#ReUnion Process

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

A longer than average, even attention-demanding (by fb standards, certainly) and powerful, nourishing read.

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The Human Place

An Interview with Pauline de Dampierre

Much has been written about a certain spot in Paris where a kind of inner fire was kept burning throughout the dark days and nights of the German occupation. In a small and crowded apartment in the rue des Colonels Renard, a strangely assorted group of people met nightly to listen with absorbed attention to an Armenian Greek named Gurdjieff, to eat the amazing meals he cooked for them, and to hear read aloud the still-unpublished Beelzebub’s Tales to His Grandson.

Pauline de Dampierre was one of the circle. She was a young attorney who turned journalist after the war was over; but like many another of the gifted young, she was not destined to follow either of the careers she had originally chosen for herself. Her meeting with Gurdjieff was definitive. After it, her professional work continued only as a means for living and a ground for self-study. After Gurdjieff’s death in 1949 and until the present, she has continued, in company with others of that same circle, the process of work on his teaching, for herself, and with the many new people who have come asking to know more about the enigmatic Master and the ideas he expressed.

~ • ~

PARABOLA: I have been very much interested in the definition at the end of the introduction to Gurdjieff’s book, Meetings with Remarkable Men. He says, “He can be called a remarkable man who stands out from those around him by the resourcefulness of his mind, and who knows how to be restrained in the manifestations which proceed from his nature, at the same time conducting himself justly and tolerantly towards the weaknesses of others.”

PAULINE DE DAMPIERRE: Yes. He can be just in front of the weakness of the other, because by having learned to contain his own manifestation, he knows what he is; and he knows what the difficulty is. There is a Zen story that I think illustrates this very well. A blind man was listening to a conversation going on near him, and suddenly he cried out: “Oh, what an extraordinary man! I have never heard anything like it!” When he was asked what he had heard that was so remarkable, he explained: “You know that blind people always develop a very fine sense of hearing. Now, in my entire life, I have never heard someone congratulate another for some good fortune without hearing in his voice at the same time a note of jealousy; and I have never heard anyone sympathize with misfortune without hearing in his voice a shade of superiority or of satisfaction because he himself was spared. But in the voice of this man who just spoke, when he spoke of happiness I heard only happiness, and when he expressed sorrow, I heard nothing but sorrow.…”

The man he had listened to was in fact a monk, a great Buddhist saint. Maybe you could say he was a “whole man.”

But I don’t mean by this to say that only people who reach this degree should be called “real”; because between the fully realized man who has attained the greatest development possible, and the ordinary contemporary man—“a slave entirely at the disposal of tendencies which have nothing to do with his true individuality”—there is room for another category of mankind: those who search for a way toward truth. In other words, one might say that these are people who have discovered a truth in the words of the blind man that goes far beyond a mere clever observation, which concerns them very deeply. They have seen that these almost unconscious states of feeling into which they let themselves fall are just one aspect of a much more serious problem—a fundamental problem, basic to their whole life. So they have decided to put everything they have into confronting it.

How do you feel the “whole man” relates to the idea of sin?

What interests me is what is at the source of what we call sin. Usually we see sin as a manifestation of a certain intensity, or as an action which is exaggerated, bad, harmful. But what is at the source of that action? Compared to the source, the action is only an excrescence—something that bursts through from an undercurrent which is always acting in human beings.

The undercurrent of tendencies from which these impulses arise is a part of the whole man.

These are motivating forces?

Usually these tendencies have a much greater influence on our behavior than we imagine. They are always moving, and they are at the root of what has been called our automatism. If a person were to stop all his outer and inner movements at a given moment in order to see what is acting in him, he would nearly always feel a tendency which has about it something narrow, something heavy, something with a negative aspect that tends to be against, to be egoistic. All that is usually going on unseen. But if he tries to awaken to what is going on in himself, to be sincere, he will be able to witness, in addition to what could be called the “coarse” life in him, another life of another quality—much subtler, much higher, lighter—that is also a part of himself. The contact with this other quality of life helps him to have a quieter presence, a deeper vision. And he feels an urge at that moment to be open to a quality of this sort that would have a force, that would be a center of gravity. He begins to search for a way to serve what he feels would be his real being.

