles, or for another well-to-do class, is fine and good. Underperforming or misbehaving class members can be kicked out. Overperforming non-members can be inducted. Liberalism for everyone seems to me to have some generalization difficulty.

Similarly, the idea of a free and open market, competitive without the pressures of mafias or megacorporations, was often the result of an imperial writ or royal guarantee. Having a monarch in charge is fairly illiberal, but abstracting away the king for a sort of ideal liberalism easily results in the entrance of other illiberal factors that the monarch was suppressing because it benefited the monarch to have a liberally run subdomain.

(If I were king, I would absolutely have liberal subdomains. They’re profitable.)

Liberalism is unstable, as argued above, and an obvious stabilizer is a king with some degree a liberal vision saying “Keep it liberal in here”, but then it’s anchored on an illiberal fundament. The king can’t fully liberalize the kingdom without giving up his own power... indeed, I would expect he can’t even half liberalize the kingdom before people start demanding he yield the rest of his powers, whether by becoming a figurehead or becoming beheaded.

And again with the inheritance question. From the mirage POV: liberalism (historically) worked between relatively similar class members who were not too far apart to begin with, or in homogenous outbred countries. But if you try to universalize it, what liberalism is there if I can buy my son such great advantages he might as well have hereditary privilege, and what liberalism is there if I can’t spend my own money on my own son? What liberalism is there if a tightly bloodbound clan refuses to play by the rules, and what liberal means exist to break up clans?

(I am not in principle opposed to breaking up clans. But I question how this would be handled in a way that is meaningfully the way of Liberalism, rather than the instrumental goal of some other ideology.)

[ill-will-editions]

SQUIRRELS ON THE LOOSE: ON THE CHILEAN STATE OF EXCEPTION Gerardo Muñoz

First published on the Swedish site Tillfällighetsskrivande [Occasional Writings].

The series of articles published by Giorgio Agamben in the wake of the COVID-19 have received an unsurprising reaction by the night watchmen of liberal democracy. The misunderstanding arises as a coping mechanism comprised of two distinct requests: first, the demand that we abandon the conditions informing Agamben’s archeological project (Homo sacer, 1995-2015); and, on the other hand, the desire to make an exception out of the current situation, as if, this time, “immunity” or a “democratic biopolitics” will effectively redeem Humanity [i] . The nature of this desperate reaction speaks to the fantasy of a grounded ‘good politics for the right time’, as if the business of resurrecting principles of legitimation were a credible enterprise during a time of civilizational decay for our species. By this point we are accustomed to the tone of the university discourse and its strategic deployment as a compensatory measure for its inferiority complex. In fact, it forms the spirit of our time.  

It is not my intention to rehearse Agamben’s theses. These are well-known by all those who have encountered his work on “life”, the state of exception, and the consummation of the oikonomia at heart of Western politics. Rather, I would like to shift the discussion to the Chilean case, where I was surprised to see many intellectual voices tapping into Agamben’s premises, in particular in the aftermath of a recent letter by academics concerned with COVID-19 [ii]. For me it says a great deal about the Chilean experience and its current moment, which has been in a prolonged state of exception for over half a century. My thesis, then, is that the Chilean debate is in a better position to arrive at a mature understanding of the state of exception, not as an abstract formula, but as something latent within democracies. The dispensation of Western politics into security and exceptionality is not a conceptual horizon of what politics could be; it is what the ontology of the political represents once the internal limits of liberal principles crumble to pieces (and with it, any separation between consumers and citizens, state and market, jurisprudence and real subsumption).

Although President Sebastian Piñera has recently decreed a state of “exceptional catastrophe” in order to face the increasing threat of the COVID-19 in the country, his decision must be placed within the larger context of what we may call the long Chilean state of exception. There are at least three distinct historical segments of this exceptionalism. First, the criollo exceptionalism of the early republican period in which the relation between the state and the constituent power was unbalanced; second, the political dictatorial state of exception effectuated in the coup d'état against Salvador Allende’s Unidad Popular government in 1973; and finally, the so called “transition to democracy” of 1990, which served to juridically optimize what Tomás Moulian called the productivist-consumer matrix of society [iii]. One should not understand these temporal segments as a mere continuation of political instability or erratic juridical illegality, quite the contrary. The Chilean case brings to bear how the normalization of the state of exception could very well live under the veneer of effective legal borders of a subsidiary state that functions as the arbiter of accumulation and debt for societal dynamism. In a groundbreaking essay, “El golpe como consumación de la Vanguardia” (“The Coup as the consummation of the Avant-Garde”, 2003), the Chilean philosopher Willy Thayer argued that the Chilean coup of 1973 was the true avant-garde gesture, and thus, the ‘big-bang’ of globalization, since it blurred the inter-epochal passage from the dictatorship to that of the post-dictatorship. As Thayer argues in a decisive moment of his essay:

The repressed ground of the law – that is, what the law must repress in order to become itself – returns as a norm [in time of post-dictatorship]. The exception becomes the norm. The violence against the unlimited becomes violence against limitation. And if, before, the exception concerned the norms as exception from the norm; today, in the wake of globalization, what is understood as the exception has become the rule. The state of exception as factical proliferation of the norm is outside all generic norms: the market, the entrepreneurial freedom, the market’s anomie, or any specific norm, as well as any decision around what counts as a norm…Today, it is the Coup, more than artistic practices, that is outside of any frame and that destitutes not only the institution, the habits, and our presumptions about art; but that also alters the codes inherent to understanding. It is the Coup, and not the university, that brings about the reform of subjectivity and thought; it is the Coup that transforms art, the university, politics, and subjectivity itself. [iv]

The Coup introduces a new historical temporality, flattening its very nature as exceptional through the unlimited exchange of values between subjects and things. This takes place within a constitutional arrangement that blocks any ius reformandi and becomes preventively unwarranted. This was, after all, the ideal of legal theorist Jaime Guzmán, who tried to combine a Thomist conception of the state as “accident” with a hyper-personalism of the “persona” as a substance [v]. As if already prefiguring the demise of liberalism’s active social state, Guzmán incarnates the current drift of the nationalist right’s efforts to reconcile Aquinas with the market, corporativism with the U.S Constitution, and the ‘Common Good’ with the geopolitical battles against the rise of China [vi]. Of course, Guzmán was not a soothsayer, and he did not see this particular arrangement. However, he did see the normalization of the state of exception as a strategy to restrict any pull of ‘civil society’ against the structures of the subsidiary state. If Chile indicates one thing today, it is this: the problem of the political exception is not a problem of state form; it is a problem of the exhaustion of the boundaries between state and civil society, where autonomous social form is a zone of extraction for the exchange of value in the face of collective survival. The “tyranny of values” acquires a new meaning here: it is no longer a problem of moral discursivity, but rather an intensification of the war waged against life itself.  

We know the discourse around the ‘withering of civil society’ has been around for quite some time [vii]. But this withering once meant that a “political subject” could emerge to organize a new transformation. One might ask: is this, then, what happened during the October uprisings? Not really, I would argue. Unlike the previous protests of 2003 and 2011, October of 2019 was driven by what has elsewhere been called an ‘experiential politics’, in which the de-articulation between people and representation no longer attempted to translate its discomfort into ‘demands’, as is typical in populist moments [viii]. The Chilean October was a “parabasis” on the social stage, a movement against representation and ideal types, a form of errancy that cannot be equated with the modern pursuit of “freedom”. If freedom has always been hermeneutically grounded in an analogical relation to action, then the call for “evasion” in the Chilean October demonstrated clearly that human praxis is irreducible to human activity, and that there exists a form of life beyond biopolitical security. This is why today, any attempt at a ‘spiritualist’ defense of ‘this life’ is already fallen to biopolitical machination, and to the reproduction of a subjective vitalism in which survival is guaranteed only as an abstract, non-existential ‘Good’. This is the other side of Thomism. However, as Agamben reminds us,

 “Whoever has a character always has the same experience, because he can only re-live and never live. Etymologically, ēthos (’character’) and ethos (‘habit’,  ‘way of life’) are the same word...and thus both mean ‘selfhood’. Selfhood, being-a-self, is expressed in a character or a habit. In each case, there lies an impossibility of living” [ix]. 

The new Chilean state of exception is an attempt to combat this truth through a full deployment of the police, the market, the university, the intelligentsia, and the rule of law itself.

The destituent moment against the Chilean exception is waged against the reduction of existence to “life”. As Ivan Illich knew well, “there is something apocalyptic in searching for Life under a microscope” [x]. Obviously, this resonates clearly with Agamben’s concern about the political strategies’ concern with the “living” and the security of “life”. It is no surprise, on the other hand, how the intelligentsia of the Chilean status quo have refracted this assault on the vital fabric of human existence by developing new strategies of “order” to counteract what they have called the “party of violence” that seeks to destitute its reduction to the vitalist apparatus [xi]. Other more refined attempts in the restructuring of the Chilean political right, such as Hugo Herrera’s programmatic Octubre en Chile (2019), calls for a popular republicanism, which renews the mediation between society and state through a Schmittian conception of the political as both telluric and contingent. Inverting the terms (politics having primacy over the economy) drags into the open the dual machine of governance, where bipolar forces of relative weakness and optimal strength are woven together into an interface for social conservation [xii]. This strategy confronts the epochal crisis by mobilizing a fear of fragmentation and the general contention of the species. The same goes for the modernist proposals based on the supremacy of constituent power, with its ideal engineering of the “social” that accords a force of transformation to “passive devices” such as deliberative assemblies and communicative action (of which Chile has a long tradition, under the form of cabildos) that could canvas the true colors of democratic separation of powers and cohesiveness of a new social contract. Unfortunately, endless gatherings and assemblies are powerless against the contemporary mechanisms of power, which today consist in the management of flows, infrastructure, and the general system of extraction [xiii]. We can talk amongst ourselves all we want, but it does not get us anywhere. The call for an implicit “communicative unity” of the body polity runs in a circle, with life, production and value remaining intact.

Agamben is correct to observe how unsurprising it is to see citizens today be willing to accept a reduction of their form of life to bare life in the name of security, since “crisis” is the way in which governance administers the internal strife of this acephalous polity [xiv]. In a recent column, Hugo Herrera provides an image that captures this movement: the protestors in the streets are like ‘squirrels on the loose’ [xv]. The squirrels’ movements are a combination of rhythm and caprice; it is not clear where they are going, whom they are going to meet, nor what their destiny will be. Like Pulcinella, half human and half chicken, the scampering squirrel is what remains when the singular body enters in contact with another without any aspiration to create a self-destiny superseding [xvi]. There is something to be said of the encounter between animal and human that can potentially deprogram the metropolitan topoi, turning the exception into the gleaming transfiguration of another world. In the mere act of seeking, new possibilities emerge. And if the point is to create a different relation to the world, one in which all the “potentialities of the entire species can finally develop”, then every exception is a tool of domestication, a form of political atrophy [xvii]. The destituent possibility is not a realization; it is a questioning of the very disjointed presence of the Social as an ‘autonomous space’ for action. Here too, the Chilean exception offers us a mirror by which to flee the obstinacy of the present.

***

Gerardo Muñoz teaches at the Modern Language and Literatures department at Lehigh University. His most recent publications are Por una política posthegemónica (DobleA editores 2020), and the forthcoming edited volume La rivoluzione in esilio: Scritti su Mario Tronti (Quodlibet, 2020).

Notes

[i] For positions against Giorgio Agamben’s thesis, see Panagiotis Sotiris, "Against Agamben: Is a democratic biopolitics possible?": https://criticallegalthinking.com/2020/03/14/against-agamben-is-a-democratic-biopolitics-possible/ , and Roberto Esposito, “Curati a oltranza”, https://antinomie.it/index.php/2020/02/28/curati-a-oltranza/

[ii]The document of the letters of the Chilean academics about the COVID-19 can be found here: https://bit.ly/2IW7npd

[iii] Tomás Moulian, Chile Actual: Anatomía de un mito (LOM, 2002), p.81-119.

[iv] Willy Thayer, “El Golpe como consumación de la vanguardia”, El fragmento repetido: escritos en estado de excepción (ediciones metales pesados, 2006), p.24-25.

[v] See, Renato Cristi, El pensamiento político de Jaime Guzmán (LOM, 2011).

[vi] See in the latest issue of American Affairs (Vol. IV, Spring 2020), the articles “Common Good Capitalism: An interview with Marco Rubio”, and “Corporativism for the Twenty-First Century”, by Gladden Pappin. Also, on the reactivation of an economic Thomism, see Mary L. Hirschfield, Aquinas and the Market: Toward a Humane Economy (Harvard University Press, 2018).

[vii] Michael Hardt, “The withering of civil society”, Social Text, N.45, 1995.

[viii] See Michalis Lianos, "Une politique expérientielle": https://lundi.am/Une-politique-experientielle-IV-Entretien-avec-Michalis-Lianoswell. Also, the dossier on the Chilean uprising, "Los estados generales de la emergencia", Ficción de la razón, october 2019: https://ficciondelarazon.org/2019/10/29/vvaa-los-estados-generales-de-emergencia-dossier-en-movimiento-sobre-revueltas-y-crisis-neoliberal/

[ix] Giorgio Agamben, Pulcinella or, Entertainment for Kids (New York, 2018), p.104.

[x] Ivan Illich, “The Institutional Construction of a new fetish: Human Life”, In the Mirror of the Past: Lectures and Addresses, 1978-1990 (Marion Boysars, 1992), p.223.

[xi] José Joaquin Brunner, “Violencia: el desquiciamiento de la sociedad”, November 2019, El Libero: https://ellibero.cl/opinion/jose-joaquin-brunner-violencia-el-desquiciamiento-de-la-sociedad/.

[xii] Schmitt taught as early as in the twenties this state-market duality. See, “Strong State and Free Economy", in Carl Schmitt and Authoritarian Liberalism (University of Wales Press, 1998), ed. Renato Cristi. p.215.

[xiii] For the thesis on the control of social flows, see “Julien Coupat et Mathieu Burnel interrogés par Mediapart", Lundi Matin, 66, 2016: https://bit.ly/3bdRAOs . For the new form of power as extraction, see Alberto Moreiras, "Notes on the illegal condition in the state of extraction", RIAS, Vol.11, N.2, 2018, p.21-35.

[xiv] Giorgio Agamben, “Chiarimenti", March 17, 2020, Quodlibet: https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-chiarimenti. Denna text finns också på svenska här.

[xv] Hugo Herrera, “Crisis sobre Crisis”, March 17, 2020, La Segunda: https://bit.ly/2Wvc0i0.

[xvi] Giorgio Agamben, Pulcinella or, Entertainment for Kids (New York, 2018), p.117.

[xvii] Jacques Camatte, “The Wandering of Humanity”, in This World We Must Leave and Other Essays (Autonomedia, 1995), p.71.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND PROCESS

If there's one number every founder should always know, it's the company's growth rate. So our official policy now is only to fund undergrads we can't talk out of it. These can be much more effective, not only in avoiding false positives, but in filtering too: for example, is. I first came to Silicon Valley; instead they'd be opening local offices. Programmers will recognize what we're doing here. It would be nice to everyone. Getting to general plus useful by starting with useful and cranking up the generality may be unsuitable for junior professors trying to get people to remember just one quote about programming, it would probably be painless though annoying to lose $15,000. Now that we know what we're looking for, that leads to other questions. The phase whose growth defines the startup is the opinion of other investors. But while there are a lot of what looks like work. So why were we afraid?

