#but sorting out who had masks left from the last fire season to donate to health care workers / who had extra produce & TP

[insteading]

“There's to be a fuel and food drop in the Manor grounds, as the place most easily visible from the air in this snow. And Miss Greythorne is asking if everyone in the village would not like to move into the Manor, for the emergency. It will be crowded, of course, but warm. And comforting, perhaps. And Dr Armstrong will be there—he is already on his way, I believe.” “That's ambitious,” Mr Stanton said reflectively. “Almost feudal, you might say.” Merriman's eyes narrowed slightly. “But with no such intention.”

--Chapter 9, "The Coming of the Cold"

Mr Stanton values self-containment, self-reliance. He admires the decision to make space at the manor for “the people from the cottages,” but insists that the Stanton family home is sufficient to them: “I don't see any good reason for our trooping off to partake of the bounty of the Lady of the Manor.” (Will eventually forces the issue by manipulating the Walker into such an emotional state that he needs a doctor.)

“Cottages” here probably refers to small housing near the manor, often quite old and maybe not fully modernized, that were rented from the landowner. Renters might be manor staff who weren't required to stay in servants' quarters in the manor itself overnight. Or they might be raising livestock or farming land adjacent to the manor, supplying much of what they farmed to the manor itself and some measure of food for their own household. Especially if the housing was supplied as a benefit of the manor-serving job, there was a level of precarity in being a cottager that a householder would not experience: a householder could change jobs without risking the roof over their head.

Mr Stanton's wariness about accepting the invitation to the manor makes sense: the relationship between manor and cottagers was exploitive. At the same time, our beloved “huddling for warmth” trope has so much mileage because humans really do need other humans in times of stress and scarcity. Whatever the virtues of self-reliance, some problems are too big to weather on our own. The first thing we learn to do as babies, before we can walk or talk or feed ourselves, is to cry for help. Because it's fundamentally human to need help sometimes, even if it goes against what we've learned to value.

[odditycircus-2002]

Holiday Fun

featuring, Medusa!Reader, Syzoth, and Baraka! And in case you want context, I suggest you start all the way here.

A/N: Just some headcanons to get into the seasonal spirit and how Medusa!Reader handles winter in general. Please enjoy and don't forget to like, comment, and reblog. My inbox hungers!😁😁😁

You aren't the biggest fan of the cold, since as a child that meant more chores and work than being able to stay inside nice and warm. That and herb gathering are nigh impossible. But since you grew scales, you found that you absolutely HATED it now! While you're still technically warm-blooded, you still have difficulty staying actually warm. Something Syzoth theorized may be due to the possibility of Zatteran blood having influenced your mutation. Adding reason 5,000 to carve open Shang Tsung from the groin to the gullet the next time you see him.

You aren't able to go outside to do your usual morning basking since the chilled air leaves the Wastes colder than usual. The rocks may as well be ice at that point. It's a herculean effort for you to drag yourself out of bed and its many stacked comforters, in the morning. You refuse to go outside without at least 5 layers of clothing on you.

In fact, Baraka had to go out of his way to ask Ashrah, through Syzoth, to help set up a basking area in your living quarters, since the demoness had to do something similar for Syzoth. On the plus side, this also attracted other patients, mostly afflicted Zatterans, of yours searching to get away from the cold, which means more heat for you to be surrounded by even if it's just by proximity.

Speaking of your patients, you and Baraka make sure everyone in the Colony has plenty of winter clothing and blankets. Luckily, unlike before, Empress Mileena can provide plenty of clothing and blankets to the Tarkatan Colony, thanks to donations from Outworld. Baraka was the one to supervise the fuel for the fires to keep a steady source of heat going longer than usual. You check up on everyone even more because, of how winter brings the high risk of an uprise of Tarkat.

Besides just surviving, you and Baraka go out of your way to make things lively when it's around winter festivals. Both of you had all the more reason to see that the Feast of Thanks was a success with many Tarkatans. Like before, you make sure to incorporate a mix of festivals from all those who live in the Colony from Shokan to Zatteran. While not as many Tarkatans were able to help with decorations, by the time all of you were finished, the air seemed a tad more jubilant than usual. You contributed to decoration by using your wings to reach high cliffs and places to hang up garlands and banners. You even used your hydromancy to painstakingly create a giant chunk of ice for Baraka to carve up into a beautiful work of art. You saw how Baraka's eyes were filled with a bittersweet nostalgia when the Tarkatan children started to play in the snow made from the shredded ice.

By some divine miracle, you could drag Baraka to Johnny Cage's Holiday party briefly. You went with a mask that left the upper half of your face covered, with festive colors painted on. Although you couldn't convince Baraka to dress up in any sort of festive garb or costume. You also told Baraka about how it is custom on Earthrealm to bring food to parties, so he went out of his way to bring in a fairly large beast from the Wastes. A beast that resembles a large Earthrealm koala bear with a large horn like a rhinoceros.

Johnny Cage's eyes widened in surprise when he saw you and Baraka enter his home with this beast strewn across Baraka's shoulders before the latter dropped it at his feet.

"Make sure to remove the head before grilling the meat. I recommend having your servants cook the meat to medium rare before seasoning it generously.”

”Mmmhhh very exotic. Really appreciate the roast, even if uncooked.”