Then he begins to really know that if he lets his attention, his interest, to be taken by his automatic tendencies, it deprives him of contact with that other source of life he is searching for. It could be said that there is a continual tendency to sin, in that sense. When these sins are spoken of as deadly, it means that these tendencies—if they are allowed to rule—at every moment deprive the human being of the possibility of turning towards this real life.

When you speak of this undercurrent, do you mean the passive?

Passive.… To let oneself be continuously led by these automatic, nonconscious tendencies is indeed to be passive. And when a person is passive, the automatic begins to take the initiative, to direct him. When he turns towards something else.…

When he makes a contact between the two?

Yes, then the undercurrent is able to play its normal role—its very necessary role.

Without a search, is there any sin? Is there responsibility without an aim?

It is often said that man in his state of illusion about himself is not responsible, and perhaps in that sense it could be said that there is no sin. But to what extent is he absolutely not responsible?

Is he held responsible at some level?

What we know is that every time we let ourselves go strongly into one of these tendencies, the tendency is strengthened. After a time it becomes very difficult to be free of it. It is in that way I see that one pays for his actions. And what about the harm that has been done to others through us? It is a very serious question.

I’m interested in what you say about these tendencies being natural. If they are natural tendencies, always there as an undercurrent, what are they there for? And what is the difference when they are there as an undercurrent and when they are acted out? Do they become sins only when they are expressed?

One can feel these tendencies as inescapable parts of one’s nature which to a certain extent bring data about oneself and the external world. I have to sustain my life. Many demands come to me from external life and I must sustain my outer life with the ego—as I am, I have nothing else. So it is through these tendencies that the ego is informed.

Take anger, for example. With a little vigilance, it is possible at the beginning of a movement of anger to surprise in oneself the sudden, short upsurge of an instinctive impulse that tends to immediately reject whatever is irritating us, making us suffer. This impulse is necessary—how could we get along without it? We would be inert—we could let our hand stay in a fire without reacting.

Take envy. There exists a law according to which when two masses of unequal size are near one another, the larger provokes a tension in the smaller. I should add that I know nothing about physics and do not know if this law prevails in that domain. But it is indubitably among the psychic influences that act on us, whether we like it or not. Very probably it is thanks to this law that the child instinctively educates itself, seeking to imitate an older person. He admires him, wants to be like him, wants to draw his attention, and if he doesn’t succeed in doing so, he is frightened. For adults, it is exactly the same.

And pride—don’t we teach a child to be proud of his successes, of his strength? Lacking this pride, he wouldn’t respect himself and wouldn’t make himself respected by others.

In a way each one of these tendencies is there to sustain my life at a certain level; they are necessary and healthy. But if I live with them alone, I am an animal. A human being has to stand in between and not allow himself to be taken by these things; not to let them raise opposition and justification. For this he must not let himself identify with them, and this means he must not let them make him forget the one and only thing important for him.

These sins, then, are engines of the ego? They drive the ego?

I would even say that they are engines of our nature, because we can always find these tendencies acting in us. But if one can see them, one can be informed by them instead of being blindly taken.

You were speaking of the ego.… On the portals of certain cathedrals, one can see sculptures representing the vices and, above them, sculptures of the virtues. But between the vices and the virtues, there is something intermediary. And this is not shown. In fact, what remains hidden in the middle is man’s wish to be sincere, to try to understand the meaning of his life. But for this, the underlying current must be perceived, and respected. Then the virtues take on form on their own. It isn’t necessary to seek them directly. They appear.

The rest of the time, it is ego speaking. There is no other alternative.

These virtues do not judge, do not reject, have no violence. They emanate; they radiate. Certain exceptional human beings prove that this is so, and even in someone who is very far from that, the existence of such a possibility can make itself felt.

In a way, it is like saying that only a person who knows fear can be courageous. There is no need of virtue if you don’t have vices!

What is vice? There are many ways to look at the subject—psychologically, analytically, theologically. I have no intention of adding to what has already been said along these lines. I simply want to emphasize one aspect that is rarely brought to light: the role of an inner search in relation to these underlying tendencies. Then the “vices” become simpler. You don’t so much think of them as bad, but you feel strongly, painfully, that they are harmful to what you are searching for. They are there and you don’t allow them to take too much place. You don’t reject them, but you don’t let yourself be engulfed by them, either. Through this process, something can be developed in us.

That brings a note of hope—and it bears on our earlier question about why the undercurrent is there.

