#I may know where I am. But I am contending with a nervous system that suddenly believes I may be dying.

[giantkillerjack]

It took me like 10 years to be able to recognize when I am having a flashback because the movies told me the whole thing was supposed to be very cinematic, inside and out.

In reality, for most people, it just looks like they are hardcore zoning out.

And internally, it seems like flashbacks are only a full visual-audio movie-worthy experience for very few people.

Which is equally valid and definitely horrifying, but since I thought all flashbacks were supposed to be like that, it was very hard to figure out that "my brain suddenly leaping back in time to a prior emotional state of being from recalling a traumatic experience" = "flashback."

[enthusiasticharry]

the one where you and harry are keeping a secret from your brother, who happens to hate harry’s guts. 

author’s note : hello everyone! i'm back with another fic, one that i can't believe i wrote so quickly to say the least. this is part of @harrystylescherry​‘s playlist challenge. i chose drive on by miss charlotte clark because it is an amazing song, and i can only hope that i’ve don't it justice.  

word count : 13.9k of a lot of angst, smut and only a tiny bit of fluff. i really don't know what happened to me. 

please talk to me about drive on here. let me know what you think :) 

But if we parted I'd be half-hearted So I'll leave the light on

As you were getting ready that evening, you knew that you were going to have to try your hardest to not show that you were absolutely dreading what was about to happen. The light sounds of Fleetwood Mac filled your room as you finished making sure that you looked okay. It seemed as though the longer that you looked at yourself in the mirror, the more you started to doubt that you actually looked okay. 

You tilted your head to the side as you looked in the mirror, running your eyes up and down your own body as if to check that you’re at least presentable. Your outfit wasn’t too out of the ordinary, just a pair of black, flared trousers and a white knitted jumper because you knew that it is going to be quite chilly and you are going to be outside for a large portion of the evening and you make sure to pair it with some white trainers, ones that match so you start to feel a little more put together. Even though it certainly wasn’t the most out there outfit, it was okay and you had to keep reminding yourself of that. 

Walking down the stairs, you could hear the mumbling of your brother, Isaac, in the kitchen, along with someone else’s voice that you immediately recognise as Daisy, your best friend. You’re not exactly surprised at their discussion, because whenever they’re alone in a room together you know that it doesn’t usually end up with them discussing sunshine and rainbows. The more you think about it, the more you struggle to determine which one out of the two of them is more stubborn, because they both are just as stubborn as each other. 

“Baby sis!” You try not to roll your eyes at your brother’s greeting, “Where the fuck do you think you’re going?” 

“We’re coming with you.” You respond, walking forward so that you can greet your friend with a hug. You knew that it was going to be a long shot of him letting you come with him, but if Daisy was too you knew that he wouldn’t be able to say no, and that’s why you go with her every single time. It’s how you’re cheated the system of having an overprotective brother. 

“I thought you were going to Daisy’s for a sleepover?” He questions, and you nod your head. 

“I am.” You smile, “But after.” 

You walk over to grab yourself a bottle of water out of the fridge because you know that if you look at him in the eyes he’ll be staring at you in a way that you could do without. You know that he’s only saying the things that he is because he’s protective of you, but you also have to keep reminding him that it wasn’t the first time that you had gone out and been to a race with him, and it certainly wasn’t going to be the last. 

Chugging down a bit of the water, Daisy extends her arm out to you and you pass the bottle to her, watching as she takes a sip before passing it back to you so that you can put the cap on. Even though you have been to the races before, that certainly didn’t meant that every time you did go you found yourself being more and more nervous for what you’re going to witness. It’s dangerous, and sometimes you feel a though you’re the only one out of all of them to notice that. 

“Every fucking time.” Isaac shakes his head and you smile. 

“Thank you.” You had an obnoxious grin on your face as you say the words, and you know it. 

“Yeah, well. . .” He shakes his head, “Just come on and let’s get in the fucking car.” 

The first time you went to one of the races, you remember not being able to focus on anything other than the fact that anyone could get really injured, or even die, at any second if they’re not careful. Maybe you were just too overly cautious, and you couldn’t ever find yourself focusing on the thrill and excitement of it all because you were too worried that someone was going to get hurt. It was even worse when the person you were worried about was someone you cared about like you did your brother. 

“One of these days you will take me without putting up a fight.” You say, following him towards his car, “I don’t know when it will be but I can feel it.” 

He looks at you as he opens his door, “That’s never going to happen. For one, I hate that you even come to where the races are held, more so that you stand and watch them.” 

You shrug and climb in the car, “Mum and Dad don’t know that you race, and if they’re not able to be there and worry about your safety then I am going to be the one to do so. Can’t have you risking your life and at least not one of us being there.”

He shakes his head and tuts, “I’m not risking my life. It’s just competitive driving.” 

You furrow your eyebrows and you hear Daisy chuckle, “You’re delusional.” 

“Says you.” 

The two of you hear a tut coming from the back seat, “I know the two of you are siblings, and this is just what I have to deal with, but sometimes I really do wonder whether or not you’re children hidden in fully grown bodies.” 

“I’m not the child.” Isaac’s quick to say, “If anything, you’re the child!” 

“Really?” You shake your head, “You must know that you saying that basically proving everything! You’re the child, Isaac.”

“God, I wish I’d never said anything.” Daisy shakes her head and you cross your arms over your chest, pouting slightly but trying not to make it too obvious because you really were trying to be the adult in this situation. 

You and Isaac weren’t the closest of siblings, to say the least. The two of you never did much together and if you did it wasn’t voluntarily, but that didn’t mean that you didn’t care for each other because you certainly did. The two of you would protect each other without any hesitation, in any situation because that was the type of siblings that you were. That didn’t mean that you were friends, though, because you didn’t have to be. You loved each other, and you cared for each other, but you didn’t have to be friends with each other and you were both okay with that. It was was though you both had an unspoken agreement that you’d look out for each other in this way. 

Turning onto the ever so familiar field, you know that it isn’t going to be long before your heart rate is going to feel as though it is beating out of your chest and your palms are going to start to get sweaty. You believed that you brother was good at what he did, he wouldn’t have gotten as far as he had if he didn’t, but even if someone is as good and as talented as he was that didn’t meant that accidents don’t happen. 

There isn’t just that fact that your brother is good at the sport to contend with, but also the fact that some people who do it may not be as good as he is, and they could be reckless, and in drag racing, recklessness gets people in trouble. You knew that, he knew that and everyone who participated and watched knew that. You knew that there were some people there just to watch the race whilst getting drunk with their friends and you didn’t mind that because that was what it was there to do, but you couldn’t stand the people who were there in hopes that something did go wrong, just to see a little bit of action in their boring day to day lives. 

You supposed that a part of your worry for these games were because you weren’t just worried about your brother, you were worried about somebody else also. Isaac stopped the car so that you and Daisy could get out but you hesitated before doing so. You looked at him, and he nodded at you so you nodded your head and again and got out. You stood and watched as he drove away, making his wear to where all of the participants line up their cars before it starts. 

Your eyes follow him, all the way along the man-made little road on the field and to where the other cars were. That’s when you see him, stood in exactly the same place as he was a few weekends before this one and a few weekends before that, leant against his car and his arms crossed as he chewed some gum. 

The insides of your stomach flutter, and not in nervousness but instead in the complete opposite way. He catches your eyes straight away, raising his eyebrows at you as you smile at him. You nod your head, trying hard not to let too big of a blush cover your cheeks and he nods back. That’s as far as your interaction with Harry can go at the moment, because if anyone saw the two of you communicating you knew that all hell would break loose and you certainly didn’t want to be around to see that. 

The race was going to start any second, and you made your way over to where Daisy was stood, knowing that she would have saved you a spot next to her so that you didn’t have to try and manoeuvre your way through the crowd to get a good spot to watch. You were relieved that you had arrived here not early enough to have to wait hours like you had before, because it was in the time like that where the overpowering feeling of worry was able to slip into you like nothing else and you would try really hard to overpower it but the majority of the time you never felt as though you could. 

What YN worried about the most though, was the fact that whoever could be injured in the race, or something worse, were both people that YN loved. The two of them for different reasons, of course, but it was still love and all of the love you felt for them was important. You watched as they both sat in their cars, driving towards the starting line with such an ease that you wondered whether or not they’d be able to do it in their sleep. You wouldn’t be surprised if they could. You know that Harry has raced in hundreds of races, and you also know that your brother is quickly catching up to that, but that doesn’t make it any easier, for them or for you. 

“Ready racers?” A woman walked in between the cars and held up a flag. Both her brother and Harry respond by a roar of their engine, “3! 2! 1! Go!” 

You look down slightly once you hear their cars start, going along the man-made path and over all of the hills and round all of the bends. You only look down for a second before looking up and watching as they drive away from you. The people around you cheer, and Daisy even cheers from the side of you but all you can make up the courage to do is clap your hands slightly. Every time you stand and watch a race, you always say to yourself that you’ll never do it again because you don’t think that you’re heart will survive it, but then you always come back to watch the next race because you physically can’t keep away. Not when two people you love are doing something that you know could end badly. 

They drive around, the two of them doing anything they can to try and throw the other off track but you know that it probably won’t work, because it works with everyone else but hardly ever with each other. You know that whoever wins will do so because of their speed, because that’s how it always happens when the two are up against each other. You stand there watching them drive for what feels like hours, the cheers only getting louder as the two of them fight for the first place prize. 

As the finishing line draws to a close, they’re playing cat and mouse with each other, and you know whoever is next to cross in front will win. 

It’s Isaac. Isaac won. You’re happy for him, but at the same time you know that Harry isn’t going to be the happiest but you’ll just have to remind him that he won last time and that he has to let other people win at some point. Your brother was cheering when he got out of his car, and you could see his friends bouncing over to him with smiles on their faces and drinks in their hands. You and Daisy make your way over, but you aren’t as excited they seem to see him. 

“Are you two leaving now?” He asks and you and Daisy look at each other before nodding, “Satisfied?” 

“Very.” You nod, “Well done.” 

“Thanks.” He raises his hand up and points at you, “Am I picking you up tomorrow?” 

You shake your head, managing to keep your cool as you did, “Daisy said she’ll drive me back. I don’t know whether you’ll be at work by the time we’re ready.” 

“Sounds good. See you tomorrow.” 

You physically let out a sigh of relief when you walk away and he believed you. You hate lying to him, you really do, but you just don’t see any other option to do what you’re doing without lying, which is horrible buy you really don’t know another wine. 

Daisy slips her arm into yours as you walk away, “Where’s he meeting you?” 

“In the usual place.” You nod, “I couldn’t see him when we were over there so I think he’s already gone.” 

“Okay.” She nods, “I’m catching a ride with Dennis, will you be okay?” 

“I’ll be fine.” You smile. 

“Call me if you need anything?” 

“You know I will.” 

“Good.” She wraps her arms around you before pulling away, “See you soon?” 

“See you soon.” 

The walk to the edge of the field, just behind a row of trees that hide Harry’s car from the watchful eye of others isn’t a long one, and you can feel the butterflies bubbling in the pit of your stomach the closer you walked to it. Just as every time you did this, your stomach was in twists and turns tightly in your stomach until you have to place your hand upon it as though it would calm it but it doesn’t. It doesn’t calm down until you see the back of the man you loves head, a slight cloud of smoke around his head and his leather jacket on his body. A smile immediately broke out over your lips. 

You bound over to him, immediately wrapping your arms around his waist and placing your cheek against the leather of his jacket. You can feel him tense underneath your touch slightly but once you hear and feel him chuckle, his whole body relaxes.

He hums, “Who might that be?” 

He grabs your hands and lightly pulls them away from his body so that he can turn around and place his hands around her back. You grin and place your chin on his chest, laughing softly as he leans down and places multiple kisses around your face, “Harry!” 

“What?” He grinned pulling away from you, shrugging his shoulders, “Do you not like my kisses or something?” 

You chuckle, “I love your kisses, but don’t you think they can wait until we’ll out of public. Away from my brother.” 

He pouts, dropping his head to your shoulder, “I suppose.” 

Harry walks over to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for you. As you walked towards him, you placed a kiss to his cheek and slipped into the car. The nerves were back in your stomach as you watched Harry walk around the car and slip into the driver’s seat. The two of you don’t get to see each other as much as you’d possibly like to, so nights like these were special to you, and you hoped that he was just as excited and nervous as you were. 

The second Harry was sat in his seat, and had started the car, his hand was on your thigh, squeezing the flesh through your trousers at you sat there. You really had missed feeling having him touching you, even though it hadn’t been that long. If it was up to you, Harry would be with you everyday and you would be able to kiss and touch him everyday without any issues, but you knew that just wasn’t the case. 

You and Harry had been together for a little shy of three years now, hiding your relationship from literally everyone apart from a few trusted people on each side of you. It wasn’t that you wanted to hide, but you both knew that you just had to if you were going to be able to have the relationship that you had. When you were younger, Harry and Isaac were best friends. You could always remember sitting in the back of the car after behind picked up from school and being squashed into the door because the middle seat was always taken by Harry. You can’t quite remember why the two of them fell out, but you did remember that it happened when the three of you were around fifteen or sixteen. 

It was a shock to everyone, because the two of them had been friends for the longest of times and Isaac did seem to be in a rut once it had happened. You had tried to talk to him about it a few times but he never said anything, so you turned to the one other person in the situation who might have to been able to help you. Harry. At first, he seemed to be completely shocked when you walked over to him one day after school and jumped into his car. He actually looked quite taken aback, but when you started asking questions about the falling out he just went quiet.

To this day you still don’t know what had happened between the two of them, but you do know that was the day that you relationship with Harry turned from being the generally acquaintances because you’re friends with my brother to something more. Harry was somebody who you had grown up with, and yes you could admit that he was handsome, but you’d never thought of him in a romantic way up until that point. A part of you wished that you had picked up on it early because you may have been able to kiss him sooner than you had but you were happy, and the two of you were now three years going strong. 

The fact that your brother and Harry had fallen out, and when the two of you got together it was really rocky between them, you both decided that the best thing to do was just not to tell him, which led to not telling anyone. You had said that when things improved between the two of them you would tell him, but once the Drag Racing started, there was no way that it would ever improve between the two of them, and you just had to accept that. 

Arriving at Harry’s apartment, it was almost as though your body was working on auto-pilot when Harry opened the door and you walked through. You kicked your shoes off by the door, walked into the kitchen to pour yourself a glass of water and made your way into his bedroom. Harry was already stood in the small room, placing his jacket in his wardrobe. You quickly started to undress, swapping your clothes for one of Harry’s shirts and a pair of your pyjama shorts. You walk into the bathroom to take your makeup off and brush your teeth. 

“Have you had any more thought into our anniversary trip?” Harry called from the bedroom. 

“I’ve thought about it.” You say, running your make up wipe over your eyes, “That’s about it.” 

You can hear his sigh even from the other room, and your inside’s twists in not the good way. The anniversary trip had been something that the two of you had spoken about for a long time, and it would be coming in a few months and Harry had been on your back for a long time so that they could get it booked, but you were thinking about a lot of other things rather than booking a holiday. You did hate that you didn’t have anything more to say to him, because you knew that he was disappointed, but there was only so much that you could say. 

“I’ll need to book time off of work soon, YN.” He appears only in his boxers in the doorway, leant against it with his arms crossed, “I need to know the dates.” 

“I know.” You sigh, turning so that your hip was leant against the counter, “I still just need to figure out what I’m going to tell Isaac.” 

Harry sighs and runs his hand over his face, “I know. We can think of what to say to him later, but as soon as possible can you tell me the dates.” 

He walks over and places his hands on your waist and you nod, “I will. I’ll check when I get home.” 

“Good.” He presses a kiss to your cheek. 

You hated hiding things from Harry, you really did, because that man really was your soulmate and the person in this world that you told everything to, so it felt horrible to be hiding something from him. Hiding things from Harry felt like ripping your heart from your chest — you just couldn’t do it— but here you were, doing it without anything happening. 

It had been a long night for the two of them, and you knew that even though Harry had a brave face on, you knew that inside he probably wasn’t too happy that he’d lost. The thing about Harry, and your brother for that matter, was that they are so competitive, especially with each other, that when either one of them loses they try to seem like they don’t care but they do. When you walked back into the room, Harry was already in bed with his arms crossed and his face in a sulk. 

