#give me back my girlhood it was mine first has so much meaning

[famdomohana]

Taylor Swift Midnights on Repeat

The feeling when you make your mom into a Swiftie cause you have been listening to Midnights so much that she starts liking all the songs also.

Specifically Anti-Hero cause you sing and dance to it every day.

[wavesoutbeingtossed]

The thing about her musings on her youth in this album is not just about the spending her “prime” years with someone who ultimately couldn’t give her what she thought they both wanted (family, but also in general sense the happiness you get when you’re young and your whole lives are ahead of you).

There’s SO much about her youth in general here, and how the demons of the past have raised and broken her. How each of these experiences have chipped away at her youth. This whole album is give me back my girlhood, it was mine first.

It’s all the things she’s talking about had are part of the same big trauma of the loss of that youth and innocence. It’s snakegate and how Kim K and her lackeys deliberately set out to destroy Taylor’s reputation for sport, which ripped out Taylor’s last few grasps of that young adulthood freedom without her consent. It’s mulling the price she’s paid for spending her entire youth in the spotlight and becoming a commodity instead of a person. It’s looking at a friend’s child and wishing she could protect them from the world the way she wishes she could have been had she known. It’s putting your trust in your first love who ripped the rug out from under you and your faith along with it. It’s spending your time pining for your younger days in the haze of unspeakable loss. It’s carving off parts of yourself as you grow up to make yourself palatable to your peers and your partners and as a result not knowing what parts of you are left. It’s revisiting a love from your past when you still had it all, and after the initial frenzy realizing its hollow. And yes, it’s pouring your heart and soul into a relationship you think is forever and with each passing year the light in the window flickering dimmer and dimmer, only to realize the light wasn’t coming from your home after all, and you may lose your chance to find it again before it’s too late and the dreams you so desperately cling to vanish for good.

And that’s what the end message I think ends up being in So High School: she’s reclaiming the land as it were. All these things that were taken from her and that she gave up are up for a redo. And it’s not rewriting the past, it’s coming to the realization that all those parts are still within her but so is the good. That the freedom she gave up when she released her first album is still found in the backseat of a boy’s car all these years later. That she’s older and wiser and battleworn but that doesn’t mean she can’t find that joy and lightness. “I feel so high school when I look at you” is kind of a loaded statement from someone who didn’t really get to go to high school (both actually and metaphorically). “Bittersweet sixteen suddenly” (love that wordplay btw) because again— she’s been through so much that the feelings of new love that make her giddy like a girl are tinged because she’s been here before and also never been here before because she was never that kid.

(There’s also a whole tangent there comparing Miss Americana and the Heartbreak Prince to So High School and how fraught the first is vs the lightness of this one.)

That’s why this isn’t just a breakup album. It’s why she dredges up 2016 and Jake and Aaron’s son and childhood and high school and any other number of things. Because she has spent her entire youth and adulthood grappling with the issues that came to roost in TTPD, and while this whole experience underscores that you can never know what’s going on with someone (least of all Taylor, a stranger to us all), I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that she has stressed how much healthier and whole she is now. That is why this whole album is a bloodletting, but it’s not just about a broken relationship. It’s about a whole belief system that has stolen girlhood from her and she’s determined to piece back together in the aftermath of the autopsy.

[areebianights]

To my mother, whose name means "Wild Rose"

I'm sorry, mother.

Whenever I hear the songs of a wedding ritual, I hear the cries of your dying girlhood. Whenever I see your old pictures, I trace your cheeks, eyebrows, and your smile with my trembling finger because you don't look like that anymore. I'm sorry, mother, that your rosy cheeks are dull now, that your eyebrows have faded, that your smile has lost its charm. Whenever I see a baby being born, I cry once again like I did when you birthed me because you lost your inner girl while birthing this one. I'm sorry that you lost that happy, playful, wild, free girl for this selfish, lifeless one. I'm sorry that I could never give you happiness like your inner girl did.

I'm sorry that I never realized the sacrifices a woman makes until I myself stepped into that experience. I'm sorry for all the anger you've ever suppressed, all the anger that's coming out as pain in your joints. I wish you'd have released all that anger on me instead; I wish I had bruises from you hitting me instead of the rheumatoid you've got. I'm sorry that the world hasn't been kind, but I'm even more disconcerted that you never realized how kind you've been; how much you were giving, losing, and bearing.

Mother, I know you never realized that when a girl is born, she's born with a negative score in character. That her every sacrifice, every act of virtue, every kindness has to fill up all the numbers to zero first. That she has to prove herself to be human. I'm sorry that when a man makes a compromise or a sacrifice, it's seen as a plus point, and yours is just another act because it's something you are "supposed" to do. Mother, I'm sorry for all the sacrifices that were never witnessed because they were thought of as a natural trait.

I'm sorry for all the times you got up when you couldn't because the "home" could not function without you. I'm sorry that you worked for this home to become a home for us all while it was never truly a home to you. I'm sorry that the only home a woman has is the freedom of her childhood (if she had one) and that it's the only place she wants to go back to, it's the only place where she was taken care of, rather than being the caregiver.

Mother, I'm sorry that this world is cruel, just like a woman's hormones. I'm sorry that our own body is hard on us, and that the world doesn't make it any easier. I'm sorry that you had a body that needed care and a heart that only wanted to give it. I think that we all learn to give others things that we ourselves need most. It's called love language. I wonder how much care a woman must really need, to give so much of it to everyone else.

Mother, I'm sorry you don't have time to talk about your childhood. I'm sorry that you couldn't even find it in mine because I'm not the jolly girl that you were. I'm sorry that you lost touch with your closest friends, that you barely get time for yourself, I'm sorry that all of your time is somebody else's.

I'm sorry, mother, for always running away. I'm sorry that when I came into the world you became a "mother" not only in word but in practice, and that I was a daughter only in word. I'm sorry, mother, for always running away, like the stream which appears white because I thought that's the way a woman remains "white" too, i.e., free, unbothered, and peaceful. I'm sorry that I ran away while you stayed patiently and the world painted you with all the darkness it had. I'm sorry that you didn't remain white. But mother, I promise you, that I'll always carry the whiteness you gave birth to me with. The purity, the freedom, the peace. I'll not let them take that from me.

Mother, I'm sorry that on Mother's Day, only an apology felt worth giving because everything else felt too worthless, too small, too insignificant compared to everything that you've done, everything you've suffered. These three words of apology too feel insignificant compared to the number of words you've swallowed.

-Areeba

[sungbeam]

moots as taylor swift eras??

hopping on this rn omg o7 sorry if any of u aren't into tswift and won't understand any references TT skfbeknf

i also only did a few mutuals just cuz the eras are a little specific and i matched them especially to the albums as well

bro i,,, all these are so special and personal to me skfnkdnfk i could literally do an entire essay abt every song on every album i—

@justalildumpling — midnights; at first, i was thinking a cocktail of reputation and lover, but midnights as an album already feels like that. it's the mix of party girl and soulmate, for me. the one where u want to be strong for the people around u and the people looking at u, but at the end of the night, u just want to run to someplace warm and safe and /home/. it's the sweet nothings and the "give me back my girlhood, it was mine first."

@winterchimez — speak now; i think it's the dress on the cover of the album that's doing it for me to be so honest 🤧 it's the romantic clichés from speak now and enchanted and mine, to the bitter heartbreak of dear john and castles crumbling. this album is so classically romantic, and so very ally.

@ethereal-engene — fearless; a timeless classic!! i think besides the taylor swift album, this is the most,,, country? of all the eras skfnkend don't come for me LMAO but ash is so iconic and fearless (wink wonk) like i know things might seem scary, but she has always seemed to me full of heart and youthful energy to take things on.

@mosviqu — reputation; i feel like this might be an interesting choice considering ,, idt bar's music taste aligns w reputation? but i think the messages that comes from this album and the era fit moreso. reputation is so full of strength and fire, but if you don't look close enough, you'll miss all of the hurt and the maturity and the growth. i think bar described me as emotionally complex once, but i also think so abt her as well, in the best way possible.

@zzoguri — evermore; evermore is so subtly heartbreaking and it was taylor's second quarantine album? don't come for me skfnsknf but it really felt like one of the eras where taylor let her imagination run free and she truly proved how brilliant of a storyteller she is. and i felt that really matched moni bc they too are an incredible storyteller, a master wordsmith, a wielder of heart-wrenching emotions.

@hqrana — 1989; i've had this album on LOOP lately and it makes me feel so emotional and yet powerful all at once? 1989 is so full of hope and resilience, and we know just how much this one means to taylor, and noa feels like the perfect representation of it :')) i feel like she's always going thru some shit (women in stem things 💔) but there's always a sort of optimism to our interactions which i appreciate

[sircarebearalot]

pretty lines i compiled (from my own work) for a friend and decided i might as well post here

As embarrassment made room for indignation, when Marco looked at him again, it was with a scorching fire that burned hotter, much more destructive than anything Tom could ever hope to muster.

- laugh at the pain (it'll hurt the same) -- Star Vs The Forces Of Evil

And I know I'm chaining you to the ground

But you being gone is the loneliest sound

- Ducky, I'm so Lucky! -- Odd Girl Out

Her head is bent and her soft hair is falling around her face. Evie has the physical urge to tuck it back and tilt Mal's chin up. Make Mal want her again. It was a terrible possessive thing that was created on the Isle as a means to survive. Choose to love one thing, one person, and never let it go. Your only guilty pleasure, your chosen strand of Good.

- and nothing can stay the same (it's growing pains) --- Descendants

Minthe hated Hades.

She hated the way he would watch her shower, eyes burning with an intensity that made her claustrophobic. She hated the way he sometimes wouldn't even be looking at her body, he was just looking through her. She hated how pathetic and ugly that made her feel, so much that she would give him a 'come hither' look, only feeling relief when he starts to strip.

- give me back my girlhood (it was mine first) --- Lore Olympus

They never protect the face,' she had said, easily separating him from her, classifying him as the rest. As the weak. He remembered when she would take note of others, setting them both apart loyally.

-- in a league of her own -- Carmen Sandiego

The party was several steps removed, loud and dazzling but also so far away. It was not tempting when the alternative was a rendezvous with Carmen

-- set every part aflame/this is not a game --- Carmen Sandiego

Then Julia begins to cry (and Carmen has never seen her cry before. Her eyes and nose are an angry red, and her face is contorted. Carmen loves her and she made her cry. Julia covers her face and breathes harshly. She doesn't look like a woman who was just proposed to. She looks like she had been slapped across the face.) Julia says, "We can't do this. You know we can't. Think about it ."

