#FINALLY finished my painting of best and most deranged girl

[sugarrushsato]

Heretic Killer 9000, Kromer

[hovercraft79]

Winter Song

Ch: 6 Hard Candy Christmas

Chapters: 6/31 Word Count: I,711 Fandom: The Worst Witch (TV 2017) Rating: Teen Warnings:  some difficulty dealing with the judgement of others Summary: Julie Hubble decides to see how Miss Mould is adjusting to life in the Ordinary world. Along the way she gets a bit of insight into Mildred, Hecate Hardbroom and enjoys a fabulous milkshake.

Notes: This story is part of the B-Sides: Stories from the world of Hecate’s Summer Playlist series. It is a prequel to Hecate’s Summer Playlist.

The title, Hard Candy Christmas, is by Dolly Parton, of course. So much to love in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.

Once again, Sparky did her best to save me from my own deranged use of commas and semicolons.

“Can I get one by the window, love? I’m meeting a friend.” Julie smiled and followed the hostess to a table by the window. She slung her bag over the back of the chair and settled into the café table, making sure to keep one eye on the door. She folded, smoothed and refolded a paper napkin, knee bouncing under the table. She sniffed the red carnation sprouting from the glass vase in the middle of the table. She read and reread the menu. She checked the time on her phone; she still had twelve minutes before she was supposed to meet Miss Mould at one.

Eight minutes before the hour Julie spotted a colorful coat winding through the holiday crowds filling the sidewalk. Keeping an eye on the swirling blues and greens, Julie watched the witch approaching, slowly, eyes moving back and forth between the storefronts and a piece of paper clutched in her hand. She paused on the sidewalk in front of the café, double and triple checking the address. Julie rapped her knuckles against the window, finally catching Miss Mould’s attention and waving the witch inside.

Marigold pushed the door open and rushed to the table, looking relieved. “Ms. Hubble!” Julie stood and they awkwardly flipped between missed hugs and missed handshakes, neither doing the same thing at the same time.

“Sit down, love!” Julie pulled a chair out for Marigold and shoved the menu into her hands. “I’m bloody starving.” She plunked back into her own seat and took up the menu again. “What would you like to drink? They’ve got a lovely cuppa. And if you’re feeling indulgent, they make a fabulous Black Forest milkshake – chocolate and cherries.” They slipped into silence as each woman studied her options.

After a few minutes, Marigold closed the menu, nervously rubbing her fingers over the cover. “I think just a cup of the tomato bisque for me.”

Julie looked up, stunned. “Tomato? What? You’ll do no such thing, love!” She reached across and opened Marigold’s menu back up. “I didn’t ask you to lunch for you to skimp on a bit of soup. Order what you’d like. It’s my treat.”

“You don’t have to –”

“I know.” Julie covered one of Marigold’s hands with her own. “But I want to. You’ll hurt my feelings if you don’t get at least a double cheeseburger with chips. The brie burger is to die for, it’s me regular.”

Marigold’s eyes shone with unshed tears, but she nodded anyway. “Thank you, Ms. Hubble.”

“And if you don’t start calling me Julie, I swear I’ll order the most expensive things on the menu and then do a runner,” she said, winking.

“Julie, then. Thank you, Julie.” She smiled shyly and went back to studying the menu.

The waitress came and went. True to her word, Julie ordered the brie burger with a large side of chips. Marigold opted for the chicken and avocado sandwich with a cup of the tomato bisque instead of chips or crisps.

“How are things with the…Council?” Julie asked, glancing furtively around. “How do things stand for you?”

Marigold glanced around the café. A cheerful boisterousness filled the space as guests chatted and laughed with each other. No one paid them any mind whatsoever. “I guess the Council is more or less finished with me. They kept me in…” her voice caught, and she swallowed hard before she could go on. “They kept me in custody for thirty days. I think they were trying to decide what to do with me. If I had my powers, they would have been confiscated for a period of time. Not life.” The waitress swept by, depositing a pot of tea and two mugs. She turned her attention to preparing her tea.

Julie poured her own tea, frowning as she tried to work out the best way to say what she wanted to say. “I don’t understand why they needed to punish you at all, Marigold. You weren’t responsible.”

Marigold’s mug clattered onto the table. “How can you, of all people, say that? I nearly cost your own daughter her magic. Girls were hurt because of me.”

Carefully, Julie placed her spoon on the tabletop. “What – exactly – did you do? From what Mildred said, Ethel Hallow stole the Founding Stone. Ethel Hallow created a duplicate one to put on display. Ethel Hallow tricked her sister into taking the Stone’s power causing,” she looked around, leaned forward and dropped her voice to a whisper, “causing a magical black spot.” She leaned back in her chair. “As far as I can tell, you had a moment of weakness. You didn’t tell them where the stone was, but you didn’t know anyone was still in the castle. You almost cost my daughter, Maud, Enid and Felicity everything. You almost cost Hardbroom and Miss Cackle everything. But when it came down to the wire, Marigold, you did the right thing. You made a great sacrifice. And I’m grateful to you for it. My daughter is whole, thanks to you. So are the rest. Cackle’s still stands.”

“You sound like Miss Hardbroom,” Marigold sniffled, wiping tears from her eyes.

“Hardbroom? The one with the broomstick shoved –” she finished the sentence with a rather graphic gesture.

“That very one. She actually…” Marigold dabbed at her eyes again. “She actually spoke to the Mag— Council on my behalf. Quite forcefully, I must say. I didn’t expect her to do that. Miss Cackle and Miss Drill were also there. That’s why it was only thirty days and… and…” She took a steadying breath and a bracing gulp of tea. “Exile into the Ordinary world. Though… I suppose I’m not really exiled. I just don’t belong in the witch— I don’t belong there anymore.”

“I don’t either, love. And I’m going just fine.” The waitress approached, and Julie slid her mug to the side to make room for their meal, letting the conversation lapse into something almost like companionable silence as they ate.  “Mmph!” Julie chewed her burger and swallowed. “I meant to ask you if you found a flat yet?”

Shaking her head no, Marigold set her sandwich back down without taking a bite. “It’s getting’ a bit dodgy on that front, as well. The Council put me in sort of a part-time lodging when they released me, but I’m only meant to stay there for another week. I don’t even know how to fill out the forms for an apartment. Or to find a job. I have some money saved from Cackle’s but… It won’t last long and my family isn’t exactly keen on helping out, now that I’m the black sheep.”

“I know a bit about that. Me mum wasn’t exactly thrilled when I broke out the news I was up the duff over the Sunday ham.” She took another bite of her burger, savoring the earthy taste of the brie. “Why don’t you come ‘round for supper on Friday? We can take a look at those forms together, see if we can’t get you settled.”

“You really don’t have—” Marigold stopped herself when Julie looked like she was about to fling a chip across the table at her. “That’s very kind of you,” she corrected, quickly. “I’d love to.” She spooned out the last of her soup. “This is a far sight better than Tapioca’s soup, to be sure.”

“Oi, tell me about it. I have to go to Cackle’s for a brunch Sunday for the Spe—” she dropped her voice to a whisper. “For the Spell Science Fair. I can only imagine what she does with brunch,” she said wrinkling her nose.

“I don’t miss her cooking, that’s the truth.” She fussed with her napkin a bit before speaking. “I don’t suppose… since you’re going to be at Cackle’s anyway…” Marigold stared at her empty cup of soup as if it held the secrets of the universe. “Would you mind giving Dimity, I mean, Miss Drill my regards?”

Julie suppressed a grin, and the urge to tease, responding as casually as she could, “I would be happy to. If you’ve anything you’d like to send up the mountain, I’d be happy to take it.”

“I don’t. I don’t think,” she said quickly, pushing the last bit of her sandwich away. “Thank you. Speaking of things I’d like to send along…” Marigold twisted around in her chair and pulled her oversized bag into her lap, extracting a flat package wrapped in brown paper. “This is for you. To say thank you for being kind to me when you have every reason not to be.” She handed the parcel over to Julie.

“You didn’t need to bring me anything,” Julie said, tearing into the paper anyway. “Ohhh…. Marigold. This is lovely.” It was a brightly colored acrylic painting of what looked like Mildred, standing on the stage in the theatre, holding up the staff she’d carved herself. Above her, a myriad of objects floated, captured in a glowing blue haze of magic. “That’s supposed to be Millie?”

“It is. She really did that, stopped all the things that had escaped from Vanishment from hitting the Great—from hitting Hellibore. She was magnificent. She’s going to be very powerful someday.”

“I wish that old Miss Hardbroom thought so,” Julie muttered. “This really is lovely. I know just where I’m going to hang it.”

“Thank you.” For the first time, Marigold smiled a wide, true smile. “And Julie? Miss Hardbroom does think so. She knows so. I think that’s why she’s so hard on Mildred, why she’s so keen on her learning to control her… self.”

Julie thought about that for a moment. It would be nice if it were true. Sometimes she could almost believe that Hardbroom did care about her daughter. Mildred had somehow managed to remain fond of Miss Hardbroom. She’d have to think on that a bit, she decided. For now, though… “Nah…” she said, scrunching up her face. “I don’t buy it. But I do want to buy one of those Black Forest milkshakes. Care to share with me?”

“I think you’ve made me an offer I can’t refuse,” Marigold answered, flagging down the waitress.

[cherry-interlude]

Top 10 Favourite Lana Del Rey Songs (Discography)

I’ve made posts like this before, discussing my favourite Lana Del Rey songs (or weakly ordering them despite the frequent alternations in which songs I like more), but I rarely seem to write at the moment so I thought I’d vaguely order my favourite Lana songs from her discography

10. Salvatore

This track is just a filler but I think it deserves much more, particularly as it is set apart from the rest of her music. The instrumentals and vocals, which are heavily Italian in nature, really set the scene for the beautiful landscape in which Lana is ‘working on her tan’, taking us away from the country she frequently sings of (though manages to reference it anyway) and into a different universe entirely, where the song gradually builds as does her seduction through the song. What sets this song apart is also the unusual laughing - or crying - at the start of the song which plays underneath the rest of the track, sounding like an old man who is either maniacally laughing or brokenly sobbing, which makes me wonder if he is whom Lana sings of, much to his enjoyment, or if she has left him, much to his agony, making this song’s layers become curios-er and curious-er.

9. The Blackest Day

This song is particularly special to me, not because I necessarily relate to it but because I have always been mesmerised by its beauty and emotion. It slipped through the cracks for me until I sat and listened to Honeymoon properly, and I thought it was incredible how Lana managed to convey her grief through the steadiness, building and falling along with her vocals, through the song, and it was heart-wrenching the first dozen times I heard the bridge which seemed as if Lana was losing her controlled tone from the verses. It’s an incredible track overall, with the references to Lana’s favourite musician and the way she mutters, wails and just purely sings, reminding me of the underrated Cruel World from a sadder perspective, making me wish she would sing this song live or at least push it into the spotlight along with the rest of her most-loved music.

8. Brooklyn Baby

I don’t listen to or particularly like songs I don’t relate to, particularly when they oppose me in nature - for example, This Is What Makes Us Girls - but Brooklyn Baby is one of Lana’s finest masterpieces in terms of music. It’s a charming song which strays from her dismal world of sublime sadness and instead perks up the album with a plucky guitar and Lana’s sweet vocals. Yet Lana’s vocals aren’t just sweet - they can be strong and breezy, as demonstrated in the pre-choruses - and it’s this that adds to the richness of the song. Understanding that Lana’s idea for the song is to be ironic makes it more bearable, yet it is great to hear the ridiculous claims of how no one is as cool as Lana, when compared to the much more adult and gritty opinions on ‘being the mistress’ or being abused yet nonetheless dedicated, which highlights this song as an enjoyable delight rather than a typically sad song.

7. Shades Of Cool

My terrible opinion of Shades Of Cool was, at first, that it was boring, not at all interesting and too weird for me to get my head around, yet giving it several listens really struck me just how incredible the song is, from the breathtaking music to Lana’s coy yet strong vocals - much like in Brooklyn Baby - to the emotive lyrics. Just the opening music to the track is enough to raise goosebumps, with the tentative steps that match her voice perfectly before it grows to an explosion of vocalising and music that seems to come from her heart rather than instruments. The clashing bridge is also now a favourite of mine, defiantly demonstrating her emotions as rather than being careful like in the verses instead being this strangely hypnotic noise, and I can say I was absolutely mistaken when I first claimed this to be a boring song.

6. Art Deco

The lyrics may be simple but somehow Art Deco never stops being one of my favourite tracks. The hypnotic music, which I describe as ‘aquatic’, sets the tone perfectly and automatically gives the feeling of calm on the listener, distancing from some of the more fiery tracks and instead is refreshing as a song. It doesn’t mean much in terms of lyrics, as the verses are just about the type of person I could never relate to, and the choruses are mostly basic, but the feeling the song gives me is incredible. The gradual build, with the final chorus feeling much more powerful and emotive than the rest of the song, leaves a flourishing finish, whilst maintaining the same feeling of contentment each time I listen to this song. What would make the song more perfect is if it had a music video or a live performance from Lana to bring that feeling and dreamy world to life.