What is important is to begin to be able to hold oneself at the source. I heard during my Catholic upbringing that even a saint sinned seven times a day. But I would say that the tendency to sin is at every second.

And it is not one’s fault that it is there?

It is my human place. The power to act is in the body. The wish for evolved being comes from another source. And the two parts must meet. They do not often meet by accident; they meet only when something is acknowledged and held in respect.

These impulses, then, if held at the source, can actually contribute to a continued sense of presence?

My sense of presence will only be real if I take these impulses into account. I may try to open only to something higher—perhaps it is possible in a posture of meditation, but even then not so easy. But the moment I begin to act these impulses are necessarily there, and must be taken into account.

Unquestionably, they have enormous force. It seems that something else of an equal force needs to be there. One can be aware of one of these impulses for a moment, and suddenly be swallowed by it. And then it is the only thing there.

I would say that what is needed is not an equal force but another kind of force, more subtle, more active. As in chemistry, one can take a stone and introduce a very active substance and the stone will dissolve. Well, the wish to be can be very active.

In fact it is not possible to experience an opening towards more freedom without obedience toward something higher. A human being has no other possibility. He may think he can be free, but he is either obedient and submitting to this higher, or a slave. But when he submits willingly, he may receive something of such a high quality that he will no longer be attracted to what enslaves him. Every time we are attracted, we think we find life in that attraction. But at the moment of submitting to this finer force, we feel life of such another kind that we are no longer tempted.

There is a very strong relation between the action of these tendencies and a certain automatism of the body. Of course, we all know how easily tempted we are by physical satisfactions—resting, moving about, food, sexual attraction. But what I’m speaking of is much more hidden, insidious, almost beyond uprooting by ordinary means. It’s a question of a certain “coarseness” inscribed in the body by everything that we have experienced, by the way in which we have allowed ourselves to be led along by these impulses. The body is accustomed to this heavy functioning even if outwardly it seems extremely light and free. The very texture of the body favors these impulses and is reinforced by them. It’s a vicious circle. When there is an opening to something higher, the body quietens, and begins to be impregnated with something more subtle. It finds a kind of inner behavior much more in accordance with this opening. And in that way these tendencies begin not to have such a strong action on the person.

What is the place of feeling, here? Does feeling have no action at all? Is this a struggle only between the head and body?

It is said that we have almost no contact with real feeling. Our emotions are very egoistic. There is no love in them. They always turn me to something other than what is there. When we feel emotions, there is a vibration so quick and tempting that it is difficult to resist. We always think it is our feeling, but it is not our feeling—it is our emotionality. If you observe yourself at that moment, you will recognize that that emotion is not yourself. You have no liberty; you are absolutely engulfed. Yet there is this mysterious power in the human being—to turn also towards a something else in himself that may be very weak, nearly inaudible, but of another quality that he respects more. One could say that real feeling appears at those rare moments when what is happening in the individual is of such quality that his only wish is to be able to remain there, and to serve it as best he can. It is only then that he has a positive feeling of the moment, with no wish to be somewhere else.

There seems to be a sense in which the impulses of envy, avarice, and so on seem to have to do with the future or the past—with images of something that I want, and fear that I will not be able to have. I am taken out of the present moment by wanting to insure something for the future. Do you think these impulses are based on fear?

In our usual state, we have nothing real in us to rely on, so it is necessary for us to create projections and ideas, to have desires of all kinds. We have no aim that would feed our presence. Every real search is about that—to find a place in oneself one could serve, where being could grow and play its role. Then it gives sense to life. When it appears, true relationship begins among the parts of the individual. One sees better, one is clearer at that moment, one is no longer afraid of living. Even outwardly, something is more balanced. Without that, there is never an aim which brings me in contact with the sense of my destiny. But at that moment, no matter how briefly, I see that I am in contact with the aim that I’ve sought. I know what to place my confidence in.

We are almost forced, then, to imagine some kind of reality for ourselves, because we are not in touch with a true reality. We have to create some sort of world to live in.

I would say that we haven’t been taught that we could be open to the growth of a reality in us. It is a great discovery to touch something real and tangible in us—it is the goal of all the traditions, to help the individual toward what is real in him.

There is very little in our society that lends support to a search of this kind. Why should anyone believe you when you say that something more is possible for human beings?

These ideas seem quite alien, it’s true. Today, however, several great currents of spiritual search are trying to give them new reality.