--- now i've read all the books besides your bed --- Carmen Sandiego

The words fall out like he has been sick for weeks, and it's only now that he can expel all the toxins in his body. He remembers when he was younger and would get sick a bit more often, how Mama would give him water and encourage him as he emptied himself into a toilet, assuring him that the toxins and germs would leave his body this way. This was before they got their gifts before Julieta could heal, and before Bruno became stigmatized.

--- i need to go (i don't know why) --- Encanto

She knew she was also beautiful and talented, just in a different way. (Jade was a roaring inferno, pretty like hellfire was pretty. Art incarnate. Tori was far off sunset, picturesque and easy to appreciate.)

--- unthought, unsaid, a fire burning red --- Victorious

And Beck just grinned up at him softly, soft like his hair was soft, and his voice when he spoke to André in a low tone. Soft in a way that made you ache and no more. He was a vision with the lights playing across him, all handsome face and soft-to-the-touch hair.

-- want you all to myself --- Victorious

It almost felt like peeling off a bandaid, as if the gravity between them had made itself tangible and possible through skin.

-- imagine being loved by me -- harry potter

It was crushing the way freeing things were crushing. The squeezing your hands out of cuffs, the soaring through cold water, taking a crown off your head. Killing your tyrannical father

-- Let's Not Fight Fate This Time --- DC Super Hero Girls (2019)

All at once, the conquest seemed all the more dangerous. Much more at risk but also — he never wanted it more. Is this how pirates go mad and senile? Overwhelmed and consumed by all this want? Constantly reaching for what is so close and so obviously there for the taking but still so incredibly far.

That makes more sense.

People judge them too harshly. They don’t understand what it’s like to be consumed.

-- you can't live a lie (after you've tasted the truth)--- DC Super Hero Girls (2019)

She's beautiful, Agatha said, but it sounded nearly like an insult.

-- Trapped In A Bottle -- The School for Good And Evil

That's why Alberto got his own category.

With a billion little subcategories and post-its, and side notes because- like the sky- Alberto Scorfano is limitless and infinite. From his eyes to his habits to his preferences to his fears to his passions to his talents to his hair to his attitude to his smile he is something that Luca has studied and admired to an almost painful extent.

-- All The Stars We Steal From The Nigh Sky (will never be enough)

Right ," and there's definitely an odd note in Tamaki's voice then.

Kyoya can imagine why. He knows why. It's odd for them to speak as strangers, bound by laws of civility and utterly unfamiliar. Everything they knew about each other was assumed or heard, and nothing was told or shared.

--blessed by the mystery of love -- Ouran High School Host Club

If Tamaki had entertained jealousy, it was always under a rose-tinted light. Jealousy was abstract to him in the way that poverty was. He understood that, fundamentally, it was not a good thing, but he also knew there was beauty in the moment that stemmed from it, and that’s what he liked to focus on.

--- put a little love on me--- Ouran High School Host Club

[josmoodboard]

🌙✨ my favorite lyrics from midnights ✨🌙

❝ All they keep asking me is if I'm gonna be your bride. The only kinda girl they see is a one-night or a wife. ❞ — Lavender Haze.

❝ The lips I used to call home. ❞ — Maroon.

❝ I have this thing where I get older, but just never wiser. ❞ — Anti-Hero.

❝ I should not be left to my own devices. They come with prices and vices, I end up in crisis (Tale as old as time). ❞ — Anti-Hero.

❝ I wake up screaming from dreaming one day I'll watch as you're leaving and life will lose all its meaning for the last time. ❞ — Anti-Hero.

❝ You wanting me tonight, feels impossible, but it's comin' down, no sound, it's all around, like snow on the beach. ❞ — Snow on the Beach.

❝ I gave my blood, sweat, and tears for this. I hosted parties and starved my body, like I'd be saved by a perfect kiss. ❞ — You're on your own, kid.

❝ Everything you lose is a step you take. ❞ — You're on your own, kid.

❝ You're on your own, kid. Yeah, you can face this You're on your own, kid. You always have been. ❞ — You're on your own, kid.

❝ He was sunshine. I was midnight rain. ❞ — Midnight Rain.

❝ I don't remember who I was before you painted all my nights a color I have searched for since. ❞ — Question...?

❝ Draw the cat eye sharp enough to kill a man. ❞ — Vigilante Shit.

❝ I don't dress for women. I don't dress for men. Lately I've been dressing for revenge. ❞ — Vigilante Shit.

❝ Putting someone first only works when you're in their top five. ❞ — Bejeweled.

❝ Don't put me in the basement when I want the penthouse of your heart. ❞ — Bejeweled.

❝ You would break your back to make me break a smile. ❞ — Labyrinth.

❝ You know how much I hate that everybody just expects me to bounce back just like that. ❞ — Labyrinth.

❝ Karma's a relaxing thought. Aren't you envious that for you it's not? ❞ — Karma.

❝ Ask me what I learned from all those years. Ask me what I earned from all those tears. Ask me why so many fade but I'm still here ❞ — Karma.

❝ To you I can admit that I'm just too soft for all of it ❞ — Sweet Nothing.

❝ You see all the wisest women had to do it this way 'cause we were born to be the pawn in every lover's game. ❞ — Mastermind

❝ No one wanted to play with me as a little kid so I've been scheming like a criminal ever since to make them love me and make it seem effortless. ❞ — Mastermind

❝ So I told you none of it was accidental and the first night that you saw me, nothing was gonna stop me. I laid the groundwork and then saw a wide smirk on your face, you knew the entire time. You knew that I'm a mastermind. ❞ — Mastermind

❝ My hand was the one you reached for all throughout the Great War ❞ — The Great War.

❝ And maybe it's the past that's talking screaming from the crypt telling me to punish you for things you never did. ❞ — The Great War.

❝ Did some force take you because I didn't pray? Every single thing to come has turned into ashes. ❞ — Bigger Than The Whole Sky.

❝ Romance is not dead if you keep it just yours. ❞ — Paris

❝ I want to brainwash you into loving me forever. ❞ — Paris

❝ You know there's many different ways that you can kill the one you love. The slowest way is never loving them enough. ❞ — High Infidelity

❝ I think there's been a glitch. Five seconds later I'm fastening myself to you with a stitch. ❞ — Glitch

❝ And if I was a child, did it matter if you got to wash your hands? ❞ — Would've, Could've, Should've.

❝ And now that I'm grown, I'm scared of ghosts. Memories feel like weapons and now that I know, I wish you'd left me wondering ❞ — Would've, Could've, Should've.

❝ I miss who I used to be. The tomb won't close. ❞ — Would've, Could've, Should've.

❝ I can't let this go. I fight with you in my sleep. The wound won't close. ❞ — Would've, Could've, Should've.

❝ Give me back my girlhood, it was mine first. ❞ — Would've, Could've, Should've.

❝ Burn all the files, desert all your past lives and if you don't recognize yourself that means you did it right. ❞ — Dear Reader.

❝ Never take advice from someone who's falling apart. ❞ — Dear Reader.

❝ Dear reader, bend when you can, snap when you have to. Dear reader, you don't have to answer just 'cause they asked you. ❞ — Dear Reader.

❝ You should find another guiding light, but I shine so bright. ❞ — Dear Reader.

[theicarusconstellation]

assigning a marauders character to every taylor swift album, song from the album, and lyric from the song

debut, picture to burn, “there's no time for tears/i’m just sitting here planning my revenge/there's nothing stopping me/from going out with all of your best friends”—marlene

fearless tv, the other side of the door, “all I need is on the other side of the door/with your face and the beautiful eyes/and the conversation with the little white lies/and the faded picture of a beautiful night/you carried me from your car up the stairs/and I broke down crying, was she worth this mess?/after everything and that little black dress/after everything I must confess, I need you”—pandora

speak now, speak now (song), “horrified looks from everyone in the room/but i’m only looking at you/…so don't say yes, run away now/i'll meet you when you're out of the church at the back door/don't wait, or say a single vow/you need to hear me out/and they said, "speak now"—james

red tv, all too well 10 min. version, “and maybe we got lost in translation/maybe i asked for too much/but maybe this thing was a masterpiece 'til you tore it all up/running scared, i was there/i remember it all too well/and you call me up again just to break me like a promise/so casually cruel in the name of being honest/i’m a crumpled up piece of paper lying here/‘cause i remember it all, all, all/too well”—lily

1989, new romantics, “‘cause baby, i could build a castle/out of all the bricks they threw at me/and every day is like a battle/but every night with us is like a dream/baby, we're the new romantics/come on, come along with me/heartbreak is the national anthem/we sing it proudly”–mary

reputation, so it goes…, “and all the pieces fall/right into place/getting caught up in a moment/lipstick on your face/so it goes/i'm yours to keep/and i’m yours to lose/you know i’m not a bad girl/but i do bad things with you”—barty

lover, lover (song), “ladies and gentlemen, will you please stand?/with every guitar string scar on my hand/i take this magnetic force of a man to be my lover/my heart's been borrowed and yours has been blue/all's well that ends well to end up with you/swear to be overdramatic and true to my lover”—sirius

folklore, seven, “and i've been meaning to tell you/i think your house is haunted/your dad is always mad and that must be why/and i think you should come live with/me and we can be pirates/then you won't have to cry/or hide in the closet/and just like a folk song/our love will be passed on”—remus

evermore, no body, no crime, “they think she did it but they just can't prove it/she thinks i did it but she just can't prove it/no, no body, no crime/i wasn't letting up until the day he/no, no body, no crime/i wasn't letting up until the day he/no, no body, no crime/i wasn't letting up until the day he died”—peter

midnights, would’ve, could’ve, should’ve, “god rest my soul, i miss who i used to be/the tomb won't close, stained glass windows in my mind/i regret you all the time/i can't let this go, i fight with you in my sleep/the wound won't close, i keep on waiting for a sign/i regret you all the time/if clarity's in death, then why won't this die?/years of tearing down our banners, you and i/living for the thrill of hitting you where it hurts/give me back my girlhood, it was mine first”—regulus <3

[zealouscanonindeer]

12. Hell Hath no fury

Series Masterlist

Emily Cartwright:

"You're a beautiful woman, Mrs Baker," the words oozed out of Timothy Fairfax's mouth, perverted into something grotesque in my ears, "You look so… pristine. Untouched. Virginal."

Virginal? What did he mean?

"It's no business of yours, Fairfax," I growled in the sort of tone that generally made even the dimmest of my would-be suitors pause. However, Fairfax was lost in his own musings.

"You remind me so much of Cordelia when we were first wed, just over eighteen years ago."

He glanced vaguely at Alexander as though regarding a nearby stranger who has just passed gas.

