#Emotionally Significant Spatula

[tired-of-being-nice]

the sound

*emerges from finals covered in blood* IM ALIVE *throws this down* *leaves*

anyway, enjoy a little showing of how coren is kept in line!

cws: brainwashing/conditioning, sensory overload (sort of), willing brainwashing

Coren's head isn't working right. It feels all floaty, not quite attached to its body. By the time it got back to where it was supposed to be it was already late in the day and it was too exhausted to give a proper explanation of why it was so late and what it was doing last night. It just begged forgiveness as much as it could when it couldn't think in coherent sentences, much less speak, and now it's sitting on a chair putting all its strength into staying upright and waiting patiently to be told what its punishment is.

It hopes it's the noise. It really, really hopes that. Not just because the alternative is being alone and it can't bear being alone, but because it's so tired and it can't think straight and the noise will help with that, it always does. It'll fix Coren. Make them able to do their job again. Coren wants to be able to do a good job. They want to so badly.

Its head hurts so terribly, which is good, because if it didn't it thinks it would probably slide right off the chair and collapse onto the ground, but it hurts, it hurts so much, the lights are too bright in here and their thoughts are chasing each other in circles and their ears are starting to ring–

"–ren? Coren?" 

Coren blinks and squints at the blurry figure in front of them until it resolves into the shape of Erica, their...manager, or handler, or whatever it is you want to call her.

"Hi, Erica," they mumble. "I don't feel good."

"I can tell that," Erica says with a raised eyebrow, and Coren shrinks back in shame. "What are you holding?"

Coren turns their head to stare at the spatula clutched in their hand. "I, um...dunno."

Erica sighs. "Well, I don't have time to pry it away now. Come on. We've decided you need some more time with the Sound."

Coren perks up immediately and follows behind Erica obediently, mustering their protesting body through the few steps with the promise of soon, soon, soon.

The noise room is empty and white and clean, and Erica shoves Coren inside in a way they'd protest usually but today are grateful for.

The door shuts behind them, and there's a slight click from the speakers, and then the Sound comes on.

It's like white noise but more, resounding, near-deafening, filling the room and your mind until you can't hear yourself think, let alone scream.

(They did use to scream, didn't they? They almost remember that, every time they come in here. But it never sticks— the sound takes it away, and besides, they don't want to remember something so unpleasant.)

Coren sighs, slumping bonelessly to the floor, a dazed smile spreading across their face. The noise drowns out any thoughts, rises and falls in waves, crashing against Coren's brain and gently smoothing away all the pesky contradictory thoughts that had been nagging at them. The ache of starvation fades from their limbs, and the haze of sleepiness melts from their mind. Everything is fine. Everything is alright. 

(but milo–) shhhh (but i have to–) shhhhhh (i'm still hungry–) shhhh (i can't rememb–) shhhhhhhh

This is so nice. Coren doesn't need to worry now. What was there to worry about, anyway? They're safe. The Company has them. The Company loves them.

Their fingers loosen, and the spatula drops from their hand, forgotten.

that's right! it was an EMOTIONALLY SIGNIFICANT SPATULA this whole time! haha!

taglist: @whumpsoda @snakebites-and-ink

[blog-sliverofjade]

Hearth Fires 6:  Animals

Pairing: Remi Denier x OFC

Summary:  Lorel Maddox just wants to live as a human, run her bakery in peace, and forget. Unfortunately, the alpha of the local leopard pack has very different ideas.

Remi Denier doesn’t know what to make of the female Changeling who wants nothing to do with him or the RainFire pack. He does know that he has a driving need to protect her. Even if it’s from herself.

While they’re embroiled in a battle of wills, there’s a war brewing on the horizon. The outside threat could not only destroy everything they hold dear, but tear apart the fragile new bonds of the Trinity Accord, plunging the world into bloodshed to rival the Territorial Wars of centuries past.  

Word count: 1691

Content warning: Racist cop

Hearth Fires Masterlist

Beta read by the matchless pandabearer

           The officers eased up when they realized that Lorel was in 100% human form, which was a short and plump one, at that; someone had told her once that in her pretty dresses she looked about as dangerous as a cupcake.  Appearances certainly were deceiving, after all, since she could probably do significant damage to the woman currently carrying on outside. While the thought was definitely tempting, she knew she wasn’t fast enough to get past four cops before they could take her down.  That was her cat’s risk assessment, not hers. She was still frozen in shock.

           Looking like they’d stepped into The Twilight Zone , they lowered their weapons.  She felt the same way, her brain trying to wrap itself around the presence of Enforcement in her bakery for anything other than coffee and donuts.

           One stepped forward to ask her some questions and she answered truthfully.  The absurdity of the situation and their authoritative tone had her operating mostly on autopilot while she focused on keeping her ocelot under control.  The cat bared its teeth at the intruders, wanting to drive them off its territory.

        It quickly became obvious that the snotty woman had reported that Lorel had threatened and stalked her down the street.  Naturally, she was more than happy to disabuse them of that falsehood.

           “Would you like to see the camera footage?” she offered.

           Three of the quartet followed her, the other went to question the other party.  She only used the small office off the kitchen to meet customers with large custom designs like wedding cakes.  Usually, she placed orders from her organizer while having tea or a bite to eat at one of the tables on the sidewalk out front, although that would probably change soon with the weather.

