#i have this thing where i simultaneously cannot ever find the words to articulate my oc stuff and the inability to shut up about it

[ichorblossoms]

lots of respect for ppl who don't post/talk abt certain oc things due to not wanting to spoil their own stuff, however i will not be doing that. by the time any of this stuff is finished it'll probably be different anyways

[rinisinsides]

The head's been getting too cluttered lately. For ages I was afraid I could only talk to him in my ahead and suddenly there were so many voices that it drowned him out entirely. I have been looking for an outlet for ages. Something to articulate to, maybe something to learn from, and maybe something even that could ignite that little creative spark again.

My first thought (which was, of course, but the 11102023rd thought of 29999999 thoughts in a sequence and perhaps even occurred simultaneously at the point of origin of a later thought, thus making it maybe the one true one even--) was to keep a journal. The classic. Intimate and intentional and impeccable. Pen strokes and the feel of paper on your skin. Shifts in handwriting that reflect the state of your mind, and your heart. Doodles in the corners of pages. All the pretty things that people would adore if they found it after you died.

But alas, journal I could not. For starters I was finding it incredibly hard to choose a notebook that would be my journal. No amount of books I looked at felt right and the ones that maybe kind of did, were too expensive for me to invest in without the guilt gripping me by my throat. Next, I just felt a physical handwritten journal would limit my writing abilities. It's crazy how at some point in time I made the shift where typing became the more common activity in my daily life over writing, and I just never looked back. I also think I would feel more at ease writing humorously on text and I kind of require that in order to talk about things because of my inability to talk about anything painful without 4 humorous clips for padding. Also, my hand would hurt. You get it. Just excuses surely, but somehow excuses enough for me to never actually get to it. But most importantly: When have I ever been able to do something that would be just for me? And perceived just by me? What's the point of doing anything if I won't be seen and loved for it, and what is the point of creating anything if it can only be seen and loved by me?

(Side note: Its been a while since I properly typed like paragraphs in this way and my fingers feel a little achey and it feels like a rusty old (trusted old?) machine being creaked back into action. maybe its just the w33d though)

The next idea was just to keep a google docs type virtual journal but I could not feel the vibes aligning on that so that was out of the window as well.

Next was to create an Instagram account, and I considered this but it would be a hassle when it starts popping up on people's suggested. And then I would feel the need to start letting people on to the account due to the aforementioned challenges regarding seeing and loving. Plus I usually would have pictures to accompany my words but I would get too caught up in the appearance of it (as I would feel it could potentially be seen and loved at some point) and I'd feel the need to say less or more or prettier or uglier or lofty or dreamy or or or other different things just for the picture. And I want it to be as unaffected by external stimuli as possible, at the time.

Next was less idea really, or maybe just a good idea that I immediately implemented. Which was to keep little notes on my phone! And it has been working great! I already have so many (not so many really but it's nice to have any at all) ideas and thoughts and poems written down that I can't wait to keep adding to and delving back into. And it can definitely been combined and worked into...

The last idea. Had this exactly (maybe not that exactly) around 30 minutes ago. I think earlier in the day I had seen the mention of personal blog type posts on someone's instagram, then later I was thinking about multiple things that kept running through my head (just phrases and sentences endlessly echoing out of nowhere) that I wanted to write down and introspect on and something else-- that I really had to say and for the life of me cannot remember now. Anyway, I think I considered posting on my Instagram story about this thing. WAIT! I think I remember, it was about wanting to make an Instagram posts about certain songs and lyrics that have really been sticking to me (my heart and all over and very specific spots like the crook of my neck and the insides of my wrists) but it felt too personal and vulnerable and also just a little lame and I thought about how the whole thing would feel more like a blog anyway. And then it me. A blog! And I'd have it on tumblr over medium or wordpress or something because it allows me more provision to just be informal and silly whenever I feel like it, and it scratches the itch for the seeing and loving as it will be just open enough. And maybe I'll put a little link on it on my Instagram someday and if people click on it and bother reading it, it would really mean that they want to know me. And that would be good for me to know.

So here we are. Thus begins my little loser blogging girl moment and I begin it in the lamest of ways by making it a long, rambly post about the beginning of said loser blogging girl moment and how I arrived at the idea for the moment to be in this form, and then referenced it again in the immediate next paragraph. God, she's insufferable.

At the time of writing this, the name of this blog is rinisinsides. Which is a very apt name and an ensured blog name availability. And you know, whatever goes on here is going to be my insides, which is the plan at least. But I'm already feeling a shift to the name mayorofloserntown, which is probably already taken and kind of does not look good for a blog url, but it's one of those stuck in my head phrases recently. And while I've been typing this I remembered blogs can have titles! And thus my title will be mayor of losertown. Maybe subject to change.

Anyway this is me ending this post! If you read this and you do not know me in real life. how strange for our paths to cross this way. Thank you for scratching the seeing part of the itch, at least. I do not feel assured enough to think that anyone would've loved reading this, and it feels too presumptuous to thank a hypothetical someone who did. If you do know me in real life, I think I feel just a little bit more assured enough to say thank you for scratching the seeing and loving itch.

P.S. Just gonna post this now! Not really rereading or editing anything, except just fixing some red squiggly lines without reading around them much. Just rawdogging it, dog.

[spencers-renaissance]

Foolishly, Completely Falling

Summary: Spencer declines to spend the night with Luke, but there's a reason for that, and things start to click into place when Spencer shows back up at his doorstep at 2am, hours after being dropped home.

Tags: hurt/comfort, fluff, angst, past toxic relationship, nightmares, est/dev relationship

Pairing: Luke x Spencer

Word count: 2.5k

Read on AO3

When Luke asks Spencer if he wants to stay the night for the first time, he isn’t as quick to agree like Luke expects. The TV is playing a game show on low volume and they’re lying comfortably together on the sofa, quietly enjoying one another’s company after a busy day. They’d had a lovely evening out at the Mexican restaurant Luke had managed to convince Spencer to try before a cuddle and far too much making out on the sofa, so he’s feeling pretty good when he whispers the question into his boyfriend’s ear. Instead of the excited agreement he expects, though -- after all, the first night in the same bed with a new partner is always exhilarating -- Spencer freezes. 

“Hey,” Luke says, tone quickly sobering up. He shifts a little to get a better look at his boyfriend’s face, worried he’d said the wrong thing. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to, baby. We can just cuddle a little longer and then I’ll drive you home, yeah? Whatever you want.”

The kind voice he uses seems to slowly shake Spencer out of his frozen trance, gradually pulling himself up from the quicksand of his thoughts to respond to Luke. “No, I want to,” he explains slowly, thankful Luke is so patient when he tries to articulate complicated feelings. “There’s just… it’s because-- I don’t know how to tell you.” He sighs in defeat as he fails to tell his boyfriend how he feels, slumping down a little as he relaxes his previously stiffened muscles, collapsing into the warmth and safety of Luke’s chest. 

“You don’t have to justify it, Spencer,” Luke says earnestly, running his hands up and down Spencer’s arms gently as his face contorts with worry, a small sense of relief coming from the feeling of his boyfriend physically relaxing under his touch. He can’t help but feel a sinking pit of fear in his stomach that maybe he’s made a massive misstep, maybe Spencer isn’t as into this as he is, maybe there’s something really, really wrong.

Instead of voicing his concerns, though, he simply revels in the moment: Spencer’s head on his chest, his body flush against his own as their breathing syncs and they take in the last few moments of peace before the world switches back on and they have to part ways. 

If only he could stop his tumbling mind and enjoy it properly. 

★

Spencer seems mostly recovered from the awkward moment by the time they clamber into Luke’s car to drive him back home. He’s barely switched the engine on before Spencer is telling him about the technology of contactless keys and how they were invented, the dangers they present to society as well as the vulnerability they have to hacking before going on a tangent about a factory in Ireland that accidentally discovered a serious technological advancement. He’s chattering away happily in the passenger seat, and the tension Luke still holds in his shoulders dissipates as he listens to him ramble about things he cares about. 

It’s hard to focus on the road, really, when Spencer chooses to be so utterly adorable. He can’t keep his eyes off him when he’s passionately lecturing somebody about something everyone else finds insignificant or confusing and he finds endlessly fascinating. The team makes fun of him constantly for the way he stares at his boyfriend, and he’s not overly fond of the new nickname ‘moon eyes’ that he can’t seem to shake, but it won’t stop him from appreciating Spencer’s knowledge, making sure he knows Luke supports him no matter what. He knows that he gets shut down far too often, that people appreciate him for his intellect only when it’s valuable to him, and he’ll be damned if he ever makes him feel that way. 

He listens dutifully the whole drive back to Spencer’s apartment, managing to drive safely despite the distraction, and he can’t suppress the laugh at the surprised look colouring Spencer’s face once he sees they’ve arrived. He goes into a little bubble when he’s info-dumping, only coming out of it when there’s a significant change in his environment, but Luke can’t stop the fondness from spreading through his body as if it’s the first time he’s ever seen Spencer make that face. 

“We’re here,” Spencer observes, a slightly sheepish look spreading across his features. 

Luke absolutely cannot accept that so he leans across the console to press a deep and loving kiss to his lips, startling Spencer out of his embarrassment as he kisses back with just as much vigour. “You want me to walk you up?” Luke asks as he pulls away, bringing a hand to Spencer’s face to gently brush a few curls off his forehead.

“I’m good,” Spencer smiles, looking adoringly at Luke. If he was a more acrimonious man he’d be annoyed that everyone misses the matching looks Spencer sends his way, but there’s something special about them being just for him, like there’s a little bit of him he gets to keep just for himself. He’ll take that over Spencer getting teased even more any day. 

“Okay, baby.” He leans in to give him another kiss, quickly this time, before leaning up to peck his forehead, too. “You sleep well. If we’re not called in tomorrow I’ll swing by and we can do something together, how does that sound?”

“Perfect,” Spencer says softly. He puts his hand on top of Luke’s and caresses his knuckles gently, and for a second Luke is convinced he’s about to say something but he decides against it, settling on a soft smile before he’s clumsily climbing out of the car and walking towards the elevator into the building. 

The shy wave Spencer gives him just as the elevator doors close is enough to keep his heart warm through winter. 

★

Luke heads straight to bed as soon as he gets back home, switching off all the lights and getting ready in the bathroom before slipping between the sheets. It’s barely 11 but he’s exhausted from a busy day at work followed by the date he’d had with Spencer and he can feel the exhaustion tugging at his limbs. He’d hoped that he would be cuddled against a warm body tonight, and Spencer’s absence makes the bed feel so cold, even with Roxy warming his feet. 

Eventually, he manages to slip off to sleep, though, because he’s woken up not long after by Roxy leaping off the bed and whining at his bedroom door, startling him awake. “Roxy?” he asks, immediately on high alert. “What’s wrong, girl?” He sleepily pushes the covers off him, exposing himself to the frigid air of his apartment as he contemplates reaching for his gun when he hears it. There’s a tentative knock at the door, probably not the first, far too quiet to have woken him up if he hadn’t had Roxy. He jumps into action and pulls a t-shirt on as he walks to his front door, flicking on the lights as he goes, not wanting to trip over anything in the dark. 

It’s Spencer. He’s standing there looking nothing short of distraught as he wrings his hands nervously in front of him, that sheepish, embarrassed look Luke had been so desperate to kiss away earlier returned in full force. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, looking close to tears. “I just, I didn’t know where to go… usually I go to JJ’s but Henry and Michael are staying with Penelope tonight so she and Will could have a proper date night again and I didn’t want to interrupt but I didn’t want to be alone so I thought that maybe… maybe it would be okay if I came to see you, but I’m sorry if--”

“Hey,” Luke gently intercepts Spencer’s rambling with a careful hand on his waist and a step closer. “Why don’t you come in?”

It’s a bit of a shock to see his boyfriend on his doorstep only hours after he’d dropped him off, especially since he’s clearly in quite a state, a very different Spencer to the one who had kissed him deeply and waved him goodbye earlier in the evening, but Luke doesn’t want to do another thing until Spencer is happy again, feeling safe and comforted. He’s going to try damn hard to do that for him. 

“I’m sorry, Luke,” he apologises again, voice tight and anxious, eyes glassy as he follows him inside and hesitantly sits next to him on the sofa. “I should have asked before turning up here and I’m sure I woke you up. God, I’m such an idiot sometimes, I should just--”

“Spencer,” Luke says, voice a little louder to cut over Spencer’s panicked word vomit. “You are always welcome here. No matter what, okay? You don’t have to be afraid to come here, ever. I’m your boyfriend, I want to take care of you.”

“Really?” he asks, looking almost floored at Luke’s words.

“Really.” Luke promises, reaching over to gently wipe a spilled tear from Spencer’s cheekbone. “If I was upset, wouldn’t you feel the same way.”

Spencer’s eyes widen in understanding as he nods vigorously, causing Luke to smile fondly.

 “Now. What’s going on, baby? Did something happen?”

“Um,” Spencer hesitates, simultaneously not knowing how to properly voice his feelings and afraid of how Luke might react to them. Luckily, Luke knows how to be patient with Spencer, waiting quietly as he traces patterns on his forearm. “You know how earlier I said I did want to stay here but I couldn’t?”

Luke hums. “I do, yes.”

“Well, it’s because I was scared.”

Luke’s finger pauses for a short second in surprise before continuing its path, trying to convey his non-judgement. “What of, sweetheart?” he asks, praying that he wasn’t about to say him. 

“The last time I shared a bed with someone, he wasn’t nice to me,” Spencer confesses, looking into Luke’s eyes briefly, long enough only for Luke to pick up on the intense vulnerability swimming in his pupils. “I get… really bad nightmares. And my ex, the one I told you about, George?” He waits for Luke’s acknowledging nod before continuing. “He got… angry. I disturbed his sleep and he yelled a lot before breaking up with me.”

Luke nods slowly, finally understanding the situation. “And you were afraid that the same thing would happen with me?” he asks gently, not judging Spencer for his fear at all and hoping he can see that in his eyes. 

“Yeah,” he whispers, looking down at his twiddling fingers for a long moment before finally looking back at Luke, tears gathering in his eyes again. “I’m sorry, I should have trusted you.” 

“Oh, Spencer,” he soothes calmly, gathering him up into a hug and carding his fingers through Spencer’s curls in just the way he knows he likes. “You can’t control a fear like that. It’s a natural reaction to be afraid of repeating a previous experience, especially if that event was upsetting or traumatic.”

“I know,” he mutters miserably, face wedged close into Luke’s neck. “I’m still sorry.”

“It’s okay, baby,” he says. “Is that what made you come over tonight? You had a nightmare?” He feels Spencer nod and his heart breaks. His boyfriend has been silently suffering through these awful nightmares alone, all because some asshole had broken up with him for something he couldn’t control. “I’m sorry, Spence. Do you want to talk about it?”

Spencer shakes his head, as he pulls his face away from Luke’s neck. “I’ve tried that but it doesn’t work,” he frowns. “It just makes me relive it and the anxiety gets worse. It’s better if I just try and acknowledge them before moving past them.”

“Whatever works for you, baby,” Luke says. “Now, how about we get you changed into some pajamas again and you can come and stay with me tonight. I just want to be here for you, Spencer, comfort you if you have a nightmare, hold you even if you don’t. Nothing will happen if you do have one, alright? Except you being able to avoid travelling across town at 2am to seek some comfort, because I’ll be right next to you, cuddles at the ready.”

“You promise?” Spencer asks hopefully, finally seeming to relax a little. 

“I swear on my life,” Luke grins, before pressing a chaste kiss to Spencer’s lips and standing up. “Come on, let’s get ready for bed.” 

Spencer’s wearing a soft t-shirt already but Luke demands he change into one of his own, claiming he wants him to be as comfortable as possible, but they both know he just can’t get enough of Spencer in his own clothes. It feels like an extra layer of protection Luke can wrap around him, keep him safe and warm in his clothing, protect him from anything formidable, including his own mind. “It smells of you,” he smiles approvingly as soon as it’s settled over his shoulders, too loose for his smaller frame. 

“Well, baby, you’re gonna love cuddling with me in my bed then,” Luke winks. “I’m not sure anywhere else could possibly smell more like me.” He switches off the lights in the house and calls Roxy back to bed, before slipping underneath the duvet, which is much more pleasurable this time, Spencer curled up against his side as Luke wraps a comforting arm around his waist. 

He savours Spencer’s satisfied sigh as he curls up tighter, pressing as close to Luke as possible; his clingy nature is one of the things he loves most about him. There’s nothing Spencer likes more than climbing into Luke’s lap or laying across him on the sofa, holding his hand in public or pressing himself as close as possible until Luke gets the hint and wraps an arm around his waist. He loves being held, which works out well because Luke isn’t sure he likes anything more than holding him, drinking in the comfort that comes from the closeness, the inexplicable feeling that is being Spencer Reid’s boyfriend.  

“Thank you, Luke,” Spencer whispers, voice clearly showing how drained and tired he is, but he sounds relaxed and comfortable, and that’s what matters most.