For my part, I would say that one of the most remarkable aspects of Gurdjieff’s thought is that it allows us to start from where we are—from our mortal sins, one might say, or more simply from our predominant faults. It casts a vigorous, surprising, light of truth on our multiple weaknesses, our prison. And it shows us how to listen to another voice, enter into contact with another reality.

How to be touched? One can be deeply touched by contact with someone who has begun to develop this in himself. Or special events can happen in life—a great happiness, a great sorrow, an impression of nature, of sacred art of the past—that can give an extraordinary feeling of much more life in us, much finer, much broader, as if the horizon were opening.

It gives us a taste that life should always be like that. It doesn’t happen often and it comes through events outside of us. But the longing for it is always there. For we are speaking of a human need—the need that makes us alive.

To feel it is to feel that it is true and must be searched for.

A real search is a preparation for an opening to the taste of that life. Gaining knowledge of everything that opposes it is the first step on the path. And it is a great adventure.…

[Thank you Ian Sanders]

[bodyalive]

Photo by Valentin Balan on Unsplash

* * * *

This beautiful poem is one way to express how glad I am for my work. It is a privilege to help people in this life and to have learned skills and [more importantly] ways of being and living that taught me the value of helping other people. It is almost 50 years for me having graduated an unusual college. In that space I was taught and nurtured by many extraordinary beings. It was truly an education of both heart and mind.  After college the learning and the teachers continued.  They continue all the way up to this present day.  I’ve been reflecting on the singular people who have been my teachers over the years. I hope I have given back some small portion of what I have received.

I Tell You (excerpt) I could not predict the fullness of the day. How it was enough to stand alone without help in the green yard at dawn. How two geese would spin out of the ochre sun opening my spine, curling my head up to the sky in an arc I took for granted. And the lilac bush by the red brick wall flooding the air with its purple weight of beauty? How it made my body swoon, brought my arms to reach for it without even thinking. * In class today a Dutch woman split in two by a stroke - one branch of her body a petrified silence, walked leaning on her husband to the treatment table while we the unimpaired looked on with envy. How he dignified her wobble, beheld her deformation, untied her shoe, removed the brace that stakes her weaknesses. How he cradled her down in his arms to the table smoothing her hair as if they were alone in their bed. I tell you - his smile would have made you weep. * At twilight I visit my garden where the peonies are about to burst. Some days there will be more flowers than the vase can hold. ~ Susan Glassmeyer ~ (The Incomplete Litany of Untold Stories) :: [Echoes of Panhala]

[natalievoncatte]

The yawn stretched Lena’s jaw to the point that she felt like a cat, baring her fangs. Naturally, it prompted a Kara Danvers Pout, which was utterly devastating. Kara looked at her over the top of her drink cup, straw still pursed in her delicate pink lips as she frowned slightly.

“How long have you been awake?”

“I had a half hour nap this morning,” Lena sighed.

She’d been in the office for three days, but she didn’t admit that.

“Leeeenaaaaaaa,” Kara said, drawing her name out into a gentle rebuke. “You promised me you’d stop doing that to yourself. I’m taking you home.”

Lena’s heart skipped and Kara abruptly jerked upright, briefly glancing at her. Lena hated when that happened, when her body betrayed her. Kara meant escort her home; Lena’s thoroughly tired mind had supplied another scenario, one where Kara carried her onto the bed, relieved her of her clothes and dove between her legs, but that was never going to happen. Lena let out a long sigh of resignation, trying to be satisfied with best-friendship.

She hoped Kara hadn’t suddenly developed telepathy.

If you took me home I’d never leave. I could make love to you for a hundred years.

Kara smiled back at Lena’s wistful look. “I mean it.”

“Okay. I can come back to it tomorrow. Besides, I’m too full of grease and cheese to stay awake. Should we…”

Lena never finished her sentence. There was a crackle in the air, a sudden wet smell of ozone, and the thunderous boom that made her ears ring.

Kara flashed in front of her at super-speed, yanking off her glasses and tossing them on the couch in a smooth motion.

Hovering in the middle of her office was some ramshackle contraption resembling a mechanical eye about the size of a basketball that scanned Kara with a faint purple energy ray.

“Kara Danvers. Supergirl. I am Zeglos, Regent of the Alotian Republic. I am calling to you from the home of my people, located in what is to you a subatomic realm we call Universe Q. We need your help, you are our only hope. The invaders are slaughtering us and razing our home. There is no time.”