5. Born To Die

There are many songs on Born To Die that I do love, but if I had to pick just one to put on this list, it would have to be the album’s title track. My favourite song on the album is Blue Jeans, yet this track somehow has more meaning to me personally rather than just the story I’m being told through the track I favour, and I can relate somewhat to Born To Die, for many reasons. What makes me like this song more is that it is one of the first which really made me listen to Lana Del Rey, with Young and Beautiful, Video Games and Put Me In A Movie being the first few, yet Born To Die was something else entirely and seemed to take me to another place that still felt in my world. The lyrics, which surely can be applied to many people and situations, always relate to me no matter who or what is surrounding me. There’s also the instrumental, the violins and the steps that lead into the verse, then the much more dramatic burst of the chorus which gives the song a film-feel, which is what I enjoy about Lana Del Rey’s music. It’s such a Lana Del Rey song, a memorable classic from her discography, and the greatest example of why she is brilliant when it comes to her music.

4. Ultraviolence

Because there are previous posts where I have talked about Ultraviolence, I won’t repeat what I’ve written but Ultraviolence is definitely one of Lana’s strongest songs in terms of music, as the clanging cacophony of chiming bells and shaky violins sets the tone perfectly, the slightly-off feel and the low-fi quality shows the instability and abusive romance, which doesn’t make this purely a song.

3. Cruel World

Like with the track Ultraviolence, I have gushed over Cruel World many times before, particularly when it comes to the luxuriously low-fi rumble of guitars, drums and Lana’s vocals which incredibly show her anger throughout the track, particularly when she claims she is “crazy”, an atmospheric track which is brilliant to listen to whenever you feel just as deranged as Lana within this song. It is one of Lana’s best songs by far, as passionate as it is sexy, as sad as it is empowering, and it paints the perfect image of Ultraviolence itself - unpolished yet undeniably brilliant, Lana’s finest album in terms of instrumentals.

2. Music To Watch Boys To

This track definitely managed to fight its way onto the list after years of not really listening to it as much as the rest of her music, yet Lana’s beautiful and unusual atmospheric aquatic dream, Music To Watch Boys To, is a hypnotic masterpiece and one of her best songs. It may be slow-paced and quiet song, a homage to the people that pass Lana by, but it’s a soothing, sensual track which includes different vocalisations that layer this song as much as her emotions do throughout it, whilst maintaining a cool, careless feel despite the theme of the song. The lyrics which keep the rich imagery often within Lana’s music make this the perfect glimpse into Lana’s mind, and the Fantasia-feel creates a world rather than merely a track.

1. Cherry

Though it isn’t impactful the same way as Lana’s stronger tracks such as Born To Die, Ultraviolence or her other well-known songs, it’s still a fan favourite and my own personal favourite. Though it keeps with the theme of sadness, unreliable people and Lana’s typically Del Rey imagery which she lists within the track, it’s still a seductive and strong song, twisting the idea of being broken into being able to be stronger from it, as Lana doesn’t lose her brilliance within this song. The instrumentals make this even better, with the Ultraviolence-feel of guitars and drums - though more polished - whilst maintaining the feel of Lana’s latest album.

[alexilulu]

10 Games I Played in 2017, Roughly Ranked

This is wildly long lol so have fun, idiots

#10: DESTINY 2

This is sort of awkward. Destiny 1 was a game I enjoyed with small reservations; it was obvious how hampered they were by their own backend in creating new content and design spaces to explore, prior to The Taken King. Even then, it had shining moments of joy for me. I adored the goofy dead ghost hunting like halo 2/3 skullfinding, using every trick at your dispoaal to find another morsel of insane, well-crafted tidbits of lore for this world that the game itself rarely even touched on, let alone explored. Destiny 2 was supposed to be the "we listened and we're fixing it" for that game, and a needed jump to a new backend that would free them to create the things they dreamed of.

The grimoire was removed wholesale, those bits of lore still true presumably but inaccessible in the game again. Instead of finding ghosts, you examine objects in the world, getting a 2-sentence Nolan North quip that usually is more funny than it is educational about this sprawling world they created. And it doesn't save that anywhere. We actually moved backwards in term of the lore's accessibility to the player, somehow. The game itself is still Destiny, helmet popping and aiming down sights and kicking balls around the tower, and it's storyline was ambitious in a way the original was not, actually making you feel at least a little weak for about 10 minutes before you're back to killing Fallen and then doing donuts on your Sparrow on top of their corpse. The game treats itself as both too serious and totally unserious in the same breath, a monologue of serious consequences punctuated by Cayde cradling a chicken and petting it gently. It's good, but it remains to see if it'll reach the same comfortable spot Destiny 1 got to by the end of it's lifespan.

9: NIOH Here's where I admit that some of these games I've played, in that I played it for a few hours and haven't had time to return to it. I have it on good faith that Nioh is an incredible game, and from the bits I've touched I know that to be at least probably true. I've heard it described more as a Diablo-esque loot-game pretending to be a Dark Souls ball-busting difficulty monster than vice versa. It's something I'm hoping to come back to, and if I'd been able to spend more time with, I likely would have put much further up the list.

8: Dishonored: Death of the Outsider Another game I fuckin' haven't had time to complete, Death of the Outsider is the thing I and several friends have wanted for years; Billie Lurk fucking shit up. And her powerset rules. I'm only like 2 missions in, but I'm looking forward to finishing the rest sometime before Christmas, hopefully. Dishonored 2 was definitely a game I was thrilled to play, and I know this will be more of the same.

7: Resident Evil 7 What could be better than the creeping horror of a deranged family out in the Louisiana Bayou? Resident Evil 7 was honestly so unbelievably effective at learning from the last 5+ years of immersive horror games while still, at it's heart, being a goofy Resident Evil game under that. That style clashes at times; The moment when you go outside to the courtyard of the mansion and find a double-keycard locked door when the most advanced thing in the whole house before now has been the goofy projector-doors that hearken back to the ancient history of the series. I think it sticks it's landing well, with a good lategame twist and plenty of goofy superscience in between. I've been meaning to go back to it for the Chris Redfield DLC, but I don't know if I actually want to, to be honest. That game was a fun ride, and they did their best to add the usual replay stuff like a NG+ gun and such, but I think I'm okay leaving it where I left it, on good terms.

6: Tacoma I bought the hoodie that came with a LUNAR TRANSFER STATION TACOMA patch Fullbright sold long before that game had it's transformation following feedback from beta testers, and I never stopped looking forward to it coming out. Gone Home was like a...I won't say formative, because it isn't true, but it was definitive for me. A story about two girls falling in love together doesn't come around that often, and the attention to the setting and feel of being in this old, deeply lived in house. Tacoma shows that same love of character and place in spades, giving you an even more intimate look at the world the crew of the Tacoma lived in together. I honestly lost it when I noticed during a scene that next door, their cat was asleep on the shelf above the laundry machine. Just the smallest details and love shown for everyone involved broke my heart and put it back together in a different shape. A vision of a world utterly fucked by corporatist greed such that they are essentially their own extragovernmental entities, and people live on anyway, just being people. It's so sad, but still sort of hopeful? Even if the world is garbage, people will keep on living as best as they can. It's very millennial of myself to find solace in that idea, honestly, but that's this game for you, one crafted based on the excesses of the last decade spiraling out of control.

5: Final Fantasy XIV: Stormblood In any other year, this game would be #1. You're gonna hear me say that a few more times here before we're done. Final Fantasy 14 has been a constant in my life for the last 3 years, delivering again and again the sort of joy that only comes from a game lovingly made by people dedicated to their own love of the genre, the setting and their playerbase. That's the only way I can describe it, lovingly crafted. Naoki Yoshida loves this game, and so does his team, and every inch of that game radiates this. The storyline itself is a little meandering, jumping from a failed revolution to formenting a successful one, to returning triumphant with new armies and allies at your back. Everyone in that game is, again, a joy to be around. It has a somewhat similar roadtrip feel to Heavensward, but never treads the same ground in the same way. It's more like...taking your friend abroad to another country, while Heavensward was a road trip across a state that stops and starts in fits and spurts. I don't know if this expansion will hold my attention in the same way that Heavensward did, or that A Realm Reborn did. I don't know if I have that part of myself that's willing to ride with an MMO across the lifetime of it's expansion this time. I want to support this game, and the people who make it, and my friends who do still ride with it. But this might be my last expansion.

4: Tales of Berseria If this came out any other year, it might be my game of the year. You'll hear that 2 more times before we're done. I've never been a Tales person. I know people who are, and I understand the mystique, but I never Understood it until repeated praise (and some very cute lesbian ship art) forced my hand into buying it. I don't know if I'm gonna be ok when I finish it. The game is very baldly about doing bad things. The protagonist is a demon on a blatantly self-destructive revenge quest against the self-appointed savior of the world, aided by a demon swordsman who wants to kill his brother, a witch with existentially depressed ennui, a boy who barely knows who he is, a pirate cursed to bring ruin to those around him, and a pure maiden with a tragic backstory trying to do good in the world who has fallen in with them through a series of missteps so comic they're mostly just sad. Together, this totally uncohesive group of misfits abandoned by the world, rejecting it and destroying everything that stands in their way. It crushes my heart on the regular. This is definitely a 60+ hour JRPG because I just got to hour 20 and there's absolutely still so much left to go. They've introed villain after villain, placing the shotgun on the mantelpiece for Velvet to mangle herself with just to kill them in the blast. This game breaks my heart. The world it's in is awful, every party member has been utterly ruined by some facet of it that happened to conflict with a totally normal thing they wanted. They're the devil's rejects. And I love every single one of them.

3: Butterfly Soup Remember all the praise I gave Gone Home back there? This game is like that for me this year. You can just make a game about some queer girls playing baseball and being in love, and I'll love it with all my heart. It's not hard for me to peg why I love it; Akarsha is like a fucking mirror pointed directly at my face with a moustache painted on it, Diya's anxiety and gay panic is so deeply relatable that I very nearly cried the first time she said the word Lesbian to herself and immediately tried to convince herself she's not gay. Brianna Lei's depiction of young, messy, goofy girls living with all the problems that happen to kids their age; insane parents, abuse, self-discovery, a lot of bad jokes and getting all too real at a moment's notice. I honestly cannot wait to see what else she can bring to the table.

1 (TIE): NieR: Automata If this game came out any other year, it would be #1 without effort. The original NieR did something at just the right time, with just the right amount of feeling. A rejection of the trend of father figures rescuing their child and getting the good ending, NieR was a quest to protect a girl to the detriment of everyone around the protagonist, including the girl herself. The final ending of that game ends with you erasing yourself from the world so that you never existed, to save someone who deserves to live and would have if not for you. NieR's destructive quest to protect his daughter literally destroys the world around him, disrupting millennia of careful planning and manipulation by people far smarter than him. All because they took his daughter. Damn the world, he wanted what was his. NieR: Automata follows another 10,000 years after that, in the same world, scarred by a war that broke out centuries ago. The game frequently lies to both you the player and you the protagonist, but the protagonist already knows better, and simply doesn't let on. The game focuses, instead, on the ways that something built by humans craves to become like its long-gone masters. Androids are built to be physically ideal, sexy and at times loving to one another, because that's what humans did. It's unclear if they chose this for themselves or if humans did it to them (and obviously Yoko Taro chose for them to be like this, human choice or no), but it's how they live. The machines they fight do the same, playing a phone game across millennia of what humanity was, trying to fill the holes in their life with gender binaries, sexual intercourse, children and family and love. What separates them from us? Are we any different? Do we deserve to be different? Do they? I don't know how to talk about this game coherently. There's so much there. People recently have been talking about it again, as lists like these come up, and so many bad takes are floating around that it crushes my heart. 2B's sexy, so the game is horny. It's bad because you have to replay it 5 times (no, wrong, bad). It's bad because 9S is a softboy and 2B could have been a lesbian with any of the women throwing themselves at her (come on, dude, at least try). I'm not gonna try to rebut any of these, because the game itself doesn't need my defense. It stands on its own. It's the best game I've played in the last 5 years, in all likelihood. It's definitely my favorite of the last decade.