Johnny mutters the last part under his breath. Yet, he trusts Baraka's cooking instructions because, surprisingly, the creature you brought in on Thanksgiving didn't taste half bad. You then reveal to Johnny that you brought a small cauldron of what's basically hot vanilla, a traditional winter drink from your canton.

"Why didn't you bring that at the last party?!"

Baraka spent most of Cage's party standing away from the general crowd, not wanting to risk infection. The former merchant was content to watch you chat with Syzoth and Ashrah, occasionally joining in the conversation. Such as when you and Syzoth expressed your mutual distaste for winter, or Ashrah's experiencing winter festivities for the first time. At one point when someone opened a window to let in some of the cool air, you and Syzoth immediately cling to Baraka and Ashrah, respectively.

"Oh wow, Baraka. You're surprisingly hot."

At one point during Johnny Cage's party, you spot a mistletoe hanging at a doorway. Without thinking, you drag Baraka under the plant, pulling out your little book of Earthrealm medicinal herbs.

"Baraka, look! Have you ever seen anything like this??? A Viscum album or a European Mistletoe! Did you know they're parasitic shrubs that grow on other specimens such as pine trees..."

Baraka couldn't fully follow what you were saying, but his soft expression and how the corners of his mouth twitched was more than telling how he was happy to listen. He was leaning against the threshold, arms crossed, as you animatedly told him about a myth about how it was used to poison a supposedly invincible god when Johnny Cage and Kung Lao passed by.

"I mean seriously, where do you fit all that food? ... Ooo look at you two lovebirds."

You stop in your ramble to tilt your head, with Baraka reflecting your confusion with a raised brow.

"We are not lovers, Cage."

"Surrrre you aren't"

Kung Lao responds with playful sarcasm, his dimples visible from his grin. Johnny was more than happy to explain.

"It's one of our realm's traditions that two people kiss when they're both under the mistletoe."

"Y-y-you have to be joking!"

You stutter out with your snakes starting to hiss in a frenzy. Baraka steps away from under the offending shrub while glaring at the Earthrealmers.

When Johnny Cage and Kung Lao insisted they weren't kidding, with Kenshi confirming that it is tradition, it left you and Baraka in a bit of a bind. Mostly as Baraka tried to insist he didn't want to risk giving you Tarkat, and he has no lips, Johnny and Kenshi are both quick to counter his arguments.

On the plus side, you felt as if you could pass out from how overheated your face felt. So to finally get the Earthrealmers off your back, you grabbed Baraka by the shoulders to make him crouch to your height, and use one of your snakes to give him a quick peck on the teeth.

You pulled your cloak's hood over your face, all your snakes curled up close to your head. A stunned Baraka slowly touches his teeth where you technically kissed him.

You more or less avoided Baraka for a while and stuck by the offered catering table to sip your worries away with the homemade drink you brought while idly chatting with Syzoth and Ashrah. However, you were starting to feel rather hot and bubbly on your fourth mug. That couldn't be right; the beverage you made didn't include any booze.

When you started to look over Cage's decorations that included Santa and Reindeer, you started to giggle seemingly out of nowhere much to Syzoth and Ashrah's confusion.

"What do you find so humourous, Y/N?"

"I jussst realized that thisss holiday celebrates an elderly intruder that steals your sweets."

You then burst out in laughter again. Syzoth is quickly able to put two and two together and concludes that you're drunk. The Zatteran is quick to snatch your mug from your hands when you go to take another sip from it. You pouted as your snakes hissed in their displeasure.

"Syzoth, you big bully!"

"Believe me, you had enough."

Syzoth asks Ashrah to watch you and ensure you're hydrated as he informs your host and Baraka about someone possibly spiking all the drinks. However, by the time Syzoth returns with the Tarkatan, you managed to drag Ashrah over to another part of Johnny's mansion to do karaoke on a whim. You sang Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas" in the Zatteran language. Your gaze locks on to Baraka as the song ends, refusing to break your line of sight.

"Oh, I just want you for my own. More than you could ever know. Make my wish come true...."

Not long after, Baraka escorted you back home to the Colony. He had no choice but to let you hold on to him for support since you almost fell down some frosted stairs heading out of Johnny's home. You were swaying on your feet while humming some Christmas songs you heard earlier before breaking the silence.

"I wish I could always be this close to you, Baraka."

"You know better than anyone; you can't risk too much close exposure."

You give him a frown as you wrap your arms around him and squeeze him hard.

"I don't give a damn! I rather risk my health just to hold you close to me, rather than continue to stare at you from afar for the rest of my life!"

"... Booze has clouded your judgment, Y/N. You already know why you can't get too close."

When you both returned to the Colony, neither of you really spoke to one another, but neither did you two physically separate for most of the night. However, it's not like you gave Baraka much choice, as you were determined to prove the former tribune wrong. Besides dressing into something more comfortable, you refused to detach yourself from Baraka as if you were glued on. Meanwhile, he tried to get you to rest off the booze and drink some water. The latter he was more successful with, but not the former. If he was being honest with himself, Baraka was almost tempted to immediately take up on your plead to sleep next to you, keyword, almost. However, you were just as, if not more, determined than Baraka and kept insisting. You only stopped when he offered a compromise of staying in the same room as you but not the same bedding. With that, you settled under your many blankets and quilts before you were out like a light.