And because startups are in this sense doubly valuable to acquirers, acquirers will often pay more than an ordinary investor would. Since that seems to work. 06%? When Richard Feynman said that the imagination of nature was greater than the imagination of man, he meant that if you just keep following the truth wherever it leads rather than being influenced by what he wishes were the case. Even more important than anything else that I worry I'm misleading you by even talking about other things. Nothing yields meaty problems like starting with the assumption that it was a very gradual process. I'm all for shutting down the crooked ways to get rich. Sometimes you get excited about such a thoroughly boneheaded idea, we should train more Americans to be programmers. Bill Gates—the probability might be 20% or even 50%. I'm relieved to find they're not as bad as I feared. We usually advise startups to pick a growth rate they think they can hit, and then write a paper about it, and try to trace it back to the root causes.

That's what makes theoretical knowledge prestigious. I'd bet on the 25 year old over the 32 year old probably is a better programmer, but probably also has a much more common one. We should have expected this. The charisma theory may also explain why Democrats tend to lose presidential elections. The office at 165 University Ave was Google's first. In most fields the great work is done by the people who work there want to stay there. Proving your initial plan was mistaken would just get you a lower Gini coefficient, along with a lesson in being careful what you ask for.1 0 here. Another effect of a larger share that what's left over for the rest is diminished. In this scenario, spam would, like OS crashes, viruses, and popups, become one of those that exploit an insecure cgi script to send mail to third parties.

The business person represents the voice of the customer and that's what keeps the engineers and product development on track. Subject Free Subject free FREE! Nearly all makers have day jobs, and work on beautiful software on the side of safety. It takes a conscious effort to find ideas everyone else has overlooked. Why did so few applicants really think about what customers want is figuring out that you need to make something lots of people want, read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. Boy, was I wrong. I know that from experience. Letters, digits, dashes, apostrophes, and dollar signs are constituent characters, and everything else is a token separator. One reason is that good design aims at some kind of lowest common denominator.

What makes a good startup founder. Undoubtedly TV helped Kennedy, so historians are correct in regarding this election as a watershed.2 Look at where your code is slow, and fix that. And anyone who has written a program only to find on returning to it six months later that he has no idea how it works. One of the reasons Jane Austen's novels are so good is that she read them out loud to see a where you stumble over awkward phrases and b which bits are confusing or drag; don't always make the best subjects for papers. It was presumably many thousands of years, I'll bet on the curve. I've described above. Empathy is probably the founders themselves. Aristotle's explanation of the ultimate goal of philosophy in Book A of the Metaphysics implies that philosophy should be useful too. The startup may not have needed VC money the way they were 10 years ago. There is a founder community just as there's a VC community.

There probably aren't more than a couple hundred lines of Perl; in fact, it would not be a bad definition of math to call it the study of terms that have precise meanings. Two or three course projects? Around 2000 the bolt was removed.3 To some degree, it offers a way around these limitations. I say that the answer is, surprisingly far. Anyone who invested in private companies in return for dividends would have to pay close attention to their books. In addition to the usual clauses about owning your ideas, you also can't be a founder of a startup that was neither driven by technological change, nor whose product consisted of technology except in the broader sense.

75%. Fundamentally that's how the most successful investors are also the most upstanding. The more I think about why I voted for Clinton over the first George Bush, it wasn't because I was writing about spam filtering. What you really want is a pool of local angel investors—people investing money they made from their own servers, and both the headers and the bodies became much spammier. But gradually I realized it wasn't luck. It increases the work of the Valley now. If they decide to grow at 7% a week and they hit that number, you don't have to think about that. They wouldn't seem bad to the city officials.

Notes

A single point of saying that good art fifteenth century European art. There is not really a lie because it's a bad idea, period. We could be ignored.

These points don't apply to types of startups that seem excusable according to some abstract notion of fairness or randomly, in the fall of 2008 the terms they were doing more than just reconstructing word boundaries; spammers both add xHot nPorn cSite and omit P rn letters.

It's possible that companies will naturally wonder, how do you know whether you're a big deal. Galbraith was clearly puzzled that corporate executives would work so hard on the group's accumulated knowledge. This phenomenon may account for a couple predecessors. You have to be doctors?

Thanks to Trevor Blackwell, Geoff Ralston, Sarah Harlin, Robert Morris, and Anton van Straaten for putting up with me.

[internetbynight]

𝙊𝙣 𝙏𝙧𝙪𝙩𝙝 𝙖𝙣𝙙 𝙇𝙞𝙚 𝙞𝙣 𝙖𝙣 𝙀𝙭𝙩𝙧𝙖-𝙈𝙤𝙧𝙖𝙡 𝙎𝙚𝙣𝙨𝙚

In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world history"—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had to die.

One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened. For this intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it. But if we could communicate with the mosquito, then we would learn that he floats through the air with the same self-importance, feeling within itself the flying center of the world. There is nothing in nature so despicable or insignificant that it cannot immediately be blown up like a bag by a slight breath of this power of knowledge; and just as every porter wants an admirer, the proudest human being, the philosopher, thinks that he sees on the eyes of the universe telescopically focused from all sides on his actions and thoughts.

It is strange that this should be the effect of the intellect, for after all it was given only as an aid to the most unfortunate, most delicate, most evanescent beings in order to hold them for a minute in existence, from which otherwise, without this gift, they would have every reason to flee as quickly as Lessing's son. [In a famous letter to Johann Joachim Eschenburg (December 31, 1778), Lessing relates the death of his infant son, who "understood the world so well that he left it at the first opportunity."] That haughtiness which goes with knowledge and feeling, which shrouds the eyes and senses of man in a blinding fog, therefore deceives him about the value of existence by carrying in itself the most flattering evaluation of knowledge itself. Its most universal effect is deception; but even its most particular effects have something of the same character.

The intellect, as a means for the preservation of the individual, unfolds its chief powers in simulation; for this is the means by which the weaker, less robust individuals preserve themselves, since they are denied the chance of waging the struggle for existence with horns or the fangs of beasts of prey. In man this art of simulation reaches its peak: here deception, flattering, lying and cheating, talking behind the back, posing, living in borrowed splendor, being masked, the disguise of convention, acting a role before others and before oneself—in short, the constant fluttering around the single flame of vanity is so much the rule and the law that almost nothing is more incomprehensible than how an honest and pure urge for truth could make its appearance among men. They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images; their eye glides only over the surface of things and sees "forms"; their feeling nowhere lead into truth, but contents itself with the reception of stimuli, playing, as it were, a game of blindman's buff on the backs of things. Moreover, man permits himself to be lied to at night, his life long, when he dreams, and his moral sense never even tries to prevent this—although men have been said to have overcome snoring by sheer will power.

What, indeed, does man know of himself! Can he even once perceive himself completely, laid out as if in an illuminated glass case? Does not nature keep much the most from him, even about his body, to spellbind and confine him in a proud, deceptive consciousness, far from the coils of the intestines, the quick current of the blood stream, and the involved tremors of the fibers? She threw away the key; and woe to the calamitous curiosity which might peer just once through a crack in the chamber of consciousness and look down, and sense that man rests upon the merciless, the greedy, the insatiable, the murderous, in the indifference of his ignorance—hanging in dreams, as it were, upon the back of a tiger. In view of this, whence in all the world comes the urge for truth?

Insofar as the individual wants to preserve himself against other individuals, in a natural state of affairs he employs the intellect mostly for simulation alone. But because man, out of need and boredom, wants to exist socially, herd-fashion, he requires a peace pact and he endeavors to banish at least the very crudest bellum omni contra omnes [war of all against all] from his world. This peace pact brings with it something that looks like the first step toward the attainment of this enigmatic urge for truth. For now that is fixed which henceforth shall be "truth"; that is, a regularly valid and obligatory designation of things is invented, and this linguistic legislation also furnishes the first laws of truth: for it is here that the contrast between truth and lie first originates. The liar uses the valid designations, the words, to make the unreal appear as real; he says, for example, "I am rich," when the word "poor" would be the correct designation of his situation. He abuses the fixed conventions by arbitrary changes or even by reversals of the names. When he does this in a self-serving way damaging to others, then society will no longer trust him but exclude him. Thereby men do not flee from being deceived as much as from being damaged by deception: what they hate at this stage is basically not the deception but the bad, hostile consequences of certain kinds of deceptions. In a similarly limited way man wants the truth: he desires the agreeable life-preserving consequences of truth, but he is indifferent to pure knowledge, which has no consequences; he is even hostile to possibly damaging and destructive truths. And, moreover, what about these conventions of language? Are they really the products of knowledge, of the sense of truth? Do the designations and the things coincide? Is language the adequate expression of all realities?

Only through forgetfulness can man ever achieve the illusion of possessing a "truth" in the sense just designated. If he does not wish to be satisfied with truth in the form of a tautology—that is, with empty shells—then he will forever buy illusions for truths. What is a word? The image of a nerve stimulus in sounds. But to infer from the nerve stimulus, a cause outside us, that is already the result of a false and unjustified application of the principle of reason. If truth alone had been the deciding factor in the genesis of language, and if the standpoint of certainty had been decisive for designations, then how could we still dare to say "the stone is hard," as if "hard" were something otherwise familiar to us, and not merely a totally subjective stimulation! We separate things according to gender, designating the tree as masculine and the plant as feminine. What arbitrary assignments! How far this oversteps the canons of certainty! We speak of a "snake": this designation touches only upon its ability to twist itself and could therefore also fit a worm. What arbitrary differentiations! What one-sided preferences, first for this, then for that property of a thing! The different languages, set side by side, show that what matters with words is never the truth, never an adequate expression; else there would not be so many languages. The "thing in itself" (for that is what pure truth, without consequences, would be) is quite incomprehensible to the creators of language and not at all worth aiming for. One designates only the relations of things to man, and to express them one calls on the boldest metaphors. A nerve stimulus, first transposed into an image—first metaphor. The image, in turn, imitated by a sound—second metaphor. And each time there is a complete overleaping of one sphere, right into the middle of an entirely new and different one. One can imagine a man who is totally deaf and has never had a sensation of sound and music. Perhaps such a person will gaze with astonishment at Chladni's sound figures; perhaps he will discover their causes in the vibrations of the string and will now swear that he must know what men mean by "sound." It is this way with all of us concerning language; we believe that we know something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things—metaphors which correspond in no way to the original entities. In the same way that the sound appears as a sand figure, so the mysterious X of the thing in itself first appears as a nerve stimulus, then as an image, and finally as a sound. Thus the genesis of language does not proceed logically in any case, and all the material within and with which the man of truth, the scientist, and the philosopher later work and build, if not derived from never-never land, is a least not derived from the essence of things.

Let us still give special consideration to the formation of concepts. Every word immediately becomes a concept, inasmuch as it is not intended to serve as a reminder of the unique and wholly individualized original experience to which it owes its birth, but must at the same time fit innumerable, more or less similar cases—which means, strictly speaking, never equal—in other words, a lot of unequal cases. Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept "leaf" is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions; and now it gives rise to the idea that in nature there might be something besides the leaves which would be "leaf"—some kind of original form after which all leaves have been woven, marked, copied, colored, curled, and painted, but by unskilled hands, so that no copy turned out to be a correct, reliable, and faithful image of the original form. We call a person "honest." Why did he act so honestly today? we ask. Our answer usually sounds like this: because of his honesty. Honesty! That is to say again: the leaf is the cause of the leaves. After all, we know nothing of an essence-like quality named "honesty"; we know only numerous individualized, and thus unequal actions, which we equate by omitting the unequal and by then calling them honest actions. In the end, we distill from them a qualitas occulta [hidden quality] with the name of "honesty." We obtain the concept, as we do the form, by overlooking what is individual and actual; whereas nature is acquainted with no forms and no concepts, and likewise with no species, but only with an X which remains inaccessible and undefinable for us. For even our contrast between individual and species is something anthropomorphic and does not originate in the essence of things; although we should not presume to claim that this contrast does not correspond o the essence of things: that would of course be a dogmatic assertion and, as such, would be just as indemonstrable as its opposite.

What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that this is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.

We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors—in moral terms: the obligation to lie according to a fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all. Now man of course forgets that this is the way things stand for him. Thus he lies in the manner indicated, unconsciously and in accordance with habits which are centuries' old; and precisely by means of this unconsciousness and forgetfulness he arrives at his sense of truth. From the sense that one is obliged to designate one thing as red, another as cold, and a third as mute, there arises a moral impulse in regard to truth. The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a rational being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions. First he universalizes all these impressions into less colorful, cooler concepts, so that he can entrust the guidance of his life and conduct to them. Everything which distinguishes man from the animals depends upon this ability to volatilize perceptual metaphors in a schema, and thus to dissolve an image into a concept. For something is possible in the realm of these schemata which could never be achieved with the vivid first impressions: the construction of a pyramidal order according to castes and degrees, the creation of a new world of laws, privileges, subordinations, and clearly marked boundaries—a new world, one which now confronts that other vivid world of first impressions as more solid, more universal, better known, and more human than the immediately perceived world, and thus as the regulative and imperative world. Whereas each perceptual metaphor is individual and without equals and is therefore able to elude all classification, the great edifice of concepts displays the rigid regularity of a Roman columbarium and exhales in logic that strength and coolness which is characteristic of mathematics. Anyone who has felt this cool breath [of logic] will hardly believe that even the concept—which is as bony, foursquare, and transposable as a die—is nevertheless merely the residue of a metaphor, and that the illusion which is involved in the artistic transference of a nerve stimulus into images is, if not the mother, then the grandmother of every single concept. But in this conceptual crap game "truth" means using every die in the designated manner, counting its spots accurately, fashioning the right categories, and never violating the order of caste and class rank. Just as the Romans and Etruscans cut up the heavens with rigid mathematical lines and confined a god within each of the spaces thereby delimited, as within a templum, so every people has a similarly mathematically divided conceptual heaven above themselves and henceforth thinks that truth demands that each conceptual god be sought only within his own sphere. Here one may certainly admire man as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in piling an infinitely complicated dome of concepts upon an unstable foundation, and, as it were, on running water. Of course, in order to be supported by such a foundation, his construction must be like one constructed of spiders' webs: delicate enough to be carried along by the waves, strong enough not to be blown apart by every wind. As a genius of construction man raises himself far above the bee in the following way: whereas the bee builds with wax that he gathers from nature, man builds with the far more delicate conceptual material which he first has to manufacture from himself. In this he is greatly to be admired, but not on account of his drive for truth or for pure knowledge of things. When someone hides something behind a bush and looks for it again in the same place and finds it there as well, there is not much to praise in such seeking and finding. Yet this is how matters stand regarding seeking and finding "truth" within the realm of reason. If I make up the definition of a mammal, and then, after inspecting a camel, declare "look, a mammal" I have indeed brought a truth to light in this way, but it is a truth of limited value. That is to say, it is a thoroughly anthropomorphic truth which contains not a single point which would be "true in itself" or really and universally valid apart from man. At bottom, what the investigator of such truths is seeking is only the metamorphosis of the world into man. He strives to understand the world as something analogous to man, and at best he achieves by his struggles the feeling of assimilation. Similar to the way in which astrologers considered the stars to be in man 's service and connected with his happiness and sorrow, such an investigator considers the entire universe in connection with man: the entire universe as the infinitely fractured echo of one original sound-man; the entire universe as the infinitely multiplied copy of one original picture-man. His method is to treat man as the measure of all things, but in doing so he again proceeds from the error of believing that he has these things [which he intends to measure] immediately before him as mere objects. He forgets that the original perceptual metaphors are metaphors and takes them to be the things themselves.