1 (TIE): Persona 5 If this game came out on any other year, it would be #1 with a bullet. This game had an insanely tortured development cycle. Pushed back again, then again, then again. Remember that February 2012 graphic that used to go around, and likely will right around Valentine's Day? Characters were revamped, removed, redesigned 5 times in the case of Haru (who started out as a boy, somehow). But it's exactly the game I needed in 2017. I was a transplant in Texas in 2004, going into high school in a new state where we knew no-one and nobody. I was quiet, spending most of my time outside class reading the 6th Dark Tower novel, Song of Susannah, a 2 inch thich hardcover beast. Because it's high school, rumors started about whatever they thought I was because I was quiet and wore a hoodie to school regardless of the weather, hiding guns or knives or what have you. Akira's experience touched me, in ways I never thought I would be a decade after graduating. Shit, everyone touched me in some way. Yusuke's quiet acceptance of the abuse and labels applied to him by his teacher and his fellow students. Futaba's isolation in the wake of her mother's death hit me in the heart; I dropped out of college when my own mother had a spinal cord fusion in her lumbar spine that ruined her life, left her with 10% her previous mobility. I mourned for years. Haru's quiet demeanor and the immediate, effusive joy she displayed whenever she could be with her friends, no matter the context. Ryuji's bristling rage at authority that ridicules him. Even the side cast struck me in ways Persona 4 and 3 never did. Kawakami's tiredness with the world, her exploitation she brushes off as a fact of life. Takemi's cool acceptance of being forced from the job of her dreams into treating bruises and being blackballed by the world she worked to survive in. Sojiro's struggles with cruel family that would destroy the daughter he loves as his own. Persona 5 is a game about the ways that society is designed to strike down the odd man out, casting them aside as worthless or ridiculous. The simple girl run into a cult, the daughter of a model forced into a role she never asked for, the typecast and the downtrodden, who deserve so much better than the world they've been given. This is a deeply flawed game. Within hours of Ryuji standing side by side with Ann to defend her from the casual sexism of Kamoshida or any other number of aggressions, he becomes a slavering hound doing the same thing to his best friend. The writing, when it's not inconsistent, simply isn't there; Haru's final and rather grand entrance peters off into maybe a dozen lines she has in the main story following her introduction. 6+ years in development can do some bad stuff to a game. But I love it, despite all of that. I can see what this game could have been, with a less tortured development, with a director who didn't ask the character design to make all of the female confidants "cuter". With a more focused vision, a clearer goal, and a better route there. All of that said, I still love my satanic crime ring. And I probably always will.

[kpopyourcherryy]

Mayday - vi

Genre; horror/mystery 

Length; 2,900+ words

Warning(s); violence, abuse (physical, verbal, emotional), kidnap 

Y/n’s p.o.v. 

The last thing you remember when you finally woke up was hearing Jaebum’s and Youngjae’s voice, and screaming for help until you heard the sound of the front door closing once again; then tears streaming down your face when he entered the room. His words, “Let’s get you home..” ran through your head as hiss hand viciously came down on you thrice more before you were finally out again.

Your eyes began to slowly open once again, the hazy filter made it hard for you to make out exactly where you were- it felt like a dream... your head hurt, your face and entire right side felt bruised and achy. “Wh- Where am I?...” You asked that dreadfully cliche question as he you rubbed your eyes, sitting yourself up. That’s when you suddenly felt it, the cool leather fabric that was wrapped around your neck and the icy, heavy chain that hung from it. Bringing your hands up to your neck, you felt the heavy duty collar, “What the fu-” Your voice trailed off as your eyes finally noticed the heavy chain that was basically bolted into the wall. 

Your blood ran cold when you heard footsteps coming from the hall way behind you. Immediately, you backed up against the wall; pressing against it as if you hope it could somehow protect you from him. “Are you awake,y/n?” Jackson calmly asked as he walked out in front of you. 

“I- I wanna go home..” You whimpered, tears began forming in the corners of your eyes. You looked around the room once again- the walls were empty and painted a dingy grey color that made the whole place look sickly- there were no windows, so you didn’t even know what time it was; whether it was day or night. “Please.. I won’t tell anyone- I just want to go--” 

Before you could finish your sentence, Jackson landed a harsh open-hand slap across your bruised cheek. He then crouched down in front of you, gently cupping your abused flesh in his large hands; forcing your gaze back up at him. A wide, toothy smile sprawled across his face as he motioned around the near empty room, “This is home now, y/n.” He replied, then playfully bounced the chain attached to your collar, “If you’re a good girl, this will come off okay? It’s only there now for cautionary purposes..” His playful demeanor suddenly changed as he finished his spine chilling sentence. 

“Caution- Cautionary purposes?” You timidly stuttered, but your question seemed to only agitate him as he roughly wrapped his hand around your through; squeezing only to slightly cut off your air. Your hands immediately shot up to his forearm, clawing at it as he pressed harder on your throat. “Ja- “ You gasped, the lack of air brought tears to your eyes as your face reddened, “Stop- St-”  Before you could continue your weak attempts to form words, Jackson eased up on you. The fresh air burned as it rushed into your lungs causing to you to weakly cough while you steadied your breathing. 

You peered up at Jackson with your teary, frightened gaze only to be met with his dull, nightmarish stare. The older man leaned down, his face only a couple inches away from yours, “You’ll NEVER be able to leave me again, y/n.” He snarled, lifting his upper lip like a dangerous wild animal, “I won’t allow it- I’ll kill you before you leave me for him again..” 

At first your mind didn’t really register what he said, but once it kicked in; you just sat there, staring down at your hands as tears furiously streamed down your cheeks. 

Just as Jackson was about to speak again, the sound of his text tone rang through your ears- it was an oddly calming, yet cheery song that simultaneously haunted you. How could someone so awful- so sick and deranged, display themselves as this gently, kind-hearted person?

Jackson’s p.o.v. 

Standing from his spot in front of you, he replied to Mark; who’s texts sounded so desperate and fearful. 

Through his peripheral vision he could see the curiosity that painted itself on your face. He turned his attention back to you, grinning as he practically waved his phone in your face, “What, y/n?” He asked in a smooth, intimidating yet playful tone, “You wanna know it is?” Pausing for a moment, waiting for your response that never came, he cleared his throat as he unlocked his phone once more. 

“Well, I’ll tell you anyways.” He replied to himself, holding the phone in front of your face; allowing you to read the texts, “It’s your precious boyfriend..” He scoffed, rolling his eyes as a ghoulish giggle flowed out of him.  Scrolling up, he allowed you to read the most recent messages, “Look how worried he is, y/n.” He chuckled, seeing the man he despised so distressed brought nothing but joy to him. 

Y/n’s p.o.v. 

You sat there reading and rereading Mark’s frantic messages to the man who was causing the worry to happen in the first place.  Tears continued to flow down your cheeks like rivers as your blood boiled. 

Looking at a giggling Jackson, you shook your head in complete disgust.  This couldn’t be the same man you once were proud to call your best friend. How could it be? 

“You’re disgusting..” You softly uttered out, your insult immediately quieted his laughter. 

He tilted his head slightly, scoffing in disbelief, “What the fuck did you just say?” 

“I said-” You replied as you propped yourself up onto your knees, “You’re fucking d i s g u s t i n g. You’re fake as fuck. Just wait until Mar-” Cutting you off before you could continue, Jackson landed several vicious slaps across your bruised face, then roughly slammed you against the wall behind you. 

“Shut the fuck up!” He shouted as he slapped you once more, “You stupid selfish bitch! You talk so highly about him like he’s some sort of super hero, but is he out looking for you like the others were?” He brutishly growled as he knocked you down onto the could tiled floor, “You know what he’s doing instead of looking for you? He’s sitting there sulking, waiting for me to take him fucking booze so he can gain the courage to text some other whore to keep him company while you’re gone.” 

The unbelievable pain you felt from his harsh blows and being so carelessly man handled was almost nothing compare to the stinging words that freely flowed from his mouth- drawing out a shaky cry as you wished for it all to be over. 

Suddenly, with one swift movement, he was on top of you; pressing his heavy, muscular body against you like a predator would do it’s prey. “He doesn’t love you, y/n..” He spoke in a smooth, low snarl, “Not like I do at least..” 

You practically trembled beneath him as he stayed there on top of you.  He suddenly wrapped one of his hands around your throat again, cutting of your air for the second time as his eyes loomed over your helpless, fragile body. 

“Don’t test my patience, y/n..” He lowly growled his warning, then roughly pressed his lips against yours. As he broke the sudden kiss, he took your lower lip between his teeth- gently nibbling it, just before he leaned down and whispered, “Mark’s not coming to save you, y/n.. Don’t make me hurt you anymore princess..” 

Nothing but a fearful whimper escaped your lips as he released his grip around your neck, standing from his position. You watched as he pulled out his phone again, “I’ll be back tomorrow, my pet. Your boyfriend wants me home already.” He cruelly stated while turning his back towards you, smugly chuckling as he heard the sound of your faint sniffles. “Be a good, quiet girl for me while I’m gone, okay?” Turning back only slightly, flashing you that pompous, toothy smile of his. 

You watched him walk away, disappearing into the hallway that he first appeared from, but then popping back out minutes later.  “Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you..” He cheerfully began though his eyes were still cold and emotionless, “Don’t even try to escape, y/n. That chain is the strongest I could find, and your collar..” Pointing at the leather that snugly wrapped around your throat, “Is tough to cut, even with scissors- plus it locks from the back.” 

Tears rolled down your cheeks as you watched his wave bye, then disappear into the hallway. Seconds later, the sound of a heavy door slamming shut rang throughout the room. 

Was this really your life now? Were you going to have to spend the rest of your days practically walking on eggshells, shackled to this dingy wall- with an unpredictable maniac?  These questions ran through your mind as you curled up into the tightest ball you could manage, you laid there sobbing until you eventually fell asleep- your dreams were the only way you could escape now, even if it was only for a little. 

Mark’s p.o.v. 

Mark sat there agitated and worried sick.  Where could you be? Why did you leave your bag and phone behind, you’d never leave anywhere without them- so why did you now? Standing from his seat on the couch, he began frantically pacing back and forth as tears formed in the corners of eyes. 

“Hyung..” He heard Yugyeom softly call out to him as he entered the living room. “I just got off the phone with y/n’s mom, she- she hasn’t from her since she left for work this morning..” 

Just hearing the younger mans regretful statement brought him to his knees, though it hadn’t even been a full day that you had gone missing; the fear he felt was indescribable. “Fu-Fuck.. “ He sighed as the tears he attempted to hold back rolled down his cheeks. 

Yugyeom sunk down to the floor beside him, “Hyung.. It’s going to be okay..” He spoke in a hushed, comforting tone while rubbing his back, “We’ll find-”

Before he could finish his sentence, the sound of the front door opening caused Mark to shoot up. “Y/n!?” He called out, running over to the entrance of the dorm. But the moment he saw Jackson standing there, removing his shoes while holding the case of beer he requested- his heart sank.  “I can’t just sit here and do nothing anymore..” Mark suddenly said, as he hastily began walking around the living room; gathering his things. “I- I need to go find her.. She wasn’t feeling good when she was coming home, and there’s supposed to be a storm tonight.” He frantically explained as he searched high and low for his car keys, “She’ll get sick if she’s out in the rain, plus she’s scared of thunder..” 

“No- Hyung, don’t do that.” Jackson replied, offering his hyung a comforting smile as he grabbed his belongings, tossing them on to the couch. “You won’t get anything accomplished if you’re anxious like this.” The younger man smoothly explained while wrapping his arm around Mark’s shoulders. “Look just sit down, have a drink and tomorrow we can all go looking for her- and if she’s not home by then, we can go to the cops.” 

Jinyoung strutted into the room almost out of no where. “Mark.. I kind of hate to admit it but Jackson’s right..” 

Mark nodded, wiping the tears from his eyes, “Yeah I know..” He replied, nodding as he wiped his nose and sniffled, “I know- but just the thought of her out there alone, possibly in danger horrifies me.” 

Jackson pulled him down to the spot on the couch beside him then opened the case- handing him a can, “Here- this will help calm you down.” He said softly, pulling out another and handing it to Yugyeom, then another and offering it to Jinyoung; who politely refused. 

“Jackson..” He suddenly said while taking the drink from him, “You were the only one here during the time y/n went missing..” The loud crack from each of the boys opening their cans filled the room for a second, “Are you sure you didn’t hear or see anything weird?” 

“Yeah..” Jinyoung suddenly cut in while seating himself beside Yugyeom, “Youngjae was telling me you said you heard her talking to her sister or someone over the phone.”  Jackson silently nodded as he took a sip of his beer.  “But..” He continued, showing obvious signs of suspicion, “When Jaebum talked with her, she said she hadn’t spoke with her since ten o’clock this morning..” 

“Well..” Jackson shrugged, taking another calm sip, “I was half asleep when I heard her talking to someone, so I could’ve misinterpreted the whole thing..” He then leaned his head against Mark’s shoulder, “I feel like this is my fault..” 

Mark finally took his first sip, sniffling and clearing his throat afterward. “Why do you say that?” 

“Because..” Jackson pouted, tears welled up in the corners of his eyes, “I should’ve paid more attention, if I had-” He sniffled as tears rolled down his face. “if I had, she’d already be home and none of you would be so worried..” 

Yugyeom scooted closer to his hung, patting his thigh as he attempted to comfort him as well, “It’s not your fault, Jackson-hyung..” He soothingly replied, “There’s no way you could’ve know this would happen..”  

As Jackson sat there sobbing, Youngjae and Jaebum finally came out of there room. “Yah! Why are y’all drinking?” Jaebum asked, taking the open cans away from each of the men. 

“We should be either going out to look for y/n, or resting so we can go out and look for her tomorrow.” Youngjae added, shaking his head at his friends, “Drinking isn’t going to solve anything.” 