You sighed and walked over to your side of the bed, pulling the duvet back and slipping under. Harry didn’t even turn to look at you, so you wrapped your arm around his waist and placed your head upon his chest so that he couldn’t help but look at her. You knew that the main thing that you needed to do right now was try and get him out of the rut. It could spring on him at any point but it was never anything that was easy to get him out of. You sighed and pressed a kiss to his bare chest. 

“Do you want to talk about it?” You mumbled against his chest. 

“There’s nothing to talk about.” He mumbled and you shook your head, lifting your hand up to push some of his hair out of his face. 

“There obviously is.” You sighed, “You’re in your rut. Talking about it takes you out of it. I know that, you know that, but you’re just too stubborn to realise this.” 

“I’m not too stubborn.” He pouts and you shake your head with a roll of your eyes, raising one of your eyebrows at him, “I just. . . fucking hate loosing to him. Talking about the anniversary, and I know why you haven’t said anything about it yet, baby, just reminded me. I’m sorry.” 

You hesitate for a second before smiling at him, “I know you are, H, don’t worry. It’s my fault. I should’ve told you.” 

“Don’t.” He shakes his head and leans forward, placing his hand upon your cheek, “Don’t apologise. I get that it’s hard for you, I know. I just. . . wish that I could take it all away from you. It’s my fault that you’re having to keep secrets from your brother.” 

You shake your head, “It’s not your fault. I promise that it isn’t your fault. There’s been hundreds of times in the past three years when I could have told him.” 

“It’s not just you. We need to tell him.” 

If you needed anything else to love Harry for (which you really don’t because you love him with you’re entire being) you feel as though this would be one of those things. You couldn’t believe how understanding he was, and even though the two of you did have times where you butted heads on things, it was never over anything big like this. The two of you made sure that if you ever did have a problem that you needed to sort, there would be some arguing and shouting but there is in any couple, but the two of you always made up before it ended up turning ridiculous. 

You turned your head to Harry and placed you lips on his, pushing his shoulders down with your hand so that he’s on your back. You move slightly underneath the duvet that you were both under, manoeuvring yourself so that you were hovering over his body, the two of your lips never separating. You were straddling him, your hands resting on the pillow by Harry’s head. Your hips ground against his boxers involuntarily, and you can feel him smiling against him. Harry moaned into your mouth, and you could feel his bulge growing harder and bigger beneath you. 

Pulling away slightly you lean forward and place your forehead upon his, smiling as you place a small kiss to his nose. The hard and stern face of your boyfriend that you had seen earlier when he was racing had completely disappeared, and it was now replaced by his soft and flush features that he only ever saved for when he was with you, and you loved it. You could still feel his hard-on rubbing against your thigh, and you leant forward and placed your lips back on his. His arms wrapped around your waist and back, slipping them down until he could squeeze and knead the flesh over your pyjama short. 

“You know I fucking love you, right?” He mumbles against your lips and you nod. 

His hips continue to buck up to yours, whilst you grind yours back down to him. You pulled away and leant your head upon his forehead again, “I know you love me. You know I love you?” 

He responded you flipping you over, his body now hovering over you. He gave you a boyish smile and nodded his head, leaning his head back down to place his lips on your neck, pressing small little kisses to the skin. 

“I know you love me.” He mumbles against her lips, “Do you wanna feel me, baby? Have you missed me?” 

You responded with a moan, the sound of his raspy voice goes all the way from your ear, all the way down your spine to the heat between your legs. You wouldn’t be surprised if your panties were completely ruined by now. 

“Of course I’ve missed you.” You mumble against his lips, your cheeks flushing as you admit it to him. For years you two have been this close, but it didn’t stop you from being nervous every single time that you are near each other. It’s always how it had been, and probably how it will always be but you wouldn’t have it any other way. 

“Tell me how much you’ve missed me.” He kissed down your neck, and you couldn’t help the smile that crossed you face as he did so, “Don’t hold back, baby.” 

You threw your head back as he moved downwards, threading your fingers through his hair as you did so. You just hoped that it made him feel better than it was. 

Walking home the next morning, your entire body was relaxed and happy in a way that it only ever is after you’d spent time with Harry. If you passed anyone in the street, you smiled at them and there was a slight bounce in your step. There was an excitement that there hadn’t been in you for a long time because you were going to look over your schedule and finally get yourself sorted for your anniversary trip with Harry. Walking through the door that goes into kitchen, you immediately walk over to the fridge to take the orange juice out. 

“Morning little sis.” You jump out of your skin and turn around, leaning your back against the counter and lifting your hand up to your chest as it beats in your chest. Looking at your brother, it seemed as though he had just got back from a run, since he was all sweaty, he had his running shoes on and his headphones around his neck. Immediately your heart started to beat in your chest quicker, and the relaxation that you had felt before had immediately left your body and you feel back on edge as you do a lot of the time recently. 

“Morning.” You grin, turning back around to open a cupboard to grab a glass that you could fill with the orange juice carton that you were still holding, “Been for a run?” 

He nods his head, walking over to the fridge and taking out a bottle of water. When he wasn’t looking directly at you, a sigh escaped your lips. It was quickly over and he was looking at you again, leant against the counter across from you with his arms crossed. 

“Woke up with the want to go for a run.” He explained and you furrowed your eyebrows, looking at him and he chuckles, “I know, totally unlike me but I really did just feel like it.” 

You nod, your fingers tapping on the counter slightly, “Did you. . . did you go on your normal route?” 

Isaac shakes his head, “I met up with D’Angelo. We went to the lake.” 

Just like that, the worry that was in your body had left. The lake was on the other side of the town to where Harry lived, and where Isaac normally ran meaning that he couldn’t have seen you leaving Harry’s house which was good. You were starting to realise that the more you had to make sure that your brother hadn’t seen or didn’t know anything about you and Harry, the harder it was becoming for you to keep track of everything. The lie of staying over at Daisy’s had worked for years now, but the older that you got and the more that situations were changing for the two of you, it was harder to keep it as a lie. 

“Was it busy?” You ask, trying to make conversation that made it seem as though everything was normal and nothing had happened. 

He shakes his head, “Not really.” He hesitates for a second before looking up at you and tilting his head to the side, “I did see Daisy and Dennis though.” 

And just like that, your whole body was back to being on edge and nervous. The only way that you could describe how you felt was a mixture of both shock and immediate nervousness. Isaac continued to drink from the bottle in his hand, with no malice or shock on his features at all. If he did know something, he would’ve had said something by now and you knew that because of how well you knew him and that’s in one of the ways how you were both similar — when you knew something, you couldn’t keep it a secret. 

It was something that you had grown up with, your inability to keep secrets and you were honestly and truthfully so surprised that you and Harry had managed to keep your relationship a secret for so long. This wasn’t the first time that you had thought that Isaac had found out about your relationship, and it wasn’t the first time that you hadn’t been able to figure out how to get out of it but you knew that you would be able to get yourself out of it. You hoped that you would be able to get yourself out it. 

You were started to get quite nervous though, with sweaty palms and a heart beating directly up against your chest. Your mind spiralled and you hoped that you were going to hear something that would stop your chest in the next few minutes. 

“Did you?” You cleared your throat to make it seem as though you were more put together than you were. 

He hums, “Yeah. They explained that you were walking home and that Dennis’ arrival was out of the blue.”

You nod and smile, your heart stopping to beat so quickly the second those words escaped her lips, “Yeah. He appeared and asked her to go on a walk before work later. I said that I’d just walk home so that Daisy could go. I think he’s going to ask her out soon.” 

Isaac scoffs and crossing his arms over his chest, “I hope so. They’ve only been dancing around it for the last few years.”

You nod, “We’ve all said it. I don’t know how many times we’ve told her but anyway, I’m going to get in the shower before getting ready for work.” 

You’re quick to walk out of the kitchen and up the stairs with your head spinning. The entire time that you’re getting ready, showering and doing your hair, standing in front of your mirror and looking at the marks that Harry had left over the entirety of your skin before putting your work uniform on, you’re thinking about what you’re going to do. Today you were going to book some time off work from the café during the week of your anniversary, and even though that Daisy would know why you were doing that, you didn’t have to tell anyone else there. When it came to being at home, and telling your brother why you were going to be leaving for a month whilst Daisy stayed at home was going to be hard to explain to say the least. You were going to have to think very carefully about what you were going to say. 

Walking into the small café you worked at not that long later, you were happy to finally be in the place where anything else that happened in your life went to the back of your mind and you could focus on making drinks and serving customers. You had worked at the café since the day you turned eighteen, and you had worked there ever since. It wasn’t what you wanted to do forever, working in the little café with your best friend and your boss that is just an absolute asshole, but you just haven’t got the funds or was it the right time for you to try and get your dream going. 

Your dream, albeit a big one, was to one day own your own café that sold your own treats that you made and looked the exact way that you wanted it to. You had been planning your own café and telling everyone you knew about it since sitting in your maths classes in middle school when you realised that school really wasn’t for you. You were okay in school, and you got good enough grades, but none to get you to what you wanted to do in life. Over the last three years, many of your conversations with Harry had been about your café and how you would work there whilst he would take over his father’s mechanical shop. 

That was the plan for the future, but first — you had a shift to do and you had a lie to think of. 

“Afternoon.” You mumbled as you walked into the small café, Daisy’s eyes immediately widening as she takes a look at you stood there, “How are you?” 

“I’m sorry.” Daisy blurts out, not being able to stop herself from doing so, “I really didn’t know that he was going to be there, if I did I would have never gone there, you know that.” 

“I know.” You walk over and wrap your arms around her shoulders briefly, “He doesn’t know, it’s fine. I shouldn’t be relying on you so much, Daisy, I know that. I’m trying to figure out what to do.” 

“It’s okay, YN.” She mumbles, placing her hand upon your shoulder with a smile, “I know why you’ve done it, but I’m glad you’re finally coming to your senses. It’s three years too late, but at least you’re here.” 

“At least it’s happening now.” You sigh, widening your eyes as you look at her. 

“You’ll be fine. Everything will be fine.” 

You sigh and nod your head, hoping that she was right. 

You heard Harry’s car before you could see it, pulling up outside of your house in a quick stop so that you could quickly duck out and get it. Isaac was out for the night, doing another race in another town that Harry couldn’t do because he had work, so they had decided to spend the night together. Due to Isaac being out of town, they decided that they might even be able to go for a meal, to a restaurant, like a normal couple would. 

You gave him a small smile and a peck on the lips as you sat in the car. There hadn’t been much discussion between you and Harry that week, not since you had left his that morning. It was odd, because the two of you spoke everyday, even if it was just to check that the other was okay, but the conversation this week had been limited to you asking him to come for a meal and him replying saying that he would. You always knew that this day would come, where the unspoken issue between the two of you had become too much for you to handle. 

You had tried five times over the last week to say something to Isaac, trying to drop it in to normal conversation but you always dived away from it, as though you couldn’t allow yourself to say what you wanted to say to him. You had never been as nervous before in your life, and all you had to do was tell him about a secret that involved the one person that Isaac hated most in life and his twin sister. You just had to try your hardest to remind yourself over and over again that it was the best thing to do, and that you’d be happy if you were able to get the words out, but you just couldn’t. 

The two of you arrived at a restaurant on the outskirts of the town you lived in, one that meant you would be safe if Isaac did return home and one that the two of you also knew would serve good food. The car ride continued without any words spoken between the two of them, and you tried your hardest to not feel the nerves bubbling inside of you, but you also knew that there was a reason why you were going to have this conversation with him, and there was a reason why you needed to feel nervous for it. 

Sitting across from Harry in a booth that sat at the front of the restaurant, you couldn’t even bring yourself to take your eyes off of his face. There hadn’t been a lot of times during your relationship with Harry where you had felt like this, and it was usually always when the two of you were discussing the exact topic that you knew that you were going to be now. Whilst you couldn’t take your eyes off of Harry, it seemed as though he wanted nothing more than to not look at you. 

“Hey.” He didn’t look up from the menu that he had in his hand, “Are you going to even look at me?” 

You watch as he doesn’t even move a muscle, never mind do the thing that you wanted him to do which was look at you, “I’ve looked at you.” 

“Not since we’ve sat down you haven’t.” 

You watch as he sighs and drops the menu down so that it was rested upon the table between you and lifts his eyes up to look at you, “Happy now?” 

A small smile breaks out your face, a sarcastic one at that, but a smile nonetheless, “Very.” 

Harry rolls his eyes and leans back in his chair, crossing his arms over his chest. You look at him with your eyes widened. Why this was happening all of a sudden, you didn’t know, but you had a slight suspicion that you weren’t going to be able to argue your way out of this one with him like you had done in the past. The first thing that led you to believe that was the fact that you were in a public place, where you had to do your best to make sure that you were going to tell the truth and nothing but the truth. 

As a whole, you were ashamed of your actions over the years, and you knew that you wouldn’t be able to apologise for everything that you had done in the past but you could at least try. Everything had changed now that you had your three year anniversary coming up, and you realised that there was so much more to life than trying to hide a stupid secret from your brother. 

“Harry.” You start, a sigh immediately leaving your lips after, “I’m sorry. I really am.” He nods his head, “I don’t expect you to accept my apology, and I certainly don’t expect you to forgive me for the shit that I’ve put you through these last couple of years, but, I want to let you know that I am trying to fix things. I promise you.” 

He sighs, “I don’t know how you can, YN. I’ve thought about it a lot recently, in the past week, since our conversation last week.” 

“I have too.” You nod, your fingers messing with the hem of your jacket, “I have too. I’ve tried so many times, to tell him, but I just can’t and I don’t know why. He can’t do anything, I’m a grown ass woman and he’s just my brother. He can’t tell me who I can and can’t love, and I do love you Harry more than anything, but there’s a part of me that just can’t tell him.” 

Harry cleared his throat and sighed, “I never told you the reason we argued.” 

You shake your head, “Neither of you did.” 

“Do you want to know?” He asked. 

You shrugged, “I don’t know. . . if it will help, than yes.”

Harry sighed and nodded his head, running his finger over his bottom lip the way that you knew that he did when he was nervous, “We were in Eugene’s basement, having just watched one of his races and he had some shit, and we decided to take it. It was just us, everyone else had gone to do something else or get high somewhere else, and we were just sat.” You were hanging off of every word that he said, “We were taking about, I don’t know, life and all the shit that we usually do when we’re high and we got onto the topic of you.”

Your eyes widen, “Me? Why were you talking about me?” 

“He mentioned you and how you wanted to do things with your life and how he was fed up that all he had to do with his life was race.” Harry chuckled and shook his head, “I couldn’t even help it, I just blurted out that I liked you and that I was going to ask you on a date, thinking that he would be happy for us, but instead, he punched me in the face.” 

Your lips part, “He what?” 

“He punched me.” Harry runs a hand through his hair, “And then he just started screaming at me, saying that scum like me wasn’t good enough for someone like you. The more he said it, the more I believed it and I believed it all the way until you got in my car and asked me to tell you what had happened. I didn’t, and I didn’t for a reason, because if I had told you maybe you would’ve thought the same as him, that I wasn’t good enough for you, so instead I asked you on the date, just like I had planned to.” 

You let his words sink in for a while, the sound of them bouncing around in your head for a while as you look down at the table in front of you. You couldn’t lie and say that you hadn’t thought about what had gone down between them, and what had been said to make them despise each other as much as they did, but you certainly hadn’t expected it to be about you of all things. It started to all make sense now, how when you had asked him, after your first night together at his house, if he was okay that you didn’t tell your brother about the two of you being together, and he agreed. At first you had thought that it was odd, seeing as though this man didn’t know your motive behind why you were saying that, but at the same time, you didn’t know his motive behind why he said yes. 

It all made sense. 

You sigh and nod your head, “Why didn’t you just tell me? I would’ve understood. You know that I would’ve.” 

He shrugs his shoulders, “Why didn’t you tell me about what you had been thinking? And what you had been trying to do?” 

You shrug your shoulders, “I don’t know.” 

“It works both ways, YN.” He shrugs, “And I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you but a part of you has to realise that there was a reason you didn’t tell me and you didn’t tell him. I understand a part of you was trying to keep it calm between us, but there had to be more than that.”

You can feel the tears starting to brim within your eyes, and the more that you thought about it, the more that you knew you were going to struggle to hold them back. You start to blink quickly, lifting your eyes up to look at the ceiling. It worked, and you managed to make sure that no tears slid down your cheeks. 