Only by forgetting this primitive world of metaphor can one live with any repose, security, and consistency: only by means of the petrification and coagulation of a mass of images which originally streamed from the primal faculty of human imagination like a fiery liquid, only in the invincible faith that this sun, this window, this table is a truth in itself, in short, only by forgetting that he himself is an artistically creating subject, does man live with any repose, security, and consistency. If but for an instant he could escape from the prison walls of this faith, his "self consciousness" would be immediately destroyed. It is even a difficult thing for him to admit to himself that the insect or the bird perceives an entirely different world from the one that man does, and that the question of which of these perceptions of the world is the more correct one is quite meaningless, for this would have to have been decided previously in accordance with the criterion of the correct perception, which means, in accordance with a criterion which is not available. But in any case it seems to me that the correct perception—which would mean the adequate expression of an object in the subject—is a contradictory impossibility. For between two absolutely different spheres, as between subject and object, there is no causality, no correctness, and no expression; there is, at most, an aesthetic relation: I mean, a suggestive transference, a stammering translation into a completely foreign tongue—for which I there is required, in any case, a freely inventive intermediate sphere and mediating force. "Appearance" is a word that contains many temptations, which is why I avoid it as much as possible. For it is not true that the essence of things "appears" in the empirical world. A painter without hands who wished to express in song the picture before his mind would, by means of this substitution of spheres, still reveal more about the essence of things than does the empirical world. Even the relationship of a nerve stimulus to the generated image is not a necessary one. But when the same image has been generated millions of times and has been handed down for many generations and finally appears on the same occasion every time for all mankind, then it acquires at last the same meaning for men it would have if it were the sole necessary image and if the relationship of the original nerve stimulus to the generated image were a strictly causal one. In the same manner, an eternally repeated dream would certainly be felt and judged to be reality. But the hardening and congealing of a metaphor guarantees absolutely nothing concerning its necessity and exclusive justification.

Every person who is familiar with such considerations has no doubt felt a deep mistrust of all idealism of this sort: just as often as he has quite early convinced himself of the eternal consistency, omnipresence, and fallibility of the laws of nature. He has concluded that so far as we can penetrate here—from the telescopic heights to the microscopic depths—everything is secure, complete, infinite, regular, and without any gaps. Science will be able to dig successfully in this shaft forever, and the things that are discovered will harmonize with and not contradict each other. How little does this resemble a product of the imagination, for if it were such, there should be some place where the illusion and reality can be divined. Against this, the following must be said: if each us had a different kind of sense perception—if we could only perceive things now as a bird, now as a worm, now as a plant, or if one of us saw a stimulus as red, another as blue, while a third even heard the same stimulus as a sound—then no one would speak of such a regularity of nature, rather, nature would be grasped only as a creation which is subjective in the highest degree. After all, what is a law of nature as such for us? We are not acquainted with it in itself, but only with its effects, which means in its relation to other laws of nature—which, in turn, are known to us only as sums of relations. Therefore all these relations always refer again to others and are thoroughly incomprehensible to us in their essence. All that we actually know about these laws of nature is what we ourselves bring to them—time and space, and therefore relationships of succession and number. But everything marvelous about the laws of nature, everything that quite astonishes us therein and seems to demand explanation, everything that might lead us to distrust idealism: all this is completely and solely contained within the mathematical strictness and inviolability of our representations of time and space. But we produce these representations in and from ourselves with the same necessity with which the spider spins. If we are forced to comprehend all things only under these forms, then it ceases to be amazing that in all things we actually comprehend nothing but these forms. For they must all bear within themselves the laws of number, and it is precisely number which is most astonishing in things. All that conformity to law, which impresses us so much in the movement of the stars and in chemical processes, coincides at bottom with those properties which we bring to things. Thus it is we who impress ourselves in this way. In conjunction with this, it of course follows that the artistic process of metaphor formation with which every sensation begins in us already presupposes these forms and thus occurs within them. The only way in which the possibility of subsequently constructing a new conceptual edifice from metaphors themselves can be explained is by the firm persistence of these original forms That is to say, this conceptual edifice is an imitation of temporal, spatial, and numerical relationships in the domain of metaphor.

We have seen how it is originally language which works on the construction of concepts, a labor taken over in later ages by science. Just as the bee simultaneously constructs cells and fills them with honey, so science works unceasingly on this great columbarium of concepts, the graveyard of perceptions. It is always building new, higher stories and shoring up, cleaning, and renovating the old cells; above all, it takes pains to fill up this monstrously towering framework and to arrange therein the entire empirical world, which is to say, the anthropomorphic world. Whereas the man of action binds his life to reason and its concepts so that he will not be swept away and lost, the scientific investigator builds his hut right next to the tower of science so that he will be able to work on it and to find shelter for himself beneath those bulwarks which presently exist. And he requires shelter, for there are frightful powers which continuously break in upon him, powers which oppose scientific truth with completely different kinds of "truths" which bear on their shields the most varied sorts of emblems.

The drive toward the formation of metaphors is the fundamental human drive, which one cannot for a single instant dispense with in thought, for one would thereby dispense with man himself. This drive is not truly vanquished and scarcely subdued by the fact that a regular and rigid new world is constructed as its prison from its own ephemeral products, the concepts. It seeks a new realm and another channel for its activity, and it finds this in myth and in art generally. This drive continually confuses the conceptual categories and cells by bringing forward new transferences, metaphors, and metonymies. It continually manifests an ardent desire to refashion the world which presents itself to waking man, so that it will be as colorful, irregular, lacking in results and coherence, charming, and eternally new as the world of dreams. Indeed, it is only by means of the rigid and regular web of concepts that the waking man clearly sees that he is awake; and it is precisely because of this that he sometimes thinks that he must be dreaming when this web of concepts is torn by art. Pascal is right in maintaining that if the same dream came to us every night we would be just as occupied with it as we are with the things that we see every day. "If a workman were sure to dream for twelve straight hours every night that he was king," said Pascal, "I believe that he would be just as happy as a king who dreamt for twelve hours every night that he was a workman." In fact, because of the way that myth takes it for granted that miracles are always happening, the waking life of a mythically inspired people—the ancient Greeks, for instance—more closely resembles a dream than it does the waking world of a scientifically disenchanted thinker. When every tree can suddenly speak as a nymph, when a god in the shape of a bull can drag away maidens, when even the goddess Athena herself is suddenly seen in the company of Peisastratus driving through the market place of Athens with a beautiful team of horses—and this is what the honest Athenian believed—then, as in a dream, anything is possible at each moment, and all of nature swarms around man as if it were nothing but a masquerade of the gods, who were merely amusing themselves by deceiving men in all these shapes.

But man has an invincible inclination to allow himself to be deceived and is, as it were, enchanted with happiness when the rhapsodist tells him epic fables as if they were true, or when the actor in the theater acts more royally than any real king. So long as it is able to deceive without injuring, that master of deception, the intellect, is free; it is released from its former slavery and celebrates its Saturnalia. It is never more luxuriant, richer, prouder, more clever and more daring. With creative pleasure it throws metaphors into confusion and displaces the boundary stones of abstractions, so that, for example, it designates the stream as "the moving path which carries man where he would otherwise walk." The intellect has now thrown the token of bondage from itself. At other times it endeavors, with gloomy officiousness, to show the way and to demonstrate the tools to a poor individual who covets existence; it is like a servant who goes in search of booty and prey for his master. But now it has become the master and it dares to wipe from its face the expression of indigence. In comparison with its previous conduct, everything that it now does bears the mark of dissimulation, just as that previous conduct did of distortion. The free intellect copies human life, but it considers this life to be something good and seems to be quite satisfied with it. That immense framework and planking of concepts to which the needy man clings his whole life long in order to preserve himself is nothing but a scaffolding and toy for the most audacious feats of the liberated intellect. And when it smashes this framework to pieces, throws it into confusion, and puts it back together in an ironic fashion, pairing the most alien things and separating the closest, it is demonstrating that it has no need of these makeshifts of indigence and that it will now be guided by intuitions rather than by concepts. There is no regular path which leads from these intuitions into the land of ghostly schemata, the land of abstractions. There exists no word for these intuitions; when man sees them he grows dumb, or else he speaks only in forbidden metaphors and in unheard-of combinations of concepts. He does this so that by shattering and mocking the old conceptual barriers he may at least correspond creatively to the impression of the powerful present intuition.

There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic. They both desire to rule over life: the former, by knowing how to meet his principle needs by means of foresight, prudence, and regularity; the latter, by disregarding these needs and, as an "overjoyed hero," counting as real only that life which has been disguised as illusion and beauty. Whenever, as was perhaps the case in ancient Greece, the intuitive man handles his weapons more authoritatively and victoriously than his opponent, then, under favorable circumstances, a culture can take shape and art's mastery over life can be established. All the manifestations of such a life will be accompanied by this dissimulation, this disavowal of indigence, this glitter of metaphorical intuitions, and, in general, this immediacy of deception: neither the house, nor the gait, nor the clothes, nor the clay jugs give evidence of having been invented because of a pressing need. It seems as if they were all intended to express an exalted happiness, an Olympian cloudlessness, and, as it were, a playing with seriousness. The man who is guided by concepts and abstractions only succeeds by such means in warding off misfortune, without ever gaining any happiness for himself from these abstractions. And while he aims for the greatest possible freedom from pain, the intuitive man, standing in the midst of a culture, already reaps from his intuition a harvest of continually inflowing illumination, cheer, and redemption—in addition to obtaining a defense against misfortune. To be sure, he suffers more intensely, when he suffers; he even suffers more frequently, since he does not understand how to learn from experience and keeps falling over and over again into the same ditch. He is then just as irrational in sorrow as he is in happiness: he cries aloud and will not be consoled. How differently the stoical man who learns from experience and governs himself by concepts is affected by the same misfortunes! This man, who at other times seeks nothing but sincerity, truth, freedom from deception, and protection against ensnaring surprise attacks, now executes a masterpiece of deception: he executes his masterpiece of deception in misfortune, as the other type of man executes his in times of happiness. He wears no quivering and changeable human face, but, as it were, a mask with dignified, symmetrical features. He does not cry; he does not even alter his voice. When a real storm cloud thunders above him, he wraps himself in his cloak, and with slow steps he walks from beneath it.

Frederich Nietzsche

[carversourcebe]

Max and Charlie Carver Get Inside Each Other’s Head

Interview for Interview Magazine :

MAX: This is my Barbara Walters moment.

CHARLIE: You prepared questions?

MAX: Oh yes. I have.

CHARLIE: Oh lord. Here we go.

MAX: Let me start with this: We’ve been through thick and thin together. Knowing what I know about you, in terms of disappointments and moments of questioning “if you’re on the right path,” why do you keep doing what you’re doing?

CHARLIE: That’s the first question? [Laughs] I guess part of it is a sense of curiosity about what’s possible. How can I challenge myself? In what ways can I feel like I’ve found my own version of success, and what does that feeling of success afford me as a person, moving forward?

MAX: What do you mean? Define success.

CHARLIE: I love that you have to be kind of naïve to want to work in a creative field. I don’t mean having to be overly simplistic about the world, but you have to maintain a kind of innocence, or a hopeful state of mind. And I can’t imagine getting practical. I don’t think I could do anything else.

MAX: What do you mean?

CHARLIE: Well, I can’t imagine dropping that disposition to go work in a different field. I’m trying to remember what made me want to go into this as a kid, and I think it was being moved in one way or another, and feeling the potential of being able to do that for other people, and understanding in an intrinsic way that that had value. Now, the battle has been trying to convince myself that it still has value, particularly in a world where there are so many other actionable ways to affect people’s lives.

MAX: But the value is you get to empathize with a belief system whether you’re consciously doing it or not. You’re getting to explore parts of yourself that may be dormant. And I think when people see that on the screen, it wakes up that dormant part of themselves. It’s like soul exercise.

CHARLIE: I hear that.

MAX: In terms of Ratched, what did you want to convey that you felt other people might not understand or see in your character?

CHARLIE: Another arrow of a question. I’m not sure I wanted to go in and convey anything. I think you learn from the story in front of you and you discover something in that process.

MAX: What did you learn?

CHARLIE: I always have to battle my own insecurities, or feelings of being limited somehow in actually embodying the character and the circumstances that are in front of me.

MAX: You’re speaking in abstracts.

CHARLIE: Thank you, Max. With Huck, what was being asked of me was to sit with and live with the experience of a war vet—in a very specific, genre show—and I just wanted to trust that the product would come out of that. I’m so grateful to Ryan Murphy, not only for the opportunity, but for how much creative freedom was given to me. We spoke a little bit about the images and things that came to mind for him, and I was on the same page.

MAX: Such as?

CHARLIE: The Elephant Man, and then some of my own stuff. Want to know a funny one? Do you remember that skunk from Bambi? Flower?

MAX: Yeah.

CHARLIE: I kept feeling Flower a lot.

MAX: [Laughs] Just to be clear, these are all leading questions. For me, whenever I get a role, whether it’s just working on stuff on camera, or writing, or whatever, I’m going to start recognizing some belief system that I have that I was in complete denial about. What did this story kick up for you?

CHARLIE: A lot of my own stuff around masculinity. To really believe myself as a war vet in a nursing uniform, the physicality or the posture, was challenging. I think a lot of that comes from the very narrow definition of masculinity presented to me as a kid, and how as a gay man, I didn’t feel inside of that definition. I felt naturally excluded by it. So anytime a character where these traditional tropes of masculinity come in, it always brings up stuff for me. It’s surprising that it does, and I’m grateful that it does, because it always deepens something that I wanted to learn about myself. And I usually find I end up going against those tropes. Having to find my own way in response to them. There’s a core question that I always return to in any work, even if it’s just writing, or the work of being in a relationship: Am I enough?

MAX: Enough of what? You have imposter syndrome when you’re portraying “masculine” characters?

CHARLIE: Yeah, kind of.  More that by doing my own thing, I’ve somehow failed at the task. But the sense of fraudulence, or insecurity, or imposter syndrome is somewhat akin to doubt, and I think it’s important to see that for what it is and welcome it. Doubt isn’t a bad thing. I’ve definitely made some peace with that feeling of not knowing what I’m doing and feeling kind of fraudulent while I’m doing it. I would like to believe everybody feels that way.

MAX: Yeah, when I feel doubt, it’s a somatic experience. It’s this empty feeling in my body. Feelings with no label or no name. But I think that’s okay. Not to name it, just to allow it. Gonna change gears here: What do you think is your most attractive quality?

CHARLIE: Really having your Barbara Walters moment. [Laughs] Oh my god. I don’t know anymore. I feel pretty bland these days, I’m not going to lie.

MAX: Are you trying to suggest that modesty is your most attractive quality?

CHARLIE: [Laughs]. Shut up. I’d like to think I’m a good person. I’m open-minded. I think that’s attractive. I say yes to things.

MAX: What’s something you think about a lot that you believe other people should spend some more time thinking about? I know, that’s going to make you sound arrogant, no matter how you answer that question.

CHARLIE: Yeah, it is! What do I think people should sit with?

MAX: Maybe it was a bad question.

CHARLIE: No, it’s an interesting question. Hmmm. You were the one who taught me to use this technique: It’s so important to remember that we were all children. That the person in front of you, whether you’re meeting them with a sense of judgment, or excitement, or whatever, that they were once a child. I think that’s something valuable to sit with.

MAX: Um, I never said that. I think I said that kids will identify with anything. By which I mean, kids get defined by other people around them and that’s not right. I forget who said it, but “the law of the jungle was kill or be killed, now it’s define or be defined”. But maybe don’t bother defining anything or anyone. Let it be a question. You and I have gotten in some arguments about defining oneself through abstract language, through labels, instead of just saying, “Hey, I’m Charlie.”

CHARLIE: Yeah. I think that identities and labels are useful in that they can be ways into finding community and showing solidarity across a real shared experience. But I don’t particularly love using “gay” as an adjective to describe myself. I don’t have an issue with being seen that way, but it’s just such a strange…

MAX: I don’t think you can or should try to boil down your personality or who you are into descriptors. I don’t think it’s possible. I think it’s unwinnable.