“I know, I know..” Mark replied, sighing while wiping his eyes as he stood from his seat, “I- I’m going to bed... Goodnight..” He said with a soft wave then disappeared down the hall. 

Jackson’s p.o.v. 

Taking another, larger gulp of his drink; Jackson sniffled, wiping the remaining tears off his face with the back of his hand. “I feel so bad..” 

“If you felt bad you would’ve paid more attention to her..” Youngjae scoffed, rolling his eyes at his hyung’s act. “So stop with those fake ass tears..” 

“Fake ass tears?” Jackson slightly shouted, tilting his head as he stood from his seat glaring at the younger man. His hands balled up in fists as he stepped closer to him, “Says the one who constantly teased her, maybe you should stop acting like you even give a shit, Youngjae- you were so mean to her after all.”

Youngjae called his bluff, stepping up to the plate as he practically stared down his hyung, “Mean to her? Teased her? She was like my sister you oblivious piece of shit.” He snarled, mentally preparing to fight the older man. 

Jae and Jinyoung finally stepped in, separating the two men, “Yah!” Jinyoung shouted, the commotion finally drawing BamBam out of his room. 

Rushing out into the living room Bam stood between Youngjae and Jackson, attempting to play peacemaker, “Guys.. Come one, please don’t fight..” He weakly pleaded, “We can’t just fall apart like this.. We all need to be strong- not only for Mark, but for y/n. Do you think she’d want to see us like this.” 

Immediately Youngjae nodded, relaxing as he backed off. Shaking his head, the younger man let out an exasperated sigh, “Whatever, do whatever the fuck you guys want- I really don’t care anymore.” He finally said, shooting Jackson a dirty look. “I’m going to bed, I’m going to cops tomorrow.” 

Jinyoung and Jaebum finally relaxing, both men plopped down onto the couch, “Yugyeom..” Jinyoung softly said as he rubbed his temples, “You and Bam should go to your room already..” 

The maknaes nodded in agreement, putting up no fight then walked down the hall together- whispering to one another, probably about how quickly the situation escalated. 

Turning to Jae and Jinyoung, Jackson began apologizing profusely, “Im so sorry- I didn’t mean to let the situation escalate so much..” He said softly, his head hung low as he pretend to feel over bad about everything that has happened, “This is all my fault..” 

The two men sat there, shaking there head.  “Yah, Jackson..” Jae finally said breaking the short silence, “Just go get some rest, we have a busy day ahead of us tomorrow..” 

Jackson nodded, combing his fingers through his brunette hair. Standing from his spot, he began making his way to his room, but turned back for a moment, “You two should get some rest, too.. Don’t stay up to late..”  Both men nodded, then wished him goodnight as he walked to his room. 

Once there, hushed giggles flowed out of him. “God there all so fucking stupid..” He whispered to himself while stretching out his arms. Walking over to his bed, he plopped himself down onto the mattress; a smug grin painted on his face- silently patting himself on the back for his acting.  The loud roar of thunder rang throughout his room as the rapid pitter patter of the rain hit his window, suddenly he remembered what Mark said- She’s scared of thunder.. - his lip stay curled up in that twisted grin as he imagined how terrified you must be. God did he wish he could see you right now; you look so pretty when you’re scared. 

To Be Continued..

[georgeinmalawi]

Dedza/Mzuzu

22.1.17

As we squeezed into two of the three tiny seats in row 2 on the “Big Bus” to Dedza, the ample man in the third offered me the Saturday “Nation”, one of the Malawi dailys. Reading it was much like other issues: descriptions of government officials being dismissed or investigated for corruption, tales of young girls in villages having to perform sexual favors for their chiefs or aid workers in order to get their ration of food, etc. I thought I’d write about that but as we got off the bus, it turns out he gave me the paper before he’d read it, so I returned it to him and don’t have it as a reference. 

Dedza Pottery is a very large compound 5 km. outside the town of Dedza.  It has been around for decades and the potters make lovely and whimsical stoneware pottery. There is a lodge and restaurant, as well, and Linda and I are spending two nights here before I head north to Mzuzu to teach some child psychiatry to clinical officers and nursing students at St. John of God College and to learn about their remarkable (by reputation) programs for the mentally unwell, the addicted, and mentally retarded (Learning Disabled) children  Linda will return to Blantyre to teach this week.   

The Pottery is in a lovely setting, surrounded by lawns and flowers and trees and, beyond the property, hills.  We happily walked here after the 3 ½ hour bus ride and the countryside became increasingly beautiful, always shockingly green and punctuated with small (800-1200ft) mountains. The area has been clearcut but there has been an active reforestation project here for 10 years and the young pine forests soften the rocky slopes of the hills. We climbed to the top of Dedza Mountain with a guide; the view of all the undulating greenery below was refreshing after the plastic trash and deforestation in a lot of the South. 

During the past week before leaving Blantyre, I evaluated a man, 50yo, who was lying on the concrete floor of the clinic for a couple of hours, screaming. We were very busy and after briefly assessing that he wasn’t perishing, I left him to his several friends and family members and worked my way down the list of patients who had signed in earlier than he.  When his family finally carried him in to see me, as he apparently couldn’t walk, it was quickly clear that he didn’t have a functional psychiatric illness but was delirious. Why? It turns out he has been HIV positive for some years, although his family had not been told. I needed to get him back to the ED where he could have a lumbar puncture to look for signs of infection and be admitted to the hospital for definitive treatment of his HIV/AIDS and whatever secondary infection might be consuming his brain. He’d been in the ED the night before and they, seeing he was deranged, sent him to Room 6 (Psychiatry Clinic) to be seen the following day. We really need to do an in-service with the staff there about distinguishing delirium from schizophrenia or mania, as this happens not infrequently and it delays treatment considerably. 

Room 6 received two consultation requests.  One was for a woman, 42yo who’d had pre-eclampsia and who’d given birth to her 6th child and gone home, only to become disoriented, confused, mute and not taking food or fluids after 3 days. She tried to harm her child, as well. After two more days the family brought her back to the hospital where she was found to have extremely high blood pressure.  Treated with two antihypertensives, she, astoundingly, completely cleared and was discharged by the time I went to see her. [It was been wild in clinic this week, with an extra patient load, two of the three nurses out, no residents present, and only one psychiatrist, me. As a result, I was late to get to the consultations.]  From reading the consultation request I thought she had a post-partum psychosis but it turns out she had eclampsia psychosis without a seizure, also known as “Donkin psychosis”. I have never heard of it but looked it up online. 

After I found her bed empty (She was only in hospital for 2 days before she recovered.), I tried to locate her medical record. The ward clerk pulled out two large cardboard boxes full of loose papers and proceeded to go through them, finally pulling out 3 pieces stapled together with her name on them. That is how the records are delivered to Central Record Storage. Electronic medical records would be wonderful, except there are no computers and often no electricity. 

The other consultation request, whom I also didn’t see, was a boy with epilepsy who had a fit and fell into a cooking fire. He was about to have an above-the-elbow amputation of one forearm and hand because he had so badly burned the nerves and tendons that they were irreparable. He’ll be seen by the other psychiatrist who is now back in town from holiday. 

I’m having a new sign painted for our clinic, on my dime. Our current one says, “Room 6 Psych”. It is written, as the other signs in the hospital are written, with red letters on a white field, but it must have been painted in place because the red paint is dripping. It looks like an invitation to a horror movie.  Mine will have the same regulation color scheme but will be allowed to lie horizontally until it is dry and will say, “Room 6 Mental Health”.   The director of the hospital, when I said I would pay for it, was happy to approve it. Tiny steps. 

My trip to Mzuzu was an eye opener. The further north you travel in Malawi, the less congested it becomes. There are many fewer people per square kilometer in the north and, consequently, there are still beautiful standing forests. Of course, there are the occasional denuded hills but a vigorous reforestation project had been underway. When the government shut it down a few years ago, however, some disgruntled employees set fire to great swaths of pine trees, killing them. I guess if desperate and hopeless and angry enough we all will foul our own nest. 

I was late getting off in the morning when I was to meet Amelia, a GHSP volunteer teaching community mental health nursing in Mzuzu. I walked a bit of the 30 minutes to the hospital, realized I wouldn’t make our meeting time of 7:20AM, and jumped on a bike taxi. It is a bike with a padded seat over the rear wheel and foot pegs. I had no bike helmet so if Peace Corps had seen me, I’d have been in hot water. It was pretty scary actually but certainly got me to the House of Hospitality quickly.   

St. John of God is a standout series of programs: a lovely 26 bed mental hospital on a hill, a separate 30 day inpatient drug and alcohol detox center, and, across town by the College, a truly amazingly comprehensive program for Learning Disabled children and teens. They are starting mental health services for children and adolescents, in addition to the LD program. I enjoyed teaching the Clinical Officers, although at the end after thanking me, their instructor requested that the next time I would please give a lecture. I quickly said that I have never felt lectures were particularly useful for teaching, favoring a more interactive approach. I then realized that may have been offensive and said that I can certainly focus my remarks more the next time. The Mental Health Nursing students presented 4 different cases that we were able to discuss; they were a lively bunch.

The best part of the experience for me was driving to a small district clinic on the road down to Lake Malawi. It was a brick building sitting in the woods constructed by the community with a slab concrete floor, two rooms, no water or electricity, and window frames without windows. It was packed with people sitting quietly and patiently on benches. The nurse and the village representative made a list of who was there, charts were pulled from the wooden box we brought, and the nurse, the clinical officer, and Amelia all saw patients for 3 ½ hours. Most were established patients, most had chronic mental illness or epilepsy (which is treated by mental health professionals, not neurologists, in the developing world) and required medication adjustment or refills. It was an efficient, humane operation. St. John of God goes to all the district clinics once per month to provide these services.  True community mental health. Basic but effective.

The three GHSP nurses working in Mzuzu took great care of me. We ate at Midlands, a really good and inexpensive Indian restaurant, at the chapati lady’s spot in the midst of the market where two of us had lunch for about a dollar total, and at a couple of wonderful restaurants run by ex-pats in beautiful old homes set in gardens outside the city.  There is a great chitenje market and I bought Linda 4 meters of black with electric blue dragonflies, thinking Ken the Tailor could make a stunning cocktail dress with it. We’ll see. 

My bus ride back to Blantyre, all 10 hours of it, was entertaining as I chatted with a very interesting man who’d completed medical school at the College of Medicine, hadn’t practiced for reasons I didn’t explore and he didn’t offer, and was now finishing a Masters in Public Health at a university in Durban, SA. He gave me a really good perspective on Malawi’s slide downhill over the past 15 years. Even though the prevalence of HIV is considerably down, the population explosion and the fact that the country cannot feed itself has wreaked havoc on the economy and the environment.

We are going to have to leave our house, I fear. One of the other yards in our compound was invaded by 6 armed men who stole batteries and other things from the 3 cars parked there. Peace Corps is concerned about our safety, having had some very serious incidents over the years with regular volunteers (mostly people just out of college). We’ve each protested strongly but are also looking at other houses which Peace Corps will have to rent. We feel totally safe here, with bars, gates, guards, alarms, panic buttons, padlocks, and so forth. I’m certainly much more concerned about getting hit on my bike, being in a minibus crash, or being able to exit the house if there is a fire. We love our porch, our view, our spacious dwelling, and the possibilities for a really good garden but are working for an organization and must toe the line. 

The inauguration was pathetic. The women’s marches all over the world have been inspiring. It is so sad to see our magnificent democracy, for all its flaws, being led by someone so unsuited to do so. And is he in Putin’s pocket, as it seems? But the mobilization of so many gives some hope. We unfortunately are reaping what we’ve earned by leaving so many poor, unskilled for this economy, and uneducated in the dust. It takes a dose of narcissism to run for president. His tops the heap, however, and will hopefully lead to his collapse soon. 

Given all this, I’m going to stay another year. I realized, thinking about it this morning, that if I leave at the end of my contract in June, I’ll feel like I’m going home with my tail between my legs, slinking off. I can’t say I won’t feel the same after two years but at least I can see a few things through that I have begun. The needs are greater than I can ever hope to substantially improve, in a real sense. But I can try to do a bit. I also feel that I have no pressing work drawing me home.  It is nice to feel needed here.

BTW, for some strange reason I cannot post photos here, so I may shift my operation to Facebook.

[dan-wreck]

BOWIE #2 - STARDUST MEMORIES 

Photo by Mick Rock

Oh stop groaning, you can name a piece of writing with a Woody Allen pun when the person you're writing it about is a cultural Zelig.

Soon there's going to be a whole generation where the Bowie they remember is the dead Bowie. The sanitised version who is forming in the popular imagination. Then after that there's going to be a generation who don't have a Bowie. Figuratively and literally, kids born into a post Bowie era. Pity them more. I guess how you first encountered him is a question of when you grew up and your surroundings: a guy I worked with at my last job, 20 years older than me, announced "That guy from Labyrinth is dead!". Presumably, somewhere, there's a die hard Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence fan who was mourning the death of Jack Celliers. We may never know.

