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faerune · 4 years

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all of the fun fact questions for naomi and one other of your choice!

tabby you are making me WORK thank you 💗🤧

— Naomi Which tropes do they fit? Which archetypes? I actually made a big list of her tropes when I was trying to nail her down:

Jerkass with a Heart of Gold

Alone with the Psycho

Cowboy C*p

Good Bad Girl

Hot-Blooded

Badass Normal

The Napoleon

Former Teen Rebel

Honor Before Reason

Red Oni/Blue Oni (subverted with Rebecca)

Deadpan Snarker

Cigarette of Anxiety

Like Brother and Sister + Vitriolic Best Buds (with Adam)

Huge Guy / Tiny Girl (with Nate)

Do they play any instruments? Sports? Naomi can play piano but stopped when she was in middle school. She played lacrosse, volleyball and track but track was always her favorite!

What are some items they always carry? Chapstick, hair ties, her gun and pepper spray, tissues, bobby pins, and a little pocket planner!

Do they collect anything? Books? I guess? Specifically poetry books. Also fluffy blankets.

What position do they sleep in? Usually curled up and wrapped in blankets like a burrito!

Which emoji would they use the most? 😐 or 🤨

What languages do they speak? A working knowledge of Spanish but that’s about it.

What’s their favorite expletive? Damn or shit lmao. Shit is frequently used by her when she’s tired and exasperated which is...often.

What’s their favorite candle scent? Anything fresh like spring forest, seaside linen or dryer sheet.

What songs remind you of them? Naomi’s playlist is so big but everything at once by Mothica is a great one.

Which animal would you say represents them? I don’t think I’ve actually thought about this. Some kind of a cat! A feral alley cat lmao.

What stereotypical high school clique would they fit into? Popular bad kids baby! Now? She’d be the quiet kid in the back.

What would their favorite ride at an amusement park be? The fastest, craziest roller coaster!

Do they believe in aliens? Ghosts? Reincarnation or something else? Aliens? She doesn’t really think about it but would probably shrug and say “probably”. She suddenly believes in a lot of things given the big supernatural reveal. Doesn’t believe in reincarnation or anything of the type.

Do they follow any religions/gods? Do they celebrate holidays? She was raised Catholic but like a C&E Catholic and never was really taken to church by Rebecca. Naomi celebrates the “typical” American holidays not out of any actual worship of any religion but just because it’s a habit and to get together with family.

Which Deadly Sin do they most correspond to? Which Heavenly Virtue? Pride and Diligence!

If you had to choose one tarot card to represent them, which would it be? The Hermit - inner guidance, soul-searching, introspection, isolation, loneliness - or Temperance - self-healing, realignment, balance, moderation, purpose!!

— Tess Which tropes do they fit? Which archetypes? Just to name a few:

Open Heart Dentistry

Beware the Nice Ones

All Girls Like Ponies

Took A Level in Badass

Berserk Button

I Did What I Had to Do

Do they play any instruments? Sports? Tess rode horses and participated in equestrian shows up until vet school! She played flute for a little bit in highschool for band but she didn’t really like it. She also played a bit of volleyball and softball.

What are some items they always carry? Hair ties, gauze/scissors/basic triage medical stuff if case someone gets hurt on a run, extra bullets, her pistol, spare pair of socks, a lighter, a pocket knife, granola bar or some kind of small snack.

Do they collect anything? Bottle caps and tourist magnets!

Usually curled up and wrapped in blankets like a burrito!Which emoji would they use the most? 🥰 or 💞

What languages do they speak? Spanish! She’s a little rusty but her father and her often spoke in it at home. Her brother is better at it though.

What’s their favorite expletive? Damn or shit!

What’s their favorite candle scent? Woodsy ones! She loves the Christmas ones that smell like really thick pine or like a camp fire. The floral ones make her sneeze but she likes any others tbh she’s not too picky.

What songs remind you of them? Sensible Heart by City and Colour

Which animal would you say represents them? A butterfly!

What stereotypical high school clique would they fit into? Does weird horse girl count as a click? I guess probably the athletes!

What would their favorite ride at an amusement park be? Tess would just like walking around with whoever she’s there with and playing the stall games!

Do they believe in aliens? Ghosts? Reincarnation or something else? Aliens she actually believes in! She thinks it’s interesting and people are kind of surprised someone has rational and sensible as her likes thinking about those conspiracy theories. She’s not super serious about it but she def thinks something is out there. Tess believes in ghosts or at least spirits and that’s why she tries to give people proper burials/put down walkers if she can and it won’t be a danger to her.

Do they follow any religions/gods? Do they celebrate holidays? Tess was raised pretty strictly Catholic! She does celebrate holidays when she can even though it’s a little hard during an apocalypse. Family is important to her and holidays were always about family and the people she loves so it’s important to her by extension.

Which Deadly Sin do they most correspond to? Which Heavenly Virtue? Wrath and Charity!

If you had to choose one tarot card to represent them, which would it be? The Star - hope, faith, renewal, spirituality, purpose, despair, self-trust, disconnection or The Empress - dependence on others, beauty, nature, nurturing, abundance.

#thewildmother #asks #WOO can't believe i finished this aklgsdjkg #oc: tess #oc: naomi

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lezliefaithwade · 4 years

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The Power of Poetry

When I was growing up, my father would often refer to my mother’s side of the family as though he were speaking in parenthesis. “Your mother’s sister…” or “Your mother’s aunt…” and to be fair, my mother did the same with my dad. Even as a child, the differences between their two worlds were shocking. My mother, nicknamed “Showboat” by my fraternal Grandmother, was both a breath of fresh air and shocking to the strong British stock my father heralded from. There was nothing capricious about the Wadley’s. My grandfather was a train engineer. My grandmother raised five boys during the Depression. They attended Anglican church regularly, played bridge, and ate their meals every night together around the dining room table. My mother’s family was another story. My paternal grandmother, after having already been widowed twice, lived in “sin” with an Italian cook who worked for my great-grandmother in her restaurant. She had flaming red hair, wore tight dresses, and loved a good time. I can’t ever remember a year my Nana wasn’t on a diet. I never saw her read a book, or cook a single meal – ever. I think she lived for trips to Florida where she and my grandfather would spend days at the pool and nights at the bar.

My parents were a kind of Romeo and Juliet, defying their parent’s wishes for the sake of love. One glance at their wedding pictures tells the whole story. A happy bride and groom stand with their arms entwined while decidedly unhappy in-laws, barely cracking a smile, are photographed outside of the church.

By the time my brother and I were born, we had become the branch on both sides of the family tree that didn’t really belong to either. We were the odd ones out. My mother’s family couldn’t figure out how Anglican children had penetrated their ranks, and my father’s family were apoplectic when they discovered that my brother and I had been enrolled in Catholic school. At Christmas as we opened our gifts inside the home my father grew up in, my grandmother could be heard to comment on the amount, the cost and the suitability of every item. By dinner time, my mother was counting the minutes until we would leave.

The disparity between the two families was never more evident than when my parents would ship us off to a relative when they were going through a particularly difficult rough patch. Most often a relative I didn’t know. Usually a childless female or lonely widow who at a party said in passing something like, “Lezlie is so precocious. I’d love to know what goes on in her mind.”

“Really?” my mother would ask and the next thing I knew I was at my cousin Cheryl’s or my Aunt Gwen’s.

Cheryl was an attractive woman with wispy blond hair and fine features. A staunch Catholic, she insisted I put a doily on my head then dragged me off to church where I became nauseous from heat and incense. Like many such relatives, Cheryl saw the weekend with me as an opportunity for indoctrination and spent hours reading bible stories about Jonah in the whale and Noah’s ark. Somewhere she missed the memo that I was already reading A Wrinkle in Time and had moved beyond the old Testament to Madeleine L’Engle. I came home insisting my parents never subject me to her good intentions again. Cheryl, now having proven my father’s point about how crazy my mother’s relatives were, would cause him to simply smile and say, “See, that’s what I’m talking about.”

Aunt Gwen was another story altogether. Universally considered “weird” by all my relatives, Gwen lived in a rather nice apartment in the Beaches. She wasn’t religious at all, but an alcoholic who kept her apartment dark and sombre. She’d serve me processes food, that I didn’t like, and once, when I was three, she took me to a funeral parlour. About a month later as my parents were driving past the establishment I blurted out, “I saw a man sleeping in there.” My mother just looked at my father and rolled her eyes. Over time they started keeping score against each other and the points were racking up.

By the time I was in Grade 5 my parent’s marriage was, not surprisingly, on rocky ground. It was probably even before that, but it was Grade 5 when I noticed it for the first time. Both sides of the family were poised for what seemed an inevitable split as I began a new school and a new classroom with my first male teacher, Mr. Koerner. Mr. Koerner didn’t like me. Or maybe to put it more accurately, he preferred the other girls in my class and most notably my best friend, Trinka. Trinka was beautiful, and poised and loved to colour code her notebooks. She cared about her clothes and her nails and had perfect posture. When she started a Greek Mythology card catalogue, she shot up in Mr. Koerner’s estimation as practically perfect. In terms of rank, there was Trinka, Anila, Diane, and then me. I was (before the term had even been coined) the “Duff”. I wore glasses, spilled food on my clothes, and was a decidedly bad influence on my best friend. When Trinka and I wrote a radio play about a murderer who chopped up his victims and flushed them down the toilet only to back up the entire city’s sewer system, it was my parents, not Trinka’s who got the call about how disturbing it was. My mother and father knew full well that I was influenced by Creepy Magazine (a series of comic books I loved reading) and thought nothing more of it.

Mr. Koerner did not like my mother, most notably because of two incidents that went all the way to the Superintendent of the school board. The first one occurred one morning when I mentioned in class that she had allowed me to watch the movie “Gypsy.” Never overly concerned with our ability to process movies, my parents frequently watched sophisticated films with my brother and me. They were always available for questions if there was something we didn’t understand and they never subjected us to anything we didn’t want to watch. So, when I happily explained the plot to my classroom one Monday morning during current events, Mr. Koerner was aghast. In front of my class-mates he publicly castigated my parents and humiliated me for what he deemed to be an inappropriate movie for a child of my age to watch (He clearly took issue with strippers). The second incident and probably much worse was the way he insinuated himself into my life when I got my first pair of contact lenses. I’d been wearing glasses since I was two, and by the time I got into grade 5 wearing contact lenses became a viable option…one recommended by my optometrist. Mr. Koerner was shocked the first day I arrived without my spectacles. He told me I was vain and blamed my mother for a decision he thought was not in my best interest. At this point my father got involved. He stormed down to the school and, as I understand it, scared the bejeezus out of Mr. Koerner. For the first time in a long while, my parents were getting along. At night I’d hear them as they shared their common dislike for the man my mother referred to as, “Larry”. I suddenly felt like I was in a version of Disney’s The Parent Trap. What began as me dreading school, turned into me hoping “Larry” would put his foot in his mouth yet again so my parents would come together as a team.

Mr. Koerner had, among his many idiosyncrasies, a penchant for keeping scrapbooks. They weren’t for public consumption, but rather books compiled of our work for his personal pleasure. One day for an assignment, I turned in the following poem:

They’ve all left now

Gone their separate ways

This house once filled with laughter

Must now face empty days

A cold breeze taps my shoulder

And I blink and turn around

I only hope I’ll have such love

For the new home that I’ve found.

Mr. Koerner gave me 90% for the poem with instructions to have it signed by a parent and then returned.

“Returned.” my mother said, “What for?”

“His scrapbook.” I replied between mouthfuls of mashed potatoes.

“What scrapbook?” my father asked.

“The one he keeps our stuff in.” I nonchalantly replied.

“For what purpose?” my father queried.

I shrugged my shoulders. “Beats me. He’s got tons of Trinka’s stuff in there is all I know.”

“Well,” said my mother, “He’s not getting this back.”

I choked. “What do you mean? Everyone has to return their work once it’s been signed.��

“Not this time.” My father chimed in. And that was that.

I loved that my parents were taking a stand as a united front. I did not like being the messenger.

The next day I turned up for school without the poem, hoping Mr. Koerner wouldn’t notice. At the end of the day he stopped me before I could sneak out.

“Lezlie, do you have your poem signed by your parents?”

“Oh, gee, I forgot it. I’ll bring it tomorrow,” I said and left for home.

The next day it was the same. And the day after that. By the end of the week Mr. Koerner was getting wise that something was up.

“Lezlie,” he asked, “What’s going on with the poem? I gave it to you to have signed and then returned. If you don’t bring it back, I’ll have to dock you your mark.”

When I told my parents that I was perilously close to losing my grade if they didn’t return the poem, they were furious.

“He knows what the mark is,” my mother exclaimed.

“Surely he’s recorded your grade already,” my father stated. “What the heck’s up?

In the meantime, my mother had copied the poem and sent it to every member of both her side and my father’s side of the family, selecting to tell them that I had written it and that my teacher was threatening to dock me my mark if I didn’t return it to him. Could they believe the injustice of it all?

For the first time that I can ever remember, there was a universal uproar from both sides. Even my cousin Cheryl and my Aunt Gwen called to tell my mother how unfair it all was. And the following week, when he threatened once more to dock me my grade, both my mother and my father went to the school to visit him. It was one of those pivotal moments when you know that things will either be better or worse for you, but will definitely not remain as they have been. An hour later when they returned, my father simply said, “Well, that’s that.” Apparently, my dad told Mr. Koerner that if he ever threatened me again about anything, he’d make it his mission in life to have him transferred. After that, my teacher pretty much ignored me and never asked for a single item of mine for his “scrapbook” ever again.

That year my parents seemed to be closer than ever and the day I found out I had Mr. Koerner for grade 6, I was secretly thrilled.

When my parent’s marriage did, in fact, dissolve a few years later, there was no villain left to unite them. Lines were drawn in the sand and sides were picked. Our weird family of four that had never really belonged to either side of the family, were now a family of three and even more conspicuously out of step.

Still, for two brief years I enjoyed the unification of my parents as they fought to protect me against a terrible teacher. And somehow throughout it all, I learned about the incredible power of the written word along with a new found love of poetry.

#poetry #teacher #family #student #growing up

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kamijoxversailles · 4 years

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Odd questions Monsieur?

1) sexual orientation.

Bisexual.

3) the one person who’s arms i’d like to be in.

Is no longer with us.

5) a description of my self-esteem.

It is generally very high~!

7) my favourite book.

Either “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” by Pierre Choderlos deLaclos, “The Romance of the Rose” by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, OR “The Three Musketeers” or “The Count of Monte Cristo” by Alexandre Dumas. They are all very different books, ranging from novel in letter-form about the naughty affairs of French aristocrats, to medieval epic romanctic poetry, to fanciful and thrilling adventures! I can’t choose just ONE book.

9) someone i miss.

Jasmine You

11) what i did yesterday.

Worked, and played piano unrelated to my work.

13) my favourite song right now.

Ordinary World by HYDE.

15) what i find attractive in a girl/boy. Man/woman

A good personality, knowledge or the desire to accquire knowledge, Enthusiasm/passion, self discipline. The ability to feel joy at small, seemingly insignificant things, such as the sight of a bumblebee sitting on a flower.

17) my favourite flavour of ice cream.

Rose or lavender.

19) what are my future plans.

Release Persona Grata (single) and Persona (album). Have concerts and tours, write more music.

21) the most embarrassing moment.

Injuring myself quite badly by falling off the stage, thus needing help to get back on and having to finish the tour seated down and with crutches.

23) a description of the girl/boy i like.

As I am not romantically invested in anyone right now, I am going to choose to describe a young woman I feel a deep, platonic love for.

