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folightening · 5 years

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I swear we've briefly met before

Summary: This Loqi Tummelt Lunafreya had set him up with looked awfully familiar, but Ravus couldn't quite figure out where he'd seen him before.

Ravus/Loqi - Final Fantasy XV

Characters: Ravus, Lunafreya, Loqi, mentions others

Rated Teen

Words: 2278

*****

A week ago, Lunafreya had set him up on a date. Ravus had no intention of going; he'd told her as much. Yet here he was, riding with her to meet some Loqi Tummelt she swore would be a good match for him. After her previous failures at finding him a date he was astounded she was trying again. Even if two of those failures were now a friends of his. One of which also thought Loqi would be a good match.

"Lunafreya," Ravus said. "You said this Loqi Tummelt is a friend of Prompto's, and Aranea knows him as well. How did you come to the conclusion that we ought to date?"

"Just trust me. I know what I'm doing."

"That is what you said the previous five times."

"This time, I definitely know."

Against his better judgement, he'd trust hers again this time.

"If this does not work out, no more setting up dates for me."

"Promise me you'll try." Lunafreya glanced at him. "Aranea worked out fine."

"Aranea worked out fine because we established that I am a homosexual before the date was half over."

It had never occurred to him that he might be until he'd met her. She had helped him figure out something important about himself and now two years later, they were close friends. Aranea was arguably the closest friend he had.

"Ravus."

"I will try. You didn't find this one through that app I regret downloading."

That hadn't stopped one of the others from being a failure, but it was still preferable. Four times, he'd met someone off that accursed app. Three of those times had been utter failure due to being incompatible with those men. Obviously, the app did not work as it claimed to.

A few minutes later they pulled in to the restaurant. Luna parked and pulled out her phone, quickly sending a text. A few moments later she giggled.

"'Traffic's being a bitch, so I might be late.'" Luna turned and looked at Ravus. "You want to wait inside or out here?"

"Unless you plan to show me a picture, I'm waiting right here. You may introduce us."

"Fine," she sighed and started typing again.

Lunafreya had forbidden him from doing any research and Aranea was on her side, refusing to tell him anything helpful about Loqi. He had been told on numerous occasions that he was too quick to judge people, but that hardly seemed a good reason to keep him in the dark with this one.

"Couldn't you give me some information about him? You knowing him is not enough."

"He's a cute, extroverted, dirty blond Niff from a rich family. Early twenties, five-seven, and you're not getting anything more from me." Lunafreya smiled. "Talk to him and get to know him."

She seemed awfully determined with this one. Aside from Aranea, the previous five hadn't gotten quite the same amount of pushing for it from her. Thinking about it, Aranea had seemed a little eager for it as well. Perhaps this set up date wasn't just for him?

"You really think Loqi is the one for me."

"Perhaps. Though I was wrong about Ignis."

"He and I could have worked had he not been an uptight analytical psychologist with a tendency of judging people and- We're too similar for a romance to work out."

Ignis had agreed, though they remained friends.

"I still think it could have if either of you had been willing to give it some time."

She was probably right. Given time, they could have formed something akin to romance. Maybe.

"He isn't my type."

Lunafreya snorted and Ravus scowled.

"You know what your type is?" The doubtful look she gave him stung slightly. "Why didn't you ever tell me? That would have made this much easier."

"I have only a vague idea- nothing definite enough to tell you about."

Some hard thinking and a late night spent scrolling a site he'd never visited again had shown him what sort of man he found attractive, as well as reinforced the conclusion that he is indeed homosexual. That hardly helped him know what he was looking for personality-wise. Which was far more important and why he hadn't bothered telling her any of his findings.

The rest of the wait was in silence. It wasn't a long wait, just ten minutes before a young man with dirty blond hair was walking over. He was pretty cute: youth clung to his cheeks, full pink lips were curved into a slight frown, and his side-swept styled hair only added to his attractiveness. There was also something familiar about him, like Ravus had briefly interacted with him before at a store or something.

"There he is," Lunafreya confirmed Ravus' suspicions.

They both got out of the car, Loqi and Lunafreya greeting each other with wide smiles. Then Loqi turned to Ravus and extended a hand.

"My name is Loqi Tummelt."

Ravus shook the extended hand but didn't match the smile.

"Ravus Nox Fleuret."

"Let's go."

Loqi turned and Ravus followed, telling himself he wasn't nervous. He'd been on enough dates to not be nervous. So what if this young man was familiar? If he was undeniably attractive? Ravus was not the sort to allow things like that to affect him.

Fortunately they were soon sitting by a window. He much preferred sitting by a window when eating out. It helped him feel less crowded even with all the noise reminding him how many other people were in the restaurant.

Also fortunately, Loqi was happy to fill the space between them with chatter. Mostly about himself, perhaps too eagerly. Ravus looked over the menu as he listened to Loqi's 'here's why you should be interested in me' speech.

"What do you do?"

Ravus raised a brow at Loqi's abrupt change in subject. The man knew Lunafreya, surely he knew what her brother did.

"I assist Lunafreya with running our family's company."

These days, he might as well be the CEO but until Lunafreya fully settled on her new path in life, that title would remain hers.

"Hobbies?"

None that he would tell a stranger about.

"What I do with my free time is irrelevant."

Loqi laughed, a nice sound that had Ravus almost smiling in response.

"What you do with your free time is very relevant."

He leaned forward over the table and Ravus was certain he'd seen that expression before. Though with the small smirk and half-lidded eyes he couldn't think of a single moment such an expression had been directed at him.

"If your free time is as busy as your work, how are we to spend time together?"

"Aren't you the confident one." Ravus leaned forward as well, a small smirk of his own tugging at his lips. "I can yet decide you are not worth any more of my time."

Usually his personality was one of the things people cited as a reason they didn't want to be near him. Arrogant, cold, closed-off, judgemental, just plain mean... all words people had used to describe him. So it came as a pleasant surprise when Loqi didn't pull back and leave.

"Oh, I promise I'm worth it. Just give me the chance to show you."

Truth be told, he was already liking Loqi.

"Are you ready to place your order?"

Ravus broke eye contact first to look at the waiter and place his order. For Ravus, a medium rare steak with a salad on the side. Loqi decided on a cheeseburger with fries.

"Earlier," Ravus said, "you said you were taking classes for engineering."

"It's something I've always had an interest in. If I make a career out of it, I can do something I enjoy and help people. Everyone benefits."

That dedication was admirable. Ravus had never had any particular interests to follow and make a career out of. Just make Mother proud and don't fail. ...Maybe Lunafreya had a point.

"How are the classes going?"

"They're going fine, 'Daddy'."

Loqi chuckled and reached across the table to tap him on the nose. Something about the action flustered Ravus but Loqi continued before he could express any of it.

"We're on a date here. Shouldn't you be asking about things other than my classes?"

Expressing an interest in his date's academics didn't strike Ravus as an odd thing to do.

"If our relationship continues after this first date, your academics will be of interest to me."

"I've a GPA of 3.7 and pulled more all-nighters than I can remember. That satisfactory?"

It was better than what Lunafreya's current boyfriend had. Not that Lunafreya's boyfriend had stayed in college, but... that comparison wasn't important now. Ravus nodded, unsure how to continue the conversation.

"What about you?"

"4.0, recently graduated."

Loqi whistled and once again Ravus was almost certain they had briefly met before. Something about his mouth... Or maybe that was just Ravus being interested in him.

"Perfect honor student, huh? A degree in business?"

"What makes you assume that?"

"You are one of the CEOs of the Oracle Company. If you're anything like your sister, you don't have that position just by blood."

Technically, he did. He just didn't want that to be the only reason he held the postion. He wanted to prove he was good enough. That his mother hadn't been wrong in naming him as the joint heir of the company with Lunafreya.

"Enough of that, though. How do you plan on this date going?"

"I hadn't considered anything beyond dinner," Ravus said.

If over the course of dinner they decided they weren't interested in each other, there would be no point in doing anything else together. Even something simple could ruin it for them.

"Did you have any hopes for this?"

Loqi leaned back in his seat and appraised Ravus.

"Maybe. If dinner goes well."

Technically, they didn't need to do anything after even if they were getting along well. They could easily just decide on a second date and part ways. But what little remained of Ravus' day was open, and if Loqi had the time he wouldn't deny him.

"How open are you to sex on the first date?"

"Not terribly, I'm afraid. It would beg the question of whether or not you are actually interested in me, or if it's merely a sexual attraction."

Sex rarely crossed his mind as it was. Starting a relationship with it sounded ludicrous, and yet a part of him disagreed with his statement about not being interested. Loqi was exactly his type, as far as looks went. In fact, he looked so much like that young man who'd-

As the thought crossed his mind Ravus set his cup back down. He couldn't be.

"Well that's a shame," Loqi said. "It's probably for the best."

The hair curved the same way at the ends. On his cheek was the same beauty mark. Eyes the same shade of gray-blue. The more Ravus stared, the more Loqi's face looked like him.

What were the odds?

"Something on my face?"

"You look like..." Ravus fell silent, unsure how to go about bringing it up. Did he even need to? If he was wrong Loqi was sure to be offended.

If he was the same man, that meant... Ravus's cheeks flushed as he remembered clearly what had happened when he watched that video. Specifically that man in particular had- Oh dear gods above this was embarrassing.

Loqi's lips curved into a grin as his eyes grew understanding and once again he leaned forward over the table.

"I look like what, Ravus?"

That was a tone Ravus certainly did not appreciate his name being said in. Not in public- No, not at all. Even if it did come from Loqi and- Ravus scowled in an attempt to hide his embarrassment. He hardly knew Loqi enough to be attracted to him. Much less act like this. So what if he knows what Loqi looks like naked and the sounds he makes during sex? So what if he wanted to take this chance to experience it himself?

"How many have you watched?"

"Just one."

He really didn't want to talk about the fact that his sister had managed to set him up on a date with one of the men from the single porn video he'd ever watched. Specifically the man he found appealing.

"Which-"

"I do not wish to talk about it," Ravus snapped.

Loqi's laugh was a mean little sound this time, but before either of them could say anything the waiter was back with their food.

Eating in relative silence didn't stop Ravus from remembering that video. Or the fantasy he'd indulged in after hastily shutting his laptop. Which would only be worse now that he'd actually met the man and- Ravus frowned at his food. That was a rather unfair situation between the two of them.

"Loqi," he said. "I believe I shall take you up on your offer. If it still interests you."

He didn't dare look at Loqi to see his expression. He kept his focus on his food instead, feeling how hot his face and ears were. As much as he wanted the suggestion to be a matter of evening out something that didn't really matter all that much, there was no denying that was an excuse. He couldn't remember a time he'd been this stupidly interested in having sex with someone.

"Oh, I'm interested," Loqi said. "Now tell me, have you ever been to Accordo?"

As Ravus informed Loqi that no, he had never been to the island nation, he felt himself relaxing again. Maybe this could work.

#ravus x loqi #ravus nox fleuret #loqi #loqi tummelt #lunafreya nox fleuret #ffxv #final fantasy xv #fol stuff #ravqi

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artificialqueens · 6 years

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You Bring Out the Best in Me (Bengela) - vulnerose

Rambly A.N. - Hi guys! So this is meant to combine two requests I got, one being with Dela having a panic attack and the other with either Shangela/Dela being flirty and the other not noticing until said person finally makes a move. I love reading longer fanfics so I thought rather than giving two short ones, I’d just combine them into one. (And of course, why not both having a crush on each other?) Apologies if any characters here are OOC, I try my best but I haven’t written fanfiction in a long time until recently so my skills are rusty. I’m always up for prompts so if you ever want one just comment on either my posts on the artificalqueens tumblr or AO3, my user is vulnerose there as well. Andddd of course this has nothing to do with any of the people mentioned! Enjoy my loves :)

ALSO if you’d want to see a potential sequel to this just let me know. I’m honestly considering doing it, I loved writing this fic so much.

The pressure was getting too much for Dela to handle.

It was her junior year of high school, where the competition to look as good as possible academically-wise had truly kicked off. Teachers were so much tougher than they had been in the earlier years, and she found herself crying in her bedroom after school. Every. Single. Day.

It wasn’t like Dela wasn’t a good student - she was. She was a straight A all honors student, and had been since middle school. She’d decided to challenge herself to taking four AP classes, thinking she could handle the stress since she’d enjoyed taking AP Euro the previous year. But dear god was she wrong. Bio projects were daily, her APUSH teacher was super demanding and offered no test corrections, statistics was fucking her over mentally, and she could barely write a rhythm in music theory. It was draining her mentally and physically - she had to work her ass off to maintain all As. Even then, her parents still found a way to demand more out of her.

She couldn’t count the number of times she just wanted to sleep, but couldn’t because of a report she needed to write. Dela was notorious for having coffee with her every morning. She didn’t do it purposely or for show, she couldn’t survive a day without a large cup of coffee, since she rarely got more than 5 hours of sleep. In the mornings she’d put layer after layer of concealer under her eyes to cover up the ever growing bags down there, and red-reducing eye drops became her best friend. She surprisingly rarely broke out, maybe a bit of acne here and there but her skin was rather clear.

Despite all the stress eating away at her mentally, she still managed to be the sweet, always delightful girl everyone had come to know her as. She never snapped at anyone, even when they were yelling in her ear and she’d barely had any caffeine. Her image was very important to her, and she stopped at nothing to maintain it.

It was midterm time, the most stressful time of year by far, second of course to finals. Dela had anticipated this week for a bit now, studying hard for long hours and attempting to prepare herself mentally. Each midterm intercepted at least one other, and it wasn’t too long before Dela was aware that she’d be taking all of her midterms on one day. One fucking day. She nearly broke down in tears when she realized this.

The day before midterms started, Dela decided she couldn’t care less and allowed herself to destress completely, as she knew she’d only worsen the upcoming anxiety attacks if she worried over a stupid worksheet right now. The anxiety set in right after school, when she immediately began reading page after page in her history book, doing practice problems, rereading her English novel, practicing her flute, and working on her big bio lab that acted as a midterm that was due tomorrow.

She fell asleep at 4 after being confident she would be alright. She had to wake up at 7.

She walked into the exam room the following day, bags unconcealed, eyes red and puffy, contacts bothering her, and head pounding from a migraine. The second she was handed that paper, anxiety took off and in the most minute moment, her throat felt like it was being suffocated, tears trying to well in her eyes, head more focused on people tapping their stupid fucking feet on the ground. Her fingers and thighs were shaking, completely enslaved to the major panic attack she was experiencing. Her brain was focusing on anything but the paper in front of her. ‘You pulled your ponytail just a TAD too harsh. Now it’ll be the only thing you think about.’

She miraculously survived, and asked immediately afterwards to go to the bathroom. The panic attack was subsiding but fear began to grow again. What if she failed all of them? Would her mom disown her? What if they thought I was cheating because I was looking around the room so often? I couldn’t help myself, right? It was the anxiety, not me right?

Dela locked herself in a stall and just sat there recollecting her thoughts and allowing the panic to subside. God, how she wished someone was here to make her feel better right now. Jinkx had ended up missing midterms incredibly narrowly, as her family’s yearly trip to Seattle had been scheduled to start the day before. Jinkx always had shitty cellular up there so there was no way she’d be talking to her until after the Christmas break ended. Aja was still taking her midterms and so was Trixie, and Alaska was probably too busy with Roxxxy and Detox to watch her cry about her everything.

She pushed at the chipping nail polish on her thumb, sighing heavily as she thought. Nobody really cared for her, did they? Dela always felt that she had a sufficient friend group, people that had her best interests in mind no matter what, but the realization dawned on her that no, no she didn’t. She couldn’t think of one person that would be able to comfort her right now. That person was always Jinkx, but now she had to find a way to deal with her emotional breakdowns on her own until her best friend returned. And she didn’t know how to take that.