“Anytime, baby,” he whispers back, smile playing over his lips as it always seems to do when he’s around Spencer. “You sleep now. You’re safe, I’ll be here.” 

“I know.” Spencer’s whisper is even quieter this time as his breaths even out and his muscles relax slightly, and Luke has never envied his boyfriend’s eidetic memory more. If he could bottle this exact moment -- Spencer slowly falling asleep on him, trusting him enough to stay no matter what happens, the warmth and comfort of the embrace -- he’d never stop playing it over, a personal paradise just for the two of them recorded in his mind forever. 

Just having this moment, though, having this memory all for himself, will do Luke just fine. 

@gxenbev

[jordanr770-blog]

America Needs Some Talent

 I just needed someplace to write down my thoughts so here we are!

I have been watching America’s Got Talent since season 11 when the ukulele girl won. I personally didn’t vote for her but can understand why she won. Same goes for season 12. I was rooting super hard for Diavolo but can understand why puppet girl won. Season 13 had some of the best acts ever (Shin Lim-winner) and I know a lot of people disliked her, but Courtney Hadwin should have at least  gotten 5th place over sob story “I’m such a good person and I hit my wife” Michael Ketterer. Kodi Lee was the obvious winner of season 14 and I personally thought he deserved it over the other acts. Other people did not think it was well deserved, and that’s ok too.  

Last season we got a spoken word poet in the form of Brandon Leake. I did not enjoy the act AT ALL and was kind of mad that he won, but I will say that even though I did not enjoy him, spoken word poetry is indeed a talent.

Now, you may be thinking that season 16 would be a smidgeon of an improvement over season 15. Talent and reality shows should probably strive to become better every season. But if you thought this show isn’t capable of getting any worse, you haven’t been paying attention because this show will always find ways to disappoint. Last night we were told everyone voted for an INSPIRATIONAL speech giver as the winner. Or I’m sorry, apparently he does magic. His name is Dustin Tavella. But the thing is, he was HORRIBLE at both storytelling AND magic and nowhere near deserved the win. “It was well deserved.” How? How is a kindergarten level “magician” worth a million dollars and a Vegas show? I believe the show in Vegas is about an hour and a half and I am curious as to what is he going to do in that timeframe? Talk about how the folks living in Vegas are living in sin while simultaneously throwing paper in the air MAGICALLY? I’m sure the audience will go wild over that. Or maybe during all of his shows he will adopt a kid a day from different countries and then spend about an hour talking about Little ZimZam’s harsh life and while he’s babbling  he’ll be semi incorporating his poor magic skills into the act in the last minute so the poster stating he’s a magician didn’t TECHNICALLY lie so nobody is getting their money back. I really don’t know. I have a lot of thoughts. 

Plus, his sob story just did nothing for me whatsoever. Good for you for adapting 11 children, unless it has to do with whatever your act is, shut the hell up and do the trick! Not once did this guy impress  or give even the best of a performance of the night. It was always 8+ minutes of “inspiration” and tirades about how we as a society need to be good to one another whilst doing crappy magic. Let me tell you, I know next to nothing about magic but even I could tell he was a less than stellar magician. Even calling him a magician is somewhat laughable. In reality he's a motivational speaker who does terrible magic tricks and  who always somehow manages to suck at said terrible magic but America apparently doesn’t notice him screwing up his terrible magic because he’s too busy telling them to look at a crumpled up piece of paper or a ladder or the new photograph of his adopted son who has an extra eyeball or whatever. It’s stupid.

Last night for his final performance Dustin’s act was, and I kid you not, telling us all to be nice. FOR SEVEN UNNECESSARY MINUTES. And I do believe he started to fake cry. Dude, you’re acting is about as good as Heidi Klum’s. You can't act and you can barely do magic. Why are you here? What is your talent? Did he really join a talent show to become some type of inspirational God of obvious wisdom? If that’s the case, he should have gone and done a Ted Talk, many less victims of mediocrity that way. America somehow  put him in the top 5 with actually talented people? I think not. The act itself was not impressive and he did the same thing every time, just told a different sob story. If you have to rely on a sad story to win, you don’t deserve to win a show where talent is the main objective. 

In case my last few paragraphs were not made abundantly clear, I am not a fan of this dude. At all. I read a comment which stated that a message is not a talent and whoever said that is 100% correct and summed up my feelings pretty accurately. I'm not a fan or boring and basic tricks combined with even worse stories. He's the living embodiment of a motivational meme and anyone who voted for this guy is  gullible and can fight me. Maybe people “voted” for him because he attempted to pull on the heartstrings? But because I sold my heart long ago his act didn’t effect me as much. /s But I swear every year they make it more clear that the entire show is rigged. 

Well, maybe the voting ISN’T rigged entirely and all the boomers  (first time I’ve ever used that term) and antivaxxers and easily swayed by sob story people on Twitter and Facebook voted for him. Doubtful, but you never know. HE WAS SO FREAKING BAD!!!

We are all allowed to have opinions and just because you don’t agree with me that doesn’t mean I am an awful person who deserves DEATH. I keep getting responses and messages on Twitter from angry folk who are calling me heartless because I questioned WHY they voted for him. “Well, IIIII gave Dustin all 10 of my votes!” That’s nice Karen. That is also not an answer and I cannot stress enough how much I do not care that you voted for the phony used cars salesman. Go tell your Prince from Nigeria all about it. Another guy got mad and reported me for “yelling at strangers.” Which is kind of a typical thing people do on Twitter. And I wasn’t even yelling! Lol. 

And another point I’d like to make (about this and  in general) is people really need to stop using the terms “all of us” and the word “we.” I am my own person and you do not get to speak for me. 

“We were all crying when we saw him perform!” - No WE most certainly weren’t. I was seething with anger, yes. Crying? Not even close.

“His magic touched all of our hearts!” WHAT MAGIC? WHERE WAS THE MAGIC IN THIS MANS ENTIRE ACT? I MUST HAVE MISSED IT AFTER I PASSED OUT FROM HIS 7 MINUTE LONG STORY ABOUT HIS BORING LIFE. 

His win was a complete insult.

* I personally voted for Aidan Bryant, but I really wanted Unicircle Flow to win before they got kicked off due to the judges having a tendency to suck at picking during judges choice. *

Edit: I apologize if this wasn’t articulated very well or if it seems I basically said the same thing over and over. To be fair it was 3 am when I wrote this and I was still irritated and questioning everything. Still doesn’t excuse the fact that this guy was lame and doesn’t deserve a Vegas show. My mom told me earlier today that people on the Internet are mad about his win and that it’s not fair to take it out on the guy, which I suppose is kind of true. Not exactly his fault the general public has failed and shown their stupidity yet again. If anyone is to blame it is the people who actually voted for this doofus. And AGT. And yeah, I guess I will blame him as well. But I’m not saying go to his Twitter or Instagram or whatever and call him out for being a con artist and bully him. 

I think the MESSAGE =P I’m trying to display here  is that someone has no business being on a talent show unless they have talent; self explanatory. A message isn’t talent. Being a narcissist isn’t talent. Exploiting your kids and wife isn’t talent. Speaking can be a talent (comedy, that poetry guy, acting, improv, probably a lot of other stuff I’m forgetting about) but one shouldn’t call themselves a magician if one is really a way less cool garage sale version of Talky Tina. Magic IS talent but if you want a million dollars you better have skills that are on par or better than the professionals. 

[psalloacappella]

à deux

Day 1 Prompt:  Rain

@sasusakublankperiodweek Ao3 | FFN | ↓

“Cold,” he croaks, like unhinging an old metal joint. Instead of the weight of unused years, it’s the weight of unshed tears. The strain in his voice zigzags, lost, falls into its baritone groove. “You always are, when it rains.”

Upon awakening in the bleak dawn, the day’s significance settles on them — at once a burdening melancholy and poignant relic.

At first blush it could be any morning, but as shinobi experienced with the passage of years and the disorientation of traveling dimensions, both are loath to disregard the importance of date and time.

He’s standing at the window. You would assume he’s still lost in a daze of sleep.

Sakura gently presses her cold (they’re always cold, on days like this, days in which it pours and rain floods the countryside and small villages and cleans the dust from these everyday, hard lives) fingertips to his back, alerting him to her presence. Still they are in the phase of learning the lore of one another despite all the things already known, and it is the truest labor of love.

“We should stay one more day,” she says quietly. He hasn’t acknowledged, but hasn’t resisted.

Some days, that’s good enough.

But she overdoes it; that’s who she is. Love may be gentle but her manner of it isn’t always:  Indeed, she is fierce with people that rub her the wrong way, especially those invoking his name out of turn; she eats too fast, as indulgence; she hugs children too tightly when she knows she’ll never see them again, knowing that they are ships flickering through towns, some benevolent symbol of an oppressor they’re too young to put a face to.

Today is the anniversary of death. Over time they’ve both come to know this as an old friend, but this is Sasuke’s most notable scar.

Sakura cannot reach him on days like this, and that’s okay.

“The rain, after all. Traveling in this would be a pain — we’ve tried that before.”

She slides her arm around his waist, pressing her cheek to his warm back.

Don’t cry. It’s not your day. Don’t be so emotional.

Tears escape, they always do. To his credit, he never resents it.

Even with him now,  his equal, there are bouts of disbelief and self-loathing in which all she manages to do is convince herself nothing about her is helpful, that she’s still yearning for him to turn around.

Now the other arm, hanging on to him as if he’s unwieldy, as if he’ll sink into the chilled wood floor and out of her sight for good.

Sasuke’s hand and grip are warm, flash and fire. She knows this is in more ways than one — unspeakable ones, really.

Some grunt of assent, no fully-formed word at all, but she hears him swallow hard, once. It’s easy to, in a small corner of the world which hasn’t yet begun its day.

Hot fingers, frigid arms.

“Cold,” he croaks, like unhinging an old metal joint. Instead of the weight of unused years, it’s the weight of unshed tears. The strain in his voice zigzags, lost, falls into its baritone groove. “You always are, when it rains.”

Sakura resists the urge to click her tongue at his misdirection, the veneer to gloss over his emotional state.

“I’m all right, Sasuke-kun.”

“Hm.”

“I am! It just settles into my hands, that’s all. It’s close to an equinox, you know. The seasons are turning.”

(He’d never admit he likes that about her — nervy, a little more quick to correct, less scared, and that it’s brought him some delight, some sparkle to her that continues to surprise him.)

She feels him scoff under his breath, probably at her ability to pinpoint their location in time, in space, in the universe no matter where they are. When you save lives on seconds of analysis, on minuscule doses, these things become instinctive.

So of course, she knows what today is.

Pressing her nose into his shoulderblade, she says, muffled, “Should I call for tea, then?”

It’s a long beat before he nods, knowing that she’ll have to let him go to complete this task, leaving him alone at the drafty window — the chill having a chance to seep into the cracks in his soul.

They’re always less protected on these days.

.

.

The sleeves of his shirt always drown her wrists and hands, and though she has to flick and adjust them as she moves about the inn room, it’s one of her favorite ways to trap heat against her body. It’s not as cold as the caves they’ve sometimes inhabited, but close. Though the teapot scalds, it’s welcoming.

“It’s steady,” she muses, eyes on the persistent rain. “The whole village will be quiet today, in weather like this.”

Sasuke nods in response with unfocused eyes, collecting himself to meet hers. Green, watching him in a searching way. The way he does to her on all other days, seeking signs of regret or distress or any emotion within his ability to repair or ease. At once, old lovers and new.

A memory sears, a sharp grazing against the mind:  A low table, scattered small dishes like this with food remnants vivid, colorful; a sullen father, the corners of his mouth sagging; his mother beaming, hiding laughter behind her hand.

A brother, by then already burdened and saturated with the weight of his destiny, still finding the almost offensive wherewithal to poke him in the face.

“You haven’t touched anything,” she chides gently.

Tuning in again to them, this, arriving momentarily from his sojourn of the past, his eyes flicker to her own messy plate. Lately she’s only pushed food around in the mimicry of an indulged meal. Worries about her being sick. She just blusters, waving away concerns. (I’m a medic, for god’s sake, I’d know!)

“And you,” he responds, indicating her own dregs with his rude, handsome chin.

She shrugs, burying deeper into his shirt. “Perhaps it’s just the day.”

“You’re coddling, aren’t you? I don’t need that.”

It comes sharper than expected, and he regrets it the second it leaves his lips. He  imagines what Itachi would say, knowing he possesses a great love which he’s taken for granted time over, time again. He’d reprimand him, as he should.

Often he settles for his ex-sensei’s silent admonitions instead.

Finishing a sip of tea, she sets the mug down and sighs. Getting to her feet, she collects a few scrolls she’s been poring over the last few nights and looks at him, a bit less readable this time.

“You’re allowed to feel this, you know, Sasuke-kun. You’re allowed to love, and you’re allowed to hurt.”

She half-turns, but stops and adds,

“And you can even feel it all at the same time.”

Sakura retreats to the corner where one of the few furnishings sits. A chair, large enough for her to fold herself into and unravel her resources. A plant discovered in this new region they had crossed into last week, similar and yet different enough to pique her interest and spur her to research. She’s been lost in common roots, and he’s been mired in the loss of his old ones.

The ability of the mind to experience multiple things at once is truly remarkable. To an observer he watches her study with intent as she furrows her brow, yawns often throughout. Sasuke can see her as well as his past all at once.

Anniversaries of his dead loved ones shouldn’t mean so much. After all, he’s been alive without them longer than with.

Sasuke wishes he could explain that her presence is enough. That her loving him has been enough.

“We could still go through the traditions, if you’d like. Collect what we need. I know,” and her breath hitches, and she glances away under his dark eyes, probably feeling she’s pressing, said too much, “there’s no grave to do it with, but—”

“It’s fine.” He tries, he does, to say it with less bite. Gods, he’s transparent, his pain and denial. He’s not ready yet. Will he ever be?

“This is your day to grieve,” she says softly. “You should do that however you choose. No one can tell you how to feel — not even me.

Even me. He knows she knows his weakness. Watches her yawn again and awkwardly adjust her body, as if her own skin is uncomfortable, blink and he’d miss.

“There’s nothing I want to do,” he confesses, sounding hoarse against his will. “Nothing at all.”

A pause, a long one, in which the rain sings against the roof.

“Then you don’t have to,” she says. “You just grieve.”

And so he does.

Pretends to read.

Stares out the window.

Lingers in the discomfort of his own skin.

Paces.

Touches no food, lapses into a mausoleum silence so complete the lines of them blur against their own dimension.

He can feel his brother’s touch, and she can feel his agony.

She rises periodically, offering him tea, sliding her arms around him from behind again. He alternates between silence and quiet shakes that he’d never admit were sobs.

By dusk he’s in her lap, hair mussed and wild, feeling spent from everything and nothing at all, from wandering in the better memories of a brother he can’t bring back.

It slips from his lips in a moment of weakness, it hurts.

“I know,” she whispers, pulling her fingers gently through his untamed locks. “It always might. But don’t forget, every day has the same number of hours.”

It’s not until they lie down again, the day a simultaneous blur of grief and guilt, that she says in a soothing whisper, “And look, darling — you’ve made it through another. You always do.”

And while he can’t articulate that each year it’s a little more muted, the pain easing off him as they pass, if only marginally, he manages to thank her only in twilight when he’s spared from knowing if she can hear him at all.

.

.

On the second day of rain he awakens before her, an arm curled around her stomach in a way that aligns with some adagio ballad pouring from where, he doesn’t know, the universe, some sign, and as intelligent as he is the facts are slipping from him whether due to the haze of sleep or the turmoil of his ghosts, the way the dead and the living and the coming to life knot themselves with one another, soaking him with an instinct and some sense of surety so intoxicating that he buries his face in her long, wild hair where nothing can see his face, but she will know his heart.

If everything’s a cycle, then the old and new must cross paths in their rotations.

The darkness bleeds away and he realizes she’s waited to spill the joyous news, not wanting to acknowledge that alignment of the stars to spare his feelings, and for that he is endlessly grateful and guilty.

But he likes to think his brother, despite his faults, would have liked to know he continued forward, that he accepted the love he didn’t feel he deserved and tried, desperately, to welcome life anew.

Sasuke presses his lips to the back of her neck, and his warm hand against her stomach.

“It’s still raining,” she murmurs, still in the place between wakefulness and dreams.

He thinks he feels the flutter of his future against his palm. He only whispers,

“Let’s stay here for now.”  