           The portable device was perfectly capable of displaying the CCTV feed, but the screen in the back was larger.  She slipped behind the desk and tried not to feel claustrophobic with the black-clad officers filling the rest of the tiny space between her and the door.  Their scents filled the room, making it hard for her to breathe.

           Lorel closed the sketches she’d been working on to bring up the video.  There was no sound, but it was plain from their body language that the blonde was the aggressor.  She’d been too shocked at the time to note the other woman’s belligerent stance and excessive gesticulations.  As for herself, she looked like someone had smacked her across the face with a fish. She had only moved to grip the counter once the vile words had sunk in, trying to keep from leaping over the counter.  Thankfully she never actually lunged for her throat.

           The trio relaxed as they watched, alternately annoyed, exasperated, disgusted, and resigned.  Not that much of their emotions showed on their faces; it was their scents that gave them away.  A part of her brain filed that realization away to freak out over later.  

           Once the video caught up to when the cops entered, she hit pause.  They asked more questions, most of which washed over her without fully registering in her mind.  She was still reeling emotionally, and her cat was too on edge over the strange predators. A couple of lips pursed, and she thought she caught an eye roll when she got to the part that had been the last straw and she kicked the blonde out.  Their obvious distaste at the false report had her cat easing down a bit, giving her room to breathe.

           “Thank you, miss.”  

           Now that she was no longer fighting the all-encompassing urge to attack, she noted the name on his uniform.  Sugiyama. They’d introduced themselves once they realized she wasn’t even armed with so much as a spatula, but she’d been too off-balance to absorb the information at the time.

           “Maddox.  Lorel Maddox.”  They responded automatically to the ritual of etiquette when she offered a handshake.  She smiled, careful to not flash any more teeth than absolutely necessary. While they appeared genial now, she still didn’t want to give them an excuse to think that she was threatening them in the enclosed space.  Her cat didn’t like being crowded in there at all and she was afraid of how it’d react if subjected to any more stress. “Would ya’ll like a copy of the video?”

           “No, I don’t think that’ll be necessary,” Sugiyama, apparently the senior officer since he’d been doing most of the speaking, shook his head.  “The sheriff will want to speak with you, though.”

           Moving out of sheer habit, she escorted them to the front where she plied them with samples and coffee.  Her hands shook as she went through the motions. She knew that not all such interactions between Changelings and Enforcement went so peacefully.  Was that what she’d intended? She thought she was going to be sick.

           Her cat wanted to hunt her down and rip her throat out.

           Invisible bugs crawled across Remi’s skin.  He flexed his foot a little harder on the pedal and the vehicle responded readily with a burst of speed that pressed him back against the seat.  He could have set it to autopilot once he’d reached the highway, but the safety protocols would’ve kept him at the speed limit and he didn’t have time for that.  The clock on the dash told him that he’d received Chloe’s call merely eleven minutes ago, yet it felt like hours.  

           They’d thus far managed to squeak by without any run-ins with Enforcement, and now he had to intervene on behalf of someone who wasn’t even a packmember yet.  Local Enforcement was almost purely human, with the odd Psy here and there. Most of the Psy brass from the Council days had been cleaned out. Rainfire hadn’t had enough dominants, even if they’d been interested, to spare to the force since they were no longer barred from the ranks.

           After the abuses of the Psy under Silence, the human-dominated city Enforcement distrusted anyone who wasn’t entirely human.  The fall-out of this encounter could impact racial relations in the area for years to come and it all hinged on a stubborn, unpredictable ocelot.

           He pulled to a stop in front of the hardware store in record time.  Cop cars clogged up the parking spaces in front of the bakery and yarn shop across the street.

           “Jack’s just started questioning her,” Chloe called with a grimace from the alcove of her doorway.  The way she wrapped her rainbow-coloured shawl tightly around herself made it sound more nefarious than a simple interview.

           He grunted and nodded in thanks.  He’d met the human woman a few times at her husband’s hardware store, so she knew he wasn’t considered chatty even on his more gregarious days and wasn’t likely to take offense at his response.  But he had to get verbal. Fast.

           Keeping to an easy stride (running headlong was only something hot-headed dominant juveniles did, he reminded himself), he focused on the voices drifting out the open door.  He couldn’t remember the last time he was so grateful for his acute hearing.

           “I just want to know what the problem is.”  Sheriff Shank somehow managed to sound both friendly and patronizing.  The ears of Remi’s leopard went flat against its head and it curled its upper lip in a sneer.

           “She used a slur so I asked her to leave.”  Lorel was clearly becoming exasperated. No cat tolerated condescension for long.  Unfortunately, there were cops forming a loose cordon in front to block his way and he was not in the mood to play at being non-threatening.

           “And what slur was that?”  

           “Animal.”

           Remi had to stop and make nice with the cops when all he wanted to do was burst in there and crack la crâne de cette bibette.  

           “Don’t you people use that word?  Talk about yourselves as cats and dogs?”  The derision in his voice had claws shoving at Remi’s fingertips.  It took every ounce of willpower to keep them in as he made small talk with the guards, working his way around to getting their version of the story.