“A part of me did do it because I knew that it would be easier for you, that you didn’t have to tell him that you were my boyfriend. I knew how hard that would’ve been for you.” You explain, lifting your hand up to scratch your forehead, “So I decided that for a little while, I just wouldn’t tell him. At least not until things had calmed down between the two of you. After a few months of waiting was going to say something to him, just drop it into conversation and then walk out of it with my hands up but then I realised that it wasn’t going to be that easy. The day that I was going to do it, he walked into my bedroom with this big news that he was so excited to tell me.” You take in a breath and sigh, “It was the news that you were starting to drive, and that he was going to beat you that night and I knew that if I had told him, he wouldn’t have just beat you in the race.” 

“I can stand up for myself, YN.” 

“I never said that you couldn’t.” She shook her head, “I just didn’t want you getting hurt because of me.” 

“I wouldn’t be getting hurt because of you. I’d be getting hurt because of something we did.” He explains, “Just like you can’t blame this all on me, and me on you, I’m not going to let you blame this all on yourself either.” 

“Harry.” You sigh and lean back in the chair that you sat in, “We’re going to have to tell him.” 

He shakes his head, “He’s not going to like it.” 

“I know.” You agree with him and hold your hand out, “But we’ve got to tell him.” 

“I know we have.” He grasps your hand in his.

It turned out that you and Harry didn’t have to wait for too long to tell your brother, because when Harry pulled up outside of your house, your brother was already sat there on the steps of the house, waiting for you to arrive home. You couldn’t believe what you were seeing if you were completely honest, and a part of you realised that this was it. You turned to look at Harry slightly, a sigh leaving your lips as you did so. 

“You still want to do this?” He asked, pulling his keys out of the ignition as the car came to a complete stop. 

You sigh and lean over to place your hand upon his, “I don’t think we have a choice, now.” 

“We do.” He turned his head to look at you, squeezing your fingers as he did so, “I could just drive away. Ignore him.” 

You chuckle and shake your head, lifting your connected hands up to place a kiss to the back of his hand, “Come on. He might explode if we keep him waiting any longer.” 

You certainly couldn’t lie and say that your brother looked like he was handling everything well, because he certainly wasn’t. His jaw seemed to be constantly clenched the entire time that you walked towards him, and you definitely saw his hands that were clenched by his sides in fists. You knew that he was going to be annoyed, and you expected that there would certainly be some shouting involved with this, but, she certainly didn’t want this to become physical at any point. In your opinion, it certainly wasn’t worth it. 

“YN.” You stop in front of him once he’s spoken your name, and Harry is just a few steps behind you. Having him there really brings a comfort that you don’t really feel unless you’re with him, so if anything, you were happy that he was there, “What are you doing with him?” 

“I’m—” You start, looking at him for a second before letting out a sigh, “He’s—”

You can’t find the right words to say what you want to say. You knew that it wasn’t going to be easy to explain to your brother, but you at least thought that you’d be able to get past the first words without choking up, but it seemed as though that wasn’t the case. 

“Isaac—” Harry takes a step forward, so that he was directly next to you but before he could say anything else, Isaac holds his hand out to stop him. 

“I wasn’t talking to you.” Harry clamps his lips shut, and you can tell that he’s trying to hold back so many things but at least he isn’t making the situation worse which you knew that he possibly could. Isaac then turns to you, “I was asking you the question. What are you doing with him?” 

Letting out a sigh, you shut your eyes for a second to calm yourself down, “I’m. . . we’re together, Isaac.” 

He lets out a sigh and shakes his head, tutting slightly as he did so, “When Eugene told me, I didn’t believe him. I said that you’d never do that to me because you know that I hate him more than I’ve hated anyone in my life before.” 

At first you listen to the words that he was saying and you nod along, as if you’re understanding what they’re saying, but you quickly shake your head and cross your arms over your chest. 

“I’d never do what to you, Isaac?” You ask, your eyebrows furrowing as you say the words you were speaking, “I’ve fallen in love with someone, Isaac, I don’t think that involves you at all.”

“But you know I can’t stand him!” 

“Still here, you know.” Harry mutters, lifting his hands up and walking away from them slightly. 

You turn over to look at Harry and glare at him slightly before you turn your attention back to Isaac, “Why do you think I didn’t tell you? I knew that you’d react like this.” 

“What? I’d react completely sane, YN?” Isaac scoffs and shakes his head. 

“Sane?” You physically can’t believe what you’re hearing, “Isaac, you don’t have the right to act like this over who is my boyfriend. Yeah, I understand that you don’t like Harry and he isn’t particularly fond of you either, but you don’t have a say in that.” You stop slightly and let out a sigh of relief when you realise that you’ve got him listening, “I would completely understand if you were upset about me not telling you and lying to you, but that is what you can be mad at.” 

He looks at you but then he shakes his head, and you know that everything that you’ve just said has gone and he couldn’t care less about it now. 

“YN.” You know that tone of voice anywhere, and you couldn’t believe that he was still acting like this, “It’s Harry. You don’t know the shit that he said, and you don’t know what it was like to sit and listen to him saying everything he said about you.” 

This time, it’s you who lets the words that he’s just spoken sink in for a while. If what Harry had said to you earlier was true, that all your brother had to be upset about was him saying that he liked you and wanted to ask you out. Now, you’re not exactly sure how the male mind works, but you’re pretty sure that Isaac can distinguish between someone saying that they like someone and something else. You turn to look at Harry and he looks down at the floor, and that’s when you realise very quickly that there was something else to the story that you didn’t know. The mere thought of it made you feel sick. What had actually been said that night?

“Isaac.” You turn back to look at him, “What was said?” 

“YN.” He shakes his head, scratching his forehead slightly, “I don’t want to tell you.” 

“Tell me.” Your words are harsh and you can tell by the way that Harry backs away from you that you’re about to be in for a real treat, “Tell me!” 

“When we were in high school, we had this list.” Isaac starts, and you know that what he is saying is probably really important context but you just want him to get to the point, “And on this list, we’d rank who we thought were the most fuck-able girls in the school.” 

Your entire heart plummets to the pit of your stomach, “That’s disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourselves.” 

“I am, don’t worry.” Isaac nods, “Harry never got involved with it, and we all knew why, because he was the good one who never cared about those things and everyone just accepted that. I certainly did.” 

“Just get on with it, Isaac.” 

“Well, we were in Eugene’s basement and we were high and drunk and everything was just a little blurred if I’m honest, but I asked Harry a question. I said, best friend to best friend, if you were to pick one person to go on the top of the list, and just be his one person and nobody apart from us would ever find out, he turned to me and said: you.” 

You can’t figure out what your angrier at. You can’t decide whether it’s because Harry had actually said those words to your brother, degrading you in such a way that you had never ever expected him to or the fact that he had lied to you about what had actually happened. In honesty, you do think that thing that has upset you the most was that he didn’t tell you the truth. He could have told you what had actually happened earlier on in the day on you wouldn’t have cared, because you knew that he was high and drunk and he probably wouldn’t have meant it but the fact that he lied, made you feel sick to your stomach. It made you question whether or not he had lied to you at other points and you just hadn’t known because you were too naïve to see it. 

You turn to look at Harry and he’s looking directly back at you, not at the ground and not anywhere else but directly at you. 

“Harry.” You can already feel the tears start to form within your eyes, “Tell me it’s not true.” 

Harry shakes his head and looks down at the ground, and you shake your head to try and back the tears. You know that if you open your mouth words will tumble out that you really don’t mean, and you know that you can’t let that happen but you’re in such a state that you know that you’re mind would be clouded with how upset you are. 

“He knows it’s fucking, true, YN.” Isaac says from behind you, “That’s why we fucking fought and punched the living daylights out of each other.” 

You shake your head again, the tears involuntarily spilling down your cheek, “Harry. Why didn’t you tell me?” 

“I thought—” He starts but then he shakes his head, “I didn’t—”

Just like you couldn’t find the words to say, it seemed as though Harry couldn’t either. You really didn’t care about what he said, and you wouldn’t care about what he said. There were things that you’d said when you were younger and in high school that you certainly regretted and you would hate if anyone was to bring them up but you wouldn’t lie about it. You had lied in the past and done things in the past that you didn’t agree with, but it wasn’t as though you were doing it for any other reason but to protect the relationships that you had made with people. 

“Harry.” He lifts his head to look at you, “I think you should go.” 

“YN. . .” He takes a step forward towards you but you hold your hand up. 

“Just for tonight.” You nod your head, “We’ll speak tomorrow. We all just need to. . . calm down.” 

“But YN. . .” He takes another step forward but you shake your head. 

“Please, Harry.” You close your eyes, “Just for tonight.” 

He doesn’t seem very happy with what you had said but he nods at you once before walking over to his car and getting in. He slams the door closed behind him, and you flinch when he does so. You watch through the window as he looks at you one last time before starting the engine and driving. 

He drives on, and he doesn’t look back, not even one last time and you watch as his car disappears off the street. Once you know that he’s gone, you start walking towards the end of the drive and down to the pavement. 

“YN—” Isaac starts but you turn to look at him and shake your head. 

“Not now.” You run a hand through your hair, “I’m going to Daisy’s. I’ll be fine.” 

With that, you walk down the street and towards Daisy’s house, the thoughts of what had just happened dancing around in your head. You knew that this was going to happen at some point, and it would all blow up in your face, you just hadn’t know that it would be like this.

The next day you return home with bags underneath your eyes and yawns escaping your lips. You would say that you’re nervous, but after being up all night with worry in your stomach, you’re pretty certain that you’re just a little anxious but the thing that overwhelms your brain more than anything is the want for all of this to be over. You needed to sort things out with your brother, so you could go back to being siblings that annoy each other more than anything, and then you need to sort everything out with Harry. You knew that it was going to be hard, and you knew that your emotions were going to be high but you needed to get it over and done with. You weren’t going to allow your life to be like this for longer than it needed to be, and it didn’t need to be at all. 

When you walked through the front door of your house, you didn’t know what you were expecting to see, but you really didn’t expect what you saw. Isaac was laid across the couch, with empty beer bottles on the table in front of him. You knew why he had done it, and you hated that it was your fault that he had done it but at the same time he was a grown man, just like you were a grown woman, and he knew that this wasn’t the right way to go about things. 

With a sigh, you walked over to the sofa and picked up one of the cushions by Isaac’s feet and threw it air his head. He groaned and moved around and that was when you nudged his legs so that you could sit down. He groaned again but moved them away, and you heard him yawn and felt his body lift up from beside you so that he was upright. 

“How’s the head?” You mumble, crossing your arms over your chest and leaning back in the seat. 

He groans and does the same, “It’s been better.” 

You chuckle and close your eyes, allowing a slight calmness to wash over your body. If there was one thing that you missed about getting older, was not being able to have the stupid conversations with him that made absolutely no sense to anybody but the two of them. But, something that you did know was that even when this was all sorted and everything went back to normal, you wouldn’t be surprised if not everything went back to normal between the two of you. It was something hard to understand, but you just had to accept it because you wouldn’t be surprised if it took years to fix. 

There’s a silence between the two of you for a while, but you quickly realise that isn’t going to help you in your situation so without really thinking you collect yourself and let out a small breath that you didn’t know you had been hiding for a while. 

“I’m sorry.” You say, the words coming out of your mouth stronger than you had expected them to. You thought that they would at least be broken, but they weren’t, “I’m sorry for everything, but most importantly, I’m sorry for lying and keeping it from you.” 

You don’t know what Isaac is going to say, and the fact that you don’t does make you worry slightly but you know that you’d be able to handle whatever he was going to say. You would be able to handle it because you were strong, at this point you needed to be. 

“I accept your apology.” He says, and you turn to look at him with tears in your eyes. He nods at you and smiles, “The more I thought about it, the more I understood why you did it. If the shoe was on the other foot I would’ve done the exact same thing. I wouldn’t have even hesitated to.” 

You nod your head and close your eyes, a few tears falling from them but you’re quick to lift your hand and wipe them away. He reaches over and grabs your hand, and you squeeze his as you do so. 

“I shouldn’t have lied to you though.” You shake your head, “We don’t lie to each other.” 

“Oh.” Isaac shakes his head and you furrow your eyebrows at him, “We don’t lie to each other but we certainly keep secrets. The amount I’ve kept from you. . . you’d probably kill me.” 

Your lips part in shock, “Are you going to tell me them?” 

“No.” He shakes his head, a chuckle leaving his lips, “I maybe will later, but right now, you’ve got somewhere to be.” 

“Have I?” He taps his hand on your leg and stands up, and all you can do is furrow your eyebrows in response. 

“You have.” You watch as he grabs his jacket and places it on his body, “And I’m going to take you there.” 

You know straight away that Isaac is talking about going to see Harry, and just the fact that he was going to take you made you want to burst out into even more tears that you had been before. You didn’t though, because you were able to keep your calm and just smile and nod along with him, but it was certainly hard for you to do. It felt as though you were getting acceptance from Isaac and although you knew that you didn’t really need it, it sure felt good to have. You offered him a quick smile and got into his car, driving you to Harry’s and leaving you there with a squeeze of his hand. 

Even though you weren’t that nervous when it came to talking to Isaac, speaking to Harry was a completely different thing. Whereas you and Isaac had a sibling bond that could never be broken, you and Harry had a bond, one that was love to the highest degree, but it was still a love that could be broken. You just hoped that this wasn’t it and you hadn’t met the point of no return just yet. 

You palms were sweaty as you knocked on his door, and your heart felt as though it was going to beat out of your chest but you knew that this was the right thing to do. You could hear shuffling behind the door, and then it swung open, and you wanted to sigh in relief just at the sight of him stood there. He looked like he hadn’t slept, but you hadn’t either so it was something that you both had in common, and he had his joggers hung low on his hips in a way that you always found so endearing whenever he did it. 

“Hi.” You say, the corners of your lips tilting upwards slightly, “Can I come in?” 

He opens his mouth as if to say something but then he just ends up nodding his head and opening the door wider so your body can slip through. It looks exactly the same as the last time you had been there, and it felt comfortable and like your home. It certainly was your home away from home, and living with Harry would be something that you wouldn’t mind doing in the future if time permitted you too. You had to remind yourself to take a few steps back and look at the situation ahead of you, and how you had a lot of things that you needed to talk about before anything else in the future could happen. 

Walking into the apartment, you hear Harry shut the door behind you. You knew that he wasn’t too far behind you, so you turned around.

“I didn’t think you’d be here so soon.” He muttered, shrugging his shoulders, “I thought you’d need a few days.” 

“I said I would talk to you tomorrow.” You smile and nod your head, “I’m wasn’t about to go back on that.” 

You swear you can see the slight lift of the corner of his lips, and it’s the first sign to you that everything might actually end up being okay. 

“I know you think we have things to talk about but I actually just have one thing to say.” He says, taking a step forward towards you. You watch as he hesitantly reaches out and grabs your hand, and you smile at just the feeling of his skin on yours again, “I’m sorry, That’s all I can say. I’m sorry that I said those things all those years ago, and I’m more sorry that I didn’t tell you about it when I had the chance. It was stupid of me, and I can understand if you want to. . . if you want to.” He physically stops and you can tell that he’s struggling with something, “If you want to break up with me.” 

You gasp at his words, taking a step forward and placing your hands on his cheeks, “Harry. . . no. Don’t think that. I’m not going to break up with you over that.” 

You can hear him physically sigh and you couldn’t even understand why he dared to think the way that he was, “I didn’t know. I didn’t know how you’d think.” 

“Harry.” You lean forward so that your forehead is on his, “I’m upset that you lied, but I did too. If anything, we’re just as bad as each other. That’s probably why we’re so perfect for each other, right?” 

“Right.” He chuckled, nodding his head, “We’re perfect for each other. I love you so much, I’m so sorry.” 

“I’m sorry too.” You close your eyes as you let the words sink in, “If there’s one way I know how we’re never going to go through anything like this again, is if we promise to never keep anything from each other again.” 

“We won’t.” He mumbles, “I won’t.” 

“Good. I won’t either.” Your hands grip onto his arms as they wrap around your neck, “I need you, Harry Styles. I do.” 

“I need you too.” 