"Ever since then, I've been trying to find that purity again, like a man who sees the first snowfall of his life and then despairs to see it churned up and dirtied underfoot."

He suddenly focused on me again, a frightening spark of madness in his eye.

"A woman touched is a woman spoiled. Alexander knows that – so he tries to spoil as many women as he can before I can find them."

The spark had become a hungry flame, and I backed away from him, even as he advanced on me like a predatory cat.

"Clarissa," he purred as if he had any right to such familiarity, and then forced his mouth onto mine, as he pinned me to the wall.

My emotions fled. Fear, despair, revulsion, all gone, along with, for the moment, conscious thought. As I felt his hands on me, the thing that had chased them all out of my brain reared its head. To call it merely anger would have done it a severe disservice. History, legend, nature – all these are peppered with female warriors. Boadicea of the Celts. Hippolyta, Queen of the Amazons. A she-cat defending her kittens from a bear. It seemed as though all these and more lent me a portion of themselves. No, I was not angry. I was furious – enraged! - and every fibre of my soul seemed to burn with a seething white-hot flame. Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, so spake Shakespeare – and Timothy Fairfax was about to taste mine! I bit down hard on his lower lip, bit until I tasted blood, and kept biting until I was certain I'd nearly bitten his lip off. He howled in surprise and pain and tore himself away, not quite escaping as my balled left fist collided satisfyingly with his nose, followed shortly by the fingernails of my other hand clawing at his eyes.

Of the cousins who had shared my girlhood, the oldest – Benjamin to absolutely everyone else from the day he turned eighteen but always Benjy to me – had taught me how to fight, schooling me carefully in the fine art of hurting the other chap as much as possible before one was pulled off one's adversary and dragged home for supper and a good scolding. Of course, due to the voluminous petticoats required by feminine fashion, I could not with any great efficiency get my knee up into what Benjy delicately called a man's "anatomy". However, the same fashion laws that had cursed me with petticoats also blessed me with an alternate weapon.

While Fairfax tried to get his equilibrium after my barrage, I reached up to my hair, to the single pin with which Cordelia – poor Cordelia, if she had to deal with this man for eighteen years! – had artfully secured my coiffure, and drew it out. Of course, "pin" seems an overly dainty word for what generally amounted to a very thin ladies' dagger. The hatpins used by fashionable ladies tended to measure in the vicinity of six inches long, with the "social" end decorated with beads and jewels to go with one's outfit. It was a weapon that had served me well in the past, and now as Fairfax advanced upon me, intent upon his planned mayhem, I held it low and prepared to give him something to consider if in the future he wished to try anything like this again.

Sherlock Holmes:

I was halfway back to the house when I heard a ghastly scream. It was strangely distorted, quite unlike any scream I'd heard before, and it was oddly shrill. I cursed myself for another oversight and made haste through the snow, not even taking the time to remove my snow-covered boots as I followed the sounds of mayhem downstairs, reaching the corridor in time to hear another thin, strangled shriek, cut off by the sound of a piece of furniture breaking.

I burst through the door and saw Alexander Fairfax, face badly bruised as though beaten with a one-handed attack, holding half a chair, Timothy Fairfax curled insensible on the floor amid a scattering of wood fragments, and Emily Cartwright, her hair loose about her shoulders, the neckline and one sleeve of her dress torn, her face white but for two spots of colour on her cheeks, blood on her mouth, and bosom heaving as she tried to regain her breath. She clutched something in her left hand which I gathered to be the erstwhile fastening for her hair. As I watched, her face – which was initially distorted with outrage – relaxed into relief. Her mouth trembled as though she wished to say something and her eyes glistened with impending tears, but in the end she did neither. It appeared that the constrictions imposed by her corset were not conducive to sustained aerobics such as might be found in fighting off an attacker. It was likely a small miracle that I was able to catch her as her knees buckled, and – with a glance at Alexander and a nod in reply – lay her on the lad's bed.

"She fought like a right fury, Mr Baker," Alexander volunteered, still clutching the broken chair like a drowning man might clutch a piece of driftwood, "Father tried to do something awful to her but she wasn't having any of that." He looked apologetic. "I didn't think to do anything until just before she stabbed him in the… the… well, manly bits. With a bloody long hairpin. You married a real spitfire, sir. You better treat her right – if only for your own good." He offered me a wan smile, showing me the source of the tooth I'd found in the bedroom.

I was about to instruct Alexander to gather together the other players in this drama when Mrs Fairfax, apparently alerted by the same sounds that brought me, appeared in the doorway. He looked very small as she glanced down at her fallen husband, then over at the bed where lay Emily. From the look on her face, she had already figured out what had happened – which did little to make the scene any less shocking.

"Master Fairfax," I said levelly, "go and fetch the others in here at once. On your way, kindly bring back a small quantity of brandy for your mother to settle her nerves." He hared away. I turned to Mrs Fairfax. "Madam, this young lady has fainted." I did not need to mention the whys and wherefores. "Would you be kind enough to aid me in reviving her?"

She looked baffled for a moment. "You need to loosen her clothing, Mr Baker. Especially the corset, just a bit." Oh, God – not that again! "This happens sometimes, when a lady gets over… overexcited." She faltered momentarily, but recovered admirably. "Didn't you know that? You're her husband after all."

"A medical friend of mine has in the past advised me of such, but I possess neither the knowledge nor any right to do so." I forestalled her question with an upraised hand. "I shall explain all in a moment. In the meantime, would you please aid her? Ah – here comes young Master Fairfax and the rest. Madam, I suggest you take a few sips of that. Good." I turned to the rest of those assembled and cleared my throat."My name is Sherlock Holmes," I commenced, "I see some of you know the name. I was called in to investigate reports of a Ghost haunting this establishment, and as you can see, I – and my assistant on the bed yonder – have found him. Or, more to the point, we have discovered the Ghost and the reason for his haunting." I glanced in Emily's direction and saw her beginning to recover, her clothing, ahem, duly loosened to allow her to breathe, with Mrs Fairfax still at her side to ensure that she was okay and also, to some degree I expect, to preserve Emily's modesty from any other eyes. I turned back swiftly to my audience. "Miss Emily Cartwright's bravery ensured that the Ghost was unmasked, along with, I expect, the true danger lurking in this house." I glanced over again and saw Emily's dress now firmly buttoned up (though of course the problem with the neckline could not be helped.) "I shall allow her to tell her tale." She glanced up at me, met my eyes, and smiled briefly at the honour I had conferred upon her.

Emily Cartwright:

What a sweet, arrogant git he could be! I couldn't help but smile all the same – he must have heard the commotion and leapt with the intent of aiding me, to judge by the fact that he hadn't even shed his snow-covered boots.

I stood, declining Cordelia's helping hands, and stood beside Holmes as I prepared to relate the extensive timeline I'd pieced together from my own observations and from conferring with Holmes(making sure my voice projected enough to reach even Mr Hammond's ears).

"I am about to relate a rather sordid tale in mixed company, covering some rather touchy topics. Some of it is merely conjecture – don't look at me like that, Holmes – but all of it is based upon what Holmes and I found, what Alexander Fairfax told me of what he knew, and Mr Fairfax's own words to me shortly before I had to defend my honour from him, with the results you see lying on the floor. This whole mess probably started not long after Alexander's birth it seems. As Mrs Fairfax's condition grew obvious, Mr Fairfax lost any husbandly desire for her and apparently reached his conclusions about the innate beauty of 'untouched' and ...virginal women. " I quoted Mr Fairfax's exact words.

I saw Holmes' expression shift, very subtly, through a number of possible results, one of which may have been mild discomfort, before resuming its original state of studious neutrality.

"It is not unreasonable to assume that Mr Fairfax pursued his newfound 'hobby' at every opportunity. Clearly his desire for 'untouched' women is strong enough to override any checks imposed by social mores. His son Alexander related to me his own observations of his father's attitude towards likely-looking women in town – probably when he was purchasing his gardening supplies for his work here – while at the same time maintaining a façade of a happy marriage. It must have been quite a coup for him, then, when the Hammonds decided to rent out the spare room to guests… especially given that most of their guests were newly-wed couples. He had ready access to the women he so desired, without having to hunt for them.

"But then how to make sure that he was not caught? Holmes found a book in the study on various medicinal plants and herbs – including a particular plant from which can be made a rather effective soporific and muscle relaxant. He would slip some of this drug into the coffee in the evening and everyone would sleep like the dead, unable to fight him off."

Holmes broke into my narrative at this point. "He kept the tools of his 'hobby' as Miss Cartwright called it in the hothouse, where I found them while I went for my walk. Clearly nobody else ever went in there; otherwise he would have concealed the evidence better."

"But Mr Fairfax is not, strictly speaking, your Ghost," I said, gently regaining control, "You see, Alexander followed his father on one of Fairfax's nocturnal visits and saw what he was doing. Alexander told me that when he discovered how far his father had sunk, he had to do something to defend future guests from future attacks. He couldn't be certain if anyone would believe him if he told them what he'd witnessed. The Ghost was born. His aim in this was hopefully to wake the women before his father arrived, or at least to make them seem 'spoiled' in his father's eyes. His intentions were pure, at least, even if the means were frightening. In the end, however, Holmes and I have concluded that Mr Fairfax is the man who should be arrested in this whole plot, not Alexander. The beating I gave Alexander last night when he visited will be penance enough, in my opinion."

In the end, of course, the police were called (and arrived while faithful Cordelia had patched up her mongrel of a husband) to take Mr Fairfax away.

Holmes put in a good word for Alexander, whose only crime was to be the son of someone like Fairfax, and the lad was questioned about his role and ultimately released with a severe warning. To expect any less would have been a pipe dream. Holmes and I gave our statements to the police, of course (though I had to give the officer a brief lesson in manners before he would listen to me), and turned over the evidence we'd uncovered (including the means of Alexander's ingress to the room). Afterwards there was nothing left for us but to pack up and go home. Holmes declined payment for his services in this instance, which didn't go over terribly well with the Hammonds, who felt obligated to give us something. They finally convinced him to take away a plant from the hothouse. He chose the valerian flower as a keepsake – how droll.

[taylortruther]

I know everyone is obsessed with "give me back my girlhood, it was mine first" but I can't stop thinking about the way she says "(pause) at nineteen". I'll never get over how much emotion she can put into the simplest phrasing to mean so much. As someone who is Taylor's exact age, I feel so much of that song about how thinking you were so old/mature at a certain age and then looking back in your 30's you realize how absolutely young and inexperienced you really were.