The next day, you woke up with a painful hammering into your head and the low light searing your eyes, which forced you to use your second eyelids to look around. All too soon, memories of last night come crashing to the forefront of your mind, which causes you to bury your, suddenly hot-as-fire, face in your pillow.

'WHY DID I DO ANY OF THAT?!?'

After attempting to hide away in your pillows and blankets, you eventually emerge to find your flask, an ornate box with beautiful snake-like designs, some herbal painkillers, and some freshly cooked meat next to your sleeping area. A fond smile makes its way to your face.

After downing your meal and medicine, you open the ornate box, reasoning that it must be from Baraka. Inside the beautiful box is a single flower. A tropical flower that you thought was instinct. Which struck you as odd. Inside was a note in elegant and curvy writing that read

"To the most beautiful flower of them all."

It wasn't in Baraka's handwriting.

[lodelss]

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | January 2020 |  8 minutes (1,978 words)

“And when they bombed other people’s houses, we / protested / but not enough, we opposed them but not / enough …” On January 3rd, Ukrainian immigrant Ilya Kaminsky quote-tweeted his poem, “We Lived Happily During the War,” after it went viral the day Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was assassinated on the order of President Donald Trump. The poem appeared in his long-awaited 2019 poetry collection, Deaf Republic, about a town that responds to the killing of a deaf child by itself going deaf, a parable of the present-day United States, a country that responds to its own demise (and the rest of the world’s) by blocking its ears. His tweet went up in the midst of increasing tensions between the U.S. and Iran and ahead of the death of more than 50 people in a stampede during Suleimani’s funeral procession. It went up months into bushfires ravaging New South Wales that have destroyed millions of hectares and killed roughly half a billion animals. It went up in the wake of a slew of antisemitic attacks across the country. Last Sunday, while thousands in New York marched in solidarity with the Jewish community, the Hollywood awards season kicked off in Los Angeles with the Golden Globes, and the media started gleefully tweeting about couture as though the destruction of the world had politely paused for the occasion. The timing made me think of a friend who recently asked: What if all the people who went to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — tens of millions of Americans — protested instead?

“Now’s NOT the time to live happily,” read Kaminsky’s tweet after he extended his thanks for his poetry’s dissemination. He did not squander the moment the way so many of us often do, advising instead that we “write quality journalism & spicy op-eds & protest poems, get out in the street if you’re able. We won’t live happily during another war.”

But aren’t we already?

* * *

In April, when the Notre-Dame threatened to burn to the ground, a bunch of billionaires fell all over themselves pledging to restore the Gothic cathedral (which turned out to be a lot of bluster — the fundraising goal was largely met by small donations). The mega-rich have been comparatively quiet in response to Australia’s bushfires, which are exponentially more devastating, broadcasting their priorities all the louder. Columnist Louis Staples noted that billionaires tend to run businesses with the sorts of carbon footprints that fuel climate change, the clear cause of the conflagrations. “Also Notre Dame is a landmark in a world famous city,” he wrote, “whereas the Australian wildfires have mostly affected rural, sparsely populated areas.” This confers a kind of poetry on their predilection. Notre-Dame is not only one of France’s most powerful religious and cultural symbols, it was also looted during the French Revolution because it was emblematic of the country’s — and the church’s and the monarchy’s — plutocracy. Marie Antoinette lost her head, but so too did Notre-Dame’s statues. That billionaires pledged to rebuild this historic monument to inequity amidst worldwide uprisings against oppression and large-scale environmental destruction speaks to where their allegiances continue to lie.

More than morals, more than guilt, the number one concern of the ultra-rich appears to be rebellion — the threat of those with less coming for those with more. In the New Yorker this month, a profile of the Patriotic Millionaires, “a couple hundred” rich Americans (at least $1 million in income; more than $5 million in assets) who push for policies to address income inequality, had them voicing this fear repeatedly. Tech exec William Battle, who was raised Republican but veered left after Trump’s election, somewhat comically told the magazine (in a whisper, I have to imagine), “We could have — I don’t want to say it, but, riots.” It tickles me to think of a bunch of exceedingly rich idiots walking around with their knickers in a twist of terror over an imaginary enemy, while in reality the horrors of the world largely originate with them. Paraphrasing Walter Scheidel, author of The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-first Century, the New Yorker’s Sheelah Kolkhatar explained, “levelling happens much more often because of the collapse of a state, such as the fall of the Roman Empire; because of deadly pandemics, like the black death of the thirteen-hundreds, which killed so many people that there were labor shortages and workers’ wages went up; and because of mass-mobilization warfare, such as the two World Wars.” Sound familiar? States are too in control to bow to pitchforks; what they can’t control are natural (“natural”) disasters. Fire, flooding, starvation, disease. Which isn’t to say they aren’t trying.

“Disarm the lifeboats.” This is the title Jonathan M. Katz, who made his name reporting on the 2010 Haiti earthquake, chose for his latest The Long Version newsletter. It’s a reference to journalist Christian Parenti’s 2011 book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, which builds on a model of panic proposed by Lee Clarke and Caron Chess. These two academics claim that panic weakens social bonds, reducing the likelihood of crisis resolution, but that it is in fact rare in disaster situations. But people’s enduring belief in this myth — the truthy trope that the public panics in a crisis — ironically leads to actual “elite panic”: powerful people hoarding authority and resources and withholding information. And this panic is actually worse. “Because the positions they occupy command the power to move resources,” Clarke and Chess write, “elite panic is more consequential than public panic.” To get an idea of the sort of consequences they’re talking about, go to any newspaper. It will bear out Parenti’s prediction that elite panic results in what he calls “the politics of the armed lifeboats,” where “strong states with developed economies will succumb to a politics of xenophobia, racism, police repression, surveillance, and militarism and thus transform themselves into fortress societies while the rest of the world slips into collapse.” The failure to mitigate disaster — through cooperation and redistribution, through working together instead of apart — inevitably leads to the collapse of these lifeboats as well.