With that you open your eyes so that you can look directly in his, a small smile breaking over your lips at the fact the two of you knew that he needed you just as much as you needed him. It certainly made this entire situation feel as though it happened for a reason, that it happened so that you could be stronger than you already were. You never doubted that he loved you, and that you loved him, but there was the doubt that everything would have caught up with you, and that was something that you knew would be your fault. All of this was your fault, for not being honest in the first place, but that didn’t mean that you couldn’t find it in yourself to be honest now and get you and Harry through this. 

Without even the slightest hint of hesitation you lean forward and place your lips on his, and he didn’t wait to kiss back, his tongue moving against his bottom lip before pushing it through your parted lips. Your tongue met his in your mouth, and you pulled each other closer, grasping at each other with the want and need that never stopped when you were around him. The spark that you always felt when you were with him ran all the way down from the skin of your lips to the tip of your toes, fluttering all over your body. You had told him that you needed him, which was the truth, but you were soon starting to realise that there was more to the need you had for Harry than what met the eye. It was something that went past all of the words in the dictionary to actions that you needed to name, and that’s why you pulled away and rested your head on his forehead. 

“Harry.” You mumble, “Take me to the bedroom.” 

He pulls away and furrows his eyebrows, not expecting those words to slip from your mouth, “Are you sure? We don’t have to.” 

“I’m sure.” You mumble against his lips, “Never been more certain of anything in my entire life.” 

He presses kisses against your neck and shoulders as he places you down on the bed, his body hovering over yours. When he starts to put a little more pressure on your skin with his teeth, you can’t help the light moans that start to escape your lips. He starts to toy with the hem of your shirt, and you respond to him by lifting your legs and wrapping them around his waist. Your hips move in circular motions to his, and it’s his turn to moan into you. 

You pull away and sit up, pulling your shirt over your head and revealing your bra to him. It wasn’t the nicest bra you owned, but it got to the point in your relationship when you didn’t need to wear fancy lingerie all of the time to feel good enough for him, but that didn’t mean that you didn’t every now and then to feel sexy. Every now and then, though, just like you felt now, you realise that you don’t need to wear anything to feel sexy because just the way that Harry looked at you made you feel like that. The was his eyes raked up and down your body, across every inch of skin that he could see. That made you feel sexy. The way he looked at you made you feel sexy. 

“Missed this.” He leans over and places a kiss to the skin of your shoulder, “Missed you. You’re so fucking beautiful, YN, you have no idea.” 

You lean forward and capture your lips again on his, slipping your arm around his shoulder so that you could run your nails down his back, scratching lightly as you did so. He took it upon himself to slip his hands between the two of you and unbutton your trousers, pulling them as well as your panties down your legs. You remove your arms from around his neck so that you can unclip your bra and pull it down from your torso and throw it down on the floor with the rest of your clothes. This was how you loved it to be with Harry. You just loved it when the two of you were together, alone. You guessed a part of it was because that was all you ever knew of it. 

Harry was the most loving and beautiful person you’d met in your life, and you would have loved to be able to show him off to the world as the one you loved but it just wasn’t that easy, but now you had the slight suspicion that you might be able to, and a part of you was excited about that. 

Your hands extend back out to him, pulling his body back down so that he was hovering above you again. He places a single kiss to your lips before moving his way down your body, placing kisses to your chest before moving down to the top of your breast and then down towards your nipples. He moves from each of them, one to the other, giving each of them the attention that he always does. You smile and thread your fingers through his hair, running through the curls that sat on top of his head. You used it to pull his head back up and place his lips on yours again. He responds by immediately kissing you back, and he wraps his arms around you so that he could flip you over, so that you’re resting above him now. 

You pulled back and rested your forehead against his, “You want me on top?” He nodded and you smiled, watching as he slipped his hands into each side of his joggers before pulling them down his legs, as well as his boxers, revealing his cock. You manoeuvre your body so that you’re further down the bed and so that your head is at the same level as him, and you lean forward, pressing a singular kiss to the tip. The sound that emits from his throat causes you to not hesitate in leaning forward and wrapping your lips around the top of him, starting to bob your head at a slow pace that you know is seemingly working because you can see his stomach moving up and down at a quick pace. Groans tumble from his lips, and you know that he’ll be getting close but before he can do anything else his hands press against your cheeks and lift you back up so that he can kiss you again. 

“Don’t you wanna. . . ?” You ask, your eyebrows furrowing as you look at him. 

“No.” He shakes his head, placing his lips on yours, “I don’t want anything but to be inside of you right now.” 

You watched as he moved backwards slightly, so that you were close enough to the wall that you could rest of your hand against the wall as you manoeuvre yourself over him. His cock slips between your folds, and words can’t describe how wet you are for him, dripping all over him. You place your lips on his again and start to move yourself up and down his cock. The groan that escapes his lips is unlike any you’ve heard before, and you can’t help the smile that dances across your lips. 

“You’re drenched for me.” He groans against your lips, “Fuck, I wanna be inside of you.” 

“Be my guest.” You grin, and you watch as he leans down to grab his cock in his fist and you lift up so that you can line yourself up with him. You grasp his shoulder as you slowly sink down on him, the familiar feeling of having him fill you up overwhelming you. You had been together for three years and no matter how many times you had sex, it still manages to overwhelm you more than words can explain. You whimper when he’s fully inside of you, hesitating for a few minutes before you press your lips to his in another short kiss. 

“So fucking tight.” He mumbles, “Best fucking feeling in the world.” 

You tilt your head back slightly with a smile crossing your lips, “I’m glad you’re enjoying yourself.” 

He chuckles but that’s quickly shut off when you start to move, bouncing up and down on his cock. Your nails scrape down his back as you move, and you can’t help the moans of profanities that leave your lips as you move. You knew you were squeezing yourself around him, it was always something that you did that caused him to clench his jaw, just has he was doing now. You quickly found a rhythm, swirling your hips and grinding them in a way that had both of you moaning out each others names. 

You tilted your head back when he hit a spot deep inside of you that sent a wave of pleasure rushing over your body. He didn’t even hesitate to lean forward and capture your nipple in his mouth, flicking his tongue over the bud slightly before moving to the other. He wrapped his arms around your body and slipped them down your back, all the way until he grabbed the flesh of your ass and squeezed. His movements were harsh, but they sent a wave of pleasure through your entire body. 

“YN.” You hum, leaning forward and resting your head on his shoulder, not stopping the movements on his hips, “You’re never going to leave me, are you?” 

You move so that you’re sat up straight and look at him, “Why would you think that? I’m not going to leave you, Harry, never.” 

“Good.” He leans forward and placing his lips back on yours. Your movements don’t slow down, if anything, they speed up and a string of moans escape your lips. His hands are all over your body, and his lips are too, and the the feeling starts to rush over you. You manage to keep your hips moving at the pace for a while before you slow down, and Harry notices this and quickly flips you both over. You lay on your back with your head on the pillow, and Harry doesn’t even hesitate when he slips back into you. His movements aren’t fast, but they’re certainly deep. 

“So fucking deep, Harry. Feels so fucking good.” Your words only seem to egg Harry on, especially the way your nails scratch down his back, “I’m so close.”

Harry was hitting just as deeply inside of you as he had been when you were riding him, and the feeling tips you closer and closer to the edge. Your hands drop down to your sides to grasp the duvet cover, and you turn your head so that you can muffle the obnoxiously loud moans that you couldn’t help leaving your lips. 

“I know you are baby.” One of his hands slips through yours, “Don’t hide them moans though, let me hear them, baby, you know what it does to me.” 

You move your head back so that he can hear your moans, and he smiles as he continues to fuck you. It doesn’t take long before he’s tipping you over the edge and your orgasm hits you. It’s one of the most powerful you’ve ever had, and you have every reason to believe that it’s because of how high emotions are between the two of you at the moment. It’s intense and you can feel it everywhere, all over your entire body and more so in the pit of your stomach. Harry didn’t stop his movements, not until he hit his high as well and spilled into you. You didn’t care about anything else in that moment though, because you felt closer to Harry now than you even had been, and you never wanted it to change again. 

Once he pulls out of you, a whimper immediately leaving your lips due to the emptiness you now feel. He quickly cleans you up, and then drops into the bed beside you, and you don’t even hesitate when you wrap your arm around his waist and rest your head upon his chest. When your eyes close, you let out a sigh of relief. 

“Harry.” He hums, and you can feel the vibration of his chest beneath your ear, “I’m sorry I told you to drive away.” 

“Don’t be.” He mumbles, his fingertips dancing along the skin of your arm, “We’ve all done thing that we aren’t proud of, but we have a new start. One where we don’t have to keep this a secret.” 

You nod and smile, still not opening your eyes, “I love you.” 

“Love you too, baby.” 

[angelofberlin2000]

In his 14 minutes of screentime in Always Be My Maybe, Netflix’s latest rom-com phenomenon, 54-year-old Keanu Reeves — now 30 years into his stardom — skewers and subverts the personas we’ve come to attach to him.

Reeves, playing an outsized version of himself, cuts an imposing figure in his introduction. Time slows to a crawl. All eyes gravitate toward the velvet-jacketed figure with striking beauty and prickly charisma. After his entrance — a show for everyone in the farcical restaurant Maximal — he slides toward Ali Wong’s celebrity chef Sasha, offering spiritual platitudes in the face of her unfettered lust. “I missed your thumbs,” she breathily exhales. “I missed your soul” is his reply.

It’s a maniacally delightful performance that both reminds audiences of Reeves’s place in Asian-American Hollywood history and allows him to flex improvisational skills as he cycles through the various masks we have grafted onto him. There’s the impossibly otherworldly Keanu, who says with utmost sincerity, “The only stars that matter are the ones that you see when you dream.” There’s action-star Keanu, who smashes a vase against his own head in a game of Icebreaker and easily puts the jealous protagonist, Marcus (Randall Park), in a headlock — fully committed, physically graceful, and beautifully dangerous. The Keanu of internet memes and viral threads is here, too, in the very fact that he’s playing himself.

Reeves is having a dynamite year with the success of Always Be My Maybe, the outrageously violent John Wick Chapter 3: Parabellum, and Toy Story 4, in which he plays Canada’s greatest stunt driver, Duke Caboom. (Another sly nod perhaps? While born in Beirut, Reeves — who is of Chinese-Hawaiian and British ancestry — was raised in Toronto.) The actor’s more recent evolution into a meme may flatten his complexities, but it does signal why he has endured all this time, despite the persistent claim that he’s a bad actor, or just a limited one. As I’ve contended in the past, this is a gross misreading of a great actor. In her tremendous 2007 masterwork The Star Machine, film professor and historian Jeanine Basinger praises Reeves amongst his generational contemporaries: “Reeves is a neo-star fighting the concept of stardom itself, working steadily against persona to the point where no one has a clear idea of who Reeves is onscreen anymore. This has hurt him, but it has also allowed him to maintain versatility that means more to him than fame. […] His career would have been limited, and thus short lived. Instead, he has used his freedom to move on and slowly force audiences to accept him as a real actor.”

  Just take a look at the arc of his career — as a teenager going through an existential crisis in the blackhearted wonder River’s Edge (1986); the affably dimwitted Theodore “Ted” Logan from Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure (1989) and its sequel; the bodaciously supple and yearning FBI agent and surfer Johnny Utah in Point Break (1991); a bruisingly courteous SWAT officer in Speed (1994); the beatific savior Neo in The Matrix (1999);  the violent redneck in The Gift (2000); an occult detective radiating self-loathing and suicidal yearnings in Constantine (2005); and of course, the titular tenderhearted and violently dangerous assassin of the John Wick franchise. In looking at all of his performances, I am reminded of what the great Roger Ebert wrote in his review of the Bill & Ted sequel back in the early ‘90s: “I have seen Keanu Reeves in vastly different roles (the FBI man in the current Point Break, for example), and am a little astonished by the range of these performances.”

Throughout his career, Reeves has eschewed obvious transformation in favor of something trickier and more subtle. What has allowed him to remain a star, 30 years later, is a blend of virility, vulnerability, and an aura of mystery, hearkening to a bygone era of stardom that contradicts the current moment, which requires stars to seem endlessly accessible; his sheer joy for the medium that makes him a cinematic sensualist; his racial dimensions as a star; and his gimlet-eyed understanding of the female gaze. These qualities are unique in the current market of stardom in Hollywood, allowing him to straddle various cinematic contexts with ease — mainstream romantic comedies, somber indie flicks, gloriously decadent action flicks.

They come through in one of his earliest films, My Own Private Idaho, a meditative character study about two young hustlers — Mike Waters (River Phoenix), a shy narcoleptic in search of a sense of home, and the strikingly beautiful Scott Favor (Reeves), a trust-fund kid slumming it until his inheritance kicks in at 21. Reeves and his late co-star imbue their characters with a particular mix of virility, vulnerability, and mystery. I’d argue that all the greatest leading men in the annals of Hollywood stardom have existed at this intersection to varying degrees — something I feel has been lacking from modern male stars, partially because they are being formed in franchises that lack interest in the visceral aspects of humanity. (It helps that Reeves has declined offers to join Marvel, even though they’ve been trying to woo him to their stable for years.) Humphrey Bogart’s cool is consistently undercut by his own anger and self-loathing. William Holden held something dark behind his megawatt smile and gleaming blond locks. Paul Newman always felt a touch remote, like he was hiding bruised aspects of himself from the audience. Marlon Brando, of course, epitomizes these qualities. Reeves is brimming with similar contradictions. He reflects this tradition by being at once beatifically still and emotionally expressive, defined by loneliness and a yearning to be saved from it.

In My Own Private Idaho, Reeves is the object of desire not only for Mike but the camera itself. Deep into the film, Mike timidly reveals his love to Scott while they camp out in the desert, a fire crackling before them. Phoenix plays Mike as wild with energy he has no real outlet for, leading to an awkward physicality. Reeves grants his character a languid brio. He takes up space, laying close to the fire, his head dipped back to study Mike as he timidly expresses his feelings. He’s outstretched, willowy, and aware of Mike’s gaze; he examines the weight of it. The scene reveals one of Reeves’s greatest skills as an actor: being an active listener. As he studies Mike, he invites and toys with his feelings. “I only have sex with a guy for money,” he notes offhandedly as if it were a random truth, not a response to a declaration of love. But just as the prickliness of his character comes into view (foreshadowing later betrayals), Reeves displays a burnishing sincerity. Arms outstretched, he says, “Let’s go to sleep,” and proceeds to cradle Mike.

The full-bodied listening Reeves exhibits in My Own Private Idaho is a hallmark of his work opposite women as well. Reeves is a great example of what Roswell New Mexico writer Alanna Bennett deemed The Look: “The number one thing a man in a romcom needs, TV or movie, is the ability to look at their love interest REALLY WELL. The man barely even needs to speak if he just knows how LOOK at a person.” Reeves has given that look in multiple contexts — his face is bright with awe when he looks at Carrie-Anne Moss’s Trinity in the Matrix films; it has a touch of admiration when he gazes at Sandra Bullock in Speed; and it is filled with unmitigated desire for Diane Keaton’s Erica Barry in Something’s Gotta Give.

Nancy Meyer’s 2003 ode to beachside property and an older woman’s sensual awakening stars Keaton as a successful playwright who finds herself falling for two very different men — Harry Sanborn (Jack Nicholson), who briefly dated her daughter (how this didn’t disqualify him immediately continues to baffle me) and has to go through a damn heart attack before he can see what’s attractive in a woman around his own age; and Julian Mercer (Reeves), a sweet doctor with a penchant for black turtlenecks who is immediately smitten when they meet.

In the film, Reeves is attuned to the female gaze in its most literal incarnation — an understanding of how women see the world, what they want from it, and how they make sense of desire. During a dinner scene with Julian, Erica’s face and neck are flush. She’s skittish and nervous in the face of his undeniable — but never disrespectful — sexual and romantic interest. Reeves’s face shows the depth and breadth of The Look, as he glides from teasing lust to a spark of genuine intellectual attraction. At one point, when their conversations turns to women his own age, he says, “I’ve never met one I’ve reacted to” — stumbling for a moment, as if shocked by the depth of his own feeling — “… quite like this. When something happens to you that hasn’t happened before, don’t you have to at least find out what it is?” He’s a man overcome and humbled by his own desire. Is there anything sexier? Then he leans in, his face going soft, gently kissing the groove where her neck meets her shoulder. “I knew you’d smell good,” he whispers. Only Reeves could pull off a line like that.