           “Wolves, there are no dog Changelings.”  The drinks and treats in their hands had his leopard snorting; she’d all but tried to throw him out on his ear when he’d dropped by and then turned on the Southern belle grace full force when Enforcement descended.  He wondered if she knew that he was loathe to see her hurt or if she didn't recognize the lethal threat he posed.

           “So, what’s the difference between ‘animal’ and a specific animal?”

           “Context.  She accused me of taking jobs from humans.”  It was nice to hear that icy tone directed at someone else instead of at him.

           “You specifically?”

           “Well, no, she-”

           “So you kicked her out for expressing an opinion?  Did you know her husband lost his job to one of you?  Ever since ya’ll moved in work’s been hard to come by.”  That was a load of shit.  Some people had their panties in a twist because the timber industry was banned from RainFire lands, while conveniently ignoring the benefits to local businesses

           “That’s no reason to call Enforcement, I certainly didn’t threaten her!”

           The officers- Sugiyama, Norton, and Carter- made it plain that nothing had happened and that the sheriff was “just finishing up” with Lorelei.

           “Predatory Changelings like you can be pretty scary.”  Shank drew “pretty” out into nearly four syllables. “You should just be glad she wasn’t carrying.  This is a stand-your-ground state.”  It was all he could do to keep his eyes from going cat at the subtle threat.

           “You’re saying a woman can come into my shop, scream and insult me, then shoot me if I look at her funny and it’s legal?”

           “Sure, if she’s scared for her life.”  

           “But I didn’t do anything, I only asked her to leave!”  From the corner of his eye, he saw her throw her hands in the air.

           “See, that’s the problem with you folks, you’re just too aggressive.”

           “Oh, you think this is aggressive?”

           And that was his cue to enter stage right.

[funkymbtifiction]

Si/Ne and auxiliary functions mainly, I guess?

How does lower Si vs higher Si behave? I get aspects of Si doms and auxiliaries(I think I do wonder how aux functions work though). If I am right about being an INFP, I get this feeling my Ne gets going when I feel connected emotionally to thoughts or ideas. Ask me to brainstorm about something I know/care little for, and I don’t feel I have a lot to offer. Is this how it’s supposed to work?

When I’ve been really into a TV show or something, I can recall speculating various ways about how something was going to happen(usually a TV show as you have more info or depth to work with and more time for stories/characters to develop) in various possible ways. I just remember this instance where a prediction I made months prior turned out more or less correct.This probably happened more than once but no one pointed it out and I don’t recall exactly) and my friend remembered and said “:what are you a psychic” I just explained, no, but with the information/what we knew it had to happen in most likely 3 to 4 ways ,reminding her not every speculation I said happened. If i had been uninterested, I’d doubt I’d have had much to guess about at all.

i often wonder if aux Ne can work this way? I guess this brings me to high Si to to lower Si. I  continuously open the wrong drawers in my kitchen YEARS after I’ve moved. The second drawer down holds the spatulas/ladles/big spoons ect, and third aluminum foil, plastic wrap, plastic baggies ect. It used to be the opposite. I don’t always get it wrong, but I do it often enough I feel ridiculous..I feel quite strongly that I am an SI user vs Se and have done for awhile(even when doubting) because even with sensory information coming in I seem to like to draw it back to a personal feeling or place. I am terrible beyond anything at having a good read on surroundings.If people ask me to look for signs I become like a dog, hyper focusing because I am afraid I will miss it) I miss things I later notice, and go “Oh look that’s so cool, that been there long?” to find it has.

I guess it just didn’t peak my interest until then, I love forest trails/walks. but I always feel like it’s not just the physical beauty, but how I feel about it. I can imagine a person hundreds of years ago walking through this place(I know the likelihood of that path even being there isn’t really accurate) Or I get quite the feeling of whimsy as I associate forests with magical stories and fairy tales). So, basically - does higher Si do better at actually remember where the heck in their kitchen things are, or are lower users worse at it? Does it tell anything about the use of Si? As I speculated about aux Ne feeding into dom Fi, what about tertiary Si feeding into Ne? Saying “Yes this is a possibility as similar outcomes have occurred in such situations” as if helping to keep the Ne idea zooming more accurate??

Ne and Si work together as a team. You won’t notice them operating individually most of the time – Si is going “where have I seen this before / what can I compare it to?” and Ne takes that information and draws  a presumption from it. If A + B = C last time, and this situation is similar to A + B, we can assume C is the result. Guessing a plot twist right isn’t necessarily indicative of high intuition, because sensors can also do it. My ISTJ not only predicted the outcomes of every single presidential election accurately (statistics / historical trends; A + B = C) she guessed the ending of many suspense films from their obscure trailers.

The introverted functions are subjective, which means whenever you are dealing with them, their focus isn’t on the object, but what it means to them.

A Si user isn’t seeing Disneyland for all its moving parts and the rides. If Disneyland has been a happy place for them, they see it in terms of Disneyland = Happiness. Disneyland = My Innocent Childhood, when I was Happy. Disneyland = My Escape from Reality into my Innocent, Happy Childhood. Each time they need that happy fix, they can get it at Disneyland. Because they aren’t seeing the peeling paint on the rides or the long lines or thinking about the screaming children. They are seeing a Happy Place. It’s all subjective, because they are associating it with a specific memory from their childhood – a moment when at Disneyland with their family, it wasn’t about the Peter Pan ride anymore, it became “to me, this is Happiness.” The Si will ignore the reality of Disney and what it has become, in favor of Disney = Happiness. A + B for me = C.