But in the meantime, as Kaminsky wrote, “I was / in my bed, around my bed America / was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.” Within the center of the country’s plush cocoon, far away from the laps of floods, or the waves of heat, or the growling hunger, or the roving pestilence, we are comfortable enough to be lulled into complacency. Sprawling homes constructed by capitalism have taught us to individualize and to consume, and so in the midst of a crisis, we respond by purchasing self-help, by buying into self-care, by looking after ourselves as a first port of call, as though anything else really comes second, as though after that massage we will actually extend a hand to anyone else. “I believe that each person has the opportunity to offer the gift of their own higher level of consciousness,” Oprah told The Today Show earlier this month. “You can only heal the world when you are healed yourself.” The feel-good cliché is hard to shake because it isn’t entirely wrong. You do have to be well before you can take care of others, right? Aren’t we always told during in-flight safety routines to put the mask on ourselves first? Except we never seem to get further than that. Those in distress, who feel less cocooned, always seem to be fighting alone. In a recent interview with The Guardian, DeRay McKesson discussed the burnout faced by people of color who have been part of Black Lives Matter protests while the larger population sat in bed and watched on TV. “We saw that people were going to say, ‘Oh, my God, people should be in the street,’ but would never join us,” he said. “We saw that people weren’t willing to risk much.” Outside the lifeboat, they got tired, and inside the lifeboat, the messiah — the one on Netflix, I mean — provided a higher calling.

* * *

“In the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) / lived happily during the war.” The last line of Kaminsky’s poem seemed to be host Ricky Gervais’s inspiration at the Golden Globes on Sunday. Before anyone could even take the stage, he castigated the ballroom full of famous faces for living happily, despite some of them — including Michelle Williams and Patricia Arquette — going on to address the war raging outside. “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech,” he warned. “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything.” And yet Gervais himself broke his own rule, pleading at the end of the show to “please donate to Australia.” I consider this about-face a positive sign, the synthetic lifeboat losing buoyancy despite itself. Gervais’s inability to follow his own dictate shows the weakness of the fortress the West tries so hard to enforce in the face of the current calamity; the invisible ruins have suddenly become visible, even when we are watching from our bedrooms. This is the sound of Australia denouncing its prime minister for refusing to acknowledge the climate change, the sound of Americans protesting their president for attacking Iran, it is even the sound of Anand Giridharadas’s viral tweet pointing out that 500 of the richest people in the world could save the planet, if only they would work together.

“Climate scientists have modeled out how global temperatures might shift in different geopolitical scenarios,” wrote environmental journalist Emily Atkin in her newsletter Heated last week. “And the scenario that always ends up with the planet in fiery climate chaos is the so-called ‘regional rivalry’ scenario — to put it simply, the one where everyone is fighting, borders are closed, and rich white-led countries like the U.S. are super racist toward less-wealthy countries filled with brown people.” Which means the opposite is also true, the planet survives in the global community scenario in which everyone is cooperating, borders are open, and all countries are equal. So here’s the choice: You can face guaranteed death in the comfort of solitude, the chaos outside muffled by Disney and Netflix, Justin Trudeau’s beard, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal defection, by any solipsistic interest, really, which does not involve engaging with the external world. Or you can face the cataclysm, you can bathe in discomfort and unrest, you can engage with it in your work and your life along with everyone else, and with them work toward survival. Refusing to rock the boat for fear of making anyone uncomfortable right now does not mean the boat is not still fated to sink in the end. If we keep continuing as we have, the Crisis of the Third Century, in which the Roman Empire almost folded due to combined political, social, and economic crises, could very well become the Crisis of the Twenty-First. In an interview with Chinese Poetry Quarterly in 2011, Kaminsky even compared present-day America to latter-day Rome. “The Roman Empire has produced many things that were valuable to modern civilization. But at what cost to other nations? This is the question anyone living in the U.S.A. today, particularly its authors, should be asking,” he said. “Anyone who reads and writes books should attempt to see with clarity the world they live in, pay taxes in, support by mere being there. Not everyone is guilty, Dostoevsky used to say, but everyone is responsible.”

By which he means: Rock the boat, especially if you’re in it, even if you don’t have a life jacket of your own.

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

[wishingfornever]

9/12/17 – No Contact:  Cheat Day?