Kara glanced back at Lena. “I’ll help if I can. Let me-“

“There is no time. You must come with me now.”

“Wait, hold on a second-“

The machine flashed, thrumming as it powered up, and blasted here with a wave of light that surrounded them both, and then in a crackling boom they both vanished, leaving behind the ozone smell and a faint impression of Kara’s boot heels in the carpet.

Lena stared into the empty space for a moment, then shot to her feet, snatching the phone off her desk, where it had lain ignored since Kara walked into the room.

She called Alex, shocked at the blubbering panic in her own voice. Within a few minutes, everyone was there, piling into the room. Lena warded them off from the spot where Kara had stood. Alex was cold and calm, her voice clinical, and she immediately began issuing orders. J’onn took Lena aside and gently asked her probing questions in the manner of an old detective, coaxing every meager detail of the event out of her.

Within half an hour, Brainy and Lena had set up all sorts of equipment around the room, scanning, hoping to find some energy signature or other clue that could enable them to bring Kara back from wherever she’d been taken.

It proved fruitless. They tried everything.

Minutes stretched into hours. Lena was exhausted, heavy with fatigue.

“Go home, get some sleep,” said Alex. “We can’t help her if we pass out on the floor.”

“I’ll sleep here.”

She did, throwing a thin blanket over herself on the couch. It was Alex, not Lena, who cleaned up the Big Belly Burger mess. Lena slept fitfully, showered in the en-suite attached to her office, and changed into an old hoodie that she kept there and wore when no one was looking.

It wasn’t hers. Threadbare, a maroon color faded to a soft red, the back still emblazoned with a cracked and fading Midvale Mathletes Club logo, it was Kara’s. Lena had snatched it from Kara’s sofa and put it on one night when she was feeling bold and then, as now, felt surrounded by it, the oversized garment swaddling her.

And it smelled like Kara, just enough. Kara had stared at her intently for a moment when she took it that night but said nothing, a wistful sad look on her face before the moment was broken by Wynn’s bad joke at the table. Wynn was gone now, but the hoodie remained, just as it had remained when they were fighting, when she thought she’d never see Kara again. She’d worn it then and cried herself to sleep in it.

Just like now.

A day became two. Then three. Five. Lena tried everything, pursued every theory. They called in every favor, human and alien. Brainy tried to send messages to the future. Nia dreamed fruitless dreams. Alex paced like a caged animal and Kelly kept the peace, keeping them all fed, making sure everyone slept, talking things out whenever tempers flared.

Nothing worked.

Lena even tried praying, something she hadn’t done since the last time she was in a small church in Ireland. It didn’t work this time, either.

Lena was seated next to Brainy on the couch, going over a design for a new device to try to follow what was by now a thoroughly cold trail. Alex stood at the balcony door, staring out into a slashing summer rain squall that buffeted the glass with distant thunder and gusts of wind.

The ozone smell tickled Lena’s nose and she looked up, just as Kara took a stumbling step out of nowhere, appearing in her office with an utterly bewildered look on her face.

“Kara?”

Alex snapped round, adding her voice to the chorus. “Kara?”

Kara stared at her sister, open-mouthed, tears welling in her eyes.

“Alex?” she said. “Alex, you’re alive? How is that possible?”

“Alive? Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Kara!” Lena cried, her voice ragged in her throat.

At the sound of her voice, Kara snapped around, eyes wide. Her knees buckled and she sagged, almost falling. She stumbled forward as Lena stood and they fell into each other, Lena hurling herself, reckless, into an embrace that revealed too much. She almost climbed Kara, all but throwing her legs around her as well as her arms as she buried her face in the Kryptonian’s neck.

“Oh God. Oh Rao. I thought you would all be gone. I begged them to let me leave but they wouldn’t let me go, I had to…”

“Kara?” Alex asked, cautiously. “Why would we be gone?”

Kara barely seemed to hear her as she gently twined her fingers in Lena’s hair and wrapped her powerful arm around Lena’s waist, encircling and shielding her.

“How long has it been?”

“About a week,” Lena choked out. “I was so scared.”

“A week?” Kara blurted. “It’s only been a week here?”

Alex put a reassuring hand on Kara’s back, standing next to them. “Yeah, you were taken on Tuesday, kiddo. It’s Wednesday, the 17th.”