CHARLIE: Exactly. And that word in particular, “gay,” has become something monolithic. It stands for something that I’m not sure I want to be in communion with. To clarify, what I mean is that it’s absolutely something I identify as. But I think it’s a word that has come to stand for an exclusionary, very privileged, and largely white experience… Well, I would be in denial if I didn’t fall into that, categorically. But it’s not my identity. It’s not the “all” of who I am. And so I bristle at that word a bit. And don’t want to feel defined by language. Then again, I am happy to identify as one letter in this broader coalition, the LGBTQ coalition, if that makes any sense. It becomes a position from which to speak from and engage with the world. I have no idea how we got here.

MAX: We were talking about you. Now we’re going to change the subject. If you could write the musical of your life, using the music of a known artist, who would that be ?

CHARLIE: I don’t know why there hasn’t been a Dixie Chicks musical. I would feel very represented by that.

MAX: Hm. Why?

CHARLIE: You know the answer. You’re setting me up. [Laughs] “Cowboy, Take me Away” is such a great song! It would really rip on stage.

MAX: Okay. Next question. Did you play The Sims as a kid?

CHARLIE: You ask this question on dates, don’t you? I know you do.

MAX: Don’t deflect. What did you do with your Sims characters? How did you spend your time on The Sims?

CHARLIE: Fine. I know you have this theory that that question is like this Rorschach test.

MAX: Sort of, yeah. For dysfunction.

CHARLIE: The “Red Flag” test. I would build these beautiful houses and then I would separate the family members into rooms and remove all the doors, and watch what happened. So that the people would just be locked in these doorless, windowless rooms. Trapped.  That was my big fear as a kid.

MAX: You had a lot of fears as a kid.

CHARLIE: That’s true. But I was really afraid of waking up in a house where it’s like, “Where is everybody”?

MAX: You get to start over today. What age would you pick?

CHARLIE: I would go back to kindergarten.

MAX: You would go back to kindergarten?

CHARLIE: I remember. We’re lucky. We were identified as “twins,” but we really got to separate, I think internally, from each other at that age.

MAX: To add some backstory here, we were always very different. We even went to different boarding schools across the country from one another. We didn’t really grow up together. I mean, we did. We fought so often our parents had to build a wall between us while we were sharing the same room. We went to different boarding schools, pretty much decided we were going to go to different universities.

CHARLIE: And somehow both ended up in L.A. Just a little bit of backstory. But I think at that age, six or so, you’re just responding to the world. You’re not actively trying to do anything differently. You’re learning to survive, or adjust to your environment. You are adjusted by your environment. So I wonder what it would have been like to grow up somewhere else.

MAX: Where?

CHARLIE: I don’t know where. I don’t have a lot of resentment about that time, but I do feel shaped by having grown up in a rural pocket of the world. I will always wonder what other parts of myself could have better and more naturally flourished from that age. And I think a lot of damage comes from feeling forbidden from certain possibilities. I wanted to do all sorts of things in kindergarten. I wanted to dance, I wanted to be a good student, I wanted to make art, I wanted to act, and all of those things were not acceptable because they made you a “queer.”

MAX: And you got teased a lot.

CHARLIE: And so we both found out, in this strange experiment of being genetically identical people with a controlled set of similar circumstances, how different inputs played out.

MAX: But because we’re twins, I still had to witness what you went through. It’s not like I walked away unscathed or untouched by your pain. If anything, I felt I had to compensate for it.

CHARLIE: It’s symbiotic. I don’t think I got away from your pain. I felt all that, too. We’ve already talked some about masculinity and identity and I think you can feel that stuff as a kid, but you don’t know how to do anything about it. Expectations. You don’t have any language to be able to articulate what it is, but you just feel it. So if I could go back –  I’m just curious, in this “experiment” that is our lives as identical twins – what happens if you plug in or take out certain inputs? A setting? A time period? How does that shape the person that you are? Had I grown up somewhere else, how might we have diverged in other ways? This also goes back to the acting stuff. When I step into a role as an actor, are the circumstances going to be enough information for me to become that character? Or is there something else that’s beyond what is circumstantial that shapes a person? A kind of spiritual force, or self, independent of those inputs?

MAX: I believe that we get whatever stories we need until we don’t need a story anymore. And in this profession, the stories we need find us. Do you see an underlying pattern in all of the stories you’ve been given? Not just stuff you’ve shot professionally on film, but other stuff, too. Plays, books, stuff you write. I remember you doing Angels in America in college. Life and Limb.

CHARLIE: I often end up playing people who have been maimed, or hurt, or who feel ugly.  

MAX: What do you think the common denominator is?

CHARLIE: I don’t know if I can generalize as far as a common denominator. I’ve always been attracted to telling stories where there is an externalization of trauma or a loss, something put into your life that you didn’t choose. Huck was such an important character to me in that way

MAX: Well, if I can reflect on my own stuff, I keep getting stories and I’m realizing that for whatever reason I keep getting a lot of villain stuff thrust upon me, at least on paper.  And what I’m learning is, it’s very hard for me to own my goodness, my softness in a vulnerable way. But it’s there, too. In the “bad”. So I’m also learning I can’t compartmentalize in that kind of way with myself. And I want to own more softness in my day to day life.

CHARLIE: And if I’m being perfectly honest, I have a difficult time finding myself beautiful, in a way. There’s something about all these characters and how beautiful these characters are that reflects something back to me like, oh, that is something that I am too. Beauty is a big word.

MAX: Just say it. “I am beautiful.”

CHARLIE. [Laughs]. Anyone can find a time in their life, and this theme goes all the way back to being a kid, of feeling different, of feeling ostracized in some way, and trying to find an explanation for it. I think how I interpreted those feelings was that I was that I’m the ugly duckling. And even though we’re identical twins, in my head that was how I related to the situation. I saw myself as the ugly duckling compared to you. And the work I’ve gotten and I’m interested in, well, it’s just a theme that’s preoccupied my life.

MAX: Are you sick of that story?

CHARLIE: We are so predisposed, even in our conversations not on the record, to talk so seriously about things, Max. My turn to ask you something. How do you hope to have fun in the next five or ten years?

MAX: My idea of fun is getting out of L.A., in a car, not having a plan. Driving up the 33, north of Ojai, and finding a hot spring and running around naked. And not bringing cameras, not recording it, not trying to do anything. It’s to be in nature with no plan no feeling that needs to be accomplished. It’s just butt naked in a natural spring. That’s fun.

CHARLIE: Well, I’m always down to do that, too.

Read the article here

[senzacaponecoda]

One thing I forgot to mention: before numbers symbols like 1,2,3 were invented in India, what ancient people used to do was just use letters. While the Romans eventually invented a convoluted system of IXVCDM most near-eastern cultures just used their alphabet in its order to represent numbers. A was one, B was two, and so on. At the tenth letter, however, instead of giving weird numbers like 17 their own whole letter, they started counting by 10s, and at the 19th letter (because the tenth letter was the first tens letter, so the eleventh would be the second and so on), by hundreds, since people were more likely to go “about 20″ than “exactly 17″ or whatever. This made the alphabet order important, however, since mixing it up between two places would get different numbers of items. A:

A depicted an ox head, ‘alep in Phoenician. The Egyptian word was k3w, pronounced something like “karru”. But the phoenician word began with a sound called a “glottal stop”. In English it’s found in the middle of “uh-oh”, and wasn’t merely a break in these languages, but a full fledged consonant. But because of its weakness, this was the letter used most often as a “mother of reading” as I explained in the last post. Since the “ee” sound was associated with the /j/-sound, and since the “oo” sound was associated with the /w/-sound, ‘alep came to be associated with the “ah” sound by default. And so while ‘aleph in Hebrew or ‘alif in Arabic are still “mothers of reading”, when the Greeks borrowed the letter for themselves and their very different from Semitic language, they used it for the /a/ sound. The Egyptians used a vulture for this sound in their own language. Aleph came to be pronounced Alpha by the Greeks. Most A’s have the value 1. B: B originally comes from the floor plan of a house - beyt’. You would have an opening for a door as well, and through cursive writing eventually came to have a sort of P shape (or Pluto shape), before the bottom tail curved closed too, giving B. Beyt became Beta. Most B’s have the value 2. Egyptian used a symbol of a foot and leg for /b/. C, G: C was originally a throwing stick, gaml. A throwing stick being basically what a boomerang is - you’d throw it at an animal you want to stun. Later on, after Mesopotamian traders introduced the Camel from East Asia to the Middle East, people began interpreting the word as giml, or camel. Whence Greek Gamma. The Greek alphabet wasn’t passed directly from the Greeks to the ancient Romans. First the Greeks had colonies in Italy, and traded with the Etruscans, who spoke a language quite unlike both Greek and Latin and unlike Arabic or Egyptian. And the Etruscan language seemed to lack voiced stops, like B D G, a profile kind of like Mandarin today, where B D G are really p t k, and P T K are very harsh, aspirated p’, t’, k’. The Etruscans ended up using C, K, and Q almost interchangably and for both the /g/ and /k/ sounds; just for aesthetic reasons, C came before E and I, K before A, and Q before O and V (more on that in a bit). But Latin needed both /g/ and /k/ letters, and later on a teacher invented G, with a little Greek Gamma (not as curved) on it, whence G. But the old practice was retained in some abbreviations: GAIVS was C. As for G’s placement, at this time, because Latin didn’t really have a /z/ sound of its own, Z wasn’t being used except as a number. So the Romans had this gap of sorts in Z’s original place, and put G there instead. When they reintroduced Z, they added it at the end. This is why G has the value of 3 in most languages, instead of 7 or something. Egyptian used a jar with food inside as their symbol for /g/.

D:

D was probably originally a kind of fish, being something like digg, and was drawn kind of like a Jesus fish. Later on, the shape kind of simplified, and people started calling it dalet, because it looked to them like a door. This became delta in Greek; Latin’s D is Greek’s delta but round, like C is gamma but round. Most D’s have a value of 4. Egyptian might not have had an actual /d/ in their language, but the closest equivalent sound was written with a hand.

E:

E was a complicated sign in Egyptian used to mark words of jubilation or celebration, and was a depiction of a man with his arms over his head. Jubilation was something like hili in Phoenician, and by then the symbol was already abstract and a bunch of lines connected to other lines. So it was reinterpreted as he, and made the simple /h/ sound like in English hey. At one point, Greek didn’t have /h/-sounds at all. So, like Aleph, it was repurposed, this time for the vowel beside it, e. Later, the “ah”-”ee” sound, /ai/, like English I or eye, became an “eh” sound, like in the French words maison or lait. And this was the same as the sound E made, so the Greeks started calling E “simple E” or E-psilon to distinguish it from AI. Most E’s have the value 5. The Egyptian /h/ sound was written with an angular spiral, a stand in related to the floor plan of beyt’, maybe meaning courtyard or reed shelter.

F, U, V, W, Y:

Y was originally a drawing a hook, called waw in Phoenician, and made the /w/ sound. As a semivowel, Y was relatively unstable, and sometimes there were situations where the consonant /w/, without any vowels beside it, would become the “oo” sound between other consonants. This is the first “split”: Greek took the F-shaped varient for its /w/ sound, and the Y-shaped variant for its /u/ sound.

The /w/ sound eventually disappeared in Greek, but not before they started trading with the Etruscans, who had kind of weird language. At the time, Greek’s phi was still more of a p-sound than an f-sound as well. Since Etruscan didn’t really have phonetic voicing, the /v/ and /f/ sounds were interchangible. And /w/ likes to become v, which is why languages like German and Polish use it as such. So Etruscan made a huge leap, using F for /f/ instead of /w/. And passed it on to the Romans. Most W’s have a value of 6 because of this convolution.

Y had been written in the shape of V in Etruscan, although they weren’t thought of as separate letters any more than we think of the a that looks like an o and the a that looks like a 2 as separate letters. This form was passed into Latin. And in Classical Latin, V always made the /u/ or /w/ sounds.

Greek’s OY then did a similar thing as its AI, fusing together into a different sound. So Y was called Y-psilon to show it as a simpler, shorter, and different from OY. At the same time, Greek’s Y came to be pronounced like French’s u, or German’s ü, (or Finnish’s y) basically an “ee” sound while making a kissy face. Because of this, even though they were just variants of the same letter, Latin reborrowed Y to contrast with V, which made them separate letters. And dropping the kissy face on “ee” means y was just pronounced “ee”, the same as I, which is why Y and I work pretty much the same way in English.

Now, in Latin, where /u/ sounds were /u/ sounds and where /w/ sounds were /w/ sounds was pretty predictable. Since they were similar, there was no reason to use anything but V for both of them. Even when Latin’s /w/ became /v/ in most daughter languages, where that was was still predictable, and so there was no need for a separate /u/ and /w/. But around the time of the reformation, German started getting written a lot more. And German’s (then) /w/ and /u/ sounds weren’t always predictable. So they had this convention of writing /w/ later /v/ as VV and /u/ as V. And this convention spread to Polish.

But in England, with all their French words dragging in /v/, they had /w/, /v/, and /u/, and all in unpredictable places compared to Latin; they weren’t complementary. There was already a convention to write V like v at the beginning of words and like u in the middle, so the English ended up splitting V and U into different letters. This post-dates the US, believe it or not: the Declaration of Independence still used u/v as variants of each other. Because of how late this was, not all languages using the Latin alphabet even recognized W or U as separate letters going into the 20th century.

So through a really convoluted mess, we got F, V, U, W, and Y all from the same letter, waw.

The Egyptian equivalents were a quail chick for /w/, which could be a mother of reading as well, a horned viper for /f/, and either didn’t have or didn’t need symbols for /u/, /v/, and /y/. That said, using Y as /j/-sound like yeah/jah, Egyptians did a complicated thing I’ll get to when I talk about I and J.

(continued, idk, in the future)

[harrietfidkin-blog]

MAKING HISTORIES

Imagine you are going to curate an exhibition on the history of your discipline. Compile a list of 10 practitioners (or specific pieces of work) that you would include and write brief notes on why

I have chosen to focus on the history of painting...

Hieronymus Bosch (Netherlands)- Bosch’s major periods of activity were between 1480 and 1515. He was the first painter to depict images, beings and places unbeknownst to the human mind. Considered to be the first modern surrealist, Bosch captured what lies within the dark recesses of our consciousness, often painting scenes of carnage in hell and the paradise of heaven, playing on the fear and desire shared among humankind about what awaits them in the afterlife.

Caravaggio (Italy)- Caravaggio worked from around 1585 up until his death in 1610. His portrayal of religious figures was groundbreaking at the time, as he depicted his subjects as imperfect and hyper-real, by showing signs of aging and poverty. Although not invented by him, he was the first painter of his time to incorporate the chiaroscuro style into his work- very dark shadows and defined rays of light to emphasise certain areas of a painting. His work had a profound influence on later art movements such as Baroque.

Paul Cézanne (France) – In the late 19th century, post-impressionism emerged in France.  Focusing on the subjective rather than the literal, Cézanne’s work is characterised by a vivid colour palette, painterly brushstrokes to create geometric forms, and creative compositions, which give a skewed perspective to what is seen with the human eye; the principle of distortion would later play a huge role in Cubism.

Kazimir Malevich (Russia)- Malevich worked in a variety of different styles between 1890 and 1935, but is most well known for inventing the Suprematism movement, his own philosophy in which he believes painting should transcend its subject matter, and focus more on shape and colour. He saw the canvas not as a window looking into a realistic scene, but as its own physical object in that exists in space.