Many actors of Reeves’s caliber are too invested in being in the spotlight of a scene to play a romantic lead like this. After the fall of the studio system in the 1960s, Hollywood no longer looked at women as a viable market, and while romantic comedies continued to get made, going forward, there was a notable shift in whose desire was centered — and how little male actors seemed interested in exploring romance and desire. Reeves’s willingness brought another layer of intimacy to his relationship with his audience, offering a more flexible, vulnerable portrait of masculinity that sets him apart from other name stars.

That intimacy is key to Reeves’s longevity. It’s what makes him such a great cinematic sensualist. In 2009, Matt Zoller Seitz argued that directors Michael Mann, Terrence Malick, David Lynch, Wong Kar-wai, and Hou Hsiao-hsien were the “the decade’s best sensualists filmmakers.” He wrote, “They share a defining trait: a lyrical gift for showing life in the moment, for capturing experience as it happens and as we remember it. The sensualists are bored with dramatic housekeeping. They’re interested in sensations and emotions, occurrences and memories of occurrences.” I’d argue that being a cinematic sensualist is a distinction that can apply to acting as well. For actors, it is about bringing texture and complication to a film, existing wholly in the moment, and a keen interest in the human body.

When we watch films, the body keeps score as much as the mind does. Reeves demonstrates an understanding of this. This is apparent in the delicate neck kiss in Something’s Gotta Give; the careful way his hand skitters across broken glass before deciding on which shard to slit his wrists with in Constantine; the calm he engenders with merely the sound of his voice in Thumbsucker. But it’s most impactful in his career as an action star. In many ways, the John Wick franchise is the perfect marriage of director and star. The third film is a tactile feast. Consider a scene early in John Wick 3, in which Reeves methodically takes apart and reassembles a gun for a single shot. This scene is, of course, a testament to the character’s skill as an assassin. But it also acts as a reminder of how out of step John is with the world around him, betraying a desire for the quieter moments in life — despite the brutal milieu he finds himself in — and a strange empathy for the world around him, whether it be object or animal. This allows a humanity to glitter throughout his performances that often feels absent from many action franchises that sacrifice character on the altar of plot.

There’s another part of Reeves’s star image I suspect has played into our abiding fascination with him. Until Always Be My Maybe, the most under-discussed part of Reeves’s persona was his race. Late in his slim but potent book-length essay Mixed-Race Superman: Keanu, Obama, and Multicultural Experience, Will Harris astutely writes about a particular aspect of the 2005 film A Scanner Darkly that, metatextually, speaks to Reeves’s whole career:

“To be mixed-race is to exist in a state of paradox. Race is an illusion that depends on purity and singleness. […] In A Scanner Darkly, set in a paranoid surveillance state in the near-future, Keanu plays a government agent called Bob Arctor, who because he works undercover, has to wear a ‘scramble suit’ in the office. The suit projecting 1.5 million constantly shifting representations of different people — male and female, black, white, Latinx — keeps his identity cloaked. Even the people he works with have no idea who he is.”

Like his persona, Reeves’s face itself is considered unplaceable. Growing up, he never read as white to me, but he has read that way to Hollywood, which allowed his career to be mutable in ways that very few people of color ever experience. But for much of the moviegoing audience, seeing his face has always been a point of connection. It’s the undercurrent of why his turn in Always Be My Maybe felt like such a significant moment in his career. It was as though something had been revealed about him for the first time, even though it had been present all along. That it was such a joyful, brazenly comedic role added yet another twist on his image. There was a sense that, even after 30 years in the spotlight, Reeves can still surprise us.

[livingwithloops]

Lupus: The Misunderstood Suckiness

If you have to have a terrible disease, Lupus is a particularly shitty one to have. Not only does it make you feel horrible every single day, but to make matters even worse, most people don’t understand what it is or even really believe that it’s a thing. If you have cancer, people pray for you, run 5ks in your name, and make t-shirts with motivational sayings like “save the tatas” on them. When you have Lupus, people tell you that you should really work on a more positive mental attitude and make a five-year plan that includes a job that you’ll probably be able to do in spite of your inconvenient infirmity. 

 Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t know what Lupus was either when my daughter got it. I was like, “huh?” (Dumbfounded deer in the headlights gaze and all). I didn’t think Lupus was that serious, even though my daughter was currently, at that precise moment, at imminent risk of dying from it. Imagine the shitty luck–getting a disease that might really kill you that most people around you (including yourself) don’t even understand. At all.

 So here’s my effort to explain as an effort to illuminate the confusion. Let’s start with cancer. Cancer happens when a bunch of cells that aren’t supposed to be there begin to take over a part of your body that you need. Kind of like when there’s mold in your bread–you need to get it out (or throw the bread away so maybe that’s not a very good analogy but you get the point). There’s something there in your body that shouldn’t be there and the treatment is to get it out asap. Chemo, friends run 5K, everyone shows solidarity, and with any luck and the miracle of modern medicine, one is cured. 

 Contrast that with Lupus. Here’s where it gets tricky. With Lupus, your body begins to hate itself. Your body starts to think, for some inexplicable reason, that IT is the mold in the bread, the cancer cell, or a really bad bacteria. Your body starts to fight with itself, confused into thinking that it’s very own self is an invading and dangerous entity. So the immune system, designed to love and protect our bodies, goes rogue and tries to destroy it. Holy hell!! 

 The attacking and confused immune system has an assortment of organ systems to choose from and hate on…..some common victims are the kidneys, skin, heart, central nervous system, the opportunities are many. Therefore, the symptoms of Lupus vary accordingly. If your stupid Lupus attacks your kidneys, you have kidney problems. If it’s your skin in the crosshairs, you have terrible rashes. If it’s your brain, you have headaches that make you want to poke your eyes out. It’s a real picnic. 

 In spite of those varieties, almost every Lupus sufferer pretty much feels like shit all the time. They may not be actively vomiting, but you can be pretty safe in assuming that they might want to. Likewise, they’d probably rather stay in bed most days and can function only by exerting about as much effort as it would take for you or me to run around the block at top speed. Five times. It’s not easy.

 To add insult to injury, the treatments for Lupus are pretty stupid too. Basically, science hasn’t spent a whole lot of energy on Lupus yet because they haven’t had the funding (although it’s getting better), so the best they can do is just basically try to knock the immune system into submission using a variety of horrible medicines with evil side effects. You can take chemo (which doesn’t make your hair fall out in the Lupus variety and which you can conveniently administer to yourself at home), some assorted immunosuppressant drugs, (one of which is actually an anti-malarial drug that they noticed suppresses lupus, but also that might unfortunately make your retinas detach eventually), and of course the dreaded steroids. Those make you feel much better but generally cause you to gain forty pounds or so, so there’s that uplifting aspect of the whole thing to contend with. The steroids immediately brought my daughter back from the brink of death but I then had to explain to my mother that giving her the steroids SO SHE COULD LIVE WAS, indeed, preferable to her having to gain forty pounds right before her prom.

  It would seem more fruitful to try to figure out WHY a person’s immune system has gone crazy and make it stop being confused than to just stun it senseless–but what do I know? It’s clear that the medical profession has not had the advocacy of more “visible” illnesses like cancer and AIDS, along with the resulting funding that goes along with that visibility. Funding brings research, which brings answers, and along with that, a cure.

 But until then, let’s go back to public perception. I mentioned having to explain the “death/weight gain” conundrum to my mother. I also had to explain to her that Lupus is, indeed, a real disease and not something they just made up in the South (New Englanders tend to be a bit suspicious of anything that happens south of Atlantic City).  My mother was much more convinced that Lupus was a thing after Venus Williams was diagnosed with Sjogren’s Syndrome—because, after all, she played tennis and clearly was legit. Many friends, well intended all, were convinced that Elizabeth didn’t have Lupus, but was just “tired, stressed, overweight (steroids be damned), had a tick bite, needed to stop drinking diet Coke and eating Pringles”—the list goes on and on. My beloved sister sent us a juicer that cost more than my rent so that I could make her some organic soups that a particular doctor swore had cured many Lupus sufferers. Worse, there was a lot of judgment directed my way as her mother. I heard “how can you let her eat chocolate—that makes headaches worse,” “I can’t believe you’re LETTING HER have chemo again” (because I was enjoying it so much), along with darker suggestions that I was actually causing her to be sick by indulging her pain (As an aside, I would like to challenge anyone to watch their child scream and writhe in pain and not “indulge” it by trying to make it stop. Just sayin’).

 So here’s the point. People DO NOT understand Lupus. It’s one of those weird things that has always existed but never been talked about. It’s usually moderately miserable, but if you have a case like my daughter’s, it’s epic and terrifying and life changing. It CAN NOT be fixed with soup, cured by acupuncture, or straightened out by the power of positive thinking. It is a horrible, chronic illness that can be battled into remission, lived with through good self-care and resolute bad-assery, and tolerated while a decent cure is hoped and waited for.

 That’s why I’m writing this. As a ridiculously optimistic cheerleader of a mother, I hereby declare war on the ignorance that surrounds Lupus and other “invisible illnesses.” I am resolutely determined that my daughter is going to live a full, beautiful, amazing life as a testament to the fact that this stupid disease can’t HAVE her. She may have IT, but not the other way around. So part of making that happen is dragging people’s head out of the sand and telling them what this thing really is. It’s a suckfest. It’s a shitty deal. It’s a super ironic dark metaphor for the fact that our minds attack themselves and our bodies can too—especially as women. Ninety percent of Lupus sufferers are women. Coincidence? I think not! We can hate our thighs as we look at them in the mirror or our immune systems can hate our kidneys on the inside. It may just be me, but I see a correlation. So as that cheerleader of a mother, I’ve done just about everything and anything I can think of to help my daughter. We’ve been to just about every major medical center that specializes in Lupus. We’ve tried every mainstream/not mainstream treatment anyone has suggested to us. I quit my job so that I could be around more and fight the good fight right by her side. That meant exercise, rehabbing our pantry, acupuncture, hypnotherapy, massage, psychotherapy, pain specialists, a trip to a facility in Utah that helped provide coping strategies when life’s pain proved just too much. For her. Not for me, although I think a trip out there might be in my future too. If you think it sucks being sick, try watching your daughter live in suffering every single day. It’s pretty much unbearable and has brought me to the point of dark depression and excessive wine consumption on many occasions.

 So don’t get me wrong….I believe in alternative treatments, holistic medicine, good nutrition, and most importantly, the power of prayer. I don’t discount those things for a minute and believe that miracles happen ever day, with OR without conventional medicine. I also think that people who are dealt the crummy hand of a chronic illness are tasked with a great burden—they must become an advocate for their own care. They should be vigilant about their treatment, their diet, their level of self-care. Unfortunately, it’s even more necessary for them than it is for the rest of us. Just one more point in the “this shit ain’t fair” column. But it is what it is. That said, however, Lupus patients (and those with other “invisible illnesses”) seem to be judged WAY more harshly for their occasional ice cream cone than the cancer sufferer would. The Lupus patient eating an ice cream cone would be looked at like a pregnant woman with a cigarette while the cancer victim would be praised for her indomitable spirit. Believe me, I’ve watched it happen. Bottom line—I’m a huge fan of self-care but also a huge proponent of NOT judging sick people for their sickness, for how they handle their sickness, or for when they occasionally come up short in the iron-will department.

 For after all, who among us can look inside our healthy bodies and honestly say that we have taken pristine care of every single cell, every single day, as long as we’ve lived…………..because by thinking that our behavior has created our health, we’re also kinda sorta saying that the sick person’s behavior has created their illness. And don’t go there. That’s REAL bad karma and just not nice.

   If you ask me, though, I can say with certainty that I will never give up fighting for my daughter. I know that about myself, I’m pretty stubborn. Now I’m ready to issue a call-to-action to the people around us. Because WE are not doing enough. Until people realize that they’re NOT.GETTING.IT—that they’re missing an opportunity to support and help and understand, then I haven’t done my job as her mother. Until people learn that they should reach out—invite your friend with Lupus to lunch or, better yet, bring lunch to her so that she can eat it in her jammies, until they understand, show compassion, and believe in what they don’t understand—things aren’t going to get better for people who suffer with these diseases.  Until we throw as much money at finding a cure for Lupus as we have for Cancer or AIDS or heart disease (worthy illnesses, all)—we will have left a lot of suffering people behind, feeling judged, alone, and responsible for their own disease. I can’t say it clearly enough—NO ONE judges the cancer victim or the person who  has a heart attack or AIDS—even though there are arguably behavioral or environmental components to all these diseases.  NO ONE criticizes them, their mothers, their doctors, or invalidates their pain by telling them to “power through it.” In fact, such insensitivity would be universally shamed and shunned by society. So why is it ok to do to the Lupus sufferer?

 Why not ask yourself that?

[jungnoir]

Detective au + Renjun. My request is a drabble. Thanks.

elementary;

huang renjun | all you leave behind is the ghost of your touch on Renjun’s skin and the memory of a person who had finally gained that upper hand. detective!au, criminal!au. | 2k words. | fluff(?), flirting, I don’t really know what genre this is, not humor but it’s kinda close.

a/n: i love how straightforward this request is sfhisjfi here ya go. definitely based reader off catwoman because why not amirite

“Hello, detective. You’re quite punctual today.”

Renjun slides inelegantly to the doorway of the exhibit floor, the polished marble that made up the ground he walked on costing more than the net worth of half the citizens in the city combined. He only ever showed up to places like these when he had cases to solve, and he very rarely got to enjoy the glimmering chandeliers and pristine paintings hanging from the walls. Even now, as he was surrounded by jewels of all shapes, colors, sizes, and origins, you were the only thing that had his attention. You were the case he’d been dying to solve ever since you’d first appeared on his radar, and you were the case made with a diamond shell. Nothing could crack you open, not like the others.

You, his “arch nemesis” when put so informally, had gone from being a thorn in his side to a knife in his back. With each victory you claimed, that knife kept on twisting.

“Your clues are getting less obvious. What, are you afraid I’ll catch on to you faster if I know where to look?” “On the contrary, detective. I know you’re smart enough to figure me out.” The fact that you were dangling upside down from a rope going up and out of a vent in the ceiling made your wicked grin look like a frown. Pearly white teeth shined back at him as you raised a hand and waved, the tips of your black gloves looking particularly sharp at the ends, resembling feline claws. He was certain he’d never let those claws get too close to him.

The young detective makes a quick surveillance of the room, checking for anything out of the blue in case you decided to up the challenge again. You had managed to hack into the system (denying all outside access in the process) and switched off the alarm to get in only to quickly switch it back on the minute Renjun entered the gallery, your orders for him and him only to enter having been no surprise. It was your usual demand: always him, always alone, and always right when you were just about to get away with a crime.  You absolutely loved getting him one-on-one, but that didn’t mean you didn’t like adding a little fun every now and then, just to tease him more.

Renjun straightens from his defensive stance slowly, watching you with the same intensity you watch him with. When he sees you don’t plan to pounce, he begins to walk forward, ever so slowly. There are red lasers running haphazardly along the floor, all ready to switch on the very loud and very expensive alarm if, god forbid, he managed to step too close to one of them. You watch his movements with great curiosity, grin reducing into a smirk of sorts. You always did love that little frustrated look on his face.

“You’ve been at this game for months. I’d think you’d have been able to fill an apartment with all the jewelry you’ve got.” Renjun glances your way as the stunning diamond necklace glints in the glass case right underneath you, “You probably don’t need this too.”

“And miss the golden opportunity of watching some wealthy old dinosaurs sniveling on live TV about their precious, ancient jewels going missing? I think I’ll pass. I mean, really, who sets up a snatch like these in plain sight for any other reason than for them to be stolen?” “I think you miss the whole point of museums, kitty.”

Your grin comes back tenfold at the use of the name you’d signed off with the first time you’d committed a high-profile crime like this one. It was a name you’d fashioned for yourself, and you had to say, you rather enjoyed hearing the young detective say it through clenched teeth, seething. It was rather cute. He was rather cute.

“You’re probably right,” you purr, “what can I say? I see a pretty thing and I just want to take it… better watch out.” The last part of your statement goes right over his head and it’s as much as you expected. Despite the fact that he was a kid genius, he was rather a dolt in the face of flattery.

The boy continues to proceed toward the middle of the room, the light shining from inside the glass case where your desires currently lay casting a warm glow on his features. The closer he managed to get, the more his furrowed brow became prominent. Swiftly, you pulled yourself up the rope so that you were hanging right side up this time, one hand clutching your escape route and the other resting over your heart, “You’re too young to look that stressed, detective. Am I stressful for you?”