I’m being bad.  I grabbed a popcorn ball.  Just one and I’ll be done with them.  They’re one of my favorite Halloween treats.  Halloween is my favorite holiday.  You know this.  I kind of missed it last year.  I was super disappointed. :/

There was something I wanted to talk about from yesterday but I can’t remember right now. So, instead, I’ll tell you about my… breakfast maybe?  Not that healthy.  A bunch of bellpeppers, tomato, and onions.  Cheese and ham too, so as I said… not that healthy.  Also, I added avocado.  I hate wasted food and avocado goes bad pretty fast.  So, I cut out the bad part and ate the rest.  I guess I’ll have another sandwich of the same style later on and also with a full avocado. I remember.  We through out that lemon meringue pie and the funnel cake.  My dad couldn’t finish it and I refused to touch it, so it was in the garbage.  Of which, I also through out the garbage cans. That means we’ll need to get new cans here.  Through out that tarp, through out everything.  Especially that lemon meringue pie and funnel cake. I hate wasted food.  I feel bad that I didn’t have any but I’d feel bad if I had even a slice.  I’m committing and I have to choose my guilt.  Right now, my guilt is ham and cheese with a side of popcorn ball.  :D Delicious, delicious guilt.

I’m feeling pretty awake so after I finish the popcorn ball I’ll get started on exercise.  Then maybe I’ll get back to my book.  I know you see what I post on Facebook.  I know you’ve seen my book cover. I hope you like it.  I like it but it feels sort of… unrelated. The other titles have actual historic stuff from the period on them. I’ll probably get sued for it too.  I think my favorite cover is Perdition.  It has the Osiria rose on it.

You know me, I’m a whore for that rose.  It’s my favorite.  I hope if I ever get super rich and you and I get a castle in Spain with a koi (sp?) fish pond that we could surround said koi fish pond with a bunch of Osiria rose bushes.  They’re so pretty…

Pretty hopeful, eh?  I MUST get a castle and you MUST be in it and there MUST be koi fish and there MUST be roses!  MUST MUST MUST!!!  That’d be ideal for me.  Not sure about you.  I mean, you’re the one who proposed the koi fish but I’m the one who imagines it surrounded by roses.  I need to look up how they survive the winter.

I also want to make a secret room.  You said you know how and I think it’d be super cool.  Maybe if I become an author and it makes us enough money to afford that little castle in Spain, we could have that secret bookshelf hold a lot of my books.  Then the one book I didn’t write will be the key to opening the door.  Might be a bit obvious, though.  That’s the problem with me.  I’d be too obvious for a secret.  Like, if I didn’t go with that idea I’d want to go with a pun or a witty response.  For example, it could be the book Common Sense that opens the door.

I think it’d have to be a boring book.  Or a book that’s not too obvious at least.  Like, it can’t be Twilight because if we’re entertaining a guest, they’d criticize us and grab it to further criticize us.  Then our sex dungeon would be revealed. What if we had three secret rooms?  One for you, one for me, and then one for the both of us? Like for you, you could have whatever you want.  For me, I’d probably have a bunch of airsoft guns or historic regalia (something nerdy like that).  Then the third could be the sex dungeon.  It’d be so cool to tell a friend before we go out, “It’s time to arm up...” and then open a hidden bookshelf to reveal an armory of toy guns. Yeah, I guess that’s why I’m not rich… because I’m not serious enough for my own good.  I look at making jokes, especially bad ones.

I have yet to eat this popcorn ball.  I’ve just been ranting about owning a fucking god damned castle this entire time.  Brb

I missed popcorn balls.  I hate how they’re only available during October.  Seasonal products piss me off, especially if they don’t HAVE to be seasonal.  I guess that’s one of the reasons I hate Christmas.  Then again, I never liked the Christmas songs… all that mirth.  Disgusting.  Thanksgiving I hated, too.  I hate all the holidays that are supposed to bring people together.  Holidays are just kind of a dumb tradition.

Despite this, I still wish people a merry Christmas.  I adhere to tradition because I’m dumb.

I really want a hidden door.  Doesn’t need a castle, just want that hidden door.  We could live in Nevada or someplace.  Somewhere with a house, obviously.  I just want that hidden door.  If you want to keep your door hidden from me, that’d be fine too.  And if we have children, we can hide all LEGITIMATE firearms (also known as real steel) in one of the hidden rooms.

One of my earliest memories.  I was a toddler.  I somehow found my dad’s revolver.  He left it there, in plane sight of a child.  Very dumb on his part and he admits it.  I was just a toddler so I was exploring and discovering everything.  I grabbed the revolver and held it in front of me and pulled the trigger.  It fired, the barrel came up and the front sight hit my forehead.  I started bleeding and I started crying.  It was a loud noise and my head hurt.  I don’t remember much beyond that.  There was a hole in the wall, though and I’m the reason. That’s something I don’t like about guns. They’re VERY not safe around children.  And I can guarantee that if my dad dies, I’m inheriting most of the guns.  Was supposed to be all, but whatever.  Doesn’t matter.  Thing with guns is that you need a place to put them.  Preferably unloaded.  Some pieces can stay out, like that flintlock rifle above the kitchen but for the most part, they shouldn’t be available for a quick grab. In the event of a home invasion, you can hide in one of the fake rooms and I’ll deal with it.  Most home invaders don’t have guns themselves, so I’d be alright.  I’m naturally bigger so any threat would be chased off.  Criminals aren’t brave and they don’t have to be.  They just want to grab what they can and get out.  They don’t want to hurt anyone but they will if they have to.  It’s desperation. Regardless, sometimes there might be a criminal who is bigger than me or has a chip on his shoulder or have a gun.  That’s why you’d hide in a secret room.  If we have kids, they’ll hide with you.  Thing is, I’d rather not expose them to the sex dungeon so early.  Call me old fashion, but let them discover that shit on the internet.