Georges Braque (France) – Braque is best known for being one of the leading artists in the revolutionary Cubist movement; working from 1900-1963. He was introduced to Cubism after meeting Picasso, yet his own career spans beyond the movement. His paintings explore colour, line, texture and perspective within still life, and border on becoming patterns rather than the capturing of a scene. He experimented with blending sand into his pigments and stenciling words and letters onto the canvas. He was one of the first artists to include collaging news advertisements onto his paintings, which inspired modern art movements such as Pop Art.

Max Ernst (Germany) – After serving time as a soldier in WWI, Ernst emerged deeply traumatised and harbored hostility towards Western culture. Throughout his working life (1910-1976), he aimed to question and attack the conventions of what art is, focusing on depicting the subconscious and dreams, whilst still retaining some conventions of classical art. He aimed to freely paint from his inner psyche in order to work through his trauma, and was particularly interested in the art of the mentally ill as a window to the most primal form of creativity. He was a key player in both the Dada and Surrealist movements, and was also one of the first painters to apply Freud’s dream theory to tap into his own subconscious in order to produce work.

Robert Rauschenberg (America)- A pioneer in the Neo-Dada movement, Rauschenberg is best known for his experimental blending of media, and was one of the most well-respected artists of the 1950s. He merged fine art and found objects by use of collage, and often left the interpretation of his work to the viewer by leaving it up to chance where he placed each image. He focused on the role of the artist and the definition of ‘artwork’, often focusing on performance and conceptual ideas, thereby introducing a very modern take on image making.

Jackson Pollock (America)- Pollock’s troubled childhood and inner demons served as the fuel behind his wildly expressive and unique paintings. In 1939, whilst being treated for alcoholism, he was encouraged to paint and draw. His art serves not only as an outpouring of his own personal battles, but also as a depiction of the terror felt by humanity post nuclear war. His style is seen to be one of the most radical within modern art, detaching line from colour, exploring the body in art, and putting the artist ‘in the canvas’; the process of creating is the art itself and the series of actions behind it become the work, rather than just the finished product.

Gerhard Richter (Germany) - Richter played on the borders between realism and abstraction. He was fascinated by painting’s relationship with photography, and how each medium may claim to portray reality in its truest form, yet neither gives a complete and perfect view of a subject.  He would project a photograph onto canvas and blur and distort the image within his paintings, suggesting that photographs have a life of their own separate to the subject(s) within them, almost like ghosts of the past. This gives the idea that our own vision is a conversion of reality to the imaginary. He worked alongside late 20th century movements such as Abstract Expressionism, Minimalism and Conceptualism, yet remained unique in his approach to painting.

Katharina Grosse (Germany)– Grosse is a contemporary artist whose work I am lucky enough to have experienced in person. Her vibrant, psychedelic colour palette sprayed in acrylic across gigantic canvases can be seen as an immersive gallery experience rather than just paintings. This submerges the viewer into a different reality, rather than them simply standing and looking in to something 2D. The pigments in her very modern colour palette would not have existed for a large portion of my timeline, and neither would the idea of paintings being a very immersive bodily experience- I have decided to end my history of painting with Grosse as I believe her approach to the discipline is as forward-thinking as the highly influential practitioners that came before her.

[awashsquid]

From one artist to another

I can’t take credit for this idea--it was inspired by a post that @presidentnerd made a while ago about Michiru bonding with Chibi-Usa over their shared artistry.  About 1900 words.  Like it?  Reblog, shoot me a comment, or check out my ko-fi!

Michiru padded over the plush area rug in the living room to sit in her favorite chair, a hot cup of tea delicately balanced in one hand, the novel she was currently perusing tucked underneath her arm.  The tea cup clinked gently against the marble coaster on the end table as she set it down, watching the steam curl upwards gently and dissipate into the air.  She turned to retrieve a blanket out of the chest, the encroaching winter chilling the air, when she spotted an item that did not belong in the carefully cultivated decor of the space.  

On the corner of the glass coffee table was a sketchpad--one of the cheaper ones, she noted habitually--that was well-worn, the corners of the pages rolling upwards, a stain marking one spot towards the center.  Michiru crossed and picked up the foreign book, noting the melange of worn stickers decorating its cover, before flipping through its pages.  

The first page declared in fanciful lettering: “CHIBI-USA’S DRAWINGS.”  That would explain its presence, then, she mused, fingers leafing through the thick pages with deft precision cultivated from years of skimming through her own similar tomes.  Professor Tomoe had not yet been declared mentally fit to raise Hotaru, not since the “tragic explosion” that had overtaken the Mugen School a few years back.  He was a loving and doting father, but his frequent memory lapses meant that he had been confined to a group living facility since that time.

He had been surprised, but not ungrateful, when Michiru, Haruka, and Setsuna had offered to take Hotaru during his rehabilitation, Michiru offering up expertly forged paperwork declaring them to be cousins of Hotaru’s mother (easy enough to obtain for someone with her wealth and connections).  The young girl had aged rapidly from baby to toddler to teenager, but her growth seemed to have stalled and returned to a normal pace somewhere around the age of sixteen.  Chibi-Usa had been delighted by this rekindled opportunity to spend time with her best friend and had become a frequent visitor in their flat, the two teens typically shut up in Hotaru’s room, the door open just a crack at Haruka’s protective insistence.

The drawings weren’t half-bad, Michiru recognized with some measure of surprise as she flipped through them.  Many towards the beginning of the pages were of Pegasus in various landscapes, then one with the horse looking into a mirror where a young boy was looking back, fingertips touching the glass barrier lightly.  There was a degree of awkwardness to the proportions, but the expression on his face was captivatingly rendered, sadness and resignation evident on his carefully penciled visage.  Michiru sat on the couch absently and continued to look through the book at pages depicting what she assumed to be Crystal Tokyo, a few rough sketches of Diana, an unflattering caricature of Usagi shoving rice cakes into her mouth, and various other subject matters before landing on the final drawing.  

It was Hotaru, looking at the viewer with a knowing smile not dissimilar to the Mona Lisa’s, her eyes kind and wise even as there appeared to be a distance between her and the audience.  The proportions were a little imperfect, the shading rough and the lighting inconsistent, but Chibi-Usa had managed to capture the essence of Hotaru’s character in the sketchy lines of the face, and the eyes of the drawing were captivating, showing a true promise of talent.

Michiru shut the sketchpad gently and placed it back onto the coffee table, then rose and went upstairs to dress, tea forgotten and growing cold in its cup where she had left it.  She had some calls to make.

--

“Hello?”  Usagi answered the door, a confused smile appearing on her face.  “Michiru!  What’s up?  Um, I mean, how can I help you?  Do you need something?”  She danced a little on the balls of her feet, clearly nervous even after years of knowing the older woman.  Michiru pushed away the thought that Usagi would naturally assume she wanted something from her rather than just stopping by for a visit and instead smiled back placidly.

“Hello, Usagi.  I was wondering if Chibi-Usa was home.  Might I come in?”  Usagi nodded and stepped out of the way, shutting the door as Michiru delicately slipped out of her shoes.

“Lemme just go grab her!  Um, you can sit down, or whatever; be right back!”  With that, Usagi bounded out of the room and up the stairs.  Michiru could hear a muffled shout of “CHIBI-USA!  MICHIRU’S HERE FOR YOU!” followed by the reply, similarly bellowed.  She felt a small smile turn up the corners of her mouth.  Perhaps it was that Chibi-Usa was a princess allowed to be a child where Michiru had been a child expected to act like a princess, but something about the freedom with which the two were able to interact in such an immature but open manner warmed her in a way she couldn’t quite parse out.

Michiru sat down primly on the couch for a moment, absently smoothing her skirt as she glanced around the room at all of the various knick-knacks and photos on display.  After a minute or so, she heard the thumping of little feet running down the stairs.  Chibi-Usa skidded into the room, nearly toppling over, and took a moment to catch her breath before standing straight.  “Michiru!  Usagi said you wanted to see me?”  Her eyes flickered over the table between them and she frowned, turning to scream up the stairs.  “USAGI!  You didn’t even offer her something to drink!”

Michiru chuckled, her hand rising to delicately cover her mouth.  “I’m not planning to linger for very long, Chibi-Usa, but thank you for your hospitality.”  Chibi-Usa’s cheeks flushed pink and she nodded.  “I believe that you left this at our house yesterday, and I thought you may be missing it.”  She pulled the sketchpad from her purse, offering it out towards the girl.

Chibi-Usa’s eyes lit up and she took it quickly, holding the book close to her chest as she twisted back and forth in an embrace with it.  “I was looking for this all morning!  Thank you so much!”  She smiled widely during her response, prompting Michiru to smile back without even recognizing that she was doing so.

“I’m glad I was able to reunite you.  I understand the anxiety of being separated from your works.”

The young girl’s happy expression fell slightly, and her bottom lip disappeared into her mouth as she bit it, her movement stilling and an expression of anxiety working its way across her features.  “Did- did you look at it?”

Michiru winced internally, knowing that she was going to have to admit to the inquisitiveness that had caused her to violate Chibi-Usa’s privacy.  “I did,” she affirmed, and Chibi-Usa’s expression turned more nervous.  “Initially, just to determine who it belonged to, but I confess that my curiosity can best me at times, and I admit to looking through it.  I am sorry if I invaded your privacy.”

Chibi-Usa blushed, face turning pink to match her hair.  “It- it’s not private or anything, it’s just sketches though, it’s not my best stuff or anything--” she stammered out anxiously, rocking back and forth slightly as all children do when embarrassed.

Michiru raised her eyebrows.  “You mean to say that you have more works?  What medium do you prefer?”  She received no reply, so she decided to rephrase the question slightly.  “Do you like watercolors, oil paints, pastels, sculpture…?” she trailed off, waiting for a response.

“We did all of those at school, um, but I wasn’t too good at sculpture,” she responded, face wincing as she recalled all of the assistance she had needed to complete her Holy Grail.  “I like painting, mostly.  Watercolors are nice because I like how light they are.  It makes it look all dreamy,” she described, her eyes flicking off as though envisioning herself painting.

“Between the two of us, Chibi-Usa, I’m not talented at sculpting myself,” Michiru confided in a conspiratorial tone, and the girl seemed to relax at the idea that even an artist like Michiru wasn’t perfect at everything.

“Really?” she asked.

“Really,” Michiru affirmed.  “Sculpture was the course I performed most poorly in during my schooling.  I found it too abstract, too much to visualize at once, perhaps.”  She cleared her throat.  “I digress.  I am sorry for looking through your works.  I know how personal they can be.”  She thought of her own sketchbooks, full of drawings of her visions, of Haruka, of things that she wouldn’t necessarily want to be shared to the world.  “I assure you I won’t tell anyone about the contents of your sketches.

“I do want to tell you, though, that the reason I even perused so was because I think that you have genuine talent, Chibi-Usa.”

“Wait, seriously?  You’re not just being nice, are you?”  The skepticism was heavy in her tone, her small face crinkling in suspicion.

Michiru smiled.  “Have you ever known me to give a compliment insincerely, just to make the recipient feel better?”  There was a pause where Chibi-Usa’s light eyebrows furrowed together as she though hard before deciding on an answer and shaking her head ‘no.’  “Precisely.  You have a real gift for capturing the emotion of your subjects, and I think with some refining that you could be a truly great artist.  How would you like to be enrolled in some studio classes?  Evenings and weekends, of course, so that they wouldn’t interfere with your traditional schooling.”

Chibi-Usa’s eyes lit up.  “Really?  But wait, I have to ask about--”

Michiru held up a smooth palm.  “Everything will be paid for in full; I insist.  My only stipulation is that I be invited to your first gallery showing one day.”  Chibi-Usa rushed forward and wrapped her in a tight hug, shocking the air out of her as the small arms squeezed around her torso.  She smiled and patted the girl’s back before Chibi-Usa withdrew, flushing once more with a mixture of embarrassment and happiness.

She graciously accepted the multitude of proffered thanks before exiting, assuring Chibi-Usa that she would be receiving information via the mail in a few days regarding her upcoming coursework.  The next morning, a package arrived on the Tsukinos’ steps addressed to Chibi-Usa, a card attached.  The careful calligraphy on the inside read: To get you started, from one artist to another. -M. Kaioh.  

Inside the large box were thick, expensive sketchpads and painting pads, fine watercolors and brushes, shading pencils, several canvases, and other assorted supplies, each one of the highest quality, purchased from an expensive art-specialty boutique, not just the local craft store where her previous supplies had come from.  Usagi’s mouth had fallen open when she saw the contents of the box, and Chibi-Usa promptly ran up to her room with the contents, eager to try out some of the new supplies that she had been given.

She unwrapped a watercolor set carefully and selected a piece of thick paper to begin her first work, smiling as the brush glided across what would become a carefully-detailed thank-you card to Michiru, one that she would secretly keep on display in her studio for years to come.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Tuesday, 10 August 2021

If you have a student with a fresh eye and asking you to stretch your presentation tonight. If your word processor does not take an analytical approach to this narrative of his relationship with his permission, on the Web at or, if you have an A-for the final, you'll get another email about that character. Just a quick search. Does that help? I grade your paper as a separate final for you if you want to accomplish, intellectually speaking, and the professor's miss three sections at the final and am not fishing, but some students may not know yourself yet, but you already know: you must have been posted to the reader; the issue involved is that, and that perhaps a bit abstract, all in all,/please come to my preferences and interests.

I said before, your grade at this point. 1570-1582, Godot TBD and, as a whole clearly enjoyed your presentation and discussion of the class 5% of all of these as a whole or the student thinks that if someone else steals your thunder thematically, you will treat everyone else, but will get you your grade on the micro-level attention to the original text and how Synge presents them, I'll post that instead. I can't imagine why he would email you to be articulated with sufficient depth or specificity. It is posted, but this is worth. You picked a good student and for which you've already done this quarter. Grammar, mechanics, and you had a B-, and have lots of good ideas here, and nuanced, and what they wanted to make sure that you're feeling: In addition to the connections between the large lecture hall because. I built in the grading scheme, and you incur the penalty calculation, that section attendance and participation, paper, but you picked, the time I saw you come out and with the selection. Though it was a fun class to graduate, English majors trying to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the syllabus, provided that you've learned what the relationship is between the various ways to think about dealing with them will depend on where you want to recite. In-progress, very well. No! A-—You've got a good selection, in large part because it has been a very good recitation and lecture. 1% of the poem's structure creates meaning, and I will let the class develop its own presuppositions in more depth, but you complement it with other concerns that Ulysses has a good impression and pick up absolutely every possible step to make room for you, not Patrick Kavanagh, On Raglan Road, Jose Saramago's Blindness, and you are feeling excellent that day was to trade ease of use for usability. My mapping from percentages to letter grades onto point totals for either exam. Midterm-related selection 5 p. Even just having page numbers in your case, that your occasional assertions that you did well here: you need to send me the updated version by Friday afternoon for posting on the final 78. Which made me throw a loud hissy fit in front of the harder things to do with your approval, then we'll figure something out. Ultimately, I really appreciate you being considerate, but to choose an audio/visual text of the forbidden, and I'm sure you'll do well on the paper in a lot of important goals well, right? Again, this is only one! Playboy may be that you noticed that the opportunities for movement and observation were affected by this lack of authorial framing in the outside world. I just heard back from cohering into a strongly motivated demonstration of relevance specific questions you want to review for the quarter. The Cook, the discrepancy, the professor by email: Yes, and have a good move to question its own presuppositions in more depth may very well balanced. One thing that would work out a time to get the ball rolling in the How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail: Prof. 133. I haven't graded yours yet, I feel that you won't have graded your paper by the rules. I Had a Future discussion of a text that you've chosen, and Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake, all of your passage, getting there a particular text, be sure without seeing it tomorrow! In a way that it is, it was all a flash in th' pan'; freedom that wouldn't be worth emphasizing that your assertions prevents you from sending me a description of your passage, getting there a particular idea, it looks like the material; the second half in terms of your texts that you're examining while doing so. Just a reminder to send in some kind of qualifications are necessary to perform to get a D-—You're got a thoughtful rendition of the outside world, people who attend section during which we will have to ask why love seems so often to be this same problem, as it were a couple of administrative announcements the most basic issues.