Only sort of related - you know how ATW was considered the "hidden fan favorite" since it wasn't a single? Do you think that kind of song can exist anymore in the streaming era? Like I feel like WCS is going to be the next fandom ATW but because of streaming I feel like everyone is just gonna know it. Sorry this ask is all over the place lol

i thought the same thing about the pause! it feels so intentional, just to really let that situation sink in for the listener.

you bring up an interesting question about streaming. i do think hidden fan favorites are still possible, but it would take time to see it. inevitably some songs on any album will have longevity and capture a wide audience, and others will not. the marketing of certain songs matters, too - all too well is "hidden" because taylor didn't push for it to become a single, she didn't promote it, and she underestimated how much it would resonate with her fans.

now that taylor is even more massive, i think a "hidden" fan favorite would be a song that faded from the public consciousness, which is inevitable. eventually, the album will fall off the top 10, fewer people will listen to it, she won't perform some songs on tour, and in a few years, the average pop listener won't really care about certain songs.

to me, a hidden fan favorite isn't a song only hardcore fans listened to (because yes, in the streaming era, and when taylor is so popular, that's pretty rare*.) it's a song that is beloved by fans, but generally unknown or unappreciated by the average listener.

*that said, taylor is one of the few album-artists left; most musicians are singles artists these days. from that angle, maybe "hidden" fan favorites are just as likely for taylor today as they were in 2012, because the gp has less interest in albums, and the gp won't continue listening to midnights in full forever.

i'd consider evermore more of a hidden fan favorite for these reasons.

but what does everyone else think? i'm not a chart follower so tbh i'm just talking out of my ass rn.

[inlovewitheasefuldeath]

literally just constantly internally screaming about midnights there is nothing i love more than distance/perspective/time passing giving new revelations on old traumas and events, being able to make an upbeat poppy song about something negative, being able to finally mourn something you didn't even register as a loss when it happened, unraveling complexities in relationships/good people do bad things/bad people do good things/good things feel bad/bad things feel good, holding the joy/romance/beauty in a lost and maybe bad relationship, just the line KARMA TAKES ALL MY FRIENDS TO THE SUMMIT, identity as being shaped through trauma and you can't change that but you can choose to attribute meaning wherever you want in your life, i can't rewrite the narrative but i can reread it with whatever interpretation i want, "you're on your own kid" as something that can be sad and empowering at the same time, IF I WAS A CHILD DID IT MATTER IF YOU GOT TO WASH YOUR HANDS/GIVE ME BACK MY GIRLHOOD IT WAS MINE FIRST, pitched voice in midnight rain my beloved, dear reader as the final track something something unreliable narrator of my own life's story, THAT'S A REAL FUCKING LEGACY (disparaging), intense visual images/synesthetic figurative language, how slick and syrupy glitch feels, question...? and closure as two sides of the same story, "there's no mo(u)rning glory it was war it wasn't fair", VISUAL ALBUM POG, "baby love" literally my stopping my small gay heart,

there's probably so much more i could ramble about but thats all my brain has spit out so far right now

[swiftzeldas]

thoughts on midnights?

it's me hi i'm the problem it's me

i really love the album especially the 3 am tracks! it does have the same problem that rep does for me which is the overproduction but it is MUCH better than reputation and the lyricism and vulnerability on this album truly blow me away (i know the lyrics are getting trashed by twitter stans but i mean this with all sincerity and all due respect: if u have a stan account on twitter for a pop star i do not trust your opinions on anything) she's literally just showing off the phenomenal grasp she has on the english language and that is the most impressive thing about this album imo, and that is THE Taylor Swift Trademark, right, the lyricism and storytelling??? the melodies are all very catchy too which i love

also would've could've should've is the most devastating song i've ever heard in my life (and "give me back my girlhood, it was mine first" really even SOUNDS like Dear John to me)

my favorites rn are anti-hero, midnight rain, and would've could've should've! but i also love question....?, bejeweled, karma, the great war, high infidelity.....i mean who am i kidding i love the whole album

labyrinth and dear reader are really the only ones that aren't doing a lot for me right NOW but i like to remind myself that i didn't like last kiss until speak now had been out for quite awhile so songs really do grow on me!!!!

[jonathankatwhatever]

The cat is alive! At least for today. 20 Mar 2023.

I wrote down the date. I knew I had: I kept saying to myself that I had told you the date in writing so that drove the conclusion. It did not occur to me, under the stress, that I could look for that. I wish I were kidding. It popped into my head, but the panic made me miss the obvious, meaning the panic is self-sustaining, has a boundary, has movement around that boundary which prevents proper action. That we can take apart later today. I’m really looking forward to that, because it finally occurred to me to search this blog. That didn’t help because Tumblr only ‘remembers’ the posts which are loaded by it. I typed in March and got only the last few days where I used the date. So I scrolled back to the beginning of the year. Couldn’t find it. Then I realized: I hand wrote it! That narrowed it down. I found the reference and it clearly says March 28.

So no betrayal! The cat lives!

At least for today!

The amount of pressure that applied to me was unreal. The guy I’m in was entirely calm, while I was freaking out. This isn’t just a case of dissociation of inner and outer self: it was entirely tinged, all the way through, with the identity issues, meaning largely gender and sexual identity.

That’s the idea I couldn’t get into words last night. The thoughts about issues in spaces like gender and trans and other non-binary identifications is that you don’t purely become a binary this or that as your ‘non-binary’ choice or as your swap or transition. I carry with me the patterns of thought and behavior from being right-handed. It makes me right-handed though I really am not, though I function better in every single way when I am left-handed. That this must be true is obvious in gs, especially given the D-structure, meaning that you are tinged, are labeled, no matter what labels you apply to yourself.

It’s amazing how the focus shifts when the panic starts to subside. Now I’m worried about you taking on so much.

I had written my farewell notes in my head. You saw some of them in print, and they got ‘better’, if you call it that.

I wasn’t able to get out the example I had in mind. Here’s another. When I see you, I see you. That was a strange realization which truly sank in yesterday, under all this pressure, when I realized I hold you to your standard, not to mine, that my criticisms of you in my head are a version, a 1-0Segment flip of the ones in you, which I can see when I look at anyone else. So, you should be feeling good when you look in the mirror because I now look in the mirror and I see the person you want to see in the mirror. I’ve gone over this feeling before, and that’s the first time I’ve been able to articulate the thought.

Back to bed. It’s still early and maybe I can sleep without my hands curling to my face in stress.

————-

Not much sleep but an interesting experience, which included an examination of panic as rotational speed, as an object, a gear which spins fast to avoid connection with others, meaning it is analytic to that pole, meaning a whirlpool like I painted on the wall of my bathroom.

That startled me. So I went with it and started to think that maybe the way I’m sitting now is actually part of the transition. I want to give you back your girlhood by combining mine with yours and for our boyhoods to merge in the same way.

That made me turn my head the other way, which made me realize I used to sit the other way, like how I’d lead into tasks with my left so my right had the higher degree of freedom, and thus control of not only the movement but of the structure and its supports. So I started to handwrite and realized that fundamental motive seems to appear in the ways you can use a notebook, as highlight by the strange way I do mine: right to left overall, but left to right within, so you open the cover like the book is in Hebrew, but you write and read first on the left, then the right, then go to the left beyond, meaning you count 3 spaces over, past the left you already wrote or read, over the right that you haven’t, to the next left. Then you count back to the right, then you count the same 3, then back 1.

Look at the inside cover: beginning on the left means the step back is to the cover, then count past that first to the next left. It’s the continuation of a pattern which reads both left to right and right to left, with one side dominant. This works the other way if we switch all the left and right labels, so this is the minimum for counting both methods: you get a choice of sides, and these count in the oddest 13 yet: the fundamental pattern of take 1 step back, 3 steps forward or 3 steps forward, 1 step back. The idea when we came up with that arrangement was to embody identification space so that a space is identified not only as one chain but as multiple chains or even combinations of sets, and that this skip over and going back is a lot like you have set the edge of your territory along that left side and now you have developed your territory within and you’re stepping out, past the edge, which makes a second identification. But what completes the identification is, and I’m loving this, is that skip over the right to the next left leads to the step back, which sets the identification for the space as now it is behind the front edge. Or beyond the line of scrimmage, because I thought of the line advancing, then the QB drops back and they throw a pass forward, so they line up there, then drop back and another pass forward.

So f1-3//3-1 has been recreated or rediscovered. Does it fit? I know it does, but I can’t accept that without doing the work. The fundamental expansion and contraction of a 1Square to a 4Square sets the boundary of the 1Square relative to the other 3 gs. I’m seeing it as a breathing motion, as the 1Square blossoms, then the contraction to the next gs along the szK, then the breath. Exactly like the old pictures I found which I posted over the weekend. So yes, this does exactly embody. Now I remember thinking that. Good.

And? So what? So I organized these notebooks with that thought. And that lets you identify these chains. And these chains rotate a Triangular: if you count around 1 2 3, back 1, then you rotate the End count around the triangle. So this combines SBE with Halving, because this also organizes by 2’s. It occurs as the count of 2 new when you skip over the right. It occurs as the count of the 2 skipped rights over a left. It occurs as the step back because that divides or Halves the space within the current edge.

I took a break without posting. I feel like I should apologize for stepping away, though I imagine it’s us taking a break and doing something else. Like I just did some fantastic left side learning and stretching, which included thoughts about how might say to a person, it’s not your religion that’s wrong, but your version needs to conform to the reality of the mathematics. So yoga and other systems of movement naturally express the same desires for connection and purification as any other culture expresses fitness, expresses ideals of movement and expression. Didn’t this used to be obvious? Is it obvious? The French were seen by the English as ‘weak’ because they like dance at Court because ideal dance expressed the ideal movements one had to follow, which could be portrayed as reflecting form over substance, even to death by over-heroic acts. It’s interesting this conception persisted when Napoleon was beating everybody. And I’d say the issue Napoleon faced was that you can’t innovate that much with 1800’s military: no planes, limited artillery, no repeating weapons, only horses or foot transport. So the space he had to operate in was finite. If I can translate that, it would be gold.

The space he had to operate in was finite because the Dimensional Enclosure generated to a 0 boundary which inverted to the limits of his capability to fit to the DE, which I’d say he largely accomplished. In that light, I can even see the attraction of Russia: not to conquer but to take over from the Czar, meaning to become ruler of an existing Empire which he would run better, which would make his Empire the best ever, etc. Install a new Czar and that entirety inverts to and from him 0-1-0.

But finite also means that when you count a certain number of times, you reach that 0, which translates along the line where that occurs through to Waterloo, as all the dimensions line up to that Actuality.