That is, of course, until her brain and the voices inside began to taunt her and laugh, saying she was dumb, unlovable, forgettable; the list went on and on and on. Tears began to run down Dela’s cheek as she couldn’t stop the voices from continuing to spew hateful words at her, telling her how she’s a disappointment of a daughter and how all of her friends really just felt sorry for her. That she bombed all of her midterms and she’d be rejected by everyone.

Logically Dela knew it wasn’t true - nobody would hate her for failing a test, but she couldn’t help but believe the other two. Since when had her parents been truly proud of her? And since when did the majority of the girls she called friends ever text or call her? Even hang out with her? She couldn’t think of a time, date, or place.

Dela was fully broken down and worn out, crying from stress and panic and relief and sadness all at once. She’d never truly felt so useless and vulnerable until this day in time. Dela was grateful she hadn’t worn makeup, at least there’d be no tear stains on her skin.

Her crying session was abruptly ended by a voice.

“What’s going on in there mama? Don’t know who’s in there or what’s going on but it’s something. I’m not leaving until I help you darling.”

Dela’s eyes widened as she instantly recognized the voice. Shangela Waldey. Head cheerleader, but in the few times she’s spoken with her, seemed nice. They shared a couple of classes too. Her ugly crying stopped and was replaced by quiet sniffling.

“Honey? C'mon, tell me what’s up. Or come out and I can give you a hug or something.”

A hug did sound pretty nice right now.

Dela came out of the cubicle with her face red, eyes even bluer than usual from crying, and Shangela’s heart broke at the sight. She didn’t know Dela well, but it hurt to see the usually sweet and happy girl stripped down and miserable.

“Oh sweetie…” Shangela’s arms reached out and wrapped around Dela’s body, and Dela felt a sense of comfort and relief. She continued to cry but it definitely wasn’t as audible as it’d been before. Dela tried to avoid crying all over Shangela’s cheerleader uniform but Shangela wasn’t having it and whispered for her to not worry. Shangela rubbed her back to try and relieve the poor girl, wondering who made a girl so precious and gentle cry like this.

“What’s wrong honey? You’re always so happy. Did someone hurt you?” Dela blinked at her, shaking her head slowly, both still keeping the hug.

“Wasn’t anyone. I’m so stressed out Shangela, I just finished taking all my exams today. My brain has been so fried this entire year and I’m really scared that I’m gonna do shit on them.” Dela began to bawl again as she told the girl what was bothering her. Shangela’s hand began to play with Dela’s hair as she continued to listen to the girl talk. “My closest friend is away and I can’t talk to her right now and I feel like nobody cares about me. I can’t think of one person that I could talk to right now, none of them like me. I just feel like a tremendous failure.” Shangela broke the hug, holding one of Dela’s hands in hers, other lightly pointing up Dela’s chin so she could look her straight in the eye.

“Don’t know you that well honey, it’s the truth. But from what I do know, you’re anything but what your brain tells you that you are. I’m sorry you feel that way sweetheart, because it’s not true at all. You’re not a failure, and if you really feel like you don’t have anyone that you can talk to, I’m here.” Dela’s eyes widened slightly - she wasn’t expecting that kind of a response. From the moment Shangela broke the hug she thought she would taunt her and get her popular friends to begin bullying her.

“Got a lot on your mind, don’t you?” Shangela was smiling with both her eyes and mouth, watching Dela stare into space. Dela snapped out of it almost immediately.

“Sorry, I just wasn’t expecting you to say that.” Dela stopped momentarily to wipe the tears from her eyes before continuing. “Why do you care about me? Like you have so many friends and you’re so popular, why me?”

Shangela couldn’t help but laugh. “Girl you think I give a shit about 99% of the people I hang out with? You can’t trust them with any secrets you got, all they wanna do is get drunk on weekends, they’re barely passing their classes right now, fucking ridiculous. Partying and failing isn’t my schtick, only reason why they keep me around is because without me, there’s no cheerleading team.” Shangela so badly wanted to form a true friendship with someone, and had always found Dela to be a sweetheart - not to mention quite beautiful too - and she couldn’t pass up this opportunity to get to know her better.

Dela sat down on the bench beside them, Shangela joining her, waiting her response. Dela buried her head in Shangela’s shoulder, whispering ‘thank you’ over and over again.

Shangela felt her heart begin to fly, and she couldn’t think of why.

Shangela broke the hug, grabbing Dela’s hand and walking the both of them to the sink. “C'mon honey, let’s get your face washed so you don’t look like a hot mess. If you can let’s hang out after school.”

Dela smiled at her, dousing her face in cold water, feeling energy soar through her as it hit her face. “Sure, that sounds lovely.”

After sharing phone numbers, the two of them grabbed their backpacks, ready to head out after spending far too long in there. Shangela’s hand fumbled in the front pocket of her backpack, searching for a box of Altoids. She took one in her mouth.

“Have one girl, you need it after all the coffee you drink.” She could tell Shangela was being playful - nothing in the blonde’s voice indicated bad intents.

Dela laughed, taking one out and popping it in her mouth, the peppermint freshening her breath.

“See you soon girl,” Shangela waved goodbye, heading out of the bathroom.

Dela’s face was illuminated with the biggest smile it’s ever had. She didn’t really know why. “See you soon,” she whispered back, in the silence of the bathroom.

—————————————————

The past couple of weeks had been some of the best either of them had in their lives. They spent time hanging out as often as they could, and texted on those days they just couldn’t be together in person, especially when Shangela had work. It excited Shangela to have a real person for a friend - not a fake, popularity-obsessed one. She could talk to Dela about seemingly anything, from grades to personal issues and everything in between. Dela always listened and gave her advice when she needed it. Shangela was, for the first time, not feeling left to the side in a friendship. She felt like Dela truly cared about her and her wellbeing.

Dela didn’t know what to expect initially, but had all her doubts and scared about Shangela shut down that first time they hung out after the bathroom incident. She just had an aura consisting of genuine, loving, reality-checking behavior that Dela just loved. Shangela was never one to lie - she always told it how it was and she respected her immensely for that as it’s so easy to lie. She initially thought of Shangela being a substitute for Jinkx but she no longer viewed her in that manner - she was nothing like Jinkx. She was just uniquely Shangela, and when Jinkx returned from Seattle she couldn’t wait to tell her what’d just gone down.

“You’re friends with who?” Jinkx whisper-screamed at Dela, a bewildered look on the ginger’s face as she attempted to take in what Dela had just told her. The two were in Dela’s bedroom for a sleepover, where Dela just unraveled the news to her friend.

Dela snorted at her response. “You heard me.”

“Christ, I leave for one week and a year’s events have gone by. I’m warning you right now, if she ever hurts you or you let her I’m personally beating her into a pulp.” She pointed a finger directly at Dela when she said the last fragment of her sentence, establishing her meaning well and clear.

Dela threw a pillow in her face. “She’s not gonna do that, I promise.”

Jinkx got off the floor, rolling herself into Dela’s bed and shutting off the lamp as she turned on the TV. “Don’t make a promise too soon. Now let’s watch something before I pass out.”

—————————————————

It had been a month since Shangela and Dela had first met that day, and Dela was just now getting to see Shangela’s apartment - purely because the two had to finish a biology project they’d been assigned to work together on.

Shangela fumbled with her keys as Dela stood behind her in the hallway of the building. “It’s not much to look at so don’t be surprised.” Dela laughed as Shangela finally managed to get the door to unlock after numerous tries.

Closing the door behind her, Shangela led Dela around and allowed her to take in her surroundings. The apartment was rather simple - it had both a modern and cozy feel to it. Dela couldn’t help but notice the lack of people in the apartment.

As soon as they got to Shangela’s room, and both of the girls plopped down on her bed, Dela decided to ask her what the deal was with it. “Hey Shangie?”

Shangela’s head turned toward her, putting down her phone. “What’s up sweetheart?”

The cute nickname made Dela’s heart fly, but she tried to not let it be visible. “I’m sorry if this is rude to ask, but you appear to live by yourself, how come?”

If there was one thing that hurt Shangela slightly, it was talking about what had happened between her and her parents. Dela immediately sensed the discomfort on Shangela’s face after she’d asked her the question, and instantly felt like shit. She reached a hand out and rubbed Shangela’s shoulder in a comforting manner.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to Shangie, I’m sorry if I hurt you in anyway.”

“It’s ok, just that it’s hard what I went through with my parents.” Shangela paused momentarily, deciding whether she should say the next thing or not. “Promise you won’t judge me for what I’m about to say?”

“Unless you murdered someone, I have no judgement in my heart towards you,” Dela reassured her, smiling with her eyes.

She took a deep breath before continuing. “So when I was around 13, my mom caught me watching lesbian porn. I’d been doing watching it for a while but I got careless that one day, you know? So then my parents had a long talk with me and sent me to conversion therapy and all that shit,” Shangela took a pause, her eyes beginning to water. She hated the fact that she was about to cry like a baby in front of Dela, but she’d seen the other girl in that state before so she felt less embarrassed.

“Oh no, you poor thing.” Dela immediately engulfed her in a tight hug. “What happened after, since obviously conversion therapy isn’t a scientifically proven way to become straight?”

“I faked that it worked for a while, but last year they caught me kissing a girl and that was their final straw. They kicked me out and I haven’t spoken to any of my family in about a year.” Tears stained Shangela’s cheeks as she thought of her family; all the good memories that made her wish this all hadn’t happened. She really did love and miss her family, but she would have been even more miserable staying in the closet but being with them.

Dela could feel her adrenaline spike as she heard Shangela tell her that she was gay. “I’m gay too and my parents didn’t react well either when I came out. They told me to never talk about it again or they would throw me in the streets. I know exactly how you feel, there’s just so much hate and ignorance in this world, it sucks.”

Shangela couldn’t help but feel a sense of relief pass through her body as Dela told her that she was in the closet as well, and how she didn’t just get up and leave. Of course Dela wouldn’t do the latter - she knew the girl well enough by now to know that she doesn’t judge a soul - and she honestly wasn’t expecting her to tell her that she was gay as well.

“We really are the same, aren’t we?” Dela laughed, punching her arm lightly.

“Now I can send you pictures of girls that I think are hot,” Dela told her, winking.

Shangela couldn’t help but smile as she saw her wink. It gave shy, cunning, and flirty all at once.

Maybe it means something… maybe it doesn’t.

“Cmon girl, we all know I’m the standard of beauty.”

“Wow, society’s standards are that low?” Shangela’s mouth gaped at Dela’s answer, the once silent room filling with laughs and guffaws.

“Fucking bitch. Let’s get started with this bio project and make it good so we don’t hear Smith lecturing our asses on how we’ll fail the AP test.” Shangela couldn’t thank Dela enough for brightening up the mood, but now it was time to come up with a project worthy of at least a passing grade.

“Boo,” Dela pouted, sighing as she went to get her laptop.

“Hurry back quick so we can start baby.”

Dela was now incredibly grateful she had her back turned to Shangela so she couldn’t see how much that nickname made her blush. She returned, both laptop and her bio binder in hand and sat on the bed once more, Shangela having wiped her face of the tear-stained foundation and runny mascara and eyeliner from crying, yet chose to reapply her red lipstick. Dela couldn’t help but notice how good of a color red was on her.

“I like that lipstick shade on you, it looks so beautiful.” Dela had been pulling up the rubric to see exactly what they had to accomplish - and of course they got the project focusing on sex cells.

“Thank you darling, maybe I’ll give it to you one day,” Shangela spoke, wrapping her arm around Dela’s waist and looking on with her at the screen. Was that flirtation in her voice? No - couldn’t be, probably just meant she’d buy it for her birthday or something. The arm was an innocent gesture but she couldn’t help but feel her heart burst from it. Oh god, why was she getting so enamored by Shangela all of a sudden? She’d always acted this way around her - it meant nothing one way or the other, right?

What was this girl doing to her?

Dela couldn’t say anything else besides, “Let’s get this started.”

And so they did.

—————————————————

“Dela? Earth to Dela?” Jinkx waved a hand in front of Dela’s face, who’d been staring at her locker for the past five minutes. Dela immediately sprung back to life, twisting the combination.

“Sorry, lot on my mind right now. You have time to talk?” She shoved several books in and slammed the locker shut with her foot.

“Sure do. Let’s walk to the coffee shop, you can talk to me about your issues throughout the journey,” the redhead replied, tapping the top of Dela’s head. Dela couldn’t help but notice Shangela walk right by the two of them as they neared the front door. She winked at Dela, then began heading toward the gym, presumably for cheer practice.

Jinkx had noticed as well, and gave Shangela a confused look to her back. Nonetheless, they walked out together and Dela began the long process of explaining everything happening to her to Jinkx.

“So basically I wanna tell you something she told me the other day but promise you won’t tell anyone about it? Like, ever since I’ve known this I’ve been feeling weird things towards her and I don’t know why.”

“My lips are sealed doll.” The two decided to sit down on a bench in the park, which happened to be right by the café they’d been headed to. The ginger played with the rips in her jeans, still looking at Dela, fully alert.

Dela whispered so that nobody besides the two of them could hear. “We came out to each other. I’m only whispering in case she isn’t out yet.” Her voice leveled to a normal speaking voice. “Now I feel like everything she does is flirty, and I don’t know if I’m just being too hopeful or there might be something there.”

“What sorts of things are making you think she might like you?”

“She calls me these really sweet nicknames and I blush every time she calls me them. Like she calls me baby and darling all the time and I haven’t heard her say my actual name since the first day we met.”

Jinkx’s fingers moved onto scraping the black nail polish she had on. “Hmmm, that’s tricky because a lot of people do that sort of nickname thing with close friends. I mean, I do it to you on the daily. Buttt, it can be a sign. Give me the rundown on the rest.”

Dela began to count off with her fingers as she recited. “She gets kinda touchy with me, she’s always in the mood to hang out with me, I told her how nice her lipstick looked on her and she said she’d give it to me and I don’t know whether it’s a pass or not, you know?” She got frustrated with herself as she realized that her potential signs just sounded like Shangela being a good friend, which of course she was. “It’s so hard to explain, but I just feel like she does.”

“I bet you there’s one very obvious sign that you’ve forgotten. Think Dela, think,” Jinkx persuaded her, knowing there’s got to be one key factor to making the final verdict.

Dela hesitated for a moment, before speaking. “I mean, she’s cried in front of me, but I don’t think that’s a sign? I know she’s not known for crying but that didn’t seem like a sign to me, maybe it is.”

Jinkx’s eyes widened. “Oh no honey, she loves you. Shangela hasn’t cried in front of anyone in this school since pre-k. Which I commend her for, I can’t go for even a month without crying.” Dela felt her heartbeat speed up. “But the question is, do you like her? And I already know the answer to that, you do. Make a move on her before she thinks you’re not interested. That probably won’t end pretty.”

“You support me being with her?” Dela almost felt the eyeroll Jinkx gave her in response.

“As long as you’re happy with it, I don’t give a shit you do. But mark my words, if Shangela Wadley ever even thinks of hurting you, I will make sure she gets it.” Dela smiled, hugging her.

“Thanks dude.”

“No problem, I love being the third wheel,” Jinkx spoke, sarcastic. “You can get your girl after we finish this shift.”

Dela sighed, annoyed, as she’d forgotten completely about their shift. “Three hours of hell and I can go over to her house.”

The two got up and began heading toward the coffee shop, where they both worked. “What’re you gonna do there with her?”

