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I'd Never Lie to You

Chapters: 3/6 Rating: Explicit, 18+, MDNI, please! Relationships: Syril Karn/Dedra Meero Characters: Syril Karn, Dedra Meero Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Explicit Sexual Content, Emotional Manipulation, Hurt Attempted Comfort, Established Relationship, Angst, Syril Lives, POV Alternating

“Syril,” she whispers. Dedra brings her hand to rest on the side of his face, her thumb stroking lightly at his still-wet cheek. The familiarity of it relaxes her, even despite the context of the moment. Her body remembers the peculiar mechanics of closeness and comfort; these strange gestures she’d only ever bothered to learn for him. This is how things should be. “You’re safe. You’re home.” No one can take you from me again.

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Third chapter! In the aftermath of his spur-of-the-moment decision, a reeling, agonized Syril prepares for a wedding that might destroy him.

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Summer by Karpo Trokhymenko, 1920

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los angeles california 1940

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DabuQlu’DI’ yISuv!

“When threatened, fight!”

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

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Material Shapes

Connecticut-based prop stylist and designer Kristen Meyer creates geometric shapes using crackers, sticks, spaghetti, herbs, and other common raw materials. The finesse comes in her use of negative space, creating implied borders lines that help complete the shape without a full density of “ingredients.”

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It's been years since I started seeing nutrient flows constantly in my daily life, and the more I study agriculture, the more I see them.

See, every time you harvest something, you take the nutrients in that item away from the soil, and they go somewhere else. When I put a banana peel in my compost bin, I think (a little gleefully) about how I've just added an exotic, different profile of nutrients to my own property--but I also think about that distant banana plantation that lost tons of nutrients per year to US grocery stores, and I wonder what they replaced those nutrients with.

The farmer across my field grows corn, which gets harvested for feed. Corn is a nitrogen-hungry crop. Every year, that corn sucks up nutrients, which get harvested and shipped away. The farmer, being a conventional farmer, mostly replaces those with a conventional fertilizer. Nitrogen is often applied to fields in the form of ammonia fertilizer, which is made via a process that binds nitrogen in the air with hydrogen from natural gas. This feels like a vast resource, but of course we know it's not inexhaustible and not without cost.

Ideally, said farmer does soil tests and applies a carefully considered amount of ammonia. It is taken up by the growing plants and relatively little is lost. Possibly (often), though, some of the ammonia is leached out via rain and ends up in waterways, where it causes plant overgrowth and algal blooms, which harm the waterways in several ways, and turn those nutrients from a resource into a contaminant.

Meanwhile, the corn is also uptaking a variety of other nutrients from the soil which the commercial fertilizer is NOT replacing. Year by year, those nutrients get shipped off to distant feedlots and depleted in the soil. Eventually, those nutrients are gone from my neighbor's field and, quite possibly, languishing in a manure lagoon somewhere in, say, Indiana, where one can only hope it's properly treated and made into compost. But, you know. Not necessarily.

When I buy compost at the store, it's usually based in either cow manure or "forest products". Hopefully, depending on brand, those forest products MIGHT be collected municipal yard waste. Which is pretty good. Those suburbanites don't want their leaves, I do, win/win.

Except that because those suburbanites raked their yard waste, they now need at some point to fertilize their trees, shrubs, and turf grass. Meanwhile, they've eliminated habitat for the many insects that use leaf litter to either overwinter or reproduce. They may not be counting the costs, but the costs don't stop existing.

The ebb and flow of nutrients is something that, in the current system, goes utterly unregarded by most of the people taking part in the process. Even gardeners bring nutrients onto their soils mostly without thinking about the places those nutrients came from. I think in a sustainable world, that needs to change.

Also probably we need to do a hell of a lot more cover-cropping.

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040625. The Excess of Nothingness.

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everyone shut up and look at this

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this duck LOVES pink drink

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varada sethu these shows don’t deserve you

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i must not let the fatigue get me i must not let the inertia take me i must not lie down, i must keep fighting. oh giles corey, patron saint of more weight, protect me as i walk forward, endlessly. so many days now i wake and the exhaustion presses her hands on my shoulders. she asks me what more can you do? and i close my eyes to her. i have given up so much already. i must not kiss her. she dances so beautifully. she makes this bed into a promise. i must not lie down, love. i must get up. i must keep fighting.

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Photo project of the photographers native village Tagveti, Khashuri, Georgia

"When I realized what I was looking for in a photograph, I started taking pictures of my village. My first photo project is its documentation and I am continuing to photograph it to this day. The project is called Village of the Mice and is the portrayal of my own village, its history, and the people who live or have lived there. The images show how it’s changed, how it diminished and, in a way, I can say that its history is somehow similar to Georgia’s fate. From today's perspective, when looking at the people in my photographs, I realize how hard those years were for them – the country was going through several hardships. Some of the villagers I photographed have passed away, some others have left… you will now see many empty houses, ruined buildings and very few people who still live there. What I’m trying to say is that emigration is not just a single village’s problem but a general issue of the country. There even exist statistics of two hundred villages being abandoned, nobody lives there anymore. I think this is caused by the prevailing harsh environment as it is very hard for the villagers to survive."

- Natela Grigalashvili

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Quick and messy sketch of a horse's face, far less detailed than my usual style and, frankly speaking, in some places rather anatomically dubious - but I still wanted to share it because it's the first thing I drew in... I don't know. Eight months? Nine? And as such, it has brought me some joy.

My state of mind has not been kind to the ability to draw lately. Concentration? In very short supply. Patience? Even worse. (At least with myself and my own projects.) What my mind has become exceedingly good at, however, is opening the gates and pouring all sadness, fears and insecurities on me that it can find as soon as I try to draw. Or, God forbid, write. Which is why I've mostly stopped trying it at all, honestly.

But long times without any creative activities at all aren't particularly good for my peace of mind either, so for the last few weeks, I've been slowly and tentatively starting again. Just little things now and then. Just what my mind lets me do. Trying to expect nothing from it - not a pretty result, not even to finish it - except teaching my brain that there's really nothing so scary about drawing.

This here was the result of knowing there was absolutely no way I'd get myself to be calm and focused enough to even try to draw an anatomically correct horse, but then, instead of giving it up completely, thinking: "But what about a horse's face? Just part of a horse's face? Approximately instead of correct? And just colour it wildly as if you were a child with crayons... - Can you do this and would it be better than no horse at all?"

As you can see, I could do this, and decided it is indeed better than no horse at all ;)