I can’t quite see it in grid squares. Yet. So, let’s use the counting above. He’s ahead, and the others catch up. Because the utility of the ways he’s ahead, like in his conception of political organization, do not have the same effect within the Space or are, perhaps better said, more removed from the Actuality of the conflicts, of the battles and related events. So, they could catch up because the space imposed a finish line for military advantage. Phrase that in I//I and that becomes rational, which has a denominator, so the idea is that finite order is that denominator, whatever that is, so finite and infinite, which is exactly what I//I enables. OK.

So D3-4//4-3 acts as I//I in any moment at scales. That’s really cool.

The moment as a Counter again with the Observer.

There’s something I’m having trouble getting about the subgroup being finite, meaning an element is finite as a finite subgroup, which means in I//I that it must reach a 1 that can become a 0 or there is no 0. Oh, the flip appears: the 1-0Segment!

——————

I’m getting upset, and not out of panic but anger. How could you do this to my family? I spent the weekend experiencing the nightmare of having to tell my children: I’m dead and I destroyed all your lives. And now I have to turn to Debbie and say it’s less than 4 weeks until your beloved daughter gets married and we have to file for bankruptcy. Why? Because the promises made to me are always being shuffled off into the future. She’s barely hanging on now. The stress is physically hurting her. And you do this to her. How can you do this to my family? How can you hurt them like this?

It’s unnecessary. It’s cruel. So now I’m picking up on negatives and then I start to think that isn’t what you are, and I know that but I can’t understand this behavior. It’s wrong. Just plain wrong.

I can do the forms. I’ve been reading through them. Can’t find the lawsuit, but I can get the details. I cannot fathom why this is happening. What good does it serve? Why hurt people when the idea is to help them? When the idea is to stop pain, to stop people hurting, to stop people from hurting other people, and from hurting themselves, then why hurt Debbie, who is a complete innocent? Why hurt Rachel, who is a complete innocent about to get married? Why hurt Jordan? They do not deserve such callousness.

I get the reference: why are you still writing pages? Because that’s the process, but this is a finite group in this finite existence. I am a finite group in this existence. My processes all have biological Ends, really the analytic Ends where the processes of life here 0. And while that enables 1 in eternity, that means it’s 0 here and that means you’re affecting others and their eternities.

What kind of example is it to say: we wouldn’t even help the one of us who did the math? We inflicted gratuitous cruelty on his family. So come on and join the party because it’s much better to be aware. Great message in that lesson.

It stands against everything I think about. I get up to take care of the animal’s needs because he asks me and I’m not going to assert the right to not listen unless I have a good enough reason, like it’s too late or too early or he needs affection while I’m doing something else. If I don’t have the energy, the motive force, to care about his needs, then shame on me.

Maybe I can talk more about the panic loop. It’s a neat example of an elliptic: there’s a rational point, which this weekend was the date, and that extrapolated into an entire scenario which is the developed as the curve constructs, which is mechanical, all connecting to that original rational point, which is thus the mapping of Irreducible layer to layer in I//I because you have the rational points, indeed the curve on the one Irreducible or as constructed by the layers both with the complexity in the rest of that gs process mechanism.

You can see this happen over the weekend. I fixed that rational point, which was that my memory was wrong, held that versus it was correct, and the loop developed. This loop turned so fast I could not see that I had the ability to look up the truth. I filled that space at very high speed and grew very tense. I thought my chest was going to explode.

I see a theory developing, which is that the outer person, my shell guy, operates under I//I principles at a slower internal rate so he can act faster on an external basis. That explains why I keep trying to get myself, my attention, out of the way: focus on physical activity requires focus on the physical activity. In part perhaps because I’m cross-wired left to right and back, so another example of this Winding pattern. This spins and that projects a 0 boundary over the 1Space (and thus a 1Space boundary over the 0Space). Kind of like throwing a discus if the discus itself spun larger rather than in a line or arc, so it would expand and then contract over the space of that line or arc extend over the field. Like if you stood at the center and hurled disks repeatedly with a blindfold so the direction shifts.

That enables a lot of comparison.

So, that would explain why I spend so much of my time trying to slow my mind down. Playing music as I should means reducing the external gs processing to the act of playing so that externality bounces around 0, meaning it 0’s in such a way that the music keeps moving while also counting resolutions and other forms of Endings. All those hit 0’s because they’re all analytic in gs process.

Oh, I get it. I’m the one who put us into this mess in the sense that I’m the one who forced the error that cut my tendons. It wasn’t him. It was her. Or me. Because my speed put way too much dimension into that moment. I remember how I was caught up in the silly storyline of teaching my brother how he could in the future get his own bottle down though he was just then crawling.

That’s exactly why I want you, need you to make decisions for me. Oh, so if it works that way for me, then it works the same for you. There is an experience way back when this work was really getting going, when I felt that I accessed a mind, yours, which was spinning super fast. And I passed that off because it reminded me of the Twizzies, of the twins who spin, and one holds still and that’s I//I because we dance with our hands tied because that forms our space for spinning. I’ve seen that image countless times and now it makes sense.

Slowing my mind down as search translates into slowing I//I so the spins match for what I’m doing. In other words, rather than slow down, I Wind faster, tighter, around that loop, around the hole that loop describes, so it’s boundary to center as 0-1-0, and that shrinks the 1Space down, so in the 0Space, I can’t see the choices clearly and start spinning pat them becuse I must have missed something except I keep missing it because it’s only visible when I slow down sufficiently to focus.

So internal processing speeds can go haywire compared to external processing speeds. Athletes and the uncoordinated. Depth of athletic skill too: fast processing with less depth from the internal side of the I//I.

How would we treat that? I keep reminding myself with little success how things have gone. Does not work well. Medication works but it isn’t full time and the gaps in coverage can be enormously powerful. That’s something people seem to have a hard time grasping, that medication of any kind has gaps and those are dimensional spaces, so when one appears constructs appear to fill the gap. Oh, and the thing is that negatives have a bit of advantage: they can spin very fast because they need to come around to the positives, meaning they’re freer, they have more room, they can go fast on the open road, because they don’t have to tie to the Actuality as closely. Thus chance estimations or priors become very distorted because threads have to slow down to communicate to the external self, who isn’t slow but isn’t set up for that kind of DC&R because the external self has to deal with the external self’s finite groups. Like school or a show or a tour or a career is a finite group. Like a life.

So, as we’ve said many times, the D-structure reduces in grid squares to D3-4 threads meeting D4-3 threads. The external self is thus responding to the finite expressions, the finite order of the group of a you or me or whom or whatever. I can’t dunk a basketball unless the net is very low. So all the stuff I can’t do with the basketball has to get discarded, when of course most people can’t do that. They can’t become a performer like you.

Need a break. But isn’t that a cool idea: that we are groups of finite order within groups of infinite order. That is I am finite here because all the 0Space processes End, which makes a 0 of me here and a 1 of me in what is to us Eternity.

That is the description of the soul I’ve been looking for. Tangible you is a finite group in gs process. Golden thread indeed within an orthogonal space.

Your stagecraft is exactly you. Exactly you. Tangible and intangible.

—————

Some thoughts came that I would normally try to exclude, but I think now I have a way to address and maybe analyze those. So as uncomfortable as this makes me, I was thinking about how R and I can tell D to stop worrying about the wedding, to stop trying to take on jobs that don’t exist, to stop trying to do work they don’t want her to do, that they are getting married because it’s a legal step and they don’t see this as a big deal in a public sense at all. They want it casual. They want it relaxed. Then I thought, like you or I would. Then I thought like you would if you got married. Which became you’re married. Which became this is all a hoax, which led me to say, wait a minute I’ve done this before: why are you tipping to negative. Which mean the negative automorphism, a flip of the 1-0Segment at that End, so we can infer a result based on these dimensions reflecting into that negative image of you. Then I thought of the song and how that has the opposite meaning of that, particularly in reference to the sadness because this is a choice of sadness for the sake of Eternity. Which deserves capitalization there. So, if everything lines up to say you’re the embodiment of that positive, I take the gap and infer a negative which speeds very fast to exclude comparison, which is a form of insistence, which connects - finally? - to the long ago idea that the flashing light in my head regarding my damaged hand was actually trying to get my attention, not turn it away, but I’m incapable of seeing that because my internal identity connects to my shell or external identity.

What a strange result? Why would we loop destructively? Why do birds pull out their feathers? Stress. Pressure caused by not knowing what to do and being uncomfortable, which pretty much depicts how I existed for most of my life because I was physically disconnected by the side switch. But why the message? Oh, because it’s food or flight: what draws attention at the base levels is food or run for it. And those can combine because danger lurks near your food. This connects to the dreams about a force in my life guiding me physically: it expresses you that way, what you want for me, not the insecurities. As in, all that fussing with my hair was to get me to accept myself, not to criticize my looks. That took approaching the left side to get at all. I mean as a right-hander, I couldn’t see myself in the mirror at all. I couldn’t see how I walked or stood.

So panic points are meant to say look at this and dismiss, like when the warning buzzer went off as Neil Armstrong was flying the LEM to the moon’s surface.

[bookfreaky]

LOVE DOING - The Analysis

Intro:

I try to never analyse my work while still working on it, because I believe that the painting must be born from an image in your head, or a feeling, and not from a concrete idea. That is the foundation of abstractionism. Then when you’re finished and you are kind of star-gazing your own work, you try to find what made you create all that, what made you use that colour or this shape. I did that and I saw that all the dots were connected in the same theme: Love.  

Love as a broad concept and my experience with that. I think love is a very liquid sentiment, like water, it takes the shape of its every container you put it, but pretty much it’s still love. That same impulse is there. It can be like water also in the way it reflects the sun light, how it changes colours and distorts shapes. Love can be illusory; it can be lysergic but it can also be the answer to many simple questions in life. In its gas form it can be contagious and performative as it inhabits imagination, but it can also become solid when under pressure, just like water becomes ice under high pressures. In difficult situations, the love you feel for that person may be the only thing that keeps you going. I experienced that, and I think many people did too with so many people getting ill and dying during the Covid pandemic.

Like water it nurtures, like water it drowns. Love can be represented as a substance, like it just did, but also it persists as an action, an abstract action at so, an actual verb. In abstractionism, it’s to be said that colour is verb while shape is noun (I won’t remember to said that), for that reason I focused in this collection mainly in two colours in their variations, red and blue. Without the political branding aesthetic, red is seen in psychoanalysis as a active colour, the colour of human blood. Blue could be described as a “calmer” colour, but not so lacking in action. As Rebecca Solnit said, I quote:

“Water is colourless, shallow water appears to be the colour of whatever lies underneath it, but deep water is full of this scattered light, the purer the water the deeper the blue. The sky is blue for the same reason, but the blue at the horizon, the blue of land that seems to be dissolving into the sky, is a deeper, dreamier, melancholy blue, the blue at the farthest reaches of the places where you see for miles, the blue of distance.”

