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under communism we all have to share one toothbrush with this man

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Being flirted with is a basic survival need. It goes air, water, being told I'm pretty

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Just hanging around the turret stairs all day trying to have a moment with someone

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the flag is raised

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my entire life for the last 6 months has been a liminal space. I would describe my current mental state as an airport terminal at 4 a.m. I would describe my brain as a dimly lit service tunnel under an office building. I would describe my veins as unlabeled PVC pipes that go on and on and on

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recently

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devoutly religious teenagers creep me out...

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well - that was one of the hard ones. he's my best friend, and I was so scared of ruining things, of making it weird - but now he knows - and yes i cried like a baby when I told him and his wife - and kept crying for an hour after that - (it's hard to drive on I-75 with tears in your eyes) - but i had to tell them, because not telling them now - leaving it for next time, again - that would have felt like lying - it would have felt like distrust. I should have trusted them a long time ago - and I told them I was sorry I held it back for so long, they deserve honesty - after all these years of friendship, they at least deserve my honesty - and now they have it. now they know.

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if you eat 1 mango you will get so high from that mango, don’t go to work. you’ll need to go to bed immediately

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right so the official GOP platform is (1) fucking 10 million people over by cutting services and (2) somehow still making the nation's finances even worse. awesome. three cheers for economic conservatism

oh and those "concerns" about medicaid from the right? that's not republicans having second thoughts about killing poor people. that's republicans who are "concerned" that this bill doesn't kill ENOUGH poor people

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On "Ritual" (式日) (2000) by Hideaki Anno

tw/ suicide

~~~

I’ve always told therapists, counselors, psychiatrists, and doctors that I’ve never had suicidal thoughts. I’ve never wanted or planned to do it. Whenever my brain decides to play out a death scenario (near a ledge, I'm falling; on the highway, I'm crashing; close to a gun, I'm, well…), I instantly reject the scene. I get immediate vertigo and I evict the image from my mind. I have not stood by the road and threatened to leap in front of a truck; I have not climbed outside a railing and looked up, then down; I have not thrown myself at the emergency exit door on a moving train. I do stare at fire, but it has nothing to do with my backstory. I just like the way it dances.

I have, however, glanced sideways at the edge. I have teased my imagination with horrible endings. From time to time Thanatos rests his hand on my shoulder, polishes his scythe, and licks his lips, eager to reap my soul. But he never stays long, and he never speaks. He shows me weeping family members and distraught friends asking "why," he projects an image of my lifeless body onto my frontal cortex. Is that “thoughts”? Is that what experts call “ideation”? I have sometimes given myself to tiny, microscopic rituals, to pocket-sized performances—not a tower’s worth, not enough to fill a day and night, but enough for an hour or two. Enough to make me laugh so hard my abs ache in the morning. Enough to hear the wind chimes for a while.

Probability is divinity. Our best evidence for the existence of God is the ruthlessness of weather. To ritualize is to externalize the ineffable—to seek absolution Yesterday, judgment Today, and mercy Tomorrow—to divine intent and truth in the unpredictability of space and time, of particles and clouds and celestial coincidences—messages in stars, writing in the bones, burning guts and prophecies and ringing telephones. O Haruspex—arrow-shaker, dowel-pointer, aeromancer—read my fortune back to me. Draw my future on my arm in charcoal. Memorize this dance for me, perform it for the empty seats, synchronize your steps with silence. Armed with ritual, She can celebrate another day. She won’t get older if She freezes every time her mother calls, if She stacks the rocks in perfect order, if She paints her face white. Know that death is barred from sacred spaces. Know that when you stand inside the cone of scarlet light, when safely tucked inside the basement bathtub, the stranger cannot touch you. Know this: judgment comes tomorrow, not today.

The gods respond to persistence. Repetition sanctifies, rituals catalyze, and destruction purifies. A clap before a bow, and then the kami won’t ignore your prayers. Ancient sorcery always comes back to blood—to methods for its removal, and procedures for making clean your dirty meat. The Lord your God demands a healthy cut of lamb, or else His locusts shall obscure the sun and blot the moon and strip your cattle of their flesh, leaving only skeletons. Abraham raised the knife and turned his eyes to Yahweh. He asked himself: Is the sky still blue? Is the song still stuck in my head? Can I finish this verse before I end this life? He took a breath. He begged for signs.

Then, ritual complete, he looked down. He peeked behind the veil. There—today’s answer, spoken by the universe—there it was, staring back at him. Isaac’s blank expression. (They’d done this every day for years; Isaac didn't fear his binding anymore. He got along with God.) So Abraham relented. He was still okay. He was still okay today. Thank God—thank the Holy Ghost—thank the ritual, the awful test he passed. He retreated from the railing with a smile. Isaac stood up, brushed his shirt, and joked, “I bet tomorrow is your birthday.” 

The prophet laughed and said, “Yes. Tomorrow is my birthday.”