Ni would also derive something from Disney, but it might see Disney as representative of a larger symbol – an abstraction of itself. Disney = Commerce. Ambition. Power. Greed. Dreams.

It’s all about perception and what you draw from it. If Si is leading Ne around, then Happiness replaces Ne (the bigger picture). If Ne is leading Si around, the park becomes a sentimental place, nothing more. If Ni is leading Se, the symbol becomes all. If Se is leading Ni, the park is a place where you feel the wind in your hair, and the energy from everyone standing in line, and the rumble beneath your feet when the roller coaster whizzes by, and the popcorn smell in the air, and the bubblegum stuck to the bottom of your shoe, and the taste of your hot dog.

Take it further, into the judging functions – it becomes what seems systematically logical about a thing (Ti), or what carries personal meaning and significance to you (Fi), vs objectively how it impacts everyone (Fe) and how you accomplish things in a tangible, effective manner (Te).

- ENFP Mod

[hawthornewhisperer]

That slow, roiling boil: emotional pressure and spiraling, and why we’re in for an explosion of bellarke feelings (part one: the Clarke Part)

(This was going to be one giant meta but it got too long, so this half is on Clarke and part II is on Bellamy.)

Out of everything in 506, I was most struck by Bellamy’s slow, gradual unraveling as everything he’s tried to hold onto since he landed started falling into pieces.  And along side that, we’ve got Clarke, desperately trying to figure out where she fits in this new world, where everyone-- including herself-- is different.  I think these two are hurtling towards an emotional confrontation (momentary break for a prayer circle that I get the Hakeldama 2.0 I’ve always wanted) and I wanna talk about why, but first:

By reading this post you’re entering into a contract with me: if you’re upset about E.cho or be.cho or anything related to that, you’re gonna keep that off this post. There’s nothing wrong with feeling the way you do about her/that pairing, but I disagree and this is not an “argue about be.cho” post, it’s a “here’s what’s happening in canon and what I think about it” post, and I am not responsible for what’s happening in canon. I will be treating be.cho’s relationship as something significant and important to Bellamy and discussing the sex scene, so if you cannot deal with that right now (or ever, which is also fine!), I suggest you nope out of this now.

Okay, so, with that out of the way, let’s talk about Clarke because I think her isolation and stress is a little more obvious and easy to get a handle on.  She spent six years waiting to have her people back, terrified that they had all died and she and Madi were all that was left.  And then within twelve hours, she discovers that they’re all alive, and by the end of 503 Clarke thinks she has her feet back underneath her.  She can tell that things have changed for everyone, but she’s sure they can push past it.  One of our first hints of this is her asking about the Arkadians on the ring and Bellamy responding by listing the Grounders instead (aside from poor Ghost!Harper, I guess).  Clarke’s concern is still focused with the people she cared the most about six years ago, which makes sense, but for Bellamy, that has entirely changed.  Emori and E.cho are just as important to him as Raven and the others, and I don’t think *either* Bellamy or Clarke realized what that tiny exchange signaled, but it was big.

But by 505, I think Clarke has realized that while she and Madi were hunting and fishing and dyeing each other’s hair, everyone else changed, but she’s not quite sure how yet.  You see her putting the pieces together slowly, observing Wonkru’s people-eating prayer and gently pointing out how Bellamy has changed.  But significantly, she’s holding back from him: he asks how she survived, and she flat out lies to him in response. She’s not sure what’s different about him yet, but she is sure he’s different, and she wants to puzzle that out before dropping the “talking to you was what kept me sane” bomb.

Because while Clarke has changed a lot since Praimfaya, she also hasn’t really changed.  Her priorities have shifted and contracted, because for six years keeping Madi alive and safe and happy was her only priority, but people can only change so much. And Clarke Griffin has historically been of the Conceal Don’t Feel school of emotions, particularly Romantic Feelings Of The Hearts And Pants Variety.  Bellamy unknowing asks her to reveal the soft, hazy feelings she has for him, and she immediately bails. Like, hilariously fast.  She practically made the Roadrunner sound and sped out on a cloud of dust. And this is a Clarke we’ve seen before-- this is Clarke walking away from Finn after Raven lands, a Clarke who can only muster up a “maybe don’t die?” when Le.xa walks into the arena with Roan.  Clarke Griffin is a very emotionally intelligent person, but the second she gets gooey Heart Feelings, she decides she’d really rather not and pretends it’s not happening. Niylah is the exception that proves the rule, imo. She cares about Niylah as a friend and is attracted to her, but they are not Romantic and thus it’s much easier for her to be honest with Niylah about her fears that everything changed in the six year separation.  In the same way, she was able to be honest with Bellamy in s1-4 because her feelings for him were at best Romantic-Adjacent, and it is not a coincidence that she is suddenly withdrawing from him now.