A secret door that leads to a panic room.  Maybe in that panic room, a bomb shelter.  That’d be super cool, no?  In the event of a nuclear holocaust, you might be fine.  Problem is you’d have to keep it stocked, so that’s pretty dumb.  :/

We could donate the canned food to charity before they expire.  Or we can try keeping dried food and water down there.  Idk, believe it or not I’m not really into the “prepper” thing.  Gas masks would be nice, too.  Problem is is that some gas mask filters use asbestos which is super unhealthy, especially old school Soviet gas masks which we may be getting.  Good news, though, they can work with modern gas masks too so it should be fine.  I don’t like the material some gas masks come in though.  Latex… yuck.  It feels uncomfortable around the face.  Makes you sweaty. And it could tear.  Not quality material.  We’d have to get gas masks that fit the face and I’d prefer if their material wasn’t shit. We’d see.  Probably super trivial but it’s nice to have in an emergency situation.  Or in case there is a super potent odor.  That’s something cool about gas masks; they kill odors so in case of bad smells, you can over come it with a gas mask. Hell, we should get one for doing kitty litter.  :D If you still do porn and we happen to get a house/castle/citadel/fortress that has a hidden sex dungeon, I imagine you’d set up a little studio in there.  Or if we have three hidden rooms you’d set up shop in your hidden room.  But if you make due with the sex dungeon being your cam room, then you’d have a hidden room all to yourself.  I wonder what you’d put in there. Especially if I’m not allowed in.  Probably would have your journals.  As you said, you never shown me the newest entries.  I doubt Haru.  Unless Fern the Husky just becomes too unbearable. That said, we’d probably spend nights down in the dungeon.  Especially if we have kids.  Children like to walk in on their parents having sex.  I never have, but I know others have.  Or we could… cough lock the door when we sleep.  That wouldn’t be so bad.  Except the little Stephen clone in my dreams would get SO excited and want to tell us something in the middle of the night and run in the middle of the night in pitch black hallways down to our room, try opening the door, and crash instead.  Then he’d cry. He would be our son… -,-

I feel so much better today than I did yesterday.  Most of this entry has been me fantasizing.  Only been an hour into the new day, too. I’m glad.  ^^

Maybe you’d have a closet in your hidden room. I think it’d be a super spiritual room that you’d sanction or whatever.  Buddhist writings on the wall, super zen and peaceful… I can see that being the thing.  And because it’s your peaceful energy room, I wouldn’t be allowed in it as to not corrupt your own energy that you’ve been manifesting or whatever. Yeah, I can see it. In my room it’d have airsoft guns, as I’ve said.  Probably real guns too.  I don’t want it to be an armory but that’s what it’s sounding like.  I also want to use it as a closet.  Not for normal clothes but for dumb little outfits like my hoplite panoply or a victorian era outfit and other things like that. It’d be where I geeked out.  Probably would have to be big because… most those things don’t stack very well.  I also don’t want to have too many airsoft guns.  Weird, right?  The thing is, some airsoft maps limit the FPS limit.  Some do 400 and others do 350.  350 tend to be close spaced maps in corridors and the like. Thus, I’d need a couple guns to replicate what I feel my playstyle would be and what the map would be like.  So, it’d depend. And even if I did fucking GORGE on all these airsoft guns, hopefully I’ll be able to afford it if I’m able to afford a house/castle/cathedral/pope hut with hidden rooms. Dreaming about a future I’ll probably never have is soothing.  Probably because you’re in it.  Or because I’m super materialistic despite being a communist.  ;) Alright, it’s time for me to start my sets.  I love you and I’ll message you when I’m done. <3

Just finished.  After my sets and when I started jogging, I was super tired.  Like exhausted, sweaty, out of breath, and my heart is pumping.  I started to jog and… well, I’m still sweaty and exhausted but I’ve gotten my second wind back.  I think I need to start jogging outside.  Except I can’t with my shoes right now. I’ll be going to Reno with my dad this friday and I’m supposed to get some shoes then.  That’d be nice.

I was thinking more about our secret rooms.  I was thinking if someone really wanted to get in, they’d throw all the books off the shelf until they found one that stuck and then pull that one to open the door.  Then I thought about putting a button where you push it and it unlocks and allows you to pull the book and open the door.  Problem with that, they’d just rip it off if they REALLY wanted to get in. So, what if the button were on the bookshelf itself?  Think about it.  If they couldn’t find a book that opened a bookshelf, then they’d conclude that maybe it’s a different bookshelf and move along.  Or if they knew it was that bookshelf, they’d have to rip the whole thing off.  And we wouldn’t have to worry about which book to use. :D That said, I think it’d be cool if the secret rooms connected and required both sides to be opened in order to be let in. That way, if you want to get to the sex dungeon from your sanctuary, I could let you in and we wouldn’t have to leave the basement. Thing is, we’d have to separate a basement. If we build a house from scratch, we’d have to invest in digging out the ground and just adding… so much.  It’d be super expensive.  :/ I also thought about having a gym in my armory.  Getting used to the idea that it’s basically an armory for toys and shit.  How nerdy is that, eh?  But if I had a gym in there, then I’d be a part of the armory too.  And because it’s just a room with historical crap and gym equipment, you can go in whenever you want too.  We could work out together.  You can spot me while sitting on my lap.  I’d get so buff so quickly. That said, after I get rid of this fucking skin condition, I want to get a tattoo on my upper back.  “This Machine Kills Fascists” except in Spanish.  Unfortunately, in order to be awesome and bad ass, I need to get somewhat buff at least.  And… also skin condition.  I know you still want to get a tattoo.  Don’t know what you want to get. Maybe my name. Kidding, I know you’d never get a name tattoo.  I remember you saying that.

