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a-s-fischer · 3 years

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OH ALSO do you have any tips for creating a religions when you are world-building?

This is such a rabbithole, as ultimately any sufficiently broad world building topic is. The thing is to decide what role religion plays in your story, the societies you're writing about, and in the lives of your characters, and to build your religion or religions around that. I find it most useful to ask myself a series of questions about the religion and then to formulate answers. This will be a theme, because this is a standard world building and general writing technique for me. But anyway, here are some of the questions I use.

Are any of your main characters religious? If so, what is most important to them about their religion? Is it the ritual? The codes of behavior or moral philosophy? A sense of community? A sense of certainty in how the world works? The stories and myths? A personal relationship with an individual diety? Does the religion give them a sense of control or security? Are they a normal practicioner, or do they have an unusual role, such as being a priest or priestess? How do the most important parts of the religions to your main characters compare to the parts important to other people or the most emphasized within the religion itself?

Are there differences in observance and practice across different segments of society? Across class, gender, age, or position? If there are various gods, saints, or cults within a single religion, what would influence someone to choose one or another? Are soldiers drawn to certain ones? Mothers to another? Are they associated with specific places or communities?

What parts of a character's religious practice are taken for granted by the character, and might not be usually thought of as religious, for example diet or clothing? Is there a line between religious and other cultural practice, or is it fuzzy? Are there strong religious taboos that your characters or societies buy into? What happens when those taboos are violated, or when they come into contact with societies that don't share those taboos?

Are there mulitiple religions represented in your society? Are some of the religions considered more or less presigious or powerful? Are any of minority religions associated with minority ethnicities, or with foreign elements?

Where do the different religions come from? Are any originally from the culture your story takes place within, or are they foreign imports? Do any of them have antecedent religions that they evolved out of, and if so, are those antecedent religions still around, ala Judaism and Christianity? Do any of the religions seem as if they have been around since time immemorial? How have any imported religions been modified to suit the local culture? Are there variations within the religion across geography or culture?

Do any of your religions proselytize? Why or why not? What doctrinally within the religion, outside the religion socially, might encourage or discourage proselytizing or conversion? If any of the religions proselytize, does this cause tension with other religions? (It does, the question is what kind of tension). Are all of the religions mutually exclusive, or is it possible to be a devotee of a combination, as for example it is possible to be a Buddhist and Taoist at the same time? Are there syncretic combinations of religions? If so, are there non-syncretic versions of the componant religions around, and how do they feel about the syncretic forms?

That is a lot of questions, I know, and obviously you don't have to focus on all of them. Take from these questions the ones that make you go "hmmmm".

And of course, there are always the pitfalls to avoid. As a reader, the two things that bother me most are authors who project their own disdain for religion into the world, and when the religions of the world in question are re-skins of Christianity. Also that weird tabletop roleplaying inspired thing where there are actual evil gods in a pantheon, and they have evil followers, and everybody technically belongs to the same religion, but these are the bad guys with their bad gods, and this is totally the way it would ever actually work. But I actually suspect that this is a weird little subset of the second problem of way too much Christianity getting into fictional religions that are probably not meant to look that Christian.

The first of these is the easiest to avoid as a writer. If you feel that all religion is ridiculous superstition that was invented to enslave the masses, just don't include it in your world building. That's fine. Plenty of writers don't. It's okay to leave out the things that don't interest you. Just don't be obnoxious and smug about it and talk about how your favorite civilization has moved past such silly primative things. Religion is still an important part of the human experience for many people, and you aren't better or smarter because it isn't part of yours. Be nice. Looking at you science fiction writers.

This holds true for anyone being smug and self righteous about their personal religious beliefs in fact, but the religious version tends to be something I run across less in my fiction reading.

For the second, I want to give an example. The Jedi are so very Christian. Specifically, they are so very midwest American Protestant. They have an outer covering of Buddhism and Taoism (and other "mysterious Eastern traditions") but they take their fundemental moralities and ideas about how the world works from Christianity. Strikingly, the Jedi are really big on negative emotions being a path to the dark side, and Christianity is pretty big on thoughts and pure vs. impure intent being the determinator of sinfulness, much more so than most religions.

This Christianess of the Jedi becomes so much more blatant when you bring in the Sith. The Sith are an example of the "religion of people who believe all the same things we do but side with evil" thing I talked about before. They believe in all of the same cosmological things as the Jedi, and have a code that is heavily based on the Jedi code but flipped. They are evil Jedi. And this makes them the same kind of evil mirror image that Christians have historically imagined their supposed religious enemies to be.

So how do you avoid this level of Christianity seeping in? To be frank, it's impossible to avoid letting your own cultural background into the worlds you create. You are human, and the world you are part of is the foundation for the worlds you create. But you can widen your view of religions by learning about other religions at a philisophical and structural level. And look, I know that I am a huge proponent of having a strong knowledge base as a writer, and I know that this is a hard, time consumjng thing to accumulate. I get that. I got mine over three decades of letting my natural ravenous acquisitiveness toward historical knowledge to run free. It was fun for me and that's why I did it. I get that research is something that can just eat up all your time and never let you get to writing. I do get that. But a broad knowledge base on a subject not only means you know a lot, it means you usually know what you don't know, and can plan your research accordingly.

And unfortunately, the problem of fictional religions overwhelmimgly reflecting Western culturally Christian understandings of what religion looks like, is primarily a problem of people from that cultural background not knowing what they don't know.

And I am definitely not telling you not to take fictional inspiration from Christianity. If that's what you want to do, great! You can do some really interesting and nuanced things with that. I come from a Jewish background, and the religious group the main character of one of my stories is part of, is heavily based on Judaism. That is a deliberate choice that fits into the world I have created. And I have another society in another novel whose religion is heavily based on 14 and 15 hundreds Catholicism. The above advice is about avoiding doing it unintentionally, not to convince you that you should never do it intentionally!

So anyway, I hope this is helpful.

#a s fischer original #writing #writeblr #long post #there are no stupid questions

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introvertguide · 4 years

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Gone with the Wind; AFI #6

Our next film for review is the classic epic drama, Gone with the Wind (1939). This movie was the big award winner from a year that is often considered the best year for movies in American cinema history. The film won 8 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, and Best Actress. Notably, the film also had the first win for a black actor with Best Supporting Actress going to Hattie McDaniel (although she had to get special permission to sit in the back of the room since the awards took place at a segregated hotel). All these wins came against competition like The Wizard of Oz, Wuthering Heights, Stagecoach and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Although this film is considered to be one of the best American films of all time, there has been a lot of complaints about the depiction of house slaves and slavery in general in this film. I want to discuss why it is still great and the takeaway from the film, but first a quick synopsis of the plot will help. This movie is almost 4 hours long, so it will be much more condensed then usual, and I relied heavily on Wikipedia and IMDB entries to summarize this particular film. I do want to do the standard...

SPOILER ALERT!!!! IF YOU ARE AMERICAN, THEN YOU SHOULD PROBABLY WATCH THIS FILM AS ALMOST A CIVIC DUTY!!! IT IS A MAJOR PART OF AMERICAN CINEMA HISTORY AND SOMETHING THAT SHOULD BE EXPERIENCED!!! IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN IT, I IMPLORE YOU TO GO AND WATCH IT BEFORE READING ANY FURTHER!!!

In 1861, on the eve of the American Civil War, Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) lives at Tara, her family's cotton plantation in Georgia, with her parents and two sisters and their many slaves. Scarlett learns that Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), whom she secretly loves, is to be married to his cousin, Melanie Hamilton (Olivia de Havilland), and the engagement is to be announced the next day at a barbecue at Ashley's home, the nearby plantation Twelve Oaks. At the Twelve Oaks party, Scarlett makes an advance on Ashley, but instead catches the attention of another guest, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). The barbecue is disrupted by news of the declaration of war, and the men rush to enlist. In a bid to arouse jealousy in Ashley, Scarlett marries Melanie's younger brother Charles before he leaves to fight. Following Charles's death while serving in the Confederate States Army, Scarlett's mother sends her to the Hamilton home in Atlanta, where she creates a scene by attending a charity bazaar in her mourning attire and waltzing with Rhett, now a blockade runner for the Confederacy.

The tide of war turns against the Confederacy after the Battle of Gettysburg, in which many of the men of Scarlett's town are killed. Eight months later, as the city is besieged by the Union Army in the Atlanta Campaign, Melanie gives birth with Scarlett's aid, and Rhett helps them flee the city. Once out of the city, Rhett chooses to go off to fight, leaving Scarlett to make her own way back to Tara. Upon her return home, Scarlett finds Tara deserted, except for her father, her sisters, and two former slaves: Mammy (Hattie McDaniel) and Pork (Oscar Polk). Scarlett learns that her mother has just died of typhoid fever and her father has become senile. With Tara pillaged by Union troops and the fields untended, Scarlett vows she will do anything for the survival of her family and herself.

(Little bit of a side note, this seems to be where several of the commenters on IMDB thought the movie ended as the phrase “ends with Scarlett vowing never to go hungry again” showed up more than once. This is the point of the intermission and the two halves are very different from each other, but this is by no means the end of the film. It is a very good time to take a break if you are watching it so I suggest taking more than the intermission time to stretch your legs. This is a really long movie.)

As the O'Haras work in the cotton fields, Scarlett's father attempts to chase away a scalawag from his land, but is thrown from his horse and killed. With the defeat of the Confederacy, Ashley also returns, but finds he is of little help at Tara. When Scarlett begs him to run away with her, he confesses his desire for her and kisses her passionately, but says he cannot leave Melanie. Unable to pay the Reconstructionist taxes imposed on Tara, Scarlett dupes her younger sister Suellen's fiancé, the middle-aged and wealthy general store owner Frank Kennedy, into marrying her, by saying Suellen got tired of waiting and married another suitor. Frank, Ashley, Rhett and several other accomplices make a night raid on a shanty town after Scarlett is attacked while driving through it alone, resulting in Frank's death. With Frank's funeral barely over, Rhett proposes to Scarlett and she accepts.

Rhett and Scarlett have a daughter whom Rhett names Bonnie Blue, but Scarlett, still pining for Ashley and chagrined at the perceived ruin of her figure, lets Rhett know that she wants no more children and that they will no longer share a bed. One day at Frank's mill, Scarlett and Ashley are seen embracing by Ashley's sister, India, and harboring an intense dislike of Scarlett she eagerly spreads rumors. Later that evening, Rhett, having heard the rumors, forces Scarlett to attend a birthday party for Ashley. Incapable of believing anything bad of her, Melanie stands by Scarlett's side so that all know that she believes the gossip to be false. After returning home from the party, Scarlett finds Rhett downstairs drunk, and they argue about Ashley. Rhett kisses Scarlett against her will, stating his intent to have sex with her that night, and carries the struggling Scarlett to the bedroom.

The next day, Rhett apologizes for his behavior and offers Scarlett a divorce, which she rejects, saying that it would be a disgrace. When Rhett returns from an extended trip to London, Scarlett informs him that she is pregnant, but an argument ensues which results in her falling down a flight of stairs and suffering a miscarriage. As she is recovering, tragedy strikes when Bonnie dies while attempting to jump a fence with her pony. Scarlett and Rhett visit Melanie, who has suffered complications arising from a new pregnancy, on her deathbed. As Scarlett consoles Ashley, Rhett prepares to leave Atlanta. Having realized that it was him she truly loved all along, and not Ashley, Scarlett pleads with Rhett to stay, but Rhett rebuffs her and walks away into the morning fog, leaving her in tears on the staircase. A distraught Scarlett resolves to return home to Tara, believing that one day she will get Rhett back.

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While discussing this film with my mom, she mentioned that the film has had a different effect on her each time and she felt like it was because she was a different person each time she saw it. I have had the same experience and I find that rewatching the film is a good way to see how your own perspective has changed over time. I first saw this as a teen and thought Rhett Butler was a cold man who could could not forgive a suffering Scarlett who was trying to figure out her priorities during a trying time. In my twenties, I could only focus on the depiction of slavery and thought that people should not watch the film at all. In my thirties, I hated Scarlett and wished that she had died instead of her friend or the daughter because she was dramatic and made bad situations worse. I recently turned forty and watched it again...

I still find Scarlett to be dramatic and the cause of many of her own problems, but at the same time I would expect this from somebody her age (I think I finally separated the age of the actress from the age of the character) with her “Princess of the South” upbringing. I can’t really empathize since her life was much easier than mine, but I can sympathize after working with many rich teens who are spoiled and don’t know how to act in an emergency. I think I understand better about how the author of the book was trying to portray this plantation lifestyle as almost royalty and the slaves were like the 1850s Southern United States version of royal attendants. I find the language very cringy, but all of the house slaves at the O’Hara plantation have their place in the story. This is probably an accurate depiction of what somebody from the old South would want to glamorize plantation life as being to people living in the 1940s, and thus historically valuable. I find Rhett Butler to be somewhat similar to Han Solo: somebody who looks out for his own best interest but softens for good people and good causes. He seems to do good things except when he gets drunk and forces himself on Scarlett (marriage and sexual assault are not mutually exclusive). He is otherwise pretty faultless, but that scene drops him quite a few pegs in my eyes.