She is in the spring of life, her pale skin reminiscent of the morning dew on a velvety rose petal. Her hair is like a waterfall of golden chestnut silk, all the way down to her slender waist. Her fingers are long and slender, delicate enough to conceal the strength in them. That strength is most apparent when she plays the violin, pressing the strings effortlessly and without pain. Her eyes, the soft, deep colour of an young tree, its bark still shining and smooth, sparkle like a crystal chandelier in sunlight when she laughs. She has lips that, like her skin, bring to mind a soft, velvety rose, though her lips bear an even closer likeness, because the rose gave them their colour as well.

25) how many kids i want in the future.

None.

27) my idea of a perfect date.

Something that shows my date’s passion, if I am the one who arranges it. If I am asked out, I appreciate coffee from a small, hidden gem of a coffee-shop, and a trip to a museum or art gallery, antique book shops, old churches and their graveyards.

29) what my last text message says.

“Send me a rough draft by tomorrow. Thank you!”

31) what i hate/hated the most about school.

The pressure they put on children to perform perfectly at all times, lest they be punished with a bad grade.

33) i’m loud, outgoing or shy.

I am outgoing.

35) if i still talk to my first crush.

Celebrity crush, yes, I do. We’re friends now. My very first non-celebrity crush, no. Once we graduated from high school, I never saw her again.

37) if i smile at strangers and why.

I always wear a face mask and sunglasses outside, so it doesn’t show anyway. But I smile to a large amount of strangers at my concerts~

39) my full name.

Kamijo Yuuji.

41) what colour underwear i’m wearing right now.

Bold assumption that I’m wearing underwear at all right now~

43) my relationship with my family.

Good, though I rarely meet them in person.

45) my favourite food.

Anything French, chiffon cake.

47) my celebrity crush.

*chuckles* Well, one of them has always been, and always will be, Sakurai Atsushi.

49) my worst perversion.

“Perversion is a type of human behavior that deviates from that which is understood to be orthodox or normal.“ -Wikipedia

By this definition, most of who I am is a perversion. I am a man who wears high-heeled boots. In the 18th century, this was normal. In the 21st, it’s by definition a perversion. I make music that is not mainstream music aimed at the general public. That, too, is by definition a perversion.

However, I suspect this question means perversion to be a thing of sexual deviancy. In which case, my worst perversion is an affinity for rope bondage and whips.

Merci~

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intervieweird · 4 years

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Academic Aesthetics

𝐫𝐞𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧𝐝 𝐛𝐨𝐥𝐝 𝐰𝐡𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐚𝐩𝐩𝐥𝐢𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐦𝐮𝐬𝐞 !

✟ DARK ACADEMIA ✟

Long black coats, thunder but no lightning, red wine, blood, forests in winter, a single guttering candle, latin, bones, all of history in your hands, Tchaikovsky, piles of old books, the hour before sunrise, complicated cravats, Hozier, true crime, Donna Tartt, secret diaries.

✟ LIGHT ACADEMIA ✟

Sunshine in shallow water, white cotton, lacy dresses, champagne, the plays of Oscar Wilde, summer rain, wind rustling the pages of a book, jacket over one shoulder, Maurice, frost covering new flowers, Florence + the machine, roses, bare feet, girls school, old books about species of plant or butterflies, biological Diagrams, flowers in your hair, perfect notes.

✟ CHAOTIC ACADEMIA ✟

Two top buttons undone, scribbled notes in pencil or biro, kill your darlings, untied laces, so much coffee, all nighters, crying in the library, Mozart, writing film scripts for fun, rain storms, moorland, swimming in the dark, movie soundtracks while studying, procrastination, muddy boots, unsent letters.

✟ GREY ACADEMIA ✟

Jane Eyre, sunrise, cold hands, perfect handwriting, beat gen, Edgar Allan Poe, crows, small animal bones, writing essays until 2am, Vivaldi, February or November, zodiacs, loving history and art, Leonardo da Vinci, Tamino.

✟ ROMANTIC ACADEMIA ✟

Billowing pirate sleeves, Lord Byron, theatre, violets, Achilles, reading poetry aloud, bloody cheekbones, love letters, doodling in class, Doc Martens, long ball dresses, gothic churches, Dead Poets Society, sword fights backstage, wind and mist and violent storms, tea, long journal entries, wide brimmed hats, museums.

✟ SPRING ACADEMIA ✟

Cotton shirts with large jumpers, celendines, Maypole dancing, reading short stories, old traditions, Jane Austen, new term, beautiful notes, pastel colours, period dramas, magpies, 2005 Pride and Prejudice soundtrack, new leaves, cold feet, dancing.

✟ SUMMER ACADEMIA ✟

Flower crowns, studying late while the sun is still up, full moons, parties outside, sun dresses, warm rainstorms, exam season, bare feet, ancient Greece, herb tea, singing to the radio, lying in the grass, bird song, biology textbooks, the Lord of the Rings, studying outside, Mystery of Love by Sufjan Stevens.

✟ AUTUMN ACADEMIA ✟

Foxes, dead leaves, large coats and scarves, old stone walls, steaming black tea, mist, travel journals, forgetting to study until the last minute, Frankenstein, old songs, nostalgia, carrying a book everywhere, Rebel Rebel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, soup, studying in the morning as the sun rises.

✟ WINTER ACADEMIA ✟

Long walks, misty breath, so much reading, shunning capitalist society, sad music, learning about witch hunts, philosophy, Wuthering Heights, mystery books, Dracula, black and white photos, transcribing music, old statues, silence.

✟ FERAL ACADEMIA ✟

Pin stripe jacket with jeans, Dionysus, “Norse” makeup, cold sweet tea, running through the forest, mythology, I got an unconditional so I don’t need to try hard, scraping the grades, shouty music, Hellenic polytheism, obsessive interests, reading a 500 page book in one sitting, love learning, hate the education system, vive la révolution.

Tagged by: @teamreeves (loved her aesthetics damn)

Tagging: @caravaggiovagabond, @eidolatria (any of them), @mercysought (emilie) and anyone else who wants to!

#meme.#long post //#(no read more we post to the dash like men)

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heavenburdened · 5 years

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GRIEVING, consumed with fear & mad with loneliness, eden finds himself more lost than ever ; and soon, like the distant stars and constellations he reads about in books, eden no longer seems to be part of this world. he imagines that he is made of the galaxies and nebulas —— light-years away and out of mind, out of sight ; drifting away peacefully in the cold vacuum of space & building his walls up high —— cementing them there, strong, as no one, not even once, comes to break them down. A LONELY PRINCE TRAPPED IN THE HIGHEST TOWER ; that’s what eden becomes yet again. yet he exudes a quiet unassuming warmth, for he is closer to the sun up here.

WHY HELLO THERE LOVELIES !!! i’m edie ( 23, she/hers, gmt+11, cat mum, literature nerd & tea enthusiast ) & my cute lil woc ass is so gosh darn excited to be a part of this muh’heckin amazing group ?!!?!?!??!?!?! i’m here with eden lovegrove ( and cha eunwoo’s heaven-sent face ????? can i get an amen ??!!!?? ) ; a #softnsadboi with a rrrrruff past who i’ll be introducing to you all right down below !!!!

DISCLAIMER : this ???????? is a heckin’ 1000-page novel. 2 ur left u will find refreshments n water —— pls stay hydrated whilst you read thru this !

[ ! ] CLICK HERE FOR A MOBILE VIEW ( less formatted for easier reading ! ) OF EDEN’S INTRO POST !

* ╰ APPLICATION !! ❜ ───

✧･ﾟ( atlas + cha eunwoo + cismale ) 𝒎𝒂𝒎𝒎𝒂 𝒎𝒊𝒂 !! have you seen ( eden lovegrove ) around ? ( he ) has been in kaos for ( one week ). the ( twenty-four year old ) is a ( journalist & freelance writer ) from ( wisconsin, usa ). people say they can be ( ascetic ) but maybe that’s not too bad ‘cause they can also be ( forbearing ). whenever i think of them, i can’t help but think of ( a wound too great ; that always has been & won’t heal, grief ; consumed by sorrow & mad with loneliness that yet still could not keep the boy from kindness, and softness ; emanating from starlight and filling him full to the bone ). ･ﾟ✧ ( penned by edie, 23, gmt+11, she/hers ).

* ╰ STATISTICS !! ❜ ───

basics

BIRTH NAME: eden park ADOPTED NAME: eden lovegrove BIRTH DATE: february 25th, 1995 ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: pisces AGE: twenty-four CURRENT LOCATION: kaos, greece NATIONALITY: american ETHNICITY: south-korean GENDER: cismale SEXUAL ORIENTATION: demisexual ROMANTIC ORIENTATION: homoromantic

background

BIRTH PLACE/HOMETOWN: wisconsin, usa ( birthplace & childhood residence ) —— manhattan, ny, usa ( late adolescence ) SOCIAL CLASS: lower class ( birth ), upperclass ( during late adolescence / adoption ), middle class ( present ) EDUCATION LEVEL: completed a journalism degree with honours at yale FATHER: franklin park MOTHER: dolores park SIBLINGS: matthew park, christopher park FATHER ( ADOPTIVE ): chet lovegrove MOTHER ( ADOPTIVE ): amelia lovegrove SIBLINGS ( ADOPTIVE ): everett lovegrove OCCUPATION & INCOME PRIMARY SOURCE OF INCOME: journalist ; writing articles for guardian u.s. SECONDARY SOURCE OF INCOME: freelance writing ; prose, poetry, essays, published in zines & online CONTENT WITH THEIR JOB? yes PAST JOBS: bookshop clerk, library assistant, florist SPENDING HABITS: very thrifty ; good at saving MOST VALUABLE POSSESSION: a faded photograph of himself and his first love, now passed away

appearance / physical information

FACE CLAIM: cha eunwoo HAIR COLOUR: black EYE COLOUR: brown BUILD: mesomorph DOMINANT HAND: left hand HEIGHT: 183cm WEIGHT: 76kg INK: none PIERCINGS: none ALLERGIES: shellfish DIET: vegetarian

psychology

MBTI: infp ENNEAGRAM: type 2 ; the helper MORAL ALIGNMENT: chaotic good DOMINANT TEMPERAMENT: melancholic PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE TYPE: verbal-linguistic & intrapersonal SOCIABILITY: medium EMOTIONAL STABILITY: stable DRUG USE: no ALCOHOL USE: yes PRONE TO VIOLENCE? no VIRTUES: ardent, profound, forbearing, sagacious VICES: reclusive, distracted, withdrawn, ascetic HOGWARTS HOUSE: ravenclaw ACCENT: manhattan accent FAVOURITES ACTIVITY: reading, baking, knitting, writing, going on walks ANIMAL: cats BEVERAGE: boricha / barley tea COLOUR: powder blue FOOD: yachae sundubu jjigae / spicy soft tofu and vegetable stew CELEBRATION: christmas MODE OF TRANSPORTATION: walking MUSICIANS: keaton henson, flyte, palace, the black skirts, banff, kelsey lu, matt maltese SCENERY: the ocean BOOKS: disoriental by négar djavadi, the uncensored picture of dorian gray by oscar wilde, when i hit you: or, a portrait of the writer as a young wife by meena kandasamy, brother by david chariandy, & 10 minutes 38 seconds in this strange world by elif shafak.

* ╰ THE STORY !! ❜ ───

eden’s biography is trigger heavy, with the following triggers —— religious fundamentalism, homophobia, racism, physical & emotional abuse.

CHAPTER ONE : THE LONELY PRINCE.

COLOURED BY AMBIGUITY and suspended in an air of INEXACTNESS from the moment he breathed his first breath, eden park was born into the world as a simple PLACE HOLDER between his older and younger brother —— caught in the middle, outshone on both sides, and quite often FORGOTTEN, even as a child.

in amongst frank and dolores park’s hopes and dreams for their eldest and youngest sons, eden learned terribly early on that his existence mattered VERY LITTLE to anyone at all —— for while the youngest son ( matthew ) was doted upon, fussed over and coddled, and the eldest son ( christopher ) was given the responsibility of shouldering the entire burden of the park family name [ a family with important ties to the church community in wisconsin ] ; eden seemed to FADE AWAY into the background —— more an OBSERVER of his family’s comings and goings than an ACTIVE PARTICIPANT in amongst it all. growing up, eden had no particular expectations placed upon him, nor was he deemed any specific role to play ; and so he often spent his time ALONE and off and WANDERING, DRIFTING from interest to interest ; from this to that, biding his time in the absence of his parents who had their hands full with matthew and christopher, and their devotion to the religion that had gotten them through the hardships & aftermath of the korean war.

where his home life was tainted with an estranged apprehension, when eden was old enough to start attending school he discovered that this new part of the world was no sanctuary for him either. his peers pulled at the corners of their eyes whenever he passed, called him yellow, and jeered at the unusual & pungent packed lunches he brought. as the real world gave the young boy no reprieve ; eden turned to books —— opening the covers and crawling inside the pages to feel safe and at peace. with each new page, he would escape the exhaustion of his family life, and the terrors of the society around him would all but fade away. by falling into the quiet blank spaces that separated the printed, parallel lines of black, eden found himself a sanctuary of utter calm and peace ; safe at last from a world that was too cruel and too loud for his heart to bear the burden of.

and so the days passed & darkened. ballet, books, and an overwhelming sense of BEING ALONE ; eden spent his days growing his mind & heart in SOLITUDE, quite nearly completely HEEDLESS of extremist religious views his parents and siblings propagated as the world spun madly on. eden’s ballet recitals : missed by his parents, morning mass went by without breathing a single word to anyone —— the middle bed, left untucked. SURROUNDED by so many people and still so estranged, eden never truly was a part of the family he’d soon fatefully grow to HATE.

the only sanctuary of hope and light for eden was the one he found in a friend, then confidante, then lover ; a boy he’d met in ballet class at 8.

the boy who changed everything for eden.

the boy he was caught kissing at 16 in the park family’s garden ; blood red roses blooming.

SCREAMING, A BODY BROKEN, AGONY SINKING INTO EDEN’S BONES.

FADE TO BLACK.

CHAPTER TWO : THE HEART CAN BEAT OR IT CAN BURN.

sixteen years old, and eden awakes to the sight of his lover standing over him with a smile. brown eyes fill with tears of relief & a chest so sore it could burst begins to shake with sobs. the tears clear eden’s vision ; and as he becomes more lucid, the vision of his lover fades away. ALONE IN A HOSPITAL ROOM, the boy scrambles to recollect the series of events that led to his arrival in the emergency room ; something buried deep in the labyrinth of his mind unsettling, warning him, letting him know that he’s not ready to remember. the nurses don’t look him in the eye, and the doctors reek of a sickening mixture of sympathy and pity. everything is raw, and horrid, and lonely, and eden can’t quite figure out the reason behind why his heart feels so terribly broken.

after three sleepless days and nights, a social worker visits eden —— relaying to him the chain of events that led to his broken body & weakened soul. the social worker tells eden of how he and his lover had been caught kissing among the flowers —— she tells eden of how his brother, matthew, had discovered them. then she tells eden of how his family had hatefully beat the only person he had ever loved into a coma ; and how when their rage had still not been satisfied, in a fury, they turned on their own son and brother.