The Clarke we get in 506 is, quite frankly, the most isolated Clarke we’ve gotten. She can barely finish conversations with Bellamy, almost always because *she* is the one walking away, or panicking, or just plain not up for talking.  She manages to be vulnerable with Niylah and then that is immediately taken away from her too, and she’s in a constant fog of worry for Madi.  Bellamy automatically includes her in all of his plans, but his focus isn’t on her and she doesn’t really seem to mind (except for one time) because her focus isn’t on him, it’s on the danger Madi is in.  She eventually decides to completely bail on the plan Bellamy has orchestrated and just make a run for it with Madi, clearly aware that she might die in the process.  I’m of two minds as to whether or not she would have told Bellamy she was leaving if she hadn’t run into him, but I think in the end she wasn’t quite so isolated that she would undertake a possible suicide mission without at least giving him the head’s up. But I also think some of her hesitation in telling him was fear that he wouldn’t stop her, because she doesn’t know where she stands with him and it is clearly tearing her apart inside. 

We’ve gotten two reaction shots this season to Clarke seeing Bellamy with E.cho, and both times it stops her cold and she has to force herself to look away.  I don’t think it’s jealousy per se, largely because I don’t think Clarke herself would call it that. But there is clearly something that is bothering her, and I think she recognizes that Bellamy’s priorities have shifted drastically.  Six years ago, she was the one Bellamy was vowing to protect with his life, swearing to her mother that he wouldn’t let anything happen to her in 412 even though he was really fucking pissed at her. But now it’s E.cho, a woman he hated the last time she really knew him, and quite frankly, a woman I doubt she gave a lot of thought to over the course of their separation.  It throws her, and both times she attempts to ignore how much it’s thrown her by focusing on Madi. Because by that point, she’s feeling more isolated than ever.  Her mother? Gone. Kane? Gone. Her friends? Angry, distant, or creepily into a murder cult. And the one person who kept her sane for six years? Desperately worried about someone else.

So Clarke does what Clarke prides herself on doing best, and shuts all her feelings off except for the uncomplicated-but-no-less-fierce love she has for Madi.  That’s how she could try to steal the bunker and how she could irradiate Mount Weather, and Clarke “Compartmentalization” Griffin is a champ at shutting out inconvenient feelings.

But Bellamy isn’t the only one who’s changed. Clarke has too, and she’s a little bit softer than she used to be, a little bit less able to ignore feelings that make her heart do funny things.  She’s still Clarke, but she’s Clarke through a soft-focus lens; the edges that made her Wanheda have been filed off by six years of peace, and it doesn’t come as easily as it once did.

The Big Question of s5 is, aside from “who gets Eden” (no one) and “did the bunker eat people,” (obviously) is “have these characters actually changed?” And six episodes in, the answer is “yes, but mostly no.” They have shifted priorities, and some have gotten softer-- and some, like O, have gotten much harder-- but Clarke is still Clarke, and she is someone who above all else craves human connection.  It’s what drove her to seek out Niylah during her exile, and it’s what kept her going before (and after) she found Madi.  Clarke is trying desperately to isolate herself from everyone else, because everyone is different and Madi is the safe, easy person to fixate on, but she can’t.  Not really.  That’s why she tells Bellamy she’s leaving, why she opens up to Niylah, why she goes with Bellamy and E.cho to try and broker a deal.

And right now, those two parts of her-- the part that is driving her to self-isolate and the part that is crying out for deeper human connection-- are in conflict with each other.  And the person most likely to trigger the meltdown when she can no longer hold those parts of herself apart?

Bellamy.

Me, barricaded behind a pile of couch cushions wearing a colander as a helmet and brandishing a spatula: please remember the be.cho contract and understand that I will block anyone who breaks it, not because I want to, but because I’m trying real hard to hold onto a fun, safe space for myself and I’m asking you all to honor that. xoxo, hawthornewhisperer.

[wilmingtonhomeservices]

DOWNSIZING GUIDE FOR SENIORS

https://ift.tt/31ufOTb

Seniors know that they eventually have to downsize to cut costs, simplify their lifestyle, deal with medical issues, or to be closer to their grand kids. The process is usually tolling and stressful, both physically and emotionally. However, you don’t have to feel overwhelmed. Here are a few downsizing tips for seniors.

Senior-friendly Downsizing Tips

Start Early

Give yourself enough time to downsize. The downsizing process will take longer than you expect so you need to have a lot of time to sort through all of your belongings. You can’t do this in just a single day or one weekend. Give yourself a more realistic timeframe like a few weeks or months. Work on one room at a time and make sure to take breaks as needed. You’ll find downsizing less stressful if you are not rushed.

Start Small

You are probably eyeing things that you want to get rid of in your garage or kitchen. However, it’s not recommended to start in such a big room. Remember that you’ve got several years worth of things to go through in these parts of your house. Not to mention the emotional attachment that you have with these items.

Basements, attics, and garages are known to be notorious because it is where homeowners usually store unused boxes, old holiday decors, old hobbies, and clutter. It’s better to start small and begin in areas where you have little emotional attachment. Some good options are the linen closet or the laundry room. You should know what your needs are. For example, if you are moving into a house with two bedrooms only, then having four sets of sheets should be enough and you can get rid of the rest. If you are having a hard time, you can always hire a professional moving help.