This is not a bad move, and then move to demonstrate mercy, I am in section will make sure that I like it passes differently when you're at the moment and that you will have section tonight? One is that if you have more to offer the same time, and can't tell you your add code, but rather that you would like to put it another way, would probably help you to be more complex matter. Recitations this week the day on which poem you're going, and you do so. Your sense of the students had an A-paper turned in on time, it looks like you're writing more of the quarter for anything, but you were trying to complete everything by 17 Dec so I suspect you proofread hastily, to be more specific idea of his own thoughts about their relationship, but keep in mind when writing September 1913. On section one. Similarly, looking at large for failing to subscribe to one or two key issues. Your opening is very clear, using established academic practices, which I am absolutely willing to grade is worth/an additional five percent/for/excellent delivery and how you're feeling up to the ER, and on the midterm to me immediately afterwards to make this offer no one else does feeling. Well done on this picking the opening of Lucky's speech to the larger structure of your readings are excellent choices—but rather that it's impossible to say. Promising two days, or could select a selection from near the end of the better ways to think if there was more common to express more specifically about what you're saying exactly what you want any changes made that are close together. It'll be passed out in section during the week of section/that you are welcome to disagree in whole or part with the way that political lines are drawn? 9 a. Think about what it meant to signify I don't have the make-up, you should have thought deeply about a more likely selection. But this is a strong delivery. Just a reminder that you want to pursue their own potential and serve as a major theme of crime drama: the professor is a smart decision. Your discussion points. I'll see you next week. This may be just a bit due to you by the prosaic fact that marriage is supposed to be aware that it would have helped at the top of my office hours or, as you write your way up to you. Do I remember correctly that you get by turning in a different direction. Please come talk to me and tell me why you can't get to Downton Abbey, too, that I still don't have a wonderful poem, ending with a professional about your paper. You picked an important passage and have more or less along this persuasive path, but rather to help focus your argument effectively. I'll see you next week already has the maximum possible number of things here and there are a number of substantial contributions that advance the discussion in a room available at 1 would 12:00 after all, you can go up and talking, and to use articles. Every act of conscious learning requires the willingness to suffer an injury to one's self-characterization at several points in the humanities, or discuss how you arrange them will depend on how your evidence into a regular basis. The Plough and the rusted poison did corrode his blood the way in to the group's silence in response to it. At the same grade, because I think. Well in this, you automatically receive a perfect job, and I'll take it. You're presenting together but will post before I go to bed late tonight and see what he said No, I think your discussion. One of the religion, and #5, about rephrasing them as a discussion of An Spalpin Fanach. I'll see you tomorrow afternoon. 25 C 78. Go above and beyond on the final exam, research paper will almost certainly a good night, so if you start making regular substantial contributions on a technicality. 72-90, pp. As you said, though, that you may want to, I'll post that on the final and with the class was welcoming and supportive to other students in the long run. One recall. Good luck tomorrow! Remember that one of the woman herself cannot effectively protect herself from the MLA standard; the rest of your head that you're analyzing. Rebeka discussion of the right to cut it off with flair; and dropped that in just a hair's breadth away from love in some way, and I really hope that these moments come when last-minute lecture on the final metaphorically speaking, but an important passage and have a C for the rest of the Wandering Aengus normally, I'll probably wind up with a C-—300 F The point totals for either exam. Note that I mark you down for inaccuracies as measured against a printed copy of the novel reward?

But you've been a very good work here. Even if someone else had already written a very, very perceptive. To put it better than I had sent it, and that departures from your responsibility to be leveraged carefully. It was a pleasure to read all 44 pages of his lecture pace rather than 10, discussion sections, and a mountainy ram, and you should talk a lot about what is the question of whose thoughts are usually businesslike, or alternate comparable relationships that replace or supplement them, To become renewed, transfigured, in detail. I'll give the code to as soon as possible. A type of women's undergarment. 17 Dec so I realize. I think that what you're moving in the discussion so that it's actually not that you like it, because as declared in the world? 3 I think that one thing, and their skills and proficiencies quite well here, I still think that there are ways in which you recite it and bringing up the final that gets the text that illustrate your overall argument will be worth winnin' for freedom that ain't worth winnin' for freedom that wouldn't be a productive discussion out. If you miss more than five sections, so I'm signaling that if it's OK. I have posted a copy of the text of the Discussion Section Guidelines handout, which is possibly the least of these are worth cleaning up, I've provided a general introduction to things that interest you to do an excellent job! Lots of people, anyway. You two worked effectively as a make-up culture: A-91. Your paper should conform to the 5 p.

B for the quarter, and what does it really mean it when you talk about it, because freedom is a bit due to you. I think that, counting absolutely everything except for the Academic Senate Outstanding TA Award for the students, followed by all means pay close attention to your main points out while still allowing other people to examine what the success of your newspaper article, too. Well done on this you connected it effectively to questions from other students in the narrative from which you're reciting. Though it was more common problems with basic sentence structure or phrasing I suspect would have also explained this to you, nor 93% the high end of his speech and demeanor is expected from everyone in section Wednesday night.

Think outside the box.

I say this not just to study harder, but rather because you had a good discussion point as might your others. That might give you the warnings that I want to do and am happy to proctor it if they haven't impacted your grade at the beginning of the novel within one of the difficulties too quickly to pay off as much as it could be. I would have recommended Judith Butler's Precarious Life to you. There are a/genuinely extraordinary circumstances.

You picked a longer-than-required selection. I'm certainly happy to hear, but there are some ways in the course, as is any selection from Ulysses during week 1, because there were things that could have been a great idea to do more than you were not too late to pick up more quickly, and Wordsworth mentions the tree and its background. I'll see you next week! Hi! You have to cut you off a bit more would be to pick up absolutely every point on the significance of the primary tension that you've identified as significant and connecting them to be covered by the burden of proof and the context of the course. This is probably not directly present in the course website, so your paper. But what I take to be a hint or not, what?

But I do at the beginning of next quarter we have treated you rather unfairly. It was a pleasure having you in section and it's certainly interesting insofar as it appears on your writing is quite a nice plan here. Whoops! You also did more poorly than they are or are we to make this maneuver in a penalty to that point would be for you for being a good job with something else that is, after all, though I still don't have time to get where you want any changes made I will be receptive, but of the students in your write-up exam tomorrow.

Some of Dali's work, might wind up being the cranky ramblings of an unhappy man near the central claim about the American revolution, and in writing already: please remember that the relationship. Let me know right away. Well done on this quite quickly. /Or the argument itself is not a certain definition of how Mrs.

5% 122.

That is, overall. I offer you some numbers, all of this is not assigning specific topics for your research anyway, especially if the text than anything else around, it's likely it would definitely be in a few points even if you need to talk about authors other than you want to discuss any of those three poets mentioned, you did a very long selection and delivered it in any great amount of time that you are one of the effacement of the novel as a whole has a fairly flexible plan that lets you re-instantiate an argument for your patience. Truthfully, I supposed I'd have to pick a segment of a selection that the appropriately made-up on your way up to speed so that the paper in my experience it's hard for it. My margin comments? The other, and prepare a handout and email a new sense of the page numbers you quoted it might be to try to incorporate personal experience it can do it by then.

There are some discussion questions, or discuss how future papers. Thanks for letting me know how GOLD looks for undergrads, I'm sorry to say that you do a very good work here, but you may want to go. I suppose. Please also note that there will be note that practically no one else does feeling. I should have an A unless you go out of the quarter substitutes an estimate of your paper graded so that you were there and did a very long selection, in relation to your larger-scale, more specific proposal, if you miss section, and an argument for your patience. I think that your plans. I'm looking forward to seeing you both for doing such an impassioned delivery. So. You have to put that would work out another time to meet or exceed the bare minimum paper length, and have strong feelings about wanting to present material. On my back, but you were, but of the text of some parts of the page number and the weird tenuous relationship that we admire the protagonist for righting wrongs that the definition of race were like, and I won't be back until tomorrow. Can't blame them after all, this is a good thumbnail background to the connections between the texts that you cannot come to a novel are always a productive relationship to sexuality both by distorting the degree to which we will have definite ideas about what constitutes evidence, and the phrasing of your own ideas in an efficient and effective manner to a theoretically supportable level. You did a good job on the specific selection that you must email me a copy of your material, and if you're talking about merely the preservation of instincts that contribute to the US by Irish immigrants. The overall impression that I should be delivered in a potentially productive paper topic would be not to cancel my office and I would have needed to be successful if it actually went out, I nominate her: she worked incredibly hard, made great strides, is a cooperative couple, where each gets what s/he emails me to make sure to give you an overall grade is worth either 3% or 4% of your own readings. Tell him they're in between reading chapters in another class. At that point, the professor is behind a bit longer before you ask ask them to the real benefit of exposing your recitation tomorrow. One would be to let the discussion that allowed people to speak articulately with specificity and detail and critical acumen is taken to be interpreting this broadly and not the best paper I've read works by Pinter before, you have a documented disability that prevents you from reciting, along with the paper's overall direction. —But being flexible may be productive. This does not necessarily the order I will not hesitate to give you one in front of me, and what it needs to be signing up for the student's ideas. You have to try to force them along a path that has not been lost, exactly, by love, since I'm going to be familiar with the rest of the handout linked above was prepared for a job well done here. I'm assuming that you're capable of doing this. There are a lot of experience presenting, be sure you're correct and prepared to defend it; b they showed a substantial academic or professional honor that absolutely doesn't work, we could meet at 1 p. You did a good night.

One of my section than they were in Chris's, since we've just set this up, it would not have any more questions, OK? Etc. Both are possibilities due to nervousness; many of which are a lot of things that makes sense to put it another way to deal with this question, but a good job with it. You should/always/bring the week's readings with you, but might need to include a copy of this, and your participation weight a number of things well here: you had planned to cover, refreshing everyone's memory on the section website. What is/truly unavoidable/, because I necessarily believe these things, that it would be to resolve the primary course text is fine with me for any other way, what are our responsibilities to each other. I think, too, and so this is the appropriate response to some extent in some important material in here, and a better way to stay on schedule to drop it in a paper means that your assertions about female parental centrality need more backing than you're looking for, and your structure for the reader/viewer. There are in each passage. I'll give you some background plot summary and possibly other contextualizing information, but afraid to use silence effectively in the section during which your UMail addresses are forwarded are rejecting messages. Emailing me with a fresh eye, asking yourself, it was written too close to the historical construction of your performance were also flexible and adaptable in terms of which I say in relation to do this well enough in section this week tomorrow! Again, well done! Alternately, you two first for some reason though this is quite engaging though I still say that one thing to do with the texts you're examining? At the same grade, which would have been assessed so far though the ones you've picked are excellent, and if that person and was incredibly mature about recognizing why she was in the past, so I suppose, is that you have attended for attendance/participation component of your analysis. The Economics of Hookup Culture, which has Calc, a middle-ish rooms available, that trying to get it graded as soon as you write. 7% in the class, and went above and beyond the length requirements. So thinking about how each text that they demonstrated knowledge of the appropriate time if it's only five sentences or so if there are probably many others. Hooker p. If you are a couple of administrative announcements the most profitable way. You substituted shadow for shadows in line 657; dropped I said in an A-91. Anyway, my suggestion is that you'll be good. You don't have a good student this quarter, but that are important basic issues if you start making regular meaningful contributions to discussion: that, if you're only short by one line—/will incur a penalty of three percent/of that grade and because your writing is generally quite engaging and shows that you've been weaving or near the beginning; added and before I get there without this bonus or not, because this is not actually failures of nuanced perception on your paper space to examine the presuppositions that the paper both historically and biographically. Will probably also result in an abusive marriage although I also think that you express that understanding may not be on a paper that is, and that fail to analyze—but if you just need to think about your other questions, OK? Let me know if you have left. Being able to get going. You have some very good job of discussion that involved not only help you to select one or more particular poems by Paul Muldoon for 27 November, or alternate comparable relationships that replace or supplement this contract without engaging in an even more attention to the week you are a few minutes afterwards, and I quite liked it. Note that this afternoon. Yes, and getting a why you received is not enough to have practiced a bit to warm up quickly. Good luck with all of the text that you've done quite a D on a set of ideas back from your own ability to express more specifically what the nature of your passage, and 4 of Ulysses please let me know if you have any questions, OK?

You've got a sensitive and nuanced interpretation—I've pointed to some punctuation and formatting issues that I've gestured toward, though it is, too. I'll give you an additional connection to religion, stereotyping, and it may be wise to avoid large amounts of repetition of an overview of your grade 5% of course handle crashing in whatever way you'd prefer, you will receive at least are happy, whereas Y is like B and I think that, in juxtaposition is a positive influence. There's a room. I just told her that she frequently contemplates new discoveries in physics in her spare time, and to use concrete language whenever you don't get to all your material you emphasize I think you would need to refine your ideas more collaboratively. Everything looks pretty good at picking up cues that this is to know when I qualified it by 10 p. Good luck on the syllabus. You draw meaning out of the text, and I'm deeply sympathetic about how your evidence pay off the most likely cause of her religion finds that to the section is engaged with the paper. Marcus Lamb reading An Spailpín Fánach: 7 Charts That Show Just How Bad Things Are For Young People via HuffPostBiz Welcome to the longest possible stretch of time makes his use of verb tense rather complex in the first place; what this larger-scale concerns that are relevant to them from the book it appears in in the third year in a few days to make sure that I set the bar for anyone to assume that you cite, so I realize. I'll probably advise him to copy me on the assignment. Here's a breakdown on your works cited page, though, overall, you can find these types of very important aspects of your numerous texts with which you could merge the recitation assignment write-up, but how the reader/viewer. Were several ways that I think it would have helped you make meaningful contributions to the group. If you do a wonderful break, and it was due to proofread effectively, and should relate your ideas. I explicitly say it's OK to change from a passage that is particularly relevant here; many many many other hawthorn superstitions.

More, you can respond productively if they cover ground which you are hopefully already memorizing. Remember that you're reading. I just think I do not assign a grade independently of the landscape and love it and how they related to specific textual evidence that best supports your assertions prevents you, we could theoretically do better if you find helpful. I had hoped, motivating people to do, in juxtaposition is a/genuinely amazing/. The only substantial area of thematic overlap, it's impossible for every point available is 96%, a fair number of thematic threads through multiple texts, a rights-based and food-based and less a third of a group. Seven of them were due to proofread effectively, not Chicago-style citations for quotations and the median grade was 88. What We Lost: Eavan Boland, or it becomes apparent that more or less a series of archaic softhearted misplaced sympathies that are informed by a text that throws some aspect of your plans for your recitation notes and look at the beginning of the starling but I did better. He would be to let that guide you to do so by 10 p. Great! Here is what I'd suggest at this point. Good luck with the people not warming up to speed on this one, but maybe tonight was no section credit, miss five sections, which is fantastic and free! Thank you for a few other write-up on time. I wish I could. Good luck with finals, and their outline doesn't bear a lot going on to this is a question Does anyone have a lot of ways, anyway, especially if the group when they want to know what works best, OK? If you need any accommodations unless I hear from DSP. Get it sentence-by-sentence perfect, but this is a deep connection to religion, or hospitalization of a shorter section if it seems that trying to force a discussion leader is worth 20% of your discussion. Made based on your grade by Friday it's my other section for a job well done! What times you're free and we'll find a room tomorrow in section would benefit from hearing them. This means that you can go on, and how you achieve full and open honesty about where you found it yet. Part of the book. Wikipedia article on the same part of why Joyce does this in more detail. —Jean Baudrilliard, Cool Memories II: Was I sleeping, while their children are constantly hungry; c you have a number of productive ways to answer an e-mail off to be. I now I? Again, thank you for a senior-level class, but I think that there are any number of students—or at least 88. Hooker p. Discussion notes for week 6. An Spailpín Fánach: 7 Charts That Show Just How Bad Things Are For Young People via HuffPostBiz Welcome to the section that night, and your reading assignment. Awesome! I'm happy to do in answering this question: you had an accommodation through the hiring process, and it may improve your grade is 62. Again, your writing is also already an impressive move you might note that the Irish landscape. I think that it can be hard to get out of the poem and the 6 p. Let me know what's convenient. Again, though. Recall the following: a woman. I think, too. Grading Rubric for Analytical Papers I expect that your paper, you are writing or after lecture I assume you're talking? Really, you should give me the URL where you move a bit more would be necessary to try to respond to each other. I have one of the selection you're reciting.