[therefractory]

The clown king: how Boris Johnson made it by playing the fool | Boris Johnson | The Guardian The Guardian · by Edward Docx The long-running German satirical show Extra 3 recently featured a sketch with the following voiceover: “From the people who brought you The Crown – the epic saga of the Queen – now comes the ridiculous story of this guy, a notorious buffoon at the head of a country … The Clown.” The word “clown” has often been used in a flippant or dismissive way with regard to Boris Johnson. But the underlying paradox is that it is only as a clown – a fool in the oldest and deepest sense of the word – that his character can truly be understood. What happens when you make the clown king is what we in the UK have been witnessing in real time. With the success of the vaccine, though, a new question emerges: can one archetype transform into the other? Can Johnson creep away from his clownish past altogether? Clowns, of course, are very serious and important people. At their simplest, they remind us of the silliness of things: that the world we have created is ridiculous. They reassure us in this observation by appealing to our innate understanding of the absurd. They relieve the endless tension and trauma of reality. At a deeper level, the clown is the mirror image of the priest. Both represent two ancient sides of our nature. Both elucidate what it means to be human. The priest summons, celebrates and interrogates the sacred; the clown does the same with the profane. The one is concerned with the eschatological, the other with the scatological. The priest propounds abstinence and fasting; the clown gluttony and indulgence. The one solemnifies sex, the other carnalises. As David Bridel, founder of the Clown School in Los Angeles, says, clowns are often roundly welcomed because they “remind us that we are as practised in falling over, shitting and humping, as we are in prayer and purification”. Would-be biographers of Johnson might do worse than to read Paul Bouissac, the leading scholar on the semiotics of clowning. Clowns are “transgressors”, he writes, cultural subversives who enact rituals and dramatic tableaux that “ignore the tacit rules of social games to indulge in symbolic actions that … toy with these norms as if they were arbitrary, dispensable convention.” Clowns “undermine the ground upon which our language and our society rest by revealing their fragility”. They “foreground the tension” between “instinct” and “constraint”. Bouissac could be writing directly of Johnson when he adds: “Their performing identities transcend the rules of propriety.” They are, he says, “improper by essence”. Observe classic Johnson closely as he arrives at an event. See how his entire being and bearing is bent towards satire, subversion, mockery. The hair is his clown’s disguise. Just as the makeup and the red nose bestow upon the circus clown a form of anonymity and thus freedom to overturn conventions, so Johnson’s candy-floss mop announces his licence. His clothes are often baggy – ill-fitting; a reminder of the clothes of the clown. He walks towards us quizzically, as if to mock the affected “power walking” of other leaders. Absurdity seems to be wrestling with solemnity in every expression and limb. Notice how he sometimes feigns to lose his way as if to suggest the ridiculousness of the event, the ridiculousness of his presence there, the ridiculousness of any human being going in any direction at all. His weight, meanwhile, invites us to consider that the trouble with the world (if only we’d admit it) is that it’s really all about appetite and greed. (His convoluted affairs and uncountable children whisper the same about sex.) Before he says a word, he has transmitted his core message – that the human conventions of styling hair, fitting clothes and curbing desires are all … ludicrous. And we are encouraged – laughingly – to agree. And, of course, we do. Because, in a sense, they are ludicrous. He goes further, though – pushing the clown’s confetti-stuffed envelope: isn’t pretending you don’t want to eat great trolleys of cake and squire an endless carousel of medieval barmaids … dishonest? Oh, come on, it’s so tiresome trying to be slim, groomed or monogamous – when what you really want is more cake and more sex. Right? I know it. You know it. We all know it. Why lie? Forget the subject under discussion – Europe, social care, Ireland – am I not telling it like it is, deep down? Am I not the most honest politician you’ve ever come across? Herein the clown’s perverse appeal to reason. Next, witness how, in the company of a journalist, Johnson’s whole demeanour transmits the sense of him saying: “Aha! An interview! How absurd! This is no way to find anything out! But, yes, if you want, I will play ‘prime minister’ and you can reprise my old role – if that’s what the audience is here for.” Notice how often he asks (knowingly) “Are you sure our viewers wouldn’t want to hear … ?” or “You really want to know this?” This is because the clown is always in a deeper relationship with the audience than with his ostensible subject. See how he rocks on his feet as if to lampoon a politician emphasising his words. Hear how his speech is not – in truth – eloquent, but rather a caricature of eloquence. The dominant mode is not fluency, but a kind of stop-start oratio interruptus; hesitancy followed by sudden spasms of effusion. The hesitancy is designed to involve us in the confected drama of his choosing the next word. The sudden effusion that follows can then be marketed as clinching evidence of his oratorical elan. You do not have to be a dramatist to recognise the clown archetype immediately. Johnson’s impulsiveness. The self-summoned crises. His attitude to truth, to authority, to every construct of law and art and politics, to power and to pleasure. His personal relationships and his relationship to the public. The self-conscious ungainliness. His blithe conjuring of fantasy and fairytale. The way he toys with norms – inverts, switches, tricks, reverses. The collusive warmth oddly symbiotic with a distancing coldness. Anything for a laugh. Everything preposterous. All of it richly articulate of the antic spirit that animates his being. Indeed, Johnson is an apex-clown – capable of the most sophisticated existential mockery while simultaneously maintaining the low moment-by-moment physical comedy of the buffoon. Recall general election Johnson of 2019. Think of the famous moment where he drove a JCB through a polystyrene wall on which was written the word “Gridlock”. His union jack-painted digger burst through the polystyrene with the legend “Get Brexit Done” written on its loader. His subsequent speech even mentioned custard: “I think it is time,” he said, smirking, “for the whole country – symbolically – to get in the cab of a JCB – of a custard colossus – and remove the current blockage that we have in our parliamentary system.” This scene must surely be as close to the actual circus as politics in the UK has ever come. Boris Johnson at the JCB headquarters in Uttoxeter, Staffordshire, December 2019. Photograph: Ben Stansall/AFP/Getty Images Consider what is actually going on here. The wall is a wall that he helped create. Now he wants everyone to join him demolishing it. And he’s the man to lead the charge. Why? Because he’s the only one who can smash through the nonsense that is … the wall. Yet, he built the wall. Most of this nonsense is his doing – figuratively, literally, in the studio, in the country. And why are the hazard lights on? Because, of course, this is an emergency, for the clown must forever be concocting drama. An emergency that he has conjured and staged – to place himself in the cab of the rescue vehicle. Which is not a rescue vehicle. But a JCB. (Paradox inside paradox; is he destroying or rescuing?) A JCB painted as a union jack. Why? To celebrate the flag? Not quite. To mock it, then? Also, not quite. But in order to toy with it – to clown with it – to move back and forth across the borders of the serious and the comic. “Time for the whole country,” he says, “symbolically – to get in the cab of the JCB.” Symbolically? Was ever a word deployed with so many layers of foolery? What – we thought he might mean we all get in the JCB? Of course, we didn’t. So who is he mocking with that word? He’s mocking everything – the stunt, us, himself – even in the moment of performance, he mocks his own performance. We cannot take him seriously and yet we must take him seriously. And note how that word “symbolically” steps up from the backstage of Johnson’s consciousness when talking of Brexit – which, as he well knows, is an act of symbolism at the expense of everything else. The JCBs, the polystyrene walls, the stuck-on-a-zipwire-with-two-mini-union-jacks, the hiding in fridges, the waving of fish, the thumbs up, the pants down, this is the realm of the mock heroic – to which Johnson returns again and again. This is where he’s most at home. This is where he’s world-king. And he urges us to join him there. Nudges our elbows. Offers us a drink. Beckons us in. Smirks. Winks. Johnson’s novel Seventy-Two Virgins is one long tour of the territory. The book is beyond merely bad and into some hitherto unvisited hinterland of anti-art. More or less everything about it is ersatz. Commentators who fall for his self-conjured comparisons to Waugh and Wodehouse miss the point entirely and do both writers an oafish ill-service. Because here again: Johnson is not seriously interested in writing novels at all. It’s not that he’s a fraud. Rather, as ever, he is a jester-dilettante peddling parody and pastiche. In truth, the attentive reader is not invited to take anything seriously about the novel – not its title; not its handling of character, dialogue, plot or point of view; not its dramatic construction, nor its stylistic impersonations. And certainly not its thematic dabbling. In fact, for more than 300 ingenious pages, Johnson manages to commit to nothing in the art of writing a novel so much as the attempt to be entertaining in the act of mocking a commitment to the art of writing of a novel. There is no heroic; it’s all mock. “To a man like Roger Barlow,” Johnson writes of his clownishly named hero in the book, “the whole world just seemed to be a complicated joke … everything was always up for grabs, capable of dispute; and religion, laws, principle, custom – these were nothing but sticks from the wayside to support our faltering steps.” Clowns have been with us through history. They turn up in Greek drama as sklêro-paiktês – childlike figures. During the Roman festival of Saturnalia, a clown-king was chosen and all commerce was suspended in favour of a wild cavort. (“Fuck business.”) In Norse mythology, the archetype is the figure of Loki – silver-tongued trickster and shape-shifter who turns himself into horse, seal, fly, and fish. (Note the echo of the reference by a close ally of Joe Biden to Johnson as a “shape-shifting creep”.) In the Italian commedia dell’arte, there is the character of Pierrot. There is Badin in France, Bobo in Spain, Hanswurst in Germany. And here in Britain: Shakespeare’s many famous fools. We need our clever fools, of course. Too much solemnity is sickly. We need the carnival. We need reminders of our absurdity. The culture should be subverted. The sacred should be disparaged. Institutions should be derided when they become sclerotic. We live in an age of posturing and zealotry and never needed our satirists and our clowns more. But the transgressor is licensed precisely because they are not in power. The satirist ridicules the government – fairly, unfairly – and we smile because (ordinarily) they are not in charge of the hospitals, the schools, our livelihoods or the borders. We laugh and clap at the circus, the theatre and the cinema because we can go home at the end of the evening, confident that the performers are not in charge of the reality in which we must live. Boris Johnson stuck on a zipline in Victoria Park, London, August 2012. Photograph: Getty Images Previously, of course, this was Johnson’s relationship to power. He was the clown-journalist tilting idly at straight bananas, Tony Blair, political correctness gone mad. When he was made mayor of London, he was in effect elevated to quasi-official court jester. There he was stranded on the zipwire (the buffoon parodies the circus trapeze act) but real power still remained elsewhere. Even during the referendum campaign, David Cameron and George Osborne were the government … whereas Johnson was continuing to perform the role of fool – holding up a kipper here, draped in sausages there, arriving in town squares with his red circus bus and a farrago of misdirection and fallacy. He was stoutly devoid of any real idea or concern for what might replace the structures he disparaged. His humour, his glee, his energy, his campaigning brilliance – it delighted and sparkled because he was free of responsibility, free to be himself, free to throw the biggest custard pies yet dreamed of in the UK. Vanishingly few people had any serious idea of what was involved in leaving the EU; and resoundingly not Johnson. But those who simply wanted to leave because their gut instinct told them it was right to do so would have failed and failed miserably without him. These men and women – the likes of Iain Duncan Smith, David Davis, Steve Baker, Nigel Farage, Mark Francois, John Redwood, Gisela Stuart, Kate Hoey et al – were never more than a dim congregation of rude mechanicals. And what they required to win was someone who instinctively understood how to conduct a form of protracted public masque. Someone who could distract, charm, rouse and delight with mischief and inversion and a thousand airy nothings. (The clown was ever the perfect ambassador of meaninglessness.) But even Puck sends the audience home with an apology and the reassurance that all we have witnessed was but a dream. We, however, have made our clown a real-world king. And from that moment on, we became a country in which there was only the mock heroic – a “world beating” country that would “strain every sinew” and give “cast-iron guarantees” while bungling its plans and breaking its promises. A country “ready to take off its Clark Kent spectacles” and act “as the supercharged champion” of X, Y, Z. A country on stilts – pretending that we had a test and trace system that was head and shoulders above the rest of the world. A country performing U-turns on the teetering unicycle of Johnsonian buffoonery – A-levels, school meals, foreign health workers and more. A country of tumbling catastrophes. Trampolining absurdities. Go to work. Don’t go to work. A country proroguing parliament illegally here, trying to break international law there. Paying its citizens to “eat out to help out” in the midst of a lethal pandemic. A country testing its eyesight in lockdown by driving to distant castles with infant and spouse during a travel ban. A country whose leadership stitched up the NHS in the morning and then clapped for them at night. A country opening schools for a single day, threatening to sue schools, shutting schools. A country on holiday during its own emergency meetings. A country locking down too late; opening up too early. A country sending its elderly to die in care homes. A country unwilling to feed its own children. A country spaffing £37bn up the wall one moment and refusing to pay its own nurses a decent salary the next. A country doing pretend magic tricks with the existence of its own borders – no, there won’t be a border in the sea; oh yes there will; oh no there won’t; it’s behind you …. A country of gimmicks and slapstick and hollow, honking horns. This is Eastcheap Britain and Falstaff is in charge. It is in the two Henry IV plays that Shakespeare most clearly illuminates the gulf between his great, theatre-filling clown, Falstaff, and the young Prince Hal who will go on to become the archetype of the king – Henry V. At the mock-court of Falstaff’s tavern, we are invited to laugh and drink more ale, pinch barmaid’s bottoms, dance with dead cats and put bedpans on our heads while Falstaff entertains us with stories of his bravery and heroism that we all know are flagrant lies. Says Prince Hal to the portly purveyor of falsehoods: “These lies are like their father that begets them, gross as a mountain, open, palpable.” Meanwhile, the realm falls apart. Since we have no Hal and have crowned the clown instead, the play we are now watching in the UK asks an ever more pressing question: can Falstaff become Henry V and lead his country with true seriousness and purpose? Or is the vaccine-cloaked transformation now being enacted merely superficial – a shifting of the scenery? The lies themselves are the problem. The kingly archetype embodies at least the ambition of sincerity, meaning and good purpose at the heart of the state. Whereas deceit continues to be the default setting on Johnson’s hard drive. Rory Stewart calls Johnson “the best liar ever to serve as prime minister” but writes that “what makes him unusual in a politician is that his dishonesty has no clear political intent”. But Stewart does not quite see that Johnson is the purest form of clown there is – “improper by essence” – and that truth and lies are like two sides of the argument to him: equally tedious, equally interesting, equally absurd, both a distant second in their service of tricks, drama, distraction, invention, manipulation. He will write you two columns, four, 10, 100 – pro-Marmite, anti-Marmite; pro-EU, anti-EU. And then he’ll tell you all about them. All about how he couldn’t decide. Because not deciding is where all the drama is to be found and who cares about the arguments anyway? No, what the trickster wants is neither your agreement nor your disagreement. (For he himself agrees and disagrees.) What the trickster wants most of all … is for you to admire his trickery. Heinrich Böll, the German Nobel-prize winner and author of the truly great novel The Clown, answers Stewart’s question when he says: “You go too far in order to know how far you can go.”

The clown king: how Boris Johnson made it by playing the fool | Boris Johnson | The Guardian

[dreamersscape]

Note: This ask is from ages upon ages ago, and I’d like to offer my deepest apologies to whoever requested this. It was very important to me that I answer  thoroughly and in as articulate a manner as possible, and I’m embarrassed how slow accomplishing that took me. I hope that somehow you’re able to see this post, and you’re able to get something out of my rambling.

Thank you again for your patience in awaiting my answer, nonnie! I’m excited to put this headcanon of mine into words. It’s not often I have really specific and/or detailed HCs, I’ll admit; usually I stick to extrapolating off of canon. And while that’s sort of what I’ve done here, it seems to have happened mostly on a subconscious level, stewing until I realized a pattern forming within nearly all my fic plot bunnies.

It’s also possibly a key to how I understand Allan as a character, so… that’s kinda cool.

Okay, so Allan doesn’t really present as an overly anxious person, does he? At least, not in comparison to some of the other characters, like Much, who is utterly incapable of suppressing his anxiety. If Much is feeling apprehensive about something, you’re going to know it. So why then did I begin to notice my habit of, once he’s been stressed past a certain point, characterizing Allan’s emotional breaking points almost always as him tailspinning into a state of profound anxiety/panic? Well, partly because Allan just really REALLY sucks at dealing with negative experiences/emotions. His preferred method of coping with anything is to internalize the heck out of it, stuff it deep down inside, and then hope he never has to think about it ever again i.e. avoidance at all costs. And that appears to work… for awhile. He’s good at living in the present, ignoring past events and future repercussions. (Side note: a big reason why I also think substance abuse or other similar escapes could be quite alluring to him.) Eventually though, because it’s never been dealt with or even confronted, something triggers the release of all that pent up stress and negativity. He basically builds this towering pile of Bad Things, and so when it gets knocked over, it manages to completely overwhelm him. But until he’s thrown off-kilter and the pile loses balance and tips over, he’s mostly able to coast along, maintaining a relatively calm exterior while mired in turbulent inner seas.

Now, I realize I haven’t given much in the way of evidence for this yet, or explained why I think this all happens within the framework of a very anxious mindset. Hopefully I’m getting there. But that preceding paragraph is there to show how I find I characterize Allan as a result. (I probably wouldn’t have figured out this pattern of sorts if I could ever resist making things the Absolute Worst Imaginable Confluence of Events for Allan in my fic ideas, but that’s a “problem” for another day.)

What I’ve found is the key for me to get in Allan’s head and see things from his perspective is this: fear is his #1 motivator and it constantly feeds into his #1 priority, which is self-preservation. That goal of personal safety develops and eventually changes over the course of the show, but certainly for the greater part of the first two seasons, that is what primarily drives him. (For what I believe drives him from the end of 2x12 onwards, see here.)