THE WOUND IS TOO GREAT —— it always has been & it won’t heal, and eden’s cries rip through the hospital ward like a scream of agony. his tears make him tremble so violently he feels as if he were a rainstorm shook by lightning.

the recovery is a long & arduous one. knees grazed scarlet —— every night, eden PRAYS. he prays for his lover, he prays for his family, and he prays for god to change him ; to save him ; to cleanse him of his sin ; black, purple & blue covering every inch of his soft skin. most of all, though, eden prays that the loneliness and pain that grows inside his heart like a disease will cease spreading ; the boy’s pillow stained with tears as he cries himself to sleep each night.

mutilated, torn, tortured & etched away at, eden is alive, but he is nothing but a hollow body ; a home for little more than an agonised, sorrow-drenched soul.

just one week after the incident, eden’s partner passes away ; and eden is taken into the care of the state —— never to hear from his parents or brothers again ; safe at last from them.

CHAPTER THREE : I WILL NOT RAISE HELL; HAVE WE NOT ALL ALREADY SUFFERED ENOUGH? I WILL RAISE MY VOICE, AND I WILL RAISE CONSCIOUSNESS.

ten months after the incident, eden is adopted into a family by the name of lovegrove —— a family tainted with far too much darkness for eden to ever call home. the lovegroves are an all-american, white family with ties to the republican party ; with the head of the family, chet lovegrove, having strong political aspirations. the lovegroves adopt eden into the family as a move for positive press, believing that having a person of colour adopted into the family will make for a more empathetic family narrative.

and so it goes that eden park is given the new name of eden lovegrove, and once again, THE WORLD SPINS MADLY ON. while under the gaze of the public-eye chet and amelia lovegrove parade their new son eden around as if he were the sole pride of the family ( much to the chagrin of everett, the lovegrove’s biological son ), behind closed doors, they stand back and do nothing as everett calls eden words like chink, faggot, gook, fruitcake and coolie ; disdain and disgust dropping from every syllable like venom.

grieving, consumed with fear & mad with loneliness, eden finds himself more lost than ever ; and soon, like the distant stars and constellations he reads about in books, eden no longer seems to be part of this world. he imagines that he is made of the galaxies and nebulas —— light-years away and out of mind, out of sight ; drifting away peacefully in the cold vacuum of space & building his walls up high —— cementing them there, strong, as no one, not even once, comes to break them down. A LONELY PRINCE TRAPPED IN THE HIGHEST TOWER ; that’s what eden becomes yet again. yet he exudes a quiet unassuming warmth, for he is closer to the sun up here.

as eden grows from adolescence to adulthood —— though he leaves ballet in the past, where memories too painful to bear the burden of have no risk of being dredged up —— his love for books and writing never waivers even in the slightest. literature helps him understand himself as he comes to terms with the world around him, and writing helps him find a voice in a world where people keep trying to tell him what he ought to be. traumatised, a foreigner, a faggot, a stranger amongst his own family. an outcast, an orphan, a charity case. with his pen as a sword ; ink running like blood, eden finds his voice —— learning to use it to speak words of love and truth in a world that has only ever been cruel to him ; raising his voice so that it can be a light in the darkness.

high society life tastes bitter upon eden’s kind palette ; and though he is treated with nothing but malice within lovegrove manor or the high society around him, eden endures the trials and tribulations of his new life in order to use his predicament for his own benefit. rather than fixating on the cruelties of his adoptive family, eden decides to focus instead on the opportunities that have presented themselves ; using the money and the connections that the lovegroves possess in order to grow into someone that his lover, lost in wisconsin but forever in his heart, can be proud of.

a quiet renegade, eden decides to pursue journalism, graduating with honours from yale ; becoming a questioner of the common, and using his compassion and kindness and his love for words to grow into a safe-harbour for the voiceless. his first piece, an exposé on the callous and tokenistic life he has lived with the lovegroves, leaves him branded as a traitor by the family that took him in for their own devices ; and finally, after being cast out in shame, eden finds himself free at last.

the name lovegrove suits him well, however ; love becoming him, love consuming him —— and so he keeps his adoptive surname, wearing it like a battle wound for all the world to see. writing of people’s stories, in search of the truth, kind, but lonely, this is the way that eden lovegrove spends his days.

ink-stained fingers & a sorrow-drenched soul that only wants to heal ; the stars, the moon, a study of the human condition through prose and endless essays. a journalist at guardian u.s., and a freelance writer, eden lovegrove is an ink splatter of words thrown against kaleidoscopic feelings —— messy, hurt, lost, ardent, sincere, broken, human, and so much stronger than he knows.

WHERE ONE STORY ENDS, ANOTHER BEGINS : ATLAS IN OLYMPUS.

“ SOMETIMES I GET THESE VISIONS — HORRIBLE VISIONS OF INEXPLICABLE VIOLENCE, GRIEF & SORROW [ … ] LIKE REMNANTS OF A PAST LIFE BLEEDING INTO MY PRESENT. ”

over the course of the past six months, eden has started experiencing some truly horrendous nightmares —— these terrors sometimes even creeping past the border of sleep, haunting him in visions during hours of waking.

trauma from the park household, trauma from the lovegrove family ; that’s what eden believes, and that’s what his therapist believes. how could they know that these visions are actually coming from a past life ? one where eden was condemned to hold up the celestial heavens for eternity, as atlas.

“ TAKE A BREAK, SON. A VACATION. THE WORLD WILL STILL BE HERE TO WRITE ABOUT WHEN YOU GET BACK. YOU GOT A GIRL ? TAKE HER SOME PLACE NICE. ”

eden doesn’t know how to tell his editor that he’s never had a girl, and nor will he ever. but the vacation doesn’t sound like too terrible an idea —— so eden packs up his belongings, and asks a man at the airport counter what the cheapest & earliest flight to someplace nice would be. KAOS, the man says. the island of kaos. and just like that, atlas finds his way to olympus.

eden’s toes curl gently into a horizon of golden sands ; soft waves lapping at his feet as he relearns how to breathe. a softness emanates from the setting sun ; filling the broken man, full, to the bone. the world is wide —— and for the first time in his life, on this strange and beautiful island called kaos, eden feels like he might be in exactly the right place at exactly the right time.

since arriving in kaos one week ago eden’s nightmares have been getting worse ; and the visions, strange, violent, and full of glimpses of sorrow, split his head with migraines —— yet curiously, eden does not feel as if he is breaking —— on the contrary, it feels as if he is on the very edge of awakening.

–— AAAAAND, SCENE !!!!

i’ll get to posting some replies to starters & interacting tomorrow ( because i’m eXHAUSTED after an excruciatingly horrendous day at work today ), but please like this post if you’d like to plot something up ??? OR LITERALLY JUST slide into my dms and throw headcanons for our muses at me pls ?! bc i’m awfully awkward and idk ?? how ?? to aPPROACH PEOPLE for plotting !!!!!

okie bye i’m going to go make some dinner and then shall slumber for 2000 years, but ilu all already and am so excited !!!! to start !!!! writing !!!!!

#kaos:intro #IDEALLY this would include a tl;dr because it is #....... a straight up novel !#but dinner and then a vERY early night of sleep beckons me so perhaps i will post one tomorrow !#ilu all !#* ╰  we rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should ❜  ─── ( muse )

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blackkudos · 6 years

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James Baldwin

James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an African-American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic. His essays, as collected in Notes of a Native Son (1955), explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th-century America, and their inevitable if unnameable tensions. Some Baldwin essays are book-length, for instance The Fire Next Time (1963), No Name in the StreJames Baldwinet (1972), and The Devil Finds Work (1976).

Baldwin's novels and plays fictionalize fundamental personal questions and dilemmas amid complex social and psychological pressures thwarting the equitable integration not only of blacks, but also of gay and bisexual men, while depicting some internalized obstacles to such individuals' quests for acceptance. Such dynamics are prominent in Baldwin's second novel, Giovanni's Room, written in 1956 well before gay rights were widely espoused in America.

Early life

Baldwin was born after his mother, Emma Berdis Jones, left his biological father because of his drug abuse and moved to Harlem, New York City. There, she married a preacher, David Baldwin. The family was very poor.

Baldwin spent much time caring for his several younger brothers and sisters. At the age of 10, he was teased and abused by two New York police officers, an instance of racist harassment by the NYPD that he would experience again as a teenager and document in his essays. His adoptive father, whom Baldwin in essays called simply his father, appears to have treated him — by comparison with his siblings — with great harshness.

His stepfather died of tuberculosis in summer of 1943 just before Baldwin turned 19. The day of the funeral was Baldwin's 19th birthday, the day his father's last child was born, and the day of the Harlem Riot of 1943, which was portrayed at the beginning of his essay "Notes of a Native Son". The quest to answer or explain family and social rejection—and attain a sense of selfhood, both coherent and benevolent—became a leitmotiv in Baldwin's writing.

Education

James attended P.S. 24 on 128th Street between Fifth and Madison in Harlem where he wrote the school song, which was used until the school closed down. His middle school years were spent at Frederick Douglass Junior High where he was influenced by poet Countee Cullen, a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance, and was encouraged by his math teacher to serve as editor of the school newspaper, The Douglass Pilot. He then went on to DeWitt Clinton High School, in the Bronx's Bedford Park section. There, along with Richard Avedon, he worked on the school magazine as literary editor but disliked school because of the constant racial slurs.

Religion

The difficulties of his life, including his stepfather's abuse, led Baldwin to seek solace in religion. At the age of 14 he attended meetings of the Pentecostal Church and, during a euphoric prayer meeting, he converted and became a junior Minister. Before long, at the Fireside Pentecostal Assembly, he was drawing larger crowds than his stepfather had done in his day. At 17, however, Baldwin came to view Christianity as based on false premises and later regarded his time in the pulpit as a way of overcoming his personal crises.

Baldwin once visited Elijah Muhammad, leader of the Nation of Islam, who inquired about Baldwin's religious beliefs. He answered, "I left the church 20 years ago and haven't joined anything since." Elijah asked, "And what are you now?" Baldwin explained, "Now? Nothing. I'm a writer. I like doing things alone." Still, his church experience significantly shaped his worldview and writing. Baldwin reflected that "being in the pulpit was like working in the theater; I was behind the scenes and knew how the illusion was worked."

Baldwin accused Christianity of reinforcing the system of American slavery by palliating the pangs of oppression and delaying salvation until a promised afterlife. Baldwin praised religion, however, for inspiring some American blacks to defy oppression. He once wrote, "If the concept of God has any use, it is to make us larger, freer, and more loving. If God can't do that, it's time we got rid of him". Baldwin publicly described himself as not religious. However, at his funeral, an a cappella recording of Baldwin singing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" was played.

Greenwich Village

When Baldwin was 15, his high-school running buddy, Emile Capouya, skipped school one day and, in Greenwich Village, met Beauford Delaney, a painter. Capouya gave Baldwin Delaney's address and suggested paying him a visit. Baldwin, who was at the time working after school in a sweatshop on nearby Canal Street, visited Beauford at 181 Greene Street. Beauford became a mentor to Baldwin; it was under Beauford's influence that he came to believe a black person could be an artist.

While working odd jobs, Baldwin wrote short stories, essays, and book reviews, some of them collected in the volume Notes of a Native Son (1955). He befriended the actor Marlon Brando in 1944 and the two were roommates for a time. They would remain friends for more than 20 years.

Expatriation

During his teenage years in Harlem and Greenwich Village, Baldwin started to realize that he was gay. In 1948, he walked into a restaurant where he knew he would not be served. When the waitress explained that black people were not served at the establishment, Baldwin threw a glass of water at her, shattering the mirror behind the bar. As a result of being disillusioned by American prejudice against blacks and gays, he left the United States at the age of 24 and settled in Paris, France. His flight was not just a desire to distance himself from American prejudice, but to see himself and his writing beyond an African-American context. Baldwin did not want to be read as "merely a Negro; or, even, merely a Negro writer". Also, he left the United States desiring to come to terms with his sexual ambivalence and flee the hopelessness that many young African-American men like himself succumbed to in New York.

In Paris, Baldwin was soon involved in the cultural radicalism of the Left Bank. His work started to be published in literary anthologies, notably Zero, which was edited by his friend Themistocles Hoetis and which had already published essays by Richard Wright.

He would live in France for most of his later life. He would also spend some time in Switzerland and Turkey. During his life and after it, Baldwin would be seen not only as an influential African-American writer but also as an influential exile writer, particularly because of his numerous experiences outside the United States and the impact of these experiences on Baldwin's life and his writing.

Saint-Paul-de-Vence

Baldwin settled in Saint-Paul-de-Vence in the south of France in 1970, in an old Provençal house beneath the ramparts of the famous village. His house was always open to his friends, who frequently visited him while on trips to the French Riviera. American painter Beauford Delaney made Baldwin's house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence his second home, often setting up his easel in the garden. Delaney painted several colourful portraits of Baldwin. Actors Harry Belafonte and Sidney Poitier were also regular house guests.

Many of Baldwin's musician friends dropped in during the Nice and Juan-les-Pins Jazz Festivals: Nina Simone, Josephine Baker (whose sister lived in Nice), Miles Davis, and Ray Charles, for whom he wrote several songs. In his autobiography, Miles Davis wrote:

I'd read his books and I liked and respected what he had to say. When I got to know him better, Jimmy and I opened up to each other. We became great friends. Every time I was in the South of France, in Antibes, I would spend a day or two at his villa in Saint-Paul-de-Vence. We'd get comfy in that beautiful, big house and he would tell us all sorts of stories...He was a great man.

Baldwin learned to speak French fluently and developed friendships with French actor Yves Montand and French writer Marguerite Yourcenar, who translated Baldwin's play The Amen Corner.

His years in Saint-Paul-de-Vence were also years of work. Sitting in front of his sturdy typewriter, his days were devoted to writing and to answering the huge amount of mail he received from all over the world. He wrote several of his last works in his house in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, including Just Above My Head in 1979 and Evidence of Things Not Seen in 1985. It was also in his Saint-Paul-de-Vence house that Baldwin wrote his famous "Open Letter to My Sister, Angela Y. Davis" in November 1970.

Literary career

In 1953, Baldwin's first novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain, a semi-autobiographical bildungsroman, was published. His first collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son appeared two years later. He continued to experiment with literary forms throughout his career, publishing poetry and plays as well as the fiction and essays for which he was known.

Baldwin's second novel, Giovanni's Room, caused great controversy when it was first published in 1956 due to its explicit homoerotic content. Baldwin was again resisting labels with the publication of this work: despite the reading public's expectations that he would publish works dealing with the African-American experience, Giovanni's Room is predominantly about white characters. Baldwin's next two novels, Another Country and Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone, are sprawling, experimental works dealing with black and white characters and with heterosexual, gay, and bisexual characters. These novels struggle to contain the turbulence of the late 1950s and the early 1960s: they are saturated with a sense of violent unrest and outrage.