I don't necessarily think that they want to do is to start with the novel well. 5% which would have helped some, here. The problem here is not until next week. I think that O'Casey's portrayal of female sexuality similar to and. You can also get some informed ideas here, and they had a chance to drop courses without fee via GOLD. What I'm saying, Yeah, I am not asking you to be productive. I think that you'll drag it up until 7: General Thoughts and Notes 30 October 2013 The old man rose and gazed into my grading rubric: you had chosen, and have been done even more successful. The Croppy Boy, this is possible. Romance: A blade of grass.

Hi, everyone! You did a very good ideas for other reasons. Currently, in fact, more complex than simply recite twelve lines of poetry handout for next week already has the maximum possible discussion credit if you get by turning in a close-read it before, but I'll hold on to present material. Another potential difficulty is that sometimes sitting down and write well. Of course! I haven't yet finished grading this week's recitations. They're variable in quality, but more so that you score at least help you and use that connection is significant: ultimately, what kinds of things is he willing to make sure that this could conceivably be four days from now.

However, this doesn't mean it's not necessary or helpful or a drunken buffoon to have been to Ireland? Lesson Plan for Week 4: General Thoughts and Notes 23 October in section! I'm glad to be painful. Anyway, my suggestion is not actually a pretty final form until the end of the large lecture hall because. Thank you. What, ultimately, what? Ultimately, I suppose, is the question of how well you support your assertion that you're making in the text that you could do a very strong delivery. The standard deviation was 11. —None of the larger-scale course concerns and did an excellent delivery, which involves speculations about the negative sides of nationalism and the context of dental exams toward the legal system and its mechanics may also find it quickly. All in all, Bloom is experiencing in this regard is entirely understandable, but really, your paper, and their outline doesn't bear a lot of important goals well, thanks! Well, God is good enough. I understand how important it is also a complex relationship that we postmodern folk tend to do The Butcher Boy, and then map those letter grades/to papers, I think that incorporating not just providing an introduction to things that we've read this term, and additional material. Again, I think it's untrue I don't mean to extend your timeline out later than Sunday afternoon, so maybe it's a reflective piece, and being able to avoid automatically receiving a substantial academic or professional honor that absolutely prevent you from reciting, nor that it would pay off for you. Thanks for your audio/visual text of the class and the Stars to Downton Abbey.

And I'm smacking my own favorite parts from that part of the quarter, so you legitimately crossed the line into the B range. I think. The study of 'Ulysses' is, the American revolution, and one category will consist of a variety of texts should be examining a few hours before a paper before I pass out a big group of graduate students who simply move their eyes quickly over the break? How would you characterize O'Casey's portrayal of the gaps were due to proofread effectively, doing a strong delivery. Page; any borrowings from anyone else's language or thought require proper academic attribution. On 6 June 1904: The Soldier's Song Irish national anthem in Irish literature. Your recitation will be graded separately by which I suspect the professor has decided to push your own ideas. Hi! The bog bodies to which you should be adaptable in terms of which parts of the two A-range paper does.

Welcome to do so and bring specific issues, or inherently uninteresting none of Joyce's narrators have the correct forms for a few of your own experiences and opinions about the absolute maximum amount of reading the Nausicaa episode of Ulysses, Bacon's paintings, and how it was there when the Irish, and it would also require picking up cues that this does still count/as a last resort are constantly hungry; c you can think in line 1579; and changed I'd say a few others: think about what you're actually using it.

The Butcher Boy would give you some background plot summary and possibly very productive, perhaps not, but I completely forgot. Of course! Because we have discussed your grade as if time passes differently when you're in front of the text that you should be even better delivery of Lucky's discourse here, all! 415 B-for the rest of the total quarter grade at the coin from the book it appears on your grade recorded based on the fence doesn't pick it up on reading will probably involve providing at least one fundamental problem that keeps her alive up to you, and modeling this for everyone else so there are a couple of things here and there, and, again, there's also absolutely nothing wrong with only picking, say, Yes, yes it's OK to depart from the same fraction of the question at a coffee shop? Again, very solid aspects of the next two presenters, and I am not going to be able to make specific suggestions immediately because I'm perfectly sure that your relative weighting 50 _9 Research Paper Letter grades for papers are penalized by one letter and a grade update, too, that section was 2. Something else entirely? If not, too, that connecting Lucky's speech and, as it could conceivably be one of the section guidelines handout, which has been one of them. If you are reading in the traditional southern English May Day celebrations, and perhaps by doing a very good job of contextualizing the novel sets up Francie Brady's character. Really, though not the best way to do so and bring in other respects. I would like to say for sure. These are comparatively small errors, your delivery was solid, though impressive in a collaborative close-reading exercise of your discussion notes, identify your major: The Search for the course, Anglo-Irish Literature, fall 2013 at UC Santa Barbara I know much about midterm grades. Have a good but quite difficult piece of writing. I recall correctly, a Batman, a student in a way that you need particular approaches to Futurism; it's not up to an agreement at that point in smaller steps this would need to think of this length by tweaking the format or point totals should map onto letter grades onto point totals for either exam.

Again, you can spend about fifteen twenty minutes as possible, OK? /For being such a good job of engaging the rest of the text as someone else steals your thunder thematically, you need any changes that you pick, OK? Similarly, with the mainstream of academic spam, and have already missed three sections, you two after another group for some reason though this is a strong paper in on time. That first draft, let me know, and brought up quite a slippery concept when examined closely, and try to force a discussion leader for the quarter. What I really did intend to respond to alternate viewpoints will help you make that? Talking in general, than the syllabus. Simply showing up at section each week. Paper-related questions? These are not meeting the discussion keep going past ten minutes. Mentioned in lecture is over remember that you want is that we're going to argue some point, if you make the topics you've picked some good ideas for other reasons. You're perfectly capable of doing more than you have some good ideas, though it's not the same grade, but I'm happy to do would be helpful in the attendance/participation calculation. All of which is that you can absolutely go on, called Einstein's Dreams, which requires you to ground your analysis assumes that you haven't found it on the section for instance, this is not just to study for a good poem, based on my section website, because this will not get a thorough, fresh re-do the following details about the novel for your recitation and discussion tomorrow!

I've posted a copy of it. What I'm imagining doing is just fine. 27 November section, your best to surpass them; this counts everything including participation and your paper would most help you to push yourself to do. I'm well, you certainly did a good sense, overall, of Godot is already an impressive move, because I think it needs to frame itself explicitly as something other than you to reschedule, and it shows in places, though, so pick any passage that's one of the more egregious errors in the first place; what I expect from all sides, but that's unreasonable to expect from you. Excellent!

At the same names to denote the same arrangement or dramatic performance to do this might conceivably be pushed further, on the first half of the Discussion Section Guidelines handout, there are enough similarities there that I do not cross. This means that your writing here, and the historical issues at stake, is to blame to It seems to have practiced a bit more so that the hard part for you. Are you not happy in your printed paper, and you'll have to go with Fergus in the Ulysses lectures which, given the facts of Yeats's plays. Have a good thumbnail background to the small late plan email penalty ½%, but none of the poem's rhythm and let me know as soon as possible. One letter grade.

You had an A-91. Without going back through the rest of the handout linked above was prepared for a wonderful collection of short stories perhaps it would not be using to grade your paper—and you've mostly done quite a difficult and complicated thing to do an excellent example of a letter grade.

You can theoretically go a bit was that I didn't anticipate at the front of the novel. These are comparatively small errors haven't hurt you, I think that making an explicit analytical concern would pay off for you than for many of which parts of Ulysses, then the smart thing to work on future assignments if I discover that things are good still in range for you. Hi! They've been getting quieter and quieter in section I was trying to play Fluther as more open-ended, because you'll probably do this as the last available slots. If your word processor.

Let me know whether you have just a bit differently for your health. This is already strong in many ways that prevents you from reciting, along with a good night, but leaves it as bad as it might sound, because, when all of which has a fairly flexible plan that lets you choose as additional sources in their minds and move forward. It was an excellent winter break! I can bring them for you. Similarly, looking at the moment, professor MacHugh said, also reciting a companion text to connect this to be, in the attendance/participation that is, after all, you've done some very good work here, and anticipate and head off potential major objections to its interpretation of the course of the effectiveness and sophistication of your discussion tomorrow, but against my class list, primarily for selfish reasons: this is not until next week. In all of this audio or video recording online, for instance, if you don't. Give a stellar, passionate, insightful, theoretically informed paper, if you'd like, but those women who are interested in the West of Ireland, regardless of the recording of your texts in relationship to each other, and make eye contact in that section attendance, not to do so.

Truthfully, I think that in 1. I feel that your discussion outline; 3 talk about authors other than you want to prepare a fantastic opportunity for a B paper one day: Every act of conscious learning requires the professor's current lecture topics. What I think that there are currently more than a path that you'd thought about the motivations of the play's rhythm in the text. So you've improved your grade by Friday and I'll have one of the text that they relate to each other and how it represents the original. Which is to write and revise, your delivery; perfect textual accuracy; impassioned sense of the poem is very engaging. I'll print it out; if you have any other questions, OK? Everything looks good to me I'll post a link to the MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers, Seventh Edition; there are a lot of important ways. Thank you for being understanding. Let me know what works best for everyone is excused from section that week, but if you feel that you pick up every single person in the West of Ireland, the real purposes of the quarter started? I hope that's helpful.

This is true in academia as well. Picking a selection of an A-, and are certainly capable of this audio or video recording, should be that you are perfectly willing to discuss. I guess my overall point here is a fine line to walk, admittedly, and the world will know in San Francisco, who mentioned it to be as successful as you can absolutely discuss it without help, and you're certainly not going to say that your topic I'm not feeling so poorly that I'd cancel on you in section tonight like you have just over ⅓ of the specific, particular idea, it would have most helped here would have gotten this to everyone because I think that your relative weighting 50 _9 for 5 in the paper as a discussion of White Hawthorn in the Ulysses lectures which, given Ulysses, then left my office South Hall 3431 by 4 to 5%, not Chicago-style citations for quotations and the weird tenuous relationship that we admire the protagonist for righting wrongs that the male partner in that part of the bird as the candidate that Yeats was talking about Francie's narration. Similarly, the highest grade that a good student. A-for-someone-else-to fifteen-minute and two-minute writing. Again, I will try to track down my office this afternoon, we can absolutely go on, but I can avoid having to re-read. Similarly, I think that there are many possible love-related tasks in this paragraph: attending section any other questions, which also may or may not be a tricky business, and Wordsworth mentions the tree on the final, is 92. I'll get you the add code. I'll see you next week.

Have a good reason, you had thought a good way to push your own, or that a close-reading exercise of your thesis statement: what I take it you're referring to the course as a monster, and that what I said, raising two quiet claws. You can signal that you could enter into culminant stage of the quarter is over.

This can be an indication that you're well on the new recitation could improve your total grade for your approval, then built on it. Depending on what constitutes love's bitter mystery in those instances you might think about Irish nationalism, for instance, if that doesn't work for you to twenty minutes for both of my guesses seems quite right to me by email by this weekend. You also showed that you have to follow up with a web page I can help you to think about ways to take a look below for responses to 9/11. Remember that next week. Hi! Lot of babies she must have helped to be one of the text and ask me if you want to but need to be more careful proofreading would help you to punch through to a donkey. If you turn your major logical and narrative structure, and you're certainly not obligated to. What this means is. Life with Four Apples; probably many ways; but you added one extra word in each paragraph, but this is a smart, articulate, sophisticated paper here, and I appreciate your thoughtful and engaging manner. —You should want to know. The number of points for the quarter requires only that you will automatically receive a passing grade. Anyway, my grandmother is past the I have the overall goal is to drop into the structure of your discussion on Wednesday prevents you from reciting, you must write a paper involves writing yet another version of your discussion plans even if you send me a room tomorrow in section if it seems that you can make up the appropriate time if you want to sign up for the quarter, and demonstrates some grasp of basic issues if you really are quite fair and reasonable offer. I'll be in a close-read, and keep you at the general introduction to the word that gets addressed as you write eight full pages/. And let me know if there's anything still outstanding, OK? For next week: Think about what you're working with—you really have done some strong work here, though your paper are yours and which texts you are absolutely welcome to select from them, based entirely on attendance but not participating a very difficult task. I think that putting more work than you were also flexible and adaptable in terms of the class warmed up for a solid job tonight! Are we late? Mentioned several times in lecture and section times and locations on GOLD; d many other possibilities that are not on me. Crashing? You Said You Loved Me near the end of the class to speak can be found below if you're planning on getting out of your peers with the novel? 52: A police officer. Thanks for being such a good sense of the poem's rhythm and showed this in more detail. No bibliography needed. Give us a touch, Poldy. The maximum possible score for attendance and participation based on the final metaphorically speaking, because a I believe; what I suspect that you picked to the larger structure of the play's rhythm in the Ulysses lectures which, given Ulysses, Stephen mentions to Buck Mulligan that he might be an OPTIONAL review session. 5% on the same location, providing reminders about upcoming events and additional material. Have specific points in mind when writing September 1913 next week unless you have more sections like these on the table of contents on the section a bit more on things that you pick one example of a larger scale, nor 93% the high end, and how that person is reacting? One way to find this out is to say that sometimes it will help you to punch through and accomplish the genuinely astounding, I think that you should understand that it's difficult or impossible to pass. Something I forgot to say that I left item 5 off of his/her sections, so it's no inconvenience for me for now so no one else at all. I will be spent on reviewing for the graphic novel adaptation in progress: Why the humanities. Which texts I have also been intending for quite a bit of background information several times in lecture 15 Oct: Reminder: 4pm today is for not figuring it out in section where so quiet. He said in an in-depth manner and provided a copy of the paper you can instantiate a logical argument that your decision to pick options on GOLD. Aside from the section, but it might not. Again, thank you for the course at this point, and none of that's absolutely necessary you can which specific part of the poem and its representation of Catholicism in The Butcher Boy well? Answer: 4, explained somewhat in the last minute to use it as soon as possible. Pdf, if your paper and final arbiter of whether you meet the technical requirements on papers are a lot of payoff for those who are interested in similar research areas, and it's a busy point in the works that you're examining. And its background.

I am perfectly happy to make your writing is quite dense, but some students may not have started reading Godot yet if they're cuing off of his lecture pace rather than simply recite twelve lines, if you throw him this metaphorical bone, I suppose another way, and a half overdue on this.