Kara stared past Lena, resting her chin on the shorter woman’s head, and began to sob with relief.

“Kara?” said Alex.

“Time dilation,” said Brainy.

“They told me time would pass slower up here but I didn’t believe them. I’ve been gone for… for…”

“It’s okay, Kara,” Lena whispered. “You’re okay, you’re back.”

“Eighty seven years, four months, and eighteen days,” Kara sobbed. “It’s been so long, I thought you were all dead.”

Alex stiffened. “Kara. Oh my God.”

Kara buried her face in Lena’s hair and breathed her in, shuddering. “I’d given up. All that kept me going was hoping I could see you again. This is a gift. A gift. I love you all so much.”

Kara still held her, rocking slightly, her big shoulders shaking with powerful sobs.

“Kara,” Lena whispered. “Kara, it’s okay.”

“I love you,” Kara blurted. “I love you. It’s okay if you don’t love me back, I just need to tell you, I have to tell you. All I could think about down there is how stupid I was and how stupid I’ve been and how none of the reasons I never told you made any sense,” she sucked in a breath as if she’d briefly forgotten how, “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

There could be no mistaking her intent. She seethed with it, it radiated from her very bones. Lena hugged her hard, crushing her with all her might as if to crawl inside her.

“God, Kara, I’ve dreamed of hearing you say that. I love you too. Let’s… mmmph!”

Kara was kissing her. Lena’s brain briefly froze, then she realized the full magnitude of what was happening. Kara was kissing her. Kara was kissing her. Then Lena was kissing her back. There was so much in it, need and lust and adoration and an unbelievable desperation, but above all love. Lena felt her heart open as if hadn’t in a long time, like a flower unfolding to receive the nurturing warmth of morning sun.

“I’ve been waiting for this for so long,” Kara whispered when they finally broke and Lena again could breathe.

“Let me take you home,” said Lena.

[gay-jesus-probably]

I like the general fandom trend to just take the plot of Hyrule Warriors as a loose guideline at best and just use the whole concept as a good excuse to get blorbos to interact across timelines, BUT I'm very disappointed that everyone is missing the comedic potential of a very specific squad of characters:

Young Link (aka Mask), who walks out of the nightmare of Majora's Mask and immediately gets portal kidnapped into a temporal war, takes one look at the whole mess and decides that you could not fucking pay him to admit to being the resident expert on Time Shenanigans. He introduces himself with the title of Hero of Termina, and definitely doesn't have any other ones, that would be crazy. Hero of Time? Never heard of him.

Tetra, who is a kickass pirate captain with zero patience for people trying to shove her into the Designated Princess role, and realizes immediately that Oh Fuck, this Hyrule has a lot of Ideas about how the Hero and the Princess are supposed to properly play their parts, the second they realize she's technically a Zelda they're gonna shove her in a goddamn dress and damsel her again, that's not happening. So she's definitely just a really cool pirate captain, nothing else going on here at all, definitely not the heir of the Hylian royal family in her time, that'd be crazy.

Ravio, who is literally just a palette swapped Link, meaning that the second his hood comes off, things are gonna get Awkward. There's no way in hell he's dealing with all that Hero baggage, that's Link work, so that giant bunny hood/mask is practically superglued to his head, and he's not taking it off for love or money.

Spirit Tracks Zelda, who is just in the Phantom Armour the whole time, and passing herself off as just a friendly ghost posessing a suit of armour to help the Hero of Spirits. Of course she isn't Princess Zelda, that's ridiculous, if she were a Zelda then people would start getting really weird about her technically being dead, and boy does that ever sound like a whole Thing she doesn't want to deal with, so she can't possibly be Zelda, she's just a nice ghost knight. Also, her teenage grandma is here, and that's kinda weird, so it's easier to just not admit to being royalty and avoid that awkward conversation.

Finally there's Sheik, who is not the Princess Zelda of the era straight up abandoning her war torn country for months at a time so she can risk her life in extreme cosplay for no clear reason, but is instead the actual Sheik from Ocarina of Time, who just beat Ganondorf like a month ago and is still trying to process what the fuck to do now. Also, he's been pretending to be a boy since he was ten, and is realizing there's a pretty good chance that he isn't pretending anymore, so that's a whole other can of worms. But for the last seven years of his life, being Princess Zelda meant certain death, so he's not really inclined to introduce himself like when in a new and stressful situation (not to mention he might actually just not be a girl named Zelda anymore), so he automatically introduces himself as just Sheik the spooky ninja man, and fuck he's in too deep to back out now, looks like he's committing to the bit. If you think you sense the Triforce of Wisdom on him, no you don't.