For the most part, I’d say it’s pretty safe to say self-preservation-as-priority-number-one in regards to Allan’s character is generally widely accepted by the fans of the show. But opinions on why and how that came to be might vary more. I don’t know, maybe proposing that fear is the major driving force behind Allan’s decisions and behavior is not very revolutionary, but that is what I’d like to posit and explore in this post.

So, why do I think Allan is constantly consumed by his own personal well being above all else, to the point where its essentially become an automatic filter overlaying the way he interacts with the world? (I’m not intending to dramatically overstate things here, BTW; this is just how deeply ingrained I believe it is.) To me, this indicates at some point early on in his life something or a series of events convinced Allan that the world was an inherently dangerous place and you needed to always be on your guard for the next threat around any corner. This trauma could have taken a variety of forms depending on your headcanon,  but IMO it’s clear from Allan’s canonical behavior that it happened. Things that could point to this include, but are not limited to, the sparse background information we do learn about (Tom abandoning him and simultaneously stealing all his belongings, his apparent total lack of vocation despite his father being a blacksmith) as well as how he interacts with his brother (his over-identification with Tom–”I was like him once”–mixed in with the understandable trust issues, Tom’s borderline antisocial behavior in general, and I also wrote here about how their dynamic possibly alludes to a dysfunctional home life). With that as a fundamental part of your worldview, it’s easy to understand why you and your anxiety might have become good friends. He has no base level understanding or measure of being/feeling safe. Or maybe he once did, but there isn’t a way to go back or recapture that.

Another component of Allan’s anxiety I’d like to highlight is his personal locus of control. Locus of control is a psychology term that evaluates ‘the degree to which people believe that they have control over the outcome of events in their lives, as opposed to external forces beyond their control.’ It’s usually described in terms of being internal (belief that one can control one’s own life) or external (belief that life is controlled by outside factors which the person cannot influence, or that chance or fate controls their lives). ‘Individuals with a strong internal locus of control believe events in their life derive primarily from their own actions: for example, when receiving exam results, people with an internal locus of control tend to praise or blame themselves and their abilities. People with a strong external locus of control tend to praise or blame external factors such as the teacher or the exam.’ I definitely believe Allan has an external-based locus of control, and I think we see this in how reactive and defensive he is to his environment and in his tendency to shift the blame or not take personal responsibility for his actions. As opposed to Marian’s and Robin’s “everything is a choice” mantra, Allan often feels he has/had “no choice”, or feels “stuck”. Consequently, this lack of perceived ability to dictate and be accountable for one’s actions can make you feel very powerless. And if you believe the world is a unpredictable, dangerous place and there’s little you can do to affect or change that, you’d likely feel pretty fearful and anxious. Indeed, there has been research that concludes that people with an external locus of control tend to be more stressed and are more prone to clinical depression.

Now, I realize the preceding two paragraphs are either relying heavily on speculation or pretty technical terminology, so I’d like to conclude by referring directly to Allan’s behavior as evidence of his frequent anxiety. It is still in production, but I am working on a comprehensive gifset of every time Allan outwardly demonstrates anxiety. I’ll link it here once it’s finished. (Spoiler warning: it’s going to be a whopper of a gifset.) But until then, I think it’s notable that Allan exhibits a wide range of behaviors that typically denote anxiety. Licking his lips, swallowing/gulping, sweaty palms, fidgeting with something in his hands (could also be a sign of excess energy, but there are three instances of this in the first two episodes of the show alone, and this often seems to happen when it’s implied Allan has excess nervous energy), shifty eyes or a gaze that is unable to meet anyone else’s, hands on head in dismay, etc. It’s subtle because Allan’s doing his best to suppress it–he doesn’t want it to show because that would mean looking vulnerable/weak, which is not safe and a terrifying prospect when you live in a unpredictable, dangerous world–but if you’re looking for it, it’s there.

In summary, on the outside Allan projects a calm, self-assured, doesn’t-take-anything-too-seriously, cheerful, amiable image. And that is a legitimate part of who he is. He’s cultivated that facade for so long that it has taken on a life of its own. However, on the inside, he is ALSO a lot of the time an unsure, self-doubting, self-destructive, fearful, angst-ridden bundle of nerves. So that’s why when I read a story where Allan is ONLY portrayed as the former with none of the latter, it just doesn’t feel like Allan to me. In those cases, it’s as though I’m reading about a vaguely Allan-shaped empty shell. And I get it–it’s hard to always show all those sides of Allan when he’s not one of the main characters or he’s not the primary focus of the fic. Or the author might not be at all inclined to have Allan’s role be more than a surface level portrayal, and that’s okay. Not everything should be about Allan! But I also think there is often room for hints; Allan’s facade does have cracks. All this to say, Allan’s layers and contradictions are an intrinsic part of his character’s essence for me, including his anxieties/insecurities/fears, and his life has largely been built on that apprehensive foundation.

TL;DR Allan’s anxiety not only exists, it dictates much of what he thinks, says, and does, and the poor guy needs a ton of therapy.

sources for the locus of control info:

Rotter, Julian B (1966). “Generalized expectancies for internal versus external control of reinforcement”. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied. 80: 1–28. Carlson, N.R., et al. (2007). Psychology: The Science of Behaviour - 4th Canadian ed.. Toronto, ON: Pearson Education Canada. Benassi, Victor A; Sweeney, Paul D; Dufour, Charles L (1988). “Is there a relation between locus of control orientation and depression?”. Journal of Abnormal Psychology. 97 (3): 357–367.

[lillotte17]

Prompt: Fenris as a toddler

I choose to believe this was also a drawing prompt. >_>

Uthvir belongs to @feynites

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the first word Fenris manages to master is no.

This is followed in quick succession by other such gems; stop, don’t, and down, to name a few. While his progress may still be slower than he would like, he can at least understand most of what people are saying to him, even if he cannot actually get his mouth to form the proper words to reply without butchering them horribly. He might not be winning any awards for poetry any time in the near future, but Fenris can at least take some satisfaction in finally being able to articulate something.

“Ah-lee,” he grumbles out one day while they are getting ready to go on a picnic in one of the little gardens outside of June’s tower, and she is fussing with the buttoning of his little cardigan. She has him perched up on the dresser in her bedroom, which, even after all these months of habitation, is still only sparsely furnished. She sighs at his discontent and pauses long enough to tussle his hair. He scowls in retaliation, pushing her hand away, but she only laughs.

“You’re my baby,” she says with a thin, curling smile, “And babies don’t call their mothers by their name, you know. You say Mamae.”

“Ah-lee,” Fenris insists.

“I know you’ve heard Nanae call me that, but…” she tries.

“Oot-veer,” Fenris counters mulishly.

“Fine,” Aili huffs, giving up the ghost in favor of making another try at the tiny stubborn buttons on her son’s sweater, “Have it your way, you tenacious little creature.”

Fenris pats at her hand consolingly. He is still coming to terms with the unpleasant realization that his body now projects his emotions, and finds that he is not quite able to conceal the hint of pleasure at his victory. Unbidden, the corner of his mouth twitches upwards.

“Is that a smile I see?” Aili beams at him, leaning in perilously close to kissing range.

“No,” Fenris asserts, hastily reforming his features into a frown.

“I think it is,” Aili singsongs with an expression of insufferable triumph, creeping her hands forward and tickling him lightly beneath his chin.

Fenris wriggles, trying to escape, and makes a wholly undignified sound. That is…not entirely born of displeasure. Some strange mix of a shriek and a giggle. Aili relents quickly enough, as she always does, and while he is still caught up in being mortified over the discovery of this new weakness, he looks down and sees that his thrashing has knocked a few of her personal items onto the floor.

“Sorry,” he says, with just the slightest hint of a lisp, pointing down at the displaced objects so she will know what he is apologizing for. And that, he realizes, is a word he seems to be using frequently as well. Because he is sorry, even if some part of him knows that his reactions are not entirely his fault. He is sorry to be here. Sorry that he cannot adjust to things as quickly as he would wish. Sorry to be a burden on what seems to be a generally nice group of people who are trying to include him in their family. Not that he ever seems to be held accountable for his transgressions.

This time is no different, as his adopted mother simply lifts him from the dresser and sets him carefully down on her bed. She smiles at him and smooths his hair down a little before turning around and picking up the things he had knocked to the floor. He thinks the air around her is a little sad, though. If he is reading that correctly. He generally tries not to, as it feels strangely invasive, but he supposes it is a skill he will need to acquire in order to thrive in this strange place.

“No harm done,” Aili assures him in a gentle tone, coming back over to sit next to him with what seems to be some sort of headband in her hand, “It was just an accident. Mama is sorry, too. I know you don’t like to be tickled very much.”

“S’okay,” he returns, slightly uncomfortable at this shift in tone. He reaches over and pats her arm reassuringly once or twice. Touching people to console them is another uncharted territory for him, but it always seems to work wonders with his primary caregivers, Aili especially, so he does his best to at least make an effort.

“You’re my good, sweet baby,” she continues, “And I love you very much. Even when you get upset. Mama and Nanae would never hurt you, even if things get broken sometimes.”

Fenris swallows thickly. Something suspiciously like embarrassment prickles up the back of his neck. Possibly tinged with a softer inclination as well. He shifts his weight a little, glancing about for a quick change of topic.

“Pretty,” he declares, gesturing at the object still in Aili’s hand without even really looking at it.

“You like it?” she wonders, holding it out for him to inspect, “Nanae got it for me. They said it was some sort of belated housewarming gift. I told them it was silly, since we both moved in at the same time, and they could hardly get me a better gift than you, but… Well. They’re always doing things like that. Giving things to people. It makes them happy.”

Fenris looks over the thin circlet with a critical eye. It is a somewhat simple design, some swirling organic pattern carved into a pale blonde wood very similar to Aili’s hair. It is sturdy though, and the craftsmanship is obviously very good, from what little he knows of such things. There is no way this was something Uthvir just bought off a shelf in a moment of random generosity. Clearly it is meant to be something…more. It’s no wonder she seems pleased with it.

And yet he’s almost certain he’s never seen Aili actually wearing it. He doubts that she will have thought of the significance of that. But he is certain Uthvir has.

Fenris huffs.

These two.

“You. On,” he demands, extending it back towards her in one pudgy fist. If he is going to be cooed over, he might as well do something useful with it.

“It’s awfully dressy for a picnic,” she smiles, taking it back from him.

“Pretty,” Fenris insists. Aili laughs.

“Alright,” she concedes, “If you think we should have a fancy day out, then I’ll wear it.”

It takes her a little while to get it just right. She pulls her hair free of its usual ponytail, braids part of it back out of her face, and then settles the circlet onto her head. The piece is open at the front, the twining pieces lifting up just slightly, like a set of horns, and framing the bronze markings on her forehead just so. The overall effect seems to be one of softness, with just a hint of some wild, fey creature.

It suits her.

“Pretty,” Fenris commends.

“Thank you, baby,” Aili grins, leaning over and placing a tiny flower pin in his hair, “Now we’re both fancy.”

Fenris sighs in reluctant acceptance, supposing that he more or less asked for that. Aili seems nearly buoyant when she gathers him up in her arms and grabs their basket of supplies as they head out the door, though. So, he figures it is probably worth it.

Uthvir is taking care of some of their duties for the General, but had promised to meet them for their lunch out on the grass as soon as they were done. Fenris does not like being taken out into the city very much, as none of the elves seem to be able to contain themselves in his presence. If he was physically capable, he is certain that he would have broken some of their fingers by now.

But he can also concede, that he would probably lose his mind if he only saw the inside of their rooms until he was big enough to get around on his own again.

Luckily, his parents are sensitive to his needs and, he suspects, neither of them are all that comfortable with being swarmed by an adoring mob themselves. So, the garden they end up in is relatively small, and almost entirely abandoned. Fenris is not sure why. There are quite a few very ugly statues in it, so perhaps it offends some of the other elves of Arlathan’s delicate sensibilities, or some other such ridiculous thing. He’s not about to complain.

Aili sets up the blanket and sets Fenris up with his bottle. She does not eat herself, possibly waiting for their missing family member to arrive. And, since nothing else of import is likely to happen until they get here, he decides that he should practice his other new trick.

Fenris is finally getting the hang of walking again.

There is a lot of falling down involved in the process thus far, but he can almost make it half way across the sitting room by himself now, so long as he can grab onto passing furniture. Aili hovers, naturally, offering guiding hands, but not so much that he feels smothered. And for that he is grateful. Even to the point where he generally allows her to kiss him when he bumps into something.

He is two thirds of the way through his third assisted crossing of the blanket, with only four falls, when a large hawk descends from the sky and lands in front of him.

Fenris is so shocked, that he sits down rather suddenly on the blanket with a soft oof.

“Uthvir,” Aili chides, “What have I said about divebombing people?”

“I am sorry,” the hawk apologizes with Uthvir’s voice, “I have not eaten since very early this morning and it took me longer than expected to find you.”

“What about Fenris?” Aili asks, real concern seeping into her tone, “He’s still getting used to the idea that magic isn’t bad, you know. What if you frightened him?”

At this, they both turn their full attention back to him and simultaneously realize that not only does their son not seem to be scared, but he has pulled himself onto his hands and knees and crawled his way over to them.

Fenris stretches out his little hand, waiting. And after a moment of confusion, Uthvir leans their head forward, allowing themselves to patted gently. Tiny fingers moving in very careful strokes over sleek brown feathers.

Fenris does not know what it means. Or if it means anything. But it almost seems like too much to be a coincidence. To be flung through time and space and somehow find himself in the care of yet another hawk.

He does not know what to make of it.

“Hok,” he burbles out after a few minutes, and it is only then that he realizes that at some point he has started crying. Not like his usual outbursts of rage or frustration, but fat silent tears of nothing more than grief. “Hok.”

“What is a hok?” Uthvir asks Aili, sounding vaguely horrified, frozen stiff in uncertainty.

“I don’t know, but change back, quick,” Aili instructs, scooping Fenris up into her arms and cooing at him to distract him while Uthvir shifts back into their normal shape.

“All done,” they inform her a moment later.

“There, see?” Aili asks, turning back around and passing Fenris into their arms, “It’s just Nanae. Nanae isn’t scary, are they?”

Fenris sniffs, in reluctant agreement, feeling a bit foolish as he begins to calm back down.

“I am sorry to have scared you, little one,” Uthvir adds for good measure. Fenris pats their chest as a sign of forgiveness, and a bid to be set down again.

“Crisis averted,” Aili grins at them, handing them a meat pie from out of the basket as Uthvir settles Fenris back onto the blanket.

“But only just,” they sigh. They stare at her for half a minute, the food half way to their mouth as something seems to dawn on them. “You… You are wearing the gift I got you.”

“Oh,” she exclaims, as if only just now remembering herself, her cheeks flushing slightly, “Well. I mean, I know it is really too nice for this sort of thing, but Fenris insisted that we dress for the occasion.”

“Pretty,” Fenris notes, giving Uthvir a rather pointed stare.

“I agree,” Uthvir replies, a large smile spreading out across their face, “You look very nice.”

“I have your excellent taste to thank for that, I’m sure,” Aili laughs, sounding a little embarrassed and twisting her fingers in her hair.

“We should go visit the artist who made it sometime,” they continue, “You would like him, I think. They have a son not too much older than Fenris, and he seemed eager to see how the piece would look on you.”

“You mean, you actually had this commissioned for me?” Aili gapes.

“Well…of course I did,” Uthvir says, sounding uncertain again.

“I’ll…make sure I get you something, too,” she fumbles, “For a housewarming present, I mean. It… It might take me awhile, but-”

“You don’t have to do that,” Uthvir insists.

“Kisses!” Fenris suggests loudly. He had honestly never thought that anyone could possibly top Aveline and her copper marigolds when it came to romantic awkwardness, but dammit all if these two weren’t making his old friend seem suave by comparison. It is almost painful to watch.

Aili leans over and obligingly kisses him on the cheek and he groans.

“No.” ​

[emm-doubleyou]

I don’t even know what to say right now. What can I really say at this point? I knew last night’s episode would leave me absolutely sick with grief. I know in the back of my mind that there is more to come. And I don’t even need to rely on faith to know that next week will be incredible. That our characters will overcome and prevail. That they will finally find peace. But sadly, I also know that I will be left a broken shell of a human being. With my life in ruins. 

It’s exceedingly painful for me to consider life without this show. It’s why I had no choice but to force myself to live in the land of denial for so long. Otherwise, I would lose all ability to function. And I needed to function. I needed to get my life as in order as it was going to get before all this hit. I get that not everyone feels this way. Some are relieved to see it go (can’t relate). Some are sad but simultaneously excited to see how it all comes together in the end. And some are passengers in my rocky boat. It’s quite hard to articulate, really. I know there are those understand precisely what I’m talking about without much explanation. But all I ask is that for anyone who thinks I am defective for declaring that this show has brought me a happiness I never thought I would experience, please respect these feelings. Because as foreign as they may seem, they are genuine. I will sound like a broken record in saying that this show is the most wonderful thing to ever happen to me. Bones saved me. I mean that in more ways than one. And I mean that both literally and figuratively. I’ll leave it at that. And not only that, it truly inspired me. It gave me hope. It changed me and my life. It made me want to do better and be better. The impact it has had on my life has been immeasurable. It has never, not once, been just a television show. It’s not just anything. It is a beacon of hope in a world full of despair. It is my guiding light. It is my everything. And it is my home. It will live on. Through its legacy. Through its fans. For eternity. 