“I’m addicted to Game of Thrones thanks to her now, so we planned on watching it for a movie night. Maybe a special topic will be brought up.” Dela looked at Jinkx and wiggled her eyebrows.

“Ah yes, that topic being on the role of the nucleus in a cell?”

“Sure,” Dela rolled her eyes as Jinkx laughed, both reaching the glass entrance door of the coffee shop simultaneously.

“You’re so in love.”

—————————————————

“Hey girl!” Shangela greeted Dela in pajama pants and a t-shirt, hair up in a bun. Her look may be seen as lazy and boring to others, but Dela saw her looking equally beautiful as she did all made up. Shangela enveloped Dela in a hug.

“Hi Shangie!” Dela’s hair was wet and cold against Shangela’s scalp - she’d probably just washed it - and Shangela didn’t care one bit. It was unlike her and she knew that - cold wet hair was her worst enemy.

Everything is appealing when it’s done by the one you love, isn’t it? Shangela shook that thought out of her head. It was time to accept the fact that Dela had no feelings for her in that way and just thought of her as a close friend. The thought of that pained her, but she felt like it was obvious at this point. Dela probably would have made a move on her by now if she liked her, as Shangela thought her flirting made it clear that Shangela liked the other girl.

God, she really needed to get out of her head for a second, didn’t she?

“Hey girl, need help with your stuff?” Shangela asked, noticing Dela carrying a bag with night clothes, which appeared to be rather heavy. Dela shook her head in refusal, but her eyes glimmered, thanking her for the offer.

“Can I leave this in your room?” Shangela waved her off, giving the signal to do whatever the hell she wanted. Dela ran across the living room to the bedroom, plopping the bag on her bed before coming back to the couch where Shangela was sitting, curled up in a blanket. “How rude of you to not give me one too.” Shangela laughed.

“Girl please. Go steal one from my room.” And so she did.

Dela returned with a blue blanket, with the pattern being the phrase ‘Halleloo!’ written all over it. “The most Shangela one I could find,” Dela mumbled while curling herself into a ball with the blanket, her head lying on top of Shangela’s lap purposely as the two sat on the couch. The blanket smelled like her too, and Dela couldn’t get enough.

Shangela ruffled Dela’s hair, smiling at the girl. “Excellent choice dear. Let’s watch this shit now.” Dela wooed in response.

For the next hour or so, the two girls stared at the screen, Shangela making remarks on how she was literally Daenerys or how she was the mother of the dragons. Dela would just smile in response, enjoying the sweet moment as Shangela gently stroked her hair, treating her with care and caution. The tension between the two was clearly thick to anyone but them. After a second episode had concluded, Dela flipped her body around so she was facing Shangela, but her head still in her lap. Shangela looked at her confusingly, the movement drawing her attention away from the credits.

“I wanna ask you something,” Dela said, looking up into Shangela’s eyes, who at this point had retracted her hand from the other.

“What’s up?”

“Do you like anyone?” Um, duh, is what Shangela wanted to say, but she couldn’t bring herself to be that brash. Hesitation evident, she eventually responded.

“Mhm.”

“Cool, I do too.” That phrase had sunk any hopes Shangela had of Dela liking her, and all she wanted to do was cry. “Let’s play a game.”

Shangela raised her eyebrows at her. “A game? What do you mean?”

“Like,” Dela paused for a moment to collect her thoughts before sitting up, “We each reveal one characteristic of the person we like so we can guess who the other likes. We say 5 qualities and at the end we have to guess.”

Fuck it, why not? “You go first darling.”

“Sure.” Dela was happy yet extremely nervous, wondering if her plan would blow over. “She has blonde hair.”

“What a specific quality.” Dela smirked. “She has black hair.

Dela thought for a moment before saying the next trait. “Her first name is eight letters long.” Shangela raised an eyebrow at her. Ok work, she thought. Shangela barely knew how to spell her own name, let alone the number of letters in it.

“Hers is four letters long.” Dela wanted to gape, but knew she couldn’t. Who else had black hair and a four letter name?

“Hmmm, she’s a cheerleader. A pretty good one at that.” Shangela was almost positive she could hear her heart pounding out of her chest when Dela said that. It’s gotta be her, there was literally no other person in the school it could be.

Shangela thought for a moment before saying the next hint. This could either blow up in her face or make her the happiest person in the world. “She was crying in the bathroom about finals one day and I helped her out.” Shangela both couldn’t wait to see Dela’s reaction and feared it.

She felt Dela’s hand graze hers, and was petrified as Dela hadn’t responded right away. Dela’s other hand brushed the curly blonde hair out of her face and stroked her cheek lightly.

“It’s me huh?” Dela asked her in a faint voice. Shangela wanted to roll her eyes so hard at that question. No, it’s the fucking Pope.

“Mhm, if you don’t feel the same I’ll never mention this aga-” Shangela had been cut off by Dela pressing her lips against her own. Her body had tensed up immediately before relaxing into the kiss, wrapping her arms around Dela. Everything felt right. Dela’s lips were warm and so soft, and her thumb continued stroking Shangela’s cheek as the two shared the first out of many tender moments.

Dela broke it, tears welling up in her eyes as she realized the reality of this. This girl loved her. She vowed to herself to treat her like a goddess, as she deserved nothing less than that.

“It’s so early but I want to let you know that I love you, and I have for the past couple of months. You’ve made my life so much better and I feel genuinely happy whenever I’m around you, it’s not the fake kind that I give to most of the people in school,” Dela didn’t look Shangela in the eyes speaking this, focusing on chipping the nail polish on her fingers. Shangela tightened her grip on Dela, rubbing her back with her hand lightly and stroking through her hair with the other.

“Same here baby. I love you so much, and I hope you know that. You bring out the best in me.” Dela gave her that smile - that beautiful fucking smile that she loved so much - and buried her face into Shangela’s shoulder.

“I can’t believe it took us so long to admit it to each other,” Dela said, breaking the silence they’d had momentarily. Shangela leaned in to give her another warm peck on the lips before agreeing with her.

“Whatever, we have each other now and I can shower you in love.” Dela smiled against the skin on Shangela’s shoulder.

“Sounds great.”

Shangela turned off the TV, lifting the girl still wrapped in her blanket as she shuffled her way to her bedroom, still wearing hers. Dela kisses the same spot on her cheek repeatedly throughout the short journey, and let out a whine when Shangela released her from her grip, leaving her on the bed under the covers. She removed the blankets from their bodies and discarded them haphazardly across her room. Shangela joined her in the bed, Dela snuggling up against her warm body as Shangela hugged her tight, pressing a kiss into her neck before beginning to doze off.

As they began to fall asleep, they were over the moon as they were finally able to lie in bed with the one they loved.

—————————————————

After that weekend, they made a promise to each other to not keep it a secret. Of course, not rub it in everyone’s faces, but to not avoid little things like holding each other’s hands in the halls or sneaking kisses when nobody was looking (or so they thought).

That Monday morning, Jinkx was all but shocked seeing the new couple hugging in front of Dela’s locker, which wasn’t too far from Jinkx’s. She smirked at Dela, mouthing 'I told you so!’ before being waved off by a flip of the middle finger by Dela.

Eventually, the two had to part, as they had different home rooms. Their different classes didn’t stop them from all their thoughts being consumed by one another.

Lunch time rolled around, and Dela was thoroughly surprised when she saw a particular girl with winged eyeliner and red lipstick coming her way. “Oh look who decided to join me for once?” She spoke teasingly, Shangela rolling her eyes.

Shangela sat next to her. “I don’t give a fuck about my old 'friend’ group anymore.” Shangela said, emphasizing the word friend with finger quotation marks. “I have you and I really don’t care what they have to say about me anymore.” Dela looked lovingly into Shangela’s eyes before pressing her lips against hers. People were probably staring but they didn’t care - let them stare.

They pulled apart way too quickly for either of their likings, but neither girl wanted to get in trouble by the staff. Dela’s lips had become a faint red from her lipstick and Shangela loved the way it looked on her more than anything.

“I’m getting you to wear red lipstick soon, it looks so nice on you.” At this moment, Jinkx and the rest of Dela’s small friend group had joined the table, everyone but the three who knew gaped at the situation. Shangela simply smiled and greeted them all warmly, getting to know the rest of Dela’s friends. Some of the popular group that had been used to Shangela being with them had caught notice of the situation.

“The fuck is she doing?” Violet questioned to Ginger and Manila, confused as hell as to why Shangela was hanging out with new people, much less why she was getting all touchy with a band nerd - Dela. “What’s gonna happen to the cheer team now?”

Both girls were about to agree with her when a voice came up behind them. “I’m fine with it. She looks really happy.” Manila turned her head to see who was speaking.

It was Raja.

“But-” Ginger began to speak before Raja shut her down.

“Honey she’s never looked happier than she does right now. Let her live. Shangela’s staying on the team, she told me.”

The trio nodded their heads reluctantly, continuing to watch the scene a bit more before turning back to their table.

Despite attempting to focus her attention on the new girls, Shangela’s mind and eyes would always go back to Dela. She couldn’t help herself, and Dela winked at her when the period was close to being over, letting her head rest on Shangela’s shoulder and wrapping an arm around her waist. Shangela looked at her, her heart being warmed as Dela’s beautiful blue eyes sparkled and glittered at her. She was perfect.

“You guys are so fucking cute,” Aja said. The whole table noticed the scene occurring when Aja had pointed it out and began squealing. Dela’s face flushed with embarrassment, but Shangela, being the girl she was, leaned in to kiss her. The squeals turned into 'aw’s and they pulled apart at the exact moment the bell rang.

Although they had to part ways since they didn’t share their last two classes together, Shangela followed her to the band room, not caring if she was late. Dela refused to let her but Shangela was resilient.

As they turned a corner, Dela mumbled, “I love you,” into Shangela’s ear. The shorter of the two whispered the same thing back, and there they were at Dela’s stop.

“So movie date tonight?” Shangela asked her. The two didn’t have plans but fuck it, why not make some?

“By movie you mean Game of Thrones? Of course. I’m surprised you’re not sick of me after being around me literally twenty-four seven.”

“I could never get sick of you, you stole my cold dead heart. Now go in before your teacher yells at you.” Shangela stood on her tippy toes, pressing a kiss into Dela’s hair before running off before she was insanely late. Dela’s face had a bright smile plastered on it, her heart warm and full.

She was perfect.

#vulnerose #dela x shangela #lesbian au #high school au #slow burn #tw mentioned homophobia #fluff #bendelacreme #shangela laquifa wadley #jinkx monsoon #manila luzon #raja gemini #Aja #violet chachki #ginger minj #rpdr fanfiction #submission #tw panic attack #as3

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scotthastiepoet · 3 years

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Scott Hastie - SYNDICATED INTERVIEW

THE VERY BUSINESS OF POETRY ITSELF

One poet’s view from the UK

See -

http://www.scotthastie.com/?p=5426

Hi Scott, do please tell us how you go about writing, how you organise your day?

"I am fortunate to have a smallish study all to myself, up in the loft, which looks out over open fields and a tree-lined skyline. Here I have quiet, cocooned space overlooking the English countryside (almost in the clouds…) and absolutely everything I need. Far, far away from anything else – phones, computers, tablets and door bells, especially…

For me, as a full time writer, a fairly rigorous, almost monastic daily routine is very important and underpins all my efforts. Not just in creating an exterior environment that is conducive to a concentrated and undisturbed focus on my craft – but one that also allows important preparatory time of an almost religious nature - given the spiritual themes that run through my work.

On a normal day, this would involve around two hours of advance preparation: morning exercise (normally running in the countryside and/or rowing) followed by breathing exercises, body stretches and meditation, sometimes some music also – before even beginning to think about any writing…

Having also eaten simply, I then would normally write in silence for between two to four hours – losing any sense of time, till my body tells me it is time to refuel. Immediately after lunch, I would then have a shorter 1-2 hour session (often the most exciting time of the day when earlier writing can begin to coalesce) Evenings are then usually important down-time from what is a quite an intense and tiring process. However I would still normally have a couple of short sessions early, right after my evening meal and also last thing before bed – which are more about reviewing existing work and quick, little polishing sessions – looking afresh and anew at whatever has emerged that day.

For me, it’s very important that every day (whether a writing day or not) begins and ends with me quietly reading through my last half a dozen pieces – in order hopefully to stay ‘in the flow’ and ‘in the voice’, clinging on tightly to that ‘silken thread’ that, once it slips from your grasp, can often be so hard to regain! Unless I’m away travelling or have specific social commitments, then EVERY day is a writing day.

I also have three identical and rather wonderful little digital voice recorders that literally go everywhere with me (one stays by the bed) so that, whatever I’m up to, I have some chance of capturing all those amazing little thoughts and insights that come to you, just out the blue - And as if by magic! These I call my ‘fragments’ and they usually come when you are in the throws of just doing something else, entirely - or just surfacing from sleep, for example. Rather than just sitting down somewhat deliberately: ‘to write some poetry! ’Previously so, so many of these fragments would have just got lost in the ether forever, before I started to adopt this method and built it into my daily resources and routine.

How on earth does a poem begin to emerge on a blank screen or piece of paper?

Yes well then, beyond the general details of my day to day creative practice, I am often asked to describe exactly how I go about creating an individual poem. Firstly I have to say, in my view, you should never ever sit down to compose on a blank piece of paper - that, I think, is a big mistake many make. Furthermore, which really surprises many of my readers, neither do I ever start with a preconceived theme to write about.

Instead, I simply begin with some of these fragments, as described above, stored on a page; importantly with the most recent at the top... (as I calculate these should be the best reflection of your most current sub-conscious interests) and then see what begins to happen. Which stir you? Which begin to link together? (as per William Burroughs celebrated ‘cut out’ technique) and which prompt you to write on, some more?

And then usually, for me at least (given the immediately preceding minutes I have already invested in meditating and ‘getting in the voice’) something soon starts to take shape and I simply go with the flow and follow its lead... And of course, once the guts of a theme is out and has been safely captured on the page – then it is always possible (and often wise!) to have a break - knowing its detail and narrative is safe and can always be polished later. So this is truly how the nuts and bolts of the creative process works for me, anyway.

What drives and inspires you to write?

All my life (and for reasons I can’t quite be sure of) I have always been a seeker in the spiritual sense and always very ambitious to live life to the full. Whenever I am blessed with special moments or insights in my life, then my first instinct is to share the light and energy that comes from this experience with others. I am particularly keen to reach younger readers and students, still at a formative time in their lives and am always especially gratified when this group of readers, in particular, is touched by my work.

I suppose, at the core of my creative effort, is an attempt to try and present and illuminate a runway ahead, if you like... Fed directly by my own being and experience – in the hope that it resonates. My personal mode of doing this is, of course, as an artist and as a poet in particular.

Who are your greatest influences?

Beyond my own personal experience of living my life as fully as possible, I have always also been uplifted and inspired by reading other writers. After all, what greater gift and truer pleasure can there be that the opportunity to read and absorb, to have an internal dialogue yourself with some of the greatest minds and souls that have ever lived? Especially in antiquity, just think how exciting it is to be able to get to know the ancient, elemental voices in Beowulf, the colours of Ovid, the technical wizardry of Flaubert, the vision of Blake, the wisdom and majesty of Gibran or Rilke, for example.

My passion for poetry was ignited, as an impressionable adolescent, by schoolboy studies of the great English Romantic poets in particular – Wordsworth, Keats and, for me, Coleridge in particular. The work of William Blake and some of the truly great French writers like Rimbaud, Verlaine and Baudelaire were also a great influence. Shakespeare was of course the most glowing and effortless example of someone who had truly found their own voice and, in all likelihood, could write as fast as he could speak... As a student, I was both inspired and awestruck by that – to the extent it seemed like my lifetime’s challenge was going to be the long journey to begin to find my very own true voice.