Baldwin's lengthy essay "Down at the Cross" (frequently called The Fire Next Time after the title of the book in which it was published) similarly showed the seething discontent of the 1960s in novel form. The essay was originally published in two oversized issues of The New Yorker and landed Baldwin on the cover of Time magazine in 1963 while Baldwin was touring the South speaking about the restive Civil Rights movement. Around the time of publication of The Fire Next Time, Baldwin became a known spokesperson for civil rights and a celebrity noted for championing the cause of black Americans. He frequently appeared on television and delivered speeches on college campuses. The essay talked about the uneasy relationship between Christianity and the burgeoning Black Muslim movement. After publication, several black nationalists criticized Baldwin for his conciliatory attitude. They questioned whether his message of love and understanding would do much to change race relations in America. The book was eagerly consumed by whites looking for answers to the question: What do blacks really want? Baldwin's essays never stopped articulating the anger and frustration felt by real-life black Americans with more clarity and style than any other writer of his generation. Baldwin's next book-length essay, No Name in the Street, also discussed his own experience in the context of the later 1960s, specifically the assassinations of three of his personal friends: Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Baldwin's writings of the 1970s and 1980s have been largely overlooked by critics, though even these texts are beginning to receive attention. Several of his essays and interviews of the 1980s discuss homosexuality and homophobia with fervor and forthrightness. Eldridge Cleaver's harsh criticism of Baldwin in Soul on Ice and elsewhere and Baldwin's return to southern France contributed to the sense that he was not in touch with his readership. Always true to his own convictions rather than to the tastes of others, Baldwin continued to write what he wanted to write. As he had been the leading literary voice of the civil rights movement, he became an inspirational figure for the emerging gay rights movement. His two novels written in the 1970s, If Beale Street Could Talk and Just Above My Head, placed a strong emphasis on the importance of black families, and he concluded his career by publishing a volume of poetry, Jimmy's Blues, as well as another book-length essay, The Evidence of Things Not Seen, which was an extended meditation inspired by the Atlanta Child Murders of the early 1980s.

Social and political activism

Baldwin returned to the United States in the summer of 1957 while the Civil Rights Act of that year was being debated in Congress. He had been powerfully moved by the image of a young girl braving a mob in an attempt to desegregate schools in Charlotte, N.C., andPartisan Review editor Philip Rahv had suggested he report on what was happening in the American south. Baldwin was nervous about the trip but he made it, interviewing people in Charlotte (where he met Martin Luther King), and Montgomery, Alabama. The result was two essays, one published in Harper's magazine ("The Hard Kind of Courage"), the other in Partisan Review ("Nobody Knows My Name"). Subsequent Baldwin articles on the movement appeared in Mademoiselle, Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, and The New Yorker, where in 1962 he published the essay that he called "Down at the Cross" and the New Yorker called "Letter from a Region of My Mind". Along with a shorter essay from The Progressive, the essay became The Fire Next Time.

While he wrote about the movement, Baldwin aligned himself with the ideals of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1963 he conducted a lecture tour of the South for CORE, traveling to locations like Durham and Greensboro, North Carolina and New Orleans, Louisiana. During the tour, he lectured to students, white liberals, and anyone else listening about his racial ideology, an ideological position between the "muscular approach" of Malcolm X and the nonviolent program of Martin Luther King, Jr.. Baldwin expressed the hope that Socialism would take root in the United States.

By the spring of 1963, Baldwin had become so much a spokesman for the Civil Rights Movement that for its May 17 issue on the turmoil in Birmingham, Alabama, Time magazine put James Baldwin on the cover. "There is not another writer," said Time, "who expresses with such poignancy and abrasiveness the dark realities of the racial ferment in North and South." In a cable Baldwin sent to Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy during the crisis, Baldwin blamed the violence in Birmingham on the FBI, J. Edgar Hoover, Mississippi Senator James Eastland, and President Kennedy for failing to use "the great prestige of his office as the moral forum which it can be." Attorney General Kennedy invited Baldwin to meet with him over breakfast, and that meeting was followed up with a second, when Kennedy met with Baldwin and others Baldwin had invited to Kennedy's Manhattan apartment (see Baldwin–Kennedy meeting). This meeting is discussed in Howard Simon's 1999 play, "James Baldwin: A Soul on Fire" The delegation included Kenneth B. Clark, a psychologist who had played a key role in the Brown v. Board of Education decision; actor Harry Belafonte, singer Lena Horne, writer Lorraine Hansberry, and activists from civil rights organizations. Although most of the attendees of this meeting left feeling "devastated," the meeting was an important one in voicing the concerns of the civil rights movement and it provided exposure of the civil rights issue not just as a political issue but also as a moral issue.

James Baldwin’s FBI file contains 1,884 pages of documents, collected from 1960 until the early 1970s. During that era of illegal surveillance of American writers, the FBI accumulated 276 pages on Richard Wright, 110 pages on Truman Capote, and just nine pages on Henry Miller.

Baldwin also made a prominent appearance at the Civil Rights March on Washington, D.C. on August 28, 1963, with Belafonte and long-time friends Sidney Poitier and Marlon Brando. The civil rights movement was hostile to homosexuals. The only known gay men in the movement were James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin. Rustin and King were very close, as Rustin received credit for the success of the March on Washington. Many were bothered by Rustin's sexual orientation. King himself spoke on the topic of sexual orientation in a school editorial column during his college years, and in reply to a letter during the 1950s, where he treated it as a mental illness which an individual could overcome (the common view of the time). The pressure later resulted in King distancing himself from both men. At the time, Baldwin was neither in the closet nor open to the public about his sexual orientation. Later on, Baldwin was conspicuously uninvited to speak at the end of the March on Washington. After a bomb exploded in a Birmingham church not long after the March on Washington, Baldwin called for a nationwide campaign of civil disobedience in response to this "terrifying crisis." He traveled to Selma, Alabama, where SNCC had organized a voter registration drive; he watched mothers with babies and elderly men and women standing in long lines for hours, as armed deputies and state troopers stood by—or intervened to smash a reporter's camera or use cattle prods on SNCC workers. After his day of watching, he spoke in a crowded church, blaming Washington—"the good white people on the hill." Returning to Washington, he told a New York Post reporter the federal government could protect Negroes—it could send federal troops into the South. He blamed the Kennedys for not acting. In March 1965, Baldwin joined marchers who walked 50 miles from Selma, Alabama, to the capitol in Montgomery under the protection of federal troops.

Nonetheless, he rejected the label "civil rights activist", or that he had participated in a civil rights movement, instead agreeing with Malcolm X's assertion that if one is a citizen, one should not have to fight for one's civil rights. In a 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?, Baldwin refuted the idea that the civil rights movement was an outright revolution, instead calling it "a very peculiar revolution because it has to...have its aims the establishment of a union, and a...radical shift in the American mores, the American way of life...not only as it applies to the Negro obviously, but as it applies to every citizen of the country." In a 1979 speech at UC Berkeley, he called it, instead, "the latest slave rebellion."

In 1968, Baldwin signed the “Writers and Editors War Tax Protest” pledge, vowing to refuse tax payments in protest against the Vietnam War.

Inspiration and relationships

As a young man, Baldwin's poetry teacher was Countee Cullen.

A great influence on Baldwin was the painter Beauford Delaney. In The Price of the Ticket (1985), Baldwin describes Delaney as

...the first living proof, for me, that a black man could be an artist. In a warmer time, a less blasphemous place, he would have been recognized as my teacher and I as his pupil. He became, for me, an example of courage and integrity, humility and passion. An absolute integrity: I saw him shaken many times and I lived to see him broken but I never saw him bow.

Later support came from Richard Wright, whom Baldwin called "the greatest black writer in the world." Wright and Baldwin became friends, and Wright helped Baldwin secure the Eugene F. Saxon Memorial Award. Baldwin's essay "Notes of a Native Son" and his collection Notes of a Native Son allude to Wright's novel Native Son. In Baldwin's 1949 essay "Everybody's Protest Novel", however, he indicated that Native Son, like Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, lacked credible characters and psychological complexity, and the friendship between the two authors ended. Interviewed by Julius Lester, however, Baldwin explained, "I knew Richard and I loved him. I was not attacking him; I was trying to clarify something for myself." In 1965, Baldwin participated in a debate with William F. Buckley, on the topic of whether the American dream has adversely affected African Americans. The debate took place at The Cambridge Union in the UK. The spectating student body voted overwhelmingly in Baldwin's favour.

In 1949 Baldwin met and fell in love with Lucien Happersberger, aged 17, though Happersberger's marriage three years later left Baldwin distraught. Happersberger died on August 21, 2010, in Switzerland.

Baldwin was a close friend of the singer, pianist, and civil rights activist Nina Simone. With Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry, Baldwin helped awaken Simone to the civil rights movement then gelling. Baldwin also provided her with literary references influential on her later work. Baldwin and Hansberry met with Robert F. Kennedy, along with Kenneth Clark and Lena Horne and others (see Baldwin–Kennedy meeting) in an attempt to persuade Kennedy of the importance of civil rights legislation. Kennedy referred to Baldwin as "Martin Luther Queen" throughout his life.

Baldwin influenced the work of French painter Philippe Derome, whom he met in Paris in the early 1960s. Baldwin also knew Marlon Brando, Charlton Heston, Billy Dee Williams, Huey P. Newton, Nikki Giovanni, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jean Genet (with whom he campaigned on behalf of the Black Panther Party), Lee Strasberg, Elia Kazan, Rip Torn, Alex Haley, Miles Davis, Amiri Baraka, Martin Luther King, Jr., Dorothea Tanning , Leonor Fini, Margaret Mead, Josephine Baker, Allen Ginsberg, Chinua Achebe and Maya Angelou. He wrote at length about his "political relationship" with Malcolm X. He collaborated with childhood friend Richard Avedon on the book Nothing Personal, which is available for public viewing at the Schomburg Center in Harlem.

Maya Angelou called Baldwin her "friend and brother", and credited him for "setting the stage" for her 1969 autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Baldwin was made a Commandeur de la Légion d'Honneur by the French government in 1986.

Baldwin was also a close friend of Nobel Prize-winning novelist Toni Morrison. Upon his death, Morrison wrote a eulogy for Baldwin that appeared in The New York Times. In the eulogy, entitled "Life in His Language," Morrison credits Baldwin as being her literary inspiration and the person who showed her the true potential of writing. She writes,

"You knew, didn't you, how I needed your language and the mind that formed it? How I relied on your fierce courage to tame wildernesses for me? How strengthened I was by the certainty that came from knowing you would never hurt me? You knew, didn't you, how I loved your love? You knew. This then is no calamity. No. This is jubilee. 'Our crown,' you said, 'has already been bought and paid for. All we have to do,' you said, 'is wear it.'"

Death

Early on December 1, 1987, (some sources say late on November 30) Baldwin died from stomach cancer in Saint-Paul-de-Vence, France. He was buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, near New York City.

Legacy

Baldwin's influence on other writers has been profound: Toni Morrison edited the Library of America two-volume editions of Baldwin's fiction and essays, and a recent collection of critical essays links these two writers.

One of Baldwin's richest short stories, "Sonny's Blues", appears in many anthologies of short fiction used in introductory college literature classes.

In 1986, within the work The Story of English, Robert MacNeil, with Robert McCrum and William Cran, mentioned James Baldwin as an influential writer of African-American Literature, on the level of Booker T. Washington, and held both men up as prime examples of Black writers.

In 1987, Kevin Brown, a photo-journalist from Baltimore, founded the National James Baldwin Literary Society. The group organizes free public events celebrating Baldwin's life and legacy.

In 1992, Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, established the James Baldwin Scholars program, an urban outreach initiative, in honor of Baldwin, who taught at Hampshire in the early 1980s. The JBS Program provides talented students of color from underserved communities an opportunity to develop and improve the skills necessary for college success through coursework and tutorial support for one transitional year, after which Baldwin scholars may apply for full matriculation to Hampshire or any other four-year college program.

In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante included James Baldwin on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans.

In 2005, the USPS created a first-class postage stamp dedicated to Baldwin, which featured him on the front, with a short biography on the back of the peeling paper.

In 2012 James Baldwin was inducted into the Legacy Walk, an outdoor public display that celebrates LGBT history and people.

In 2014 128th Street, between Fifth and Madison Avenues, was named "James Baldwin Place" to celebrate Baldwin's 90th Birthday. He lived in the neighborhood and attended P.S. 24. Readings of Baldwin's writing were held at The National Black Theatre and a month long art exhibition featuring works by New York Live Arts and artist Maureen Kelleher. The events were attended by Council Member Inez Dickens, who lead the campaign to honor Harlem native son, Baldwin's family, leaders in theatre and film, and members of the community.

Works

Go Tell It on the Mountain (semi-autobiographical novel; 1953)

The Amen Corner (play; 1954)

Notes of a Native Son (essays; 1955)

Giovanni's Room (novel; 1956)

Nobody Knows My Name: More Notes of a Native Son (essays; 1961)

Another Country (novel; 1962)

A Talk to Teachers (essay; 1963)

The Fire Next Time (essays; 1963)

Blues for Mister Charlie (play; 1964)

Going to Meet the Man (stories; 1965)

Tell Me How Long the Train's Been Gone (novel; 1968)

No Name in the Street (essays; 1972)

If Beale Street Could Talk (novel; 1974)

The Devil Finds Work (essays; 1976)

Just Above My Head (novel; 1979)

Jimmy's Blues (poems; 1983)

The Evidence of Things Not Seen (essays; 1985)

The Price of the Ticket (essays; 1985)

The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings (essays; 2010)

Jimmy's Blues and Other Poems (poems; 2014)

Together with others:

Nothing Personal (with Richard Avedon, photography) (1964)

A Rap on Race (with Margaret Mead) (1971)

One Day When I Was Lost (orig.: A. Haley; 1972)

A Dialogue (with Nikki Giovanni) (1973)

Little Man Little Man: A Story of Childhood (with Yoran Cazac, 1976)

Native Sons (with Sol Stein, 2004)

Music/Spoken Word Recording:

A Lover's Question (CD, Les Disques Du Crépuscule – TWI 928-2, 1990)

Wikipedia

#James Baldwin

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rainbowlaughs55 · 5 years

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Writing Therapy Ideas

Painting, reflecting your feelings into words, you start to see your snippets of crowded thoughts into a clearer picture. Some people like to sing, draw or exercise to cope with stress and depression. I am attracted to writing because it gets every single detail of my complex mind into perspectives. I enjoy writing as a hobby and also develop it as a therapeutic approach.

So during Thailand long Songkran weekend, I sat down with my bullet journal and a few coloured pens and a list of writing ideas for mental health.

1. Writing in your diary

Do it every night. Write down how you feel. Unlike social media, a book or a word processor software is your best friend whom you can share your experience in an honest way. It doesn't matter how beautiful your words are, you just gotta write down. It helps me to go to bed with less anxiety because writing is like painting clouds and letting them fly far away.

2. Write lyrics

Yes, as a pianist I enjoy improvising new melodies on the piano and just sing along. That is how I can get the ideas for lyrics straight away. Writing lyrics is a powerful platform to express passion and deep feelings - a great way to breakthrough emotional distress.

One game you can play with it is to listen to melodies in a language that you don't know, or just listen to instrumental songs. Then, you can write in a sentence telling how that sound makes you feel as a kick start to your lyrics and telling a story through a song.

3. Poetry

Writing poems is fun. It is like playing a game too. You know the theme of your piece of writing, and you have to express that through the patterns of sounds. It is a way to pour out your feelings into a place - helps to calm your mind.

4. Write a caption to a photograph/ picture

Maybe it can be a picture from your phone, or from the internet that reminds you of something in the past. Write down how it makes you feel. At times this approach leads me to imaginary thoughts of something that hasn't happened to me yet. It helps me to forget what is ahead and rest into a mindful position.

5. Write a fictional story

I enjoyed doing this when I was a secondary school student. The best part is to turn someone I know in real life into a vivid charaction with addtion to your imaginary thoughts about him or her. Everyday life relationship in modern age is connected to fiction all the time with social media. But social media rather cause anxiety because of bad imagination about people you know. You cannot reach someone's emotion through it. Writing is a good way to calm your anxiety. Afterall you know that your fictional character is from your crazy fantasy. Likewise, in real life, what you think about that person might not be true. Writing a fictional story is escapism -- a breakaway from rigid routines of life for a while and just to have fun in your secret and happy place.