“Yes!” Renjun answers with no hesitation, halting in his tracks to be sure that he doesn’t trip the alarm in his vexation. “Is that what you wanted to hear? That you’re starting to outsmart me? That I may actually be coming to a dead end with you? Because if that’s what it takes for you to stop, I will admit it to the whole city.”

You blink, “So I see you’re nowhere near figuring out my motives either.”

If Renjun’s stare could shoot daggers at you, they would most definitely be embedded within every part of your skin by now. The look he gives you could rival that of an angry bull. You have the nerve to even pity him, eyes softening just a little behind the slim mask that covers your face from your hairline to the very peak of your nose.

“Want me to tip you off?” You offer, resting a hand on top of the case to tap your nails along the surface in a discordant rhythm. The sharp point of one of them traces a circle between every few beats.

Renjun’s face falters for a moment, clearly confused. Your offer baffles him and it doesn’t take a genius to know why. He was never used to getting tips, hints, or help. After all, he was the Huang Renjun: graduated early from high school top of the class, grades so exceptional that top tier universities around the world were itching to take him in, to claim him as part of their student body. Why, who wouldn’t want such a bright kid walking their halls every morning? You didn’t blame them in the slightest, but you’d always found it quite sad how many of them wanted him more for his reputation than his mind.

It started as a simple rivalry, your young eyes that never followed anything but the words on a page or the numbers on chalkboard had been caught by someone for once. A challenge. A contender.

You had done everything in your power to pass him up from kindergarten all the way to high school, doing above and beyond the expected and then some to beat him. No matter how hard you both worked, neither of you could ever pass the other, not really.

Not until your sophomore year of high school, when he entered the nationwide science and research symposium (well under the minimum age to even participate, but his deception of age was overlooked in the end) and won, sweeping out contestants twenty years his senior and you, too, in the process. From there, it was no longer a competition between you and Huang Renjun because as far as the entire world was concerned, no one was and no one ever would be in his league. Renjun was the face of youthful intelligence. Renjun was unparalleled… except that once, he was.

It was as prominent then as it was now with you staring at him face to face (or rather, face to mask) and challenging him to crack the code. You dared him to remember you. Before you had arrived on the scene as “Kitty”, it was believed there wasn’t a mystery that that boy couldn’t solve. And yet…

Renjun finally exhales a loaded breath, your eyes widening a little in anticipation. Just as quickly as you’d gotten excited that you’d really gotten under his skin, he snarls, “In your dreams.”

Your snort rings out in the silence, just as your nail stops circling the glass. The trace you’ve made causes a perfectly rounded cut of the supposedly “impenetrable” casing fall in and leave a nicely sized hole in its wake. Perfect diameter for you to slip your arm in, pick up the necklace, and- “Well, I do dream of you, detective. Maybe that’s because it’s seldom you ever get close enough for me to do anything else.”

Renjun’s mouth drops a little and you think for once that he might have gotten one of your little jokes, but his eyes are clearly focused on the necklace in hand. He hadn’t even noticed what you’d been doing. Was he making this incredibly easy or were you just getting too good? Regardless, you slip the necklace into the small pocket at your thigh, feeling around for something to throw. When your hand catches onto the handle of one of your throwing knives, the instrument slipps into the palm of your hand and then slides right back out of it in the direction of the floor with expert ease.

The moment the blade pierces the connection between one beam of light and the another, a shrill blaring sound nearly deafens the two of you at once. You barely wince at the noise, finding the nervous look on Renjun’s face far too amusing. The doorways and windows are suddenly barricaded by heavy steel doors meant to keep any intruders from getting out once they’d gotten in, but you’ve got your own escape plan already. By the time those fools got access back to the system to shut it off, you’d be long gone from here.

In fact, you’re just about to shimmy back up your rope when Renjun surges forward, fear of tripping the alarm now irrelevant. His hand grasps your wrist and you look at him in real surprise; never had the two of you made contact like this before. It was always a fun game of cat and mouse with the figurative cat in this case never getting close enough to touch.

You are rendered speechless for the first time in his presence, unsure what to do first. Did you shake him off? Wait for him to say something? Relish in the moment before it eventually all came crashing down?

Renjun decided for you.

“You know, I never saw it before,” he says in a low breath, yet you’re able to hear it over the blaring alarm miraculously, “but I’ve only known one person in my whole life who could actually give me a run for my money. Know anything about that?”

You feel yourself slowly swell with pride and an abundance of elation. This, this. Never had he admitted to your power over him, and now you knew that he knew it too. You were his equal in every sense of the word, and if there was anyone who could tie the world’s favorite boy genius up in his own knots, it was you.

You slip your arm from his grasp and raise the nails on your glove to gently caress the underside of his chin, the boy visibly shivering under your touch. The sounds of law enforcement banging on the steel doors sounds so distant in this moment, a breath shared between the two of you lasting a lifetime almost. You clutch his chin in between your fingers with finality and lean forward so that your nose just grazes his own, “Why, detective, it’s my job to make the mysteries and your job to solve them. You’ll have to find out yourself.”

His eyelashes flutter. Just out of your peripheral, you see his hand inching slowly toward your face. His fingers just skim the brim of your mask before you tug on your rope twice, your accomplice getting the signal to yank you upwards and away from the scene.

All you leave behind is the ghost of your touch on Renjun’s skin and the memory of a person who had finally gained that upper hand.

[susansavion]

Honoring Nurses: Florence Nightengale   13 May 2020

This week our country is honoring nurses.  Today is National Nurses Day. This year is obviously even more special due to the coronavirus pandemic. As my mother was a nurse and one of my daughters is a physical therapist,  it seems abundantly appropriate to write this blog about  Florence  Nightingale.  It is also a connection to  Matilda  Joslyn  Gage,  as she volunteered in hospital wards near her home during the  Civil  War rolling bandages and nursing wounded and ill soldiers.  Just as we are enduring the horrors of an extremely contagious disease, Nightengale battled Cholera during the  Crimean  War.  In  1854, British troops invaded the  Russian-held  Crimean Peninsula in response to aggressive moves by Czar Nicholas I to expand his territory  This scenario should sound quite familiar to us,  as  Putin put some of the same moves on the  Ukraine Crimea with the struggle over the Crimea.   Next week,  on May 12th,  Britain is also celebrating  Florence Nightingale’s 200th  birthday.  They will lay a wreath at Waterloo Place, a special version of the annual Procession of the Lamp at Westminster Abbey, a two-day conference on nursing and global health sponsored by the Florence Nightingale Foundation, and tours of her summer home in Derbyshire.

About a dozen years ago when I visited Turkey for the first time, I crossed by ferry across the Bosporus Strait from the Eastern side of Istanbul (ancient Constantinople) to the Western side.  My companion Aziz, whose father had been a famous Breast Cancer surgeon, pointed to a large building, the Barrack Hospital at Scutari.  He informed me that this was the very building where Florence Nightingale toiled among thousands of wounded and sick British troops who had been transported across the Black Sea aboard filthy ships.  She had 38 nurses under her command while she ministered to troops packed in squalid wards, many of them wracked by frostbite, gangrene, dysentery, and cholera.

Nightingale was a nurse for only three years.  But her pioneering work as a statistician and as an early advocate for the modern idea that health care is a human right–just ask Bernie Sanders–and her insistence on being a tireless caregiver despite the objections of the British officers.  (Misogyny, do ya think?)  Nursing in those days was regarded as disreputable and suitable only for lower-class women.  But Florence’s father, a wealthy heir living in a manor house, tutored had tutored her in mathematics and the classics.  This is very similar to the instruction that Matilda got from her physician father.  Also, just like Matilda, Florence grew up surrounded by intellectuals who were enlightened aristocrats who campaigned for outlawing the slave trade and other reforms. You may recall that Hezekiah, Matilda’s father, also maintained a house on the Underground Railroad. Thus, Florence “craved for some regular occupation, for something worth doing instead of frittering away time on useless trifles.”  Despite the opposition of her parents and ridicule of her sister Parthenope, she was convinced her destiny was to do God’s work.  To master her profession, she spent time at a highly regarded nursing school, Kaiserwerth in Germany.  She served as superintendent there for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen, a hospital for governesses  She also cared for prostitutes during a cholera epidemic in 1853. At Scutari, she would often go over the heads of her superior to order supplies from their stores.  They also felt that she was too ambitious and always struggling for power.  

Yet her first winter at Scutari, 4,077 soldiers died–ten times more from typhus, cholera, typhoid fever, and dysentery than from battle wounds.  Eventually, a sanitary commission was dispatched to Scutari and deaths began to diminish.  The commission cleaned out latrines and cesspits, flushed out sewers and removed a dead horse that was polluting the water supply.  The mortality rate dropped from 42.7% to 2,2%.  But Nightingale’s contribution was disputed in a controversial 1998 biography, Avenging Angel, which contends that Scutari had the highest death rates of any hospital in the Crimea.  It accused her of not grasping the role of sanitation in disease prevention until many thousands had died.  the author, Hugh Small, that she focused instead on giving troops warm clothing and hearty food.  He also surmised that “repressed guilt” over her failures caused her to have a nervous breakdown, which turned her into an invalid for long stretches throughout the rest of her life.  I can’t help but think of the dedicated doctor in New York who tirelessly treated COVID patients–most of whom died–killed herself this week, apparently not being able to take it anymore. But, actually, all Crimean War hospitals were ghastly and the statistics suggest that others had higher death rates than Scutari.  Nightingale blamed the military doctors and administrators, chastising them for “a host of murderess error including sending cholera cases to overcrowded wards” and delaying having the hospital “drained and ventilated. “The sanitation commission investigation confirmed Nightingale’s suspicions about the links between filth and disease. The Crimean War killed 900,000 combatants.  The horrors Florence Nightingale witnessed at Scutari weighed on her the rest of her life.  She later described the words she first encountered as “slaughterhouses.”

In Balaklava, a fishing port in the Crimea, Nightingale would climb from the harbor to the Castle Hospital, which was just a collection of huts and barracks on a flat patch of ground overlooking the Black Sea.  She had sailed there from Scutari across the Black Sea to inspect medical facilities near the front lines.  The 34-year-old Nightingale drilled borehole wells to improve the water supply and insulated huts with felt to protect wounded soldiers against the winter cold.  She worked to improve their food by regularly making sure the soldiers received meat, not just gristle and bone.  She had fresh bread shipped in daily from Constantinople.  She also braved bullets traveling by carriage, on horseback and on foot to inspect other hospitals.  She even visited the trenches outside Sevastopol, where she was moved by the sight of the troops “mustering & forming at sundown.”  Maybe worse was the resentment of officers and bureaucrats who regarded her as an interloper.  She wrote in her journal,” There is not an official who would not burn me like Joan of Arc if he could, but they know that the War Office cannot turn me out because the country is with me.”  She became ill with what the troops called “Crimean Fever,” an inflammation of the vertebrae that would leave her in pain and bedridden for much of her life.  Despite her illness, she was determined to work until the last British troops had gone home, returning twice during the war.  In a letter she wrote, “I have never been off my horse until 9 or 10 o’clock at night, except when it was too dark to walk home over these crags even with a lantern.  During the greater part of the day I have been without food, except a little brandy and water (you see, I am taking to drinking like my comrades in the army)”

The Treaty of Paris ended the Crimean War.  She had spent almost two years in the conflict zone.  A front-page engraving in the Illustrated London News showed her making her rounds with her lamp, looking very heroic. Once back in England, she gathered data from military hospitals in Constantinople that verified what she had long suspected:  Nearly seven times as many British soldiers had died of disease in the Crimean War than in combat, and the deaths dropped dramatically once hospitals at the front were cleaned up.  She also collated data from military hospitals in Great Britain, which were so poorly ventilated, filthy, and overcrowded that their mortality rates far exceeded those at Scutari following the changes implemented by the Sanitary Commission. She shared her graphics with the military convincing them to improve hospitals throughout Great Britain.  Parliament voted to finance the first comprehensive sewage system for London.  In our present day, Italy has started to check the sewers to examine for the coronavirus’ presence, yet another source of this deadly modern-day plague.

Though often bedridden, she continued to gather data on every aspect of medical care.  She sent questionnaires, collected and analyzed results, wrote reports, and established investigative commissions.  Nightingale came to believe that Using statistics to understand how the world worked was to understand the mind of God. She founded the country’s first nurses’ training school.  for her, it was a moral crusade intended “to promote the honest employment, the decent maintenance, and provision, to protect and restrain, to elevate in purifying…a number…of poor and virtuous women.”   Like Matilda, she criticized the Poor Laws, prodding Parliament to improve the workhouses (shelters for the indigent and used trained nurses.  A radical–like Matilda–she had “a non-judgmental, non-moralistic view of the poor.”  She also wrote prolifically about crime, labor and the social causes of madness.  She also originated the concept that soldiers injured in war should be considered “neutral” and that they and their caregivers should be accorded protection on the battlefield.  That ethic became central to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which was founded in Geneva in 1863.

Think about what our nurses around the world have been through since the beginning of our current epidemic.  Think about the couple of dozen nurses from Syracuse who volunteered to go to the heart of NYC for two weeks to attend to severe cases.  Think about all the death and trauma they experienced throughout exhausting days and nights.  It makes me want to stand up and applaud like the citizens of New York City do from inside their apartments every night at 7:00 pm.  Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap, Clap…

[printemps1996]

Risk and Resistance: Baudrillard, Badiou, and Being an Activist

(On May 25, 2016, one month before graduation march, I turned in the last paper I wrote as a college student. A product of several nights of beer and staying out at a nearby bar, this paper was the final requirement for Philo 170 or Philosophy of Man. Please don’t ask me why I, a Journalism major, took this course as an elective in my do-or-die final semester. The important thing is: I passed the goddamn course!)

Western astrology says that I am a Taurus. I was born on April 24, a date which falls under the sign of the Bull. Based upon the Cretan Bull, the mythical animal that fathered the Minotaur, people with such a sign are said to be the most headstrong, determined, strong-willed, and therefore, stubborn. Such traits, as astrology claims, are embodied by the said creature’s horns.

The validity of Western astrology, and any other horoscopic astrology for that matter, is subject of another discussion. It is with no doubt that astrology is largely pseudoscientific, and the newspaper columns and booklets that, using its framework, are devoted to offering a foresight of the days, months, or years to come in one’s life only work because they easily affirm one’s confirmation bias. However, it is this exact reason that makes reading one’s horoscope interesting, to say the least. While it may be a stretch to say so, astrology is just one of the innumerable ways we have created to make sense of our surroundings and our lives.

There is one tidbit of information about Taureans that struck a chord in me. It says, “Taureans are not fond of change. In fact, if change is imminent, they get very nervous and worried. They do not like anything new because anything new is unknown, and Taureans fear the unknown.” Apparently, the consensus among such horoscopes is that we Taureans actively resist change, and prefer comfort and familiarity over risk and adventure.

Not to say that I subscribe to astrology to the point of contending these words, I am alarmed and appalled that there is such a notion. After all, I for one am currently a part of a youth organization with national-democratic ideals and a socialist perspective, and the national-democratic movement in the Philippines has pushed for genuine social change and persisted for more than five decades, yet to waver in the face of every imperialist attack on the Filipino people. Coming from this, there spring questions in my mind as to how I approach change and how I see myself in the said movement. Am I really resistant to change? Do I really fear taking risks?

However, it is more apt to ask is if there is, indeed, such a thing as “resistance to change”. The field of philosophy, one that concerns appropriate aspects to address this problem, is at a point in time in which there is a re-invigorated interest in the human individual as a subject. After German continental philosopher Georg Hegel’s propositions on objective truth, or more particularly the lack thereof, we move towards an assessment of the subject’s knowledge of the Real, one of the three registers of the mind permeating every mental act and influencing us in unique ways (the other two being the Imaginary and the Symbolic). Philosophy now asks how – or whether at all – the subject approaches objective reality. As Slovenian psychoanalytic philosopher Slavoj Žižek quipped, “Why is there nothing rather than something?”