Cue shenanigans as the five of them attempt to hide that they're all actually kind of A Big Deal. The group motto is "Nobody says shit", which is usually delivered as a frantic hiss whenever someone slips up. Just the reunion between Sheik and Mask alone would be absolutely buckwild given how they parted, and how they're both frantically pretending to Not be involved with each other. For added hilarity and/or drama, Sheik gives his semi-bullshit cover story of having just been a friend of the Hero of Time, then runs into said Hero of Time and they both have to desperately pretend not to know each other, because if anyone picks up on the mountain of baggage between them then Mask is busted, and he won't hesitate to drag Sheik down with him out of sheer spite. Not to mention the weird balance of Sheik being used to this Link being a teenager that's actually a small child, and now has to adjust to Link who is a small child that's actually a teenager.

Also, i really feel like we're all missing out on the comedy potential of Ganondorf recognizing Young Link on sight and the two of them immediately launching into a grudge match with some extremely personal and specific insults on both sides. Meanwhile literally everybody else is just standing there watching, trying to process the fact that out of every single person that's been pulled out of time, Ganondorf only has personal beef with a literal nine year old.

I just feel like we're all really sleeping on the potential for Shenanigans here. The whole thing is an absurd mess, why not have some fun with it?

[johnslittlespoon]

i just finished the prologue of the mota book and i don't know how i haven't seen a single post talking about how after john and gale's stalag reunion, they were then separated for another four months.

my heart is aching so bad. imagine being reunited (after almost three weeks, oct 8–26th) and having that tiny feeling of 'everything is going to be okay' and then being ripped apart again for four fucking months. 120 more days of not being able to be at each other's sides.

[imviotrash]

Concept: Soma comes back to visit England after a while and processes his Grief in a healthy manner by rebuilding his support system, because he deserves the world and deserves to be happy.

Some of the other characters:

-Maurice

-Edward

-Elizabeth

-Joanne

-Cheslock

-Clayton

-Sieglinde

-some minor characters

[barmadumet]

The beginning is the end is the beginning…

New, tear-jerker comm for Chapter 45 Streets of Gold 🥹

Here is the very first scene I envisioned; this is where it all began, though it was the end. See my Ch 45 end notes for the dissertation on this piece 😆

THANK YOU, Sin (ratinthemud on X) for bringing this magical moment to life 🙏♥️🥲

[augentrust]

sometimes i’m having a completely normal day and then i remember that in response to essek’s betrayal, caleb kisses his forehead right where a pearl would go for fortune’s favor, the spell for second chances, and suddenly i need to lie down 

[aprilblossomgirl]

Phi Arthit Kongpob, is that you (eyes on those pink milk and iced coffee)

[prince-sawgrass]

Luxaeterna, a participant in the first true battle of the war between the Rainwings and Icewings, the Battle of Stolen Light. Her venom-fangs were torn out by an Icewing poacher, and after surviving and avoiding capture, replaced them with harder gemstone teeth. She’s well known for the number of Icewing skulls she’s impaled throughout the war. She is Boomslang and Quetzal’s great aunt. Postwar, she has been reunited with her living grandnephew and accompanies him for scale retrieval in the Ice and Sky Kingdoms.

Quetzal in his last moments before being murdered by an Icewing poacher. He had sold Boomslang’s egg to the Icewings in the hopes of gaining immunity from the scale trade- but he learned far too late that a bargain can’t be kept with someone who wants to wear your skin.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

art | Edgar Maxence

* * * * 

Even during your lowest moments, where you feel nothing but clay against the dark earth, You are never alone.

You have thousands of powerful ancestors behind you; those who have lived through life's wilds and wastelands, griefs and hardships, and do so with you now. Those who carry you in the gnarled and knotted embrace of the Tree of Life, each bestowing a dark seed of promise within your sleeping cells.

Feel their proud voices. Their dreams for you, and advice like moonlight. Feel the loving hands that lift you from the edges of despair, or hurt, or bewilderment - and into clarity. And hear their wisdom. That it is the journey that is the thing and the success is in simply taking it. As they return you back gently to your feet...and into the life you came here to live.