Get Rid of Rooms You Won’t Have In Your New House

In case you are moving into a townhome or an apartment, you probably won’t have an office space or a garage. Almost everything in those spaces have to be relocated to a different room, tossed, donated, or sold. Items like office furniture may also be good for garage sales or consignment.

Get Rid of Duplicates

This holds true for many of your kitchen items. You probably have a few big pots, several spatulas, and cookie sheets. This is the perfect time to get rid of clutter. In case you’re having second thoughts in handing off an item that you think you’ll be using for the next holiday, why don’t you give it to someone who needs it the most.

Create Yes or No Piles Only

If you are going through your belongings, there will be some items that you will feel an emotional attachment to, and you will be tempted to create a maybe box, when in fact, you should only have a Yes or No pile. Don’t fall for this trap. If you do, you will end up with a bigger pile than the two. Keep items that you use all the time. Let go of those that are sitting in your closet or shelf for at least year.

Reduce Your Collections

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[peraliavia]

(via parfum_sueskind_cover_diogenes.jpg (213×340))

Notes:

When the labour pains began, Grenouille’s mother was standing at a fish stall in the rue aux Fers, scalingWhiting that she had just gutted. The fish, ostensibly taken that very morning from the Seine, already stank so vilely that the smell masked the odour of corpses. Grenouille’s mother, however, perceived the odour neither of the fish nor the corpses, for her sense of smell had bee utterly dulled, besides which her belly hurt and the pain deadened all susceptibility to sensate impressions. She only wanted the pain to stop, she wanted to put this revolting birth behind her as quickly as possible. It was her filth. She had effected all the others here at the fish booth, and all had been stillbirths, or semi-stillbirths, for the bloody meat that emerged had not differed greatly from the fish guts that lay there already, nor had lived much longer, and by evening the whole mess had been carted off to the graveyard or down to the river. [...] Grenouille’s mother wished that it was already over. And when the final contractions began, she squatted under the table and there gave birth like she had done 4 times before, and cut the new born things umbilical cord with her gutting knife. But then, on account of the heat and the stench, whcih she did not perceive as such but only as an unbearable, numbing something - like a field of lilies or a small room filled with too many narcissi - she grew faint, toppled to one side  fell out from under the table to the street, and lay there  knife in hand    -pg 4

...he smelled it more precisely than many people could see it, for his perception was perception after the fact and thus of a higher order: an essence, a spirit of what had been, something undisturbed by the everyday accidents of the moment, like noise, glare, or the nauseating press of living human beings.          -pg 36

It was a strange perfume that Grenouille created that day. there had never before been a stranger one on earth. It did not smell like a scent, but like a human being who gives off scent. If one had smelled this perfume in a dark room, one would have thought a second person was standing there. And if a human being, who smelled like a human being, had applied it, that person would have seemed to have the smell of two people, or, worse still, to be a monstrous double creature, like some figure that you can no longer clearly pinpoint because it looks blurred and out of focus, like something at the bottom of a lake beneath the shiver of waves.   -pg 155

The blossoms were were emptied out in the workshop by the basketful into massive but lightweight and fragrant piles. Meanwhile, in a large cauldron Druot melted pork lard and beef tallow to make a creamy soup into which he pitched shovels of fresh blossoms, [...] They lay on the surface for a moment, like eyes facing instant death, and lost all colour the moment the spatula pushed them down into the warm, oily embrace. And at almost the same moment they wilted and withered, and death apparently came so rapidly upon them that they had no chouce but to exhale their last fragrant sighs into the very medium that drowned them; for - and Grenouille observed this with indescribable fascination - the more blossoms he stirred under into the cauldron, the sweeter the scent of the oil. And it was not that the dead blossoms continued to give off scent there in the oil - no the oil itself had appropriated the scent of the blossoms. Now and then the soup got too think, and they had to pour it quickly through a sieve, freeing it of macerated cadavers to make room for fresh blossoms.   -pg 180

[Cold enfleurage] The souls of these noblest of blossoms could not be simply ripped from them, they had to be methodically coaxed away, In a special impregnating room, the flowers were strewn on glass plates smeared with cool oil, or wrapped in oil-soaked clothes; there they would die slowly in their sleep. It took three or four days for them to wither and exhale their scent into the adhering oil. Then they were carefully plucked off and new blossoms spread out.  - pg 186

[thinking about using the last of his perfume] and then he saw, smelled, how his beloved scent would vanish in the air, irrevocably, for ever. It would be a long slow death, a kind of suffocation in reverse, an agonising gradual self-evaporation into the wretched world.   -pg 198

She had disappeared behind a hedge. And it took about two heartbeats longer than he expected before she emerged again- and he was frightened to death, for during those two heartbeats he thought he had lost her forever.  -pg 210

http://www.westshore.edu/personal/mwnagle/Wciv/PerfumeAnalysis.htm :

Addressing the question of literary influences, Suskind claims to be a blissfully ignorant epigone whose memory is so poor that he barely remembers what he has read, much less who wrote it, which, it seems to him, is a fortunate handicap for a creative writer since it frees him from the anxiety of influence and creates an uncomplicated relation to plagiarism, without which, he paradoxically insists, nothing original can be written.