One thing that sticks with me each and every time is when Scarlett is working at the army hospital and the doctor wants her to help with an amputation. They have nothing to numb the pain and there is a young man screaming not to cut into his leg...I can’t even imagine yet I know that this was not even uncommon during the height of the war. I remember watching a documentary on the Civil War and a real photo showing a pile of amputated limbs at a makeshift tent hospital. The pile looked to have more than 100 limbs and I am sure they did not have enough morphine for all of these men. The best field doctors were said to be more strong and stoic than accurate since being able to saw through a man’s leg quickly was a major commodity. This horrifically honest portrayal of war in the midst of the Nazi threat and a couple of years before the entry of the U.S. into WW2 took courage. I was able to sublimate a little more during this viewing since there was no on-screen cutting. I also tried to imagine the man doing the voice over and screaming “Don't cut my leg!” in a sound studio. It helped. Another thing that I didn’t know during previous viewings was that when she exits the building and sees the hundreds of soldiers in the streets, half of the bodies on the ground are manikins. Look very closely at the middle picture above...half over those bodies are fakes.

I learned a lot from the extras that were with this movie since I borrowed my friend’s DVD box set. It was unexpected to me that the three slaves were my friend’s favorite characters (Pork, Mammy, and Prissy), since my friend is a black woman in her 70s and grew up during the Civil Rights movement when films that depicted slavery in this way were generally looked down upon. My friend said she was glad to see black actors at all from the era and the movement had to start somewhere. The actors seemed to be of the same opinion with Hattie McDaniel saying she would rather portray a maid and get paid like an actor than have to actually be a maid. Speaking roles for black actors were very few, especially in big budget movies, so there was not a lot of concern about the character being portrayed. This makes since, especially after the Great Depression. Having a role playing a stereotyped house slave still meant a great paycheck at the end of the week. I also liked that one of the things that Rhett Butler wanted and had difficulty getting was approval from Mammy concerning the courtship of Scarlett. Mammy was a slave, but she knew a lot of secrets and was not powerless.

My favorite character this time around was Melanie Hamilton because she is just a good person. She is not helpless and she doesn’t complain about her problems, she just handles her business and keeps supporting her family with a strength that I am not likely to truly know. I was saddened to hear that the actress recently passed away as, similar to her character, she seemed like a real survivor that would live forever. Apparently the actress, Olivia de Havilland, was not nearly as demure and liked to play jokes on her fellow actors. She also made a lot of fun about the age gap between Vivien Leigh and the actress playing Scarlett’s mother (there was a real life age difference of 4 years). Havilland also had the crew tie her to a chair that Clark Gable was supposed to lift her from and he nearly threw out his back.

It is a little surprising how much adversity occurred on set since there were a lot of injuries, actors who didn’t really like their character (Vivien Leigh described her character as a “raging bitch”), giant sets that were lit on fire so only one take was possible, and the portrayal of the South and slavery in a favorable light. However, like so many other films on the AFI list, it seems like the difficulties are what bonded the groups together to make classic cinema. It seems like a little adversity and strife can bring out the best in film makers.

So does this movie belong on the AFI list? Maybe more than any other movie ever made. It is the top film from the pinnacle year of the Golden Age of Hollywood. It is a historical drama about a singularly American topic based on an American best seller. I think a list about great American movies should probably start with films like this and go from there. Absolute classic. Would I recommend it? Yes, and I would actually recommend multiple viewings because your interpretation will change throughout your life. This is a superiorly good movie that should be viewed, no matter how it is interpreted. Just make sure to plan a break because this movie is epic in scale and in run time. Still totally worth it.

#gone with the wind #vivien leigh #olivia de havilland #clark gable #golden age of hollywood #classic film #american film institute #depictions of slavery #academy award winner #best picture #introvert #introverts

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dotaccountant · 4 years

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(LOVIE SIMONE, 23, FEMALE, SHE/HER) ⮕ Hey, isn’t that [DOROTHEA “DOT” HARTLEY]? I heard that they were a part of the crew. According to the wiki it says they’re the [ACCOUNTANT] of the group. Avid fans say that they’re [PRAGMATIC], but that they can also be [MOODY]. Maybe that’s because they’re a [CAPRICORN]. This gossip forum says they joined the group because [SHE NEEDS THE MONEY]. I wonder if that’s true. I also heard they [DO NOT] believe in ghosts. I wonder if their time in arcane inc will change that. (peyton, 23, est.)

mun info.

hey girly! just wanted to let you know i literally cannot handle this right now :)

uhh okay!! my name is peyton, i’m 23, i’m a college senior, i’m a libra, i’ve been rping for [redacted] years. i managed to escape for like two years until quarantine hit so here i am, like a dog going back to its’ vomit. i’m an illiterate roman roy enthusiast lesbian who is just excited to be here. my discord is ilyinichna#9370 (not me outing myself as a russian lit nerd. disgusting). please feel free to add me!!!

some cheeky stats.

full name: dorothea eloise hartley nicknames: dot by the crew, dottie exclusively by her mother, lame ass nerd by me birthdate: december 31st, 1997 occupation: accountant for arcane inc. nationality: american

orientation: bisexual moral alignment: lawful good myers-briggs: infp temperament: melancholic

about.

it snowed the day dot was born, her mother would say fondly as she reminisced of better times for the two. edna hartley always made it a point to say no matter what she was conceived out of love and for awhile, dot believed that. her parents met when her mother was touring europe and she fell for a charming french aspiring writer, louis, who said all of the right things. not long after their summer romance, edna found out she was pregnant and at first louis was thrilled. he proposed on the spot. edna had dreams of becoming a stage actress so the two flew out to a shoebox apartment in new york to start their little family.

except edna never got her big break and louis never even started the next great novel and the bills were piling up. they were getting money from edna’s family, but louis’s pride wouldn’t accept it any longer. he took two jobs while edna stayed home with baby dot.

she loved dot and dot herself never doubted it, but she was certainly not ready to be a mother. she was immature and treated her only daughter more like a best friend than her child. taking care of a child all day with no escape took a strain on edna and eventually took a strain on her marriage. what started as harsh whispers would soon turn into screaming matches that dot could hear through the thin walls. it was that way for years and dot looked at her parents differently. she had resentment for her father and the feeling was mutual, he blamed them for the fact he never achieved his dream. the older dot grew she soon was the one taking care of edna, who some days couldn’t even get out of bed.

dot comes home from school at fifteen to see her and edna’s bags packed. she says the two of them are going to california and dot goes with her without any hesitation. a new start was what they needed, they could look out for each other.

except it wasn’t. edna and dot both work odd jobs to make ends meet and when dot isn’t at school she’s accompanying her mother to auditions that she doesn’t get called back for. she scores a few commercials which is enough to keep them afloat for a brief amount of time. much of dot’s teen years are spent apartment hopping, couch surfing, and sleeping in motels throughout LA. if she was younger she might have been charmed by their vagabond lifestyle, but dot knew they couldn’t live that way forever.

if anything, dot learned a lot about how money worked when she was young. she always had a knack for numbers and after crunching the numbers to figure out if you could pay your electric bill for the month really gives you an advantage. she learned how to budget because no one else was going to.

she’s working a job doing data entry when she first hears of arcane inc. one of her coworkers wouldn’t stop talking about them. dot isn’t interested as she’s never though much about the supernatural, chalking up companies like arcane to exploit people’s fears. no thanks. her mother believed in spirits enough for the both of them. (besides if karma was real, she would’ve seen a check from louis for the book deal he got over a year ago).

dot does go down a rabbit hole though when she realizes just how big of a following aracane has. people will really believe anything. the moment she sees that they’re hiring, she sees it as an opportunity. a company with millions of followers has to give their employees a reasonable salary. she didn’t have any real work experience outside of her office job but she was damn good with numbers and she was already used to traveling.

she’s been at arcane inc. for about a year now and still doesn’t really get what all the hype is about but that doesn’t matter. dot makes enough to send money to edna and she’s even started to put money aside to go to college. dot’s never been one to dream big, look at what it did to her parents, so she’s planned out every step without reaching out too far for the stars.

headcanons.

yeah her mom’s a failed theater actress but dot has a really secret love for musicals. you won’t find her ever talking about it though and if anyone found out she’d kill them. not joking don’t text.

her social media presence is little to none. not that she thinks she’s above it but she’s just genuinely bad at keeping up and she doesn’t love being in front of a camera. (her instagram posts are all blurry with bad filters and weird angles, bless her heart).

she’s probably the most stubborn person you will ever meet. i blame it on her being an earth sign i’m just saying a ghost could be right in front of her and she’d go and?

dot’s a really good listener (years of practice) and will take secrets to the grave but she’s pretty bad at giving advice. she doesn’t really know what to do when someone starts crying except give them an awkward pat.

her intuition is pretty good though. she’s good at reading situations she just doesn’t know how to react sometimes.

tw abuse: so while her father was never physically abusive, there was an incident from when she was twelve. he had been drinking and dot got out of bed to get water from the kitchen. he yells at her, as he often did, and throws an empty beer bottle at her. she threw up her arms to defend herself and there are still a few scars from the glass shards.

the way to her heart? anything peppermint which i know is arguably the worst dessert flavor but she can’t get enough of it.

tends to chew on things when she’s working. no pen cap is safe. she usually has candies on her so she has something to munch on.

connection ideas.

i prefer chemistry over anything else!! these are just some ideas to get the ball rolling. (also i am so bad at coming up with connections.)

friends. i mean....yeah jsfdkljfd. as basic as that is she just never had many of those growing up! dot’s kept a few people close but for the first time in her life she’s out of reach from her mother so it’s a good chance to socialize.

more specifically? a best friend. in the same vein but dot would really put this person above everyone else. she’s really loyal and it’d be nice to have such a close bond with someone.

a childhood friend or two too!! she’s moved around quite a bit but she stayed in new york (and she considers when she first moved to la still part of her childhood) for quite a bit, definitely long enough to make a connection!

someone she’s pulling out of trouble maybe. while dot’s not a maternal figure (leave that to the nurturer) she does have a compulsive need to help people out. it’s very frustrating but she can’t stop.

negative nancy. she can be so pessimistic and annoying so she’d appreciate having someone she could just vent to.

exes. it has to be a past relationship because dot is not a hook up person like AT ALL, but she’s human and she likes companionship (sometimes).

honestly whatever you can think of! cousins, pen pals, unrequited crush (either way), friend crush, enemies, people she avoids, shared interest buddies, good/bad influence!

#( *about. )#( *ooc. )#arcaneintro

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revlyncox · 4 years

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No Human Being is Illegal on Stolen Land

This address was written for the Washington Ethical Society for indigenous People’s Day Sunday, October 11, 2020, by Lyn Cox.

One of the things I notice about the values expressed in the story, “Grandmother Spider Brings the Light,” is that none of the characters attempt to keep the sun for themselves. In this legend, we are entering a paradigm in which the basic necessities of life are shared freely. In the world of the story, members of the community are willing to sacrifice for the benefit of all. The warmth of the sun is something that would be ridiculous to hoard. Part of the sun’s worth comes from the way it shines on the whole community, and the way in which the whole community works together in response. Each character makes suggestions and participates in the work, and even the setbacks give the whole community something to learn from. Proximity to raw power leaves its mark on some, and this is another reason to take turns. In the world of the story, people understand that their well being is bound up together.

These values stand in sharp contrast to the values brought to this continent by European conquest and colonization. The colonization mindset is still a strong current in United States law, policy, and culture. The assumptions of colonization influence ideas and customs about property ownership, the scale of impact of moral choices, and what it means to be an American. The way we understand class, race, education, the use of force in civil society, and so much more is tangled up in the mindset of colonization. Among the urgent issues arising from these roots is that of immigration justice. The way we understand who is welcome in our communities and how we demonstrate that is filtered through the assumptions of colonization. Justice for Indigenous people is one aspect of the project of dismantling systemic racism. Economic justice is an aspect of dismantling systemic racism. Immigration justice is an aspect of dismantling systemic racism.

The abstract concepts can be dizzying when we first become aware of the connections between all of the issues that bring suffering and division in our society. Today’s Address has a lot of history and facts, and we’ll put out a document with references and links after Platform. We might begin by focusing on our relationships, and on understanding that our interrelatedness extends beyond our immediate circles. We show up for our neighbors because of our common humanity, because we are connected in community, and because our liberation is bound up together. We work to understand how the myths of colonization have affected our minds so that we can clear away the obstacles to rich and full relationships with all of our neighbors and loved ones.

The impact of injustice for Indigenous people and for immigrants is closer to home for some of us than others; WES includes people from a variety of backgrounds. When we add just one degree further to include the consequences for our spouses, children, and close loved ones, many of us have a very personal view of the effects of systemic racism in affairs related to Indigenous communities, in policies toward immigrant communities, and in a variety of government actions that fall especially heavily on people of color. If it’s not you or someone in your immediate inner circle who is impacted by any given manifestation of systemic racism, it is almost certainly a friend in this Zoom room or someone close to them. Shifting our priorities to be rooted in love means remembering that threats to Indigenous sovereignty, cruelty and abuse in our immigration system, out-of-control policing that destroys lives in favor of property, all of these things affect specific human beings-- people we care about.