For many people the Bowie they remember is Ziggy Bowie, whether they were alive to see him bringing bisexuality onto the BBC or not. Maybe this is one of the reasons behind the recent cringeworthy trend of calling him "the Starman" the same way that faux-matey twats call Paul Weller the Modfather. Maybe it's just that these people are idiots. Bowie himself didn't really seem to think of Ziggy as an enduring character or perhaps he just felt like he’d said all he could through that conduit. He laid him to rest after Aladdin Sane after all: around 42 years before he finished creating. Ziggy was really strictly speaking a footnote. The relatively anonymous figure of Major Tom, however, was one he kept returning to: after Space Oddity he came back in Ashes To Ashes, then again in Hallo Spaceboy (the Pet Shop Boys remix particularly) and then finally we see him dead in the Blackstar video.

Ashes To Ashes for instance: Major Tom is strung out in heaven's high and hitting an all time low. This, though, at a time when Bowie's cultural stock was quite high. He was incredibly cool. He was still selling a lot of records. He was the one person who could hang out in the living room of a confused and senile Bing Crosby or at a tiny punk gig and fit equally well with either. There was no point reviving Ziggy because a whole load of New Romantics and Goths were doing it. The fact that this new flock of painted birds were very inspired by him was something that'd become crushingly obvious when Bauhaus did their borderline karaoke version of Ziggy Stardust in 82. Bowie embraced his bastard children with open arms, casting them as his grim entourage in his video, with one notable exception.

Gary Numan. A huge fan who wound up getting thrown off the set of a TV show they were both on and being dismissed as the "same old thing in brand new drag" in Teenage Wildlife because our man was feeling a bit insecure about this new pretender. Which is a bit rich, really, considering that young Bowie himself was a fusion of Iggy, Newley, Scott Walker and whoever else he could latch onto. Numan was certainly no more derivative than Bowie and it wasn’t just Bowie he was drawing from: he drew as much from JG Ballard and Philip K Dick novels and John Foxx as he did from the Spider from Bromley. It’s allso amusing considering that he sings Teenage Wildlife in a voice uncannily similar to that of Billy MacKenzie, who his people had recognised the grand high art high camp potential of when they heard the Associates cover of Boys Keep Swinging and offered them a publishing deal; then later on "The midwives to history put on their bloody robes" is delivered in the voice of another Bowie acolyte, Richard Butler.

Make no mistake, Ashes to Ashes is simultaneously a high water mark, a brilliant pop record and the point where Bowie stopped being ahead of trends and started chasing them. It just so happened that a lot of these trends were started by people catching up to him. Confusing, no? In fact, this is the one point where you could maybe give some credence to the lazy critics idea of Bowie as "chameleon". Now at his best Bowie was never a chameleon. Especially when he was first Ziggy, actually because there's no way Bowie / Ziggy was blending into the background: he was an incredibly beautiful, sexually ambiguous peacock character. But during the 80s he did blend in quite a lot. He was just another one of the rank and file whether prancing about onstage with anonymous session hacks on the Glass Spider tour or just being "one of the guys" with Tin Machine. It didn't really suit him. It was unnerving. It still seemed like a costume but a very lazy one. The equivalent of Bowie turning up to the macabre Halloween coke party of 80s pop in casual clothes and saying "I came as David Jones".

So the next time we saw Major Tom in a lot of people's eyes he really was hitting an all-time low. Not everyone's, not the die-hards and not people who buy and listen to music based on what they hear, not what they're told by a music press who had been swallowed up by the sexless and jingoistic Britpop craze. See, with Outside what he'd done is released an elaborate concept album rife with pervy sexualised violence, violent sex, drugs, strange invented characters and references to obscure artists and art movements like Chris Burden (already visited in the Berlin days on Joe The Lion), Herman Nitsch and the Vienna Actionists. The visual component was a huge part of it all again, with unnerving videos like Samuel Bayer’s The Hearts Filthy Lesson. In interviews he was talking up Tricky and The Young Gods and saying how much he wanted to work with Glenn Branca. Being ahead of the curve by talking about the power of the internet as everyone thought he was nuts. He was even working extensively with Eno again.

You know - the sort of thing you want from Bowie!

This isn't what the British music press wanted. They wanted safe flag-waving and to be told what they knew to make them feel like they hadn't dumbed down to a degree which is still marring pop music with waves of Oasis clones because for a while it was acceptable to make bland drivel devoid of imagination or sensuality. They smeared Bowie's dabbling with jungle and drum'n'bass as a sad old man trying to stay in touch when in reality it was really just in continuity with him learning to play sax as a teenager because that's what all the cool jazz musicians he looked up to did, making "plastic soul" on Young Americans and welding the cold European sensibility of Low, "Heroes" and Lodger to the beating heart of the black American rhythm section of Davis, Murray and Alomar. Cultural segregation, two world wars and one world cup was what they wanted and they didn't want ageing mavericks showing up and demonstrating how hopelessly conservative they were.

A lot of the incredibly dull music being hyped up to the skies was, just like it was with the New Romantics, made by Bowie fans. So the time was right for him to come back but could he have not just have given them Ziggy again? Something with nice short songs, loud guitars, some dramatic strings. This time a bit more hetero, though, so the lads mag readers weren’t left shifting about uncomfortably again the way they were whenever they saw Richey James Edwards.

"Do you like girls or boys? It's confusing these days"

If you're not paying attention you can almost miss it but Hallo Spaceboy is, in fact, mentioning Ziggy / Bowie as much as it mentions Major Tom if not more. In those two lines we see Bowie cagily re-opening the closet door now it's safe for him to do so, and doing so on a mind-fuck of a concept album closer to the spirit of Ziggy or Diamond Dogs than almost anything he'd done since (The Thin White Duke was as much coke psychosis as an actual character). Before this the last time he was really clear about this was on Scream Like A Baby where he talked about queer bashing ("They came down on the faggots") and obliquely mentioned a gay love affair. Then let's look at the remix: it doesn't get much gayer than The Pet Shop Boys, really, does it? The Pet Shop Boys remixing a song from a polymorphously perverse album where he sings from the point of view of various genders: just listen to his alarming pitched-up Baby Grace voice or the strange androgynous Vocoderised ice queen voice of Ramona A Stone. 

Most offensively of all, though, however much you laughed at him it didn’t really work because he was very aware that it was funny. The segues between tracks were full of gallows humour and the Algeria Touchshriek voice sounds like nothing so much as Peter Cook’s E.L. Wisty character; it’s very serious stuff but as you hear Bowie intone “The screw is a tightening atrocity, I shake as the reeking flesh is as romantic as hell” in The Voyeur Of Utter Destruction (As Beauty) there’s a faint smirk under it. He is always aware of his own absurdity.

1.Outside didn't spawn any of the sequels he talked about doing but it's no surprise: artists tend to talk about at least five times as many ideas as they actually follow through and work on. There were drum'n'bass and jungle rhythms creeping in on I'm Deranged and We Prick You, some classic Bowie ballads like Strangers when We Meet (itself, like Teenage Wildlife, in the "Heroes" continuum and one of my favourite Bowie songs) and some homages to what Scott Walker was up to at the moment like The Motel or A Small Plot of Land. He wasn't setting the trends now: he was following them and the best you can hope for is that rather than trying to assimilate into it as he did in the 80s he was putting them into the Bowie blender.

This, however, misses the point that he was never that original in the first place! The way he presented his ideas was, and he had a unique singing voice but the fact is that he just had his ear to the underground and did these things to a mass audience so they just looked new. In that respect Outside is no more or less original than Low or one of the records everyone goes on about it just happens that when it came out it wasn't the first time the masses were hearing these sounds as it was when he made the second side of Low which sounds like Cluster or Harmonia. Bowie’s value wasn’t as an inventor of new sounds it was as a way of making them digestible and emotionally accessible to everyone in a way which may then allow the actual innovators (and he did always cite his sources) to break through to more success: this is quite laudable.

So then of course he went on tour with NIN, continuing to refuse to "act like a man his age". Now this raises an interesting question about Bowie's public perception. How is it that he was an old man 20 years ago when he was in his late 40's - early 50's but then when he died he was too young to go? Could it be that as rock'n'roll, still a young artform, develops that our perceptions of performers capability changes? The fact is that for a pervy old man, as he was labelled at the time, he still looked very youthful and very vital. Far sexier, far more dangerous than any of the Britpop boys who'd grown up on his music but who shuffled about in tracksuit tops and shapeless jeans. As this live TV clip shows, with Gail Ann Dorsey looking just as androgynous and unworldly as he ever did but with seemingly the minimum of effort; and Mike Garson looking deranged.

The right people were listening: Fincher saw the potential to run The Heart’s Filthy Lesson over the credits of Se7en and Lynch used I’m Deranged in Lost Highway. Both were similarly grim end of the 20th Century blues, meditations on madness. Both soundtracks, coincidentally enough, featured the work of NIN and Coil: it’s a little frustrating how close in terms of interests Bowie and Coil are, how few degrees of separation there are between these immensely influential queer occultist artists and that they never actually worked together. 

He continued in this vein with Earthling, still upsetting everyone by continuing to do what he felt like doing rather than digging up old characters. A subtle “fuck you” to the beige whitewashed sounds of Brit-pop in the cover where he wears a stained and tattered Union Jack coat as he looks out over an idealised version of England’s green (screened) and pleasant land. This on an album as infused with contemporary black music as Young Americans was. Even his huge 50th birthday show was as much of a celebration of Bowie present and looking forward as a fond look at what had been. Then, of course, "Hours" came.

Now "Hours" is perhaps an unfairly maligned album: if anyone else had put out an album with songs as great as Thursday's Child and Survive on they'd be praised to the skies and rightly so. They are moving, perfectly constructed pop songs but there's no real fire or spark of innovation in them. What little emotional impact there is has been drowned in high-tech production that covers everything in an unpleasant sheen. This is possibly as much Mark Plati and Reeves Gabrels fault as Bowie's as this is his most straightforwardly collaborative album (with every song co-credited to Gabrels) but I'm not sure. I feel like Reeves Gabrels gets unfairly criticised as he's been involved in some of the most ridiculous things Bowie has done (i.e. Tin Machine) and he appeared onstage in daft outfits playing wanky guitar solos.

He's also been involved in some of my favourite Bowie songs, however, and if you see him playing with The Cure he's not as huge a presence. He’s not jumping all over everything with fretboard tapping and lunging around waggling his tongue like Gene Simmons with a PhD: this implies that he cut such a larger than life figure because his boss wanted him to as much as anything else. So despite his persona bordering on that of a middle-aged man enthusiastically demonstrating FX pedals to you in a guitar shop, blaming him too much is misguided.

According to the excellent Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog, it was around this time Bowie started thinking about making a Ziggy Stardust film and as such he was annoyed by Velvet Goldmine's fictionalised steps into the same territory. Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine is an enjoyable film but I can see why he'd be so annoyed with it: it is clearly the work of a gay fan feeling betrayed by him “going back in” circa Let’s Dance. Possibly the great man was realising this wasn’t one of his best moves however well it worked at the time. After "Hours" was out and around the time of Heathen in 2002, Bowie changed his tune regarding Ziggy: “I’m running like fuck from that…Can you imagine anything uglier than a nearly 60-year-old Ziggy Stardust? I don’t think so!".

Similar ambivalence towards the idea is hinted at by the shelving of the video for the Pretty Things Are Going To Hell (itself a dual reference to The Stooges and Hunky Dory) where Bowie is menaced by huge puppets of past characters: the Pierrot from Ashes To Ashes, The Man Who Sold The World, The Thin White Duke and of course Ziggy. Maybe he judged it to be a bit on the nose.

It is an interesting change in perception we've undergone. In 1996 he was too old to be performing like he used to do but in 2013, at the age of 66, there were whispers about how great it'd be if he toured again. Not in any other industry do you expect a 66 year old man to get up onstage and dance about trying to be sexy for two or three hours a night. He could've done it like Dylan or Cohen (who only started touring again when he was much older than Bowie, true) but it wouldn't really have been his style: here was a man for who dance and mime and stagecraft had been an integral part of what made him a star. It’s still very present in his last videos and one of his final works was an honest to God musical after all.

So in the Blackstar video when we see that Major Tom is dead and at peace at last what are we to make of it? Clearing house for a whole new phase of experimentation and new ideas or a man on his last legs knowing that even if he didn't die straight after making this album he didn't have forever and was in the winter of his years? This is where we start to maybe give him too much credit. He was a man, and a great man but not a superhero. Superheroes don’t do things like release terrible covers of Iggy Pop songs with Tina Turner bolted onto them. “Ah but he only did that to keep his good friend financially solvent.”. Okay, good point.

He was a very intelligent man but not some towering inhuman intellect who could've predicted the moment Blackstar's "Something happened on the day he died, his spirit rose a metre and stepped aside" soundtracking the moment we knew we knew we knew. Maybe he predicted that it'd be a long while before somebody else took his place because things aren't set up that way. The industry has no interest in promoting bravery, the shock of the new. But he can't possibly have predicted that he was soundtracking millions of people thinking "He's gone, isn't he?" when he wrote that in remission. To think that he did is ridiculous, isn't it?