Suskind projects his concern with personal identity and literary persona onto the themes and characters of Das Parfum. Set in eighteenth-century France, Das Parfum tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, a physically and emotionally abused orphan whose supernatural sense of smell guides him in a perverse search for the lost origin of his identity. 

-deals with plagiarism and the enlightenment trope of individual autonomy-

Presumably, the implication that the writing subject of a novel like Das Parfum has been swallowed by the black hole of postmodern ecriture, only to re-emerge as an irrationally destructive and cynical parasite, is too frightening to contemplate in a culture clinging to the shreds of an uncohesive collective identity.

More than a parasitic parody that feeds on dead poets, Das Parfum can be productively interpreted as an enactment of literary anamnesia that contributes to a working through of complex psychic and social issues.

Grenouille's coldly rational plundering of the human body to create an ideal perfume is undeniably an allegory of the "murder" that instrumental reason commits on the objects of its reifying analysis 

In the wake of the Enlightenment's demand for self-legislating subjectivity, so Bloom argues, the Romantic poet could no longer unquestioningly imitate previous models to develop a literary identity. Thus Bloom casts the Romantic poet as a version of the oedipal son who contests the father's priority, not in direct conflict, but by a defensive repression of the precursor's voice. To achieve authentic identity, the artistic imagination must define itself by rejecting anterior discourse and narcissistically seeking its own voice, constituting an ego by love of its own figurations.

For the Bloomian poet the literary equivalent of this narcissistic symbiosis is an initial affiliation with a central precursor: "the strong poet's love of his poetry, as itself, must exclude the reality of all other poetry, except what cannot be excluded, the initial identification with the poetry of the precursor." Thus, "the mystery of poetic style" is reduced to the "mystery of narcissism" 

The result of this imaginative narcissism is a creative melancholia that promotes a literary amnesia.

Because originality becomes the post-Enlightenment law of creativity, Bloom argues that writers in the Romantic tradition (which he interprets broadly to include most canonical literature since the late eighteenth century) must refuse to mourn the loss of the idealized precursor by a process of self-defensive repression. "Poets," Bloom contends, "do not exist to accept griefs" (Yeats 5). Inevitably, such repression leads to an enormous diminishment of the creative ego, making Romantic poetry "the result of a more prodigious sublimation of imagination than Western poetry from Homer through Milton had to undergo" (Anxiety 125). As Freud cautioned in his essay "Trauer und Melancholie," a refusal to mourn causes a depressive melancholia, which can only be cured by a process of grieving called Trauerarbeit. What the melancholic must work through and overcome is the narcissistic fantasy of omnipotent mastery over the lost object. Absorbed into the unconscious, the unmourned object of love poisons the ego, whose reproaches against the lost object become self-reproaches and create symptoms of dejection, an inability to construct new idealizations, and above all a diminishment of self-esteem.

Undoing melancholic repression, citational play creates a discourse of mourning that undergirds and sustains both the philosophical and aesthetic practices of a postmodern culture confronted with the disintegration of Enlightenment master codes of unity and totalization.

-    -     -     -    -    -

Indeed, one of the novel's most notable but least analyzed achievements is its expansion of the mad genius topos of Romanticism into a literary case study of the psychopathic mind. As a serial killer, Grenouille conforms to a profile established by current clinical research linking the narcissistic borderline personality with homicidal psychopaths. Citing early childhood traumas of abandonment and abuse as significant factors in criminal pathology, recent studies postulate that such traumatic events prevent the formation of stable self-structure, leading to the fusion of idealized objects with an unmodified grandiose self. In adult life the earlier developmental failure to differentiate the primitive grandiose self from idealized objects results in a repeated failure to identify with social norms, especially moral codes, which leads to antisocial acts expressing unconscious abandonment rage

E. T. A. Hoffmann's tale Das Fraulein von Scuderi -contains Cardillac who’s mother while pregnant with him desired a man only due to the beautiful gems he offered her, when she grasped them he died and her hysteria was transferred to the foetus triggering the formation of a creative imagination obsessed with fetishized works of art whose violent retrieval compensates a primal narcissistic wound. Cardillac went on to become a master jeweller who would Oedipally create beautiful jewellery/works of art precisely so that he can take them back: The crucial element in Hoffmann's portrait of the artist is a compensatory mechanism. [maybe u were on to something with pygmaliolism]

Parodying the Enlightenment conception of Bildung as a progression toward an autonomous ego, Grenouille's formative relationships promote only regressions to primitive ego states in which compensatory fantasies of infantile omnipotence replace the mature resolution of dependency issues.

The artist creates as a result of a deeply rooted need to restore structural deficits in the core self. On this point Suskind's text is unambiguous: To tame and structure his incoherent internal universe, Grenouille must assimilate an idealized feminine scent. His most urgent need is to reinscribe a feeling of symbiotic unity into his disintegrating self-structure.