So, I found a set of shorts that belongs to you.  I’m going to leave you a message that the next time I see Daniel, I’ll hand it to him and give it to you.  Might not have to message you.  Will probably wait until Friday to tell you or something.  Idk, I’ll think about it.  But it’s your shorts and you’d probably want them back.

Of which, I need a list of things you forgot at Adela’s.

Oh, it’s raining.  Maybe that’s why I’m feeling better.  Huh.  That explains a lot.

Current time, 8am.  It’s a sunny day.  Bit of smoke, but that’s alright. Got this wasp thing fucking with me.  Should really crush it.  I don’t like hurting animals and insects are animals.  Was hoping it’d fuck off.  I haven’t begun edits yet today.  Postponed some. ><

I’m going to get to it.  Soon, at least.

[lodelss]

Happily Never After

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | January 2020 |  8 minutes (1,978 words)

“And when they bombed other people’s houses, we / protested / but not enough, we opposed them but not / enough …” On January 3rd, Ukrainian immigrant Ilya Kaminsky quote-tweeted his poem, “We Lived Happily During the War,” after it went viral the day Iranian general Qassem Suleimani was assassinated on the order of President Donald Trump. The poem appeared in his long-awaited 2019 poetry collection, Deaf Republic, about a town that responds to the killing of a deaf child by itself going deaf, a parable of the present-day United States, a country that responds to its own demise (and the rest of the world’s) by blocking its ears. His tweet went up in the midst of increasing tensions between the U.S. and Iran and ahead of the death of more than 50 people in a stampede during Suleimani’s funeral procession. It went up months into bushfires ravaging New South Wales that have destroyed millions of hectares and killed roughly half a billion animals. It went up in the wake of a slew of antisemitic attacks across the country. Last Sunday, while thousands in New York marched in solidarity with the Jewish community, the Hollywood awards season kicked off in Los Angeles with the Golden Globes, and the media started gleefully tweeting about couture as though the destruction of the world had politely paused for the occasion. The timing made me think of a friend who recently asked: What if all the people who went to see Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker — tens of millions of Americans — protested instead?

“Now’s NOT the time to live happily,” read Kaminsky’s tweet after he extended his thanks for his poetry’s dissemination. He did not squander the moment the way so many of us often do, advising instead that we “write quality journalism & spicy op-eds & protest poems, get out in the street if you’re able. We won’t live happily during another war.”

But aren’t we already?

* * *

In April, when the Notre-Dame threatened to burn to the ground, a bunch of billionaires fell all over themselves pledging to restore the Gothic cathedral (which turned out to be a lot of bluster — the fundraising goal was largely met by small donations). The mega-rich have been comparatively quiet in response to Australia’s bushfires, which are exponentially more devastating, broadcasting their priorities all the louder. Columnist Louis Staples noted that billionaires tend to run businesses with the sorts of carbon footprints that fuel climate change, the clear cause of the conflagrations. “Also Notre Dame is a landmark in a world famous city,” he wrote, “whereas the Australian wildfires have mostly affected rural, sparsely populated areas.” This confers a kind of poetry on their predilection. Notre-Dame is not only one of France’s most powerful religious and cultural symbols, it was also looted during the French Revolution because it was emblematic of the country’s — and the church’s and the monarchy’s — plutocracy. Marie Antoinette lost her head, but so too did Notre-Dame’s statues. That billionaires pledged to rebuild this historic monument to inequity amidst worldwide uprisings against oppression and large-scale environmental destruction speaks to where their allegiances continue to lie.

More than morals, more than guilt, the number one concern of the ultra-rich appears to be rebellion — the threat of those with less coming for those with more. In the New Yorker this month, a profile of the Patriotic Millionaires, “a couple hundred” rich Americans (at least $1 million in income; more than $5 million in assets) who push for policies to address income inequality, had them voicing this fear repeatedly. Tech exec William Battle, who was raised Republican but veered left after Trump’s election, somewhat comically told the magazine (in a whisper, I have to imagine), “We could have — I don’t want to say it, but, riots.” It tickles me to think of a bunch of exceedingly rich idiots walking around with their knickers in a twist of terror over an imaginary enemy, while in reality the horrors of the world largely originate with them. Paraphrasing Walter Scheidel, author of The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-first Century, the New Yorker’s Sheelah Kolkhatar explained, “levelling happens much more often because of the collapse of a state, such as the fall of the Roman Empire; because of deadly pandemics, like the black death of the thirteen-hundreds, which killed so many people that there were labor shortages and workers’ wages went up; and because of mass-mobilization warfare, such as the two World Wars.” Sound familiar? States are too in control to bow to pitchforks; what they can’t control are natural (“natural”) disasters. Fire, flooding, starvation, disease. Which isn’t to say they aren’t trying.