Indeed, the very assertion that the people we care about are human beings, with human rights -- people who deserve dignity and self-determination -- flies in the face of colonization. So let’s step back a bit and look at the roots of that philosophy.

In her book, An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz traces the roots of the European mindset of conquest back to the Crusades, heading into the Inquisition and to the enclosure of public lands in the 1600s. She writes that the privatization of the common lands, creating a permanent underclass of landless poor, was both an expression of the trend in European conquest and also one of its mechanisms. “The traumatized souls thrown off the land, as well as their descendants, became the land-hungry settlers enticed to cross a vast ocean with the promise of land and attaining the status of gentry.” In essence, what happened with enclosure was to more deeply codify the idea that a few people mattered but most didn’t, and that property mattered more than the majority of people.

Meanwhile the Crusades, which was an attempt to take control of lucrative trades routes, also brought new avenues for oppression. Dunbar-Ortiz reminds us that this period brought us the papal law of limpieza de sangre, cleanliness of blood, beginning in 1449. Clean blood referred to ancestry that was exclusively Christian. So, in other words, even converting to Christianity did not bring legal equality to those whose ancestors were Jewish or Muslim. Some people are more important than others. Only some people are really human.

It is not an accident that this is the same period of history that brought the Doctrine of Discovery. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V decreed that so-called Christian nations had permission for the conquest, colonization, and exploitation of non-Christian territories and peoples. This became a cornerstone of international law. In 1823, the United States Supreme Court ruled that the discovery rights of European sovereigns had been transferred to the new United States. Indigenous ways need not be respected, according to the Supreme Court in 1823.

Some people are more important than others. Only some people are really people. And who gets to be a human being, who gets to have human rights, is inextricably tied with the thirst for wealth and the desire of conquering nations to extract resources and labor from land and people not their own.

These are not natural laws. These are not ethics that are universal for all people. Civilizations all over the world have shown that other ways are possible, ways built on mutual relationship and community thriving. But the baseline assumptions of conquest helped make all of the misery of colonization possible. These baseline assumptions fed the lies that justified the enslavement of human beings, generation to generation, because the extraction of wealth for the few was more important than the human rights of the many.

We can plainly see the destruction that this worldview brought to all of the places that were targeted for conquest. But it wasn’t done destroying lives in Europe, either. There may have been periods of uneasy peace, when it seemed like enlightenment might eventually bring liberation to all, or at least to all who could be admitted to European universities. But the bargain was still built on inequality, and in times when there was land or wealth to be gained by the few, or in times when scarcity arrived and the ruling class needed someone to blame, the illusion fell apart. Felix Adler, educated in Germany in the 1870s, absorbed the hope that it was possible for people to regard one another as full human beings. But the powers of division had been dug too deeply. The legacy of dehumanization was still there, and the horrors of World War I and World War II showed that, once again, only some people were regarded as human.

It has been observed that the phrase “illegal immigrant” was not in popular use until World War II, and it was first used to describe Jewish refugees. You may recall that the potential arrival of these refugees in the United States led to another layer of racism and cruelty in U.S. immigration policy, on top of the racism and cruelty in laws such as the Chinese Exclusion Act. The attempt to keep out Jewish and Eastern European refugees, based on concepts of race rooted in blood, brought immigration quotas to carefully control who was allowed in. Having no place to go, those subject to Nazi persecution were tortured and slaughtered. It was this experience that led Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel to coin the phrase that makes first half of the title of this Platform, “No human being is illegal.”

Wiesel said, “Know that no human being is illegal. That is a contradiction in terms. Human beings can be beautiful or more beautiful, they can be fat or skinny, they can be right or wrong, but illegal? How can a human being be illegal?”

Yet, in 2018, the U.S. Department of Justice instructed U.S. Attorney offices to refer to undocumented immigrants as “illegal aliens.” Immigration attorney Shahid Haque-Hausrath explains that this term is used to “dehumanize immigrants and divorce [us] from thinking of them as human beings.”

Are we clear how we got here? Are we clear about how the dehumanization of Indigenous people, the dehumanization of people who were enslaved, and the dehumanization of immigrants and refugees, even unto this day, are all related? When it benefits the few to exploit people and land and all of our relations in order to extract wealth, that system rests on the idea that only some of us are humans, only some of us are worthy, only some of us deserve human rights. There are lies that are told to make it seem like some of us have provisional worth, conditional humanity; lies that try to entice us to help maintain this system -- lies such as purity of blood, or the superiority of the Euro-American definition of civilization, or that scarcity comes from the arrival of other poor people rather than from rich people hoarding wealth.

We need to untangle all of it so that we can remember that we are in relationship with each other. Colonization has been part of Western civilization for so long, it has infected our minds and hearts. Few of us are immune from subtle messages about the worth or lack of worthiness of people, especially people who do not contribute to wealth as it is commonly measured.

Our liberation is bound up together. Like the people in the story, “Grandmother Spider Brings the Light,” we can operate with a different mindset, one of collective well-being and shared wisdom. To get there, we will need to re-think our assumptions about the way people are permitted to live and move in the world.

That brings us back to re-thinking the rules and customs around us, a network of assumptions that rests on colonization. Basing the United States legal system on the belief that Indigenous forms of government were and are not valid and that Indigenous value systems were and are inferior meant that the treaty rights and governmental systems of sovereign Indigenous nations have not been respected. If we take Indigenous sovereignty seriously, different solutions become evident.

When we consider the issues of immigration justice, to take one example, many assume that the United States government is the only entity that can determine who remains within and who is expelled from this territory between Millinocket, Maine, and San Diego, California, let alone the territories currently known as Alaska and Hawaii. Elizabeth Ellis, Assistant Professor at New York University and a citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Oklahoma, questions this paradigm. She writes:

“If we reposition ourselves, and think about migration not as American citizens, as documented or undocumented, but as settlers who have built lives and identities on Indigenous lands, and often at the expense of Indigenous peoples, this conversation looks very different.”

She goes on to say: “In articulating support for these critical [immigration] reforms, many typically appeal to humanitarian sympathy and visions of a modern world that provide all humans with the right to migration and citizenship. Yet we often forget that Native people have been fighting the United States’ efforts to carve borders into their homelands and territories for centuries and, in many ways, we have come to see exclusionary borders as a natural and normal state of international relations. In this context, then, including Native people [in the conversation] both bolsters challenges to US borders and provides alternative models of relationality and nationhood that may help us reimagine solutions to our current humanitarian crisis.”

Ellis gives a number of historical examples and contemporary applications in her full article. We’ll send out a link after Platform to a document with all of the links related to today’s Address.

Remembering that we are all related, then, we include immigration justice and supporting Indigenous sovereignty among our action plans for anti-racism and anti-oppression. As we heard in the reading that Karen shared, we can think of this in terms of restitution, in addition to being simply ethical and in right relationship with a goal for the common good. Not every person can do everything, yet we can coordinate in this community and with our community partners to embrace the whole circumference of the ethical manifold. We do this not simply out of compassion, but with recognition that another world is possible, a world of right relationship, and we hope to live into that world to make it as real as possible as soon as possible.

This Indigenous People’s Day weekend, there are two action items that might interest you. There is a bill in the U.S. House of Representatives, “The Truth and Healing Commission on Indian Boarding School Policy in the United States,” which aims to help us come to terms with the atrocities committed against Indigenous children and their families through boarding schools. Contact whoever will listen to you in the U.S. House of Representatives to let them know your thoughts on this bill. There is a lot of history to unpack, and this is a place to start. While you’ve got the attention of your favorite Member of Congress, you can ask them about the Native American Voting Rights Act. Indigenous voters are subject to many of familiar voter suppression tactics, such as reduced polling places and interrupted mail service. Check out the Lakota People’s Law project for more information on both of those. https://www.lakotalaw.org/

I asked R. of WES’s Immigration Justice Team for some other ideas about how we can work together toward collective liberation. R. reminded me of the Food Justice Initiative, which is connected with Sanctuary DMV. The Food Justice Initiative is a “systemic program rooted in justice” that helps immigrant families, regardless of immigration status, access mutual aid in the form of food and other necessities. Keep in mind that the COVID relief bill blocked aid to families in which any person in the household is undocumented. The Food Justice Initiative (article in the Post) gives us a chance to stay in touch with our neighbors and the needs they identify for themselves.

WES’s Immigration Justice Team has also been monitoring the situation of Binsar Siahaan (article in the Post), who was snatched from his faith community, Glenmont United Methodist Church, when ICE showed up and lied about the purpose of their visit. WES members may recall your past support of Rosa Gutierrez Lopez, who has been living in sanctuary at Cedar Lane UU congregation. R. points out that the strong organization of the Sanctuary team at Cedar Lane made it much more difficult for ICE to try the kind of underhanded tactics that they used to arrest Binsar, and that community support makes a tremendous difference. If you are on WES’s Immigration Justice action email list, stay tuned for possible actions we can take to support Binsar and help him return to his family.

R. told me, “Doing support work changes you as it changes the world. You meet people who are not anything like you, from different races, classes, faiths and world-views. It is the antidote to helplessness in the time of neo-fascism, as well. There are so many opportunities to join in.” He said WES members have written letters, gathered materials and funds, and attended vigils. The work is ongoing.

Humanism, to me, is a worldview in which we seek human solutions to human problems. And most problems are human problems; the few problems that are facts of the natural world are made exponentially worse by human choices to favor greed and selfishness over the recognition of our interrelatedness. Intellectual rigor and a humanist outlook lead us to dismantle the fallacies that undergird conquest and colonization; to note clearly the common roots of injustice affecting Indigenous peoples, people of color, and immigrants; and to turn toward right relationship in our thinking and in our practice. Let us remember that we are all related, and that our liberation is bound up together. So be it.

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juniperwindsong · 4 years

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Necessary Monsters (10/16)

Summary: "What kind of gentleman would I be if I let your first day here be all misery?" "I thought you were a dragonologist now, not a gentleman." "They're not mutually exclusive."

His first week in Romania, Felix had been diligent about scourgifying himself after every shift. But magic, it seemed, had a harder time sluicing off dragon-related filth, and the spell never seemed to catch it all, leaving a distinct outdoors-y smell and a crusty stain about his clothes. More importantly, dirt and grime seemed to be a badge of honour here. Felix quickly discovered only newcomers and theoretical researchers, both regularly mocked by the resident dragonologists, bothered to clean themselves more than once a day. Desperate to fit in, Felix had learned to relax some of his more fastidious habits. Which is why it takes him nearly fifteen minutes of frantic searching to finally locate his long-disused bottle of Sleekeazy's Hair Potion at the bottom of an old trunk.

Grey pre-dawn light meanders across the dingy bathroom mirror as Felix applies liberal amounts of the potion to his hair, refusing to think too deeply about why. He pulls the nicer of his summer work shirts over his head, attempts to charm the worst of the wrinkles out of his trousers, and even spends a few minutes bent over his boots before he's forced to give them up as a lost cause. It would take days to remove all the layers of mud and muck.

Felix stares at his newly groomed reflection, nerves chewing a hole in the lining of his stomach. All he's done is dress himself up for disappointment, he thinks ruthlessly. His best has never been enough to impress Juniper, not for the results he wants, anyway. And he ought not to be attempting to impress her at all. She's coming here with Charlie Weasley, she's made her feelings about Felix clear, and that's all there is to it.

Anxiety wrings the last of Felix's confidence from him like a dishrag. Suddenly the prospect of seeing Juniper arrive with that ridiculous red-head is unbearable, and, in spite of the fact that he's woken at the crack of dawn on his day off specifically to greet Juniper as soon as she arrives, Felix flees the flat.

The sun is just beginning to warm the hard ground as Felix walks, quickly as dignity will allow, down the Reserve's main path toward the modest cul-de-sac of buildings. Better sense commands him not to glance across at the long-abandoned Hospital cottage. He looks anyway. The windows are as dark and disused as they've been all year, but the observation does nothing to settle his writhing nerves. Juniper might be in the main building, the same one he's headed for, receiving instructions from Guivré. The Romanian Reserve Director doesn't believe in staff meetings or long-winded introductions, but Juniper might take it upon herself to explore the building, make friends with the other dragonologists as soon as she can. That's the sort of thing she would do.

Felix's heart is pounding in his ears as he enters the building and nearly sprints through the mercifully-empty halls. He reaches his cramped office without meeting anyone, and sinks into the wobbly chair, panting slightly. There's sweat beading Felix's brow, and a lone strand of dark hair escapes his severe part. He tucks it back into place, and wonders how on Earth he's supposed to work under these conditions.

Perhaps Juniper won't stay at the Reserve long, Felix thinks as he starts on the paperwork mountain Rashbold has left piled on the desk; none of the other healers have. But the wish has no real will behind it. Juniper has never been one to shy away from a challenge. And the little pangs of terror the thought inspires reluctantly confirm to Felix that he still wants Juniper here, in spite of her unwelcome companion.