6. Write a letter to your future self

This is something I would want my youth group at church do sometime. And even though I am not classified to the age of the youth group, I still find myself have fun writing down some goals in bullet journal. You will get some thoughts who you are and your greater calling. If it makes you feel like you are so far from your dream. Remember your struggles today will form you to be who you will be. You cannot predict your future because your thought might change and our society changes all the time, but you are created with many talents. So, enjoy your living today and use every skill that you have now for good work.

7. Gratitude notes

There is something good everyday. The air you breathe, the food you have. Everytime I look to the sun rise I would say "thank you Lord for this life and a new day!". I cannot do all these things without God. My life would be so meaningless if it is without God.

In the evening, I turn away from all worries and list down the things that I am thankful for. Write it as part of my diary/ bullet journal.

Some people have loads of thoughts but they do not realise that if they arrange them into sentences, that say something to them. Writing is how I learn about myself and a chance for me to notice little things that God speaks to me throughout the days. Writing is fun, and it encourages me both in my dark and bright moments.

#writing #therapy #mental health

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strangeumbrellassite · 6 years

Photo

Save the Date! Strange Umbrellas #21 is coming to V22 Louise House, London Saturday 4th August 6 to 8pm Get your tickets

Full line up includes: A solo by Jack Goldstein Soramimi, a film by Daisy Dickinson and Julia Laird Daniel Spicer/ Paul Khimasia Morgan - electronics and DIY instruments Steve Beresford/ Charlotte Keeffe/ - electronics, toys, trumplet and visual perofmrnace Rodez, a film by Stefano Miraglia Blanca Regina/ @AvanacA -voice, electronics and visual performance BIOS Solo: Jack Goldstein Jack Goldstein makes Experimental Lo-fi Power Pop/Emo. His latest record, entitled ‘Sandwiches’, is a Brian Wilson-esque song-cycle set in an imagined interzone near the Oxford that Goldstein grew up in. His previous record, ‘Tonic Of Wilderness’, was described as “a quiet triumph; a….collage of sound taking in so many moods, emotions and samples that it’s hard to keep track”. He is also a musicologist and academic at Goldsmiths University and was awarded the Bob Gilmore Prize for Outstanding Work in Musicology for his dissertation on the influence of politics and brass bands. He has also written on pop, experimental and improvised music. https://jackgoldstein.bandcamp.com Duo: Daniel Spicer/Paul Khimasia Morgan Daniel Spicer is a writer, broadcaster, improviser and poet based in Brighton, UK. He writes about music for The Wire and Jazzwise magazines. His book on Turkish psychedelic music, 'The Turkish Psychedelic Music Explosion: Anadolu Psych 1965 to 1980', was published by Repeater Books in 2018. He is currently working on a book about Peter Brötzmann. He presents a weekly radio show of improvised music, 'The Mystery Lesson', on Brighton’s Radio Reverb 97.2FM. He is founder and director of Brighton Alternative Jazz Festival. As an improviser, he has worked with artists as diverse as Adam Bohman, Dylan Nyoukis, Alan Wilkinson and Konstrukt. He has published three collections of poetry: 'Osshole Accidents' in 2012, 'Notes For Colour' in 2015 and 'From The Bottom Of The Tower' in 2018. Paul Khimasia Morgan is interested in detourning familiar musical instruments in improvised music settings. He currently uses amplified guitar body. He has performed in regular and ad-hoc groupings with Steve Beresford and Blanca Regina, Richard Sanderson, Simon Whetham, Seth Cooke, Dimitra Lazaridou-Chatzigoga, Ryu Hankil and Charlotte Keeffe. His latest solo album, Peoplegrowold was released on Mark Wastell’s Confront label. In 2016, he collaborated with artists Joseph Young and Kay Aplin to produce a series of sound-art concerts and talks featuring Beresford and Regina, Cathy Lane, Felicity Ford, John Kannenberg and Brambling which resulted in his piece, slow kiln, being included on the Landscape : Islands cassette compilation. His previous work appears on labels including Linear Obsessional, Absence Of Wax, Crónica, engraved glass and Con-V. Paul curates Aural Detritus Concert Series, runs the Aural Detritus and TSOKL labels and writes for The Sound Projector. Trio: Steve Beresford/Charlotte Keeffe/Max Hattler Steve Beresford has been a central figure in the British improvising scene for over thirty years, working with the likes of Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Christian Marclay and Alterations. His work with Marclay has included mixed media pieces like ‘Screen Play’, ‘Ephemera’, ‘Graffiti Composition’, ‘Shuffle’, ‘Pianorama’ and ‘Everyday’. He has also written songs, scored feature films, TV shows and commercials. Steve has worked with hundreds of people, including The Slits, Stewart Lee, Ivor Cutler, Prince Far-I, Alan Hacker, Ray Davies, Mandhira De Saram, The Flying Lizards, Rachel Musson, The Portsmouth Sinfonia and John Zorn. He has an extensive discography as performer, arranger, composer and producer, and was was awarded a Paul Hamlyn award for composers in 2012. Charlotte Keeffe performs regularly across the UK and internationally as part of several ensembles. She has played at numerous Music Festivals, including Glastonbury and accompanied the likes of Will Young, Charlotte Church, Kate Nash, Laura Mvulaand Liane Carroll. Fascinated with improvised music, Charlotte helped guitarist John Russell establish the Mopomoso Workshop Group. She plays regularly in the London Improvisers Orchestra and has shared concert bills with the likes of John Edwards, Steve Noble, John Butcher, Steve Beresford and Mark Sanders. Charlotte performs as a trumpet/ flügelhorn soloist and as part of her trio, Space Painters, with guitarists Joe Smith Sands and Diego Sampieri. Space Painters had their debut gig at The Vortex last May. Charlotte also has a new quartet project and will be releasing her debut album featuring some of her original compositions very soon… Max Hattler is an artist and academic who works with abstract animation, video installation and audiovisual performance. He holds a master's degree from the Royal College of Art and a Doctorate in Fine Art from the University of East London. Max has lectured at CalArts, USC, Goldsmiths, KASK and many more. Max has performed live around the world including at Playgrounds Festival, Re-New Copenhagen, Expo Milan and many others. He lives in Hong Kong where he is an Assistant Professor at School of Creative Media, City University of Hong Kong. Max's current research focuses on synaesthetic experience and visual music, the narrative potential of abstract animation, and expanded artistic approaches to binocular vision. Duo: Blanca Regina/Anavaca Blanca Regina is an artist, teacher and curator based in London. Her research and practice is heterogeneous and encompasses expanded cinema, free improvisation, graphic and moving images, photography and performance art. In 2014 she became a lecturer at the School of Music and Fine Art at the University of Kent. From 2011 to 2014 she was a visiting research fellow at the University of the Arts, London, Chelsea College of Art and Design. She has performed with various artists, including Terry Day, Leafcutter John, Steve Beresford and Matthias Kispert and has curated a number of events and installations in London and internationally. Her last solo exhibition: ‘Expanded and Ephemera Audiovisual’ was presented at MUPO, Oaxaca, México in November 2015. www.whiteemotion.com AnavacA is a multifaceted communicator who expresses herself through arts and therapy. She has participated in various healing performances and psychomagic projects. She developed, with her hands and her voice, regression processes and has collaborated with artists and therapists for 20 years. She currently lives between Malaga and London. Films: 1 - Soramimi 2017 / 3’32 / 4:3 / Sound Soramimi taps in to the rhythms of the forest, channelling the positive and negative energies through the red and blue masks and eventually creating an abstract piece of ritualistic occurrence. It was all shot on Super 8 in the mountains of Japan (Kanazawa, Nagano, and Yakushima Island) and features music by Grimm Grimm. Julia Laird is a Scottish photographer and director based in London. She uses both digital and analogue photography and moving image to cover the areas and people around her, both in her home country and whilst travelling further afield. http://julialaird.com/ Daisy Dickinson is a London-based director and visual artist whose work involves experimental short film, music video, projected installation and live visual performance. She is one half of the audio/visual collaboration ‘Adrena Adrena’, with ex-Boredom’s drummer E-da Kazuhisa, and is currently working as a visual addition to Seefeel, Grimm Grimm & Samuel Kerridge. Dickinson’s visuals have been described as ‘magmatic and sulphurous, cosmological and transcendental, drawing attention to the wonder of the earth and our sensuality on it’. https://www.daisydickinson.co.uk/ 2 - Rodez 2017 / 3'00’’ / 4:3 / silent This is an exploration of the Rodez Cathedral and a study in colour, repetition and flickering, composed of 292 photographs. Stefano Miraglia (b. 1988 in Málaga) is an Italian-Spanish visual artist based in France. Merging digital video, analogue photographs, archival documents and autobiographical elements, his moving image work stands at the intersection between abstract art, experimental animation and diaristic cinema. His works have been screened at numerous international film festivals, including Transient Visions, Pesaro Film Festival, Festival des Cinémas Différents et Expérimentaux de Paris, Syros International Film Festival and Fracto. Since 2011 he has been collaborating with Argentinian artist Leandro Varela. Stefano Miraglia is the founder and main curator of The Moving Image Catalogue. http://stefanomiraglia.eu/

#strange umbrellas #v22 #art #music #performance #film #live

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the--concertmaster · 7 years

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Mormon Headcanons

Ok... So since I literally needed only one person to be interested in hearing my headcanons, I’m gonna post them! Thanks @bookofbway!

Alright... I’m gonna start with James Church, because he doesn’t get enough love.

THIS IS GONNA START OF REAL SAD.

James wasn’t originally a Mormon, since due to his upbringing, I seriously doubt his parents were Mormons.

His mum died when he was still young, (probably about 10) from something unrelated to his dad, a car accident or something. (I’m sorry!)

Afterwords, due to the shock of losing his wife, his dad went sober and tried to concentrate on bringing his son up right.

James never forgave his father for the way he treated him and his mother.

Mormon missionaries came knocking at their house one day, and James chose to convert as he found it comforting the idea that his mother had went to a better place and that in latter days he could spend eternity with her.

He also liked the idea of going on a mission to help others, and also liked the idea of being able to get away from his dad for 2 years.

James was a track runner at school, and although he was sporty, found his passion more in the arts.

He is an amazing sketch artist and enjoys writing short stories and poetry.

He’s more serious and sombre than the other Mormon’s in Ugnada, but tries to act cheerful and bright (and turn it off).

He really liked Chris, because he felt he could relate to him since Chris had lost his sister. (also Poptarts was extremely adorable.)

He has messy black hair, and wears large square framed glasses.

Is the tallest and strongest out of all the Missionaries in Uganda. OK! Now for poptarts

Enjoys dancing as it’s his way of remembering and commemorating his sister.

Has an extreme fear of his friends and family dying on him.

Will never end a conversation on a negative note and always tries to say goodbye to his friends and family when leaving, just in case he never sees them again.

Loves everything sweet.

Poptarts was his sisters favourite food.

He has no formal dance training, but is quite good since his sister taught him how too (and then Mckinley afterwords)

He originally had a crush on his Mission Companion, Elder Mckinley, before he started to develop feelings for James Because James listened to him and understood his pain of loosing his sister rather than just telling him to turn it off. (Also James was hot af, and muscular and...)

He’s definitely the shortest and cutest of all the Elders

He has a Teddy bear that he took with him to Uganda, and will protect at all costs.

He loves looking at James art and reading his stories.

He is Bi (and no-one can tell me otherwise) MCKINLEY!!!!!!

Ok so, Mckinley defintely is the eldest child with 2 younger sisters, so he knows how to be authoritative and control and lead people.

He took tap classes, literally right up to the time where he left for Uganda.

His sisters were somewhat jealous that Connor is a better dancer than them.

But his sisters also stood up for him to his arents and peers saying that pink is a perfectly normal colour for a boy to like and that they should break gender stereotypes and stop calling him gay. Connor appreciates them for this.

He was definitely bullied in year 5 for how close he was to his friend Steve and all through highschool people would accuse him of being gay.

He started dating a female friend of his, to try to make others believe that he was straight. The relationship didn’t last very long though.

He totally got all the lead roles in the school plays, and sometimes did performance is the Community theatre musicals.

He is an excellent singer and had also taken vocal lessons from a young age.

He was also a very strong leader within theatre groups he was part off and often organised mini performances around their community with them.

Connor may seem friendly and nice, but don’t ever cross him or undermine his authority, he will wring your neck.

He’s never seen a prettier Boy with more perfect hair than Elder Price.

It broke his heart to have to ditch Elder Price in Uganda and leave with Elder Cunningham and the other Elder’s, but since he was pushing down his emotions, and trying to be a good Mormon on his Mission it’s what he choose to do.

He cared more about making the other Elder’s happy, and creating a friendly community among them, than converting the Africans, thus why they literally had no baptisms.

As soon as they went off-grid with their mission, he immediately got a TV and gaming system installed withing their lodging to entertain the Elders.

Him and Poptarts crush at Just Dance.

He literally holds a karaoke night once a month at the Missionary.

He was actually very surprised (and pleased) to find out Elder Price was gay

Once he did come out completely, he was very open with his affections towards Kevin (which Kevin often got embarrased about)

Falsettos is totally his favourite musical. He especially loves Whizzer. ALRIGHT! ARNOLD CUNNINGHAM

Always had the best imaginative writing at school.

Writes a ton of Fanfiction, and reads them too.

Has heaps of OC’s.

Bit of a loner at school too, never really had any friends.

Extremely popular online though.

Had a huge Tumblr following on his blogs about Star Wars, LOTR etc.

Has heaps of Fan theories too.

Totally Vlogs.

Cosplays as well. Goes to all the conventions.

Dreams of being able to go to San Diego Comic Con

He has Irlens Syndrome, which is one of the reasons why he didn’t read the Book of Mormon, becuase it was actually difficult for him to read it.

His father literally thinks of him as a freak due to all his obsessions and fanboying.

His mother dotes on him though and adores him for the person he is.

He always wants his fathers approval though, which is why he decided to go on a mission.

He genuinely wants to do good in the world and make others happy, and will do anything to help others, even if he doesn’t get anything from it.

He forces Kevin to Cosplay with him on Halloween. He goes as Han Solo and Kevin goes as Luke Skywalker.

He holds a halloween party and costume party in Uganda for all the Elders and Africans.

He also makes a Leia costume for Naba, which she loves, despite not really knowing too much about Star Wars.

All the Elders end up loving the little quirks about Arnold in the end, and have a great deal of Respect for him, since he’s so kind hearted.

He’s never been happier than he was in Uganda.

He still admires and loves Kevin after everything they went through. AND FINALLY THE MOST PERFECT MAN ON EARTH (AND I WILL FIGHT PEOPLE OVER THIS) KEVIN PRICE. I literally love him so much though.

Kevin grew up in a really strict household.

He’s the second oldest of all his siblings, with an older sister and three younger brothers.

He always feels that he has to compete against his siblings to be seen as the best, and to do so, tried to do literally nothing wrong.

His favourite sibling is his Brother Jack, who is just a year younger than him, because Jack worships and admires Kevin and he rather likes that. He also still feels super guilty for blaming him for eating that donut

Him and all his siblings all took piano lesson.

Kevin is actually very good at piano, but not as good as his older sister, which always really bugged him because he wanted to be the best at everything.

Straight A student.

Literally had no time for relationships throughout school since he was too busy trying to make everyone like him, as well as being a good mormon, getting good grades, playing piano well.

Didn’t realise till he was in Uganda that he was gay.

He never really though about relationships, or had sexual thoughts till he was in Uganda since he was always so busy.

He had a very meticulously planned schedule.

He absolutely adores everything Disney and Pixar, loves happy endings and cries every time Mufasa dies.