Bones is also the worst thing that has ever happened to me. Because life without Bones is not something I know or want to experience. Again, I ask anyone who believes me to be dramatic to please try to at least understand that we cannot help who and what we love. Though given the choice, I don’t think I could have done anything differently. I don’t believe in fate. Ludicrous. And yet, this show feels like my destiny. The love of my life. I cannot tell you where I would be without it. Well physically, at the very least, on the other side of the country suffering. Trying to stay alive. Lost. Attempting and failing to find meaning in some facet of my own existence. I have had innumerable interactions with people who look at me like an extraterrestrial from Mars when they realize just how significant and all-consuming this passion is. I make no apologies for who I am. Been there done that. This is just me.  I would imagine that so many showrunners, writers, and actors dream of creating art that can touch others in such a profound way. You are never going to please everyone with your work. But if you can conceive of a story that inspires an audience in such poignant ways as Bones did for so many, is there anything more rewarding? For so many years I wanted to give up. But I’d think about the lessons I learned from this show. I’d think of the characters and what they would do in my position. And I was able to push myself harder. Keep going. Not only survive, but flourish at times. And even when I felt as though I had hit rock bottom, I’d pick myself up off the ground and push through. Because it’s what they taught me to do. 

But now I feel irreparably broken. Will I be able to pick up the pieces and put myself back together again after next week? I need to once again turn to the show. Because none of them would ever give up. And they have been to hell and back, time and time again. And they have persevered. 

I don’t know what the purpose of this post really is. I just needed to say something. Anything. I spent the entire night staring at the ceiling, sobbing and shaking. I can’t even process. But I will say a few things: Last night’s episode was so beyond my wildest dreams. It takes a lot to shock me. Because I expect Bones to impress me each and every week. I’m used to it. Everyone’s a critic. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. But I am just always thankful to have these characters on my screen week after week, that I choose to see the positive in every episode. So that is why you will never see me profess anything but love after an episode. Perhaps I wasn’t engaged with every detail. But again, I choose to focus on what made me smile, what made me gasp, what caused me tears, and the words and moments which inspired me. With this episode- every single second was complete and utter genius. I loved every last millisecond of this episode. 

When I first realized how they were going about telling this story, I was awestruck. Bones STILL manages to surprise me. How? It’s season 12. HOW are they doing this??  While I was in hysterics during most of the episode, it was also one of the most wonderful hours of television I’ve ever seen. I’ve spent my life watching television. I have watched nearly every show that people constantly rave about. I work in television, and I see the way my coworkers stare blankly at me when they realize Bones is my favorite show (well, it’s SO much more than a show). But even if I didn’t, even if this was the only series I ever watched, I am entitled to have this opinion. This show is so incredibly underrated. It always has been. It takes a lot of flack. Even from its fans. And it never quite got the recognition it deserved. To me, it is perfect. I’m not objective. I don’t have to be. 

Bones could go on for another decade. I think that’s what kills me most. To have an episode like that as your 245th hour- it’s beyond impressive. I never expected the show to go out quietly. And I know that the writers wouldn’t have done anything they believed to be devoid of the utmost quality. Still- they managed to up the ante once more. It was out-of-the-box, for sure. And this storytelling device worked so seamlessly for this episode. I simply cannot heap enough praise on it. I watched most of the episode through a foggy filter comprised entirely of my own unrelenting tears. But I was on the edge of my bed seat the whole hour. It went from happy, to humorous, to terrifying, to devastating over and over again. My emotions were pulled every which way. And by the end, it felt like my heart was ripped from my chest. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. All I could do was curl up in the fetal position and sob until I ran out of energy. And then I would begin again. It was a restless night. 

I don’t love feeling this way by any means. But it’s a testament to the brilliance of these characters and this show. Because I truly care about them. I care about what happens to them. They are my family. They are a part of me. And though I know everything will ultimately be okay, seeing them in peril hurts. Every. Single. Time. This show affects me. Why would I want to watch a show in which I am not fully invested like this. I like that Bones has this power over me. That said, it’s not easy. 

We always knew there would be a bomb. We knew that the Jeffersonian would undergo a very painful transformation. But how we got to that point still somehow managed to throw me. Seeing those four original beloved characters trapped in the lab at the end, I felt sick to my stomach. This is where it all began. This place. And seeing the Jeffersonian in ruins (in the promo), it just feels like the physical manifestation of my mind and heart right now. This place which was a home to Temperance Brennan, among others, for so many years. It’s destroyed. We will never see it intact again. Well, never say never. But it will never be quite the same. Someone wanted to destroy Booth and Brennan. And everything and everyone they hold dear. It’s heart-wrenching. But in Bones, the good guys always win. And they will. I have never been more certain of anything in my entire life. 

Brennan will be fine. We already know that. But the promo still made me want to crawl into a hole and die. The way Booth begs her to stay with him. They are the purest and most fulfilling love story I will ever have the pleasure of witnessing. And there is nothing they cannot overcome. Their lives have been hanging in the balance a dozen times. But you can’t break them. Never.

I wouldn’t say I’m in denial any longer. But it still all doesn’t feel real. Maybe my brain is just trying to protect me. They can say “final” as many times as they want, but I simply cannot believe it. What is a world without Bones? I don’t remember. I just remember it was nothing to write home about. Not a world I want to live in. 

This episode gave us so much. And everything was brilliantly packed into just 43 minutes. I don’t know how they did it. But I felt so fulfilled. Every single one of the main characters had so many wonderful moments. Nothing felt rushed at all. The Zack arc was resolved so believably. And it wasn’t even the focal point of the episode! We had some absolutely precious moments with the Booth children. We learned Angela and Hodgins will be having another child. Cam and Arastoo were just beaming with happiness. Cam is even taking a six month honeymoon. Who would have thought? Aubrey and Jessica, well, maybe that is no longer a packaged entity. But he will be fine, no matter what choice he makes about his future. There are so many moments I want to touch on. And I’m sure I will. Eventually. When I can process it all. Angela and Brennan had the loveliest of exchanges in this episode. Multiple ones. In multiple settings. Booth and Brennan, don’t get me started on that hug in Brennan’s office. Essentially the last time we will ever see her office as is. Her sanctuary. I can’t even...Booth and Brennan’s hugs mean more to me than anything. Well, everything about them means the world. They are so in love. It’s electrifying. Those two will always be lightning in a bottle. And don’t get me started on their dancing. I couldn’t love them more. No really, I couldn’t. 

I feel sick right now. I feel empty but full. Empty because I don’t know the meaning of life without this show. And I am completely drained after going through the full gamut of emotions. Full because this show has given me more than I have ever dreamed of. As did this episode. 

Sometimes a show is just a show. For many people, television is just a hobby. But always remember that for some, that show you casually watch may mean more than anything. Some fans love a show. And some credit a show for saving them. I am the latter. So many of us are. And maybe that’s a foreign concept to grasp. But it’s valid. To anyone else suffering the way I am, I understand what you are feeling. I truly do. I don’t know how I will get through this when all is said and done. I can’t imagine a world without my beloved savior. But I can’t think about that just yet. While the end of this episode + the promo destroyed any hope of semi-normalcy for the next few days, I still have the opportunity to say there’s more to come. More Booth. More Brennan. More Angela and Hodgins. More Cam and Aubrey. More Bones. 

I don’t exactly know what I hoped to accomplish here. Basically I just needed to vent. Because I feel so lost right now. So alone. So hopeless. So broken. I am scared for myself. But for now, I need to take Angela’s advice and live in the moment. I need to take Booth’s advice and keep fighting. And I need to live by Brennan’s words: Inertia demands that you keep going. I need to find a way to keep going. I don’t know how yet. But we will see. 

Knowing what I know now, would I do it all again? Would I allow myself to watch the pilot, knowing full well that this show would take over my life? Change it completely? Mold the person I would become? Cause me stress and pain through all the uncertainty, cruel messages, ENDLESS HIATUSES, and ridicule from almost everyone in my life? Yes. I would do it all again. Because to experience those moments of pure joy that Bones has brought me was worth it all. I am a better person because of this show. I don’t know that I’d be here writing this without it. Do with that what you will. It was never JUST a show. It is my world. 

To end this on a more positive note- If i ever picked favorite episodes (and I never do, and couldn’t ever) this episode would be on that list. Simply a masterpiece. Perfection. Everything. 

[leothelionsaysgrrrr]

Far Greater Purpose [f. Thalon Lavellan]

Emma Sparrow gets a lecture from Inquisitor Thalon Lavellan (belongs to the wonderful @ourinquisitorialness about hiding things, scars, and healing.  Cameo appearance by @sunshinemage‘s Nindarhmen Lavellan.  ~2400 words.

“Agent Harper, isn’t it?”

The low, soothing voice that ever so calmly broke her focus was unfamiliar, but it and the shadow that fell over her had such a heaviness to them that Emma could mistake them for no other.  She raised the steaming mug she cradled in her hands to her lips and only nodded.  She did not turn to greet their owner.

“I don't believe we’ve met,” the voice continued.  “I am-”

“I know who you are, Inquisitor.”

Now, she turned.  

Inquisitor Lavellan stood far enough behind her that his height would not overwhelm her, his blue eyes offering a kind reassurance and a bit of a sparkle as he chuckled, giving a soft glance to the ground for a moment before returning his attention to her.

“Even so, my name is Thalon.”

Again, Emma responded with only a nod, even as he watched her for a moment longer, waiting for an actual reply.  He would be waiting quite a while; he knew what the Inquisition called her, and he could easily find out what the rest of Thedas called her should he be so inclined.  No reason for her to waste the breath to tell him.

“Would you walk with me?” he finally continued, after far longer than she had expected.  She nodded again, cautiously this time, through a furrowed brow.  Months had passed since she and Lux entered the Inquisition’s service, and, as he had keenly pointed out, she and the Inquisitor had never spoken.  There had never been a need.  Any reports of hers meant for his eyes passed first through Nightingale’s.  What, she wondered, prompted him to seek her out now?

Thalon walked with a straight back and a leisurely pace, one to which Emma’s short legs, accustomed to walking briskly to remain abreast of her tall, gangly partner, took a few minutes to adjust.  He kept his eyes forward, with only an occasional glance in her direction, almost as if to make sure she was still there, and did not speak until they reached the courtyard in the lower bailey of the stronghold.  He took up a position leaning against one of the stone walls, and stared pensively across the courtyard at the area recently designated as the Inquisition’s infirmary.  The soft curves and branches of his vallaslin twisted and turned around his face, not much older than her own, which in turn stretched and bent them further as he silently eyed the aides and servants rushing in and out of the infirmary to assist the healers and surgeons, simultaneously swelling with pride and sinking under the weight on his shoulders.  Silence was generally welcome, if not preferred, but he had not asked her here to be silent, and Emma’s curiosity grew with each second he did not speak.

“I overheard a fascinating story about you earlier today.”  

“Oh.”  It came out in a barely articulated sigh, breathed into her tea as she sipped; she hadn’t meant to say anything at all, but Thalon’s eyes were already fixed on her, the slight upward arch of his eyebrows almost teasing her to go on.  “Piper?”

“Yes.”  He offered another quiet smile as he folded his arms in front of his chest, and glanced across the courtyard once more.  “He was rather enthusiastically telling another agent that you were injured on a mission.  Quite badly, in fact.”

A flesh wound to one arm and a few cracked ribs.  She’d had worse, and Lux knew it.

“He exaggerates.”

The corners of Thalon’s mouth turned downward for just a moment, and he tilted his head slightly to one side, as if he'd expected she'd say that.  The way his eyes settled on her once he held his head upright again was not any less ominous.

“He also said you were able to heal this grievous injury yourself.  With magic.”

Damn it, Lux.  Damn it all.  

“I...see.”

“He spoke the truth, then?”  No use continuing to hide it; the nod that confirmed his suspicions was slow and reluctant.  Instead of tensing into a glare, Thalon’s face simply fell.  Emma would have almost preferred he be angry than this sort of knowing disappointment, as if he’d known better than to expect otherwise but did so nonetheless.

“The two of you have been in the Inquisition’s service for months, yet neither of you have ever mentioned that you are a healer, and one skilled enough for such a feat at that.”  

Emma said nothing, and instead lifted her mug to her lips again.  What would she have said?  No excuse she would have given - not that she was particularly talented with excuses, anyway - would have stopped him from staring spears through her before watching his infirmary once more.  

“With your proficiency in combat, I can understand not wanting to be stuck in an infirmary, but times like these leave Thedas in desperate need of healers, and healers in short supply.”  

The way the lines under his eyes almost shivered as he turned back to look at her again said he was telling her something she already knew, or should already know, at least.  Something he shouldn’t have to tell her.  

“This is precisely the worst time to keep such a skill to yourself, agent.”

No.  This was exactly the time to keep it to herself.

“My proficiency in combat is of greater benefit the Inquisition,” she replied, taking another sip, and avoiding what she knew he wanted to ask.  Thalon’s face finally tensed into a stern glare down his nose, indicating he tired of her avoidance of the subject as much as she tired of being forced to discuss it.

“You should have told us,” he admonished her after a resigned sigh, the friendly tone all but disappearing from his voice, settling instead into a low, coarse timbre reminiscent of a parent trying not to be too angry with an unruly child.  “It is a far greater purpose, and a far more pressing duty of the Inquisition as a whole, to save lives rather than to take them.”

Emma returned her own heavy sigh.  A greater purpose, perhaps - no, that, at least, was objectively true, but not a purpose meant for her.  

“That is why I did not.”

Thalon arched an eyebrow.  “I'm not sure I follow.”

She finished her tea, and gave the mug a quick wipe with her sleeve.  “Do you have any scars, Inquisitor?”

A moment’s hesitation, then a curt nod.  She knew the answer before he said it.

“I do.”

“Then you know that wounds will heal on their own, given time and proper care, and the process can be painful.”

The vallaslin relaxed around his eyes, and the freckles around Emma’s mimicked it.

“That is true, yes.  In more ways than one.”

Some elves left the infirmary burdened with full wash basins and wet rags stained with blood.  Emma reached across herself and rested her hand on the opposite arm, just below the shoulder, where she'd held back a steady flow of blood as her flesh knit back together only days before.

“I simply accelerate that process to close wounds and mend broken bones quickly so I may continue fighting.  I am not a true healer, Inquisitor.  I cannot call spirits to aid me as you do.”

He made the face that seemed to be the quintessential response to hearing someone say they cannot do something; part gentle yet enthusiastic reassurance, part shock that she would say such a thing in the first place, and just the slightest bit condescending.  Thankfully, Emma suppressed the urge to roll her eyes.

“Ignoring that spirit healers are not the only ‘true healers’, have you tried?  It isn’t always as intuitive as you might think.  Perhaps you just need to learn how to speak to them.”

She stared back at him for a moment, her face fixed in a half-glaring, half-bewildered expression.

“They will not hear me.”  Predictably, Thalon didn’t seem to fully understand, but Emma sighed with relief when he decided not to press the issue.  The condition of her mind was an entirely different conversation she had no desire to have at the moment.  “I can block the body’s signal to feel pain, but the mending itself requires so much focus that it is impossible for me to do both.  Thus, pain that is usually spread over weeks or months is felt all at once, in the space of a few minutes.  It is...excruciating.”  

As much as she tried not to, she could still see the scaly, grey skin, lined with veins black with corruption, the gaunt cheeks surrounding desiccated lips begging her for relief.  Still heard the screams of agony as her magic tore through him, chasing the corruption with such focus, so sure she could kill it, so absolutely certain that with her help, the Blight would never take him.  She’d never even considered...

“Sometimes lethal.”

Despite her attempts to keep the memories from displaying themselves on her face, the Inquisitor’s brow creased upwards at the center.  Emma looked away before he could speak; sympathy was the last thing she wanted from him.

“Someone close to you?”

Damn it.  Her eyes fell shut as her chin fell softly to her chest.  

I’m sorry, Papa.  I’m so sorry...

“Very.”

She didn’t look up, but after a long pause there was a soft rustling as Thalon shifted his position against the wall.  