So I dedicate this four paintings to the people I love and whomever loves things, but also to all the feelings that come about with love. Some of these paintings are capable of calming me and I could keep looking at them for hours, forgetting about myself. Others make me feel angsty, uncomfortable and looking at them oblige me to think about my own existence and fear my future.

I really hope you look at the paintings before you read the whole thing, and suffer through the same. Thank you.  

Love Escaping Into the Blue:

This one was the first painting I made, before I imagined it to be a collection, and it was born from the experience of decompressing love from a place of deep passion; where you are taken by this sudden and enormous sadness but also relief. I felt free, really. I read this biology paper from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, called “Light in the Deep Sea”, and it explains that there’s some uniformity of colour in the ocean animals according to how deep in the water they inhabit. Animals living in the great depths of the sea, between 6,000 and 11,000 meters deep, have commonly a very vivid red colour, but closer to the surface of the water, between 200 and 1,000 meters deep, most animals are silver and grey. That’s because in this depth the brightness of sunlight is fragmented into a blue colour, and grey reflects the blue light creating the illusion that the animal is, in fact, blue. A Blue Whale is actually grey, not blue.

[Seadevil Fish (Cryptosaras couesii), left. Blue Whale (Balaenoptera musculus), right.]

The painting shows a leak of red coming into blue and bluer space, which is this feeling of infatuation and selfish desire, possession, fear and jealousy that is very red in colour and has connotations of violence and anger, moving into a place that is not so deep in the water but clearer and wider as the open sea, illuminated by this navy-blue light. It’s like you can finally breathe and see that your love is still there, but it has changed. In hope by being closer to the atmosphere it is also somehow closer to the divine. I imagine some people might feel lost when love escapes into the blue, and I get this sensation too, but it’s about loving freely, learning how not to feel love so deeply into ourselves, but widely like the ocean.

Love Growing in the Pit of the Stomach: 

When I looked at this painting in particular after it was done, I had this sensation of angst that was difficult for me to name. It’s about desire, it’s about this feeling growing inside of you that you know it will be something more than what you want, but what you need. I’ve become obsessed with the image of holes, looking like they are piercing the canvas; I think they show this emptiness I feel, like a window showing how hollow I am inside, but also, they give me this satisfying feeling by looking at them, like opening a wound and poking a bubble. I think this emptiness comes from the idea most trans women cannot take away from the back of their heads, which is if you do or do not have a “female genitalia”. Gender in our culture is very centred around genitals and biological sex, for centuries being a woman has been defined by the person who’s able to carry a man’s child. There is this little fantasy of mine where women have this little hole in them that can swallow the world. The idea of it, for me, has grown into a very real desire very much like the desire for sex. Actually, very close to sex too. But the roots growing out of the hole, in green and blue, represent pain and fear, because I’m not sure if I’m okay with the idea of having to undergo a surgical procedure to fulfil this fantasy, neither I am sure if it is a fantasy or a need.

Most of my work resembles yonic shapes (resembling the form of a vulva), either in this work or in former ones, and it’s never intentional, it sort of just slips from my subconscious. I believe that the vulva, as well as the womb, are under-shadowed symbols of power. Phallic shapes are very common in art and what-not, they are usually associated with offense and aggression. Like when school boys draw a dick on the toilet stalls as if marking their territory. The vulva, however, is never quite portrayed like that.

I read about this Japanese visual artist, Megumi Igarashi, who made several pieces of art shaped after her own vagina, including a yellow vagina-boat (which I absolutely loved) and she got arrested and fined for “obscenity”. I think that for her subversive art-form she should be considered a national hero. Many man-made constructions are phallic images, look at the Washington Obelisk, or the Eiffel Tower, but in nature we most commonly find yonic shapes, like the Grand Canyon.

There is a profound violence in desiring this, feeling as if a part of your own anatomy is lacking, but you can’t grow it naturally, you can’t do it in a god-intended way. The bright red colour represents violence and sex, and in this case both. It’s way more complicated than the concept of having kids and being a mom, it’s a lot more than to be seen as sexual beings, and sexuality, and to feel loved; it’s about symbols of power and somehow getting that denied. It’s about learning how to love this new body, a body that is foreign, infertile, obscene and unconventional. That love is hard to achieve and it is violent because women, and especially trans women, have been taught to hate their bodies.  

Love Falls In The Bathroom:

This one took the longest to finish and left me with the most unsure brush-strokes, much perhaps because it isn’t based off on an idea but on a memory, on dream. In three more years I’ll be the same age my mother had and she had me, 29 years old. Somehow it feels like a looming date. Having kids and getting pregnant, specifically, have been sporadic subjects of therapy sessions – the antithesis is always the same: you are not lesser of a woman for not being able to get pregnant, you can still be a mom through other means, you are not even sure if you want kids or marriage, you can always adopt – Those answers feel reasonable, but none of them ever could appease the deep feeling of something missing in me, like something is perpetually wrong with me. Then I understood that in this painting, I was trying to evoke these feelings. Love and grief.

[My mother, pregnant with me, in the 90s.] 

My friends tell me I seem to be older than I actually am, and sometimes I wonder if that’s not because I had never been a happy child. I feel like I had my childhood robbed from me. I mean, I had an okay, comfortable childhood, and a problematic teenage-hood, but I never had a girlhood. I am still grieving it. I had been assigned male at birth, I’m still grieving that too.

In July of this year, I experienced a very vivid dream, in which although short all the images and the sensations were, felt very real. I was taking a shower in my bathroom, I close off the water, wrap myself around a towel, my usual pink one, and when I’m stepping out of the shower stall I fell. I hit my right elbow against the toilet lid as I fell with my legs open in opposite directions, a sharp pain struck me under my thighs, close to my groin, and a light string of blood followed right after that. It wasn’t menstruation blood, thin and clear red, but thick and dark. It was all very quick but I knew, right then, right there, exactly everything that was happening. I was pregnant, 13 weeks, alone in the bathroom floor, surrounded by blood. I wonder how many days of my recent life, how many hours a day, I am really just sitting down alone on my bathroom’s floor surrounded by blood. I woke up and it still felt very real. I had spent the next two days very quiet, not wanting to speak to anyone. I wanted to tell someone as soon as I was back from the dream, but I couldn’t do it. I wanted to call someone, a friend, anyone, and say “I lost it. I lost my baby”. I realised then, in that post-dreamy state, that I have been silently grieving for a lot of things, things I haven’t yet allowed myself to grieve for. Things I still did not have a chance.

Love Lost In Imagination:

This one is the only one what doesn’t forecast red and blue colours, but instead in red and blue paint mixed together in a royal purple colour. It was the last one I made, and it’s the one that differs the most in shape. I like to imagine it was love in it’s gas form, vaping inside your brain like Nitrous-oxide, with white-coloured cloud shapes and yellow peacock eye-feathers. It’s about how sometimes love can only exist in imagination, how we often elaborate better scenarios in our heads, and we think “what if things were different?”. I believe to be okay to fantasize, anyway the utopia is what moves us towards a reality, but sometimes we can get lost in imagination, and in questioning the same questions over and over. “What if I hadn’t done this and done that?”; “What if I hadn’t said no?”; “What if I had stayed longer to watch that movie?”; “What if had come out as trans earlier?”; “What if I had become a professional writer?”; “What if I had born a woman?”. Is love real if it perpetrates only in thought?

I would be more than happy to quote some of Saint Augustine here, and his theological virtues, love being one of them, but I wouldn’t like to make this essay even longer and complicated.

I think to myself sometimes, when was it that I started to prefer having peace then pleasure. My head has always been very noisy, very noisy, and I wanted it to stop. Now it feels like I’m constantly too quiet about everything. That somehow, like the Little Mermaid by Hans Christensen Andersen, when transitioning into a woman I exchanged my legs (my body) for my voice, and now I can’t voice or even pinpoint what I want. I’m just so tired. So, so tired. My mental health hasn’t been great for more than one year, and the pandemic didn’t help. I’m constantly anxious around people, even the closest ones to me (especially the closest ones to me), I’ve been eating like a bird and sleeping like a cat. Still, sometimes I imagine what future I would like, and I imagine myself living somewhere with open space, trees, breeding horses just like my grandfather did, space for dogs, musical instruments and the kids. Space for being big.

The painting makes me think that sometimes I can only love myself in this imaginary place. Otherwise, it just looks slightly like a chicken’s head. You decide.    

- Original work, G.L. Alódio.

[thevampiremariusderomanus]

Interlude With the Undead- Armand’s Lesson

Interlude with the Undead Written for the January 1979 issue of Playboy.

The author of "Interview with the Vampire" reveals for the first time an all-too-human aspect of her singular subject.

In the book, "Interview with the Vampire," Louis, who has been a member of the living dead for some 200 years, tells the story of his life to the interviewer, a young radio reporter in San Francisco.

But the book as published represents only a portion of the tapes of that interview made by the reporter. Louis told the young man much that was not included, particularly with regard to the master vampire, Armand, whom he had met in Paris. One tale was Armand's account of his methods of seduction; that is, the art of the vampire at its peak in the year 1876.

ARMAND'S LESSON:

As I've told you, Louis, each vampire selects his victims in his own way. The world is a veritable wilderness of singular beauties and each night too precious too allow for the slightest waste. Each night is a wedding, really, and the vampire is wed to the unique and alluring charms of that victim as surely as he is wed to that victim's life. You hold the spirit incarnate in your arms.

For some of us, monstrous breed that we are, and such a discerning and voracious company, it is the struggle that holds the quintessential fulfillment, the thrashing of the waning lover seems to soothe the preternatural soul. This is nonsense, really. These innocent and unsuspecting victims can't really struggle against a power such as our own. What lurks beneath these gentlemanly trappings is a strength that is unconquerable. Yet there are vampires who crave the semblance of battle, saying that it is the human spirit they love, its endurance, its faith. I have no taste for violence, voluptuous as it may sometimes appear. It is the seduction that is perfectly in tune with this monster's heart. But do not mistake my meaning. It is not I who seduce the lovely beauties whom I take as my brides. It is they who seduce me through their dreams.

You see, they all want the embrace. There is a kernel in all of them that is "half in love with easeful death" and as I wander through the latenight streets in the chill hours, I can hear their plaintive sighs, a muted chorus rising from those beds, its rhythms penetrating the very walls. They summon me. They long for me. Gentleman Death, that has been my epithet, and I so treasure it. What gentleman can refuse a lady, after all?