His favourite Movie is actually Toy Story, since he finds Woody relatable.

Reads all Arnolds fanfictions. Feruses to admit that he actually enjoys them.

Actually loves and respects his best friend, Arnold, since he truly hasn’t ever had a true best friend before.

Sings disney songs during Mckinley’s Karaoke nights.

Everyone is shocked that Kevin can sing.

Kevin is shocked by his own singing voice.

He loves how touchy Mckinley is, but is a little embarrassed by it.

Absolutely adores Mckinley for everything he is.

Once he realised he was gay, was actually reasonably open about it, since he never really understood why it was bad withing mormonism anyway.

Takes hour long showers to make sure his hair is perfect

Loves dogs. Like really loves dogs OK! SO THOSE ARE MY HEADCANONS ON THE ELDERS!

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chill-that-ur-inmyhead · 4 years

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do you like to shoot pool?: i used to have a pool table and it was fun playing it

are you any good?: eh haven’t played in a while

what is the scariest movie you ever saw?: coraline killed me, only because I saw it when I was young and it scared me when thinking if she’d ever make it back to her real family

the funniest?: funniest movie is difficult, wedding crashers probably, I love it and can have a good laugh at that movie

the saddest?: titanic

do you daydream?: yep all day everyday

do you dream at night?: yep

do you remember them? Care to share?: usually about what is going on in my life, not difficult to decipher

when you’re sick, do you like to be pampered, or left alone?: left alone, no one can see me in that weak state

who’s the better actor, jack nicholson or anthony hopkins?: anthony hopkins - hannibal was scary

are you superstitious?: eh not really

how many pictures are in your wallet?: zero

do you like getting pictures taken?: of me? eh depends how I feel on the day

if someone cries while watching a sad movie..do you laugh at them?: no not laugh

how often do you change your sheets?: once a week

is you bedroom upstairs or down?: upstairs

is it true blood is thicker than water?: yes

if you could wish someone out of your life ..who would it be?: at the moment I’m all good, if you’d ask me that a couple of years ago I would have said one of my flatmates ahah

if you could be with anyone in the world, famous or not who would it be?: be with like in a relationship? either k j apa or timothee chalamet, but physically be with, taylor swift, I just wanna know how she is doing!!

are you high maintenance?: I have my moments but I try to reel them in

if you could change one thing in the world what would it be?: the amount of hatred people can have

if you could star in any tv show which would it be?: riverdale for sure, I think the cast just has a lot of fun with each other and that is cute

deliveryman at your door who’s the package from?: probably asos

if you could completely change who you are would you?: wouldn’t mind increasing my bank balance but other than that it’s a work in progress

if you could live in a fairytale which would it be?: little mermaid

if you could live in the past where would it be?: apparently the 90s were a fun time, I would love to have experience the late 19th century or even earlier maybe 18th century

if you could see only one person right now who would it be?: brooke! I miss her

do you wear shoes in the house?: sliders

do you dream in colour or black and white?: who remembers those kind of things haha

what is your favorite accent?: french

do you like sunsets or sunrises?: I am not up early enough to catch a sunrise but I think they can be quiet enchanting and peaceful so maybe sunrise

what age did you find out santa wasn’t real?: hmmm I guess it was around 8 or 9 deffo by age 12

do you write poetry/songs/stories?: only daydreams but I don’t write them down... maybe I should

do you wear socks with sandals?: with my sliders yes

would you marry for money?: depends how much and who it is, let me way up my options haha

do you have any “in the mood” music you like to listen to?: haha usually I just let the guy pick

would you vote for a woman president?: I can’t vote for a president, but if she was the right one sure

Are looks/appearances really important?: they’re important but not everything

what are you most looking forward to?: the day I get a job and can tell my family and friends the good news

if someone lied to you and came clean is that forgivable?: depends what they lie about and how much I care, e.g someone lies about their fav colour.... whatever haha

if you had to repeat a day over and over again..what day would you pick?: my 21st birthday I spent the weekend in Paris and I would want to repeat the day over and over again x100000 because there is so much to do in Paris and I didn’t have nearly enough time

When you die, do you want to be cremated or buried? cremated

Did/do you like high school? I have fond memories Do you like to play video games? not really

Do you like Final Fantasy? Which one do you prefer of all? don’t know it

Have you ever caught on fire? nope, I keep my cool hehe

Do you have a YouTube channel? nope

Do you ever go to video game arcades? nah

Do you care what people think of you? I guess so

Have you ever had a crush on a teacher? hmmmm no

Do you like Lady Gaga? yep she’s cool

Don’t you hate when your foot falls asleep? yes

Do you think you have been in love before? in the moment yes but it wasn’t meant to last

Do you write poetry? nope

Do you like Edgar Allan Poe? no feelings either way

Have you ever met anyone famous? If so, who? nope

Have you ever gotten hit on by some creeper? yeah,

Do you watch LifeTime? i do not

Do you bless random people when they sneeze? if I’m with someone I’m not paying attention to random people and if I’m alone I am listening to music so I don’t really get the chance

Do you have a short temper? depends what the topic is

Do you like Sarah Dessen? who?

Do you want to have children? If so, how many? 3

Have you ever had a yard sale? yes

Do you go to Barnes and Noble for books, the library or someplace else? usually amazon but my friend works at waterstones and can get a 50% discount so now I go to her haha

Do you have an iPad? yes

Are you scared to die? sometimes I have intrusive thoughts about what happens next but it isn’t often

Do you go to church every Sunday? nope, used to but then it got boring

Have you ever called one of those Hot Line numbers? nope

Do you think you draw well? no way

Have you ever wanted to be a meteorologist? nope

Do you like Taylor Swift? LOVE!!!!!!!!!!!!

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incorrect-bom · 7 years

Note

,, ugandan headcanons please??

Anon: do you have any hc’s for the ugandans ??

Imma do a few for each one lmao (this is minus Nabulungi because I’m gonna her separately ayy):

MAFALA HATIMBI

A walking Dad Joke™

Own’s really horrible and loud shirts that he loves but make Nabulungi’s eyes hurt

Still hasn’t broken his habit of always making enough food for three people

The most positive man in the world

Has the tendency to hold your hands while he talks but they’re so warm and large you look forward to it every time

Very worrisome because he likes to know what’s going on at all times because he doesn’t like to feel helpless like he did when his wife got sick

If VERY cautious around the General even after he joined the Church of Arnold and doesn’t let Nabulungi pair with him on rounds

A skilled storyteller, he can make stories about him just going to the store sound like fucking poetry it’s beautiful

DR GOTSWANA

Worked extremely hard for his medical degree and he deserves it 100%

He knew he wanted to become a doctor after a little girl fell down when they were at school and he saw how happy she was after he cleaned up her knee as best as he could

Has a 14-year-old daughter whom he loves very much and is quite protective of her. Everything he does is for her safety and happiness especially after his wife had died recently

Even though he possesses a very awful… medical condition, he still remains very positive spending the last bits of money on lollipops for the small children who come to visit and Arnold

Loves to read anything and everything that shows up in the market, but loves Barbara Kimenye books because even though they are for children they remind him of when his daughter was smaller

KALIMBA

Loves to knit and sew and makes little socks and hats for whoever is pregnant at the time

A bit of a cynic and will call you out on your bullshit

Becomes a sort of grandmotherly figure to those in the village and the Elders because she gives great advice and has loads of sesame-honey candies that she gives out generously

However, she will beat your ass in football you bet it’s terrifying when she comes running at you

An overall very sweet woman who will compliment ‘how smart you look’ and then smack you because you stepped on her sweet potatoes

KIMBAY

Became Nabulungi’s mother figure after she died and comes over some nights a week to help Mafala with the cooking and cleaning and to teach Nabulungi how to read

A very blunt person who will tell you what she thinks with no hesitation

“Kevin go have a shower you smell like a warthog.” “Thanks, Kimbay.”

Quite a logical person and is usually the voice of reason among the villagers

MUTUMBO

He’s only a few years older than the Elders in his early 20s so he really gets along well with them

Especially Elder Neeley they bond over their love of the beach and Neely shows him his collection of shells so they made loads of necklaces

A really talented songwriter - he wrote all the songs for the Joseph Smith American Moses production

Loves to read poetry

His favourite colour is dark green because it reminds him of the dress his mother would wear everyday

His staple item of clothing are bandanas his favourite is a green and white one he found by the river

#I'm back. I'm gay and I'm back.#in the immortal words of Andy Randy #lets get on with theseeeee #alcoholic-bananas

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nealcassatiel · 7 years

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2. Allen Ginsberg, Castiel, and Buddhism: Cas in the bardo - an exploration of the Tibetan Buddhist death bardos and Castiel (I)

“Wanna drift off and become a newspaper headline, / what good favourable publicity in the bardo? Allen Ginsberg says, these words’ll get you nowhere / these jokes won’t be funny when everyone leaves the seven exits.” (Allen Ginsberg, Bowel Song)

Introduction

In my previous meta I discussed Cas in relation to Buddhism. In this post I will continue on this theme, looking specifically at Cas’s death state and the Buddhist concept of the bardo. I will be looking almost solely at Tibetan Buddhism which is in the Mahayana school of Buddhism. I have studied Buddhism for four or five years, however the subject is vast and please forgive me if my knowledge isn’t the best. If you have any questions about Tibetan Buddhism please ask them and if I can’t answer them, I’ll try and find out an answer from a teacher at my next visit to the Tibetan Buddhist Centre.

As a side note and personal note to this meta, I had intended to do more research on this as anything relating to theology, religion, or Buddhism is going to take a lot of research and understanding regardless of how much someone has previously studied the subject. My research was shortened and curtailed by the passing of a good friend. I had planned to write this meta about a month ago however the subject of death has been all too real for me since his passing. I apologize if this meta is too short or doesn’t go deeply enough and I will continue to write on this subject. Returning to the Buddhism and my meditations and readings this past week now that I am dealing with my grief better has been healing, and the insistence in meditating and thinking on death within Tibetan Buddhism has been a good thing to confront once more. I have been researching Tibetan Buddhist ideas on death specifically for the majority of the year for academic research, and I find solace that it has helped me in such trying times. To end this side note I would like to remind you all how loved you are and in the great words of great people; always keep fighting.

To recap on why I believe this is important, Cas is linked with Buddhism a fair bit. In The End his room was surrounded by Buddhist iconography, there were Buddhist decorations in his home when he was Emmanuel, and some of his beliefs and spiritual practices link as much to Buddhism as they do Christianity and Judaism.

The Empty and Death

At the end of 13x03 Cas woke up in what the writers are calling ‘The Empty’. It was mentioned by Billie in season 12. We don’t know much about the empty but Billie says this to Sam;

- ‘There’s one hard and fast rule in this universe: what lives, dies. So the next time you or your brother bite it… well… you’re not going to heaven or hell. One of us and I hope it’s me, we’re gonna make a mistake and toss you out into The Empty. And nothing comes back from that.’

So here we see the Buddhist thoughts on death. In Tibetan Buddhism, a well-known practice is to focus on death and to come to terms that everything which lives must die.

- ‘From the summit of the highest heavens to the very depths of hell, there is not a single being who can escape death. As the Letter of Consolation says: ‘Have you ever, on earth or in the heavens, / Seen a being born who will not die? / Or heard that such a thing had happened? / Or even suspected that it might?’’ (Patrul Rinpoche, Words of my Perfect Teacher: A Complete Translation of a Classic Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, trans. Padmakara Translation Group, p. 41)

This is a major concept in Tibetan Buddhism which monks spend years focusing on in order to try to combat their death fear and help their passage out of samsara after death.

- ‘Meditate only on death, earnestly and from the core of your heart.’ (Patrul Rinpoche, Words of my Perfect Teacher: A Complete Translation of a Classic Introduction to Tibetan Buddhism, trans. Padmakara Translation Group, p. 55.)

Allen Ginsberg, Buddhism, and Death

Allen Ginsberg also had this death fear and tried to focus and accept his death, in fact his last collection of poetry entitled ‘Death & Fame’ focused a lot on him trying to visualize and accept his own death in multi-religious terms, but mainly in Buddhist terms. On his death bed he tried to focus on Buddhism and mantras and his Buddhist teacher was called to sit with him and recite death rituals before his death and after passing. Ginsberg had a Buddhist ceremony as well as one in a church after he had passed away in 1997. I mention this because Cas can be linked very well to Ginsberg (also because my grad dissertation was about Ginsberg, Buddhism, and death – hashtag spon to that basically unread thesis that I poured so much into).

Death, Rebirth, and SPN

Another thing to note is the concept of death and rebirth in Supernatural. The brothers have died a fair few times and come back, but let’s focus on Cas. In Buddhism, one’s rebirth is dependent upon their past life. One’s karma at the end of one’s life ensures the next life. In Cas’s deaths and rebirths he has changed from each one and his past life has influenced his personality after his next resurrection. An interesting thing to understand about karma is that it doesn’t affect you in your current life. Whilst bad actions may cause bad consequences, that is not karma. Karma only has effect on you once you’re dead, so any time someone ends a story about someone getting their comeuppance and says ‘that’s karma for you’, you can correct them and say that is incorrect if ya want.

The Bardos

So, onto the bardos.

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The Tibetan Book of the Dead, in brief, is a text which contains mantras to read before one’s passing and once one is dead. It contains many chapters detailing practices and meditations and yogas to do before one’s death in order to help prepare the oneself to escape samsara (the wheel of existence where one is caught in a cycle of birth and death and rebirth).

The first bardo is the chi kha and occurs immediately after death when a profound state of consciousness occurs, called the clear light. If one can recognise this light as their reality, they are thrown out of samsara (the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth).

If one does not recognise this light they are thrown into the second bardo, the bardo of reality called chos nyid bar do. In this bardo they are shown reality in a multi-coloured mandala of forty-two peaceful deities and a mandala of fifty-eight wrathful deities. These appear to the consciousness of the recently deceased in the days following death. If reality is not recognised here then they are placed into the third bardo – the bardo of mundane existence (sri pah bar do). In this third bardo they are rebirthed in one of the six realms of gods, demigods, humans, animals, hungry ghosts, or in hell. The karma (the wrongdoings of the deceased) in their past life will gauge which realm they will be rebirthed into.

Death holds up a mirror of our past life actions.

If recognition of death and the new reality does not occur immediately in the first intermediate state after death, then the deceased moves into the second intermediate state. This second intermediate state is called ‘the pure illusory body’, during which the consciousness achieves clarity even if the deceased doesn’t know they are dead. During this stage, if proper teaching is given, the deceased will no longer be controlled by past actions. ‘Just as, for example, darkness is destroyed by the light of the sun, the controlling force of past actions is destroyed by this ‘inner radiance of the path’ and liberation is attained.’ If liberation is not attained in this state, then the deceased moves onto the third intermediate state during which bewildering apparitions (which are the product of past actions) will emerge. ‘At around this time, the bereaved relatives will be crying and expressing their grief. They will no longer be serving the deceased share of food, they will have removed his or her clothes and stripped down the bed, and so forth. Although the deceased can see them, they cannot see the deceased. Although the deceased can hear them calling out, they cannot hear the departed one calling back so the deceased may turn away in a state of despaired. At this time, three phenomena – sounds, lights and rays of light – will arise, and the deceased may faint with fear, terror, or awe. Thus, during this period, the following Great Introduction to the Intermediate State of Reality should be given. Call the deceased by name and say the following words’.