Isn't it?

[afutureinnoise]

DAVID BOWIE, PART 2

BY DAN WRECK

Photo by Mick Rock

BOWIE #2 - STARDUST MEMORIES 

Oh stop groaning, you can name a piece of writing with a Woody Allen pun when the person you're writing it about is a cultural Zelig.

Soon there's going to be a whole generation where the Bowie they remember is the dead Bowie. The sanitised version who is forming in the popular imagination. Then after that there's going to be a generation who don't have a Bowie. Figuratively and literally, kids born into a post Bowie era. Pity them more. I guess how you first encountered him is a question of when you grew up and your surroundings: a guy I worked with at my last job, 20 years older than me, announced "That guy from Labyrinth is dead!". Presumably, somewhere, there's a die hard Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence fan who was mourning the death of Jack Celliers. We may never know.

For many people the Bowie they remember is Ziggy Bowie, whether they were alive to see him bringing bisexuality onto the BBC or not. Maybe this is one of the reasons behind the recent cringeworthy trend of calling him "the Starman" the same way that faux-matey twats call Paul Weller the Modfather. Maybe it's just that these people are idiots. Bowie himself didn't really seem to think of Ziggy as an enduring character or perhaps he just felt like he’d said all he could through that conduit. He laid him to rest after Aladdin Sane after all: around 42 years before he finished creating. Ziggy was really strictly speaking a footnote. The relatively anonymous figure of Major Tom, however, was one he kept returning to: after Space Oddity he came back in Ashes To Ashes, then again in Hallo Spaceboy (the Pet Shop Boys remix particularly) and then finally we see him dead in the Blackstar video.

Ashes To Ashes for instance: Major Tom is strung out in heaven's high and hitting an all time low. This, though, at a time when Bowie's cultural stock was quite high. He was incredibly cool. He was still selling a lot of records. He was the one person who could hang out in the living room of a confused and senile Bing Crosby or at a tiny punk gig and fit equally well with either. There was no point reviving Ziggy because a whole load of New Romantics and Goths were doing it. The fact that this new flock of painted birds were very inspired by him was something that'd become crushingly obvious when Bauhaus did their borderline karaoke version of Ziggy Stardust in 82. Bowie embraced his bastard children with open arms, casting them as his grim entourage in his video, with one notable exception.

Gary Numan. A huge fan who wound up getting thrown off the set of a TV show they were both on and being dismissed as the "same old thing in brand new drag" in Teenage Wildlife because our man was feeling a bit insecure about this new pretender. Which is a bit rich, really, considering that young Bowie himself was a fusion of Iggy, Newley, Scott Walker and whoever else he could latch onto. Numan was certainly no more derivative than Bowie and it wasn’t just Bowie he was drawing from: he drew as much from JG Ballard and Philip K Dick novels and John Foxx as he did from the Spider from Bromley. It’s allso amusing considering that he sings Teenage Wildlife in a voice uncannily similar to that of Billy MacKenzie, who his people had recognised the grand high art high camp potential of when they heard the Associates cover of Boys Keep Swinging and offered them a publishing deal; then later on "The midwives to history put on their bloody robes" is delivered in the voice of another Bowie acolyte, Richard Butler.

Make no mistake, Ashes to Ashes is simultaneously a high water mark, a brilliant pop record and the point where Bowie stopped being ahead of trends and started chasing them. It just so happened that a lot of these trends were started by people catching up to him. Confusing, no? In fact, this is the one point where you could maybe give some credence to the lazy critics idea of Bowie as "chameleon". Now at his best Bowie was never a chameleon. Especially when he was first Ziggy, actually because there's no way Bowie / Ziggy was blending into the background: he was an incredibly beautiful, sexually ambiguous peacock character. But during the 80s he did blend in quite a lot. He was just another one of the rank and file whether prancing about onstage with anonymous session hacks on the Glass Spider tour or just being "one of the guys" with Tin Machine. It didn't really suit him. It was unnerving. It still seemed like a costume but a very lazy one. The equivalent of Bowie turning up to the macabre Halloween coke party of 80s pop in casual clothes and saying "I came as David Jones".

So the next time we saw Major Tom in a lot of people's eyes he really was hitting an all-time low. Not everyone's, not the die-hards and not people who buy and listen to music based on what they hear, not what they're told by a music press who had been swallowed up by the sexless and jingoistic Britpop craze. See, with Outside what he'd done is released an elaborate concept album rife with pervy sexualised violence, violent sex, drugs, strange invented characters and references to obscure artists and art movements like Chris Burden (already visited in the Berlin days on Joe The Lion), Herman Nitsch and the Vienna Actionists. The visual component was a huge part of it all again, with unnerving videos like Samuel Bayer’s The Hearts Filthy Lesson. In interviews he was talking up Tricky and The Young Gods and saying how much he wanted to work with Glenn Branca. Being ahead of the curve by talking about the power of the internet as everyone thought he was nuts. He was even working extensively with Eno again.

You know - the sort of thing you want from Bowie!

This isn't what the British music press wanted. They wanted safe flag-waving and to be told what they knew to make them feel like they hadn't dumbed down to a degree which is still marring pop music with waves of Oasis clones because for a while it was acceptable to make bland drivel devoid of imagination or sensuality. They smeared Bowie's dabbling with jungle and drum'n'bass as a sad old man trying to stay in touch when in reality it was really just in continuity with him learning to play sax as a teenager because that's what all the cool jazz musicians he looked up to did, making "plastic soul" on Young Americans and welding the cold European sensibility of Low, "Heroes" and Lodger to the beating heart of the black American rhythm section of Davis, Murray and Alomar. Cultural segregation, two world wars and one world cup was what they wanted and they didn't want ageing mavericks showing up and demonstrating how hopelessly conservative they were.

A lot of the incredibly dull music being hyped up to the skies was, just like it was with the New Romantics, made by Bowie fans. So the time was right for him to come back but could he have not just have given them Ziggy again? Something with nice short songs, loud guitars, some dramatic strings. This time a bit more hetero, though, so the lads mag readers weren’t left shifting about uncomfortably again the way they were whenever they saw Richey James Edwards.

"Do you like girls or boys? It's confusing these days"

If you're not paying attention you can almost miss it but Hallo Spaceboy is, in fact, mentioning Ziggy / Bowie as much as it mentions Major Tom if not more. In those two lines we see Bowie cagily re-opening the closet door now it's safe for him to do so, and doing so on a mind-fuck of a concept album closer to the spirit of Ziggy or Diamond Dogs than almost anything he'd done since (The Thin White Duke was as much coke psychosis as an actual character). Before this the last time he was really clear about this was on Scream Like A Baby where he talked about queer bashing ("They came down on the faggots") and obliquely mentioned a gay love affair. Then let's look at the remix: it doesn't get much gayer than The Pet Shop Boys, really, does it? The Pet Shop Boys remixing a song from a polymorphously perverse album where he sings from the point of view of various genders: just listen to his alarming pitched-up Baby Grace voice or the strange androgynous Vocoderised ice queen voice of Ramona A Stone. 

Most offensively of all, though, however much you laughed at him it didn’t really work because he was very aware that it was funny. The segues between tracks were full of gallows humour and the Algeria Touchshriek voice sounds like nothing so much as Peter Cook’s E.L. Wisty character; it’s very serious stuff but as you hear Bowie intone “The screw is a tightening atrocity, I shake as the reeking flesh is as romantic as hell” in The Voyeur Of Utter Destruction (As Beauty) there’s a faint smirk under it. He is always aware of his own absurdity.

Outside didn't spawn any of the sequels he talked about doing but it's no surprise: artists tend to talk about at least five times as many ideas as they actually follow through and work on. There were drum'n'bass and jungle rhythms creeping in on I'm Deranged and We Prick You, some classic Bowie ballads like Strangers when We Meet (itself, like Teenage Wildlife, in the "Heroes" continuum and one of my favourite Bowie songs) and some homages to what Scott Walker was up to at the moment like The Motel or A Small Plot of Land. He wasn't setting the trends now: he was following them and the best you can hope for is that rather than trying to assimilate into it as he did in the 80s he was putting them into the Bowie blender.

This, however, misses the point that he was never that original in the first place! The way he presented his ideas was, and he had a unique singing voice but the fact is that he just had his ear to the underground and did these things to a mass audience so they just looked new. In that respect Outside is no more or less original than Low or one of the records everyone goes on about it just happens that when it came out it wasn't the first time the masses were hearing these sounds as it was when he made the second side of Low which sounds like Cluster or Harmonia. Bowie’s value wasn’t as an inventor of new sounds it was as a way of making them digestible and emotionally accessible to everyone in a way which may then allow the actual innovators (and he did always cite his sources) to break through to more success: this is quite laudable.

So then of course he went on tour with NIN, continuing to refuse to "act like a man his age". Now this raises an interesting question about Bowie's public perception. How is it that he was an old man 20 years ago when he was in his late 40's - early 50's but then when he died he was too young to go? Could it be that as rock'n'roll, still a young artform, develops that our perceptions of performers capability changes? The fact is that for a pervy old man, as he was labelled at the time, he still looked very youthful and very vital. Far sexier, far more dangerous than any of the Britpop boys who'd grown up on his music but who shuffled about in tracksuit tops and shapeless jeans. As this live TV clip shows, with Gail Ann Dorsey looking just as androgynous and unworldly as he ever did but with seemingly the minimum of effort; and Mike Garson looking deranged.

The right people were listening: Fincher saw the potential to run The Heart’s Filthy Lesson over the credits of Se7en and Lynch used I’m Deranged in Lost Highway. Both were similarly grim end of the 20th Century blues, meditations on madness. Both soundtracks, coincidentally enough, featured the work of NIN and Coil: it’s a little frustrating how close in terms of interests Bowie and Coil are, how few degrees of separation there are between these immensely influential queer occultist artists and that they never actually worked together. 

He continued in this vein with Earthling, still upsetting everyone by continuing to do what he felt like doing rather than digging up old characters. A subtle “fuck you” to the beige whitewashed sounds of Brit-pop in the cover where he wears a stained and tattered Union Jack coat as he looks out over an idealised version of England’s green (screened) and pleasant land. This on an album as infused with contemporary black music as Young Americans was. Even his huge 50th birthday show was as much of a celebration of Bowie present and looking forward as a fond look at what had been. Then, of course, "Hours" came.

Now "Hours" is perhaps an unfairly maligned album: if anyone else had put out an album with songs as great as Thursday's Child and Survive on they'd be praised to the skies and rightly so. They are moving, perfectly constructed pop songs but there's no real fire or spark of innovation in them. What little emotional impact there is has been drowned in high-tech production that covers everything in an unpleasant sheen. This is possibly as much Mark Plati and Reeves Gabrels fault as Bowie's as this is his most straightforwardly collaborative album (with every song co-credited to Gabrels) but I'm not sure. I feel like Reeves Gabrels gets unfairly criticised as he's been involved in some of the most ridiculous things Bowie has done (i.e. Tin Machine) and he appeared onstage in daft outfits playing wanky guitar solos.

He's also been involved in some of my favourite Bowie songs, however, and if you see him playing with The Cure he's not as huge a presence. He’s not jumping all over everything with fretboard tapping and lunging around waggling his tongue like Gene Simmons with a PhD: this implies that he cut such a larger than life figure because his boss wanted him to as much as anything else. So despite his persona bordering on that of a middle-aged man enthusiastically demonstrating FX pedals to you in a guitar shop, blaming him too much is misguided.

According to the excellent Pushing Ahead of the Dame blog, it was around this time Bowie started thinking about making a Ziggy Stardust film and as such he was annoyed by Velvet Goldmine's fictionalised steps into the same territory. Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine is an enjoyable film but I can see why he'd be so annoyed with it: it is clearly the work of a gay fan feeling betrayed by him “going back in” circa Let’s Dance. Possibly the great man was realising this wasn’t one of his best moves however well it worked at the time. After "Hours" was out and around the time of Heathen in 2002, Bowie changed his tune regarding Ziggy: “I’m running like fuck from that…Can you imagine anything uglier than a nearly 60-year-old Ziggy Stardust? I don’t think so!".

Similar ambivalence towards the idea is hinted at by the shelving of the video for the Pretty Things Are Going To Hell (itself a dual reference to The Stooges and Hunky Dory) where Bowie is menaced by huge puppets of past characters: the Pierrot from Ashes To Ashes, The Man Who Sold The World, The Thin White Duke and of course Ziggy. Maybe he judged it to be a bit on the nose.

It is an interesting change in perception we've undergone. In 1996 he was too old to be performing like he used to do but in 2013, at the age of 66, there were whispers about how great it'd be if he toured again. Not in any other industry do you expect a 66 year old man to get up onstage and dance about trying to be sexy for two or three hours a night. He could've done it like Dylan or Cohen (who only started touring again when he was much older than Bowie, true) but it wouldn't really have been his style: here was a man for who dance and mime and stagecraft had been an integral part of what made him a star. It’s still very present in his last videos and one of his final works was an honest to God musical after all.