How difficult was it to get started?

I soon began writing my own poetry in earnest at college, where I was studying to be a librarian and where I was also then editor of the student magazine for Brighton Polytechnic and Sussex University. Quite quickly I became one of many quite active, but relatively obscure either young small press or self-published poets. However, my work always seemed to sell well and was, at the time, unusual for always being published profitably. Thereby becoming a useful second income supporting the family life of a chartered librarian – in the auspicious tradition of a Larkin! Though in my case, the career was in public, rather than academic libraries.

What do you think were the key developments in your literary career?

Significant published collections of my poetry didn’t really appear till I had a family of my own and was already in my thirties. This was largely on the back of commercial success in other genres – when I was fortunate to author a series of quite lavish and lucrative illustrated local history books. Around this time, I also wrote Reunion, a fast-paced romantic thriller, which remains my only novel to date.

Nowadays I write full time, focusing as squarely as possible on poetry once more. A newer transitional collection of my work Meditationswas first published in 2013, focusing more on the philosophic and spiritual themes, with another similar but more substantial and comprehensive collection: Angel Voices soon following in the Autumn of 2014. Along with these and my novel, two other earlier collections of my poetry remain in print today: Selected Poetry, a hardback edition and New Poetry, a later title published in paperback only. On account of growing interest, both theses titles now only very recently re-issued as e books in early 2021.

As you will by now probably know, further titles and new collections soon followed - threads in 2016 and then Pranic Poetry in 2020, the theme of which was fuelled by what I learnt and managed to absorb from a couple of years highly insightful study of Pranic Healing, under the auspices of the Institute of Pranic Healing here in the UK. By this time, there was much broader interest and appreciation of my work around the world, energised by an exponential growth of visits to my showcase website scotthastie.com - which now generates millions of hits every year from all around the world. Interest in my work continues to grow exponentially, I think significantly encouraged but the pandemic induced lockdown around the world, which encouraged so many more folk to do two vital things - Read more... and also Re-evaluate their potential and what their life was really about... which of course lies at the very heart of what my poetry speaks to. This was the reason which prompted us to bring forward by a year my two 30th career anniversary retrospective 'Best Of'' collections - Timeless: the best of Scott Hastie's poetry 1990-2020 and it's companion volume Splinters of Light: quotations from the poetry of Scott Hastie in 2020.

Sounds like the internet has played a big part in your success?

Yes your right. Initially social media was a pretty new departure for me and something I was, to be honest, something I was initially rather reluctant about – but still very much initially encouraged to get involved with by the people at Raygun who designed and launched www.scotthastie.com here in the UK in 2012. In addition, I had also always been so conscious of all the other potential pitfalls there are out there for anyone seeking to write anything significant – be it the lure of fame or fortune, or the seduction of style over substance, for example. And, as always stressed by David Lidgate, my spiritual mentor here in the UK, particularly the importance of not wasting valuable energies on promotion and ‘staying in the bubble’ - if truly serious about maximising the potential you have as a writer.

Having said this, I am glad I did listen to Raygun and we have since developed approaches that make this work for me, without literally taking more than a hour or so of my time every day… Even from my limited experience to date. Like it or not, there can be no doubt that options like Twitter Facebook & Instagram (for general public) and LinkedIn (for peer group connections) are immensely powerful engines of efficient sharing and global communication, helping to steer people from all round the world to my web site. The web site itself scotthastie.com which has a built in blog - for both general comment and also on individual poems - has also exceeded all expectations since it was launched. And all this from a standing start and with no marketing spend to speak of!

There is no doubt that the use of social media and also involvement with writing groups has played its part here. Although my books have long since found their way to most countries around the world, for me, as a writer, the key transformative effect here has been, for the first time, getting my work out much more effectively to a worldwide audience. And, of course, the surprises that come from this. For example, the scale of enthusiastic positive interest, now evident from the US in particular and also from India and some Arab states initially caught us off guard, to be honest. But is obviously very welcome, nevertheless.

So in summary, I am now a definite convert! Just twenty years ago, it simply would have not been possible at all for me to even dream of reaching the audience I do now, without huge investment from a major corporate publishing house. So it does literally transform everything. What I now say to those that ask is that: in this new world, I have two principal endeavours: Firstly - to write as well as I can, then Secondly - to be as serious and cooperative as I can be about getting my work to be read by as many people as possible. Hence, for example, my investment of time in contributing to blogs, as well as online art & literary print journals, both as a way of conveying an understanding of what I am aiming to do AND equally importantly sharing with and encouraging others – which I also find to be very satisfying and rewarding.

Though, much as the Internet does such a brilliant job for us, as writers and creative artists generally (in terms of being able to reach out and find a worldwide audience so cost effectively and without being totally reliant on the big and often greedy corporates) we all still know that the delicious feeling of having that intimate 'one to one' dialogue with the mind of another, by holding a beautifully finished printed book in your hand, just cannot be bettered or ever replaced. As validated by the simple fact that today there are more books being written and commercially published than ever before. End of any possible argument about all that there, methinks!

What excites you most about what you have achieved so far and what are you still looking to achieve with your writing?

For me, the most exciting development in my writing (in addition to the more cogent and mature voice I seem to have been blessed with, past two years or so...) is the way my poetry now seems to be truly reaching out and touching people across all social, cultural, political and faith boundaries. Much more than all the money in the world! I honestly just couldn’t want for more than that.

In that sense I’m now Living the Dream… And it therefore has become very important to me that I pay back all the blessings I’ve been given, by writing as well as I possibly can – And that, in truth, is what the rest of my creative life is about, really.

What do you consider to be the central themes and characteristics of your poetry?

On the technical front, I have always been ardent in my belief that, as far as possible, a poem should speak entirely for itself. Perhaps more so than any other art form, surely this has to be truest for poetry? Whose principal aim is to distil an experience or insight down to the absolute essence. To my mind the voice of the piece should therefore always be much stronger and clearer than any artist’s commentary or critic’s voice could ever provide.

I regard the over-arching theme of my work to be a personal investigation into the positive potential of the human spirit. This I think is clearly evident, running through most of my poems. Not that I believe my work can ever be said to be some sweet pastoral panacea, because it never shies away from pain or suffering – and is prepared to also explore the darkness, as well as the light and, crucially, the fundamental significance of their inter reaction. This being, to me, the absolute axis (the truly dynamic and crucial interdependence of the light and dark, of joy and sorrow, of love and loss, in the grand Romantic tradition) and that key notion of duality which I hope still lies solidly at the heart of my work and my approach.

I remain determined always to be challenging enough to try and reach deep into the core of the meaning of the human experience - although I do readily accept that, as my work has developed and I have grown older, my voice has also become more reflective and spiritual in its emphasis.

I have always aimed, at any time in my career, to be as simply expressed and as readily accessible as possible – For me, this is a vital component of all my work to date. And it is here that you can also hopefully see how simple often short line length structures also play their part – though still carefully shaped for emphasis, controlled rhythm and musicality that lifts key passages, enhances meaning and always looks to carefully and lyrically draw the reader towards the concluding climax of any piece. The success of which for me is always a critical consideration and the key litmus test of success of any particular poem.

How do you define what is poetry and what is not?

A very common question… Many people from different cultures often talk to me around notions of: ‘What is poetry?’ And indeed the significance, or otherwise, of traditionally rhyming schemes and syllabic metrical structures. For me, it is very stark and straightforward– ‘a poem’ is ‘a poem’ if it calls itself one – similarly ‘a poet’ is ‘a poet’ if he/she deems to call themselves one. No more complicated than that, I’m afraid. This doesn’t mean, of course, that any self-declared poet is necessarily a viable or good one - Hey! Ho!

Similar to the old days and all the discussion about what was then ‘art’ and not ‘art’ – painters and sculptors (musicians even) I think have been much more successful than poets in throwing off the shackles of the past, in my view. Both, in terms of the general public’s and even (sad to say!) most of the established ‘literary world’ and academia’s on-going perception on this issue.

That is not to say poetry that rhymes, or strictly follows a consistent metrical rule throughout is not of value – Obviously! Just as clearly as say Jackson Pollock or Rothko’s work does not trump Michelangelo’s. Without a doubt, some of the most inspiring and effective poetry ever written falls firmly into this more traditional category.

So there you go! I am a poet, unabashed, pure and simple! And if pressed (often tediously on the subject...) I will concede – Yes, I indeed write mainly what is often described as ‘free’ or ‘blank’ verse. Writing that’s not (being a child of the glorious Sixties and Seventies!) also without some ‘concrete’ influences, as I mention later.

However lyrical flow and emphasis are always essential to my work, as discussed earlier and I am not averse (excuse the pun!) to using rhyme or slipping into conventional structures, whenever they feel right. Sometimes, I even find myself writing haikus, mid-poem, without even being conscious I’m doing it! No surprise there really – as some of the deepest, most ancient of structures are precisely that: felt, rather than abstractly and mathematically constructed... Stretching back to an oral story telling tradition – when such effects were first discovered instinctively for enhancing dramatic effects and aiding memory, given that nothing was then written down – but simply retold, from generation to generation.

That being said, I always have one regular tactic up my sleeve to settle any argument, if necessary, regarding my credentials and credeibility as a ‘poet’. I ask the person concerned to read any poem of mine they wish and then promptly present them with a full prose essay conveying the very same message as the poem – Trust me, that is guaranteed to shut up even the sternest of sceptics, who all of sudden have no option but to concede there is clearly much ‘poetry’ there after all!

And, of course, overriding all this - Of one thing I have always been sure - Poetry is the purest of all art forms. Now, within that, we know all too well how the term ‘blank verse’ can be used in a pejorative way – where as ‘free verse’ self-evidently cannot. So a poet writing 'free verse' is what I proudly and ultimately lay claim to be. And writing free verse that will joyfully adopt whatever technique, structure pattern or lyrical tone (in and out, however traditional... however not…) as I see fit. And as I determine the mood, the nuance, the meaning of the piece demands.

And how truly blessed I feel given that, so clearly, poetry is the highest of all art forms and stands up there, entirely on its own level. And furthermore, doubly blessed! For, to be honest, during much of my earlier life, I could so easily can have been seduced away. For example, there have been so many times in my life when, if the devil himself had offered me the chance to be a say a singer, lyricist or wonderfully visually expressive painter, then I would have literally pulled his arm off, there and then!

Because these are of course the more immediately attractive and fashionable art forms that, in our current culture especially, can so much more easily grab the world’s attention and still go on to establish some kind of meaningful and soulful relevance. However, inevitably within them, the message has at least to be in part compromised, diluted by the medium. Whereas, for the poet, the message can come through strong and pure and can be delivered in full - Direct and Undiluted. So, although we often have a harder road to travel for sure, blessed indeed are the poets!

Your passion for what you do is very evident, what has challenged you most?

The first thing to say is that is no easy road to travel, rather a very demanding one, requiring persistent and dedicated effort over a good number of years. Going back to my youth, the first person to truly believe in me and what I had to offer beyond my lifelong friend, the precociously knowledgeable and ultimately ambitious painter, Ian Stirling was an idealistic young teacher called Robert Peel, who was my A level (higher grade) tutor of French Literature at Secondary (High) School. He was the first to open my eyes as to what might be possible and who (pretty uniquely and significantly at that time, when I was at my most rebellious and errant) still encouraged me to be myself and follow my dream. Consequently, I am forever in his debt…

Beyond that, I have worked hard most of my life to deliberately avoid being schooled by academic influences and laboured, mainly alone – albeit with the bright lanterns of what, for me, are key timeless and luminous voices like those of Gibran, Blake and Rilke to guide me on my way.

As we have already touched on briefly above – in terms of how technically I approach the challenging business of structuring of my work - then the Haiku tradition, with emphasis on focusing down and distilling the essence of what you want to say has had an on-going (if often not always directly and technically applied) obvious influence on my work. Personally, I will also always be permanently indebted for the technical breakthroughs achieved the pioneering Scottish Concrete poets, Ian Hamilton Finlay and Edwin Morgan – which really helped me see a clear way forward for myself, in terms of beginning to develop a style I feel is my own.

Is it really possible for any poet to really have his voice properly heard in the 21st century?

Like to think I am living proof that it can be done! That said, whatever anyone’s influences and any environment they find themselves operating in, I freely acknowledge that the most significant challenge faced by any writer is to truly find their own voice. And to be honest with you, I do get very weary of what sometimes seems like the endless procession of often technically, as well as intellectually talented young writers - on both sides of the Pond, simply schooled to echo the styles and mores of whatever is judged to then be fashionable by a self-serving established literary elite. To some extent, this is inevitable, I suppose... And it is perhaps unreasonable for me to imagine otherwise! But then again, as we have discussed earlier, I believe the power of the internet has played a very valuable role here in loosening this stifling stranglehold.

Also, as mentioned earlier, my tendency anyway has always been to be a bit of a lone wolf, by artistic and spiritual necessity. Thereby I believe giving yourself the time and space to conjure up a strong and unique voice that can really punch through.

I have noticed that nearly all your poems don’t have titles, why is that?

Yes, I do have a few such idiosyncrasies as a poet: And one of these is that, unless dedicated to a particular individual or location, I have never believed in giving titles to my poems. In the spirit of the haiku and my earlier answers about technique, what I say to those who question me as to why this is (and my answer often surprises or sometimes annoys many) Namely: 'if you can truly conjure a meaningful title for a poem, then, my friend, perhaps that should be the poem itself!!' And, for me, the first few words of a poem and page number will always serve as a sufficient identifier - so who needs titles anyway!

My other significant idiosyncrasy is that, despite the fact that I have the utmost respect for the practice of being a ‘performance poet’ – this is something I NEVER do - despite what it costs me in terms of the loss of promotional opportunities. In common with my practice of not using titles for my work, this also surprises some. But what I say to this is that I myself have always written so deliberately to be ‘read in the head’ rather than declaimed. All I can say here is that, for me as a poet, this is much more important and multi-dimensional opportunity and moreover, a preciously unique and timely dialogue between you and any individual reader, all of whom are different characters, with different histories, preoccupations and issues.

For example, would I trust anyone? (myself included!) to do full justice to one of my poems in oral recital – frankly not! Also would I really want to interfere at all with the very special music any one person could make (in their very own way and with the singular benefit of their unique experiences and resonances) with one of my pieces in their own head – Again, not really! Indeed some of my readers do tell me that they read my poetry aloud to themselves, quite often. And that, of course, is just marvellous! And exactly how it should be...

Given all the success you’ve had to date Scott, what still drives you on to keep writing?

As to my ultimate ambition as a writer, it is certainly not, nor ever has been Fame and Fortune... (which we all know is much more easily garnered in today's world by being pretty much anything other than a poet!) Rather, it’s always been all about something very different and much more enduring.

Something that I blessedly first became aware of so early in my life, via both my communion with my close friend, the unique, truly exceptional Ian Stirling and also the illuminating effect of a charmed incident that took place on an early journey to Italy, as described in the Foreword/Introduction to both Timeless and Splinters:

"For me, there was only ever one true ambition in life. From that charmed moment in the Pantheon in Rome, watching on as a beautifully elegant young woman walked reverentially across the marble floor of this extraordinary historic building to place a single red rose of the tomb of the painter Raphael. There and then, an insight immediately crystallized around a noble purpose for my life. Ever more certain now that my task was now leave behind something true and beautiful, fashioned from my own life’s experience that might have some chance of touching, moving and inspiring others, many, many years later. Surely, as an eager and idealistic young man, that was all I could ever hope for. And so, the die was cast!"