Imagine her, my victim, caught in the maw of mortal life and so given to dreaming. She wants an extraordinary passion, something she's only glimpsed before and lost. The memory pricks her, a flicker in the recesses of her soul, a searing rapture known but for an instant when mortal and mortal intertwine.

It is for her summons that I listen, being myself sometimes the silent siren of death that can evoke that plea from her even as I quietly pass by. No one hears my steps. I do not hear them. It seems until she offers that faint murmur, I am not even there. These winding, narrow medieval streets shroud me, no moon cuts between the jutting roofs and I am cold, cold for her as I wander, waiting with a lover's devotion for that perfect call.

You know that our preternatural flesh cannot dispel the icy air that settles on our limbs. Ours is the chill of the wind howling through eternity.

So you can well imagine the ineffable sweetness of the moment of selection, of moving out of that damp and merciless might into the bedchamber. No two of them are the same.

I need not see her. I know she's there. A warmth emanates from her living flesh and, drawing near, I see the shape of that warmth--tender, helpless, prone. There is something melancholy, sad about her nestled among the trinkets of her mortal life, the soft bed, her loose and fragrant garments, remnants of girlhood--she sleeps with the trusting sleep of the child. I tell you if I were not the monster, I would be touched. But back to the pliant treasure herself, breathing deeply in her dreams. Is it more vivid, that dream, as I draw close to her? It seems I see her eyelids flutter, she shapes a name with her lips. I tell you, she knows that the object of her inexpressible longing is there. She feels these eyes on her naked shoulders, this hand on the pale-petal flesh of her soft thigh. It is seduction, remember.

There is never violence. I tell you that all embraces, no matter how tender, are surfeited with violence. Violence is the throbbing of the unsatisfied heart. Violence is the desperate pulsing of that tender fold between the legs, that precious cleft that shapes its own emptiness; violence is the restless turning of her limbs. This is the heart and core of all violence for which the rest is rude metaphor, rough deceiving, a lie born of abused passion and broken dreams. You want the true violence? Neglect her. Then bend your head to her breasts and rest it there, to hear that awful moan.

"Half in love with easeful death" is half in love with life still. She awakes shivering and I feel my lips surrender to a smile. I know too well that I might quiet her with the stroke of my hand even as its coldness shocks her, but let her wake just a little to the crude world of lamps and torn realities. Let her see her demon lover. Let her see these eyes adoring her. Let her know that in serving me she will make me utterly and completely her slave.

Have I ever failed? It's natural enough, that question. The world is rife with passionate women, so you wonder have they drawn back from me, fought, begged for reprieve? Has some dim alarm ever sounded in the depths of those heaving breasts? Weren't these women just a little frightened by this fervent gaze? Never. Forgive my laughter, you don't understand the promise of my caress.

They have struggled too long and in vain for union, these succulent mortal beauties, they've known the prisons of their own flesh too well. Observe the flare of those narrow hips, the subtle curve of the buttocks; these are but the contours of a dungeon cell. See how their love acts have so often resembled the quarrel, how they've thrashed and, alone afterwards, lain uneasy in half sleep.

Mine is the embrace that will penetrate that isolation, mine is the kiss that will delve to the root of the soul. She knows it, my bride; she knows it without my saying it; she knows it with an instinct that is all too human and that we immortals too quickly forget. Imagine her splendid terror and how easily it melts to languor in my arms. She is meek, pliant, on the verge of some awesome awakening. She hardly feels the little tear. The breath hisses low from between her pearl-white teeth, her eyelids show the barest gleam beneath the dark lash. She cannot know how my pulse quickens with her pulse, how my heart feeds upon her heart, how pulling me toward her, I draw the heated perfumed elixir from her with my own soul, pulling the cords of her being warm through her veins.

She is so warm.

Do I have to tell you how that smooth tight flesh of her arching back burns my fingers, how those taut nipples brand my chest? She is listless, fading. One arm drops to her side, hands close weakly on the lost coverlet and, turning from me even as she is given over to me, her eyes are veiled with her silken hair.

And yet my monster's eye charts her swoon. This is the union she has longed for, and with the cunning of the beast, I have let her go too soon. I measure her, I hold her, I tingle with the life she's given me and see her moist limbs as the vessel of my mounting passion, alive as I am with her life and soothed and tormented as she is with mine.

Nothing divides us now. Her fingers prod, I savor the groans, those piquant and spirited utterances. She's mine.

Ah, but you know the price of this modulation, this rhythm. She cannot imagine my thirst for her. If she placed her hand on the marble stone in the churchyard at midnight, she might begin to understand this harrowing loneliness and, with it, she would come to know my art. I draw back from her, aching for her. I hold her, this struggling sparrow in my easy grip.

How long will that taste of her content me? It is sweet to touch her bent neck, her tousled hair. But she's given me her life's blood; what am I to give in return?

Yes, I said the word, return. Perhaps all along, you've thought me some hard and simple monster who would trick her in her sublime pleasure and give her only darkness finally as her reward? You underestimate me, you fail to understand the fire and the fiber of my own dreams. And she's too tender to me, little bride. You misunderstand the whole affair.

Rather, I become the fount of secrets. I let her part the open shirt with her own hands. I can feel her lips, quivering, virginal, that touching eagerness, I let her taste, I let her drink, and she is wild. Now I can see the incandescence of a vampire in her eyes, a shimmer to that beguiling form. The clock ticks, the wind whispers in the passage. There is much for her to learn. But she is spent now with the first undulating wave and I am in no great haste to bring this to its close.

Rather, I lie like the bridegroom with her, as if accustomed to these mortal beds and their trappings, and I have time for mortal dreams. You know that we never forget it. Vampire, Nosferatu, Virdilak. What have we all in common? What separates our cloaked and smiling figures from the other unholy inhabitants of the monster realm? Simply this: that we all were and still are men.

So let me dream for a while. Let me be young. Let me become some anxious, urgent creature riding as I did in the days of brief life through the open country fields. I feel the horse under me, his striding power. The wheat blows in the wind. And through the shifting trees, I see the sun again, warm as by bride's blood; it falls on my face, on my hands. It is her blood that makes this real as I lie there, but even as the sky is shot with those swift gold-edged clouds, it's fading, fading. I must wake. I would lead my fledgling further on.

And she? She dreams as a vampire now. She stirs. And limp and somnolent, she falls into my waiting arms.

What would you have now? That is, if you were I?

Should I usher her into the timeless life on my own? I think not. Look at that superb young form; what does it cry for, if not for another woman equally as beautiful; if not for the craft of another lady-love, supple, scented and schooled by me? And waiting on these dreary winter nights as she always waits for the fledglings that I bring her, for what is always best when shared. This is a dance for three.

Imagine the patience of such a lady-love, dark-haired, succulent; is she petulant when she sees my new bride? What of the postulant herself in such encounters; does she spurn the skilled and nurtured woman to whom I present her? What do you think? Must I instruct my ladylove to flaunt her treasures? Oh, no. She bends with an unconcealed abandon and I see my new bride, afflicted, helplessly drawn. I wonder, would it give the master a little more pleasure if they did not go so willingly into each other's perfumed arms? A cold agony comes over me in watching the soft crush of breast to breast. I see their lips drinking one from the other with a mortal urgency I'd forgotten; they moan with some submissive sentiment I no longer know.

I cannot bear it any longer. I cannot be content with a feast only for my eyes. This is what I've waited for too long, slaves shaped to the will of the master, they may command me. I feel the prick of the hot skin again, that searing luxuriant gush, one and then the other of them, and back again, first my dark and sultry ladylove, then my shimmering bride. When will it ever end, when will I be permitted to rest? It seems these hearts so perfectly tuned now to my own will not release me, they will not permit me to withdraw. My mistresses are merciless. I was a kinder master. "Do you love me?" comes the plaintive question as I lead them. "Do you love me?" as I gaze into those glittering eyes. Their lips are blood red, fledgling teeth tease the tender flesh. "Do you love me?" comes the desperate entreaty as I gather them against my monstrous and lonely breast, lonely, lonely beyond their dazzling preternatural dreams. "Do you love me?" comes the whisper again, even as the sun dissolves the shadows. But their mute and smiling faces are pitiless. And, my anguishes complete, "Do you love me?" I implore them again.

[truffledmadness]

A Girl

Content notes: this thing is a holy mess, some of which is about gender, some of which is about sex/romance, all of which is extremely cishet, because it’s mostly personal narrative time up in here, and I’ve only got the one perspective.

I remember the first time I ever felt like A Girl. I was eighteen.

Okay, no, that’s not quite right. I’m AFAB and cis and until I was out of elementary school I felt entirely like a girl--Girl as opposed to Boy, and I was very much a princesses-and-flowers (and Elizabeth I) girl at that.

But then the primordial soup of puberty cooked and transformed me and everyone I was spending time with, and things changed. I always knew I was A Woman, or at least, I would be, but there was this THING, this thing to Being A Girl, and I wasn’t that. I was a female, a woman. I was just Truffles. But I wasn’t that. I didn’t think I’d ever be that.

It had a lot to do with a kind of glamour, as manifest in generic desirability and light mystery. When I say generic desirability, I don’t just mean sexual--I mean an air that meant, when you, A Girl, were out with other Girls, perhaps walking in a horizontal line at the mall, little old ladies would smile wistfully and think what a fine thing it was to be A Girl. Boys you hadn’t had a real conversation with would “ask you out.” What this meant when nobody had a car is confusing to me even now. You and your friends would trade clothes, because you were all the same size. The thinkpiece machine would wish you into a STEM career. Somehow, I could always tell the thinkpiece machine was fine, just fine, with me pursuing the humanities.

It wasn’t that I didn’t have a clump of female friends to lurk the mall with. I did, in varying combinations. But we were goth-adjacent nerds of various stripes and no one, but no one, would see us crouched in Books A Million and think we were indulging in the Mysterious Golden Times of Girlhood. We were just...us. Not mysterious. Not desirable. Maybe we were girls (at least one of us would later find they weren’t), but we weren’t Girls.

A guy friend of mine once asked me for romantic advice in high school. It was prefaced with “Hey, Truffles, you’re a girl...” I wasn’t as brave as Hermione. I didn’t sneer.

I thought I was ugly. I’ve concluded since that I’m probably not, even if I’m not Natalie Portman either, but I knew there was something that made me not-quite. I thought that thing was ugliness. In retrospect, it was probably a combination of the “wrong” clothes, anxiety, and autistic traits, plus my high school really was objectively awful.