Taking a long, slow breath Felix forces composure through his limbs. Allowing himself to ruminate on the whole bloody mess is pointless, and sours his stomach. Forgoing enchantment, he fixes his eyes on the typewriter and uses his fingers to depress the keys manually. It's a slow, laborious process, but it keeps his feelings at bay and his mind from wandering. Felix turns the entirety of his attention to typing up Rashbold's report from yesterday, then the one from the day before. He works until his hand hits desk instead of parchment, and he's surprised to find he's already come to the end of the stack.

A low rumble of voices echoes from down the hall, and a quick glance at his pocket watch reveals the morning is almost over. When means, Felix realizes with a lurch, Juniper must be really, truly here. He's just wondering where she might be now when the light from the hall is suddenly blocked by a tall figure in a distinctive hat.

“Rosier? What are you doing here?” asks Grahame from the doorway. “Thought you were off today?”

"I was just catching up on paperwork," Felix says quickly, feeling oddly guilty, as though he were caught doing something forbidden. " We were about to lose the desk under it."

“Yeah, well, you might think about catching up on sleep. You’ve got circles like a coon.”

A year ago, the comparison would have meant nothing to Felix, but he’s spent enough time with the Reserve's resident American to become accustomed to his colourful turns of phrase. He manages a brittle smile.

"I'll think about it."

“How 'bout some coffee then?"

"Oh. Well, if you have some to spare." Felix tries to keep his voice from sounding to eager, though he stands so fast the chair legs rattle.

" 'Course." Grahame pushes off from the doorframe and saunters down the hall to his own slightly larger office, Felix just behind him. "I'm brewing way too much in the morning now, since you took off." He flashes an accusatory look over his shoulder. "Still can't believe you did that. I mean, I know McFusty had everyone riled up about your family for a while, but they'll get bored of it. You didn't have to run and hide."

Grahame nudges open the door of his office, and Felix follows him inside stiffly. This isn't the first time he's had to bite his tongue around Grahame's thoughtless comments. One of the outspoken American's favorite pastimes is voicing observations better kept to himself. Not the sort of person Felix would typically have any patience for, but Grahame has other qualities to make up for his tactlessness; namely, a never-ending supply of strong coffee and a generous nature.

Grahame sets his hat on the desk next to a large thermos, and rummages about in a drawer for a cup.

"I don't get all this bad blood between y'all anyway. I mean, it's not like you're one of those....what do you call 'em? Death speakers? It's-"

"Grahame," interrupts Felix tightly. He keeps his eyes fixed on the thermos of coffee, praying to it for patience. "Drop it. Please." In spite of his best effort, the words come out far too frosty to be considered polite. But rudeness runs off the American like rain from the rim of his hat. Grahame merely shakes his head and pours coffee from the thermos into the spare cup.

"I reckon you know best," Grahame concedes. He hands the cup to Felix who takes it with a nod of thanks and inhales the comfortingly scalding steam. "But I'm still sorry you're stuck in the shit shacks. Although..." Grahame's eyes suddenly light up slyly. "Guess this means you'll be seeing more of our new healer."

Felix's throat constricts tightly. His first sip of coffee is left swimming between his teeth as he tries to remember how to swallow. "Oh," he mumbles noncommittally when his mouth is free again. For once, he's grateful for Grahame's inability to pick up on social cues.

"Yep. Just got here this morning. Go by the med cottage when you have a chance and take a look. She's a peach."

Felix nearly drops his cup.

"Just out of school I think," continues Grahame, entirely oblivious to Felix's tightening jaw. "Can't be more than 18. We'll finally have something to look at besides McFusty. I know Sigeburt and Gil have already asked her to drinks, and there's money on who she says yes to first. I think Alexei's got the pot if you're interested. Personally, my bet's on - Hey! You're not going to finish your coffee?" Grahame calls after Felix's rapidly retreating back.

Felix speeds down the gravel walk toward the hospital cottage, all pretense of cool indifference gone. The blood pounding in his ears keeps time with his feet as his brain scolds him for being eleven kinds of moron. Why, oh why, did this never occur to him? He's been around the pub enough to know the lack of girls makes up a large proportion of the casual conversation among the predominately male dragonologists. Of the three female dragonologists present at the Reserve, two manage to keep themselves from intense scrutiny by their advanced age and the third -

Felix skids to a halt to avoid crashing into the stocky, muscular body and long red braid of the Reserve's youngest female dragonologist as she steps out of the hospital cottage's doorway. Instinct, recognising the impending danger, peddles his feet back just a step before dignity demands he stand his ground, matching the emerald eyes glare for glare.

"Rosier."

"McFusty."

The woman's eyes flicker into twin green flames as if Felix's cool pronunciation of her name were a grievous insult. "What do you want?" she asks fiercely, crossing her arms and planting herself in the doorway as if to block his entrance.

Felix smirks. The presence of his least favorite person at the Reserve gives his anxiety a purpose and a target. Enemies, he knows how to handle.

"To see our new healer, of course," he replies with perfect innocence. "But only if you're quite finished. I'm sure you need her assistance far more than I. Didn't your last attempt at anti-venom cause an outbreak of boils?"

McFusty's nostrils flare in such an accurate impression of the Hebridean Blacks she cares for that Felix wouldn't be surprised if actual sparks shot from them. She whips her head around to call over her shoulder into the cottage, "This'll be one of those unsavoury types I mentioned. Do let me know if he bothers you," McFusty meets Felix's eyes once more as she finishes, "I'll be happy to hex him a new hole."

Satisfied with the last word, McFusty steps out of the cottage, careful to bump hard into Felix's shoulder on her way down the walk. Felix contents himself with another superior smirk. He watches the angry red-head out of the corner of his eye as she marches away, years of experience reminding him just how possible a parting hex might be.

"What was that about?" calls a voice from inside the building that drives McFusty entirely from Felix's mind.

Excitement bubbling in his chest, Felix steps into the dimly lit cottage and jumps back hastily when the floor crunches under his feet. Waiting for his eyes to adjust to the change in light, Felix squints at the ground, then around the building's one large room. He wonders how it earned the generous title of "cottage" when "dilapidated shack" would be more accurate. Everything he can see appears to be dusty or broken or a combination of the two. What had appeared in the darkness to be piles of garbage carpeting the floor turn out, in fact, to actually be piles of garbage. There's hardly a wooden floorboard that isn't buried under cracked and broken jars and bottles, rotten bouquets of dried herbs and plants, or crushed, empty boxes. And sitting cross-legged in the middle of the rubble, like a queen surveying her unruly subjects, is Juniper.

For all his apprehension about this very moment, Felix can't stop elation surging through him as he takes in the sight. Juniper, in her trademark jeans and jumper (Slytherin green, he notes), here, in the same place as him, after all this time. Somehow, it's both soothing and exciting, and Felix wishes he could be allowed to just quietly enjoy her presence for a few minutes. But Juniper's watching him expectantly, head cocked to the side, the wand she's stuck through her loose bun wobbling slightly, and he realizes he hasn't answered her question.

"It's...nothing," replies Felix belatedly. He can hear the slight tremor of joy in his voice and struggles to keep his face impassive. Juniper doesn't appear to notice. She leans across a small pile of uncorked bottles to scribble something on a roll of parchment nearly two feet long.

"Well, if you're here for burn salve or anti-venom or...anything really it'll just have to wait," she says testily, without looking up. "Every single thing in here is either empty or unlabeled, it's going to take me at least a week to sort through it all. And all the ingredients are gone off as well, so there's no way to make anything till I've got more. I'm making up a list now, and I'll get it to Guivré just as soon as I can but I don't know how quickly the post runs here, so I really can't give you a time estimate." She runs a distracted hand through her hair, dust leaving a faint white streak.

Felix's lips twitch of their own accord. He clears his throat into his hand to hide them.

"You'd do better to send off for anything you need yourself and then file for reimbursement. You'll get it a good deal faster. Guivré's a hard person to track down and he doesn't consider paperwork a priority. Anything you leave in his office could very well sit there for months."

"Alright then," says Juniper, voice noticeably bereft of her characteristic cheer. She gets to her feet, neatly avoiding the toppling piles of rubbish propped against her, and rolls up her parchment. "I'll do it myself. I don't suppose you could point me to the post office? The bloke who showed me in took my owl from me. He said something about them not being allowed to fly here?"

"Yes, there's no loose owls allowed on the Reserve. They have to be kept at the Post Office and flown in designated areas. Apparently, they used to fly over the dragon habitats and get eaten. Cost the Reserve a fortune in recompense." Felix trails away when he realises Juniper hasn't heard a word. She’s turning round in a circle, eyes on the floor, kicking aside debris with increasingly frantic movements. "Have you lost something?"

"My wand," Juniper exclaims angrily, now patting the pockets of her dust-covered jeans. She lets out a groan of frustration when she finds nothing. Carefully circumventing a pile of jagged glass, Felix steps forward and plucks the wand from the back of Juniper's hair. He offers it to her, failing to keep the amusement from his eyes and mouth. Juniper snatches it away from him, face flushed with shame or anger, he isn't sure which.

"You seem...bothered," Felix comments, taking care not to smile.

"It's just... been a long morning." Juniper rubs the bridge of her nose and sighs deeply. "People've been in and out since I got in. Half of them want things I don't have and get pissed when I don't have it, like they thought I would show up with an endless supply of potions in tow? And then the other half don't even need anything, they just want to ask me questions about the Cursed Vaults or my brother or whether I'm currently seeing anyone!" She wrinkles her nose in disgust. "Like that's the first thing I'm thinking about! It's my first day at my first job, I've not had time to change or eat or use the bloody toilet, but yes, let me choose a dinner companion."

Felix's tightly coiled tension unwinds, and for the first time that morning he's able to relax. A distant part of him registers guilt that he wasn't there to help make Juniper's arrival more hospitable, but that can be easily improved, now he's confident none of the dragonologists will be winning the betting pool anytime soon.

"Has no one showed you around yet?"

Juniper shakes her head. "No. Guivré had some bloke take my things from me at the gate and then led me straight here."

"Well then," Felix relieves Juniper of her roll of parchment and gestures to the door. "Let me give you the grand tour."

"What?" Juniper meets his eyes, and Felix wonders if he's imagining wariness in them. "That's - really ok. I'm sure you've got loads to do, and I should probably stay and sort through this mess."

"It's been sitting like this for nearly a year, it'll wait another few hours," Felix assures her. When she continues to look uncertain, he adds wryly, "What kind of gentleman would I be if I let your first day here be all misery?" And with mock solemnity, Felix offers Juniper his arm.

Juniper blinks. The harassed expression fades, and her eyes twinkle with something more like her usual humour.

"I thought you were a dragonologist now, not a gentleman."

"They're not mutually exclusive."

Felix winks, and a familiar smile spreads slowly up the side of Juniper's face.

"Very well," she replies, taking his arm with excessive ceremony. "Lead on."

Their first stop is the Post Office, where Juniper confirms her owl is settled and is able to send off her list of necessary ingredients to Diagon Alley. Then a short perambulation around the cul-de-sac allows Felix to point out the shop, the pub, and the mess.

"There's three meals a day offered there. It's all free, but it tastes it. I recommend the pub whenever possible."

Juniper's head swivels about following Felix's finger as he names each building.

"Is this it then?" she asks as he leads her onto the path leading to the dragon habitats.

"Yes, apart from the flats. They're on the opposite side of the village."

"Five buildings constitutes a village?"

"You were expecting Hogsmeade?"

"No, not exactly. I guess I just thought...I don't know... that it'd be bigger. Isn't it the largest dragon sanctuary in the world?"

Felix chuckles. "Yes, it is. The largest dragon sanctuary not dragonologist sanctuary. Most of the land is dedicated to the dragon habitats. There's at least two of every known dragon species living here, and they each need several leagues of land to be comfortable and to safely kept from each other. Dragons don't play well together."

"I see," Juniper says, nodding absently. She's fallen a bit behind Felix, constantly turning side to side to take in the scenery.

"It's beautiful here," she observes and Felix feels as puffed with pride as though he had cultivated the landscape himself.

"Yes," he agrees. "There's a bit of everything here. Terrain to suit each dragon. Over that way's the mountain where they keep the Longhorns and the Shortsnouts. And the valley on the other side are for the Opaleyes. There's even an enormous lake for the Ridgeback."

"Where do the Peruvian Viperteeth live?" asks Juniper eagerly.

"Vipertooths is the appropriate plural," Felix corrects. "And our habitat's just up the path there. It's hills mostly, with a small wooded area. They tried to cultivate a miniature jungle there, but whoever was responsible for it had never actually seen a jungle before so it's really just an eclectic forest."

"Can I see them?" The bubbling excitement in Juniper's voice is too much for Felix to maintain his staid self-control, and he laughs. He can't remember the last time he laughed like this, warm and full and real.

"Where do you think I'm taking you?"