A wonderful story…

What are you reading at the moment?

Currently, I would recommend the stunning and very contemporary work of NY poet Sharon Olds, one time winner of the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize and also the poignant work of Irish poet Dennis O’Driscoll. I am also currently re-reading Marcus Aurelius and Rumi - Timeless wisdom that never fails to prompt and inspire. Additionally, I am rather addicted to rather a lot of exotic travelling round the world, spending time with and tasting other cultures – which also never fails to nourish my soul – As does spending truly precious time with my family, close friends and young grandchildren who do so much to rejuvenate my spirits, by showing me the world, as it is - fresh and new again."

Thank you Scott for your time today and being so generous with your thoughts. A very fascinating interview.

TRANSCRIPT ENDS

Syndicated interview

scotthastie.com

#poetry #Romantic Poetry #spiritual poetry #poem #poems #romanticpoems #spiritualpoems #scotthastie #scotthastiepoet

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femnet · 7 years

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The show “Gilmore Girls” focuses on the realistic, everyday lives of Lorelai and Rory and it really highlights their mother-daughter relationship. The show is full of powerful and complex women who each have their own individual stories, which is something that isn’t shown very often on TV. On the show, the men who are involved in Lorelai and Rory’s lives play more of a minor role, leaving the girls to get your full attention.

Lorelai Gilmore is the best place to start when talking about why “Gilmore Girls” matters. Lorelai embodies strength and independence. She got pregnant at 16 and raised her kid all by herself, all while holding a job as a maid at the inn she eventually ran. After years of rising through the ranks, she ended up opening her own inn. Through her persistence, she showed that strength is everything. Even while doing all this, she is a great mother. The needs of her kid are always first over everything and her fierce protectiveness throughout the series highlights this greatly. While Lorelai is silly and fun, she is also very wise and she knows her daughter Rory better than anyone and she knew, even at a young age, that she was the only one who could raise Rory the way she wanted and the way she felt was right. She raised Rory to also be independent and strong, and as the series goes on and Rory gets older, we begin to see Rory embody Lorelai more and more. She also shows women everywhere that they are capable of thriving on their own. Her mother, Emily, heavily relies on her husband, but Lorelai has no man in her life (at least not a long lasting one, and especially while Rory is young), and she proves that she is more than capable of being stable on her own. Her most important relationship is with Rory, and not a man, which is a situation that needs to be shown on TV more and more.

Next, Rory Gilmore. While Rory was very smart, hardworking, and loved reading, she was never a stereotype. She had boyfriends and spent time with friends outside of school, proving that you can be bookish while having a life as a teenager/young adult. Also after doing badly on a test, she works her way to becoming valedictorian. Her nonstop motivation in school is all internal, which I relate to greatly, proving her importance. I feel like people can relate to wanting to do well in school, and not being forced on by their parents. I was one of the few kids in my class who didn’t get punished for doing badly in school. Just like my childhood, Lorelai was proud of Rory no matter what. Rory saw Chilton and Yale as challenges, yes, but thrilling ones that were extremely rewarding. I think this sets a great example for girls who enjoy rigor in academics, much like Rory. While Rory is quiet, kind, and beautiful, she is also a powerful leader of her peers (as proven when she was vice president at Chilton and chief editor of the Yale Daily News). She treated those under her with kindness and fairness, but she is also tough, carving a way and proving that women can make great leaders. These qualities are important to be displayed in popular culture because of the lack of leaders who are women. Overall, she is an incredible role model for those who want to become a leader.

Last of the fabulous Gilmore women is Emily Gilmore, Rory’s grandmother and Lorelai’s mother. While I stated earlier that Emily relies heavily on her husband Richard, in the “Gilmore Girls” revival, Emily shows her ability to be strong and independent after Richard has passed. She curses out the women in the Daughters of the American Revolution group (which is a big feat and a dramatic and wonderful scene), moves to Nantucket by herself, and starts a new job that she ends up loving, but is very unlike her previous duties of arranging parties and meetings. Even though these parties sound frivolous, through watching Emily’s life, we learn to her, they are nothing like that. They mean a great deal to her and she shows that through her dedication and nonstop work. Unlike Lorelai and Rory, Emily and Lorelai do not have the best relationship. At one point, Lorelai calls her a cobra, amongst other nicknames of similar taste. But her angriness and cold attitude toward Lorelai are justified. She thought once her daughter ran off with Rory, she would never come back (this is seen in the first episode where Lorelai and Rory go to Emily and Richard’s house and both Rory, Emily, and Richard ask if it’s a holiday, showing that their appearances there are rare). She breaks the stereotype of women having to be perfect all the time and if they’re not they’re a terrible person by her justified coldness towards Lorelai.

Our angry friend Paris Geller is next. Out of all the women on the show, I feel as though I relate to Paris a lot, which if you know about Paris, is a little scary. But, even as my mom and I were watching the show together (a great mother-daughter bonding activity, might I add), she told me that I reminded her of Paris. She is a lot like Emily in the sense that, as the show goes on, she becomes sensible and likeable. I have grown to really love Paris’s character, and I am so glad we got so much of her. Paris is originally Rory’s enemy when she arrives at Chilton, and to Rory, Paris is a crazy and irrational mean girl. But, over time, they end up becoming really great friends, and she is Rory’s set “angry friend”, but we all know she really does love Paris. Paris doesn’t really have any friends at school until Rory, and in one episode she states, “Rory’s my only friend. She stays in the room until I’m completely done saying something” showing that her and Rory have a true friendship, despite their original hatred towards one another. At first, Paris is very insecure, despite her friendship with the popular girls, and her academic success. Rory is the first person Paris really connects with and she shapes her into a better person, showing that she can move on from her distant parents. They become such good friends over time, and Paris really does want to see Rory succeed. Paris is unlike anyone seen on television, she’s super ambitious while being extremely sarcastic.

Next up is Sookie Saint-James, Lorelai’s best friend. Sookie made her job her livelihood, and her now husband, Jackson was simply an afterthought. Lorelai and Sookie have a great friendship, and much like Rory and Paris, they never argued over a guy, which is rare in female-female friendships on TV. All of the characters on this list are unique to television in some way, and for Sookie, it’s the fact that she’s overweight. Over seven seasons and four revival episodes, the fact that she is overweight is never mentioned once. She breaks down the stereotype that if you are overweight, you’re automatically ugly and cast to the side. But, she gets married before Lorelai, who is called all the synonyms of pretty countless times on the show by a large amount of characters. Sookie had the same amount of self-esteem as the other characters on the show, and it is so nice to see that her weight was never even discussed.

Then, we have Rory’s best friend, Lane Kim. Despite being muffled by her strict Korean mother, Lane was another incredibly strong female character on the show. Lane loves music, and she spends a lot of time learning about music, specifically rock, to become a great rocker chic (which she does). Rock music is heavily dominated by men, and once again “Gilmore Girls” is smashing stereotypes when Lane becomes a drummer in her own band (I mean, how badass is that??). Asians are always portrayed as being the smart and academic ones, and Lane is intelligent, but her passion isn’t school, it’s music and she does what she wants to do. She was so cool and badass, nothing like a lot of Asian-American characters in television.

Now for “Gilmore Girls-A Year in the Life”!! The revival of “Gilmore Girls” left something to be desired for some, but for me, I tried to savor all 360 minutes of new “Gilmore Girls”. I feel like the revival really showed us what getting older felt like. While I’m only 17 (about Rory’s age during season 3), I can’t really talk about getting older, but I can talk about what it felt like seeing the characters older and what that taught me.

The revival showed me that it was important to take time for yourself. Lorelai was having doubts about what she was doing with her life, and she wanted to go off and be alone. Completely understandable and good. She was overwhelmed and she didn’t know what to do, so she went hiking, which is nothing like what original “Gilmore Girls” Lorelai would do, which is why it was needed. Just step back and take a second, smell the roses, if you will. It also shows the pitfalls of Rory’s career. When we see Rory again, she actually isn’t doing too well. She had the perfect life in the original show, which isn’t a realistic depiction of what life is like. She comes back to Stars Hollow struggling, she has new experiences that she wouldn’t ever think she would have, but she became more human because of it. Next, after speaking to one of her ex-boyfriends, Jess, Rory finds what she’s truly passionate about, seeming to have lost it amidst the floating she had done earlier in the revival. She decided that she wanted to write a book about her and her mom, which is perfect because Rory is never seen without a book, and her mom is her best friend. This idea gave her a new wave of momentum to keep going and it allowed her to come full circle and create “Gilmore Girls”.

The creators of “Gilmore Girls” have created amazing, complex characters and a classic show. It is a feel-good watch that has a broad importance and created an impact. The show is around the two amazing women of Lorelai and Rory, which demonstrates a deep and complex mother-daughter relationship. Rory is a realistic and wonderful, but flawed role model for young women. She is someone you can look up to, but she has made some mistakes that others might face. Also, Lorelai’s perseverance and persistence shows us that there is hope for everyone and you can do anything if you set your mind to it, which may be cliché, but is good to remember on your harder days. It also showed that women can build up and support other women, not tear them down. Paris wanted Rory to succeed just as much as she did, which was a lot for Paris, and it made each woman succeed and want to succeed. “Gilmore Girls” does focus heavily on relationships, so we do have to talk about the men that shaped our favorite girls. All of the men showed how people should be treated in a relationship, and it showed how they shouldn’t (when Max is trying to control how Lorelai raises Rory). Overall, “Gilmore Girls” is my favorite show, and I feel like it’s an important show about success and failure that all girls (and guys, but it is an empowering show for girls) should watch to see some realistic life experiences and see some great role models.

#pop culture #gilmore girls #representation #by lianna #december 2017

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trustafarian-theserialfiction · 4 years

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“trustafarian” part 14: you meet girl, you move in, she go March 22, 2016 1:17 pm

Just under four months: that was the safe decompression time in his mother’s head? Four months and it was the incoming call alert he’d been dreading. He’d accidentally gone online on skype when he’d restarted his laptop and it had automatically detected the hidden wifi network before he could close the auto-starting messenger. "Why don’t you ever call, I know your service provider does free long distance within Canada, now.” Looked that up did you? “Well that’s all right, you’ve probably been busy looking for a job out there—have you tried applying for a job at a bank? There are so many banks and you can really climb the corporate ladder starting in a bank. You know Sharon Mitchell?” Dan did, his parents drank wine every new year at Sharon Mitchell’s house. They never saw her except at these parties. He and his sisters had had to go to their grandparents place for new year’s, to be kept out of trouble (right until he’d moved out), because it wasn’t really a everyone-bring-your-kids kind of soiree and Sharon Mitchell’s kids didn’t attend either. “Her daughter just graduated highschool and she’s been promoted at her after-school teller job to a desk job talking people through their insurance. She could end up as a bank manager or…oh I don’t know, it’s just something to think about.” It’s just something you think about. “You know, I’m glad you’re not…I’m glad you made this change in your life,” I didn’t make this change. “I know you’re not planning on going back to school but you should really consider it, you could pay off a student loan in a few years. You’re so smart, Daniel,” no, I’m not “you could do anything you want,” as long as it’s something-to-say at new year’s, about your perfect year and perfect family and life and how well everything is going for everyone close to you because of your own phony perfection, “and I just think you’d do better in the academic stream than you think.” She was starting to slip, her Betty Crocker buoyancy was turning into irritation. He guessed he was making a sour face at her that translated despite the video quality. He was sitting in the empty kitchen, his laptop next to the bowl of crumble he’d found left for him on top of it when he’d come upstairs a few minutes ago. He really wanted to eat it and wished he hadn’t opened the laptop to watch youtube while he did. “Look at your sisters, they’ve both been published, even though they’re in the private sector now,” sure, published, whatever the hell that means. Blog posts were a kind of publishing, who cared. “Don’t get me wrong! I never wanted to be a trail-blazer either, I know exactly how you feel.” Fuck you. “The pressure is—well. But I’m so worried about you,” all in her glazed-ham blissed-out Martha-Stewart-doing-a-séance voice, the one she'd learned to say all her phoniest passive aggressive shit in, "you don’t have any savings, Daniel, and you're getting on towards 30. It’s time to grow up." It’s time to hang up, he yelled silently at her and himself. But he laughed and told her he loved her and asked her not to worry so much and told her about how Jean-Paul was doing, although not much about what Jean-Paul was doing, because she thought the little rich boy she’d met ten years ago had been so refined and polite and upwardly-mobile and so obviously socially desirable for both her and her son—except that Jean-Paul’s mother had never had the time (or interest, probably) in responding to his mother’s “our sons are friends and I was thinking we might meet for coffee sometime and get to know one another” (because I hear you’re a respected legal expert and that’s so distinguished sounding and I don’t have one of those for floating the canapé tray to at my occasional dinner parties yet) emails. It was a pleasure, in a way, that he and Jean-Paul were in exactly the same place these days, from her point of view. Neither of them worked at a bank, quelle tragédie. They both lived somewhere she would never get a slow, panning view of. His mother had never liked his ex’s mother, either, for similar reasons.

After the call—during which he’d asserted that his cell contract didn’t have a clause for “magically update to include new policies in new area codes,” and no, this call hadn’t been free because they were on a fixed-rate low-monthly-data plan with crazy overage and add-on fees (he lied), and could she please stick to emails—Dan returned to his bed and lay there feeling worse than he had in weeks, maybe a month. He’d been lying about the long-distance, actually—he’d looked into it online about a week prior and found out where to change numbers and contracts with his provider after moving, which he hadn’t done yet and didn’t really want to at this point. What was the point of paying for it to have call-in or a data plan, he didn’t want calls and he didn’t need data. He had wifi. And he couldn’t afford anything else really because he had no income, even though Torontonians seemed to get better plan options and prices than Islanders. More carriers meant more undercutting prices but it was also an exhausting amount of information with very minor differences to track before figuring out the least screwjobiest option. He’d given up; by the time he wanted or needed a more functional phone, all the plan details would be different again, half the companies would be rebranded. There was a lot about Toronto that made it seem like the future. Futuristic. He was glad he wasn’t in the past, where it was time to be a banker. Grow up and do what? Get what job? He was still replaying the conversation with his mom, before complaining that he hadn’t called, and before she’d started bringing up job-hunting more pointedly, she’d been saying "we'd pay for you to go to trade school while you’re out there, there are so many options for you, Zoe's son is getting work using his welding certification out in Alberta right now," the way she talked drove him nuts, like she wanted particular words to stick in his head, like someone telling a kid how not to get lost. Dan remembered his mother's friend Zoe’s son--he’d eaten twelve grams of mushrooms at a grade twelve grad pre-party the night he accidentally met his birth-dad at a rave in Nanaimo. Dan had been at the pre-party and heard about the rave later via facebook posts; his ex hadn’t wanted to go, she’s said it sounded like it’d be a tent full of juggalos. Turned out it was true about the guy being Zoe’s kid’s birth-dad. Zoe was a yogamom who had remarried some insurance lawyer friend of Dan’s dad when her kid was in diapers, and he hadn't been old enough to wonder whether the guy in the pictures was actually dead or just presumed dead, until he'd met him. So that guy was working on some rig in Alberta now, and Dan was supposed to follow his good example apparently, except that Dan knew via facebook what his mother apparently didn't know or didn’t think was important, which was that Zoe’s son hated it there and regretted the career path he was now committed to by the mortgage he was paying off on his dream home in the Okanagan. He liked kiteboarding and scenery a lot. Wanted to retire and kiteboard and look at scenery. Four months was the leeway, Dan thought. And here we are again in bullshitville. Or at least, it had astralprojected its way east too vividly for him to not be transported fully in turn, back to bullshitville. He tried to clear his mind for a while until it occurred to him that a change of topic was better than pushing a topic away without a distraction from it. He started thinking about what he was actually going to do with the spring since he didn’t intend on trying to spit-shine his way into a job he couldn’t stand and wasn’t qualified for.