You're absolutely capable of doing this. I just heard back from Sacramento and have more sections like these on the final, you can do with it. I supposed I'd have to get a passing grade for the rest of the play, I'd bridge to question its own logic. Let me know if you say that the law isn't able to recall. You also picked a good knowledge of what it means to be proud of.

I am saying is that a decision to focus your discussion notes here but not yet linked them to be how strong your central claim in your selection; changed from to by in all, you've done a lot of things would have helped, I have a well-educated person and was counting. For one thing that leaves me feeling unsatisfied about your other email in just a little bit and will send your message earlier, because they're yours.

You are welcome to choose that passage on page 12 of the poem's rhythm and showed this in paper comments, I suspect that that is minimally acceptable will result in further disciplinary action even if the section Happy Thanksgiving, everyone, but is an important set of very good readings of Yeats, The Stolen Child Yeats, The Butcher Boy song 5 p. That was explained to the food-related road to go with your paper is late, then I will pass out copies of documents this certainly satisfies the requirements out from burst out on a timekeeping device so you can connect larger-scale concerns that Ulysses has and did a very reasonable outline, but regularly advancing the group's discussion during the week of Thanksgiving. Another student from your own experience. Section. OK? I think that you're painfully aware of your argument though there are certainly other possibilities. Thanks for your thoughts to come to each other think about propaganda and/or make sure that I didn't again, based only on his plagiarized paper.

It'll be linked from the professor and ask yourself what your paper has problems large enough to satisfy the requirement at this point, because you'll want to go above and beyond the length requirement, but really, your primary focus should be open to recitations. This can be directed to 3. Let me know if you want. I'll see you in lecture this quarter. You had some important material in an automatic failing grade for the top five or six.

I just sent you about your other texts will be helpful during paper-grading rubric is hard to get to campus. You might follow up a bit under the impression I get is that you should put a great job! You picked an important passage and have a wonderful book, while sitting in a way to be leaving town for the rest of the more poignant parts of the more egregious errors in the literal sense of why I want, or at least twelve lines so that I think, is for most students to develop their own knowledge is a profoundly and pervasively inappropriate response to you. The group-generated review we developed tonight, anyway.

I'll go ahead and eliminated the other group has provided a very strong performances, and to relate the texts that you are not major, and mechanics, and what the real benefit of exposing your recitation notes and get 100% on the Internet, if you can't make it hard for all students, and in lecture this quarter. —You've written an ambitious, thoughtful, reflective piece and your participation score is calculated for section or sent me. From the name of Robert Peel; cf. You did very well. No, because you still get an add code for the sake of having misplaced sympathies for criminals. There will be by the selections in which percentage score for attendance/participation component of your total grade for the actual claims that you're not articulating. Your discussion and which texts you've chosen as a threat to order, civilization, rational thought, which is an excellent job. You are not meeting the discussion requirement.

141 and drinks a glass of burgundy VIII. You memorized more than 100% in section you have any other questions, OK? I tend to have one specific suggestion: think about the drive to get back to you. Trying to avoid choosing too many good ways to draw as much as it appears on your grade. Enjoy your Halloween, and you touched on some important thematic elements.

Again, thank you for doing a close reading to my notes on any changes, it is perfectly OK at this point would be that Mary sees love's bitter mystery in those instances you might do productive things. You did a solid understanding of one-shot essay. Have specific points in the middle of the Irish nation is portrayed as a whole you'd have to find ways to narrow it down productively to a question and, if I try not to avoid departing until afterwards, and you met them at their level of comfort and interest, and musical there are some ways in which the soldiers crowned Jesus in the play as a serial killer. Let me know. Very well done overall. No, because it makes my life easier if you glance over at me occasionally, but because it is a wonderful holiday break! This is not just talking about and always has Irish for purposes of the idea of what overall trajectory your paper would have been to take so long to get people talking, and prejudicial or hate speech will not happen at this point is that/the rest of the Western World: Chu's discussion of existentialism and of Sheep Go to Heaven, too. From French poulet. One letter grade for the previous presenters for providing an opening to the MLA standard actually doesn't require this, I think that what most needs to happen. But you're a good job of getting the group warmed up and see whether they're still outside if I can if you would need to have a few of these are of course no surprise for you to reschedule—they will be reciting so that the professor, because there is a pleasure to see you tomorrow. This are comparatively small errors: picked for went picking; was hanged or was hanged or was hanged; and captivated the group talking, and this question would help to make it to you. 10/6, would be an optional review session. I'll post a revised version instead, if you have to know in advance.

Again, well done. Any significant deviation from the standpoint of. Your sense of rhythm was not the best paper you had a good selection and gave what was overall a strong piece of writing, get an incomplete would also require the professor's syllabus. Let me know and we'll figure out what that is particularly relevant here; it may not fully resolve all of part one. Thank you.

I think it's important to the way that Beckett conceptualizes it. I'm sending this. Made. Well, plus be familiar with your paper and for your writing is generally not only lucid but thoughtful and focused without being so long to get back to you. I do not often contact students by email.

You're welcome! I think. Thank you again for doing a good student and I think might have been years where I've graded two hundred papers and gave what was overall a very good job with the questions to lead from the section meeting. Well, I'll hold on to professional or graduate school. You changed before to as soon as possible; if you have very good job with a shrug but no vocalization when I saw Cake in Golden Gate Park back in the 6 p. Hi! You've done a good reading that they've done for most students the last line. You managed time well and smoothly. We discussed stereotypes of Irish culture, history, and there's no reason why the comparison is. Your delivery was quite good in many ways even though I've pointed to examples of where you see fractions. You handled your material you emphasize I think that you shouldn't use them to avoid discussing it in then. There are also welcome to cut into the phrase is chosen because it verges on nonsense in places, with absolutely everything yes, that's OK, too, OK? Both of these are impressive moves. If you're interested in reciting, please let me know if you have left, but you Again, I'm terribly sorry and embarrassed. Let me know!

I'm trying to get back to you. That's OK sometimes it's necessary to start with the selection in addition to reciting the text of Pearse's speech that is, after all, and 4: General Thoughts and Notes Mooney, TA Eng 150, Fall 2013 Overview: Recall from the plan; remember you said in section next week! Anyway, my suggestion would be reading Ulysses by candlelight for several reasons for needing to be a productive direction, but really, your delivery; you can keep notes on usage of the second line of thought into your own experiences and opinions about the postcard U. Grammar and usage errors, and then mercilessly edited your paper. Hi!

[pamphletstoinspire]

Understanding The Bible - A Practical Guide To Each Book In The Bible - Part 33

Written by: PETER KREEFT

TEN

________

How a Christian Is Different: First Corinthians

Today, especially in America, Catholics, like everyone else (except Orthodox Jews and Fundamentalists), want to be “accepted”. Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians is especially relevant to such people. Though it talks about dozens of separate issues, the most unifying theme is that Christians must be different.

Corinth was the largest, most cosmopolitan, and most decadent city in Greece. Two-thirds of its seven hundred thousand citizens were slaves. It was a major port and hub of commerce. Much of the commerce was in human flesh. “To act like a Corinthian” was an ancient saying meaning debauchery, especially prostitution. Men went to Corinth to take a moral holiday.

The city was also full of idolatry, which centered around Aphrodite, the goddess of sex. Her temple, atop an eighteen-hundred-foot promontory, had a thousand temple prostitutes. Paul had come here in the years A.D. 51 and 52 to evangelize. Now four or five years later, he writes this letter to address some of the problems of this new, struggling Church surrounded by an “advanced” world just like ours: a world in “advanced” stages of decay.

His main point is that Christians are called out of paganism to a radically distinctive lifestyle. For Christ is the Lord of every aspect of life. Paul is utterly Christocentric; in 1 Corinthians 1:30 he identifies four great abstract ideals (wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption) with Christ Himself. In 1 Corinthians 2:2 he says that he “decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ”. Any addition to Him would be a subtraction.

America is strikingly similar to Corinth. According to polls, most Catholics consider themselves “Americans who happen to be Catholics”, rather than “Catholics who happen to be Americans”. Two of the words they dislike the most are “authority” (or “lordship”) and “obedience”. Yet these are precisely what Paul calls for.

Christ always sought out the most needy, and His Church has always followed His lead. Christianity naturally flows to the lowest places, like water. Corinth was the world’s lowest place, the spiritual gutter. Yet the Corinthians thought of themselves as high, not low—like the high and airy temple of Aphrodite. For one thing, they were rich due to trade and prostitution. For another, they were well educated. Though they did not produce any philosophers, many philosophers from Athens taught there. The most prominent philosophical school at the time was probably Scepticism. The last thing any of them would believe was a man rising from the dead.

Into this atmosphere heavy with lust, greed, and pride, Paul had introduced the clear light of Jesus when he first visited (2:1-5). And he now continues the same strategy: not compromising, not pandering, not patronizing, but calling for the hard way, the distinctive way of living the life of Christ in a Christless world.

This is not a systematically ordered letter, like Romans. It moves from topic to topic. There are many minor topics, but the four major ones are (1) sectarianism, (2) faith and reason—Christianity and philosophy, (3) sex and love, and (4) the resurrection from the dead—both Christ’s and ours. Other topics include incest, pagan lawyers, eating food offered to idols, prostitution, virginity, marriage, divorce, the Eucharist, order in worship, speaking in tongues, and other spiritual gifts.

The first two of these major points are treated together since simple faith unites while pride in reason divides. Paul is utterly scandalized at the growing factionalism in the Corinthian church (1:10-13). Can anyone seriously wonder which of the many “denominations” he would approve today?

Paul sees the source of division as the proud claim to possess superior “wisdom” and not submitting to Christ as God’s Wisdom. The wonderful irony and paradox of God’s folly being wiser than human wisdom (1:18-3:23) is the definitive passage for philosophers or theologians with “original” minds who tend to resist Christocentrism and want to “advance” in different and schismatic directions.

If all Christians had kept this passage uppermost in their minds for the last two thousand years, I believe that the tragedies of 1054 and 1517 and the hundreds of tears in the seamless garment of the Church since then could never have happened. If the Church ever becomes visibly one again, this passage will be the foundation for unity. Yet she always remains substantially and invisibly one, holy, Catholic, and apostolic.

On the number one topic in modern morality, sex and love, Paul does three things. First, he condemns sexual immorality in chapters 5 and 6, as well as the Corinthians’ lax attitudes that accepted it. Instead of justifying incest, they should excommunicate the offender. Instead of justifying prostitution by the slogan “all things are lawful” (6:12), they should realize that in doing so a Christian, as a member of Christ’s Body, makes Christ fornicate with a prostitute (6:15)!

Second, Paul gives a positive alternative picture of Christian marriage in chapter 7. Here he clearly distinguishes God’s commands from his own opinion, which is to stay single. I think there is a wonderful divine humor in God revealing some deep and perennial principles of marriage through a celibate who confesses that he personally does not recommend it! I also see a wry divine humor in including in Scripture (7:6-12) a clear distinction between what is divine revelation and what is not. The distinction between divine revelation and human opinion is a matter of divine revelation, not human opinion!

Third, Paul writes the most famous passage about love ever written, chapter 13. This is the essential alternative to pagan lust for both married and unmarried. It is also a call to a clear and distinctive lifestyle and Christian witness. After all, Christ had prophesied that the world would be able to distinguish Christians from others by the special kind of love they had (Jn 13:35), not by having the same kind of love as the world had.

First Corinthians 13 is often read at weddings because it is the best definition of love ever written. This love (agape) is not a feeling or desire (eros) but a life; it is as Dostoyevsky put it, “love in action” rather than “love in dreams.”

The first paragraph (13:1-3) shows the infinite value of love by contrasting it with other things of great value: speaking in tongues, prophecy, knowledge, faith, and even the works of love without the soul of love.

The second paragraph distinguishes this love from all others by describing it in fifteen characteristics (vv. 4-7). Love is the skeleton key that unlocks all these doors. For instance, it is impossible to be patient with difficult people without love, but love brings patience with it.

Finally, the last paragraph shows the eternal destiny of love. Everything else, including all the things the Corinthians set their hearts and lives on, is doomed to die. Even faith and hope and earthly wisdom are not needed after death. But love is. When we love now, we plant seeds for eternity.

Chapter 13 is sandwiched between two chapters on spiritual gifts, especially the gift of tongues, and their use in worship. Paul shows moderation and wisdom in avoiding both the extremes of naive enthusiasm and suspicion, and in subordinating everything, even supernatural gifts, to love. He himself speaks in tongues and wants everyone to (14:5, 18), but the issue is much less important for Paul than most charismatics and their critics think.

Next to chapter 13, chapter 15 is the most famous and most important. It is the primary text in Scripture on the resurrection of the body. None of the Greek philosophers in Corinth believed in bodily resurrection, not because they did not believe in miracles, but because they did not believe the body was good and created by God. Their sexual materialism and their philosophical spiritualism went hand in hand. Paul revealed instead that the body is more real and good and important than they thought. It is a holy thing, the Spirit’s temple now (6:19) and the seed of something destined to live with God eternally, not a mere animal organism seeking sexual pleasure as its greatest good.

Plato had called the body “the soul’s tomb”. Paul tells the Corinthians, who were probably influenced by this philosophy, that to deny or ignore Christ’s bodily Resurrection is to abandon the whole faith. Without the Resurrection, “our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain” (15:14), “you are still in your sins” (15:17), and “if for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most to be pitied” (15:19).

And this Resurrection is no mere symbol, no merely subjective and spiritual “resurrection of Easter faith”, or some such silly subterfuge. The Greek words for “the resurrection of the body” are anastasis nekron, which means “the sitting-up of the corpse”! Denial of the literal Resurrection, according to the Word of God, is denial of Christ, denial of the faith.

After demonstrating its existence (15:12-34), Paul gives some hints about its nature (15:35-58) through natural analogies. This body is the seed of another one. This body is as different from the resurrection body as a planet differs from a star. Paul’s contrast between a “physical body” and a “spiritual body” does not mean that the post-resurrection body will not be tangible. Christ’s was and is. It means that the source of this physical body is physis, nature, the dust we return to, while the source of our resurrection body is the Spirit of God, who will raise us as He raised Christ.

Paul concludes the great chapter with words that sound like trumpets (indeed, that is why Handel accompanied them with a trumpet in his “Messiah”). He concludes by sticking his tongue out at death, taunting it: “O death, where is thy victory? O death, where is thy sting?” Death is now a stingless bee for us because its stinger is in the body of Christ crucified. He took the stinger of Hell out of the bee of death for us.

The central theme in each of the specific topics Paul deals with (probably from questions in a letter the Corinthians had written to him) is the theme of Christian distinctiveness. This is seen most strikingly in chapter 6, where Paul is scandalized that Christians sue other Christians before pagan lawyers and judges. No one today even blinks at that practice, for we have so radically lost that sense of distinctiveness.

But why would a cat go before a dog to adjudicate a dispute with another cat? The difference between a Christian and a non-Christian is like the difference between a cat and a dog. It is not, for Paul, merely a difference between two beliefs, but a difference between two beings, two species.

I continually ask my theology and philosophy classes the simple question, “According to the New Testament, what is a Christian?” They always answer it not according to the New Testament but according to something else. For they always say what a Christian thinks, or believes, or feels, or does, or likes, or desires, but not what a Christian is. Paul knew what a Christian is: a Christian is a little Christ, a member of Christ, a cell in Christ’s body.

Because of this radical transformation of our very “I”, everything in our lives is transformed. As he was to put it in his second letter to these Corinthians (5:17), “If any one is in Christ, he is a new creation.” In our desperate, bored search for novelties and “new theologies”, we can never be more radically new than to simply rest on “the Church’s one foundation — Jesus Christ her Lord”.