~Rachel Alana

[h/t Candice Dyer]

[bodyalive]

The Consciousness of the Heart

I am a big fan of public television mysteries, especially those made in Europe. Good acting, intricate plots. So here’s a summary of a French mystery I just saw:

A woman gets a heart transplant and immediately begins having nightmares involving the heart donor and her own teenaged daughter, whom the woman and her husband had adopted at birth. Turns out the heart donor was a young woman who died in a car crash, but the nightmares indicate to the woman that the girl’s death was not an accident.

She meets the adoptive father of the young woman; he too believes his daughter’s death was no accident; so they team up to find out what really happened; her teenaged daughter gets pulled into this detective work too.

We find out that both daughters had issues about being loved related to being adopted. Lots of twists and turns in the story due to this, after which...the new heart comes close to failing. But, seeing her mom so sick, the teenaged daughter realizes how much she loves her mother. The young woman’s father becomes aware of how he tried to push his daughter into a career in medicine (his career) rather than letting her be the singer/musician she wanted to be.

In the only way that he can communicate with her now, the father places his hand on the woman’s chest above his daughter’s heart, and, speaking to his beloved deceased child, apologizes to her heart for his lack of awareness of her needs when she was alive.

You can guess the rest: The transplanted heart settles down, the woman gets better, the teenaged daughter gets over her own anxieties —and by the way, they catch the man who murdered the daughter by forcing her car to crash.

Well, it was way better than it sounds.

But here’s what really caught me—that scene where the dad talks to the heart of his daughter. As if the heart carries its own consciousness and he was able to communicate with it.

Even more than European mystery dramas, I love stories about consciousness-- there’s a literary conceit that involves a body part being transplanted into another person and taking control of the hapless recipient—say, someone gets a hand transplanted from an executed criminal and the hand takes over to steal or murder –sinister stories, even tales of horror.

An alien consciousness inside one’s own self. We are familiar with this theme. And part of what makes these stories work is the notion of the implied consciousness of the body part, the power of the body part, for example, of a hand that has its own mind.

In our age, we are used to the notion that consciousness dwells in the brain, we don’t find that strange at all. But many peoples have believed that consciousness dwelt as well in the heart. The heart responds by quickening, by aching, by urging action, or by relaxing into peacefulness. It rises up to greet its love; it sinks into despair. It feels. It seems conscious. Now we can trace the complex biological directives that guide the heart’s functioning, the chemicals and mechanisms that control it. But still, subjectively, the heart feels.

We have a complicated relationship with our hearts from this perspective. The heart as a conscious part of us that may have inconvenient feelings. It is in a sense an alien consciousness within us. I am speaking of course of emotions. And how we can harden our hearts, turn against tender feelings, deny that affective link. I’ve done it and I bet you have, too. Other emotions are there to step in—rage, fear, greed, lust.

Dr. King said he could not figure out how to reconcile the contradictions in humans (we can be so good and also so evil) until he recognized the power of love, which must be our guide.

I had a hateful spell the other day. I was, as my mother cautioned me against in the past, “being ugly.” Judging somebody harshly. Thinking about a situation that had come up that was not gonna be easy to resolve with some other people. Money was involved, of course. Odd how that often happens.

Several of us talked together, trying to come up with a solution. Someone suggested a generous resolution and then someone else countered with another generous perspective. That night, in bed, I lay there imagining how this conflict could maybe turn out to be a victory for love. I crossed my hands over my chest, above my heart, and breathed.

[disastress-i-guess]

The sillies.

[jaehyosangels]

[Jaehyo's Instagram]

[sylvies-kablooie]

something i have noticed is that before s2 aired, a lot of fanart and fic assumed that sylvie would immediately realize the error of her ways after killing He Who Remains and apologize to loki. a lot of it centered on the premise that loki would track her down and she would be broken and hollow and filled with sorrow.

but i actually really liked how in s2, she didn't apologize. it might not have brought her the peace she thought it would- we can tell that by the way her legs give out after killing him, how she realizes it didn't fix her past- but she never apologized for preventing He Who Remains from manipulating anyone else's lives the way hers was dictated by him. there was no tearful apology and regret and running into loki's arms. she did what she did, she knows it was controversial, and she stands by it.

[tootiredtocares-blog]

Timmy losing his memories and losing himself in the process years worth of memories are gone or replaced and what's left is a shell of his former self