So in the Blackstar video when we see that Major Tom is dead and at peace at last what are we to make of it? Clearing house for a whole new phase of experimentation and new ideas or a man on his last legs knowing that even if he didn't die straight after making this album he didn't have forever and was in the winter of his years? This is where we start to maybe give him too much credit. He was a man, and a great man but not a superhero. Superheroes don’t do things like release terrible covers of Iggy Pop songs with Tina Turner bolted onto them.

“Ah but he only did that to keep his good friend financially solvent.”.

Okay, good point.

He was a very intelligent man but not some towering inhuman intellect who could've predicted the moment Blackstar's "Something happened on the day he died, his spirit rose a metre and stepped aside" soundtracking the moment we knew we knew we knew. Maybe he predicted that it'd be a long while before somebody else took his place because things aren't set up that way. The industry has no interest in promoting bravery, the shock of the new. But he can't possibly have predicted that he was soundtracking millions of people thinking "He's gone, isn't he?" when he wrote that in remission. To think that he did is ridiculous, isn't it?

Isn't it?

[k-v-emrys-blog]

Barrio Biz

#1: Face Meet Fist (A.K.A. Reality)

Teresa was the Montana Family's pride and joy.

Daughter of immigrants from an inner city high school that went on to an ivy league on a full ride scholarship - it made the news! Okay, it was just the local 50-cent paper, but it still counted! Her mom still had the clippings, and she was sure her old teachers still used her as an example as what hard work and perseverance can get you no matter where you start.

... The only real problem was what came after.

Nobody ever discussed what happened after the Cinderella Story came true. The screen always faded to black after the underdog won the championship. It's always assumed that blessings just rain down upon them for the rest of eternity.

Reality, however, is never so kind.

~*~

The first time she got rejected by a job opportunity was fine. She had no connections and it wasn't like she was the best or anything. Magna Cum Laude, sure, but she knew there were kid geniuses and legacies vying for the same position at the prestigious Plantagenet Corporation, so she didn't mind it so much. It was a long shot, she knew, and she'd be okay at a smaller company or a non-profit for a few years to get some experience.

Except it kept happening.

Over and over, e-mail after e-mail. Rejection after rejection.

By the time the third month rolled around and the local library refused to give her so much as an intern docent position, she was furious!

"It's a conspiracy!" She hissed to her older brother, glaring at the latest rejection projected on the laptop in front of her.

"Yup, a terminator came from the future just to keep you from getting a job." Felipe drawled, eyes never leaving the soccer game on the TV, "You're probably gonna build an ark or something to save humanity."

Teresa was not amused. "I want to go into public interest design, not ship-building!" It had been years spent trying to explain her goals to her family, who didn't care for anything that didn't assure food on their table.

"Whatever." And it was years getting the same response.

She threw a throw pillow at his head, which he promptly ignored, and opened her browser to look for jobs. They were thinning out considerably as summer approached, most of the positions filled in months ago. Maybe she was just stubborn. Maybe it was too much to ask to actually use the degree she had spent four years, and a small breakdown, earning. There was honor in fast food service amongst the Little Havana community. It kept food on the table when your family needed it most.

She just DIDN'T WANT TO!

After years of being told to do better, how could the adults in her life just expect her to accept the status quo? She had been infused with pride and a loathing for minimum wage jobs since she was a little girl. Since her father raised her up on "I didn't cross a river and a desert for you to grow up and work wiping somebody's ass." Since her teachers told her "Stay in school, a good education is the first step to a brighter future." Since her mother told her "Work hard so you never have to depend on anybody else."

She didn't want to believe those were all just lies.

She scrolled and scrolled until she saw an opening in an office for a personal assistant. Well, at least it wasn't minimum wage, and she more than met the qualifications. Well, why not?

Application number 49, she thought morosely, here we go.

~*~

Florida weather had never been kind and it didn't lend itself to looking good for an interview. Teresa was only glad she hadn't inherited her mother's curls like Felipe and Elisa; she would look like Hermione Granger (the frizzy-haired, first year kind) by the time she stepped off the bus if that was the case. Unless the interviewer was a Potterhead, she doubted they would appreciate it. As it was, her nicest outfit was a beige pencil skirt and a white long-sleeved top. She hoped she remembered to keep her arms down so they wouldn't notice the sweat stains.  

She almost cried when she realized the interview would be at a picnic table outside, the interviewer explaining that the office was being remodeled. They were expanding, hence the need for a personal assistant.

She thought everything was going well until he said the words, "You have a very impressive résumé." She'd had twenty-nine interviews. She knew that recruiters never directly complimented prospective employees so that they wouldn't ask for a higher wage. This was how they let you down gently.

~*~

Elisa laughed and laughed and laughed.

Teresa was a great big joke to her older sister. Elisa had slacked off in high school, she had barely graduated and completely ignored college. Instead, she went straight to work. First as a secretary at a dentist's office, and then as a cashier at the grocery store, and then as a movie theater usher. She flit from job to job, not caring about the future, and living paycheck to paycheck. She was everything everyone had warned Teresa not to be.

And yet she was the one with the job!

Life was totally unfair. Teresa was starting to regret her decision to abscond from the party life. She may be a dead beat, but at least she would have enjoyed her life. Instead, she was a twenty-two year old loser with no job, no prospects, and barely any friends.

"If you're that desperate for a job, I could recommend you for one." Elisa finally said.

"I have absolutely no interest in working a kiosk at the beach." Teresa deadpanned. She also had no interest in working with Elisa, but she couldn't say that out loud. Their mother would have a fit.

"Not that job," She rolled her eyes, "That's a nine-to-five, and I don't want to spend that much time with you. I'm talking about my weekend job."

Teresa ignored the jab and instead asked, "How many jobs do you have?"

~*~

It was frighteningly easy to get an interview. All Elisa did was send her boss a text - baby sis needs a job. Can you help? - and two days later she found herself in front of an old tenement building. A polished laminated plastic sign reading PenguinTix hung in the front beside the old fading numbers and yellowing fritanga flyers. She was in the same outfit as her last interview, but she suddenly felt overdressed somehow. The feeling only increased as she stepped inside.

The office was small. Maybe two rooms and a bathroom, one large plastic table surrounded by creaky chairs in the main room. The paint on the walls was cracking and the only person in the room didn't seem much older than her. When he introduced himself as "Julio, the boss," the feeling almost overwhelmed her. Still, she tried not to show it as she sat on one of the creaky chairs and the interview began.

It was going really well, until he said, "How good are you at keeping secrets?"

She could only stare, "... I'm sorry?"

"You know, like if you saw something that you weren't supposed to see. Could we trust you?" He winked at her in a way that she supposed was meant to be secretive. It only looked ridiculous, and all she could think of was how to make a quick and safe escape. What had Elisa gotten her into? What was Elisa involved in?!

She heard herself stutter some ridiculous excuse, as Julio only stared. Until... he burst out laughing. She quickly shut her mouth, worried that he was deranged, but he wasn't laughing maliciously. It was as if it was all just a big joke.

Finally, he spoke, "Sorry, sorry. It's just a hazing ritual."

It took a few seconds for the words to fully register, and when they did, she couldn't help the outraged, "What?"

"You're already hired!" He was still chuckling, "We don't even do interviews. We just like to tease the newbies."  

She stared and stared and stared, but Julio didn't seem to care. He just kept smiling until he shook her hand and told her he would e-mail her soon for the first event. She was already halfway to the bus stop when the reality of the situation sunk into her mind.

Ticket Representative was to be her official title. PenguinTix was a small, independent company that helped publicize and sell tickets for local, small, independent events. She'd basically be a cashier if she was lucky. After four years in a university, AP classes and dual-enrollment in high school, sacrificing her social life so that she could finish in four years instead of the projected six, and generally feeling like hell more often than not, this was what she had come to. This was what all her hard work had amounted to.

All she could think was: This is really happening!

[georgeinmalawi]

Dedza/Mzuzu

22.1.17

As we squeezed into two of the three tiny seats in row 2 on the “Big Bus” to Dedza, the ample man in the third offered me the Saturday “Nation”, one of the Malawi dailys. Reading it was much like other issues: descriptions of government officials being dismissed or investigated for corruption, tales of young girls in villages having to perform sexual favors for their chiefs or aid workers in order to get their ration of food aid, etc. I thought I’d write about that but as we got off the bus, it turns out he gave me the paper before he’d read it, so I returned it to him and don’t have it as a reference. 

Dedza Pottery is a very large compound 5 km. outside the town of Dedza, which is between Blantyre in the south and Lilongwe in the middle of Malawi.  It has been around for decades and the potters make lovely and whimsical stoneware pottery. There is a lodge and restaurant, as well, and Linda and I spent two nights here before I headed north to Mzuzu to teach some child psychiatry to clinical officers and nursing students at St. John of God College and to learn about their remarkable (by reputation) programs for the mentally unwell, the addicted, and the mentally retarded (Learning Disabled) children.  Linda will return to Blantyre to teach this week.   

The Pottery is in a lovely setting, surrounded by lawns and flowers and trees and, beyond the property, hills.  We happily walked here after the 3 ½ hour bus ride and the countryside became increasingly beautiful, always shockingly green and punctuated with small (800-1200ft) mountains. The area has been clear cut but there has been an active reforestation project here for 10 years and the young pine forests soften the rocky slopes of the hills. On our second day we climbed to the top of Dedza Mountain with a guide; the view of all the undulating greenery below was refreshing after the plastic trash and deforestation in a lot of the South. 

During the past week before leaving Blantyre, I evaluated a man, 50yo, who was lying on the concrete floor of the clinic for a couple of hours, screaming. We were very busy and after briefly assessing that he wasn’t perishing, I left him to his several friends and family members and worked my way down the list of patients who had signed in earlier than he.  When his family finally carried him in to see me, as he apparently couldn’t walk, it was quickly clear that he didn’t have a functional psychiatric illness but was delirious. Why? It turns out he has been HIV positive for some years, although his family had not been told. I needed to get him back to the ED where he could have a lumbar puncture to look for signs of infection and be admitted to the hospital for definitive treatment of his HIV/AIDS and whatever secondary infection might be consuming his brain. He’d been in the ED the night before and they, seeing he was deranged, sent him to Room 6 (Psychiatry Clinic) to be seen the following day. We really need to do an in-service with the staff there about distinguishing delirium from schizophrenia or mania, as this happens not infrequently and it delays treatment considerably. 

Room 6 received two consultation requests.  One was for a woman, 42yo who’d had pre-eclampsia and who’d given birth to her 6th child and gone home, only to become disoriented, confused, mute and not taking food or fluids after 3 days. She tried to harm her child, as well. After two more days the family brought her back to the hospital where she was found to have extremely high blood pressure.  Treated with two antihypertensives, she, astoundingly, completely cleared and was discharged by the time I went to see her. [It was been wild in clinic this week, with an extra patient load, two of the three nurses out, no residents present, and only one psychiatrist, me. As a result, I was late to get to the consultations.]  From reading the consultation request I thought she had a post-partum psychosis but it turns out she had eclampsia psychosis without a seizure, also known as “Donkin psychosis”. I have never heard of it but looked it up online. 

After I found her bed empty (She was only in hospital for 2 days before she recovered.), I tried to locate her medical record. The ward clerk pulled out two large cardboard boxes full of loose papers and proceeded to go through them, finally pulling out 3 pieces stapled together with her name on them. That is how the records are delivered to Central Record Storage. Electronic medical records would be wonderful, except there are no computers and often no electricity. 

The other consultation request, whom I also didn’t see, was a boy with epilepsy who had a fit and fell into a cooking fire. He was about to have an above-the-elbow amputation of one forearm and hand because he had so badly burned the nerves and tendons that they were irreparable. He’ll be seen by the other psychiatrist who is now back in town from holiday. 

I’m having a new sign painted for our clinic, on my dime. Our current one says, “Room 6 Psych”. It is written, as the other signs in the hospital are written, with red letters on a white field, but it must have been painted in place because the red paint is dripping. It looks like an invitation to a horror movie.  Mine will have the same regulation color scheme but will be allowed to lie horizontally until it is dry and will say, “Room 6 Mental Health”.   The director of the hospital, when I said I would pay for it, was happy to approve it. Tiny steps. 

My trip to Mzuzu was an eye opener. The further north you travel in Malawi, the less congested it becomes. There are many fewer people per square kilometer in the north and, consequently, there are still beautiful standing forests. Of course, there are the denuded hills but a vigorous reforestation project has been underway. When the government shut it down a few years ago, however, some disgruntled employees set fire to great swaths of pine trees, killing them. I guess if desperate and hopeless and angry enough we all will foul our own nest. 

I was late getting off in the morning when I was to meet Amelia, a GHSP volunteer teaching community mental health nursing in Mzuzu. I walked a bit of the 30 minutes to the hospital, realized I wouldn’t make our meeting time of 7:20AM, and jumped on a bike taxi. Basically, a bike with a padded seat over the rear wheel and foot pegs. I had no bike helmet so if Peace Corps had seen me, I’d have been in hot water. It was pretty scary actually but certainly got me to the House of Hospitality quickly.   