~~~

אָבִיו֙

Father?

הִנֶּ֣נִּי בְנִ֑י

My son!

~~~

The right movie at the right time can change the way you see yourself. A movie can change the way you talk about your feelings. If you’re here, you probably agree. You’ve probably felt it many times before: that quickening heartbeat when you realize that this film will touch your soul, your flushing cheeks and tightening grip as the roller coaster climbs higher and higher and higher still. And the rush as you recognize the consistency between Hideaki Anno’s works: the commitment to harsh lights, the alternation between blunt moralizing and impenetrable symbolism, the love of metaphor and simple visual storytelling. The flashes of zaniness surrounded by long, quiet stretches of internal agony and repetitive slice-of-life. Shinji walks around again, rides the train again, listens to cicadas again. The penguin does a silly dance. Everyone will die. It will be his fault. No, Shinji’s father is no Abraham. Gendo didn’t hesitate to please his Lord.

The lesson of Her clothes is almost overwhelming. Clown makeup gradually retreats, color drips out of her wardrobe over time, her style drops its pretense and complexity. The layers fall away and leave us with black shirts and smaller silhouettes, a frank portrait of grief and longing. The house itself demands rote interpretation. Anno continues his obsession with Dante and Milton and Christian hell and Shinto rites and psychotherapy and builds the Mind Palace with references to each. It’s sometimes a little too Freud, sometimes a little on the nose. It’s sometimes a relief when the film becomes obscure again. I don’t want to hear anymore about your coping mechanisms, so tell me about angels again, tell me about the day the oceans turned red. Tell me about the distillation of the soul. Tell me about LCL, Director. But fables, in their directness and shocking honesty, serve a purpose. Fables shouldn't be too subtle. Anno isn’t just absentmindedly thumbing through the file cabinets in his brain. Anno drives his feelings home with a carpenter’s patience. He taps the nail with love and precision, again and again, scene after scene, until it’s stable and secure, until it’s firmly embedded in our skulls. Until it’s flush with the bone.

~~~

This is the part where I assure you that I’m okay. You don’t need to check on me. If you were getting worried, I appreciate your concern. But I have not built a tower and filled it with magic wards against the void. I have not laid on my side between the tracks so Death can tickle me with its eyelashes. If I had a Mind Palace, it would not be a hellish tower of constant sorrows. It would be a McDonald’s, and it would have only one floor, plus a jungle gym. My only ritual would be ordering ice cream and nodding with exaggerated Millennial understanding as the overtired cashier tells me their machine is down again, sorry for the inconvenience. Not today then. Tomorrow, I’ll get ice cream. Tomorrow is my birthday.

In bleaker moments, I would lay there and think: “This is the sort of situation where really depressed people would contemplate it. If I were to contemplate it—you know what ‘it’ is—I would think about using [currently accessible method]. But no! Get that out of my head! I don’t want to do that! Fuck, that made me nauseous. I never want to see that image again.” I’ll leave it to professionals to tell me if that “counts.” But because of this film, I think I will mention it at my next appointment anyway—with several emphatic disclaimers, of course, that I have not experienced such moments recently, so don’t put me in grippy socks and a sanitary gown, please. I can’t afford the time off work. Besides, what will my cats do? They’re probably waiting by my door right now. I have to make it home tonight or else they’ll be sad. I’ve got to make it home tonight. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. And tomorrow…

…creeps in this petty pace from day to day and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death…

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On Dìdi (弟弟) (2024) by Sean Wang

The moment after you’ve fucked up again is almost relaxing. Sitting on the curb, at peace with your own fated loneliness. Sinking into yourself. Back in the comfort of isolation. Like an old mattress—like a brown suede couch you know better than your own skin—soda stain, 2003; stab wound, 1999; crusty vomit, last summer—like a haircut you’ve wanted to change for 10 years—like the tacky quilt your mom sewed before you were even a thought. The TV blares. Here’s the latest: bombs over Baghdad. The patriotic beauty of Tomahawk missiles, anchors composing Homeric war poems live on air. Godly retribution, divine streaks of red in the Babylonian sky; a tearful Giraldo Rivera at the scene, praising the beauty of conquest; an invasion on Pay-Per-View. A wrathful Bill O’Reilly on the screen, his fists pounding the table, demanding murder as a toddler would demand a slice of chocolate cake—let me see some fucking bodies—

But enough nostalgia, lil bro. You’ve been in this dark parking lot for hours. You should probably call your sister to pick you up.

~~~

The streetlight bends over to get a better look at you.