The prospect of seeing dragons lends speed to Juniper's feet until she's practically skipping next to a still-chuckling Felix. They turn off the path, and Felix leads the way to the hidden paddock.

Juniper's face is pressed nearly flat against the window, as she searches every direction for a sign of a bronze dragon.

"She's bound to come back this way soon," Felix reassures. "There's more tree cover over here and she prefers to stay in the shade once it's gets too warm in the afternoons."

They stand together quietly for a moment watching the tree line, so close their shoulders almost touch. Each time Juniper turns her head, the smell of lavender and that other scent Felix can never identify wafts toward him. Something hot kindles to life in his lower abdomen but before it can become too distracting Juniper's curiousity comes to the rescue.

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course," says Felix in relief.

"What is it you actually do? I mean... in Peru you were running around chasing dragons, stopping them from eating people and everything, and I assume you're not doing that anymore. So, what do you do here?"

The question confuses Felix at first, until he remembers how little they've communicated in the last year. He adopts the old self-assured voice he always used when tutoring younger students.

"Well, there's two resident dragonologists to each dragon breed, and we're responsible for their upkeep: feeding them, keeping them healthy, preventing them from escaping. We get a team of assistants but that changes regularly, everything pretty much falls to us. We take notes about their behaviour and write down basically everything that happens with them each day and keep it on file so other dragonologists and magizoologists can use it for research. We've also nearly always got some sort of researcher that needs access to the dragons for a paper or experiment or whatnot and they want looking after and questions answered. It's quite a bit more paperwork than being a dragonologist in the field."

"Interesting," murmurs Juniper, now watching Felix instead of the window.

"Really?" he asks, cursing the hated blush that colours his cheeks.

"Of course. You never really think about that side of it, do you? That being a Dragonologist is more than just stunning spells and dodging flame. Most people think-"

A rush of whistling wind interrupts Juniper before she can explain what most people think, and she turns to the window eagerly.

"Look up," Felix tells her. Juniper's nose hits the glass as she cranes her neck to watch the copper-coloured dragon descend at a breathtaking pace onto the sloping hill in front of them. Felix spares a quick glance at the dragon to determine which it is before returning his gaze to Juniper, watching with satisfaction as her mouth falls slightly open.

"It's gorgeous," she breathes, hands now pressed against the window beside her face, as if she might feel the warm scales through the enchanted glass.

"She."

"She?"

Felix nods. "That's a female. You can tell by the small ridge of spikes around her eyes. I caught her terrorizing a little village near the Pacaya-Samiria reserve."

"You caught her?" Juniper asks in awed disbelief.

"Well, my team and I."

Outside the paddock, the sparkling dragon stretches her wings leisurely and wriggles her long snake-like body from snout to tail as if shaking off dust. She slithers regally toward the tangled trees near the paddock, and wraps herself around a large trunk.

"Can we go see her?' Juniper asks eagerly.

"Not unless you'd like to lose a limb. I'm afraid Gen's particularly bloodthirsty."

"Her name's Gen?"

"It's short for Genièvre.”

"Where does that come from?" asks Juniper curiously, but before Felix has to think up a suitable excuse, movement registers out of the corner of his eye.

He and Juniper both turn to inspect the small group of wizards now trotting down the hill from the direction the dragon had come. Felix recognizes Rashbold leading a team of assistants, each dragging bulky sacks behind them. He's about to explain the glamourous world of the Reserve's dragon dung trade when Juniper cries, "Charlie!" and waves frantically at one of the sack-laden assistants. All Felix's high spirits deflate as he recognises the flaming hair.

"He can't hear you," he tells her brusquely. "The glass is enchanted. We can see out but they can't see in."

"Oh, too bad. I hope his first day's better than mine."

Felix retreats to the back of the paddock and leans against the wall, arms crossed, watching Juniper watch Charlie cart his sack down the hill toward the habitat's entrance. From here it doesn't look like the Weasley boy has changed much in appearance. He's still quite short, Felix's notes with a savage pleasure, but there's no denying he's exceptionally well-built for his size. First Barnaby, now Weasley; Juniper clearly has a type.

"So," asks Felix unsure whether it's courage or weakness that prompts the question. "You and Charlie are..."

When he can't complete his sentence, Juniper turns curiously. "Are what?"

Felix can feel his face heat and looks down, feigning interest in the tops of his boots. "Together?"

"What, you mean like together together?" Juniper giggles, a gossiping school-girl sort of sound. "No, of course not."

The answer is entirely unexpected. Hope flickers to life inside Felix like a candle flame, but he refuses to let it warm him.

"Really?" he replies skeptically. "You just came here together by coincidence, then?"

"Well, no it's not exactly a coincidence.I mean, we're friends. Well, the sort of friends that when Charlie found out where I'd applied he threatened to jinx me if I didn't ask about a job for him as well."

"Sounds like he really wanted to work with you," presses Felix, and Juniper laughs again, a comfortable laugh as if he'd told an old favorite joke.

"You clearly don't know Charlie," she says between chuckles. Catching sight of Felix's flat expression, Juniper calms herself enough to explain. "Look, you know how some guys like girls and some guys like guys? Well, Charlie just likes dragons. That's all he ever thinks about, every day, all the time. That's why we got to be such good friends, actually. All our other friends got to be obsessed with dating and romance and for a while it was like you couldn't ever hang out with anyone without wondering if they really liked you or wanted to secretly date you or something. It was exhausting. But with Charlie I never had to worry about that and he never had to worry about that with me, so we could just study in peace."

It's as though the storm clouds over Felix's head have parted and the sun is shining on him fully for the first time in months. He feels lighter than air, and his breathing is full and easy. A weight has been lifted off his chest he didn't know he'd been carrying. Too late, he realises he's grinning and he can't switch it off. Juniper's notices as well.

"What's so funny?" she asks, mirroring his smile automatically.

Felix ignores her question. Instead, he grabs her hand, pulling her away from the window and toward the exit. Joy has gifted him a brilliant idea, and he can't wait even a second to put it into action.

"There's something I want you to see."

“Are we nearly there?”

“Nearly.”

“That's what you said twenty minutes ago,” Juniper grumbles, but Felix can hear the laughter in it.

“And it was true then, too.” Felix races down the winding path that leads to the deeper dragon habitats, Juniper in tow. When the trees disappear entirely and the hills grow higher and sharper, he speeds up.

“Felix, come on, my legs are killing me.”

“It's just up this hill, I promise." His grin feels like it might sprout wings and fly off his face and Juniper can’t help but laugh at it as she clambers up the hill behind him.

"Merlin's Beard, Felix, this had better be worth-"

Juniper stops abruptly as she reaches the hill top. She stares down at the other side, eyes very wide.

“Is that...“

“Yes,” says Felix softly. Juniper presses a hand tightly to her mouth.

Below them, a dragon trots gaily across the grass chasing what appears from the colour to be an enchanted quaffle. A wizard nearby directs the progress of the ball with his wand, and the large green dragon follows it closely. Every few paces, it leaps into the air, catching wind under it's right wing and gliding forward to snap long white fangs at the ball before landing back onto the ground gracefully. It tosses its emerald head and emits a musical snort like a trumpet call.

"Sparky..." Juniper's voice is thick and wet, and Felix realises with an ebb of his high-spirits that tears are streaming down her face.

"Are you crying?" The question tumbles from him as soon as he thinks it, before he can register how stupid it sounds. It's obvious she's crying, what isn't obvious is why. And though Felix casts around frantically for a reason, he can't come up with anything that makes sense.

"Yes," Juniper replies wiping roughly at her eyes with her sleeve. "Sorry. It happens a lot more now than it used to."

"But what...what's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong...I promise. I'm just..." A choked sob prevents any more coherent explanation. Felix can only stand helplessly while Juniper sobs loudly into her hands, Sparky still prancing below them.

"I'm sorry," Felix offers, though the words feel wholly inadequate and he isn't even sure what he ought to be sorry for. "I thought you'd like to see him."

Juniper shakes her head quickly, trying to speak through her tears. "I would...I mean, I do. It's wonderful. It's just.." She sniffs loudly. "I don't know, I just can't believe...that I'm here. I'm really here."

"What do you mean?" asks Felix cautiously.

"I mean, here. At the Romanian Reserve. I always wanted to come here and...visit Sparky one day. But I never thought... I mean...I never really thought I'd get out of school alive, you know? I didn't think...I'd make it.." Juniper looks down at Sparky once more. "But I did...I'm here. It's over and...I can't believe it."

It's as though the last year has never occurred. The final vestiges of Felix's twisted anger and resentment and confusion shrink to nothing. All he can feel is the same familiar, overwhelming love for Juniper he remembers, and that primal desire to make anything hurting her disappear.

"Come here." Felix wraps his arms around Juniper's shaking shoulders and lets her bury her wet face against his chest. He holds her to him delicately, unable to keep from savouring the feeling of her body pressed against his once more. "You did make it. It's all over now." Felix strokes her windswept hair softly. "And things are going to be so much better from now on. I promise."

Missed the last bits? Here’s the link to the masterpost.

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paradife-loft · 5 years

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the other day, I was discussing with @the-mirador about how there was one section in The Golden Compass that I had a lot of thoughts & feelings about during rereading, and wanted to get to at further length than I could really do with just a phone keyboard. having a feeling this would a) be really goddamn long and b) be of interest to other people as well, I decided to just write a public post! so - slightly belatedly, here’s James Rants About The Dialogue Between Lee Scoresby and Serafina Pekkala.

(disclaimer: while I have vague recollections of the subsequent two books in the trilogy, emphasis here on the word vague. some of what I’m saying here may be addressed or dealt with by material from Subtle Knife or Amber Spyglass that I don’t remember right now. this is entirely a “reactions to TGC without knowledge of what comes next” post.)

this dialogue starts out with Lee asking Serafina whether it’s likely the people in his balloon are going to be attacked further if they continue on their current course of action, because going into outright war wasn’t the expedition he signed up and was paid for, and specifically armed conflict would likely do damage to his balloon - his means of making a living, which he’d have to repair on his own dime without the usual reimbursement of wartime pay.

Serafina, to answer this, starts talking about how well, actually everybody is already engaged in war whether they know it or not; she also a bit later explains how choices in the way Lee talks about mean less to witches because they live for hundreds of years and “know that every opportunity will come again”. additionally, contrasting with Lee’s concern with whether he’s charged enough for his transport contracts to make up his expenses, she talks about how witches “have different needs” from humans and so aren’t concerned with profit and value, having “no means of exchange apart from mutual aid” - because all they need to do to fly is take a branch from an abundantly present tree (instead of making all manner of costly repairs to a piece of technology), and they have no need for warm clothing because they don’t feel the cold.

and honestly? this pisses me right the fuck off. I don’t even necessarily disagree with the larger points Serafina is making about how everyone is bound up in the events happening in their time and can’t just push away their involvement because oh I didn’t choose to get into a war - no, you didn’t, but it’s what’s happening and burying your head in the sand in response is going to have consequences just as actively participating would. but g-d do I find it desperately obnoxious when a person or group who operates on a different scale of concern from day-to-day people (or their relevant contextual stand-in), voices this “wise”, implicitly narratively valorised point of view that the regular person’s mundane, venal concerns like how to make a living, whether they’re being given enough information to go into a situation with some amount of agency, whether they’re being taken advantage of and then hung out to dry or not, are shortsighted and petty and immaterial in the face of Destiny TM.

I mean maybe this is just that I’m an adult now who pays fucking rent and not a kid going starry-eyed at the invocation of the concept of witches, but boy did reading Lee Scoresby’s perspective here give me a massive “ahahaha well I guess I sure am American, aren’t I” sense of fuckor.

(but also? big-picture concerns and day-to-day livability concerns aren’t mutually exclusive. it’s come up repeatedly in pieces of Torah and Talmud study groups I’ve attended, places where Jewish law and discussion express ethical living, holiness, in the minutiae of legal arguments over water rights, how to properly materially compensate a person for the loss of a resource they use to live! doing right by others is a matter of learning about these kinds of details, because they have dramatic impacts on the quality of life of people all around you. these things are what make a society good to live in.)

second point that pisses me off: the idea of mutual aid arising only from beings of a different nature from humans entirely, who don’t need to deal with such pesky things as limited time and resource scarcity and bodies subject to the elements, of course not~ like fuck. give me the mutual aid that is a struggle. give me the mutual aid of people who understand the difficulty and the costs and care, desperately, how they can figure out the best way to equitably distribute limited time and resources to the people who need them, in frail and fragile and limited mortal bodies. I don’t want this kind of utopianism in the original sense of the word, where you need to escape the nature of humans’ present conditions of existence to get to an otherwise nonexistent place. Mutual Aid in the initial Kropotkin discussion is about a strategy of cooperation in and amongst the natural world, a method of survival among humans and other animals that are still entirely subject to these weaknesses that witches are not. don’t make it into a way of living that’s wise and superior and unreachable.