The days were getting longer, but it didn’t feel like spring to him. Earlier in the month it might as well have been summer already for a few days and now it was winter again—to be fair, the last couple years there’d been an end of March cold snap on the coast, too, with a day or so of snow. But when it snowed out west it was somehow warmer then than during the usual winter rain, no matter how low the temperature said. Here, though, it still felt like a sharp bite on the ass from an ice sculpture every snowy evening. That was why, presumably, Bruce wasn’t sure it wouldn’t snow again this year and hadn’t started gardening; he’d said it always snowed on April Fools now, which he liked, for some inane reason. It didn’t seem wildly funny to Dad for there to be snow on any day in April. Today it seemed possible there could be snow in a week; was all weird outside, murky and kind of opaque, unlike the past few days. Overall the weather this month had been a return to form for Toronto sunshine-wise, in Dan’s eyes, and it had been seriously buoying his spirits. Although, he also suspected that the prematurely summery feeling that had made him mourn not having a patio beer, had contributed to his prematurely summerbreaky approach to working on music for Thuh Dope Show. Interrupted from his deeply concentrated considerations of the weather, he heard and felt a jumbling thumpriff begin as some someones came in the side entrance by Jean-Paul’s place and started up the stairs. He planned to ignore it, whoever it was, and thought about the crumble he’d brought down to his room, now sitting on the bowed top of his suitcase waiting for his appetite to not be ruined. His appetite felt unruined now, in fact.

He got a nasty shock when a curtain of braided hair attached to a pretty face appeared like the face in snow white’s step mom’s mirror in the portal above him. “Thinger Minge,” Andreah greeted him.

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He was still in bed hours later, thinking about how much he didn’t want to get up. Andreah had come over with Andre and stuck her head down into his room, and he’d been confronted with an outside eye on his sleeping situation—and his spending-all-day-in-an-ugly-pit-in-bed situation, which had been kind of awful for Dan. He was thankful it never happened ordinarily, but less thankful for that than he was for Andreah bothering at all. She and Andre were bringing back the bowls and cutlery from the park, where he guessed Andreah had met up with Andre and Jean-Paul and had crumble. He’d eaten his own ladling of it after she’d shot the shit with him a few minutes from his ceiling. She said he looked like a little doll in a shoebox. She thinks I’m cute, he heard claymated Rudolph nasally cheer in his head, as he lay there reconsidering her description. He got his phone out and opened facebook messenger, and looked her up using the name she’d told him, a TOS-violating pseudonym, of course. Her userimage was a black square, of course. He had no idea what to say. A witty, sexy, really fun type of thing to start a chat with, was not jumping into his noggin. He tried “you looked nice today” but deleted it after seeing it typed out.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Andre came back the next day with a thick, queen-sized fleece blanket for him. There was a starry night scene of wolves on it—coming from Andreah it seemed different than it would have from someone else, like there was more to it than just circumstantial selection, because maybe wolves were a thing for her culturally or something. That seemed like kind of a woefully uninformed thought, and Dan figured he’d keep it to himself in case it was. He appreciated the gesture; the blanket was warm and kind of heavenly, and he wished he’d had it all along. He wished he’d had it when he was sick, or one better, when he was passed out drunk with a low body temperature the night he’d gotten sick in the first place. He felt drowsier under the wolf blanket, like it had a magically charged force-field of cuddliness and security—a scaled-for-size baby-blanket was how it struck him, like he hadn’t felt so truly swaddled by one textile since the crib. He wiggled slightly in the cocoon he’d made, enjoying having his feet bare and trying to wiggle out of the imaginary second-skin of resentment he’d felt crawling under his flesh ever since being skyped unawares the previous day. Things were good. Looking up and up, even. Here he was in this big room with this big blanket, not a care in the world. Holding on to that feeling of weightless satisfaction as uncrushingly as he could, he felt himself slowly doze off, and had a last conscious sense like it was going to be the most restful sleep he could remember.

He dreamed about Andreah, about the two of them hooking up again. It’d all been fun and fond, but then they were having a talk about how Dan wasn’t sure exactly where Andreah saw things going, because her old answer wasn’t appealing enough to be sure she’d meant it. And she was angry at him, she shoved him and he thought she might just vanish out of thin air, which made sense in the dream, although he thought he was awake. She told him again that she saw things going no deeper, barring some miraculous shift in his whole attitude towards sex and dating and life in general. She told him it was a problem that he and Andre didn’t get along, which was so confusing and frustrating that he sort of halfway woke up, and feeling it happen, he swam back down into the dream to try to finish it, maybe go back to the sex part.

Awake again, having jerked off to pleasant effect, he was actually concerned that if he saw Andreah more often, he’d feel like he was performing a relationship, for her, because that was how being around his ex all the time had felt. He found himself worrying for the first time that he was so habituated to resentfully caving to some projected pressure rather than acting on whim, that he’d feel that way in another relationship even when the reality was there was no pressure, no caving, no resentment. It sort of had a foresight kind of a feeling, or it was somehow linked in his mind to what she’d been saying in the dream, about his attitude; he could envision that she would start to take on a skewed persona in his mind—more ordinary, less companionable, less fun, more annoying. Schoolmarmish, somehow. He’d realized several years ago that girls who wanted to be in relationships were people who didn’t appear, to him, to have or feel the need for lives apart from managing their partners behaviour, and in that way dating them was an inescapable emotional burden, like having really nagging parents or some kind of nanny. Someone like Andreah, who didn’t need his company, who had her own schedule, friends and life, basically unentangled with his life, seemed more like his ex’s ideal self than her actual self—someone aloof until approached, un-needy of his time or attention. But willing to spend her time and attention on him, all the same, with the sole aim of improving his mood. That was desirable company. And it would stay that way the less of it he tried to monopolize. The less of it he successfully monopolized, anyway.

The train of thought coupled with some noises above him brought him to thinking about Andre, who might have still been upstairs. He dug earbuds out of his suitcase and started an episode of Bruce’s show playing on his phone, not really listening but wanting to block out the sort of aggravating vague sounds of people upstairs.

Andre seemed like neither type of girl, not giving or needing, just a person who didn’t want to be around him and didn’t seem to really like being around him, less than an emotional burden or bolster: a minor sink. He thought about the rest of the household; in highschool and now, Jean-Paul had been someone who didn’t even slightly come across as needing him but was willing and pleased enough to be friends anyway. Dan had never really craved friendship until middle-school had burnt him out on his peer group, and his sister who was second oldest had been willing to attach him to the periphery of her social life because he was just starting highschool and she was finishing and it apparently made her more magnanimous than she’d been about being in the same elementary school; in hindsight he saw himself as an accessory. Little brother, tiny Tim. Charity. So, he’d wanted his own friend who didn’t treat him like an afterthought, or a friend-circle nepotism case, and Jean-Paul was a person who had wanted to be friends with just him, not the people his sister knew, although they all went to see his band play community centre showcases and basement gigs. Jean-Paul was a person whose company Dan had truly enjoyed, also, which he probably hadn’t encountered before because he didn’t remember a previous time of having that feeling. Jean-Paul was a person he’d been proud to be friends with, too; he’d actually felt inspired by Jean-Paul as a person, when they’d first met. He wasn’t sure he felt as drawn to him now as then, or even as he had in January, but the feeling was still there, when he really thought about it. Why didn’t he ever try to spend any time with his friend who he liked so much? But that question brought him back to what he’d been thinking about Andreah; it was becoming obvious to Dan that being able to approach people according to his own schedule was important. People weren’t appealing if they didn’t appear to have an existence strictly independent of him, or if they seemed to need anything from him.

Bruce, he supposed, also fit the bill of friend-appeal. Bruce had a peculiar vibe all his own, in Dan’s musings just then—he wasn’t quite someone Dan went out of his way to spend time around or would specifically think to spend time around, but he’d found himself enjoying Bruce’s company each time they saw one another. Bruce’s relationship with Andre was still something of a mystery; he could easily picture them platonically spooning on nights Andre stayed over, or in a tangle of tantric debauchery halfway-on and halfway-off the couch he’d sat on the first time he’d seen the back rooms. That couch seemed suspiciously easy to clean, now that he thought about it. Probably a lot of their old furniture was salvaged because it wasn’t textile, ergo easier to delouse, but was curbed because of some event that had wiped off the upholstery fine but also ruined the unit itself somehow.

Shaking out the flesh-flower image of Bruce and Andre tying in knots, he reminded himself that his grasp of the sexual identities at play was flimsy at best—he frequently failed to see anything straight about Bruce, but there wasn’t anything particularly gay about him either. He mostly acted like a six year old. Mouse, he realized, wouldn’t have caused him to think twice except for his social group and his inherent out-of-step-with-everythingness. Pete was straight, or at least, dated girls, by popular report, and Mouse and Pete were tight, but what did that mean about Mouse, was that an indication he was or wasn’t gay? He seemed to have a radar that let him avoid being around at the same time as Andre but if Dan had been in the same scene as her for years he might have moved in the same direction, on that front. He wondered if Jean-Paul’s sexual identity and line of work were any evidence one way or the other about the house population as a whole; hadn’t Alice come up in that context, when he was high on Bru-brew and Jean-Paul had told him about being an “independent male escort”—he couldn’t really remember that part at the moment. That whole conversation hadn’t processed entirely, he could feel himself sort of behold the memory of it as a whole and it was hazy, hard to make sense of. He decided to divert around it and get back to essentially kinsey-scoring everyone he knew in Toronto, since it was pretty diverting.

Andre, who he had a more confirmed read on than the others, wasn’t an outlier to the not-straight trend, though Dan wasn’t willing to bet that she’d ever actually dated another woman since apparently she and Andreah weren’t dating like how she and Bruce weren’t dating. He didn’t think he knew any girls-who-liked-girls who actually had long-term committed relationships with each other. Maybe Andreah did, or had, but like she’d said, not with girls like Andre. Too white-acting. Even Andreah herself seemed to be too white-acting for Andreah. White-sounding, whatever. Maybe part of it was that she didn’t like girly-girls; she’d been willing enough to get casual for a night with him. Maybe she liked being the girl but, with a girl. A mental image appeared, of Andre styled like one of the obvious butches he’d seen while walking through pride celebrations downtown one summer or the couple times Winks And Grins had showcased at Paparazzi. His ex had basically only gotten bookings for them by offering to take an hourly off the door cover. It didn’t seem to get them more shows and it definitely had never made them money. She seemed to think it would grow them some hype but Dan suspected it did the opposite and made them seem unprofessional and desperate, which, frankly, was close to being exactly what they were. Unprofessional for sure. Desperate for exposure, okay. She had been, at least. He hadn’t really cared. They’d never had any income worth declaring from these shows, otherwise they might have wanted to figure out how to legitimize the revenue up, like Jean-Paul had been saying the other night. Seemed like “legal consulting” ran in the family as well, after all.

He realized he was roaringly hungry, then. It occurred to him to message Andreah or walk down to Higher Grounds in time for maybe a lunch break, but in the spirit of avoiding over-affiliation that might murky up their relationship waters too soon after the blanket—and the dream—he decided to head upstairs and eat something from the fridge. There’d been a recent gold medal dive, he knew, at a Portuguese bakery nearer to Andreah and Andre’s place. She had told him the other day when they’d chatted and when Andre had shown up with the blanket she’d said there was a box of custard tarts for them all. He thought about hanging around to eat upstairs, but the idea of the others and spending time with them was deflating, and he resolved to eat grab food and come right back, possibly to do some more music work. He pulled out the earbuds, cutting off Toichiro’s fey-sounding line of banter mid-bant. There were definitely still people upstairs. Dan climbed the ladder into the upstairs hearing a conversation as it came into view—Andre was hanging off Bruce seeming kind of zoned out and dead-eyed the way she'd been the last time he'd seen her but more upset, and Bruce was saying something about feminism, and Mouse was upset already but Bruce was keeping it chill, and he was asking “...so what if you get misconstrued, man, you’ve got feminist values, and one really positive feminist value is to align yourself with something after looking at yourself and looking at it and seeing how you need to side with the non-dominant force to help it survive, otherwise it might not survive and then your reality is a little dimmer!”

By the end he’d gotten an annoying edge to his voice and the whole scene was kind of fucking ugly in its makeup somehow, more singularly than usual—and Dan said “Jesus fucking Christ” out loud, and Bruce looking over at him sticking halfway out of the hole in the floor and laughed and looked kind of sympathetic, which Dan guessed was because Bruce knew Mouse was at the breaking point for whatever deeply tormenting person code he had about people ‘misconstruing’ him, and was about to flip his shit. Mouse flailed in his direction and flipped the longboard they had used as a table, starting to scream something in Russian at him. It was actually terrifying, the little guy looked like his head was about to pop off. Dan slid back down through the hole and went to sleep with his earbuds in, hungry.

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lonbergwrites · 5 years

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Reader, Come Home - a review

I recently took to Goodreads with something of a rant about a book I just finished called - Reader, Come Home - by Maryanne Wolf.

I do not recommend this book.

I actually disliked it so much in fact – thought it was so biased and self-righteously written – that I was driven to create a special “not-recommended” tab for my bookshelf on Goodreads.

I try to give authors a lot of room. I am trying to write myself - as you knowing coming to this website - and I know how difficult and personal it is. But this book is something else. Something that deserves to not be read. Something that deserves to go away. As of today, I’ve read 90 book so far in 2019. There are 216 total books on my Goodreads profile listed as read or currently reading. Of all of these books, I’ve only deemed 6 to be “not-recommended.” That means that after going over all the books I’ve read since 2014 when I started keeping track, I could only come up with six that really had no redeeming value. Let me put this into more perspective: I didn’t even include Left Behind on this list. That is a truly terrible book – it is terribly written, has terrible plotting and characterization, and utilizes and promotes terrible theology. It is the book I use to make fun of bad books. In fact, I think a lot of it is bad for a person to read because of both the dread and the self-righteousness it inspires in its target market, the “true believers” of the Evangelical far right.

All of that said, that book did give me an insight into a former friend I grew up with, and without it, I would have far less empathy (and actual sympathy) for people of this persuasion. So even Left Behind has its merits in the right context, and isn’t on this list. That’s saying something. I dislike Reader, Come Home that much.