St. John of God is a standout series of programs: a lovely 26 bed mental hospital on a hill, a separate 30 day inpatient drug and alcohol detox center, and, across town by the College, a truly amazingly comprehensive program for Learning Disabled children and teens. They are starting mental health services for children and adolescents, in addition to the LD program. It was fun teaching the Clinical Officers, although at the end after thanking me, their instructor requested that the next time I would please give a lecture. I quickly said that I have never felt lectures were particularly useful for teaching, favoring a more interactive approach. I then realized that may have been offensive and said that I can certainly focus my remarks more the next time. The Mental Health Nursing students presented 4 different cases that we were able to discuss; they were a lively bunch. 

The best part of the experience for me was driving to a small district clinic on the road down to Lake Malawi. It was a brick building sitting in the woods constructed by the community with a slab concrete floor, two rooms, no water or electricity, and window frames without windows. It was packed with people sitting quietly and patiently on benches. The nurse and the village representative made a list of who was there, charts were pulled from the wooden box we brought, and the nurse, the clinical officer, and Amelia all saw patients for 3 ½ hours. Most were established patients, most had chronic mental illness or epilepsy (which is treated by mental health professionals, not neurologists, in the developing world) and required medication adjustment or refills. It was an efficient, humane operation. St. John of God goes to all the district clinics once per month to provide these services.  True community mental health. Basic but effective. 

The three GHSP nurses working in Mzuzu took great care of me. We ate at Midlands, a really good and inexpensive Indian restaurant, at the chapatti lady’s spot in the midst of the market where two of us had lunch for about a dollar total, and at a couple of wonderful restaurants run by ex-pats in beautiful old houses set in gardens outside the city.  There is a great chitenje market and I bought Linda 4 meters of black with electric blue dragonflies, thinking Ken the Tailor could make a stunning cocktail dress with it. We’ll see.

My bus ride back to Blantyre, all 10 hours of it, was entertaining as I chatted with a very interesting man who’d completed medical school at the College of Medicine, hadn’t practiced for reasons I didn’t explore and he didn’t offer, and was now finishing a Masters in Public Health at a university in Durban, SA. He gave me a really good perspective on Malawi’s slide downhill over the past 15 years. Even though the prevalence of HIV is considerably down, the population explosion and the fact that the country cannot feed itself has wreaked havoc on the economy and the environment.

We are going to have to leave our house, I fear. One of the others in our compound was invaded by 6 armed men who stole batteries and other things from the 3 cars parked there. Peace Corps is concerned about our safety, having had some very serious incidents over the years with regular volunteers (mostly people just out of college). We’ve each protested strongly but are also looking at other houses which Peace Corps will have to rent. We feel totally safe here, with bars, gates, guards, alarms, padlocks, and so forth. I’m certainly much more concerned about getting hit on my bike, being in a minibus crash, or being able to exit the house if there is a fire. We love our porch, our view, our spacious dwelling, and the possibilities for a really good garden but are working for an organization and must toe the line.

The inauguration was pathetic. The women’s marches all over the world have been inspiring. It is so sad to see our magnificent democracy, for all its flaws, being led by someone so unsuited to do so. And is he in Putin’s pocket, as it seems? But the mobilization of so many gives some hope. We unfortunately are reaping what we’ve earned by leaving so many poor, unskilled for this economy, and uneducated in the dust. It takes a dose of narcissism to run for president. His tops the heap, however, and will hopefully lead to his collapse soon.

Given all this, I’m going to stay another year. I realized, thinking about it this morning, that if I leave at the end of my contract in June, I’ll feel like I’m going home with my tail between my legs, slinking off. I can’t say I won’t feel the same after two years but at least I can see a few things through that I have begun. The needs are greater than I can ever hope to substantially improve, in a real sense. But I can try to do a bit. I also feel that I have no pressing work drawing me home.  It is nice to feel needed here.              

[georgeinmalawi]

Dedza, Mzuzu

22.1.17

As we squeezed into two of the three tiny seats in row 2 on the “Big Bus” to Dedza, the ample man in the third offered me the Saturday “Nation”, one of the Malawi dailys. Reading it was much like other issues: descriptions of government officials being dismissed or investigated for corruption, tales of young girls in villages having to perform sexual favors for their chiefs or aid workers in order to get their ration of food, etc. I thought I’d write about that but as we got off the bus, it turns out he gave me the paper before he’d read it, so I returned it to him and don’t have it as a reference. 

Dedza Pottery is a very large compound 5 km outside the town of Dedza.  It has been around for decades and the potters make lovely and whimsical stoneware pottery. There is a lodge and restaurant, as well, and Linda and I spent two nights there before I headed north to Mzuzu to teach some child psychiatry to clinical officers and nursing students at St. John of God College and to learn about their remarkable (by reputation) programs for the mentally unwell, the addicted, and mentally retarded (Learning Disabled) children.  Linda will return to Blantyre to teach this week.   

The Pottery is in a lovely setting, surrounded by lawns and flowers and trees and, beyond the property, hills.  We happily walked here after the 3 ½ hour bus ride and the countryside became increasingly beautiful, always shockingly green and punctuated with small (800-1200ft) mountains. The area has been clear cut but there has been an active reforestation project here for 10 years and the young pine forests soften the rocky slopes of the hills. We climbed to the top of Dedza Mountain with a guide; the view of all the undulating greenery below was refreshing after the plastic trash and deforestation in a lot of the South. 

During the past week before leaving Blantyre, I evaluated a man, 50yo, who was lying on the concrete floor of the clinic for a couple of hours, screaming. We were very busy and after briefly assessing that he wasn’t perishing, I left him to his several friends and family members and worked my way down the list of patients who had signed in earlier than he.  When his family finally carried him in to see me, as he apparently couldn’t walk, it was quickly clear that he didn’t have a functional psychiatric illness but was delirious. Why? It turns out he has been HIV positive for some years, although his family had not been told. I needed to get him back to the ED where he could have a lumbar puncture to look for signs of infection and be admitted to the hospital for definitive treatment of his HIV/AIDS and whatever secondary infection might be consuming his brain. He’d been in the ED the night before and they, seeing he was deranged, sent him to Room 6 (Psychiatry Clinic) to be seen the following day. We really need to do an in-service with the staff there about distinguishing delirium from schizophrenia or mania, as this happens not infrequently and it delays critical treatment considerably. 

Room 6 received two consultation requests.  One was for a woman, 42yo who’d had pre-eclampsia and who’d given birth to her 6th child and gone home, only to become disoriented, confused, mute and not taking food or fluids after 3 days. She tried to harm her child, as well. After two more days the family brought her back to the hospital where she was found to have extremely high blood pressure.  Treated with two antihypertensives, she, astoundingly, completely cleared and was discharged by the time I went to see her. [It has been wild in clinic this week, with an extra patient load, two of the three nurses out, no residents present, and only one psychiatrist, me. As a result, I was late to get to the consultations.]  From reading the consultation request I thought she had a post-partum psychosis but it turns out she had eclampsia psychosis without a seizure, also known as “Donkin psychosis”. I have never heard of it but looked it up online. 

After I found her bed empty (She was only in hospital for 2 days before she recovered.), I tried to locate her medical record. The ward clerk pulled out two large cardboard boxes full of loose papers and proceeded to go through them, finally pulling out 3 pieces stapled together with her name on them.  That is how the records are delivered to Central Record Storage. Electronic medical records would be wonderful, except there are no computers and often no electricity. 

The other consultation request, whom I also didn’t see, was a 16 yo boy with epilepsy who had a fit and fell into a cooking fire. He was about to have an above-the-elbow amputation of one forearm and hand because he had so badly burned the nerves and tendons that they were irreparable. He’ll be seen by the other psychiatrist who is now back in town from holiday. 

I’m having a new sign painted for our clinic, on my dime. Our current one says, “Room 6 Psych”. It is written, as the other signs in the hospital are written, with red letters on a white field, but it must have been painted in place because the red paint is dripping. It looks like an invitation to a horror movie.  Mine will have the same regulation color scheme but will be allowed to lie horizontally until it is dry and will say, “Room 6 Mental Health”.   The director of the hospital, when I said I would pay for it, was happy to approve it. Tiny steps. 

My trip to Mzuzu was an eye opener of what is possible. The further north you travel in Malawi, the less congested it becomes. There are many fewer people per square kilometer in the north and, consequently, there are still beautiful standing forests. Of course, there are the denuded hills but a vigorous reforestation project has been underway. When the government shut it down a few years ago, however, some disgruntled employees set fire to great swaths of pine trees, killing them. I guess if desperate and hopeless and angry enough we all will foul our own nest. 

I was late getting off in the morning when I was to meet Amelia, a GHSP volunteer teaching community mental health nursing in Mzuzu. I walked a bit of the 30 minutes to the hospital, realized I wouldn’t make our meeting time of 7:20AM, and jumped on a bike taxi. Basically, a bike with a padded seat over the rear wheel and foot pegs. I had no bike helmet so if Peace Corps had seen me, I’d have been in hot water. It was pretty scary actually but certainly got me to the House of Hospitality quickly.   

St. John of God has a standout series of programs: a lovely 26 bed mental hospital on a hill, a separate 30 day inpatient drug and alcohol detox center, and, across town by the College, a truly amazingly comprehensive program for Learning Disabled children and teens. They are starting mental health services for children and adolescents, in addition to the LD program. It was fun teaching the Clinical Officers, although at the end after thanking me, their instructor requested that the next time I would please give a lecture. I quickly said that I have never felt lectures were particularly useful for teaching, favoring a more interactive approach. I then realized that may have been offensive and said that I can certainly focus my remarks more the next time. The Mental Health Nursing students presented 4 different cases that we were able to discuss; they were a lively bunch. 

The best part of the experience for me was driving to a small district clinic on the road down to Lake Malawi. It was a brick building sitting in the woods constructed by the community with a slab concrete floor, two rooms, no water or electricity, and window frames without windows. It was packed with people sitting quietly and patiently on benches. The nurse and the village representative made a list of who was there, charts were pulled from the wooden box we brought, and the nurse, the clinical officer, and Amelia all saw patients for 3 ½ hours. Most were established patients, most had chronic mental illness or epilepsy (which is treated by mental health professionals, not neurologists, in the developing world) and required medication adjustment or refills. It was an efficient, humane operation. St. John of God goes to all the district clinics once per month to provide these services.  True community mental health. Basic but effective. 

The three GHSP nurses working in Mzuzu took great care of me. We ate at Midlands, a really good and inexpensive Indian restaurant, at the chapatti lady’s spot in the midst of the market where two of us had lunch for about a dollar total, and at a couple of wonderful restaurants run by ex-pats in beautiful old houses set in gardens outside the city.  There is a great chitenje market and I bought Linda 4 meters of black with electric blue dragonflies, thinking Ken the Tailor could make a stunning cocktail dress with it. We’ll see. 

My bus ride back to Blantyre, all 10 hours of it, was entertaining as I chatted with a very interesting man who’d completed medical school at the College of Medicine, hadn’t practiced for reasons I didn’t explore and he didn’t offer, and was now finishing a Masters in Public Health at a university in Durban, SA. He gave me a really good perspective on Malawi’s slide downhill over the past 15 years. Even though the prevalence of HIV is considerably down, the population explosion and the fact that the country cannot feed itself has wreaked havoc on the economy and the environment. 

We are going to have to leave our house, I fear. One of the others in our compound was invaded by 6 armed men who stole batteries and other things from the 3 cars parked there. Peace Corps is concerned about our safety, having had some very serious incidents over the years with regular volunteers (mostly people just out of college). We’ve each protested strongly but are also looking at other houses which Peace Corps will have to rent. We feel totally safe here, with bars, gates, guards, alarms, padlocks, and so forth. I’m certainly much more concerned about getting hit on my bike, being in a minibus crash, or being able to exit the house if there is a fire. We love our porch, our view, our spacious dwelling, and the possibilities for a really good garden but are working for an organization and must toe the line. 

The inauguration was pathetic. The women’s marches all over the world have been inspiring. It is so sad to see our magnificent democracy, for all its flaws, being led by someone so unsuited to do so. And is he in Putin’s pocket, as it seems? But the mobilization of so many gives some hope. We unfortunately are reaping what we’ve earned by leaving so many poor, unskilled for this economy, and uneducated in the dust. It takes a dose of narcissism to run for president. His tops the heap, however, and will hopefully lead to his collapse soon. 

Given all this, I’m going to stay another year. I realized, thinking about it this morning, that if I leave at the end of my contract in June, I’ll feel like I’m going home with my tail between my legs, slinking off. I can’t say I won’t feel the same after two years but at least I can see a few things through that I have begun. The needs are greater than I can ever hope to substantially improve, in a real sense. But I can try to do a bit. I also feel that I have no pressing work drawing me home.  It is nice to feel needed here.