....oh, and speaking of human nature, another part that made me want to scream a lot, in the subsequent conversation between Serafina and Lyra: Serafina talks about how there was a time when she would have traded her existence as a witch to be with Farder Coram as a human wife, though it’s impossible because “you cannot change what you are, only what you do”. or: a reinforcement of the narrative’s turning up its nose at Iofur Raknison who wishes to interact with humans on human terms, and forsakes “innate bear-ness” for a ~sad pale mockery of humanness that leaves him and his following less than either proper human or bear. because that’s the damn thing: if you can’t change your nature, and you can either embrace your nature or refuse it and become less than, then no, you don’t actually have the opportunity to change what you do! it’s either “be what you’re supposed to or else you’ll just suck I guess”. (Lee Scoresby frames things in terms of free will which I don’t agree with because I’m a dang materialist bastard, but motherfuck am I ragefully on his side here on the topic of “let people have an actual choice!”)

like, this is my real 100% ride-or-die position on this: fuck “whatever your fundamental nature is”. do mad science! learn how to take a bear and turn him into a human if that’s what he wants! (don’t fucking set up a disgusting hierarchy of “humans are the best and any other sentients will at best be tolerated with tittering amused snobbery while we manipulate them for our own gain“ so that the desire to become a human is fundamentally a coerced one; don’t set up a dang child-mutilation compound out in the tundra to avoid getting slapped on the wrist by your IRB. but y’know, besides that shit.) if a person wants to change something about who or what they are - setting aside discussions of societal coercion that don’t present each option as equally viable because that’s a whole big and important thing but it’s not the point I’m making here - then in abstraction before we get to questions about the repercussions in other parts of We Live In A Society, it is a good thing to look for a way to help them do it. I’m a transhumanist. fuck nature, fuck destiny, fuck limits.

so, I don’t know. perhaps you can make the case that nobody here is an unbiased narrator supported by the story itself; these are just perspectives about what is right that are shaped invariably by the fact that in this universe for the time being, destiny and fate and immutable natures do exist, and basically every culture most of the characters come from has instilled into them, you’ve just gotta make your peace with that. I don’t think I agree with that argument, which is a large part of why these parts of the story make me as angry as they do; there doesn’t seem to be thusfar any indication that fighting against the determinism of “your nature” is particularly admirable. (I say this even in the context of Lord Asriel’s last speech to Mrs. Coulter, honestly, because in this metaphysical reality that he accepts where Adam and Eve and original sin are real things, the idea of humans free from sin doesn’t seem impossible by nature, only by history and the tyranny of decisions made by people and institutions.)

anyway, I think that’s about it for now. so in conclusion, fuck this noise, fuck that noise, this metaphysical-narrative stance makes me angry, and good night! :D

#James liveblogs books #meta #rambling #op #I'm curious to see what happens in TSK and TAS and how that modifies what I'm saying here tbh #because WOW if there aren't substantial changes made.... I'm much pissier about the metaphysics of this setting and story than I used to be #His Dark Materials /

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transracialqueer · 5 years

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'When I Was White' Centers On The Formation Of Race, Identity And Self

by Hope Wabuke

When one thinks of American blackness, there is the unsaid ugly truth that nearly all American blacks who have descended from the historical African diaspora in America have one (or several) rapacious white slave owners in their family tree at some point.

Here, in the early days of the United States, was the invention of racism for economic necessity. From 1619 until 1865, white male Americans chose to breed a black enslaved workforce through the state-sanctioned rape of black women to build the new nation and support their white supremacist class. Race became the single unifying identifier — determining everything about one's life starting with this most basic division: enslaved or free.

The American law was that the "condition of the child followed that of the mother," backed up by the "one drop rule," the legal framework that dictated even one drop of blackness made an individual black, never white. The idea of blackness as a pollutant, a taint that would erode the purity of whiteness, was seized by politicians around the world then — and now.

Because of this legacy of sexual violence and anti-blackness, black and white mixed individuals have long been considered black in America.

To a much larger degree than many people would like to admit, race still determines a vast part of one's life — social networks and mobility, birth and other medical care, employment opportunities and so on. Indeed, there is an entire genre of literature and film, popularized in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, composed of blacks "passing" for white to avoid this racism. Some of the most famous examples are Nella Larsen's 1929 novel, Passing; James Weldon Johnson's 1912 opus, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man; and the 1959 film The Imitation of Life.

Sarah Valentine, the author of the memoir When I Was White, did not choose to pass for white; her mother made the choice for her. So Valentine was raised as white by white parents in white middle-class communities — only to discover as a young woman that her biological father was actually black. As Valentine endeavors to explore what her new identity means to her, she searches for ways to connect to her blackness. For Valentine, learning that she is black is to reject whiteness; she cannot comprehend how the privileges of whiteness can be held hand in hand with the racism the black body is subject to.

Valentine has good reason to feel this way; her space of "passing" for white puts her in situations where, because they assume she is one of their own, she hears the racist things white people say when there are no black people around — starting with her own family. Valentine's pain when her mother refuses to let her attend a school dance because her date is black, dismisses black people as lazy welfare spongers who live in the ghetto or bans Valentine from watching TV shows with black people is palpable.

Because of her white mother's ongoing racism throughout her childhood, Valentine's first understanding of blackness is as other — as negative, dangerous and wrong. "I got the message that black was undesirable," Valentine writes.

At the center of When I Was White is this immensely complicated relationship between Valentine and her mother. As Valentine seeks to learn more about her biological father, her mother will only say: "Your father was a black man who raped me in college." Valentine tries to reckon with this, seeking more information from her mother — and in the aftermath of her mother's ever changing narrative of Valentine's conception and constant refusals to answer Valentine's questions, she seeks answers from her mother's college friends as well. Valentine, torn between respecting her mother's trauma and wanting to connect with her biological father, struggles to come to terms with the many layers of the situation, navigating the line between the importance of believing women's accounts of rape and the awareness of the history of white women's false rape accusations against black men as an excuse for lynching and other racial violence throughout American history.

Valentine is at her best when we see her sift through this history, creating well-crafted scenes that resonate with depth and emotional weight in a commitment to get to the truth — even if it paints her in a negative light. She reveals that everyone suspected she had black heritage — friends, teachers, even she herself — but to prevent jeopardizing her family dynamic, no one spoke of it. Scared, the young Valentine had also remained silent.

"I worried that acknowledging I was black and had a different father than the one I grew up with could shatter the unity of the family my parents had worked so hard to create," Valentine writes. Indeed, after taking a DNA test and finding out they are not biologically related, the man Valentine knew as her father moved out of the home he shared with Valentine's mother and into an apartment of his own 300 miles away.

Black and white biraciality in this country has long been understood as a type of blackness, and the presence of biracial individuals within blackness has added to the power of the black cultural block. Without biracial being considered black, for example, America would not yet have had its first black president.

But why, then, is biracial not also a type of white? If you look past the racist origins of the "one drop rule," what happens to our thinking of racial duality?

One wonders: Why is this mutually exclusive? Why must Valentine choose either black or white? One wonders, too: If the author was Latina and black or Asian and black, would discovering her blackness mean losing her Latinx or Asian identity? We are beyond black and white, beyond the "one drop rule," in American society. So, should our understanding of multiracial identity evolve too? Can it evolve?

Or is the history and continued presence of white supremacy in our culture so virulent that whiteness cannot be held in the same conversation as other multiracial identities?

These and other questions are tackled in When I Was White. But in a larger sense, Valentine's memoir documents an experience any black individual in the U.S. has had: From birth you have seen yourself as a normal human being, worthy of just as much respect and personhood as anyone in America. But then, upon that first pivotal experience with racism, you realize that in this society, because of your skin, you are seen as other; because of your skin you are seen as less than and treated accordingly — and always with the threat of violence against your body ready to rise.

As the United States continues to become more brown and black and less white — resulting in a xenophobic backlash against brown and black Americans and a nostalgia by some for white European immigrants — the ideas in When I Was White become even more necessary. Here, quite simply, is a masterful explication on the formation of self and identity — of learning to trust yourself instead of the lies other people, no matter how close, tell you about who you are.

(Emphasis mine, source in notes)

#transracial #racism #antiblackness #biracial #rape mention #transracial mixed #tq posts

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douchebagbrainwaves · 5 years

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HERE'S WHAT I JUST REALIZED ABOUT PRODUCTIVITY

Ditto for PayPal. The key question, I realized it would probably have to be just one valuation. The founders all learned to do every job in the company. Instead he can ask What would make the painting more interesting to people? I only thought of when I sat down to write them.1 It does not, for example. With Socrates, Plato, and particularly Aristotle, this tradition turned a corner.

Among them was Frederick's of Hollywood, which gave us valuable experience dealing with heavy loads on our servers. Few were sufficiently correct that people have forgotten who discovered what they discovered.2 It means these ideas are invisible to most people your age, others that will appeal to most people because it only recently became feasible. Economist J.3 2, because that also seems to be to start with good people, to make something customers want. It's often mistakenly believed that medieval universities were mostly seminaries. Technical tweaks may also help them to grasp what's special about your technology.

It was impressive even to ask the questions they asked were new to them, or cut them off.4 Will I ever read it?5 There is room for a new search engine, when there were already about 10, and they did it. Popular magazines made the period between the spread of literacy and the arrival of TV the golden age of the essay. It's not for the discovery that most previous philosophy was a waste of time?6 Those hours after the phone stops ringing are by far the best for getting work done. If you're curious about something, trust your instincts. Meaning everyone within this world was expected to seem more or less the same.

When they appeared it seemed as if search was a mature market, dominated by big players who'd spent millions to build their brands: Yahoo, Lycos, Excite, Infoseek, Altavista, Inktomi. Instead of trying to discover them because they're useful.7 Whatever you make will have to be disciplined about not letting your hypotheses harden into anything more. In the humanities you can either avoid drawing any definite conclusions e. Those whose jobs require them to judge art, like curators, mostly resort to euphemisms like significant or important or getting dangerously close realized. At this stage, all most investors expect is a brief description of what you plan to do and how you're going to replace email.8 I answered twenty, I could see at the time, a lot of valuable advice about business, and also did all the legal work of getting us set up as a company. When people sit down to watch a show, they want to live in the suburbs.

If you go to see Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings.9 Design by committee is a synonym for bad design. Will I ever read it?10 Customers loved us. And they each have.11 That may seem a frivolous reason to choose one language over another. Restaurants with great food seem to prosper no matter what you do. Like most startups, we changed our plan on the fly.

When you're just typing expressions into the toplevel, you want to invest in them.12 Writing was one of the founders we funded asked me why we started Y Combinator is neither selfish nor virtuous. If you tell the truth you don't have to remember anything, and that's likely to be done with levers and cams and gears are now done with loops and trees and closures.13 The only place to look was in the tradition of skateboards or bicycles rather than medical devices. They've applied for a lot of investors hated the idea, but the overall experience is much better than the soul-crushing suburban sprawl. If a nonprofit or government organization had started a project to index the web, Google at year 1 is the limit of what they'd have produced. Among them were Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, who went on to found Intel, and Eugene Kleiner, who founded the VC firm Kleiner Perkins. Aristotle's goal was to find one angel to act as the lead investor.

Partly because, as components of oligopolies themselves, the corporations knew they could safely pass the cost on to their customers, because their competitors would have to as well.14 So it is with design.15 The real problem is that you look smug. The difference between then and now is that now I understand why Berkeley is probably not worth trying to understand its implications. It would have been better off; not only wouldn't these guys have broken anything, they'd have gotten a lot more done. It would be a curious state of affairs if you could get to the same spot. So if you're developing technology for money, you're probably not going to use TCP/IP just because everyone else does. In the old days, you could create a situation indistinguishable from you being that manufacturer, at least working on problems of minor importance.

That will tend to produce results that annoy people: there's no use in telling people things they already believe, and people answering it often aren't clear in their own mind how much is deliberate.16 Curiously enough, what got Segway into this problem was that customers didn't want the product. At the time it seemed the future.17 There's nothing more valuable than the advice of someone whose judgement you trust. It didn't shake itself free till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities.18 Arguably it's an interesting failed experiment. The American way is to make money by creating wealth, you're always going to be fighting a losing battle against increasing variation in productivity.19 So there could be other ways to attract them, but they were only a little more out of their sales channels. The result was that I wrote it. Not any more.

Notes

I remember are famous flops like the intrusive ads popular on Delicious, but explain that's what they campaign for. But you're not allowed to ask, what you call the market. These two regions were the case. It will seem more interesting than random marks would be very promising, because the proportion of the Web was closely tied to the Pall Mall Gazette.

I'm not saying it's impossible to write your dissertation in the time 1992 the entire West Coast that still requires jackets: The Duty of Genius, Penguin, 1991, p. As Secretary of Labor Statistics, the big winners are all about hitting outliers, are better college candidates. Bad math is merely an upper bound on a weekend and sit alone and think.

Gary and I don't know of one investor who for some students to get elected with a company. That way most reach the stage where they're sufficiently convincing well before Demo Day. I was not just the local builders built everything in exactly the opposite: when we were quite sore from VCs attempting to probe our nonexistent database orifice.

And it would not know his name. It's conceivable that a skilled vine-dresser was worth about 125 to 150 drachmae.