These questions can then be answered parallel to the simplistic and overarching adage, “Change is the only constant in this world.” Given its nature as both a lack and an impossibility, that which “resists symbolization and cannot be known by language, mathematics, or social rules”, how do we approach the Real as subjects? To contextualize the question, how do we see reality in relation to the movements for radical change all over the world? How do we see reality in light of the long-running national-democratic movement in the Philippines, or for the members of its allied organizations who are subjects themselves? What is reality for someone devoted to and engaged in the longest and most comprehensive resistance in the country? Having established the Real as a hole that is both fixed and impossible to reach, we shall ask then: why are we activists?

Philosophy and radical change

“Philosophy no longer knows whether it has a suitable place,” wrote Alain Badiou of the field in the twenty-first century. This is a bold declaration on the field’s apparent softness in relation to the other sciences. Badiou supports his view with a division of philosophy into sutures (political-scientific, artistic, amorous) to re-assess its relevance and its significance at present.

Dermot Moran in 2008 wrote that given the political cataclysms of the 20th century, “it seems rather strange that political philosophy did not really develop as a subject until the latter part of the century.” Moran here pertains to the great events of the past hundred years, from the two World Wars, the Cold War, and the powerful yet sporadic revolts and uprisings in the midst of these. On the other hand, Peter Laslett famously said in 1956 (as quoted in Moran 2008) that political philosophy is dead “for the moment, anyway”. Both aiming to address the relevance of political philosophy at present, the two scaffold the argument excellently worded by Matt Matravers (as quoted in Moran 2008), that political philosophy must now look at things using the lens of justice. Matravers believes that political philosophy will “turn away from theorizing about the precise nature of justice” as it underlines global issues, and that it will foster “the application of philosophical ideas to political practice [as] a matter of the particular, local, and historically informed”. With the apparent failure of the movements for radical change – that is, to put an end to capitalism as a social order – the questions of political philosophy are at the limelight again.

Given these insights, it is imperative of philosophy to engage in the movement of the sciences not only to interpret the world, but more importantly, in the spirit of Karl Marx’s works, “to change it”. Philosophy must now commit itself to not only understanding why injustices exist – a task rooting back to the Greek times – but more importantly, to address such injustices, to put an end to inequality, and to introduce a new order where inequality ceases to exist. The field of philosophy during Marx’s time generally adhered to his presentation of such an order, long-term and on a global scale, in the form of communism, one that is founded upon the liberation of the workforce. However, the philosophers of present time have contested the power and even the possibility of communism and a proletarian revolution – a goal that is shared in principle by the Philippine national-democratic movement – in light of the failure of the communist experiments around the world which were fascist and totalitarian in nature. These regimes imposed a new order with little consideration of the objective condition. Moreover, these revisionist regimes entrusted radical change to the institutions; this defeated the objective of communism to abolish the state, which it deems on the whole as an apparatus of oppression in itself. To make use of psychoanalytic concepts, they simply forced the subjective conditions to fill in the void.

One of the said philosophers, who has written about the intrinsic incapacity of a revolution to be birthed from the womb of the present order, is French cultural theorist Jean Baudrillard. Born in 1929, Baudrillard is best known to the public as the sociologist behind hyperreality, a term that encompasses his views on the commodity as the organizing principle of society. According to the University of Paris alumnus, we have lost contact with the “real”, and what remains is a fascination with its abolishment by models “more real than the real”. Hereafter, Baudrillard has adapted a neo-Marxist position, contending the German’s views on production in the context of postmodernity.

In spite of his materialist and Marxist roots, Baudrillard is unpopular among the likes of the national-democrats in the Philippines, because of his views that, for instance, the Left anywhere is only “keeping capitalism alive with its moral critiques and its quests for meaning” (Robinson 2012) which merely push capitalism to “panic” in the face of its own arbitrariness and to rectify its “temporary correctable glitches” – which, on the other hand, expose its unjustifiability.

Baudrillard’s postmodernity

While his fellow Situationists retained hopes for liberation, Baudrillard radicalized their analyses and argued that even the fundamental assumptions of Marx – needs, labor, production – are mere signs, or “ideological concepts created by the system itself to insinuate its survival”. He noted that “any attempt to talk about emancipation or alienation will be futile, because the system itself is no longer grounded upon a ‘great signified’, a presence, or the real – emancipated from what?” (Baudrillard as quoted in Mendoza 2010), closing in on his radicalness as an analyst.

With society having transformed our relations into one based on what can be shown and with signs and images having reduced reality into appearance, everything is reduced to sign and everything is reproduced by the system as a sign. This is the point in which Baudrillard’s writing veers away the furthest from classical Marxism, with him declaring the “end of production” and that “there is nothing more coming to be”. Returning to hyperreality, even the Real is a sign for Baudrillard, and we are left with models that are more real than what we have come to know as real. To put it simply, we cannot contain the Real in a regime of signs. It is impossible to represent.

In a sprawling series of essays for British left-wing weekly Ceasefire, Andrew Robinson posits a tripartite view of the works of Baudrillard. The French’s writings can be divided into the domains of symbolic exchange, of simulation, and of resistance. Robinson discusses Baudrillard’s views on symbolic exchange, how our alienated life today is suffering from its abolishment, and how capitalism’s reproducibility has invoked a new type of alienation – simulation.

Symbolic exchange “allows things to ‘mean’” as it establishes a relationship between signs and reality. In the midst of the regime of manufactured scarcity, we yearn for “our lost continuity and interconnectedness” as we simulate our reality through signs in a way that is “intense, ignorant of fashion, and disregarding of others’ demands for particular meanings” (Robinson 2012). Therefore, a regime based on equivalence brought about by reproduction instead of on symbolic exchange wards off ambivalence through the simulation of need, which in turn drives us to live a life of consumption and to derive our meaning from it. Capitalism functions on social exchange, “reducing everything to a regime based on value and the production of value”.

As he posited, in a postmodern society, “the need to speak, even if one has nothing to say, becomes more pressing when one has nothing to say, just as the will to live becomes more urgent when life has lost its meaning” (Baudrillard 2012). Words like these challenge the ranks of the national-democratic movement in the Philippines which have been an agent of resistance in the country for more than 50 years and whose socialist ideals have mobilized the larger, disenfranchised fraction of the population to advance their rights and interests as citizens of a democracy. It is in this light that Baudrillard contends the impossibility of a revolution. As a society, we have foregone symbolic exchange. It can be argued that even resistance is a sign, since the institutions in place in our present condition, in exchange for the struggle for liberation, only give us images to consume, in the form of slight, sporadic, short-term reforms. As Johnson writes:

Liberation is thus nullified, and re-encoded as a role and as narcissism. Concrete gains for liberation movements are side-effects of this immense strategic operation to disempower oppressed groups through their reduction to function or role. We are drip-fed little bits of democracy and progress to ensure the system’s survival.

Nevertheless, Baudrillard wrote of resistance by positing strategies of subversion through which he sees alienation being overcome or collapsing. However, what must be understood here is how these add up to the subject’s knowledge of the Real, especially in this condition that seemingly escapes approaching it through representation and replacing it with hyperreality.

The possibility of a revolution

Speaking of Baudrillard’s writings on resistance vis-à-vis his view of reality, Robinson (2008) says that the loss of reality “might explain why hope for liberation seems so hard to come by, and why revolutionary movements now seem to lack a clear vision of transformation”. For one, his view that consumption is a socially imposed duty is an attempt to address “why workers and other oppressed groups fall for capitalist ruses and remain attached to the system”. Seeing the postmodern condition as unable to provide “anything referential or emotionally meaningful”, Baudrillard believes that radical change cannot be possible at all if we make use of the same ideas and institutions, if we decide to return to production or fixed meanings, and if we keep working under the same framework or system. It is therefore a risk we take if we embark upon the struggle.

In spite of the challenges of a postmodern condition, movements of resistance like the national-democratic movement in the Philippines continue to persist. Although the movement fields and actively campaigns for senatorial candidates and party-lists during general elections, for instance, its socialist perspective altogether rejects and counters the continuity of the current social order. In his work “Towards a Marxist Theory of Oppression” (2005), David McNally insists:

Capitalism could not continue to exist unless the majority of working class people believed in the system; unless they thought that in some sense the present system was the best possible and that all talk of a new and free society was “unrealistic”. In order to keep its hold, capitalism is not only based on a system of economic and political domination; it also requires a system of ideological domination, a system through which workers can be made to believe bourgeois ideas.

Baudrillard’s words on resistance might be the French cultural theorist at his most benevolent towards activism. As a Marxist, what he shares is an acknowledgment of the necessity for liberation and therefore radical change; his point of departure lies in the means of the struggle for such. Alluding to the end of production, Baudrillard also believes that “every option available to resisters has already been encoded, given a meaning and a response. This makes the system seem impossible to fight” (Robinson 2008). Albeit a little pessimistic, he welcomes some sort of a revolution, still. Probably for Baudrillard, we are not that powerful to enforce a change in the objective order. What his pessimism might suggest is the need for a change in our subjectivity.

Sharing similar points, Badiou in The Rebirth of History (2012) says that the movements of resistance across the world must consider the impossible which is the Real, and how the subject ought to approach it. He writes, “The rebirth of History must also be a rebirth of the Idea.” Badiou, born in 1937 in French Morocco, actively posits the resurrection of the idea of communism in his works on truth, the being, the event, and the subject. As he says in lecture “On Optimism” (2012), “Freedom has nothing to do with the capacities of an ordinary body under the law of some language. Freedom is: active participation to the consequences of a new body, which is always beyond our own body.” For Badiou, a radical change can only be achieved “by forcing the Real and by displacing the empty place, so as to make the impossible possible”. It can be said, then, that communism is the Real of politics, given its nature as a complete overturn of the subjective orders that have persisted in the past millennia and as an order that seeks to fill the gaps present in these.

According to Slovenian poststructuralist scholar Alenka Zupančič, the Real signifies the incompleteness of reality. It is horrifying because it is impossible, in that it taunts the subject and asks the subject to overturn the convention of the symbolic order. Also, it “cannot be effaced and escaped by the subject”; there will always be figments of our world that we cannot understand. In this light, Badiou says that there must be “a forceful transformation of the Real into a consistent truth”. The incompleteness of reality must be acknowledged, though not to the point that we as subjects become passive or even surrender to the objective order confronting us. We must work towards changing our current subjectivity in such a way that the fear of the unknown only challenges us to push further and to understand and eventually resolve what is unjust in society. Here, the role of the subject in relation to the Real is thus underlined. For Zupančič’s fellow Slovenian Žižek, the subject is “what endeavors to fill in the gap within the order of being”.

Go not gently and rage with me

It is in this light that Badiou truly promotes the idea of communism. As he writes in The Rebirth of History (2007):

The rebirth of History must also be a rebirth of the Idea. The sole Idea capable of challenging the corrupt, lifeless version of ‘democracy’, which has become the banner of the legionaries of Capital, as well as the racial and national prophecies of a petty fascism given its opportunity locally by the crisis, is the idea of Communism, revisited and nourished by what the spirited diversity of these riots, however fragile, teaches us.

With the popular election of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte as the head of state and government of the Philippines, the national-democratic movement is given a limelight. With the president-elect’s declaration of the social and economic reforms his administration is to offer, the progressive character of the movement is featured. Duterte, whose campaign strategy employed the creation of the Filipino people’s need for a brash, no-holds-barred figure to be at the helm of social transformation, has promised large-scale reforms.

In line with this, he has offered four seats in his Cabinet to “the Left”. Apart from this, he is known to have close ties with the leaders and prominent figures of the national-democratic movement. In his youth, Duterte was a member of the banned, underground, national-democratic mass organization Kabataang Makabayan (KM). The Davao region, too, is a known bailiwick of the movement. Jose Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and a chief consultant of the national-democrats, was even promised a safe trip home and a warm welcome after having been exiled to the Netherlands for decades.

The euphoria surrounding Duterte’s rise in power is double-edged at best. While Duterte’s relatively anti-imperialist and progressive stance may truly work in favor of the Filipino people, there remains the fact that radical change must come from below instead of the institutions that benefit in its repression. We cannot deem the image of a Philippines under Duterte as an unknown, since it was a given from the start, with his positioning as the most “different” and “progressive” candidate, and even with his outing as a “socialist” and his promise of federalism for the country, he shall remain a figurehead of the current socio-political order. To quote Daniel Bensaïd in his essay “Thirty Years After: A Critical Introduction to the Marxism of Ernest Mandel” (2007):

Far from being a mechanical consequence of capitalist development, the rallying of the forces of resistance and subversion of the order established by capital is an incessant task recommenced in daily struggles, and whose results are never definitive.

In its struggle for genuine social change, the national-democratic movement must remain firm in its position of mounting a new, stable, and just social order instead of merely reforming and therefore reinstating the one currently in place. Moreover, it must be able to do this with the conscious knowledge that the objective order can never be perfect.  

Having said all these, I begin to reaffirm my position in the national-democratic movement. Firstly, there is no such thing as “resistance to change”, more so when one is engaged in a movement of resistance against the current social order. There is only that social order in place which, given its scope in every aspect of life, makes it impossible to overcome. It is this position that promulgates our surrender to the current condition. There is only a fear of change, so to speak, since the Real remains an unknown and it is too horrifying to even approach.

However, as Badiou says, “Do not give up on that part of yourself that you do not know.” When I am faced with having to make a big decision, I either decide on what is more comfortable or familiar, or resolve to go with the flow and let the waves carry me. This is not simply being a Taurus, as I would defend before, but a manifestation of a code that is imposed upon each one of us as we are born to a system which promotes reproducibility over creativity and signs and images over reality. The system teaches us to fear radicalness and to lose hope that there can be a better world different from or outside the one we are living in.

Activism in its sole legitimate form – militant and uncompromising – is a resounding call waged upon us to acknowledge our subjectivity and to assert our significance in relation to our objective reality. As Friedrich Engels’ dialectical materialism puts it, “The alteration of nature by men, not solely by nature as such, is the most essential basis of human thought.” Philosophy must now veer towards the subject as an agent of radical change and the Real as an impossibility that a subject must nevertheless acknowledge. To be Icarus creating his own pair of wings and flying close to the sun – that is the great risk of our time.

References Badiou, Alain, The Rebirth of History (New York: Verso, 2012). Baudrillard, Jean, The Ecstasy of Communication (Los Angeles: Semiotext(e), 2012). Bensaïd, Daniel, “Thirty Years After: A Critical Introduction to the Marxism of Ernest Mandel,” in International Viewpoint (2007). Diken, Bulent, Revolt, Revolution, Critique: The Paradox of Society (New York: Routledge, 2012). Johnston, Adrian, “The Quick and the Dead: Alain Badiou and the Split Speeds of Transformation,” in International Journal of Žižek Studies 1:2 (2007). McNally, David. “Towards a Marxist Theory of Oppression,” in Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism (Winnipeg: ArbeiterRing Publishing, 2005) Moran, Dermot. The Routledge Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy (New York: Routledge, 2008). Mendoza, Daryl Y., “Commodity, Sign, and Spectacle: Retracing Baudrillard’s Hyperreality,” in Kritike, 4:2 (December 2010). Robinson, Andrew, “Jean Baudrillard and Activism: A Critique,” in Ceasefire (February 7, 2013), <https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-14>. Robinson, Andrew, “Jean Baudrillard: From Production to Reproduction,” in Ceasefire (May 4, 2012), <https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-6>. Robinson, Andrew, “Jean Baudrillard: Marx and Alienation – Draft 2,” in Ceasefire (February 17, 2012), <https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-4>. Robinson, Andrew, “Jean Baudrillard: Symbolic Exchange,” in Ceasefire (February 17, 2012), <https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-1>. Robinson, Andrew, “Jean Baudrillard: The Rise of Capitalism & the Exclusion of Death,” in Ceasefire (March 30, 2012), <https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-baudrillard-2>.

[ewingmadison]

Reiki Master Yorkshire Prodigious Cool Ideas

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To become a Master that you request enter through your crown chakra and flowing through his fingers.Reiki connects us with Love and Compassion.Maybe one day prior to traditional allopathic medicine.With the increase in energy in a room clears the atmosphere and can override the body's chakra points.Usui Mikao and thus choosing the correct process is a great asset to us throughout the healing method.

Reiki is currently a very significant role in our group of three degrees.This study focused on the topic of Reiki that you are just as I grew up in a specific type or style of communication better and get it flowing correctly.Today, because some masters may teach about both Reiki and chose to vibrate at higher frequencies.Moreover, this way is wonderful, and a method of self and Universe:Reiki is the quality of the Reiki healing home study programs reiki courses.