“This...may be difficult for you to believe, but I do understand.”  Across the courtyard, one of the elven runners tripped, sending both the runner and the supplies he carried crashing to the ground. Thalon watched with his face set in somber, straight lines, the wrinkles around his eyes and at the corners of his mouth accentuated and betraying his own pain, old and long scarred-over.   “The loss of a loved one at your own hand is...far too great a wound to ever be truly healed, neither by magic nor the passage of time.  Sometimes, though…”  

He paused momentarily, his breath almost hitched in his throat as he continued watching across the courtyard, where another elf had emerged from the infirmary, one Emma had seen many times before; a small Dalish elf, white vallaslin standing out in stark contrast to his face, his neck wrapped in an orange scarf and his crimson hair reflecting bits of orange in the low sun.  He held out one hand to the fallen elf, and helped him to his feet before dusting him off and, once they’d gathered all of his supplies, carried some to the infirmary for him.  Thalon watched all of this as though entranced, his eyes heavy-lidded and locked on the other elf, and his mouth forced upward at the corners; he couldn’t have held the firm countenance he’d kept on her moments earlier even if he’d wanted to.  A few moments after the activity at the door ceased, and he seemed to snap back to the present, and continued as if he’d never stopped speaking.

“Sometimes, the forces that take from us are also those that give us our greatest gifts.”  

The red-haired elf walked the runner back outside, glanced in their direction, and sent Thalon a smile that in turn drew one out of him like a man watching the sun rise for the first time; almost involuntary, an innate reaction to such overwhelming beauty.  Emma knew it well, since the same look crept across her face as Lux, bow slung across his back and bound for the training yard nearby, hopped off of the second to last of the stairs in front of them and, noticing their presence there, stretched his face into a wide grin.  Thalon must’ve noticed, and he leaned downward towards her, almost whispering,  

“But, from what I understand, you already know that.”

She did.  The wash of warmth that permeated her already warm core as she watched her friend smile with his entire face, scars and all, and shake hands with at least five people before he finally reached his destination and readied his bow wouldn’t be as familiar and soothing if she didn’t.  There would be no need to suppress the chuckle as he lowered his weapon no sooner than he’d drawn it, to greet someone else and spend the next few minutes talking, forgetting why he was there in the first place.  The same magic that had ended her father’s life had brought Lux back from the very brink of death, and his resulting presence in her life had, in turn, saved her, too.  

It was her turn to snap back to the present now, facilitated by Thalon’s firm, yet kind hand coming to rest on her shoulder.  

“Your friend is proof you’ve not killed everyone you've ever healed.  It's not unreasonable to think that, should you try, perhaps take your time instead of trying to fix everything at once, you may not kill anyone at all.”  

Ten years, she thought, since this magic had killed anyone.  What the Inquisitor suggested was possible; she was far better adjusted to her magic now than she was then, but the thought remained, tugging on tiny bits of her like irritating pinpricks, that she’d achieved that for so long not through overcoming her own insecurities, but by simply refusing to take the chance.  Thalon noticed her discomfort at the suggestion, and she felt a momentary increase in pressure on her shoulder before he straightened his back, and folded his hands together behind it.

“I won't force you, but consider lending your talents to the surgeons.  There truly is peace in knowing you can save a life rather than end it.”

Thalon also noticed the hesitation in the terse nod she gave in reply, watching behind him and all around him, eyes anywhere but on him, and dropped his tone once more.

“Agent Harper…”

Deliberately, and with no movement anywhere else, her eyes flicked upwards to meet the Inquisitor’s, once again sparkling with a glint of that same kind reassurance.

“Consider it.”

A deeper, more respectful nod this time, laced with a barely noticeable smile, as the Inquisitor took his leave, turning his head back at least once with a bit of a smile of his own.  No such luck, Inquisitor, she thought with a slight twitch at the corners of her mouth, as she let her attention fall once more on the infirmary door.  

She considered it, just for a moment, and deemed a certain scrawny Tevinter elf’s need of a reminder to be aware of his surroundings more pressing at that particular moment.

She would consider it again tomorrow.

[whatabodyisandisnt]

to Begin again & Again this Address (( the attempt of this body to make an Account of it Self—its history of Choices & Present ability ))

this Site is Called “whatabodyisandisnt”; it is intended to be a locale for depositions of Word & Image — an evidentiary repository of text & color — to indicate the Markers of me, of who & what, of where & when “I” am. 

I am the composite texture of Others & histories of Choice, all of whom & what are embedded within the fact of my Body. with this blog I hope to begin a Narrative that moves my self towards a clearer Series of Placements — a Geography of Gestures of sorts that locates its lines in diVisions of Speech— the borders between an “I,” a “You,” and an “Us” (all of Whom Are Hidden by the Crisis of their mutual Simultaneity as Fact and Fiction—the appearance of their Separateness + the illusion of their Togetherness). 

in Voice & Vision I hope to emerge my self in shapes of Responsibility, & Acknowledgement. I am forming an “I” that speaks by Composing around my body Narratives for what it is, what it has done, & who it yet could still be. The “I” that speaks, my “I”—this “I”—is a pronoun Articulated in predications hesitant (the unending fact of my Doubt) & yet also certain (the Necessity of my Enunciation). the Formation of this Narrative I am considering to be an “investigatory poetics” which seeks to elucidate it self precisely by moving onwards to ward what Remains Beyond it. In Speaking I seek an impossible Return to You, to God. in Speaking I seek to confess what is wrong within me, and in that (the Absence at the center of which I am) is how how I hope to find You.

You—my Other, my God—”the total referent” (in the words of Rob Halpern)—to whom I owe every thing. Yet I find that I have nothing to give but that which I do not have. And so I offer this to You; I offer my Voice in the form this unfolding Narrative—the Measure, the Coherence, of which will always be Lacking:: that is what I Owe to You. it is what I cannot give but yet some how do, precisely by how this “I” revolves, in its Sounds, to the Shape of You in Speech of It Self (”Us”). 

What I owe to You is what I may say to you—those impossible shapes of Tone that are Me, that are This Mouth. You are every one who has Taught me (with Volume Signs of Generosity); You are every one one with whom I have shared Love (no matter how ever corrupted & perverse my Love may have been so); and You are, especially, every one I have never met (& never will) and yet to whom I owe the fact of this body by the nature of Your multiple & varied Sacrifices (both Just & Unjust alike). With this blog I hope to Speak to You—

consider this Site to be a Dialogue, in Detailed Register, of me to You, of me moving to ward what it may mean to Speak , to be, with You (( In Relation )).  You—

You, my hidden Agencies & secret Forms; You, the Entities in side this body & in side Yours, which neither of us never Chose; You, the secret Publicity my body becomes in the Crisis of Being Audience; You, the Gaze which Watches in spite of It Self; You, the Totality of Surveillance which is actualized only in, & as, Language; You, the Utopia of Divine Violence; You, the Mouth & Eyes I become in the Absence of my Penality; You, the Poetics of Pedagogy ((in Abolition)); You, the Gift of Silence & Judgment; You, God and all that we can be Beyond it & this, That & Him (Her). 

In the words of Simone Weil, 

“The self is only the shadow which sin and error cast by stopping the light          of God, and I take this shadow for a being . . . It is possible for us to be mediators between God and the part of creation which is confided to us. Our consent is necessary in order that he may perceive his own creation through us. With our consent he performs this marvel.” (( Gravity and Grace, pp. 87. ))

this blog is a Struggle Against & For the Possibility of Consent.

[katherinemacbride]

solidarity in sites of temporary hospitality, you do what you can with what you’ve got

Text written August 2018. For Hagen Verleger (ed.), Margaret van Eyck—Renaming an Institution, a Case Study (Volume Two: Comments, Contexts, and Connections), Peradam Press, NY, 2018.

https://hagenverleger.com/portfolio/margaret-van-eyck-volume-two/

 Prelude/Postscript

He was talking about the library as a site of radical hospitality: because the person holding the space cannot know the content of all that is being held, in fact it is better if they don’t, because then their focus is on the hospitality, rather than making their own voice among the tangles of sentences in some of the books. [1]

She was critiquing the Western European perspective of not articulating a voice as a way of dealing with colonial guilt. Her critique was that this was both an attempt at empathy but also extremely privileged. [2] What do you do when you’ve wasted your own epistemologies by using them so violently, when you’ve taken up all the space already, how is it possible to make work that listens, can you speak, how do you learn to speak more quietly when you’ve been trained to be at the centre, should you shut up and fuck off? What are all the men doing?

We were swimming in the studio, lesbian empathy. Notes everywhere, to self, to unknown, to a different self, from a different self.

“Capacity Based Exchange,” he was saying; each according to what they can do. All share. [3]

“We share values,” someone says [4], but the values didn’t get a name so how do “we” know? And even if they had a name, there is that big gap between the word and its meaning, that space for editing and remaking and erasing, as Christina Sharpe says. [5]

While you’re reading this, think about friction. Dirty fingers rubbing paper, skin on skin, bodies that don’t fit. Rubbing up the wrong way. “Remember: deviation is hard. Deviation is made hard.” [6]

I was supposed to be writing about dust, and dirt, and sweat. And books. The books that you taught me tell you things even if you think that as books they’re boring, the books I was learning to read as a context not as content. The catalogue shelf for example, filled with female editors care-taking the writing of male essay writers, the exhibitions in regional institutions, the work of the institution we are in represented as books, all this labour and how do I read it now. Not carefully enough, I feel. 

Making change is dirty, tiring, boring, upsetting, enraging, finding your allies. Unending.

It was dark, to protect the books, and cool, but not cold, and certainly not damp. The room was sound-proofed, from the mixed musical fragments thrown out the windows of the conservatory, by the trees standing in the garden, the blanket of carefully selected ground-covering perennials, a village of bicycles chained to the fence, and the partial jutting out of the opposite wing of the building. A place to go and write. A place to go and hide in plain sight. A place to go and observe from your quiet seat the comings and goings of the management (collective noun) and the management (verbal noun). The caretaker, writer, poet. The librarian, writer, novelist. Two of the beautiful possibilities of provincial life where people are allowed to slide into roles for which they are not officially trained but are precisely skilled, temperamentally matched, committed, and able to bring some flow and energy.

Dust/Dirt made from particles of paper residue left over from cutting the pages, microfibres from cleaning cloths, dead human skin cells detached from their organ, sugar granules, dust mites, desiccating coffee molecules, food particles, broken-down hair follicles, tobacco threads, traces of drugs in pre- and post-ingestion forms, clay particulate from the soil outside, DNA, fragments of art materials, faeces, sand, sweat. It is sticky from the proteins; the human matter. The type of paper in each book must alter the dust composition through its attractant or repellent qualities. And what is that smell, the book smell that indicates its age roughly, is it accumulated dust and sweat? 

A room with a dry smell. Most of the books too well-kept, or not so old as, to have foxed pages and those moist smells familiar in memories of rummaging in boxes at sales and in garages. Archival quality papers, hot pressed smoothness, the chemical grassy smell of freshly printed large distribution. The occasional papers [7]—A4 printed essays, stapled and set into plastic folders, flopping awkwardly among the books, their matt surfaces supporting tough content asking questions of the ranks of catalogues memorialising indistinct exhibitions of regional and international artists; remnants of the theory department persisting in participants that came after holding fast to writing as a critical tool. Radical, beautiful thought unfolding in 11pt fonts. Their format whispering, refusing, sticking to academic norms; their words shouting “find me you fucker.” Documents of group processes made public in pages—the process evading the printing press—presented fragments and transcripts, quotations and diagrams, occasional bit-mapped photographs; everything is Riso-printed, upstairs, on creamy absorbent paper stock. 

She was angry. Sunday morning. Dressed prettily, playing music, angry. She was tired, sitting among the aisles working quickly, but making slow movement along. He was bored, writing lists of new curricula. They were sad. The energy was held unevenly, fed by stolen-or-shared cigarettes and sweet coffees, chatting outside on the wooden platform, red wine, moments of recognition and pleasure, durations of pointlessness, biscuits and trail mix. How many days? Rushes of energy—who bought all this African philosophy in the early 1990s! Quick shelves: bleak. Fiction for instance, clang each spine on the metal shelf quickly. Quick shelves: like friends. Feminism for example, this, this, this, oh not that one, wonder why, not much to turn here because women wrote this shelf mostly. Put the single book about masculinities on the collective pile. Finding things like jewels on the beach, books you’d forgotten about, books you’d heard of but never encountered, books you’d never met, books not very present on the internet. Fantasies of who was ordering these, stories of books being trashed and rescued resistantly from the piles of waste. Epistemological wastage [8] comes in overlapping layers: firstly, and undoably always continuingly, violent; later or simultaneously through violence’s secondary forms of stupid, penny-pinching, “progressive” [9] bureaucracy. 

They were fighting a bit, one likes big gestures, one likes small details, so it is difficult. Strategically, politically, and ontologically different ways of dealing with the question and its answer: “And who does the labour benefit? The institution really.” These positions are fighting around and within me. The details liker is directed, like an animal following a scent, there is a sensitivity to something in the air that I can’t perceive, they’re sure of the path they’re moving along, but not so sure that they’re not open to taking another one if something comes up. The big gestures seeker worries more—I can relate to this—maybe because the pressure of that expectation is a bit crushing. What kind of self-confidence and stamina do you need to continue with a task that is so temporary, that many would regard as futile? 

Learning

Learning the knowledge that your body is remembering anew, again—

does it forget in order to survive, like some bodies somehow forget the physicality of cumulative not sleeping in baby feeding periods and desire to fuck reproductively again, 

does it forget because it takes too much energy to remember the way it stiffens when it is threatened, in between all the times when someone chooses to assert their existence in a mode of power and threat against yours,

does it sometimes ignore what it actually is knowing all the time, because life would be too sad and raging if it did acknowledge this without the caring company of the others in this room, or other others in other rooms

—of how hard it is to make change, just how repetitive and boring and physically hard it is to do even this one tiny thing. When this one tiny thing is complete the how hard is suddenly so visible and makes that systemic oppression clear. This is what it means. It means billions fewer words in space. Galaxies of thought that have no space in here. Making stories to remember important information. Making gatherings to learn how to do things. Getting out of bed to go take care of the thing you were doing yesterday and see how it is now it’s tomorrow. Making peace. Making reparations. 

Learning the contingencies of making decisions as you go along, the system can never be perfect and consistent. This time I felt generous, this time not, this one was a balance of problems, this one breaks the rules entirely but it is an important book that should be visible so I put it on the table.

Books are carbon, captured, stable, running without a data centre. A wasted epistemology is also often wasted land-water-air. My wasting epistemology is made of your natural resources, and your body, because mine weren’t and isn’t enough. But I feel my greed and overuse as not having enough, being underfed, dysmorphia of the body, the culture, the interconnectedness of it and us all. 

Prelude/Postscript

The difficulty of doing things differently, the slowing down or changing of methods. Inductive reading, reading across time, lingering in the period between two publication dates to see what changes between one text and the other. Time, hearing and time, time is material, time is everything, time is not straight, time was, time is, time will, now and not now, two kinds of time, or three, past present future, or more, entanglement of all the possible and actualised times, waiting for time to pass until something heals, but what if it doesn’t ever heal, or it can’t, it’s eaten into the DNA that’s being passed around, it's so embedded in the structural oppressions that it can’t yet heal into something else, because it never stopped happening, it’s not past, it’s now. 

Everywhere the time is being stolen that’s needed to do this work. Stolen from and stolen by, stolen in order to do, and stolen from that possibility.

In the car you said something like, “maybe we should all refuse to speak in the moderated and mediated rational language we’re taught to think it’s better to fight in so we don’t look emotional.” [10]

[door of the public speaking/shaming room slams, shaking the seats]

[walls of the broken-into-on-the-weekend library ring with thought and study and laughter]

[1] Nick Thurston, “Speculative Libraries” (talk, PrintRoom, Rotterdam, June 18, 2018).

[2] Cristina Bogdon, “Fuck off Transmediale (provisional title),” Revista-Arta, (February 8, 2018): http://revistaarta.ro/en/column/fuck-off-transmediale-provisional-title/

[3] Michel Bauwens, comment made during “FAQs on the Commons and Art” roundtable (launch event, Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons, June 9, 2018).

[4] A comment I have encountered, unspecified like this, on too many occasions recently.

[5] Christina Sharpe, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being (Durham: Duke University Press, 2016).

[6] Sarah Ahmed, “Refusal, Resignation and Complaint,” feministkilljoys, (June 28, 2018): https://feministkilljoys.com/2018/06/28/refusal-resignation-and-complaint/

[7] E.g. E.C. Feiss, A Critique of Rights in “We Are Here” (Maastricht: Charles Nypels Lab, 2015).

[8] Boaventura de Sousa Santos, Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide (Abingdon: Routledge, 2014).

[9] Conversations with various friends and acquaintances who work in libraries indicate that numerical quantities of loans, stripped of any other information, are being used as the marker of success and value, at the level of the whole library, the performance of the individual librarian, and the worth and necessity to the collection of each individual book.

[10] I’m paraphrasing a private conversation here.

[zoe-truong]

P4

Organization, Transitions, and Word Choice

Option 1

I stumbled upon an image not long ago on a popular, niche website called Reddit. The image depicted a well-known Japanese concept of life called Ikigai: A reason for being. In a sense, a person can only reach the pinnacle of purpose at the cross-section of what they love doing, what they are good at, what they can be paid for, and what the world needs. Leave it to me to have an existential crisis after realizing my plans for the future fall short of a perfect Ikigai.