“O, Child of Buddha Nature, that which is called death has now arrived. You are leaving this world. But in this you are not alone. This happens to everyone. Do not be attached to this life. Do not cling to this life. Even if you remain attached and clinging you do not have the power to stay – you will only continue to roam within the cycles of existence. Therefore, do not be attached and do not cling. Think of the Three Prescious Jewels! O, Child of Buddha Nature, however terrifying the appearances of the intermediate state of reality might be, do not forget the following words. Go forward remembering their meaning. The crucial point is that through them recognition may be attained. Alas, now, as the intermediate state of reality arises before me, renouncing the merest thought of awe, terror or fear, I will recognise all that arises to be awareness manifesting naturally of itself. Knowing such sounds, light, and rays, to be visionary phenomena of the intermediate state. At this moment, having reached this critical point, I must not fear the assembly of Peaceful and Wrathful Deities, which manifest naturally…. O, Child of Buddha Nature, if you do not now recognise these phenomena to be natural manifestations, whatever meditative practices you may have undertaken whilst in the human world, if you have not previously encountered this present instruction, you will fear the light, you will be awed by the sound and you will be terrified by the rays. If you do not now understand this essential point of the teaching, you will not recognise the sounds, the lights and the rays, and you will continue to roam within the cycles of existence. O, Child of Buddha Nature, should you have moved on, (without recognition), after having been unconscious for (up to) three and a half days, you will awaken from unconsciousness and wonder ‘what has happened to me?’ So recognise this to be the intermediate state. At this time the aspects of the cycles of existence are reversed (into their own true nature) and all phenomena are arising as lights and Buddha-bodies.’

Then a bright blue light will arise in the space. One should be drawn to it. There will be a dull white light of the god realms. Do not be drawn to that. It will spin you into the god realm and back into the cycles of samsara. Focus on the blue light. Other coloured lights occur and deities help to guide the deceased to the blue light. A dull blue light emerges which tries to call the deceased back to the human realm. Those with training will be more likely to walk towards the right light and take refuge in the Buddha to relieve themselves of being born back into samsara.

Within the bardos the deceased will be frightened and fearful. We see that Cas looks vulnerable and fearful when he wakes up in the empty.

Some Notes on the bardos and Cas in The Empty

- Normally people don’t realise they go into the bardo after death as they are normally flung back into samsara. Those who are spiritual or have undergone training will be aware of the bardo after death. (This is important with Cas because he is a spiritual person, and so if we liken The Empty to the bardo, he will fair better in this space because of his spirituality.

- In some folk, hindu, and folk Buddhist beliefs the last thought of the dying person is important and will help or hinder them in the bardo. (One of Cas’s last thoughts was probably saving Sam, Dean, and Jack, and so in The Empty these thoughts may stick with him all the more clearer (although they are pretty clear already. So his will to get back to Dean et al will be fundamental to his path through this in between place).

- For those who were spiritual in their lives, in the bardo they will be more likely to meet enlightened beings who will appear to them. (This is interesting because from what we know about the spoilers, another person is there with him. This could be another angel and chuck knows I’m praying for the return of Gabriel, or it could be another version of Cas. In the bardo, the beings/gods who appear to the person do not have to be literal. Many people within Tibetan Buddhism see the gods and spiritual apparitions within the bardo as manifestations of one’s inner self, whether that be the greed or the pride or the love or the kindness).

- The individual is also presented with a means of ending these encounters by paying attention to images and lights that feel comforting and familiar, and sometimes represent one of the passions that appeal to the person. This is where people's unconsciousness tendencies take control as they are variously attracted to jealously which can bring future lives of fighting and quarreling, pride which leads to another human rebirth, or aggression and violence which can lead to a rebirth in a hell world. Being attracted to these lights and images will cause the spiritual being to disappear and the opportunity to gain insight and enter their spiritual world will be lost. This is one of the important reasons for learning spiritual travel so that encounters with powerful spiritual states of consciousness become familiar and desirable instead objects of fear to be avoided.

- If the first bardo passes and attempts to access spiritual states were unsuccessful, the next bardo begins. The second bardo or the "bardo of becoming" is a stage in which the desires of the individual are said to carry the largely helpless soul through a great variety of intense emotional states. Good thoughts bring great bliss and pleasure, and hateful or negative thoughts bring great pain and desolation. The soul bounces from thought to thought as a torrent of thoughts and feelings come like a waterfall. Existing thought habits and desires are said to define the experience of the soul during the afterlife in this way. (Again, we see that the bardo is a space for the inner self to manifest around oneself. I think that in SPN, they will use The Empty in a similar way – in that it will be a space where Cas can understand who he is. It will be a mindful, meditative, and self-reflexive space in which he will understand who he is and the life he lead. He will see what is important to him and what he should cling to and what he should leave).

- The greatest problems of the soul in the second bardo are negative emotions like guilt and fear (which results from a lack of familiarity with the inner worlds), and lack of conscious control over its own experience. Fear is particularly harmful because it fragments the self making concentration on one thing difficult or impossible, and this can lead to confusion and loss of conscious control. (I think Cas will certainly explore these things within The Empty. He has been ridden by guilt for many seasons and I believe that he will feel the weight of his past actions even in death. However I think he will get through these and return to earth having done away with the negative emotions and guilt having worked through them all in the empty).

- For those fortunate enough to be more conscious in these bardo states, a petition to a god, guru, guide, saint, or intercessor can be made in hopes that the individual will be lifted or guided out of the bardo worlds by one of those entities. But here again, the call must be concentrated and the ability to ignore the surrounding chaos somewhat developed. When such grace is given, it is a form of salvation where the individual is saved from the discomfort and confusion of the "outer darkness" of the bardo by a powerful entity - usually one that individuals formed a bond with in their former life. (Cas’s devotion to jack comes in here. Jack guides him back. This is an interesting discussion of faith here, because Cas has faith in Jack. And whilst some people may be angry at Cas for following Jack and placing faith in him, many people need figures within their lives in whom they place their faith).

- This ability to choose a good incarnation requires discrimination, and a certain degree of conscious awareness. The new age approach to reincarnation which claims we choose our new incarnation is idealistic and not always true from this vantage point. Many souls whose thoughts in life were tinged with or dominated by negative emotions, or those who have repressed and denied such emotion through lack of awareness or an unwavering commitment to "positive thinking" will likely be desperate to escape the confusion of the second bardo. They are therefore likely to grab on to the first opportunity that presents itself like a swimmer who grasps a log in dangerous rapids in hopes of making it to calmer waters. Choosing the first object (or incarnation) that comes along may not be the wisest choice. (It would be interesting to see a kind of psychedelic/spiritual space in which Cas is drawn towards and away from things which distract him from his internal analysis and reflextion, or that draw him away from a mission to return to earth).

- The average person is said to spend a period of about forty-five days in the second bardo. However, passionate souls with strong desires or those responsible for evil acts in their most recent life are said to reincarnate almost immediately. In exceptional cases, the individual can stay in the bardo state for longer periods, and be drawn into its currents awaiting rebirth.

- One factor that helps the soul achieve the freedom of conscious control and spiritual travel during the afterlife is acceptance of death. Those who have not accepted death will resist the process of dying and introduce conflict into the bardo stages. This is why it is important for people to take care of any unfinished business as they near death so they can let go of life completely. (This will be interesting to see if Cas excepts his death. I’m not sure about this as he was in a depressive slump for a long while. But I hope that his want and love for Dean and the guys will make him not accept his new life in The Empty).

Forgiveness & Salvation

In The Tibetan Book of the Dead there are constant opportunities for enlightenment, both in life and in death. In the bardo one is given the chance over and over again to come to the light of the Buddha and come out of samsara. This is a key point in supernatural, that there are constant chances for good, for salvation, for forgiveness, for moving on a dropping the weights of before. Being in the bardo is a spiritual experience that shows you your inner thoughts, fears, and emotions. It is a liminal space which helps one to move on to the next realm or g to the light of the Buddha. Cas will be flung back into the world of samsara into another rebirth – although as he is being reborn as himself we stray further from Buddhism.

Conclusion

But what will be interesting in this upcoming episode is to see how many similarities there are between The Empty and the bardo – whether Cas will encounter a spiritual being, whether he will see his emotions manifest, whether he will be drawn to certain things, whether he will be drawn to good and bad light, whether he will be drawn back to the boys, whether he will accept his death, whether he will be able to look within himself and deal with the guilt and negative emotions he has been troubled by…. Who knows.

#my supernatural discourse #supernatural #spn #supernatural season 13 #season 13 meta #13x3 #spn meta #cas #castiel #Cas x Ginsberg #cas x spirituality #cas x buddhism #cas x ginsberg x buddhism #cas and buddhism #supernatural meta #castiel discourse

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pendragonfics · 7 years

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Seasons

Time: Chapter One | Chapter Two

Paring: Credence Barebone/Reader

Tags: female reader, female pronouns, angst, fluff, Ministry of Magic, MACUSA (Magical Congress of the United States of America), some spoilers for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them.

Summary: Come summer, winter, spring or autumn, you're still a witch, and you're still in love with Credence Barebone.

Word Count: 2,727

Posting Date: 2017-06-05

Current Date: 2017-06-15

In the summertime, the city smells of sweat and gasoline from the automobiles and the sun sets later and later as the days go by. Perhaps it was the inner romantic inside of you who read too much poetry and found time in the day to do the chores without magic to see beauty in everything. Not that summer wasn’t your favourite season, well, maybe, but every season was so wonderful. Most witches and wizards must earn their magical abilities, or at least, wake them up – you’ve heard of the pureblood families trying to compel their children toward their inherited skills through…less than favourable means. But you didn’t. You came screaming into the world as a babe the year after a bad bout of Dragon Pox in the area, and not too soon after the nurses and midwives cleaned you up, you were making things fly around and lights grow from your hands.

The Magical Congress of the United States of America, and even the Ministry of Magic (their interference thanks to your half-blooded nature, your father a British No-Maj) had their say, and because of all the magic that was cast to keep your mother alive, you’d become an anomaly of nature, and were by law to be home-schooled, and often checked-in on by a representative of the congress.

No matter. That was life, and life happens. Now at nineteen, you’d done all your learning, and though you were a more powerful witch than anyone had ever anticipated, you kept to yourself. No need getting noticed by anyone for the wrong reasons, no need being caught up in the politics of the heretic incendiary Grindelwald. Your mother had lived out her years teaching you, and now, retired herself with a sum from MACUSA and moved to Florida and married an ex-Quidditch player. Your father was in London, driving a taxi. And you ran an at-home apothecary.

Mostly, you sold all sorts of healing potions and basic No-Maj medicines (and under the table, medicinal alcohols), but there were times when you followed the spell books you ordered from London, and on request made…other things. It wasn’t like there were any rival stores in New York, and even with the wizarding trading system, and the trap-streets that withheld non-magical eyes from seeing the wizarding stores and shopfronts. It was a modest income that kept you in your little apartment above the No-Maj barber’s shop, and it was a pleasant life. All seasons of the year it be.

But even as a sort of romantic who saw beauty in most things, there was something you couldn’t, for the life of you, love. Not for any money in the world. The history books stated that the witch hunts ended in 1690. But in the neighbourhood that you lived in, there was an evil stirring.

The New Salem Philanthropic Society was led by the headstrong Mrs. Barebone. Her shouting would never cease, her flyers everywhere, her stench clinging to the curtains like cigarette smoke days after it was snuffed out. But what truly made your stomach roll was the way she treated her children. You had never in your life been treated like those children had, no – you had been raised to know you were loved, that you were safe, and warm and that the next morning, you still would be loved. Without even abusing your magical abilities, you could see it in her adopted children’s faces, that they were not raised the same. The hatred their mother had for magical folk overtook nurture, her vision crisp, her children wilting. Many a time you’d be forced to walk by the rallies when delivering a potion, unable to do anything but hear her terrifying words. Perhaps it was because she spoke so lowly of witches and wizards. Or, perhaps it was because there was a look in her eye that suggested she would stop at nothing until her dreams would come true.

You were on your way home from delivering a simple sleeping draught to the Goldstein sisters (something to help Queenie sleep at night with her Legilimens) when you saw him. You’d seen him many times, truly, but you weren’t looking. He stood near to her, but his eyes were downcast. Shoulders slumped. You had been preparing to disapparate, but at that moment, he had raised his head, those eyes meeting your own, and you wondered if you’d forgotten to breathe. But before you could smile, his mother had shouted, and the interlude was passed. He jumped, and you frowned – ever so slightly – and passing behind a gentleman, you disappeared back home, safe from the Second Salemers.

But as you stood before the mirror above the sink, inspecting yourself, trying your best to slow your unsteady heart, you could not slow the unsteady thoughts racing through your mind.

He was your age. He was your age. He was –

Straightening your Peter Pan collar, you push the thoughts from your head, and continue on-wards with the day. It was before high noon, anyway, and there was plenty of work to be done before sundown. Even if it was the summertime.

---

Before too long, it’s coming onto wintertime, and the city smells of ice and cigars and the morning frost that whitens the tips of the flowers in their window boxes. Perhaps it wasn’t the inner romantic in you, but the realist who saw winter for what it was. It was the time of year when layers upon layers of clothes were worn, or, if you were rich, wore animal hides, and continued partying.

You had waited six months for winter.

Ever since laying eyes on the eldest child of Mrs. Barebone, you decided that it was your mission to find out about him what you could. You knew that you had promised yourself, and two government systems that you should keep your head down, to keep to your own business and nobody else’s, but you had to.

Another side effect of your magical abilities was a sort of transparency with knowledge of time’s events. No-Maj’s would call it ‘seeing the future’. You called it a nuisance at best, because who needs to know what they’re going to put on their toast in three weeks’ time? Who wishes to see their true love’s hair colour eight years or so before it would come to be? If the rules around hiding the magical community from the non-magical people weren’t so strict, you might consider being a fortune teller for spare coin.

Thus, you carried on watching the eldest Barebone child from afar. Sometimes you would catch glimpses of him in a crowd handing leaflets out, or in your mind’s eye near to midnight. But you would turn over in your sleep, and dream of things other than wishing that you could hold his hand through the night-time, to assure him the world was not composed of monsters.

It happened to be almost sundown one winter night when you found yourself alone in the presence of him. For the first time in six months, you had managed it, or at least, quite on accident. You had been running from a quite aggressive man who had insisted on paying you for…less than favourable means of work, and it would come to be that you flew straight into him, knocking the flyers from his hands, the pair of you tumbling to the stone street.

“I’m ever so sorry,” he mumbles, hands scrambling to collect the flyers. He has good reason to, the stone pavement is covered in evening dew already, and the ink has begun to run over the paper. “I –,”

You shake your head. “It’s okay, I wasn’t looking, er, where I was – my goodness, you have beautiful eyes,” you mutter your thoughts aloud, and realising you did, feel a scarlet blush roar across your cheeks. “I’m sorry, that was forward of me.” Your hands reach to aid him picking up the flyers, only to realise his has stilled.

“I’ve seen you before,” he wonders aloud. “About the city.”

You smile. “I do love to walk, it’s one of my favourite pastimes.” At this, you wipe your hand upon your skirt, to him. “My name is _______ ________. I run a small apothecary on twenty-fifth street,” you gush, and pausing, leave room for him to speak.

“I’m Credence Barebone. I hand out flyers.” He looks to the ground, and sees the sodden, ruined papers. “I’m going to be in so much trouble…”

At this, you can’t help it. You know what kind of trouble he will be in when he goes home to the old church he has a bed at, yes, you’ve seen it in your head when you’re supposed to be sleeping. You’ve seen all the bruises and the pain he is in, the fear he quakes with, the mission he is on with the man from the congress.