“Disarm the lifeboats.” This is the title Jonathan M. Katz, who made his name reporting on the 2010 Haiti earthquake, chose for his latest The Long Version newsletter. It’s a reference to journalist Christian Parenti’s 2011 book Tropic of Chaos: Climate Change and the New Geography of Violence, which builds on a model of panic proposed by Lee Clarke and Caron Chess. These two academics claim that panic weakens social bonds, reducing the likelihood of crisis resolution, but that it is in fact rare in disaster situations. But people’s enduring belief in this myth — the truthy trope that the public panics in a crisis — ironically leads to actual “elite panic”: powerful people hoarding authority and resources and withholding information. And this panic is actually worse. “Because the positions they occupy command the power to move resources,” Clarke and Chess write, “elite panic is more consequential than public panic.” To get an idea of the sort of consequences they’re talking about, go to any newspaper. It will bear out Parenti’s prediction that elite panic results in what he calls “the politics of the armed lifeboats,” where “strong states with developed economies will succumb to a politics of xenophobia, racism, police repression, surveillance, and militarism and thus transform themselves into fortress societies while the rest of the world slips into collapse.” The failure to mitigate disaster — through cooperation and redistribution, through working together instead of apart — inevitably leads to the collapse of these lifeboats as well.

But in the meantime, as Kaminsky wrote, “I was / in my bed, around my bed America / was falling: invisible house by invisible house by invisible house.” Within the center of the country’s plush cocoon, far away from the laps of floods, or the waves of heat, or the growling hunger, or the roving pestilence, we are comfortable enough to be lulled into complacency. Sprawling homes constructed by capitalism have taught us to individualize and to consume, and so in the midst of a crisis, we respond by purchasing self-help, by buying into self-care, by looking after ourselves as a first port of call, as though anything else really comes second, as though after that massage we will actually extend a hand to anyone else. “I believe that each person has the opportunity to offer the gift of their own higher level of consciousness,” Oprah told The Today Show earlier this month. “You can only heal the world when you are healed yourself.” The feel-good cliché is hard to shake because it isn’t entirely wrong. You do have to be well before you can take care of others, right? Aren’t we always told during in-flight safety routines to put the mask on ourselves first? Except we never seem to get further than that. Those in distress, who feel less cocooned, always seem to be fighting alone. In a recent interview with The Guardian, DeRay McKesson discussed the burnout faced by people of color who have been part of Black Lives Matter protests while the larger population sat in bed and watched on TV. “We saw that people were going to say, ‘Oh, my God, people should be in the street,’ but would never join us,” he said. “We saw that people weren’t willing to risk much.” Outside the lifeboat, they got tired, and inside the lifeboat, the messiah — the one on Netflix, I mean — provided a higher calling.

* * *

“In the street of money in the city of money in the country of money, our great country of money, we (forgive us) / lived happily during the war.” The last line of Kaminsky’s poem seemed to be host Ricky Gervais’s inspiration at the Golden Globes on Sunday. Before anyone could even take the stage, he castigated the ballroom full of famous faces for living happily, despite some of them — including Michelle Williams and Patricia Arquette — going on to address the war raging outside. “If you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech,” he warned. “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything.” And yet Gervais himself broke his own rule, pleading at the end of the show to “please donate to Australia.” I consider this about-face a positive sign, the synthetic lifeboat losing buoyancy despite itself. Gervais’s inability to follow his own dictate shows the weakness of the fortress the West tries so hard to enforce in the face of the current calamity; the invisible ruins have suddenly become visible, even when we are watching from our bedrooms. This is the sound of Australia denouncing its prime minister for refusing to acknowledge the climate change, the sound of Americans protesting their president for attacking Iran, it is even the sound of Anand Giridharadas’s viral tweet pointing out that 500 of the richest people in the world could save the planet, if only they would work together.

“Climate scientists have modeled out how global temperatures might shift in different geopolitical scenarios,” wrote environmental journalist Emily Atkin in her newsletter Heated last week. “And the scenario that always ends up with the planet in fiery climate chaos is the so-called ‘regional rivalry’ scenario — to put it simply, the one where everyone is fighting, borders are closed, and rich white-led countries like the U.S. are super racist toward less-wealthy countries filled with brown people.” Which means the opposite is also true, the planet survives in the global community scenario in which everyone is cooperating, borders are open, and all countries are equal. So here’s the choice: You can face guaranteed death in the comfort of solitude, the chaos outside muffled by Disney and Netflix, Justin Trudeau’s beard, and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal defection, by any solipsistic interest, really, which does not involve engaging with the external world. Or you can face the cataclysm, you can bathe in discomfort and unrest, you can engage with it in your work and your life along with everyone else, and with them work toward survival. Refusing to rock the boat for fear of making anyone uncomfortable right now does not mean the boat is not still fated to sink in the end. If we keep continuing as we have, the Crisis of the Third Century, in which the Roman Empire almost folded due to combined political, social, and economic crises, could very well become the Crisis of the Twenty-First. In an interview with Chinese Poetry Quarterly in 2011, Kaminsky even compared present-day America to latter-day Rome. “The Roman Empire has produced many things that were valuable to modern civilization. But at what cost to other nations? This is the question anyone living in the U.S.A. today, particularly its authors, should be asking,” he said. “Anyone who reads and writes books should attempt to see with clarity the world they live in, pay taxes in, support by mere being there. Not everyone is guilty, Dostoevsky used to say, but everyone is responsible.”

By which he means: Rock the boat, especially if you’re in it, even if you don’t have a life jacket of your own.

* * *

Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

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