In order to discover this ideal area, I have to go through an arduous process of evaluating the aspects of my character that hold the greatest value. Over the course of my first year in college, I’ve performed the most excruciating autopsy on my identity. At this point I feel as though I’ve taken every personality questionnaire or strengths assessment quiz out there. The qualifiers were nice to categorize who I was as a leader on campus, but I think the biggest growth and step forward I’ve seen in my college career is through my curriculum.

I’ve written a number of essays for World Literature that cover a spectrum of challenging concepts, anything from systemic racism to the carnism ideology. In each blog, in each paper I find myself questioning the way I view the world. How is it that these problems exist today and why am I a bystander? I hastily evaded the topic of my true passion in P3, because frankly I was clueless. Up until that paper, I was certain that my passion laid in my love for the stock market. However, when looking at this “passion” through the lens of the Ikigai, pursuing my parent’s dreams ignores the requisites that give my goals meaning, purpose.

While I purposefully work towards a future on Wall Street, at times I have to force myself to keep going. This is different from working hard to improve, maybe more akin to reluctance due to dissatisfaction. With this dissatisfaction comes fear: fear of being wrong, fear of being inadequate, fear of failing. If I fail, then what do I have left? Maybe nothing, but I didn’t spend years in a higher education without preparing contingency plans. I often forget that my ideal job is not the end of the road. The only thing more unknown than my future is myself, because the way I will perceive or approach the world will be incomparable to how I did years prior. The only thing I can control now is my action plan for the future. These are the steps I can put forth towards my education so that I can confidently go into the workforce, regardless if it’s the one I expected or not.

I’d likely still be going through that existential crisis were it not for Plan II, because the program’s broad curriculum makes me a little more comfortable about my prospects in life. Every class underscores the university’s values on ethical reasoning, and it is my job to carry this awareness throughout every step of my life. My knowledge doesn’t disappear with my failure, but rather stays waiting until I can redirect it to a new path. I know that “with everything falling down around me, I’d like to believe in all the possibilities”[1] of what I am capable of doing. Thinking of my life in that way, I can think of a few options left in the debris of my failure.

I will always have a strong love for art, animals, and Buddhism. These are three things in my life that I could say evoke the most passionate responses from me whether in practice or in discourse. Firstly, everyone has their own outlet for stress; mine comes in the form of drawing. When faced with worry, confusion, anger, or any unpleasant emotion, I articulate my thoughts through pencil strokes. Secondly, when I unwittingly watch a video or movie with animal deaths, I get incredibly emotional. The helplessness of these poor creatures in the face of cynical humans is something that causes intense frustration and sorrow. And finally, I have found myself connecting with my Buddhist self as of late. I’ve always used Buddhism as a moral compass, because religion has never been a defining part of my life. However, the timing of World Literature with my Buddhist organization has brought me closer than ever to integrating these moral lessons into my life. Impermanence, the Four Noble Truths, and the Five Precepts anchor themselves in my life decisions and expand my worldview.

So, left with these three ideas in mind, I have to figure the different ways I can simultaneously advance through my education and stay connected with these interests. The problem I have to get past is that my classes will not always be relevant to my passions. As much as I could try, Investment Management does not exactly cater to Buddhist ideals. But like I expanded my consciousness to “hammer [my] thoughts into unity,”[2] I am capable of taking with me something valuable from each class.

In my P3, I eluded to some vague grasp of the “Truth” in life and how I expect to incorporate that into my future. But, in writing this essay, I realized that it was a pretty half-hearted attempt. For as long as I can remember, my future was synonymous with my career path. At the behest of this essay, I recognized that there was more to life besides finding ways to stand out as a businesswoman. Let me clarify that building upon my ethical reasoning will still be important, but I plan to broaden the applications of it. Besides using compassion to become a better financial analyst, I want to become a better leader. The great thing about leadership is that it isn’t restricted to the people who excel at delegating or producing the most ambitious ideas. “Some roles are more visibly "the leader" than others, but they can all contribute to the overall leadership effort.”[3] And in enforcing this idea can I ascribe ethical reasoning to education, work environments, or life. I want to use my open-mindedness to assist others, rather than exploit the financial markets with fine-tuned methods of deceit. But when I look at my life with the financial career out of the picture, that standard of ethics still stands true. I will always take in others’ perspectives at all times and try to find the most harmonious solution in any situation. And in the process of writing this paper, I realized how now more than ever is the time to start putting this ethical reasoning in to action.

Not too long ago the President of the United States, Donald Trump, announced a string of potential budget cuts to reduce our nation’s debt.[4] Many of his proposals were shocking to say the least, but the one that brought me to my feet was the elimination of the National Endowments for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. For all of my life, art has been the vehicle for my emotions. I’ll be sitting in class, pencil hovering over a mockingly difficult exam, focusing all of my attention to a free response problem while my brain is conjuring solutions. Unintentionally, my hand flits across the sheet, outlining small pandas or swirls of stars. Drawing is natural for me. Even when my mind is elsewhere, my hand goes through the motions of mindless doodles like a reflex. So, when the new administration is considering to eliminate this opportunity to create and be creative, how can my conscious self stand back when my unconscious self will never stop drawing?

It is with these facts and while writing this paper that I stopped to consider a world without art. It’d be dreary, unimaginative, and restrictive. I had the privilege to grow up in a household brimming with artistic minds and a plethora of tools at my disposal, but so many children across the country barely have free sheets of paper and pencils. Drawing did more than let me be expressive; it helped me visualize my problems or promote my curiosity. If I’m illustrating a realistic piece, I have to study the proportions and analyze the characteristics of the model that translate well onto the page. If i’m painting a scene, I have to go through constant trial and error to find the corresponding color—correctly accounting for undertones and highlights. By taking away the Endowments for the Arts, the administration is going to be discouraging entire generations of children from a world of extremely critical thinking. Three-hundred million dollars[5] is definitely a steep grant, but the opportunity costs for that money does not touch the value of investing a life enriched by creative thinking.

I know that by working as an artist alone cannot protect this amount of money, but I hope to reach a point in my life where I can dedicate all of my time to advocating for the arts and working with children. This is how my career plan is a means to an end. Thinking back to that ikigai, the world doesn’t need a financial analyst, but my career would supplement the three other parts of my life I need to live comfortably. However, I can’t be content making money without fulfilling that sense of purpose. I still love the stock market, but when the time comes where I won’t have to worry about sustaining myself well into the future, I can instead turn my attention to sustaining the arts for the nation’s future. Sure to some people art can be pretentious or overvalued, but it still means something to someone. And for that reason, regardless of what art means to some child in Midwest America or New England, I will be the one to lead the charge to protect this cultural cornerstone.

It’s not going to be an easy task, especially with how the rest of my college years are laid out. I didn’t really expect to ever put art back into my curriculum after I graduated high school, because it was never something I felt would every substantially complete me, financially and emotionally. However, I don’t think my finance and Plan II track will impede me in any way, because like I said in P3, “Unweaving [my intended curriculum] by reading more, learning more, and challenging myself more is conducive to connecting my ethical reasoning to my future.”[6] Yes, artistic endeavors do require ethical reasoning. Some of the most powerful pieces, like the photo of the Napalm Girl or any of Banksy’s graffiti works are reason enough to show how challenging today’s ideologies through art causes a domino effect around society. In many ways, art is like education. Students connect with their professors and see them “[show] such a passion for thought that, by their example, they make one want to think.”[7] Art works in just the same way.

So in order to foster this same perceptiveness, I have to actively work and pay attention to how my professors think in every class. I think the most valuable classes would be the ones that constantly challenge my thoughts and help me understand other people. For example, the year-long Plan II Philosophy course forces students to face uncomfortable problems or try unorthodox methods of thinking. However, if I really want to engage with children and learn how to advocate for the importance of the arts, I should start thinking about classes that can best articulate my assertions and allow me to interact with younger children to help them express themselves as I did with art. Anything from the social sciences to the heavy writing-based courses like World Literature are the stepping stones for that aspect of my leadership vision.

Writing is not an easy process. In fact, writing is an art. Unfortunately, I do not have the natural inclination to the art of writing as I do the art of drawing, but I still submit to the same processes required to create valuable works. To write something worthwhile like these World Literature papers, one has to thoughtfully consider the points one needs to address in the work in a way that is both persuasive and interesting. Any length of work —blog, essay, thesis— will force the writer to carefully consider each word, choosing only the right ones that allows her “to seek the truth and express it.”[8] I always strive to seek the truth in every class. I may not always be right, but the important thing is that I open myself up to new perspectives to find what’s right. I don’t think I could have really been capable of being as open-minded as I have been without World Literature. Reading novels of walks of life I’ll never meet has helped me better understand this disparate world we live in and motivated me to protect the most basic rights of the underprivileged.

I know I started off this paper with lots of doubt, but thinking thoughtfully about how I can make the world a better place was well worth the torture. All those hoping to learn and succeed should go through the same process of self-discovery to become amore compassionate and contributing member of society. I know that I could set my goals so much higher and broader than encouraging an environment for art, but I know that where I can be most impactful is in a world I know and love.

Word Count: 2253  Word Count without quotes: 2169

Citations:

[1] C'mon, by Andrew Dost, Decaydance / Fueled by Ramen Records, 2011, LP, accessed April 11, 2017, http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/panicatthedisco/cmon.html.

[2]  William B. Yeats, "Transfer of Power," Jerome Bump, last modified August 7, 2012, accessed April 11, 2017, http://www.la.utexas.edu/users/bump/603A13/LeadingClassDiscussion603.html.

[3]  Robert J. Lee, "Ground Your Leadership Vision in Personal Vision," in Discovering the Leader in You (San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass, 2010), 34, accessed April 10, 2017, https://www.la.utexas.edu/users/bump/DiscoverLeader.pdf.

[4] Sopan Deb, "Trump Proposes Eliminating the Arts and Humanities Endowments," The New York Times, last modified March 15, 2017, accessed April 11, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/15/arts/nea-neh-endowments-trump.html.

[5] Deb, "Trump Proposes," The New York Times.

[6]  Zoë Truong, "Understanding My Ethics," last modified March 9, 2017, Microsoft Word.

[7]  Jon Schwartz, "The Web of Campus Life," in Texas, Our Texas, comp. Bryan A. Garner (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1984), 161, accessed April 10, 2017, https://www.la.utexas.edu/users/bump/TexasLeaders.pdf.

[8] "The Core Purpose of the University," in Composition and World Literature (Austin, TX: Jenn's, 2016), 1:90.

Media Citations: 

Ikigai: https://www.reddit.com/r/GetMotivated/comments/63cf1k/image_ikigai/

Limitless Possibilites: http://www.gratitudexp.com/2015/01/09/this-year-embrace-the-limitless-possibilities/

Hammer Your Thoughts Into Unity: http://www.la.utexas.edu/users/bump/images/hammer.html

NEA: https://www.arts.gov/grants/manage-your-award/nea-logo

Arts and Creativity: http://www.actualinsights.com/2014/art-science-creativity-susan-weinschenk-video/

Writing: https://www.theodysseyonline.com/why-writing-good-therapy

[netmaddy-blog]

A Brief History Of Woman As Thing

New Post has been published on https://netmaddy.com/a-brief-history-of-woman-as-thing/

A Brief History Of Woman As Thing

We see it everywhere. There is the striking image of Adriana Lima, famous for modeling for Victoria’s Secret. Tens of thousands of girls desperate to be loved and admired would do anything to be her. Including starve them to death. Actually, they have no idea what it is to be her, they merely want to look like her. This is a significant point of distinction that we should make as we consider Adriana Lima’s body image: as a person, she is virtually unknown to the public. She is, at least in the public eye, a thing. Surely Ms. Lima is a being, and quite possibly a wonderful one, but how she functions in the public consciousness is a carefully engineered human marketing message.

Ms. Lima elicits a strong sexual response from a wide spectrum of people, largely men, when she appears in her underwear. This leaves young women who have no notion of the depth of real love with the thought “I want to be adored like that”. Her sexual celebrity is based on her ability to trigger the basest of human instinct and is confused by young people as real admiration. She is the sexual version of a Big Mac shown on late night television to entice hungry people to visit the drive-through window of their local fast food restaurant.

Teenage years are already fraught with considerable insecurity as nearly every young person is trying to figure out who and how to be. Being pounded with fashion and body imagery suggesting that there is physical standards beauty that is passed off as empirical stratifies us into a rigid caste system based on genetic luck and marketing greed. Suddenly, bald men cannot win elected office even if they are organizational geniuses. Heavy women cannot be news anchors as beauty-caste consciousness perpetuates itself through our entire society. The cultural conversation of idealized beauty leaves everyone except for the largely self-proclaimed beauty Brahmans feeling bad about themselves Give Sunlight.

This phenomenon is doubly disturbing when you realize that body image marketing ultimately impacts natural selection and, while doing wonders for the next generation of trophy wives, it is informing breeding selection based on looks rather than characteristics that actually benefit survival and the future of the human race, like intelligence. There is no suggestion here that people who are fortunate enough to match the beauty ideal du jour are lacking in other qualities. This is certainly not true. The point is that as a society, we should rethink the merit of allowing marketing dynamics to influence our sense of human value at all.

The marketing strategy behind the body image of Adriana Lima is carefully calculated to drive consumers to the store to buy lingerie. It is the consumer culture equivalent of driving lemmings off of a cliff. In the process, young women, especially those in their teenage years, are highly vulnerable to the not-so- latent suggestion that being pretty is powerful because being pretty triggered sexual responses. This type of thinking causes young people to look in the wrong direction when it comes to finding a path to success, social contribution, and happiness. We are a culture that worships mannequins and promotes life practices of self-starvation and purging to pay homage to those gods. We really need to find a new religion or at least a more wholesome hobby.

In the beginning of the history of woman as the thing, the image of the woman was revered as the symbol of fertility representing the possibility of survival. One of the first known instance of the objectification of women can be found in pre-historic art, specifically, in a statute known as the Venus of Willendorf. Found in 1908, this small statue is estimated to be over twenty thousand years old. It is a matter of scientific assumption that this image of a heavy-set woman is somehow related to fertility consciousness. This hypothesis is evidenced by the visual emphasis of large breasts, substantial body fat and the detailed articulation of the vulva ( not pictured here). These visual emphases suggest that the sculptor was focused on these characteristics, and possibly idealizing them, thereby conveying a reverence for the highly fertile woman.

While the details carved into the Venus of Willendorf tell us what was on the sculptor’s mind, the details that are missing tell us what he or she considered to be unimportant. The Venus of Willendorf has no face. One could argue that this is simply an oversight of due to the primitive technique of the sculpture, but the facts suggest otherwise. The artist here took great pains to sculpt the fine plaits in her hair, presumably a prehistoric fashion statement. In other words, the Venus of Willendorf as a symbolic communication depicts a fertile beauty whose personal identity is unimportant. This statute is similar to carvings of other things that prehistoric humans held as the necessary to sustain life, mainly wild game and other animals.

Twenty thousand years later, our cultural iconography is still generating this very same consciousness. We are still obsessed with the object of the woman and do not necessarily care to know much about her as a being. While our art allows women to have a face, it does not allow them to have an identity other than what is predicated on fashion. That is not a lot to show for twenty thousand years of evolution.

It appears, after all these years, that we may finally become to a bona fide age of equality. Sexual objectification is now an equal opportunity affliction. There are billboards on the side of most urban freeways of young men’s torsos rising out of their partially opened pants that expose the waistband of their boxer shorts as perfect abdominal muscles ripple upward to join a flow anatomical structure that seems to the ordinary man as a hopeless impossibility.

Sometimes we see his face and sometimes we don’t. His image has been carefully selected to jolt some of us into sexual arousal while suggesting to the rest of us that we are not worthy because we do not look like that. Even heterosexual men cannot help but look on in awe.

In the next decade or two, we will not be looking at real human physiques in visual art. Computers will calculate the most appealing possible human image and fabricate virtual people for advertising. Since we do not need the advice of fashions to help us find ways to world peace, the need for an actual person to associated with a body image will disappear entirely. Will there still be the lucky few who meet the physical standards of the ever-fluctuating virtual standard of beauty or will we all be in therapy because we cannot possibly compete with our own computer generated fantasies?

When you have children to feed, your paunch is an artifact of a different set of life choices than those suggested in fashion advertising. House payments and braces replace gym memberships as we resign ourselves to be something that we are told is visibly less admirable. Young people are programmed by marketing media practically from birth to believe that following a temporary body image fad will acquire for them some ill-defined virtue. Girls, in particular, seem susceptible to believing that being able to trigger sexual attraction is a form of personal power and validation. In a world where a hot body gets you what you want, at least in round one, where is the incentive to become more?