I’m going to start my actual review with “letter four” (her book is divided up into eight ‘letters’ she is writing to ‘dear reader’) from the middle of this book. Letter four is truly, deeply bad. This author’s elitism cannot be excused. It all started earlier as she constantly addresses the reader with “we, the expert readers” know/believe/trust/expect/etc. I understand ingratiating yourself with your audience, but this author’s judgmental tone was a lot to take, especially when it came over and over again in quick progression. She presents the fact that people – on average – now read about 100k words a day. Let that sink in. That’s a good-sized novel a day! That number is way up, she says, and is in fact more than people have ever read before. But she also argues that it is a bad thing because all of that readings doesn’t come in huge, dense passages that you have to spend hours decoding. She doesn’t concede the fact that your average person has never read that way from today through time in memoriam. The very fact that people are reading that much means that people are more literate than ever, even if it isn’t deep reading. There are stats out there today that say that the average person consumes more information on a single day than an educated person from the middle ages consumed in a year. It is such a culturally biased idea to think that the average person, who is indeed reading more than at any time in history, is going to be worse because the top 1% of readers might be reading somewhat less complicated materials. She has no idea what an average reader is, clearly, as she panders to her “expert readers.” She does (what she herself calls) an unscientific study of three best-selling novels from today, and three from a century ago – all of which are on her bookshelf at home. She says she doesn’t know about how to evaluate them, and shouldn’t draw conclusions, and then after skimming them draws the conclusion that new novels have shorter sentences and less hard-to-understand thoughts and phrases, and that is bad. She also neglects to say anything about what “best seller” constitutes sales- and readership-wise, and who could read/afford books in those disparate time periods. Once again, she is only considering the very most literate of people from 100 years ago, and comparing them to your average reader today. Here is a passage from the book that she believes exemplifies good writing: “Italo Calvino wrote about this a single, unalterable sentence: ‘For the prose writer, success consists in felicity of verbal expression, which every so often may result from a quick flash of inspiration, but as a rule involves a patient search for the mos juste for the sentence in which every word is unalterable, the most effective marriage of sound and concepts, concise, concentrated, and memorable.’” Let’s be clear on something here: this sentence isn’t concise. It isn’t concentrated. It isn’t memorable. It is written in such a way as to be dense for denseness’s sake. It actually disproves her point about “good” writing and in fact exemplifies some of the problems with older writing in the minds of the modern reader: it is dry, boring, and purposefully confusing. She has a long passage where she talks about her (former) favorite novel – a dry, byzantine Pulitzer prize winner from decades ago, where long passages are nothing more than meditations of monks as they continually ascend and descend stairs. She chastises herself for not liking it – not being able to read it in fact – in a (once again unscientific and yet conclusion-rich) study of her own making decades after she read it for the first time. She said she didn’t have the patience for it because of all the screen reading she does. Well, maybe. But maybe it was also a favorite book because of the prestige it held at the time for a student trying to get a terminal degree and justify her reading to herself. Also: reading tastes change with the times and some things don’t age well. But it was her fault for no longer having the patience… to me, this whole pursuit seemed distasteful as well as elitist. She seems to be trying to grapple with her own elitism in the following passage: ‘Some of you, no doubt, will think that I protest too much, and that only the elite parts of any population will miss the shelves of older books and poems that pass out of favor with clockwork regularity age after age, generation after generation. But it the very opposite of elitism that propels my worries. I write this book and conduct my research today only because of the dedication of my parents and of a few deeply committed teachers from The School Sisters of Notre Dame in a two room eight grade school house gave me a reason as a child to read the great literature of the past. Only those books prepared me not to leave the coal miners and farmers in my tiny Midwestern town, but to understand each of those still dear people, and the world outside of El Dorado, Illinois in whole new ways.’ First off, you were right, only the elite parts of society will care. Full stop. Second, if you have to point out you are not elitist and do so by saying you’re the very opposite, I would suggest you go back and really think about your motives, because more often than not, the lady *doth* protest too much. You cite your non-elitism by talking about a small school presumably with a low teacher to student ratio, dedicated teachers, literate parents (who were professionals), and the expectation of leaving everything behind for a better life in a better place. You say that only by reading were you able to understand the “still dear people” (who couldn’t possibly understand their town without reading Ulysses) you so smarmily smirk at in the rearview mirror. Gross. She says that kids these days are lacking a knowledge base. *Her* references are not being internalized anymore, and that makes her worry about her kids (who can code, but don’t know the literary references she expects in order to be considered educated by herself and the people who educated her). She says that “teachers” [citation needed] are mad because students don’t want to learn old books anymore (as if most students ever did). “Professors” are mad that their old popular classes can’t be taught anymore for lack of demand (boo-hoo, they have to work more and create a vital education experience for which they are being paid). My take on all of this is that in today’s world kids speak up and want interesting things to learn and aren’t automatons like the author’s generation was often expected to be. But probably the most ridiculous part of this letter is when she castigates herself for not writing perfectly in every office communication and every personal letter she writes. She castigates herself for not reading all the things like the New Yorker (which ‘actually matter’ in her own words) and instead reading journals and summations and noting things that she should probably read more thoroughly later, but probably won’t. She castigates herself for reading more now to be informed than immersed. Because unless it is hard to understand you can gain no value from it, I guess. I feel like this letter is just a letter in self-hate that she’s stapled onto the backs on those less-educated than she. OK Boomer. Letter Seven I find especially dubious as she cites a disproven study saying that children of poor or minority backgrounds hear far fewer words growing up. In fact it has been shown that this study is biased. Poor and minority parents keep quiet with a researcher sitting in their living room because they are afraid of being judged and having the researcher report something to CPS. Rich and white parents speak more verbosely in order to show off and prove themselves to the academics. If you take the researcher out of the home and install cameras/microphones, all of these differences disappear. This is institutional racism showing up in the original study. She is furthering institutional racism by citing this study. This is a recent book, and with this author using a biased and disproven study in her work makes me question anything else she has to say on the matter. Letter Eight is all politics and opinion. She talks about how (deep) reading is necessary to be a good citizen. She states, ‘We conflate information with knowledge, knowledge with wisdom with resulting diminution of all three.’ Good line. And I don’t disagree. She also says that we need to reeducate all citizens to process information vigorously across all media. Here in lies another thing that I don’t think she understands about herself, her motivations, and her writing. This obviously Boomer author (who in letter six was condemning a “Millennial mother” for being worried about reading to her kid, and not instinctively knowing what to do, but coming to her for help – I guess shame on you?) doesn’t realize that it isn’t the child’s fault that democracy is crumbling and people don’t have attention spans anymore. Boomers don’t seem able to handle TV (Fox News), let alone the internet (Breitbart). They were the ones always complaining about how those mediums would rot your brain, and now they are the ones who are destroying democracy and believing every conspiracy theory. I truly believe it takes a generation or two to understand what to do with new technology – and teach the kids a generation or two later – in order to deal with “new” technology. She is so hopped up on this because she and her generation are often unable to make the jump successfully. And like any Boomer, she says that, ‘this is our generation’s hinge moment.’ Whose, now? Who is this book meant for? It is meant for the (I’d argue) overly-educated, self-righteous, non-reflective, panicking, ageing generation of people on the out, who do not understand the world anymore and are terrified and yet still narcissistically myopic. And believe that everything they’ve done and experienced is the only possible way to live life. And they damn will enforce it exactly like that on every generation to come. Ever. Her pièce de résistance in bad thinking is her final thoughts on how to fix democracy. She says that we need to ‘recognize and acknowledge the capacity for reflective reasoning in those that disagree with us.’ This may sound great to her Boomer ears, but the problem with the opposition is some people are being purposefully ignorant and rely on the a priori rational of hard core right wing religion. It is counter to being a deep reader to argue that “everybody has a point that is valid.” It is apologist nonsense and shouldn’t be tolerated. It is the reason that we are in this mess. It is a failing of an older generation, not today’s children. Stop projecting this on to today’s children. She closes: ‘Readers are guardians’ - good readers like us, of course… so much self-aggrandizing bull. Good readers - good reading - is obviously important. But claiming that your skill will be society’s saving grace is oh so trite and pathetic. Her take away on how to lead a good reading life: Festina Lente, or hurry slowly. Well I will leave you instead with my own latin expression you could take a note of: quiquid Latine dictum sit altum videtur.

There are a lot of books and articles (sorry if that isn’t deep enough reading for you) that contain anything of merit that this book might hold. But a lot of them come without the judgement, elitism, baggage, and extremely boring summary of how the brain reads (it is good, dense stuff I’m sure she loves – it is an instant sleep-inducer for the rest of us). Dear Reader, stay away.

~BPL

#Book Review #Reader #Dear Reader #Good Reader #Come Home

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flauntpage · 7 years

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Rashad McCants is Trying to Write a BIG3 Redemption Story

When Rashad McCants arrived in Las Vegas in late April, he wasn't all that interested in the gambling, the clubs, or the social scene. He was determined to prove he could still play basketball at a high level.

Along with a number of other former NBA players, McCants was there to participate in a tryout for the BIG3, a new three-on-three summer league founded by rapper/actor Ice Cube that begins play this weekend in Brooklyn; games mostly will be broadcast on FOX Sports 1. McCants was there to play, but not just for that. He wanted to show off his skills, and maybe regain some of the nascent star power he enjoyed at his fleeting peak.

McCants was a McDonald's All-American in high school, an NCAA tournament champion at the University of North Carolina, and a first-round pick in the 2005 NBA Draft. He's best known today for washing out of the NBA after four seasons and for his pariah status at his alma mater. In 2014, McCants told ESPN that he didn't write his own papers and took bogus classes while playing at North Carolina. The school is currently under NCAA investigation for academic fraud, but others have denied McCants' claims, labeling him a malcontent.

While McCants' reputation took a hit in NBA and college circles, he continued to stay in shape and play overseas. Now 32 years old, the 6-foot-4 shooting guard demonstrated in Las Vegas a few weeks ago that he's still an effective player. A team called "Trilogy" selected McCants with the first overall pick in the BIG3 draft; Trilogy co-captains Kenyon Martin and Al Harrington chose McCants ahead of ex-NBA veterans such as Reggie Evans, Kwame Brown, DeShawn Stevenson, Larry Hughes, and many others.

"I wasn't surprised at all, honestly," McCants told VICE Sports. "I prepared six, seven months prior for the opportunity. When you're thinking about me and who I am, my confidence has definitely always been ahead of my time. I just knew that I just needed to go out there, be in shape, and everything else will handle itself."

McCants will compete in his first BIG3 game on Sunday, when the traveling league debuts at Barclays Center. From there, games will take place each of the next nine Sundays in various U.S. cities, culminating with a championship on Aug. 26 in Las Vegas that will be televised on FOX. The other games will be broadcast on tape-delay on FS1 on Monday nights. The halfcourt games will be played to 60 points, and teams have to win by two.

McCants doesn't believe that playing well will help him get a NBA training camp invitation.

"It's been seven years, man, and I haven't gotten a call from anybody in that time," he said. "I'm not looking to get a call now. I'm just focused on helping this league expand and helping other players know that it's a league that could be beneficial for their careers."

While he's under no illusions about whether he'll get the chance, McCants still believes he could make an impact for an NBA franchise. When he looks around the BIG3's talent pool, he believes that he's not alone in that regard.

"I've always been prepared to play in the NBA," he said. "If you look at the Finals and you look at the talent that's out there, there's definitely a spot for somebody like me, there's a spot for somebody like Stephen Jackson, Chauncey Billups, and a whole bunch of guys that are in the BIG3."

By most accounts, the abbreviated nature of McCants' NBA tenure had more to do with his perceived personality quirks than his talent, which few people have ever questioned. Coming out of high school, he was a consensus top-10 recruit in a class that included future NBA All-Stars Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, and Amar'e Stoudemire. At North Carolina, McCants led the Tar Heels in scoring as a freshman and sophomore and was the second-leading scorer as a junior on a loaded team that won the 2005 national title and produced four first round NBA draft picks. He finished his three-year career averaging 17.6 points per game, shooting better than 48 percent from the field and making more than 41 percent of his three-pointers.

Even in college, though, McCants dealt with questions about his attitude and aloofness. During a local television interview in October 2004, he compared his time at North Carolina to serving a jail sentence because of the regimented schedule he had to follow. He apologized for the comments a few days later. The next month, he appeared on the cover of Sports Illustrated's college basketball preview issue with the tagline "Mystery Man." The article detailed how even teammates were perplexed by McCants's moodiness and noted that then-Oklahoma coach Kelvin Sampson cut McCants from the U.S. junior national team despite believing that he was the top player at a training camp.

"Rashad was our best shooter, our best post-up player, our best creator," Sampson told the magazine. "He's a good kid who's going to be a lottery pick. But the area of the game where he'll make his biggest improvements is on teammate issues."

Similar criticisms followed McCants in the NBA. He underwent microfracture surgery on his knee after his rookie season with the Minnesota Timberwolves in June 2006 and only appeared in 37 games the next season. He averaged a career-high 14.9 points per game during the 2007-08 season, but clashed the next season with coach Kevin McHale and was benched for 30 percent of the team's games.

In February 2009, the Timberwolves traded McCants to the Sacramento Kings. He finished the year with the Kings and averaged 10.3 points in only 19.4 minutes per games. "He's a talented guy who played hard," Kevin Love, McCants' teammate in Minnesota, told ESPN in 2010. "But he seemed to have his own agenda. I'm a fan of his as a player, but maybe not so much as a person."

McHale was even more direct about McCants' prospects.

"He has to grow out of his old mentality," McHale told ESPN in the same article. "If he doesn't, he won't play in this league again."

As it turned out, McHale was prophetic. After his short stint with the Kings, McCants became a free agent at age 24 and never again appeared in another NBA game. During the past eight years, he has played in 14 games with the Texas Legends of the NBA Development League, most recently in 2013, and in professional leagues in Venezuela, Lebanon, China, Mexico, and other countries.

In an interview with the Charlotte Observer in May, McCants speculated that his former relationship with Khloe Kardashian might have led teams to question his commitment, saying it cost him $60 million to $70 million. But he was much more diplomatic earlier this month when he spoke about his career with VICE Sports.

"I'm pretty satisfied," McCants said. "I don't think everybody else is satisfied. I think everybody else thinks I should regret. I guess that's the question: should I regret making it to the NBA and averaging 15 points? Maybe I should've averaged 20. It would've given me more of a leeway not to try to keep answering these types of questions. But I feel like I was a success in the NBA. I could've done more, but unfortunately I didn't get the opportunity to do more."

Before he became a persona non grata, McCants was a top scorer for the Tar Heels. Photo by Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports

McCants' relationship with North Carolina remains strained, too. Soon after McCants alleged he took phony classes as an undergraduate, the school distanced itself from a player who had a major role in a national title run. McCants has never backed off of his allegations, but it's not something he wants to discuss. "That's not something that I want to really talk about, honestly," he said. "You can ask the next question."

Does McCants still root for the Tar Heels, who won another NCAA tournament championship in April?

"I try to watch them when I can, but I've been so busy with everything else, entertainment-wise." he said. "I don't really get a chance to watch. But I did hear that they won the championship. Congratulations to them."

When McCants isn't playing overseas, he lives in Los Angeles and has dabbled in music, film, and television production. He doesn't have any major entertainment industry credits yet, but he idolizes Will Smith, a rapper turned actor who succeeded in a highly competitive field.

"He's that inspiration to say, 'There's no limitation for what you can do,'" McCants said. "I definitely took it as motivation and just tried to take those opportunities and make the most of them."

McCants also remains involved in basketball, working as a fitness trainer and skills development coach. He said he enjoys teaching, helping young players improve, and discussing what it takes to succeed. Recently, he helped run a camp in Chatsworth, California and spoke to a group of high schoolers.

"He's always talking to kids, always giving them information," said Jamal Lovell, a friend of McCants who trains players with him. "He does a pretty good job of encouraging kids, not being hard on them but just building confidence within them. I think he's done a great job, man, NBA or no NBA. A lot of guys do that stuff because the NBA says you've got to do it. But this is who Rashad is."

When McCants heard about the BIG3, he reached out to Stephen Jackson, an old friend and NBA veteran who's serving as co-captain of the Killer Bees team. Jackson told league commissioner Roger Mason, Jr. that McCants was interested in competing.

On Sunday, McCants's team will face Jackson's in the final game of a quadrupleheader at Barclays Center. McCants's teammates include Martin, Harrington, James White, and Dion Glover, while Jackson's teammates include Billups, Hughes, Reggie Evans, and Brian Cook. That's a lot of NBA experience, and and a lot of pride. All no doubt will be looking to upstage each other. But McCants might have more at stake than anyone else on the floor. He weighs 220 pounds, only eight more pounds than his NBA playing days, and claims he's stronger than ever. He wants to show that he belongs.