But back to when I was eighteen. I was at a University Jewish Society thing with a friend, and a guy there asked the two of us to come to his frat house barbecue the next day. The clear implication was that he needed us to stand on his lawn as a sort of bait for new recruits, who would only want to go to a party if they could meet women, and he was willing to compensate us for our troubles in the form of a free meal and something amusing to do on a Sunday afternoon. The idea that my presence was even remotely plausible bait for potential frat recruits shook me to my socks.

This is humiliating to write, incidentally. It’s intimate and horrible and I feel like I’m splitting myself open to show my organs to the world and I’m doing it anyway, because I could have used a thing like this to read, back then.

These days, I am 25 years old, and I don’t particularly enjoy feeling like A Girl. It happens, from time to time, and I always feel like I’ve tricked people. “Ha! You are flirting with me because you think I’m that thing! I’m not, I’m not, I’ll never be, but I’ve TRICKED you!” My ex once implied I had less to be nervous from at a party where we didn’t know people than he did, because I was “a hot girl,” and such people were wanted at parties. I stored his exact words to send back to my former self, who would never believe me anyway.

So why am I even writing this? I don’t know. Except. Nobody ever talks to women about this. Maybe because Club Feminism has decided that too much pursuit is always worse than sexual invisibility, so we pretend the latter doesn’t exist on Our Side. (”If we admit it’s a problem, we have to give the Other Team points”) Maybe because I was quite young when I first read a guy complaining that ‘girls’ didn’t like him, and I was acutely aware that this guy would never, ever, want to go out with me.

Maybe because a woman can complain her particular crush doesn’t like her and it’s normal, but it’s a shocking and disgusting if she says she wants A Guy, Any Guy and is having trouble acquiring one. Men can say they want A Girlfriend and that’s perfectly normal.

Maybe because even in feminist circles, the experience of womanhood is still framed as such a passive thing. Maybe because it’s been my week for noticing a lot of sexual weirdness (like how “skinny-armed allegedly feminist man in horn rims who only wants to date blonde sorority girls” is a known stereotype, but another character I’ve run into quite a bit, “burly conservative WASP who is REALLY into liberal alterna-girls” is never EVER mentioned except once at an author talk I was at).

Maybe because I was a really sad kid--no, a sad girl, dammit--and I felt like a freak, and I am convinced, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that there are others out there, and half of them are at Feminist Club where they’ll be told that of course they’re experiencing near-constant sexual advances, and that’ll make it worse, and this is the only message in a bottle I can think to send.

[rhetoricandlogic]

The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead

EDITOR’S NOTE: Colson Whitehead’s novel The Underground Railroad won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction on Monday. Below is Jay Nordlinger’s review of the book from the October 10, 2016, issue of National Review. 

Colson Whitehead is an American novelist, born in 1969. He is one of the most praised and honored writers in the country. He has won a Guggenheim Fellowship, a MacArthur “genius grant,” etc. His latest novel been hailed in the Boston Globe as a “fully realized masterpiece.” President Obama announced that it was on his reading list. Oprah Winfrey picked it for her book club — which can mean a bonanza. 

(I never thought Al Franken was funny, before or after he was elected to the Senate, but I did smile on reading about the dedication of one of his books: “For Oprah.”) 

The New York Times published a lengthy excerpt of Whitehead’s novel. And reviewers’ copies came with an extraordinary letter, serving as the very first page of the book. The letter was from the editor in chief of Doubleday, who spoke of the book in near-historic terms. “To bring novels like this into the world is the reason we all chose this maddening profession.” UP NEXT UP NEXT In Political Skirmishes, Where are the Police? 00:43 00:54 Powered by Colson Whitehead is a beloved African-American writer who has now penned a sweeping novel of slavery. He is, in a sense, beyond criticism: a Morgan Freeman of letters. Yet he is a man, not a totem, and I bet he appreciates being treated as such. 

This novel, The Underground Railroad, is touched with greatness. It is also touched with okayness. It is an uneven book, with marvelous passages and un-marvelous ones. There are home runs and whiffs. I think of musicians who are brilliant one night and off the next. Other musicians are neither brilliant nor off, ever. 

Whitehead’s book is most successful when it tells its story. It is least successful, I think, when it teaches and preaches — like a social-studies teacher, being sure that you recognize America’s massive sins. Also, I think some of Whitehead’s moral and historical judgments are wrong. But I remember that it’s his book, not mine or yours. 

The Underground Railroad is the story of a young woman, a slave named Cora, who runs away from a plantation in Georgia. The story begins with her grandmother, Ajarry, who has been snatched from Africa. “Two yellow-haired sailors rowed Ajarry out to the ship, humming. White skin like bone.” Before long, her captors rape her. She twice tries to kill herself, “once by denying herself food and then again by drowning.” Telling his story of slavery, Whitehead uses the language of the time, and it can take some getting used to: “buck,” “pickaninny,” and, of course, the worst word of all, “nigger.” Children in slavery are relatively carefree, for a short time. Then they have the joy ground out of them, as Whitehead says. “One day a pickaninny was happy and the next the light was gone from them; in between they had been introduced to a new reality of bondage.” (Whitehead uses pronouns in a modern fashion.)

Let me give you one of the most beautiful, and striking, sentences in the whole book. It’s about a freedwoman who “was meticulous in her posture, a walking spear, in the manner of those who’d been made to bend and will bend no more.” 

In slavery stories, I find, as in Holocaust and other stories, all you need to do is tell it — without gilding the lily. The subject matter, and the attendant events, are horrible enough. Whitehead has one matter-of-fact statement that is a real stunner: “Lucy and Titania never spoke, the former because she chose not to, and the latter because her tongue had been hacked out by a previous owner.” I was stopped by another sentence too — one that explains that two dogs “had been beloved by all, man and nigger alike, even if they couldn’t keep away from the chickens.” In my ear, this echoes Twain (“We blowed out a cylinder-head.” “Good gracious! anybody hurt?” “No’m. Killed a nigger.” “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt”). 

On the plantation, there is non-stop sadism. One day, white people assemble for a picnic. The entertainment, to accompany their eating, is the sight of a black man being tortured to death. Ultimately, he is doused with oil and roasted. Whitehead writes, “The southern white man was spat from the loins of the devil and there was no way to forecast his next evil act.” By the way, the Underground Railroad, in The Underground Railroad, is not a metaphor. 

In due course, Cora makes a run for it, together with a fellow slave. For a while, the novel becomes a thriller. The runaways are chased by the evilest slave-catcher of all, Ridgeway, who, to add insult to injury, has a philosophy: “the American Imperative.” It is the American Imperative, he says, to kill, steal, enslave, and destroy. By the way, the Underground Railroad, in The Underground Railroad, is not a metaphor. It is literal: a network of subterranean tracks, complete with choo-choos, engineers, and so forth. There is such fancy in this novel (a novel being a good place for fancy). 

In South Carolina, the runaways have a respite, doing honorable work among decent white people — or decent-seeming. Actually, the whites are subjecting blacks to eugenics — well before Margaret Sanger. They are also injecting them with syphilis — well before the Tuskegee Experiment. It is in South Carolina, I think, that the narrative grinds to a halt, or at least slows considerably. The author takes to teaching and preaching. He is the social-studies teacher, with one didactic paragraph after another. The evil that Americans did to the Red Man, for example. (In point of fact, some evil ran both ways.) Can’t Whitehead assume that people know this? I was reminded of the sitcoms I grew up on in the 1970s and ’80s, not all of them produced by Norman Lear: always making sure that social points were driven home, in purse-lipped ways. 

As a rule, teaching in a novel should be accidental, I think, not bluntly striven for. 

Whitehead depicts black people strung up in trees, for miles and miles, as far as the eye can see. He dubs this “the Freedom Trail” — thus pouring irony and scorn on the real Freedom Trail, that path in Boston which leads a traveler past hallowed Revolutionary sites. 

In North Carolina, an Irish maid rats out her employers, Martin and Ethel, who have been harboring a fugitive slave (Cora). In explanation, she tells her friends, “A girl’s got to look after her interests if she’s going to get ahead in this country.” Is that the maid talking or Whitehead? I think Whitehead, really, more than his character. 

Earlier, I spoke of moral judgments — and my disagreement with the author. He mocks Ethel for her girlhood desire to serve as a missionary in Africa. Fair enough. Whitehead uses religion as a foil in this book. Again, fair enough. But he mocks the woman after she has been lynched — stoned to death — by a white mob. Is the mocking really necessary, at this point? In the margin of the page, I wrote, “Heartless.” 

Worse, Whitehead equates the white man who wants to rape the slave with the white man who wants to help her — because they both act from selfish purposes, wanting satisfaction. To Whitehead’s style, or modus operandi, I had this objection: Momentous events happen too abruptly, even nonchalantly. 

This book has a point of view, maybe even an agenda: America the misbegotten and irredeemable. The country was built by slaves, with no one else contributing a lick. A hero of the book — probably a spokesman for the author — says, “This nation shouldn’t exist, if there is any justice in the world, for its foundations are murder, theft, and cruelty. Yet here we are.” 

In the closing two pages, there is a suggestion of the parable of the Good Samaritan. Cora is by the side of the road, badly in need of help. A white couple passes her by (like the priest in the parable). Then comes a young man with red hair and blue eyes. He asks (unlike the Levite) whether the stranger needs help. She shakes her head no, and he moves on. Finally comes the Samaritan, so to speak: “an older negro man,” whose eyes are kind. 

I think back to the opening chapters on slavery — the capture of Ajarry, Cora’s grandmother; Cora’s life on the Georgia plantation. One effect they had on me was to make me wonder, What would I do, if I were enslaved? How much would I comply? How much would I rebel? How much would I risk? Would I run? No one can know the answers, I think. We are lucky enough not to be slaves. 

To Whitehead’s style, or modus operandi, I had this objection: Momentous events happen too abruptly, even nonchalantly. The discovery of a long-hidden fugitive, for example. It’s wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. We need a little . . . space, somehow. 

Also, you know how, in horror movies and other movies, the good guys leave the bad guy alive, instead of killing him off when they have the chance? And you’re screaming, “Don’t leave him alive, he’ll come back!”? The same kind of thing is liable to happen in novels. The calamitous return of the un-killed-off bad guy is a cliché.

I have spoken of one dragging part of The Underground Railroad, and there are others. But, on the whole, the book kept me turning pages. I wanted to find out what happened next. I turned fast, straight through to the end. This may seem like faint praise, especially in light of the treatment that this novel has been accorded. But it is not. Not in my book.

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/446644/colson-whiteheads-underground-railroad-mixes-greatness-moral-judgment