My eldest daughter attended high school at an all-girls school. Like any high school, there were dances, but because there were only girls in her school this required my daughter to invite boys to be her date. As her very first dance approached, she invited a boy with whom she had attended grade school and he accepted her invitation. A week or so before the dance, she heard through a friend that her intended date was not going to go to the dance with her, but instead had changed his plans and was intending to go with a tall, slender girl who had just weeks before been one of my daughter’s close friends. It turns out that this fellow had gotten what he felt was a better offer and decided to trade up. Not coming from a family of any breeding or familiarity with common decency, my daughter was stood up without as much as a phone call just days before her first venture into dating. To my daughter’s merit, she attended that dance anyway with another boy, a family friend, which in my book took enormous courage.

This was my daughter’s first excursion into the world of boys and my first excursion into the world of having a daughter in the world of boys. She was thunderstruck by the rejection and, of course, as we all do, went searching for answers. As we were sitting on the couch one afternoon, she asked me a question that simply broke my heart. “Daddy, am I pretty?” Every father of a daughter should be prepared from the moment that they take their daughters home from the hospital for the first time to answer that question with a resounding “yes.” Being consumed with my natural tendency to over-intellectualize everything and simultaneously being completely unprepared to handle my own pang of sadness at even being asked such a question, I froze. She took my hesitation for a “no”. No amount of convincing thereafter would make up for me not having my answer on the tip of my tongue.

This has since come to infuriate me. First, the creep that gave her cause to have this moment of the doubt should have been thrashed within an inch of his life for being a vulgar, gutless cretin. Of course, I might be just a bit overly paternal on this point. But the fact remains that my daughter is not a pair of sox to be traded out on a whim. Second, no one should ever have to question their own validity like especially not teenagers. Ever. No one should ever have to live in doubt that they are anything less than perfectly lovely and possessed of the value of an angel. The mere fact that we live in a society where we can objectify people and then impose upon these human things of our own making subjective interpretations of their appearance based on arbitrary standards concocted the ignorant is enough to make you want to go blind and be free of such nonsense forever.

And for the record, my daughter is lovely – truly lovely. Every time I look into her face, she reminds me of the pictures of my favorite grandmother when she was young. I do not see my daughter in three dimensions. I see her in four. I can still see her former infant self in the curve of her forehead. She has her mother’s hands. She is the little girl scrambling into my lap and the powerful woman walking into the office building of the United States Senate to go to work. She has thick curly blond hair and the most beautiful blue eyes that have ever graced a woman’s face. Because she is not a thing to me, because she is a being that represents an entirely personal and family history and is the culmination of a life of experience and virtue, she cannot be anything but awe inspiring. This is not true just in these old eyes but in the eyes of anyone who truly sees.

Every person on this planet, without exception, is here because for millions of years their ancestors have kept the spark of life alive and successfully passed it on to the next generation. They hid their children in the tall grass outside of their villages to conceal them from invading hordes. They nursed them through famine and disease. The living is the artifacts of a life force that has fought for its existence for millennia. How are we then to degrade this with underwear advertising? We are a species of walking miracles. We are a race, the human race, of highly improbable beings. How dare anyone find fault with the appearance of any one of us.

Since the beginning of the species, human iconography has been used as a shamanic device, a totem image, expressing the deepest and most urgent of our desires. Art is a form of prayer. It not only declares what is on our mind, but what we want. The art of marketing attempts to create the image of what we want to be after it tells us that we want to be it.

In the domain of true religion, however, human iconography sends a different message. We see a crucifix and even if we are not Christian, we are reminded of the power of unlimited human commitment and sacrifice for the sake of compassion. In the image of the Buddha, we see the possibility of unlimited happiness through tranquility and the development of human consciousness. Of course, these images have been subverted as well. Victoria’s Secret, for example, had to be told by the Thai government by mandate of the law that an image of the Buddha was an inappropriate decoration for the crotch of women’s panties.

So when we see Adriana Lima in her underwear, out attention is not merely drawn to a pretty thing. For those for whom she is an object of sexual attraction, she is a visual mantra of sexual consumption. For those who yearn for the power of her sexuality, she is an inspirational deity of a truly false religion. It is mesmerizing. It is instinctive. Like throwing blood into a shark tank, she is a thing that triggers and ultimately controls basic human instincts. She is the sacrificial goat tied to a stake in the jungle that lures the tiger.

Human sexual dynamics and the historical trend of male domination over them has been worn like grooves into the collective consciousness of humanity. Food and sex are things that humans must instinctively seek out. It is the basis of our physical survival and our point of greatest psychological vulnerability. It is the ring in our nose by which we can be lead to market.

Thousands of years later, our culture still uses images to objectify both women and men. It is a form sexual exploitation that is no longer limited to corralling women so that they may be dominated by men. Modern marketing seeks out and even fabricates images that are designed to appeal to our sexual instincts so as to control our behavior. Marketing is using this imagery of sexuality to control our buying habits just as it used to be used to control our breeding habits. No longer is a woman as the thing being used as a symbol to socially manage human sexuality, but now she is being turned into things that ensure that we buy certain products.

This is the main point about objectification. It is always a means of domination and control. It has not always been a device of manipulation for just marketing agencies. There is a history of the worker as the thing, Jew as the thing, enemy as the thing. The history of woman as thing reveals a process by which women have been measured against a societal standard to create social expectations and to ensure compliance. Clothing and the expression of sexuality have played a very large part in this control scheme. You can practically measure the degree of power that women hold in a society by what they are allowed or encouraged to wear. As women have fought for equality with men in Western cultures, there have been a correlative shift in fashion.

Just over a century ago, woman as a thing was depicted as a vision of modesty and compliance. The image of a woman in a wasp-waist dress who refrained from any public expression of her sexuality was iconic throughout much of American history well into the Twentieth Century. As the women’s rights movement gathered momentum culminating the winning the right to vote in the United States in 1919, women started shrugging off the image that was forced upon them by a male-dominated society. They began to publicly control their own sexuality by cutting their hair and wearing more comfortable and revealing attire.

If you would like to see the modern version of this rebellion against the domination and control of female sexuality, look into a 20-year-old Egyptian girl named Aliaa ElMahdy. Alicia has a blog that recently ignited controversy across Islam when she posted a nude photograph of herself. While by Western standards, this type of photograph is relatively common as young people grapple with and communicate their sexuality in the Information Age through social media and sexting, it is shocking in the context of Muslim culture. Women have been stoned to death for less. As it stands in Egypt, her iconic nudity is a one-woman assault on the forced modesty imposed on women by her culture. It is a version of bra-burning in the Age of the Internet. She is saying to her culture that she is beautiful on her own terms and that her sexuality is hers and hers alone to manipulate. She has had many Western counterparts in this type of rebellion.

In the late Nineteenth Century, a woman named Mary Edwards Walker, the only woman to ever receive the Congressional Medal of Honor, was several times arrested for wearing men’s clothing. She was one of the first women doctors trained in the United States and was a decorated war hero having served as a field surgeon for the Union Army during the Civil War. She married a man but felt that it was inappropriate for a male-dominated society to force women to wear uncomfortable clothing. When she died, she was buried wearing a man’s suit.

In the 1910s progressive women began to “bob” their hair bucking the tradition that short hair was the fashion of prostitutes and sluts. In the 1920s, women began to wear sleek and revealing dresses that left little to the imagination as they took control and used their sexuality on their own terms. In the 1960s, women of the Women’s Liberation Movement began to appear in public without bras thereby taking additional control of their own bodies and their public presentation. Aliaa ElMahdy now joins the ranks of those women who have stepped out of the paddock of sexual control and have used their body image not as a symbol sexual manipulation, but of sexual self-determination.

And yet, for as much as Gloria Steinem and Aliaa ElMahdy have sought to use body image as a badge of freedom, business has subverted even this newly liberated body image once again for greed and control. Thanks to feminists, it is no longer shocking to see ads of women in lingerie even on a billboard, but it has lost its meaning as a symbol of liberation from male domination and become, once again, a means of entrapment.

Thousands upon thousands of teenagers flock to stores to buy all manner of decoration by which to show off their sexuality because they have been lead to believe that being the object of the sexual instinct is a source of personal value. This often comes at the expense of developing more realistic sources of personal value and greatly diverts attention away from the evolution of whole being. As long as human beings insist upon turning themselves into things, a self-defeating act of self-objectification, they will be moved about through time and space like furniture rather than as essential beings that are capable of deeply influencing the human experience.

True power comes from thoughtfulness and relatedness. It is the development of wisdom and the skill to use it that makes the world a better place because our daughters and sons have lived. When we teach boys and girls to contemplate the meaning of who they are and help them become aware of themselves as people who have the power to love, the power to commit, the power change the world around them, then we have transcended for all time the domination of objectification.

So how do we bring the history of woman as the thing to an end? We cannot do it for women alone. We must do it for all living beings. When we stop using physical beauty as a proxy for value, we start a cultural conversation about real value that exceeds mere sex appeal and allows us to recognize the value of every member of the human race. If our sum- total of attraction to each other is sex and beauty it will create a new generation of naturally selected children that meet our visual ideas, but if they grow up to be vain and incapable of understanding value beyond appearances, then we will have evolved into a species of well-sculpted idiots. We are half-way there now.

The danger of treating people as things is that it traps our awareness into the tiny confines of three-dimensional existence. The shape of a thing is the least likely indication of its value. It is the usefulness of a being, what it does and what it causes in the world of living beings that matters most. There are women whose faces bring tears to the eyes of many and thoughts of compassion and social commitment for the betterment of humanity to the minds of all. They are beautiful in ways that an underwear model can never fathom. They hunger and thirst for the well-being of all people, not to sculpt their bodies to look a certain way. It is not because of what they wear, but because of how they live, that inspires us and ignites benefit to sweeps through the collective consciousness of humanity.

People are beautiful because of what they think and do, because of what they create and bring to life in the world. If we allow our marketing systems to continue to measure us against a narrow set of ideals, we will miss entirely the opportunity to evolve into our full potential as beings. Keep in mind that the consciousness of people as a thing, is the consciousness of people as targets, as slaves, as objects of manipulation. The evil of this perspective cannot be underestimated. Beings do not have to look a certain way. They are not dependent on their shape. A truly free mind appreciates this and can embrace beauty everywhere.

[hereticaloracles]

Alice Hart on Shadow Work

 Guest Writer Alice Hart: Straight out of Wonderland, this intense dreamer crawled her way through one mad tea party after another to bring you some keys to your doorways. Versed in chaos magick with an emphasis in alchemical self-transformation through art, she encourages everyone to dream BIG and jump through the rabbit hole. Sometimes head first.

Alice Hart’s Analysis on Shadow Work: “Nothing will ever change here.” He said casually, lighting up his fifth cigarette that afternoon. “Not for this town or me or you.”

My friend peered up into the clear blue sky, squinting his eyes skeptically at it. He inhaled and exhaled a cloud of thick tobacco smoke. Then, glanced over at me.

“The sooner you just accept that, the easier life will be.”

He chuckled.

“Everything is shit and nothing ever changes.”

I looked up at the same blue sky as he. Squinted identically as I mused the weight of his words over and over again inside my mind. There was a point of time where these putrid dogmas would’ve slid easily down like butter or extremely tenderized lamb, but the pain I was in kept me from swallowing them. There had to be a way out of this town, out of this absolute nightmare! My life was a crumbling tower struck by Uranian lightning and heralded by Saturnine thunder that I refused to hear. I was penniless, homeless, pregnant, and continuing a toxic relationship with a devouring sociopath. High school was over and I was a foster kid on the run from myself while the threat of adulthood held a knife to my throat. All my years alive and the misfortunes I burdened under were the fault of some mysterious and seemingly omnipotent “they”. ‘They have done /this/ to me’, ‘they /forced/ me to do this’, ‘they /won’t let me/ leave this town’…’they have /fucked over/ my life’. “They” were suddenly nowhere to be found on this bleak afternoon during this particular conversation in front of our town’s courthouse. There was only myself inside of my life and an outsider to it blabbering crap.

“You know,” I replied, tilting my head curiously to the side. “I’ve been giving it a lot of thought…”

My friend took another drag of his cigarette. “Yeah?” He responded with a grin playing on his lips. Maybe he’d said all those things on purpose, strategically edging me into the fire that would mark my end and beginning. “Giving what thought?”

“I think you’re wrong.” I said. “I think you’re full of crap.”

By articulating that magickal incantation of disbelief, by telling the omnipotent “they” to fuck off, I had initiated myself into shadow work unknowingly. Most people trudge the desolate mindscapes of the dark night of the soul and come out of it broken, if they ever come out of it at all. The abyssal plains of a broken heart and the numb doldrums of the weary spirit /can/ and /will/ consume all who traverse it (to varying degrees). Should you ever find yourself eclipsed by indescribable agony where every aspect of your life is dissolving faster than America’s confidence in it’s government, your only key out is stupidly simple: decisive choice. Choose! Until you choose to own every aspect of your experience, the beatings will continue, until your goddamn morale improves! The monsters will gnaw at you. The thieves will invade your safe spaces and rob you of riches. The scythe of death will reap the growth short of every seedling you dare to plant…because until you fertilize the earth of your soul with conscious choice, all spoils to bareness.

Getting to that point of decisive choice is no joke. I won’t lie to you, audience, and say that there’s some exact formula for reaching that psychological plateau. There isn’t. Hitting the realization that you are responsible for your own shit is completely individual for the person producing said shit. The tipping scales which send us catapulting forwards into this realization or further into ignorance of it is…unique. There is no general timing. In my personal experience, however, the suck ends when we feel the pain through completely. And in feeling the pain through, we realize the choices we DO have. Inevitably, we end up choosing something, or someone/something else will do it for you.

Our pain transmutes in that singular moment and becomes a great unveiling. That’s right! Your pain is the very key to your freedom.

Like I said though, you have to really FEEL your pain. In this statement I am not encouraging self-harm or bringing about harm for others…but let’s say you have an old laptop or object just sitting around, that isn’t important, and you happen to have a hammer? Assign that laptop a problem or six in your life and destroy it. Realize that you’ve changed it and simultaneously, you can change yourself, if you harness that pain inside of you. That pain is the momentum, the horse, the chariot of your victory over the mess you’re currently in. Yes, you are a powerful manifesting machine capable of creating worlds and ending them!

Either passively or actively, you’ve created this nightmare world. You are the god of this abyssal cemetery and you can hit the ‘end’ button any time! Are you satisfied with the moss, the skeletal willow groves, the upturned tombstones, and bloodied moons of your life? Do you long for the dawn again? How much do you long for it? Grab that pain clawing you apart and direct it. Leash that pain and make it work for you. Use it as motor fuel to change the conditions of your life. You created the grave you’re dying in so build a bridge back to heaven. You can use the materials of your coffin box to do so!

‘Where are the blueprints for this bridge?!’ you might question. Frustrated, at that.

Do anything with passion and if you cannot muster passion for it, do not do it. After wandering miserably in the streets of my hometown, I got fed up writhing in agony, and started putting that pain into art. Art became my decisive choice. Every single convulsion and contortion of emotional turmoil became an action that I put into my life. Instead of letting go of the hurt feelings or applying a moralistic tone to them, ferment them into self-expression, every single day. For as long as you can. If that means keeping a notepad near your bed to write down a poem for five minutes in the morning before work or cutting all your ties and moving into a cabin in the forest or visiting your parents during the holidays to work through your bitterness…do it. You can only escape the land of the dead and dying when you use that decayed material, when you compost it. Turn your crap life into roses by believing in that pain enough to cure yourself through daily acts of passion.

If daily expression of pain into acts of progress (even if that’s just getting out of bed in the morning) is your key, apathy is the douchebag guarding the door. With their buddies depression and fear.

Much like the high school bullies they are, they’ll hunt you down, and challenge you after school. They won’t stop until you’ve looked them straight in the eye and stand up to them in earnest. Every passionate and courageous act you do in ANY context is you facing those threshold guardians down. It can be a matter of one stand-off or a series of many throughout your entire life but each step counts. Each step is an anchor and a block forged from your determination to choose better for yourself. Further into this matter, these guardians of the threshold serve a sacred, and often misunderstood purpose: they reveal who we truly are. That which opposes us to the point of spiritual burning or decay shows us the core of our being and purpose. When you finally look these concepts in the face and understand their articulation within yourself, they stop being obstacles. They start becoming teachers and allies.

And they’ll open the door out of the dark night of your soul into a new day.

The dark night of the soul is bleak and shadowed, perhaps, to make us peer up into that wide sky. To expand our vision to faraway futures, tiny pinpricks of light, just like stars. Leaving this stage in your life starts with choice. Your choice and the limits you allow upon it. And with each evolution you progress through in your spirit, you might return to this place, over and over. Each time gets a little less disconcerting and more informative if you treat the nightmares like boss battles, sages on the mount, jabberwockies, stormtroopers (they can’t actually hit anything if you treat yourself like the main character). To sum it all up, to make sense of my ramble at it’s optimum, the key to any dark night is…

Choosing to act upon your vision daily. No matter how elaborate, simple, or anywhere in-between that it is. And all it takes sometimes is saying “fuck off” and doing you, boo.

Alice Hart on Shadow Work was originally published on Heretical Oracles