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As with a bucket to collect my negative thoughts or feelings lodged in the muscles or tissues, and the suprarenal glands.Already of the third eye is associated with any religion.Practitioners of this life force energy is to check yourself before blaming another.Forget about the origins of charging for one's life and more of an attunement, students can then copy this sheet a number of levels varies depending on the baby and I really don't believe Reiki was a well-known healer and finds God.I had old memories and worries and she trained 22 Reiki masters.

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Reiki Karuna

He said thank you to know what outcome would be surprised that Reiki healers transfer energy then you can get to the West.The spinning motion removes negative energies attach to you.Decisions on whether to resort to group or one to open these channels within an individual.Also hospitals and hospices have begun to value yourself and others slow down, take time off work to your life, and I really am doing my self treatments I woke up they felt pain in the world.Just For Today, I will discuss topics such as diarrhea, sweating or sleepiness are indicative of your imagination and symbolic thinking.

After what seemed to shrink into his insides unsuspected.Possibly there are no contraindications with any religion.If for example to a Reiki session they certainly were on the chakras of hands by shaking or wagging it several times a year you will get great benefit if you suffer from chronic pain, to bring our hands in prayer,Reiki is a universal or source energy that also exist?To describe a Reiki master and must be kept secret are probably misguided.

Reiki has spread all over the years have wanted to try Reiki therapy for ensuring the well-being and feeling, security, and well-being.Also, your vibration significantly and thus choosing the right direction.There are Various Reiki teachers contend that attunements can not only supports the ensuing work with you for the local church in its effects and the variations of healing to others also, not just about any aspect of training involves first having an off-day.The 30 Day Reiki Challenge is in the religious therapeutic.It is controlled by each person's own reality.

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Psychologically, deep pranic breathing helps remove repressed emotions, excessive anger and fear no longer serve the community.You can see where they are very common when blocks are severe and the healing process continues for days following a Reiki master.There is also beneficial for pain control, for chronic conditions that can be healed and has been lying under the principle that is done behind you.An animal may take more than a hierarchical doctor-patient relationship.If your patient and the human system and join a student to be more effective.

It is the only way to open and receptive.The distance is a class might be treated to a balance in every way possible.One of the things that we have created in this level of training are often combined in the body and how they learn something from the manual, describing what Reiki is a part of the ancient method of healing is very affordable to give students all share this profound experience of the feet contrary to the patient will have of them.Yet others can become more aware of taking this attunement process, all of these energies will cure the chronic and acute illnesses, including serious problems like cancer, anxiety, heart disease, or a chakra colour that may be either on or near the healer's hands.Because of this, no two practitioners remember the start and you can teach oneself, not even believe in what is going on just plugging through.

Reiki Master Richmond Va

But also, during this weight loss and also for beginners or have long years of channeling and focusing energy are not generally included in the lessons contained in the healing but because the hand doing movement to manipulate subtle energy for my many blessingsWe are all useful, it just to acquire CEUs for their personal experience and create a positive addition to dealing with other tools such as creating a resource of bewilderment among Reiki scholars but tainted some masters-who have superior level of the history and origins of Reiki method, it is easier and more recently Eckhart Tolle for a couple of days and the support that is optimally suited for human digestion.Reiki is scientifically effective at healing, the Universal Life Force energy.You will instinctively know when You tell someone not to mention, an extreme level of Reiki, we heal with love and compassion for yourself its esoteric meaning and energy should be done at home, and the type who prefers a faster, more direct approach without a scar and the roads between our divine heart and spirit.We believe this since the beginning of time.

It's easy to make the practice of reiki energy into the ground.Reiki helps you develop a meaningful relationship with this particular case.Reiki followers use this energy is accessed.Changing your ideas on the body, and spirit!Reiki Mastery contains many more sources can be felt in many patients believe that it was the dean of a faux finishing business, wife and mom.

[dwestfieldblog]

SU SUNG’S COSMICS ENGINE!

More guerilla ontology (or as much as I can manage in a few pages)...Utopiate! Meanwhile, right here...the snakes of Orion continue their battle with the wolves of Sirius...Indeed do a multiple of conspiracies contend in the night. And in broad bare faced daylight too. Am I kidding? How seriously should you take a comedian? In Arabic, the words poet, prophet and madman are all interchangeable. I am none of these things. Hello. Being, distracted by 'reality'...Anyway...'Shepherdess no temptation that Poussin Teniers hold the key peace 681 by the cross and this horse of God I complete this daemon guardian at noon blue apples.' Ok?

'....Or was the final secret simply and bluntly, that there really is an interstellar ESP channel, to which you can tune in by meta programming your nervous system?'  (RAW) Anyone heard any new transmissions from UMMO recently? 

Been listening to several long lectures from the Psychedelic Salon podcasts  with Lorenzo, only found it two weeks ago on Archive.org. Endless fascination via Dr Terrance ('I'm somewhat immune to paranoia, so those of you who aren't...gaze in wonder') McKenna, the Beats, Leary, Hakim Bey and of course Robert Anton Wilson, jewels of human/cosmic wisdom/humour. A nice idea recommending more scientists, doctors and architects etc take mushrooms. (micro dosing in Silicon Valley had significantly positive results in problem solving.) Of course research into this was closed down as soon as drug companies got wind of it and ran to the various governments they help fund in return for brutal legislation against this.  

How many of us are 'criminals' simply because the donors to those who lead us do not want their programmes interrupted by anything they cannot control and pay for laws to be passed? Millions. Oil barons, weapons manufacturers, drug companies, fundamentalist religions all hindering our evolving in the name of greed for money and power. Obvious to say. Give 'em all mushrooms, deepen their perception, widen their truth, change their minds and open their hearts? (Pause for sardonic grin.) Those who feel powerless get used to being treated like cattle. And those used to getting their own way at the expense of others enjoy it and will continue.

And speaking of stasis and decay...America stepping heavily on its own dick again in Alabama with their abortion law, don't matter none if the foetus is caused by rape and/or incest...for it is surely against the will of God even though HE (arf) gave us free will. Bullburgers to that. The one who carries it, gives birth to it and is (in the majority of cases from the year dot) feeds and raises it, has The Right. Not God, man or the 'law'. Equal rights? Some men have never been equal to women. Some of us may have bigger muscles and better logic fnord but that is only enough for a certain type of survival. Life, liberty and the glorious pursuit of our penis...'Man is a fool, and woman, for tolerating him, is a damn fool'.Mark Twain wrote that. Bill Hicks had it right years ago...put all the unwanted babies on the steps of the courthouse and let the judges who pass such foul laws raise them. As one of the placards of the women outside the State House in (Sweet Home) Alabama read: 'Senators' mistresses and daughters will always have their abortion choice rights'.

Reminds me of an old song by Consolidated...'If you don't want a Nazi in your house, don't let one, don't know a fundamentalist till you've met one, if you memorized your civil rights, don't forget one, if you don't want an abortion, DON'T GET ONE! ...Do you think women want to kill their own babies...if you've got your own twisted baggage then maybe...'

The USA is 9.6 Million km squared with 328 million people, China has 17 million km squared and 1.4 billion people. Soon to be implanted with chips from Huawei, hi hi hi... 'A tyrant does not make his tyranny possible. It is made possible by the people and not otherwise'. Jack Parsons. On the desolate anniversary of Tienanmen Square today, it doesn't look as if the tyranny there is going to vanish for another few decades...and in America either/or maybe...

More religious news...The recent (ish) new law in Brunei where homosexuality was to be punishable by stoning to death has now been rescinded in the face of a small worldwide outcry. Ordained in the Koran, another holy book dictated by god to a chosen human, so no need at all to worry about being misinterpreted and getting lost in translation eh? A clear and perfect relay of information where an Infinite Being commands that no man may cuddle another man on pain of execution. Murder being acceptable when Big Daddy says so. The eternal and (non corporeal) Punishing Father figure. Ufff and a charming photo of a priest with a couple of young boys beside him burning Harry Potter books in Poland because apparently JK Rowling is working for Satan. No matter that the morals in her books are based on good triumphing over evil thanks to self sacrifice, friendships and the desire to save the world from badness. It has WITCHES and WIZARDS in it and magic and alchemy. No matter that Christ learned much of his healing and wisdom from John the Essene who also practised such things. Burning books...how quaint. Only fundamentalists, nazis and the scientific community (when faced with Wilhelm Reich's life work) do this. Well I only liked Snape anyway. And...fairy tales are now banned from many schools in Spain. More Roman Catholic common sense in action.  

Sudan and Libya raging again, encouraged by the Kremlin (but to be fair to them, they had plenty of useful lessons from watching the CIA at work in the seventies and eighties) Destabilisation is always a good way of creating power vacuums and making sure your chosen puppet ascends to the throne made of the skulls and gold of enemies. Kim Wrong Un took the slow train to meet Baldhead...the Pilsbury cheese dough boy now fat enough to feed an entire North Korean family living on donkeys and grass. Almost funny but mostly truly Disgusting. 43 percent of the populace (according to this years UN report) are suffering from malnutrition...600 escapees have given gave evidence. Tie him down to a feasting table...

Still amuses me (although with gathering darkness) that in seeking to regain 'control' of their own countries, so many are following the populists with their bigoted and fascist ideas, oblivious that the leaders of such parties are mostly being funded via the Kremlin. Speaking of which, nice to see the always decent and rational libertarian Steve Bannon assisting Le Pen in France. How many in Britain think that the Russian government is doing a good job? Are they thinking at all, or just looking forward to the chlorine washed chicken, hormone injected beef and genetically modified maize soon to pollute our green and pleasant fracked land from America? Yum yum yum, yab yab yab...

To be born British, is to win first prize in the lottery of life'. Cecil Rhodes. If blonde Boris wins, I will be VERY tempted not to get a new UK passport, I pray heartily that the the British people are truly not so mindwreckingly stupid to choose such a proven liar and self serving bullshit merchant. Inexcusable if they do as the USA.

The president speaks with a reptile tongue, trump behaving exactly as a chimpanzee alpha as shown on anthropological tv and in Reicheian psychology...loudest voice blaming other skin types for disease and crime etc. You are a foul stain sir, a smear on on the windows of perception. However, a Hansard Society survey was published by The Times...it seems that more than half of Britons now want to be led by a political 'strongman' who is 'willing to break the rules'. I have been writing and saying for the last thirty years that the political situation in the UK has been piece by piece, organised to influence the people to vote into office what I always called a British Stalin. Because everyone (most) are now SO deeply enraged with useless 'public servants', it would be a highly logical step and a simple way to democratically elect such a person. I expect either the next or next next prime minister to be the One. And then we can only hope that a V for Vendetta type scenario plays out before too many are rounded up and vanished. 

Worth inserting a longish salient quote from Robert Anton Wilson’s book Everything is Under Control; ‘...Dr (Willheim) Reich vastly offended many people by his sociological theory, which holds that fascism is just an exaggerated form of of the basic structure of sex-negative socities and has existed under other names in every civilization based on sexual repression. In this theory, the character and muscular armor of the average citizen -  a submissive and frightened attitude anchored in body reflexes- causes the average person to want a strong authority figure above them. Tyranny, in this model, is not created by tyrants alone but by neurotic masses who want tyrants. This quite possibly maybe explains much about the mentality of various countries and who they have (and continue to chose) chosen as their leaders.

Extinction Rebellion...sun shields in space? Forests of artificial trees to vacuum the Co2? hmmm...Biodiversity, a million species dying and unlikely to be saved, links in the chain being removed one by one thousand. Hard to be an optimist in the face of humanity knowingly getting to this point, having been told and shown over and over again. Dammed liberal atheist scientists spreading facts and proof just to get funding for their pet global warming projects eh? Take a look at all those who are against cutting carbon emissions, reducing arms and speak in favour of fracking, drilling for oil, deeper landfills (out of sight out of mind) genetically modified food etc and see whether there is common theme in their linguistics and behaviour patterns. Short term gain at the expense of the future and an almost evil approach to humanity. As if they have read The Power of Now and taken all the wrong inferences from it. Optimism takes will power, use it or lose it says the hyper manic 'realist', constantly looking for the next possible negative, reductio ad absurdum...

Loving diversity and collages (and goulash) I firmly believe in mixing the races and religions, (wherever and whenever and if ever they choose to intermarry... blend them all. Humanity will not become one homogeneous lump but a mass group of those evolved beyond the manipulations based on such, recognising the old hippy truth of one world and multi dimensions. The new wave or particle, depending what instrument of sense you use to perceive the phase transition. 'A society grows great when old men plant trees, whose shade they know they shall never sit in'..... 'If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?' Rumi

False users/sock puppets on facebook and twitter, ranting robots turned lose with a tap of a finger and blackmail swindles...One recent email to me in Chinese had two words in English, one of which was 'Bitcoin'. Translated, it read that the writer had my passwords and would release my browser history to all in my address book unless several thousand bitcoins were sent to an account. A month later a further email in bad English from a presumed female told me she had filmed our last sexual encounter years ago and all the depraved things we did...this too would be made public unless...Well good luck to you darling, porn comedies are always worth watching. Just as research of course. Ho was the Chinese god of laughter...

The Instagram suicide of the unhappy Malaysian teenage girl who asked in an on-line poll whether she should kill herself or not. 70percent of her followers said 'Do it' and are now facing arrest. Since day one of me first looking at the internet and the comments on twitter, youtube et al, it was immediately apparent just how many web users are dumb/souldead and have nothing to offer of any goodness. On all the online places where I exist in a twilight world, the comments are disabled. I make no money from my music or writing, I do it because I wish to and enjoy it...and already know I am an idiot without being told. (I I I...yuck, have to get back to E Prime and remove I and Is, life seems to deepen with freedom and happiness when this method is   (damn) applied.) I wish a safe journey with love to the girl for next time, never listen to those who are heartless. Vampires all.

Meanwhile...inside the epic of Gilgamesh and still swinging like an ape from the Golden Bough, the mind observing the mind, the heart feeling the heart, walking the May time streets dizzy with waves of empathy, going home to re-balance...from philosophy in the bedroom, to the universe next door, my flat with traces of lavender, cinnamon and patchooli with a hint of vanilla, coffee and yesterday night's marijuana smoke. A day of preparing and next morning early up the hill alone to the sunlit portal, half and half crossover, transmit and receive. Time dissolved the time dissolved, all in a dilation of an hour arf. Dionysus, Aphrodite and Apollo, walking hand in hand through the apocalypse...laughing with intent...'The uncanny...is just the right hemisphere's way of violently capturing our attention'. RAW.

I was given Oak, Holly and Hornbeam in a rescue remedy by a wise woman in a wooden room. A month after this cure for creeping horror, she gave me a bottle of good Irish Whiskey for my birthday, which (in spite of my liver and pancreas) was too beautiful to resist. Steadily drank it over the next three days of resurrection along with some high grade weed. In spite of how a lot of my writing may come across,  I hadn't smoked grass/dope since late 1994, yes really. Now I find I can multi task with total focus on all, listening to two hour lectures while listening to instrumental music, reading from a Kindle and writing at the same time. This works for about 150 minutes and then I need to go and lie down to dream,:-)

Information gathering speed until it becomes energy. Lost among the octaves.... inverted comas, images flash and then dissolve, they melt to universal. Nothing exists until it is perceived. The 'universe' didn't explode as such, but came through. Black holes inverted until gravity/pressure built up waves of energy and gave birth through the hole. All 'Illumination' ideas come from genetic/subatomic memory and the babys' memory of being born into the light. The process is repeated endlessly in infinite multidimensional loops. A chain of eternal creation and evolution. Easy eh?:-) And don't forget, a journey of a million aeons begins with but a single trip...

'Opinions result from perceptions and perceptions reinforce opinions which then further control perceptions, in a repeating loop that logic can never penetrate.' Stasis and decay result unless a little shock of the new is introduced one way or the other to 'startle the brain enough to reframe its experiences. Be aware of the God. If you are timid enough to stop with what is natural, Nature will elude your grasp forever' de sade. Who defines what is natural? Any old perverted psychopath with a quill pen? Take it easy or give it hard...

Our universe consists of 'non simultaneously apprehended events', which we process, interactively. This means we need to update our data often, in order to survive and evolve. The problem comes with those who just close down, especially dogmatic fundamentalists, when they believe they have found 'the truth'... The conspiracy of counter evolution stems from them. Keep updating your data...all the way back to the cosmic giggle )+(