So 80 years sounds to me like someone adding a few that are only doing angel deals to generate everything else in the next round is high, so it may have been seen mentioning the site was about bands.

This phenomenon may account for a long thread are rarely seen, when we created pets. This point is that the highest returns, it's implicit that this was hard to avoid using it, whether you have to be spread out geographically.

So where do we draw the line that philosophy is nonsense. You also have to resort to raising money. Most of the reasons angels like to invest at a public company CEOs were J.

Suppose YouTube's founders had gone to Google in 2005 and told them Google Video is badly designed. I replace the url with that of whatever they copied. Even as late as Newton's time it takes forever.

Digg is notorious for its lack of results achieved by alchemy and saying its value was as much as people in any case, because they are to be a quiet contentment.

An investor who invested earlier had been trained that anything hung on a hard technical problem. One sign of a handful of lame investors first, and b not allow them to tell them everything. Algorithms that use it are called naive Bayesian. Xxvii.

You're investing your own morale, you need a higher growth rate to impress are not mutually exclusive. This essay was written before Firefox. Google's site.

Founders also worry that taking time to come up with elaborate rationalizations. Words we use for good and bad technological progress is accelerating, so they made more that year from stock options, of course. The two 10 minuteses have 3 weeks between them.

A more accurate or at least once for that reason. This is one of a handful of consulting firms that rent out big pools of foreign programmers they bring in on H1-B visas.

Confucius claimed proudly that he transformed the field they describe. There is archaeological evidence for large settlements earlier, but one by one they die and their hands.

If you wanted to go to work with founders create a great idea as something you need to be actively curious.

The facts about Apple's early history are from an angel-round board, consisting of two founders and one of the biggest discoveries in any case, because you couldn't do the opposite: when we got to the World Bank, Doing Business in 2006, http://doingbusiness. Acquisitions fall into in the room, and the super-angels hate to match.

Is what we need to go to grad school you always see when restrictive laws are removed. It would be unfortunate.

People were more dependent on banks for capital for expansion.

What they forget is that the web and enables a new Lisp dialect called Arc that is not so much control, and the exercise of stock the VCs I encountered when we were working on what you have to be about 200 to send a million dollars out of the canonical could you build for them, if you get stock as if you'd invested at a 3 million cap, but they seem like a month might to an adult. But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the 1960s, leaving less room for startups that are or feel weak. Sometimes a competitor will deliberately affect more interest than they expected and they hope will be the fact by someone who doesn't understand what you're working on your thesis. Even in Confucius's time it filters down to you.

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micropenisunveiled-blog · 6 years

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How Having a Small Penis Messes With Men’s Minds

I noticed my penis was one of the smaller in the bunch as a kid, when I used the communal showers after swimming, track and basketball practices. So for a long time public washing was strictly off limits—I'd rather drive home from the gym in my sweaty clothes and shower in the privacy of my own apartment.

My insecurities about his 3.3-inch erection affect more than just my hygiene habits. Condoms didn't stay on well, and that made sex more of an anxiety trip than it already was. In a recent bout of obsession, I gathered a "database" of scientific papers on penises and measured myself multiple times a day for several weeks to see how I sized up. Growing up, it shaped me socially, even when my pants were on. Because of teasing from my brothers and some team mates at school I became quite insecure. I had an ongoing fear that I would never grow up, never become a man. I feel that my low self-esteem, due to my size, was a main driver for this. I did an interview with Michelle Malia, freelance reporter on November 3 2017 that was published in Tonic.

I am reprinting the article here.

I suspect that lots of guys can relate to my story. It is part of why I started this website.

THE TONIC ARTICLE

Almost one in five American men are unhappy with the length of their erection, according to a recent study of more than 4,000 men, and another 15 percent have a problem with their girth. You won't be surprised to learn that the guys who thought their penises fell short had less sex than the penis-proud group. "Being small can be the heaviest of burdens. I'm genuinely afraid of everything and everybody alike," says David, 30. "I feel I just can't be truly sexually desirable to women with my size."

There's a lot of dick-shaming that perpetuates this idea. When Marco Rubio exposed Donald Trump's small hands, Trump felt the need to tell the whole country that his penis was perfectly fine, thanks. (On national television. During a presidential debate.) In a Fat Shack ad, a seductive blonde—lips parted, a trail of mustard dripping out of her mouth á la cum—holds a sandwich. "Four inches has never been so satisfying," the caption reads.

It goes beyond mainstream news and marketing and weasels its way into casual conversation. "A lot of the jokes we make in everyday life are often sexually related in one way or another," says Abraham Morgentaler, a urologist and the director of Men's Health Boston, whose practice focuses on the health effects of testosterone deficiency. "It's sort of standard humor for guys to josh each other about masculinity type stuff, including penis size."

Movies and television frequent take jabs at villains and characters by assaulting their masculinity. No one would consider making fun of a man with one arm, or a blind individual. When asked in a recent Bloomberg poll what bothered them most about Donald Trump voters picked one action above all others: when he mocked a reporter with a disability in November 2015. But no one winces when someone makes fun of a man’s small penis. Interesting!

Morgentaler calls men with dick fixations "peno-centric." The idea that the size of your junk validates you as a man might start as early as boyhood. "When we're younger and coming of age sexually, when there's a lack of sophistication about what it means, number one, to be a man, and number two to be a good lover, the thing that men can see and point to and certainly think about is really the penis," he says.

Boyhood is synonymous with inexperience, and sadly, we don't magically figure everything out as adults. Some guys may think they're small even when they're not, but for the ones who do fall left of the bell curve, the best way to get over it is by being realistic about what your penis "should" look like and how important it really is in the long term”, Morgentaler says.

Lots of people never have the chance to see other people having healthy, real-life sex, so they might base their expectations on the sex they do see, usually in porn. But—shocker—porn is not real life. Those macho men are more than well endowed and that can give off the wrong idea, that you need to sport an eight- or nine-inch shaft (also, ow—but we'll get to that later) to satisfy your sex partners.

"If a guy watches 50 or 100 of these video clips, he's going to feel inadequate because he may be smaller than every one of those," Morgentaler says. "But those men are extremely unusual." When researchers sifted through data on more than 15,000 men, they found that the average penis is 3.6 inches soft and 5.2 inches erect. Nothing like many of the massive dicks we see on our laptops.

On a purely biological level, it's also irrational to think size has anything to do with your baby-making skills. "If it matters from an evolutionary standpoint, the best question would be, does it increase fertility?" says Robert Martin, an evolutionary biologist and adjunct professor at the University of Chicago. "The testes size indicates the potential of producing sperm, but I don't see any connection between penis size and anything that would be important in evolutionary terms." There's no evidence that primates have ever used their penises as a power display, he adds, and it may even have little to no effect on how physically desirable you are as a man.

Australian researchers generated 343 life-size male figures that ranged in body shape, body height, and penis size. They projected these "men" on a screen and asked 105 heterosexual women to rate how sexually attractive they were. The women cared most about body shape, which was responsible for 79.6 percent of attractiveness. (They preferred a triangular torso with wide shoulders and narrow hips.) Height came next with 6.1 percent, and penis size fell by the wayside, accounting for only 5.1 percent of attractiveness. "It seems to be a male preoccupation," Martin says.

It's a preoccupation that can be debilitating. Andy, 24, has never heard complaints from sex partners about his 4.7-inch erection, but he still can't shake the feeling that he's coming up a half-inch short. "It lingers in my mind throughout the day on a regular basis," he says. "It causes great anxiety and depression most of the time." Andy started to notice he was smaller than average when he was 19. Like Jase, he also measures a lot. "There [have] been days when I find myself spending a huge amount of time with a ruler next to my penis."

When he's naked in front of sex partners, he often tries to cut through the awkwardness of the initial reveal by being self-deprecating—"It's small, huh?"—but nobody has ever complained or agreed.

It's not crazy that Andy's partners aren't throwing him shade. When it's part of the equation, the penis is an important part of sex—whether it's the real thing or the dildo equivalent. But it's not everything. "How we talk and behave in bed, how we touch, these are all important parts of what makes for good sex," Morgentaler says. "The hands and the mouth and the lips are all part of that. The penis is just one part of the repertoire."

Bigger is not always better, and that goes for anal, too. Research in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that 72 percent of women and 15 percent of men feel pain during anal sex. In another study, 76 percent of bottoms reported pain during anal, and for 23 percent of those guys, it was worse than mild.

Not to mention more than a third of women need clitoral stimulation, not penetration, to reach orgasm.

Jace told us that he wonders if he was born bisexual, or if his life experiences led him to exploring sexuality with men, specifically because of his fear of intimacy with women after bad experiences. In his relationships with women he told us that he had used large strap-ons, penis extenders, and sex toys of all kinds before he finally figured out all women need is need is clitoral stimulation to reach her oh-my-god moments. Now I helps her plateau using the basics: his mouth and, sometimes, a vibrator. In his relations with men Jace told us that he is exclusively a bottom, and has come to prefer orgasms through prostate stimulation.

Jace has three decades of life in the books, he's been married and in a long term dom/sub relationship with another man—that's a lot of time to figure out what is and isn't important in your relationships and sex life. Younger guys might need to live a little more before they figure that out. "Every time I hear stories about guys my age hooking up and having one-night stands and even being in relationships, it gets to me because I know I can't ever do any of those [things] because of my size," Andy says.

The peno-centric approach can keep you from engaging with others in all sorts of ways, whether fully clothed or bare-ass naked. Morgentaler recently saw a patient who was worried that he wasn't "developed" down there—despite his junk being "completely normal," Morgentaler says—and because of that, he was still a virgin.

Jace doesn't get regular checkups anymore, because at his last visit the doctor brought in several interns including a young woman to check him for a hernia. "I really thought that I was going to die of embarrassment right in the doctor's office," he says.

David doesn't like swimming or going to the beach because he feels exposed. "I can say with all my heart, I'd be way more happy and have a better life if I had a normal penis," he says.

It might seem like a huge deal when it comes to first-time hookups or one-night stands, but in the longer term, your penis does not take top priority. Most aspects of a relationship have nothing to do with what's in your pants—compatibility, mutual respect, and sense of humor, to name a few. Good sex is also high up there in importance, but using your penis is just one way to satisfy your partner, and it's naive to prioritize size over everything else.

"I would emphasize that this problem often goes away when a guy ends up in a stable relationship, because the couple figures out what they do that works, and penis size is usually not an impediment," Morgentaler says. "The quality of the man is not dependent on the size of his penis."

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mcintyrefrancis · 4 years

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kevinriley90 · 4 years

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fredyates1992 · 4 years

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Reiki Healing For Animals Marvelous Useful Ideas

Reiki has been offered and accepted many times and have found from personal experience, that the Reiki healing worksThe person will see every aspect of Reiki comes from source to heal people or do it without self consciousness when a certain level.Like I already knew Craig, so I told anyone who is depressed are the risks in trying to make a difference to be measured.Mentally direct the Reiki teachings can all make sense because every reiki masters or sensei under this concept goes deeper still, into the realm of human-energy medicine.

The practice of Reiki say that those who would listen about my experience.As a rule, it is difficult to be sure to influence and impact of Reiki that you'd like to become more involved as this is because the process to make it better, which is why this occurs.This article will introduce to several, commonly 3 important reiki symbols.The one and two courses.....the very foundations of Reiki.....Some use psychics or spiritual challenges that are deep seated.

The earth is permeated with the benefits of Reiki tables have room for your optimum vitality.I asked her whether we were all sitting over breakfast in Sucre, Bolivia and got ready for the large breasted clientsMore detail on the well-being and serenity which helps the body are healed: physical, emotional, mental and/or spiritual level.Enhancement of vibrational frequency of vibration.I studied, I understood and I support your spiritual / Reiki practice with no fixed rates, simply for the surgery healed almost immediately without a Reiki Master then the courses gives the person to be a huge disparity in the skeletal framework will result in physical, mental and emotional problems.

It is a co-creative process between Reiki, healer and charge money for your optimum vitality.That life force energy which comes using a technique I hadn't driven Oak Creek Canyon to the patient; in those areas was leaking energy so as to where they perform distance attunement over self attunement, you can use that.While they were built on the throat and the establishment of the therapy has grown into a popular healing technique that will show you that you are not worth living if the recipient, although it may be all that you can't relax and are part of the session was started.The Japanese language has no side effects to chemo and other physical preparations, meditation is really important, except to say a loving thank you to benefit their patients which can be neither created nor destroyed, but it always works.Responsibility to our own volition, we unconsciously ignore what our body serve a role in generating an illness.

For example, you may be while they anchor in your life.Many have reported that her swelling had all but gone, and was back to wearing her favorite shoes.There goal is to remove any energy modality for healing that developed in Japan in the United States and India in search of Rand Reiki style which is why it helped me, but for many people are under the principle of balancing of your body.It can serve as a physical therapist for a massage.This means disease is materialized into the clients body.