He knows of magic, but he cannot know you are magic.

“Is that an eagle?” You point upward, to a sparrow flying overhead. His eyes follow, and in the second Credence is not noticing you, you cast a spell to dry the paper, still the runny ink, and gather the flyers in your hands. “No? I must need eyeglasses…well, I shan’t keep you here much longer,” you glance behind you, hoping the man chasing you has given up. “I must be on my way, Mr. Barebone.” You pass him the papers, and straightening your skirt, are on your way home.

Off before he can question why the dog-eared, worn papers are as good as new.

Off before he can question how you seemed so familiar to him.

---

As springtime follows winter, your mother returns home with her new husband to stay for a week, insisting on helping around in your business. It’s lovely having an extra pair of hands to help around, even if one of those hands is a man you barely know who spent years throwing a Quaffle for Texas’ Quidditch team. But your mother loves him, and he loves her, and you don’t mind much, especially since you’re often taking time to steal away and meet with Credence.

Often enough, the two of you sit in the park, watching as the children play in the trees, the parents watch their children, the ducks in the pond watch them all. Sometimes you take him to the library, and share moments behind the shelves – stolen kisses, passing phrases in bursts of bravery – or you walk him almost the way home from his route, doing your best to be caring.

He doesn’t mind being holding hands, and blushes fiercely when kissed, but Credence insists he can care for himself. You understand. As someone who everyone in the magical community knows to be something, you can only hope to make your own way forward. You aren’t going to steal that from Credence. It’s the only thing left of his that’s truly his. His pride.

There’s a bumbling stranger through the city and before you know it, the routine you had created for yourself and the man you have feelings for is disrupted, and the dark magic that surrounds the city picks up the pace, like a frightened child, battering and battling for dominance. Your mother leaves with her husband, and returns to their home before an attack happens just across the street from your home. If you were a frightened person, you would feel fear for what darkness was reigning. But you do not. There’s something inside the foresight you have that keeps you hopeful, keeps you ahead of the terror that follows the attacks.

Every moment with Credence is sparse. Few witches and wizards wish to purchase your goods, for fear of the punishment of the dark magic that follows in the shadows. You resort to selling most of your things to keep the lights on, and then, using candlelight. Though springtime is a rebirth, you’re sure that the birth is not of young forest creatures, but what magic is leaving its mark in New York city this year.

“If my mother knew I saw you,” he whispers, fingers faint against your wrist. The pair of you sit upon the steps to the library, in the shadows from sight. You had cast an invisibility spell on the pair of you, but still, he wished to be obscured from sight completely. “…she would bring hell upon us.”

Your hands trail to his elbow, pulling him near. He smells so lovely, his scent a mixture of soap and something that smells like the colour blue that’s so completely Credence. You are the same age, and he is a No-Maj. You’ve fallen in love with a man who can never know of what you are…and still, here you be.

“She will have to find out, first.” You whisper. “We are careful. I cover our tracks thoroughly, she would have to be a hellhound to find a trace of what we do,” you lay your head upon his, and close your eyes. “I think I love you, Credence.”

His head turns, slightly, so you can see his eyes. Oh, those eyes, they’re so beautiful, they could see straight through flesh, through souls if only they learned how. The dark brown is mellow, and soft, almost, and melts you inside and out to feel as sweet as chocolate.

“I don’t think I love you,” he mumbles, his fingers moving across your wrist. You still, but he adds, “I know I love you.”

---

It’s autumntime now, but the city is still reeling from the bumbling stranger who had a suitcase of creatures. It isn’t the British man who is at fault, no, it is the radical Gellert Grindelwald, and because of his actions, as posing as Percival Graves in MACUSA, all the No-Maj’s in the city are obliviated, and Credence is gone.

You’ve searched high and low – far, and near, talking to his sisters, but not a soul has seen Credence. It has been six months since you have seen his form, since you have kissed his lips, since you have called his name to his face, and not to strangers who cannot remember him. The congress has little to say, and remind you to stay quiet as a condition of you living in a No-Maj area. So, you pack your store into a magicked box, buy yourself ride out of the city and travel to the countryside where people are sparse; magical, or not.

But it’s autumn, and the leaves on the trees are falling from their positions on high, and you build yourself your little apothecary store in the upstate country, in a hamlet called Beaver River. Your mother has more children of her own, and sends few owls. But she’s happy. You live your life as good as you can, and the other wizarding families in the area welcome you into the circle. For once, you’re accepted. It’s nice.

But the thought of Credence keeps you awake at night. You dream of a wisp of smoke, a tendril of darkness floating through the air, struggling though the breeze. You see his soul, but not his face, you see his pain, but not his hands, those calloused fingers you can almost feel from memory.

But come early on Monday, the first knock on the door to your home is not someone you’ve met out away from the city. At once, you throw yourself to him, wrapping your arms around his shoulders, drawing him close, near, near enough to hear the beat of his heart. He’s not in his monotonous suit, but in clothes that seem to be borrowed from someone else; the sleeves are too long, the overalls too loose on his waist. But he’s here.

Your Credence is here.

“I know what you are,” he whispers. “I’m supposed to be one too. But…I’m different.”

Withdrawing, you look to his eyes, holding him close enough to stare back into your own eyes. “You’re magical? You, you knew I was –,” you don’t finish the sentence.

Credence nods. “You’re beautiful at it, but I’m not an idiot. An eagle in the city?” He recalls, a soft smile upon his lips. “I’m here, to stay. If you’ll have me, _______.”

You nod, and realise there are tears falling from your eyes. “I’ll have you Credence, forevermore.”

#credence barebone #credence fantastic beasts #credence x reader #credence barebone x reader #credence barebone/reader #fantastic beasts and where to find them fanfic #harry potter x reader #harry potter fanfic #chaotic--lovely #pendragonfics

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Things to do this week in Toronto

What's happening in Toronto April 22-26, 2019

MONDAY, APRIL 22 (EASTER MONDAY)

Spring into Easter at the Toronto Zoo: Join for special on-site animal encounters, daily Meet the Keeper Talks, the chance of catching a glimpse of our Veterinarians at work in the Wildlife Health Centre.

Easter Lunch at Miku Toronto: Celebrate Easter with a special menu only available for Monday.

Easter Day at MARBL: Celebrate this Easter weekend with family and friends. We'll be offering Easter exclusive menu items, as well as perfecting your dinner with a bottle of wine, hand picked by our sommelier.

The Best of The Second City: The Second City’s Touring Company comes home to Toronto for an unforgettable night of classic and original sketch comedy, along with hilarious unscripted improvisation.

Queer and Present Danger Collective: Spring Queening: Hosted by Bethany Daniels featuring Sam Sferrazza, Amethyst Barron and Jade Niles Craig. Headlined by Al Val.

Cher at Scotiabank Arena: Cher performs in Toronto with special guests Nile Rodgers and Chic.

Humber Valley Art Exhibition: This guild from Neilson Park Creative Centre presents an exciting juried art exhibition with a mix of subjects, styles, and media by their highly talented member artists.

The Wow: Fax My Life: The Wow returns for April for an office themed comedy spectacular. Toronto's all-star sketch comedy collective gives you a uniquely themed full-blown spectacle every single month..

TUESDAY, APRIL 23

Gene Domagala's Toronto Places, People and Buildings, Including the Beach: Local historian Gene Domagala reviews Toronto places, people and buildings of interest, including those in the Beach.

The Bourbon Excursion at Jump: Kick off the evening with a welcome cocktail before tucking in to a four-course dinner paired with J.B.’s finest bourbons. Featuring homestyle fare such as Mortadella Lasagna, Tamarack Farm Lamb Shoulder, and Peanut Butter Baked Alaska.

#PitchItYork at Seneca College Newnham Campus: Showcasing York Regions brightest entrepreneurs, Open People Network has partnered with Seneca HELIX for #PitchItYORK! Pitchit is an interactive and fun pitch event to help entrepreneurs showcase their company to potential clients and angel investors.

RSI Leadership Dinner & Dialogue Series: To explore how trusted AI can advance and sustain the competitive advantage of your business and the markets you serve, join our AI-focused dinner and dialogue for C-suite executives.

Caméra Stylo Launch Party! The Cinema Studies Student Union's Undergraduate Journal Caméra Stylo is having their annual launch party.

Kelvin Wetherell at Cafe Mirage: Cafe Mirage Grill and Lounge presents Kelvin Wetherell on Nov 6. The performance runs between 8:00 pm to 11:00 pm in the evenings with a 15 minutes break in between. Cafe Mirage is one of the leading restaurants in Scarborough.

101: Cannabis: Canna-Curious? Learn your CBD’s from your THC’s and join us for a conversation on all things cannabis. Our panelists will be able to answer all of your burning questions: from wellness to entrepreneurship, to education and responsible use.

Hot Breath Karaoke at The Handlebar: Ridiculous game show style karaoke, with prizes.

Westway Christian Church Food Bank: The Westway Christian Church Community Food Bank is open for clients to receive food on Tuesday evenings from 5-7 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 24

Fashion Art Toronto at Daniels Spectrum

Fashion Art Toronto is a showcase of contemporary and experimental fashion and arts The five-day multi-arts experience will inspire and intrigue guests through runway shows, photography exhibits, art installations, live performances and short films.

ALSO ON WEDNESDAY

Once Upon a Refugee: Chapter II - The Unrehearsed Plan: Once Upon a Refugee is a community education event celebrating the experience and contributions of refugees, hosted by North York Community House. The evening will have music, storytelling, food, and theatre.

Etobicoke Voters: Claim Your Right To A Vote That Counts! Fair Vote Toronto presents an information session on voting reform and Proportional Representation.

City of Toronto information session on aerial spray program for Gypsy Moth: The City of Toronto will implement an aerial spray program this spring in seven Toronto wards to protect the tree canopy and vulnerable trees from European Gypsy Moth infestation.

Blockchain Revolution Global: The first truly worldwide conference for blockchain in enterprise. Speakers include Imogen Heap, music maker & founder of Mycelia, who will also perform live at the EBA gala.

An Evening of Poetry Readings with Toronto's New Poet Laureate: Join Toronto's new Poet Laureate for a thought-provoking night of spoken word. In the first public appearance of his laureateship, Toronto's literary ambassador A.F. Moritz will be reading alongside three young poets at The Poet Presentation Centre.

Showtime! Disney Edition at The Drink: A live music showcase featuring performances by Aaron Bell, Michala Todd and Charlotte Ferrarei. This time they'll be serving you live Disney music.

Who run the world? QTBIPOC: A free drop-in workshop series on relationships for youth. Learn skills and connect with other 2SLGBTQ Black, Indigenous and youth of colour (16-29) at this Beyonce-themed workshop series on relationships-- with pals, family, partners and yourself.

THURSDAY, APRIL 25

In Her Voice: Amy Spurway Crow Launch

Please join Amy Spurway in conversation with author Emily Saso at Ben McNally Books as part of the 'In Her Voice' event series. They will be discussing Amy’s debut book Crow, followed by a signing. Books will be available for sale.

ALSO ON THURSDAY

Digifest 2019: Digifest is a three-day design and tech festival as well as a startup event, organized annually by the Digital Media and Gaming Incubator at George Brown College.

Leadership & Social Entrepreneur Knowledge Cafe 2019: Seminar of interest to entrepreneurs, professionals, activists and mentors for the next generation of leaders.

16th Albert Lahmer Memorial Lecture: Andrew Larsen: Join Toronto children's writer Andrew Larsen, author of The Man Who Loved Libraries: the Story of Andrew Carnegie, for the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books' 16th Albert Lahmer Memorial Lecture.

Art-Bound at Camp Tech: Have you heard about art journaling? Come and find out what the fuss is all about. The Art-Bound workshop is an introduction and exploration of art journaling.

Coco & Cowe presents Coco Con: Media: The second event of the Coco Con series. Catriona Smart and Halla Rafati will be joined by Vanessa Craft, Editor-In-Chief for Elle Canada.

Moonstruck at Bad Dog Comedy Theatre: By way of inspiration, its cast will take the details of one audience member’s dream to create a hilarious and magical show. Completely made up on the spot and never to be repeated, this show is sorta like a dream (no, better).

Cozy Fun Comedy Show at 120 Diner: Featuring: Velvet Wells, Sarah Ashby, Luba Magnus, Jesse Singh, Honey Bennett, Freddie Rivas, Desirée Walsh

RuPaul's Drag Race Viewing Parties: Fans of the hit reality television series can watch new episodes every Thursday at several spots around the city, including Apt 200, The Gladstone Hotel, The Beaver and Striker.

FRIDAY, APRIL 26

András Keller conducts the Royal Conservatory Orchestra at Koerner Hall

Hungarian violinist, Artistic Director and Chief Conductor of Concerto Budapest Symphony Orchestra, and founder of the Keller Quartet András Keller leads The Glenn Gould School’s Royal Conservatory Orchestra.

ALSO ON FRIDAY

Metric with July Talk at Scotiabank Arena: Toronto-based rock bands Metric and July Talk perform in Toronto.

Fairlawn Avenue United Church's 58th Annual Book Sale: Shop for gently used books, DVDs, CDs, and LPs.

David Newland CD Release: Newland's CD release party will take place at Hugh's Room Live.

Toronto Lit Up: Mike Barnes: Join Biblioasis and the Toronto International Festival of Authors in celebrating the release of Mike Barnes’ Braille Rainbow: Poems through Toronto Lit Up!

Dinner for Vegetarians in High Park: Join us to check out the all-vegan restaurant The Goods. Everyone welcome. RSVP via email.

Acid x Untitled presents Justin Cudmore at Black Eagle: Brooklyn's rising star of the Queer techno scene Justin Cudmore joins Aeryn Pfaff and Ceremonial at The Black Eagle. Hosted by Miss Moço. All genders welcome. No room for discrimination.

Flashback Friday: A Time Travel Cabaret: Come witness the past, present and future like you've never seen them before through some of the cities best burlesque, drag and gender performers.

Redwood Comedy Cafe: A weekly comedy showcase featuring Canada's top comedians at the intimate Redwood Cafe in Little India.

ONGOING

Jude Ifesieh presents: 'Beauty in Lines' at Visions Gallery: Jude Ifesieh has developed a unique style, building complex images from a myriad of simple, colourful strokes and dots. His resulting works express the innate beauty of life and nature, bursting with healing energy, fertility and fresh possibilities. Runs until May 12.

Art Show & Sale by Marley Berot at Starving Artist Restaurant: Trini-Ja Canadian Marley Berot is opening her first show at the Starving Artist Restaurant and Gallery at 467 Danforth Avenue. Her acrylic paintings will stay on the walls until May 18.

VideoCabaret: Too Good To Be True: A dark comedy by the marvelous playwright Cliff Cardinal, who recently won Double-Doras, and an Edinburgh festival award for writing and performing Huff. Runs until May 19.

Next to Normal at CAA Theatre: Winner of three Tony Awards, Next to Normal explores a suburban household affected by mental illness. With a gripping story and a surging contemporary rock score, Next to Normal is a raw depiction of a family in crisis trying to overcome the past. In production until May 19.

PRECIOUS: An Exhibition of Contemporary Art and Jewellery: By creating precious artwork and art jewellery from everyday and discarded items, Micah Adams, Christine Dwane and Lawrence Woodford remind us that our world is shaped by the decisions we make. Whether disposable or sustainable, beauty is everywhere. On display through May 23.

Being Japanese Canadian: Reflections on a Broken World at the ROM: Explore the original exhibition through the eyes of curators Bryce Kanbara and Katherine Yamashita. Runs until May 25.

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