~~~

Would it kill you to take a little pity? Looks like Fahad’s still hanging out with those girls. I remember a dorm room—I can’t decide if it was a Boy Scouts thing or a church camp or what—it doesn’t matter—but I remember a dorm room, and an older boy, a Ladies’ Man. I handed him my phone. “Here’s how you do it,” he said, and took a selfie of himself laying down shirtless. Showed me a gallery of photos like it; he’d reduced romance to repetition; he’d formed callouses where I couldn’t stand to be touched. I juggled two competing explanations in my head: first, I was ugly, and he was hot; second, I was doomed, and he was not. How easily I could have fallen head-first into the rabbit hole of involuntary celibacy, of men’s rights (specifically, the “rights” to guaranteed property and sex); I flirted with that abyss in chatrooms and forums and image boards. I turned up logs just to watch the centipedes scatter. I have a soft spot for repulsive things.

(“Are you nervous?” she asked, her hand on my thigh during school lunch, no one else seeing. This pretty older girl I couldn’t act normal around. “Um,” I said. I focused hard on my blood flow to kill my erection. “I’m… shaky,” I said, choosing honesty this time. She laughed. “Shaky? Okay.”)

Lies are landmines, Chris. Careful where you lay them. Conversations feel like interrogations, don’t they? You thought you were making progress, endearing yourself to them—and then the light shines on your face, and your little fib blows up—the toothpick holding up your friendship snaps. This is what you get for telling them you could film. You deserve it, of course; you earned this shame all by yourself; but what’s the alternative? Honesty blows up too. Honesty is a chemical burn. Sincerity is a weapon of mass destruction, Dìdi. Mr. Cheney was looking in the wrong place. He should’ve gone to war with the suburbs.

There must have been a reason this shit kept happening. There must have been a disease. Where there is a disease, there is a cause, and where there is a cause, there is blame. Don’t worry, RFK Jr. will get to the bottom of it. Once, in a previous life, I texted everyone in my contacts I could conceivably consider a friend “happy new years!!!” after the big apple dropped, and no one replied, not even the next day. Who could I have blamed for that? Who could I have blamed for that summer afternoon when I called her because I just wanted to talk to someone, anyone? (“Uh, well, I have to get back to it,” she said; the antecedent to “it” being her life in general; I really admired her and her older brother Francis, the smartest and coolest people I knew, respectively; “okay, see you at school,” I said; click.) Not myself. Certainly not myself. I’d tried everything short of taking an actual risk. I’d made an effort to put myself in good situations so I could bomb them all. In those days, I would rate my conversations as successes or failures. I could have graphed them for you.

Here’s the deadly pattern: begin with the desire to belong; then perform masculinity to impress them; but perform masculinity a little too hard; express an opinion you don’t actually hold in order to seem cool and irreverent, but it’s a step too far; too obviously performed; now, commence the interrogation; scramble to invent an alibi; get found out; go home. Silent drive. Silence tight as a cable at the end of its spool. Silence like an accident waiting to happen. You swear there’s a lesson here, but where? You can’t not lie. You can’t express your actual thoughts and feelings. They’d call you gay again. You’d be labeled a fucking queer. The only thing better than masculinity is ironic femininity. For instance, a shirt of a women’s bathroom sign. For instance, a performed gesture, an exaggerated limp wrist—a joke at another’s expense, laughter redeemable as social credits—turning in your chips at the counter—but the counter's closed for the night—the house is empty—

The arcade invites you in—

Oh, I still have so much to unlearn.

~~~

Have you ever felt so totally, imperially alone that the idea of connection feels actually disgusting? That it makes you gag?

Have you ever wished you were more like your sister? Have you ever felt like a teenage robot?

Have you ever covered your nails in pencil lead late at night?

~~~

They walk in twos. You hold them in the snowglobe in your palm and watch the micro-dramas play out. They walk in twos.

~~~

Dìdi, love’s not waiting for you by the lockers. Love’s holding its hand out to you, infinitely patient, while you insist on finding it elsewhere. You want love, but you also want to prove that you don’t need it. That you can become anyone. But the changes will only come when you stop pretending. The becoming will only begin when you stop begging for it. Chris, you won’t find your real name on your bedroom carpet or behind your sister’s door, I can tell you that much; but maybe it’s necessary, this pointless searching; maybe it’s part of the Process, with a capital P; maybe God does have a plan and maybe the plan hurts. But then, why does it feel like wasted time? Like years set on fire, but the fire is not warm? 

Real fire should be warm, Dìdi. Real fire should have heat.

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tell me why 95% of the people posting hooded eye makeup tutorials simply do not have hooded eyes? or at most have a *slight* hood, but their lids are still fully visible? not to gatekeep facial features, but y'all... I'm struggling out here...

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the cosmic horror, the inexpressible grief, of watching someone who used to be funny/cool/interesting take the entrepreneur linkedin growth grindset pill and now they only ever post about gratitude journaling and real estate closings

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Grace M. Ballentine • Magnolia Grandiflora, 1946

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additionally i think a lot of us remain helplessly dependent on self flagellation and punishment believing it to be discipline/self control because we are not taught to believe that care and deliberate healing and patience and attention are disciplines themselves