"To be able to close a chapter in my career where I can end it on being on a national stage and having everyone see my talent for the last time is a good feeling," McCants said. "It's a good feeling to be able to re-surface and have these interviews because I feel like my voice was kind of taken away from me not playing for seven years. This is an opportunity for me to say how I feel. Say my piece, and end on a positive note."

Rashad McCants is Trying to Write a BIG3 Redemption Story published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

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madrasbook · 7 years

Text

The Uncle Who Lived a Simple Life

George Eliot said, “the dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.” The secret of death is unlikely to be unravelled by human intelligence. Death is such a leveller that it announces with telling finality the end of life, with no possibility of deeds or misdeeds thereafter, leaving only scattered memories of a lived life. If the departure is early, it sends a shock, which heals with time, or becomes a lingering loss if it happens even at an age where it is usual to say, “What are they going to do even after this age?”

In my family, many have led insignificant lives, if not all, going by public service or contribution to something valuable. This is the case with perhaps majority of the population. The longest living member of our family, my uncle, Anaikalchathiram Krishna Rao Rajagopala Rao, passed away aged ninety-four on April 30, 2017. My aunt, his wife and my father’s eldest sister, Krishnaveni, whom we called Kitty Athai, had predeceased him, aged eighty, seven years ago. My uncle was expected to live longer, maybe for 100 years or more, given his lifestyle and as he did not have even simple disorders like hypertension or diabetes. The curse of the present times—cancer in the form of a malignant cyst in his colon—signalled his final departure, maybe before his time.

He distinctly stood apart from our family elders in deportment and temperament. He didn’t leave any legacy that is going to be celebrated, but he showed all of us who saw him how an individual should structure his or her life according to circumstances. Probably simple life is very hard to live, resisting temptations, desires and spending for pretentious status. He was content with his belongings, never complained about life and consumed news routinely with great interest. The radio was his faithful companion in his last years, as he lost eyesight to glaucoma and his ears growing increasingly faint to sound. But, he never showed any sort of bitterness but displayed a spirit that was full of life in its simple pleasures. He was particularly keen about the weather and kept updates from weather reports in the news.

He was a completely Madras man, born and brought up in the city. He graduated from Loyola, when going to college was considered a privilege. He found a job in Railway Mail Service, which he devoutly discharged until he retired in 1982. The Hindu was so dear to him and if in my early age I understood what The Hindu meant to the people of Madras, it was through him. He had a stellar command over English, which was also special because his vocabulary spanned a vast repertoire of words that included descriptions of simple things that we come across in everyday life. Usually we struggled to get English equivalents. He was an early riser. Although he did not perform rituals, he had a deeper faith, paying annual visits with unfailing regularity to the family god, Lord Narasimha, at Parikkal.

We lived for a decade in a small town on the banks of South Pennar. And during his visits to us, he would ask me to take him to the river for a bath. On one occasion, we trudged all the way to the riverfront, only to see pools of water of varying shapes and depth scattered around on the sand bed. We chose one of the better pools that we thought had enough water for bathing. We grudgingly bathed using cupped hands at times to wet upper parts of the body. Floods in South Pennar are celebrated in Tamil literature as being fast and furious, filling up the river in a blink. But during the time we stayed on, we had seen only streams of water flow amidst a vast sand bed. On some rare occasion, when water flowed shore to shore, it was time when people would gather in the bridge to see waters gushing through the river.

Thinking back on my uncle’s life, I could see distinct features that are astonishing and something from which we could learn. My uncle’s family was big, with eight children. My paternal grandmother was proud of it and used to say, “Tomorrow Kitty can claim that one son lives there, one here, one somewhere North, one deep South.” But it so happened that excepting one son, the rest of the three live only in Chennai, and one son who used to live in Chennai had taken an early leave abode even before my aunt did.

Thrift was practiced in my aunt’s household. But what amused me then and even stuns me now is the spirit with which the couple led their lives. They spoke only of good things that happened, at times exaggerating it, and never complained about hard situations. One particular thing about my aunt was she was glued to the radio in the morning and would tell us tips or titbits that were amusing and informative. They were particularly proud of their lives. That was remarkable and shows character. My uncle never borrowed a single penny and he was able to run the family within his means. He spent wisely and saved money. He was a stickler for discipline in food and habits.

Another trait of my uncle that stood out was his soft and gentle manner of speech. He would crack jokes at times on me, all innocuous ones. I have never heard him speak ill of others or heard others say he spoke ill of someone. Even when my father’s two brothers did not speak to each other for years, he once told me, “What big deal? What are they going to achieve by doing this?” His temperament was astonishing. I had never seen him lose his cool or heard someone say he did. His remarkably understated behaviour was layered with his subtle personality. It still surprises me where he learned these traits from. His humility was one reason why he succeeded in life despite harsh situations.

He maintained cordial relations with all the relatives. The couple rarely missed any important event in the family. My uncle mingled with his next generation with great felicity and ease. He would share things with me that you wouldn’t expect elders would do normally—something like what happened in the family. He was candid and harboured no ill-will. Simplicity, frugality and a rare contentment with what is available marked his life till the end, even when his sons rose in stature and were able to provide more.

I remember when he took me to Madras from Trichy when I was just twelve or thirteen. I was at Trichy for holidays and my father was at Madras. He had come to Trichy to visit one of his daughters who stayed there at that time. The way he put me at ease and struck up conversation is memorable. He pulled my legs many a time and I only enjoyed it as it was light-hearted and never offensive. I never felt that I should be careful not to do anything that annoyed him, as typically young people were afraid of elders. I was just myself and he was okay with it.

I had stayed with my uncle and aunt briefly as I took up a job in Madras in 1997. As my father retired and moved to Madras, we had taken up a house for rent in Nanganallur. I had moved from paper to electronic mode of work. We were editing academic papers on computers. That was a bit of a strain for the eye initially and pink codes in the files added up to our imagery and imagination. Some of my colleagues began to get dreams about those pink codes, blabbering in deep slumber something is wrong and needs to be fixed. It was exciting times though to learn shortcut keys and new things in the publishing world. I did not visit my uncle and aunt for over eight months after I had moved to Nanganallur.

Once he saw me at Central where we had gone for some send off. He simply turned to me and said firmly, “You have not visited us for eight months since you went home from my place.” I felt guilty and embarrassed. I promptly paid a visit later.

I still regret that I did not visit him a few months earlier, despite thinking of it several times. And his ailment and death all happened in a span of two weeks. When I visited him in the hospital, as he lay on bed in excruciating pain with a swollen abdomen, he said, “The pain is unbearable.”

God could have made his pain bearable as he was put though enough of it through his life but had a superior spirit to make it in life without a blemish.

#uncle #remembrance

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gawaine · 7 years

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Okay so I'm finished my second year of college in the us, but academically wise- I'm only maybe a year done. I've decided to study English literature because it's my passion. What I need your advice on is this- I have the option to go to one of two four year universities. (I'm at a community college right now which is the first two years) One is in my city and the other is nine hours away. My dilemma is that I don't know which one to choose because I really want to study abroad +

in England (specifically London) for a year. I know you live in London and I was wondering if you would recommend it? This ask is kind of confusing but I hope I got my worries across? Basically I'm deciding between moving away on my own for the rest of my degree or living in London for a year and finishing degree at my local uni for the rest of my degree. I really want to experience London but I'm kind of scared?

I hope it made sense? I feel a huge pull to study there and the university that would be hosting me is a pretty good one, at least from what I've seen. Another question I had was, did you feel like living in London made getting a degree in English even more -magical-? Most of the classes in the program I would be in specifically relate to Shakespeare's and English history and I just feel like experiencing in that in England would be more inspiring then in my dinky university? anyway I hope that made sense and I'm not bothering you too much! Thank you a lot!

In ref: to your last ask, I did get them, I was just busy last night and still haven’t fought off my infection, so I didn’t have the energy to do it earlier. I said I’d be happy to help...

So after thinking about it a fair amount, I’ve decided that, in terms of your degree - studying in London absolutely makes a difference. Shakespeare was a compulsory module in my degree, and there is something incredible about learning about the Heavens and then actually standing under them, reciting Shakespeare’s lines... That said - not every single university in London is going to have those opportunities open to you, simply because it’s in the same city... So I guess I’m saying it’s dependent on what university that is?

But, that said, isn’t it better to move somewhere where you’ll be really happy for the next few years but with less excitement, than moving to London for just the one year and then being unhappy back at the place you’re at now, because it won’t feel as exciting?

Studying Shakespeare in London was a fantastic experience, but I think if you really like another uni, maybe it’s better to enjoy the whole uni experience elsewhere? It depends on what’s important to you, though.

I hope that makes sense? I’d probably be of more help if I knew which unis you were considering, but if you don’t want to share, I get it! And feel free to message me again :)

#hannah helps #university #college #shakespeare #soz if I'm barely making sense i'm still not well!#Anonymous

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pat78701 · 7 years

Text

What It's Like To Be A Transgender Teacher In Donald Trump's America

NEW YORK ― Bahar Akyurtlu had been teaching for about four months at a high school in Harlem before several students began bullying her. When she walked down the halls, clusters of students would shout at her, referring to her as “mister.” In stairwells, students would yell that her voice sounded like a man.

The harassment didn’t surprise her, even if it stung, cutting to the core of her identity. Sadly, she sees it as one of the occupational hazards of being a transgender teacher, she said.

In February, the Trump administration rolled back protections for transgender students. It rescinded guidance that called on school districts to allow students to use the bathroom that corresponds with their gender.

LGBTQ students were not the only people in schools that this action impacted. Transgender educators ― even if the move did not necessarily impact the bathroom they use ― had to watch as the rights of LGBTQ students were severed, while facing their own, unique workplace challenges.

The exact number of transgender people who work as educators are unknown, and overall, exact data on the issue is hard to come by. But the ones who do work in education often have to navigate a sticky web of parents, students and colleagues who have varying levels of acceptance, amid a backdrop of minimal workplace protections, The Huffington Post found after interviewing seven transgender educators in March.

These educators are a self-selecting group who have been open about their gender identity at work. Not all transgender people have the same luxury or choose the same path.

Trump’s bathroom rollback was unsurprising for Akyurtlu, who is in her second year of teaching math at a high school for teens who are behind in credits. The 31-year-old teacher said she is “well aware that any protections we do have are extremely recent and extremely tenuous.” That’s why she is trying to coach her students to be vigilant about fighting for social justice.

Earlier this month, she restarted her school’s previously dormant Gay Straight Alliance club. Indeed, she has formed supportive relationships with some of the school’s LGBTQ students. They sometimes act as her protector if any students targeted her. Last year, she watched as some of them got in shouting matches with their intolerant peers.

While Akyurtlu feels lucky to have an accepting school administration and colleagues, she wishes there is more she could do for her transgender students, she said in a recent interview in her teacher’s union office. Last year, she kept a watchful eye on the few transgender students who attended the institution.

Akyurtlu would remind their teachers to refer to them using the proper pronouns and call them by the correct names. When she would spot these students in the hallways ― they tended to stick together ― she would try and cram in as much advice as possible.

“Anytime I saw them I would bring them aside and be like OK, ‘Where are you getting your healthcare needs taken care of? What kinds of hormones are you taking? Here’s some organizations you can go to if you get into legal trouble ― just try to educate them about their health needs and rights,” said Akyurtlu, who started working as a teacher after spending time as a graduate student at Cornell University and then working in the nonprofit sector with LGBTQ groups. “Hell, I didn’t have any teachers growing up who would have supported gay kids. Hell, sometimes they were the nastiest ones.”

It breaks Akyurtlu’s heart, though, that the students didn’t end up sticking around. Several months before a few of them would have gotten their high school diplomas, they dropped out.

She doesn’t blame them for leaving school ― noting that they had “all of these needs and all of these traumatic things going on, and I’m supposed to teach you geometry?”

Thankfully, she has heard that at least one of them is alive and seems to be doing OK. She worries about the others. With a group that has high rates of criminalization and suicide, the statistics can be daunting.

“We have to make a priority of them and not just settle for the kids with accepting parents or the school that unveils unisex bathrooms. I think we have to really be willing to not just admit these girls exist but that they are part of our community,” Akyurtlu said.

Sam Long, a transgender educator in Denver, had a vastly different experience from Akyurtlu in explaining his gender identity to students. While Akyurtlu did not have control over how and when her kids made this discovery― she supposes they found out on the internet ― Long prepared a carefully crafted speech for his students.

Long didn’t initially plan on telling his students his story this year. Long works at a charter school that just opened and currently only serves ninth-graders. He wanted to wait and see how the school’s culture developed.

Then the election happened. Suddenly it seemed urgent to open students’ eyes to the diversity that surrounds them, especially after he heard wise-cracking students make jokes about LGBTQ issues.

Long asked his administration if he could tell his story to the students in a daily school-wide meeting. Based on scheduling, they said, he wouldn’t be able to do it until February. Soon, February became March.

The day before the event, he was nervous, repeatedly reminding himself to watch for students’ reactions instead of rushing through the speech. But he was ultimately surprised at how well it went. Weeks later, he said he could see what a positive effect his words had on his relationship with students.

Standing in front of the entire grade in the school’s front hall, Long told attentive students and colleagues how he transitioned between his sophomore and junior year of high school, and faced intense discrimination from his school administrators.

Long’s high school wouldn’t let him use the male restrooms, so he would either wait to secretly use a male restroom in an isolated part of the school, or go in the woods outside. When he tried to go on an overnight field trip with the school’s jazz band, he was told he wouldn’t be allowed to room with male or female students, and would have to pay his own way for a single room if he wanted to attend. He didn’t have the money.

Hell, I didn’t have any teachers growing up who would have supported gay kids. Hell, sometimes they were the nastiest ones.

After facing so much intolerance from teachers and administrators, he sued the school years later so that future students might not have to face the same isolation ― a story which he thinks his students appreciated.

“I talked about how much of a gift it is to have your identity and be comfortable with your identity,” Long said. “I think they noticed how important it was symbolically for me to share my story. To show that level of vulnerability is important to this community.”

Referencing an old quote from the author John Shedd, he wanted to show his students that “ships are always safe in the harbor but that’s not what ships are made for.”

Whereas Long thinks some of his students might have previously thought of him as a “boring straight man” or “as somebody to whom school and academics has always come easy to,” they soon learned the reality. “I had a horrible time at school and a hard time at home and I was homeless for a period of time,” he said. “That’s definitely not something they would have assumed.”

Long and Akyurtlu are lucky in that they are both able to be open about their identities at their jobs. In many ways, they are exceptions. All around the country, transgender teachers have been fired and punished for their identity.

But Akyurtlu hopes this won’t hold other transgender people back from going into education.

“I know it seems like possibly the hardest job in the world to do when you’re transgender and you will deal with some things, and it will be hard, but it’s hard for everybody, and we can do it,” Akyurtlu said. “I think it’s really necessary for students to be able to see a transgender person in this role, to normalize it in such a day to day constant way really makes a big impact.”

― ―

Rebecca Klein covers the challenges faced in school discipline, school segregation and the achievement gap in K-12 education. Tips? Email: [email protected].

――

Related Coverage:

Welcome To The Private Evangelical School Of Betsy DeVos’ Dreams

These Teachers Voted For Trump. Here’s What They Think About His Proposed Education Cuts

They Voted For Trump. Now, They Say He’s Already Broken His Education Promise

Gavin Grimm Is The Face Of Transgender Rights. But He’s Also A Regular Teen.

These Teachers Think Trump Can Make America Great For Kids Again

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rtscrndr53704 · 7 years