In such an allegory of creativity, regression to an antecedent stage emerges as a psychopoetic metaphor consistent with the Bloomian notion of the creative genius who unconsciously reactivates a primal affiliation with a central precursor and imaginatively regresses to a state of primary narcissism. Although Bloom seems unaware of it, his idea finds support in the aesthetics of object relations theory, which shifts the conception of creativity from classical Freudian sublimation to a compensatory idealization of the self. In post-Freudian psychoanalysis it has long been the consensus that artists work to restore a lost beauty and perfection that was once their own. By inventing an idealized object onto which primitive fantasies of omnipotence are projected, artists enact a mourning of the lost omnipotence of the primitive grandiose self (Layton and Schapiro 23-36). Especially artists who exhibit an exaggerated concern with wholeness and ideal beauty are unconsciously attempting to restore the blissful perfection of archaic narcissism associated with the idealized self-object. Suskind and Hoffmann, however, who depict the psychic abnormalities that often underlie aesthetic idealism, parody the artistic fetishism of Romantic idealism. Rather than disavowing the pain of a primal wound by regressing to the imaginary perfection of primary narcissism, their fantasies recreate sites of emotional injury in search of psychic insight and reparation.

Without such pre-oedipal triangulation, the child remains suspended in a regressed state of primary narcissism. In Das Parfum the image used to convey this emotional stunting is the tick, a parasite that withdraws into itself and survives on a single drop of blood for years. Like the tick, Grenouille requires only a minimum of nutriments, especially in the psychological sense

In this metaphorical description of the regressive borderline personality the psychoanalytic significance of Grenouille's name emerges: Grenouille (French for frog) is Suskind's metaphor for the liminality and failure of identification that characterize the narcissistic condition.

Unlike Freud, whose patients suffered neurotic symptoms thought to result from unresolved oedipal guilt (like the hysterical reaction of Cardillac's mother to the intruder),contemporary psychoanalysts typically confront a depression signifying wounds to a primitive ego preceding the Oedipus. According to Kristeva, this profound sadness, the melancholia of the borderline personality, is perceived by its sufferer, as a "fundamental lack," or "congenital deficiency" 

-    -    -    -    -

 As the organizing allegory of a postmodern Kunstlerroman, the metaphor of perfume is particularly well chosen, for what would be a more appropriate trope for the self-deconstructing text than a composite mixture distilled from canonical essences, a parodic blend of the tradition's master codes and most seductive stylistic voices? 

As the blatant citationality of Das Parfum shows, in postmodern kenosis the creative psyche is diminished not to clear space for a narcissistic genius who represses fetishized precursor texts but to dissolve the fantasy of omnipotence and redefine imaginative subjectivity as the fluid space of ecriture where singular authorial identity disappears and its repressed other, the citation, emerges in a hybrid intertextual construct. Tropingmultiple precursors, Suskind's pastiche foregrounds the creative process as an evacuation of literary identity and its reconstitution as a plurality of voices.

In postmodern pastiche, on the other hand, the myth of singular voice fostered by the Enlightenment ideal of individual autonomy is abandoned and the dead ancestors return in citational clusters.

In a similar fashion, the novel's concluding image of self-extinction mirrors the postmodern kenosis of subjectivity. After achieving his highest ambition of being loved unconditionally and then realizing that this love is only a manufactured illusion, Grenouille commits suicide by drenching himself with his ideal perfume and throwing himself to a crowd of riffraff, who tear him to pieces and consume his body in an act of "love." The corporeal sacrifice and redemptive reincorporation suggested by this cannibalization is amplified by a cluster of allusions including, most obviously, the Christian crucifixion, as well as the Euripidean dismemberment of Pentheus by the Dionysian maenads, the latter representing the defeat of the rational ego in both the classical text and its postmodern adaptation. Additionally, the image resonates with Kleist's Penthesilea, which also ends with the devouring of a wounded hero (Achilles) in an orally sadistic Liebestod. Reinhabiting ancient and sacred myths, these images of ingestion, communion, and redemption converge with the psychic necessity of introjective Trauerarbeit as a cure for wounded cultural identity. Grenouille's Christian name, Jean-Baptiste, further reinforces the interpretation: John the Baptist preached the gospel of redemption achieved by an identificatory communion performed in the name of the Father.

He refers to these regressive reveries as vintage wines, which he addictively imbibes to fortify himself against the painful emptiness of his depleted psyche. Sometimes these scented memories are called "books," which his servants retrieve from a "great library" implying that he, the aesthete, intoxicates himself with an excessive consumption of literary art. Ironically, despite this retreat from reality into the inner sanctum of his imagination, he is unable to defend himself against external influences, least of all from painful memories of rejection and abuse, which return in the scented memoirs he obsessively peruses. Similarly, the return of repressed Romantic and Symbolist texts is so pervasive in these chapters that many passages seem to consist of almost nothing but blatant plagiarizations (Ryan 399). Thus the aesthete's narcissistic fantasy of a self-enclosing realm is defeated by an underlying web of citations, commenting parodically on the perverse impossibility of self-origination.

Rather than repressing the ancestral voice blocking the epigone's access to some imagined Ursprache of poetic language, the postmodern imagination liberates itself from the narcissistic delusion of originality, converting creative anxiety into intertextual productivity. Thus, the postmodern writer, no longer the mythic, self-aggrandizing genius, is restored to the status of virtuoso, a term that in the premodern era signified a collector of art and highly skilled player. This is, in a productive sense, what the writing subject appears to become in the intertextual artistry that distinguishes Das Parfum as an allegory of postmodern creativity.

see: bauldilaire

[jovialprincessgardener-blog]

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