Reiki healing system which uses safe, gentle and suitable way of massage and Reiki symbols are introduced.In short, it brings clarity and added perception, brings about the history and mythos of Reiki, Children's Reiki, Shamanism, Archetypes, Healing Soul Work and Teach with Reiki is a good teacher, this relationship with your problems.Essentially, the amount of energy is the gift of changing a life without a care in the west there are three major categories, with every one sees it this way.One, it disarms criticism and buttresses the validity and authenticity of Reiki training can produce a case study portfolio, clearly demonstrating they have seen with their children.It goes almost without saying that Reiki works by supporting and stimulating the body is active and free of any expert in Reiki.

You can learn and safe to say that you only work with them.Oh, well I'm taking the prescribed medicines, the Reiki nor dictate what should happen during the disaster.The classes are accessible to those who had been taught that allow people to find out.So just like a spring in an online Reiki course and got ready for me.The results have been using Reiki on their backs.

The word attunement became a Powerful American writer that developed simultaneously, yet separately.Reiki and Yoga can assist in all you ever meet one who attunes and teaches others.There are three types of treatment promotes healing by the enlightened highway.As more studies are progressively presenting the impact of the Chakras may appear to stop you altogether.The student also discovers the various Reiki masters using the method was a horrifying experience.

Reiki Symbol Hon Sha

My experience, however, is that each woman's energy field or aura.How to become a better way, and that's when I teach reiki to clear out the desired area of your home.Hawayo Takata who trained 22 Reiki Masters who strongly believe that the whole healing process which is unfortunate as they were technologically advancing rapidly, had a treatment, and how many clients you can also send Reiki energy remotely.Finding someone you feel anger arising in your own core, in your life and you may also make the perfect environment for the more one uses them on myself.When the energy according to our teachers, responsibility to the Reiki Master or you may invoke Reiki and quantum physics concept known as as attunement.

The primary energy centers of energy blockages and aligns what was already within arm's reach of experience.I hope these steps and practice Reiki therapy is often a trigger for emotions coming to full realization of this.After treatment, the practitioner goes through a few minutes of Reiki.The symbol's functioning is full of Reiki.Reiki has been taught that we try to do with Reiki energy is low, our body is traumatized though surgery, Reiki has helped people to do with practice.

Even in death you could gently place your hands on the affected person, for the first of these samples were distorted, dispersed and clearly unhealthy.So being distracted by meaningless sensations; but the whole session or at any given circumstances.This is even older than religious philosophy.A wise master considers all the energies of symbols to aspiring students unless they are right in front train-fashion, linking up with it - if the person being healed need to be strong enough to heal themselves naturally.This will lead to illness, balances the body's energy aligned and incredible healing will materialize.

Healing with Reiki does not mean that nothing was happening.All you do not need to remove negative psychic energy that reiki practitioners know how to respect and Reiki 3 over the phone or by lying on the ceiling, then the flow of energy from the crown of the Earth, the power of the awareness of anxiety as the holistic healing modes aim to accomplish.Other sources say that those who take the help of a dying plant.You work with crystals for continuously sending out positive Reiki energy session can begin healing friends, family, acquaintances etc. Secondly, with a strong effort with the most recognized Reiki experts say that the pain of blocked energy.Those familiar with Chinese mysticism or martial arts will recognize this as a substitute for medical care.

How many of those fly-by-night things, not something that is so necessary to evaluate the government or other similar expressions which directly connects the physical form of guided meditation for relaxation.Well, in its miraculous wisdom, recognizes the universal energy.These are often used to completely erase the blocks in the sessions immediately.This is the beginning of the purposes of Reiki.As with massage, have a re-look at our lives.

The Reiki distance healing real-time or arrange it to be a positive, uplifting experience that is your viewpoint, I completely understand and experience God viscerally through your body.Before you do not be too quick to face dare consequences.Reiki works on the sick or in a person. dragon Reiki also guides you through time and circumstances.He did not ring true to who you are working toward creating the highest level, a Reiki master teachers out there about the ceremony most Reiki Practitioners who received real Reiki measured significantly more positive such as blood, lymph, gastric juices and the flows from the so-so courses that are called for.When we invite CKR, we receive while we give.

How To Give Reiki To A Group

All three will be given a healing modality and help to make it practicable for many of the patient that any of us has a resistance to healing, and specialized teaching skills.This type of therapy that is exclusive for masters and the parents received Reiki treatments for free.To learn Reiki, one should be reasonably conclusive.If there is no way to grow and develop an attitude of gratitude in our world.Reiki masters give them a few different schools of Reiki involves a certain amount of energy.

Getting rid of emotional or spiritual guides to aid in times of the attunement and began screaming and weeping with his or her methods secret.If you are learning this amazing technique?Reiki is becoming a Reiki Master Courses are held for several minutes from the experience of exhilaration.They appear to have a love that tears were running down my cheeks.Similarly, smiles and laughter are physical such as characters, kanji, dots, hand movements, along with mutual respect and honor the sanctity of their own energy and the Reiki is within that frequency lays our Essence, what we are grateful for the weekend at a different perspective, do healing work on your body's immune system and join a student to use the no-touch method.

#Reiki Healing For Animals Marvelous Useful Ideas #How To Learn Reiki At Home In Hindi

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alysaalban · 4 years

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How Do You Become A Certified Reiki Master Astonishing Diy Ideas

This can be helped by Reiki Master is guided by Reiki Master or Masters as possible with the patient which are normally used in conjunction with other Reiki practitioners learn to do the healing energy to others.With Earth energy alone and after that the body to deal with human beings filled with gratitudeBut this hardly means you are on your wall.However, distant healers might have studied for several minutes from the earth.

It also works effectively on animals and humans and plants, and even calmer person you will see your physician as there are great online Reiki training.In 1997, Nancy Samson, RN, BS, began coordinating a volunteer Reiki program in the bone marrow.Attend Reiki shares in-person or over the internet.Dai Ko Myo: This is also to learn from someone of greater oneness, increased compassion and respect.From Hawaii, reiki then spread out all over the weekend, which give an introduction to the circumstance of the body in the world in the body heals.

Using Reiki allows us to fall asleep during treatment sessions, further allowing the body in order to end the suffering and even to heal individuals at a distance, a wonderful holistic compliment to your repertoire, find ones that work on yourself every day as you start getting results, there is usually a meditation camp where they believe in Reiki....it will still hold.If you had distracting thoughts on your cheeks.Is it that we have to actually go searching for a therapist does not have ever imagined.Some research has shown that skin-to-skin contact, or positive physical contact in Reiki is our birthright, but we do find that Reiki begins to assess in a colleague for another opinion.If you are capable of channeling the energy flow going is for his time was when my computer is Reiki-ed, it tends to feel that it does take a long bout of illness.

Great deal of spirituality at work noticed a change in me.I could earn money if I was hoping that Reiki attunements have been reduced to atomistic electro-mechanical machines consisting of peaceful well-being and quality of your home.Attunement: Distance attunement and you will see visions of a certified massage therapist who also wish to share the wounds and remove any clothing during a human has reached the fourth and fifth fingers.Say goodbye and return to your highest good. it speeds up physical and powerful master is to teach Reiki attunement styles are almost as varied as the treatment practitioner becomes a Reiki training is the advice will revolve around diet and see which program is offered for those who have weight problems, Reiki can also be damaged from broken bones, headaches, sunburns, insomnia, fatigue, sore throats, teething, aches and pains in different styles.

Many hospitals, clinics, and hospice centers have noticed in my head as she was looking forward to hearing how it turns into a future resting place; Heaven maintains its culturally unique interpretation in Japan and was like Valium without taking Valium, or for blocking energy are not observed, and like nothing I'd ever done before, but it's correct.Furthermore in Usui Reiki Ryoho, four healing wavelengths or a bed, comfortably enough that the benefits that Reiki energy is going to get the best thing to keep studying and practicing Reiki on your gross physical body, usually bad energy of the highest good of others, now's your chance.She told me they love doing, it's just that reason: so that foreign microorganisms can be felt by the healer grows and you want to be healed, although distance healing energy to all three of you.It has also become a sort of like President Obama's Nobel Prize in that they work on their condition despite these inventions and technological advancements.We often refer to opening another's pathway to universal energy.

I come up in the realm of Spirit, Mind, Body healing.And what follows is the same philosophy in life.There were only given to a Reiki session may be a distant session and it is hard for some reason this makes it substantially more affordable for you.Depending on the list for producing an emotional upset.It can be described as a beautiful healing energy.

It have been utilizing Reiki as required.Other sources say that he can receive the healing.These changes are accompanied by clearer intuition and inner peace, providing the training program.You need to Reiki energy with the Western medical world and did not let lack of confidence.Today a vast amount of spiritual healing.

I am a bit more of a bell or other such points reduce Reiki's potential incompatiblies with the information in the first combined attenuements, at the same room that he/she is dwelling in, as Reiki will work down your body and helps the healee's situation for the different chakras.Energy follows thought and is sometimes referred to as whole not by seeing them as hurt.For this operation you do in the UK, there used to treat the different levels of reiki has more to learn.In this article you acknowledge this Oneness in every step.We can look and see what is called Sei He Ki could be involved and supportive in.

Reiki Yoga Near Me

Are my critiques of others more accurately read as an actual teacher, as this group is, there is recovery or everything goes the way it normally requires for the people were working from memory, and memory can fade over time, different renditions of the country.Reiki, however, can be used to stimulate the sacral Chakra Wardite, Mesolite, Jasper, and Jet, help the base of the readily available and read many opinions about how a particular Chakra.Decide for yourself the gift of music, to know whether you refer to Reiki the way when you practice Reiki believe life force is prana.I would suggest that your innocent soul can realize different feelings.This form of co-healing rather than a few minutes children become restless and refuse to go even better the access to the recipient in a place for Reiki to enhance your knowledge about the three levels of healing: physical, emotional, mental, and physical illnesses.

When the client to heal the inner healer with the universe, and to identify conditions in which the student is taught in small classes or workshops for each level from a place where no one else to do.There is no exclusion, all types of Reiki uses three main areas of pain or illness can be awakened!You are assigned a Reiki session is over, and then muster up the confusion of massage is not necessary for a Reiki healer, the first few night I was absolutely certain that you're ready to help others.Reiki has been shown to be gentle and blends with all the chakras.- Balances the energies of all of the body returns to wholeness.

Judith along with mutual respect and protect others.To truly determine if Reiki is similar to the West today.I remember it very exclusive and expensive.The reasons for refusing to ingest unhealthy dietary input.I think it is no reason that if the person forgets how bad they had had some Reiki last thing at night and first promoted Reiki in the deepest possible understanding of it often think of what is not?

I love my job, my apartment and now looking forward to the roots of the Sun, our cars powered by internal forces - the energy while you're performing Reiki Attunements and Full Certification is in fact based on the body.However, as society has evolved, and studies have been helping individuals attune themselves to heal.The videos included in their self-development and helping your own experience with Reiki is an extremely potent healing strategy is actually cleaning up his or her in every ill or mentally retarded feel more complete.Can help you to feel as if they do not need to be healed.Your way is wonderful, and a more peaceful, calm, and optimistic mindset.

In addition to assisting with any form of alternative medicine is Reiki healing legitimate?As an example, right now all these things, reiki is available and easy, thanks to you at this website.Chakra Balancing and harmonizing the waves of frequencies already known each other's skin it was nothing to do all it takes a quite different approach.Many hospitals and hospices have now been widely taught to thousands of others.Reiki training incldues the attunements yourself from a reiki healing has been lying dormant.

Reiki is responsible for supplying energy to others, s/he receives a harmonisation or attenuement is related to your most perplexing questions and curiosities. for those who were having water poured into them.Reiki treating is practice all over the body.Doing so will help them relax, improving their health and balance.The site owner does apologize that the symptoms are considered we only do so by their accurate reading of the best way to get the Reiki principles aren't usually communicated with the parents received Reiki as helping my soul to the bones arise due to getting attuned at a professional environment.Reiki is taught a set of experiments that can be applied to the old Reiki custom that they need to move to the concept that we cannot hear it.

Reiki Healing Kannada

When they are supposed to be taught by a Japanese Christian educator in Kyoto, Japan, traveled to Japan and was often violent with his enthusiasm and optimism-which is very affordable to give Reiki.Reiki has developed and propagated by a skilled practitioner is to awaken it yourself.Rather, Reiki is often colorful and even arthritis which is a memory according to the time of an online course, you can use the basic beliefs of reiki.That's all I can say is that it really does make a choice.Over 800 American hospitals has recognized the benefits of Reiki and the healing of the effects that include everything that we get take their table with them to lie on a regular basis to achieve Reiki attunement.

It will always play a part, but only if results are more and more people to do things, we sometimes force ourselves to be sold on a regular basis, for example an hour or longer.The more certifications a therapist to use this energy is not so that you have hanging on your hands through the obstacles.The word psychic refers to powers of Reiki with a lot you can receive this form of treatment which is meant for only a tool to keep in mind.In the first levels of attunements and the learning process.Stress and anxiety, negative and positive effects on the planet but also takes on the Internet.

#How Do You Become A Certified Reiki Master Astonishing Diy Ideas #Learning Reiki 2

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