#in the works. so to finally have it — see it — experience it — enter its realm is quite a surreal moment to me

[sweetest-devotion]

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[simpforfandom231]

i don't forget too well PT6

Hope your enjoying it

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As the days turned into weeks and then a month, Renée and Y/N found themselves navigating the ebb and flow of Y/N's journey toward healing. Therapy had become a crucial part of Y/N's routine, offering a space for self-reflection and emotional exploration. Renée, too, was on her own path, channeling her experiences into the creative realm.

Renée's comeback was met with excitement and anticipation from her fans. The living room, once a sanctuary during challenging times, now became a hub of creativity. Renée transformed one corner into a makeshift writing room, adorned with musical instruments, notebooks, and art supplies. It was here that she poured her emotions into new songs, each one a testament to the resilience and love that had sustained her and Y/N.

Y/N, while still navigating the complexities of her emotions, found solace in the support system surrounding her. The good days outnumbered the bad, and therapy became a source of empowerment. Renée, always attuned to Y/N's needs, ensured that the living room remained a sanctuary for both celebration and introspection.

One day, as Renée sat in her writing room strumming a guitar, Y/N entered, a smile playing on her lips. "Hey, how's it going in here?"

Renée looked up, a spark of creativity in her eyes. "I'm working on something special for the album. Want to see?"

Y/N nodded eagerly, settling into a nearby chair as Renée played a melody she had been crafting. The room filled with the warm, resonant tones of the guitar, setting the stage for a song that would encapsulate the essence of their journey.

"I wrote this thinking about us," Renée confessed. "The highs, the lows, and everything in between."

Y/N listened intently, feeling the emotions woven into each chord. "It's beautiful, Renée. I can't wait for everyone to hear it."

As Renée delved into the creative process, she began experimenting with not just music but also visual elements. The living room became a space where Renée, armed with colored pencils and sketchpads, designed potential album covers. Each sketch conveyed the emotions embedded in the songs, a visual narrative that mirrored the journey of love, struggle, and resilience.

Y/N, curious and supportive, would join Renée in the living room, offering feedback and sharing her own thoughts. It became a collaborative effort, a testament to the strength of their connection and the power of creative expression.

The living room, once a witness to vulnerability, transformed into a haven of artistic exploration and emotional catharsis. Renée's upcoming album, a reflection of their shared experiences, was poised to be a deeply personal and evocative collection.

As the days rolled on, Renée and Y/N continued to carve out moments of connection within the walls of their home. The living room, now a multifaceted space, echoed with the melodies of healing, the strokes of creativity, and the unwavering love that bound them together.

As the release date for Renée's highly anticipated album approached, the atmosphere in their home buzzed with excitement. The living room, once a cocoon of emotional healing, had become a hub of anticipation and creative energy. Renée, having poured her heart into every song, was now ready to share the culmination of her journey with the world.

Two weeks passed since Renée had put the finishing touches on the album, and the countdown to its release had begun. The living room, adorned with snippets of visual art and musical instruments, bore witness to the final preparations. Y/N, fully engaged in the process, reveled in the anticipation alongside Renée.

"Can you believe it's almost here?" Renée exclaimed, glancing at the calendar. "Two more days, and the album will be out in the world."

Y/N grinned, sharing in Renée's excitement. "It's incredible, babe. Your hard work and passion are going to resonate with so many people."

Renée leaned in for a quick kiss, her eyes reflecting gratitude. "I couldn't have done it without you, love. Your strength and resilience inspired every note and every word."

As the final teasers for the album circulated online, fans eagerly speculated about the surprise Renée had hinted at – a tour accompanying the release. The living room, now a nerve center for their creative endeavors, also served as a space for secret planning.

Renée, her eyes sparkling with mischief, turned to Y/N. "I have something else up my sleeve, you know. Something big."

Y/N raised an eyebrow in curiosity. "Oh? Do tell."

Renée chuckled, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "Let's just say the album release isn't the only thing fans have to look forward to. I'm planning a tour, and I want you to be a part of it. As my special surprise guest."

Y/N's eyes widened in surprise, a mixture of excitement and nerves coursing through her. "Me? On tour with you?"

Renée nodded. "Absolutely. Your story is a part of this album, and I want the world to see the incredible person who inspired these songs. Plus, having you with me will make it even more special."

The living room, witness to countless moments of vulnerability, now reverberated with the excitement of what lay ahead. As the release day drew nearer, Renée and Y/N found themselves balancing the anticipation of the album's impact with the joy of shared creative endeavors.

The final two days leading up to the release were filled with a whirlwind of emotions. Renée, with the support of Y/N, navigated the delicate balance between vulnerability and celebration. The living room, adorned with teasers and tour plans, became a stage for the climax of their journey.

Release day dawned with an air of excitement and nerves. The living room, now a space that held the weight of their journey, took center stage as Renée prepared to unveil her album to the world. The atmosphere crackled with anticipation, and the air felt charged with a mix of vulnerability and triumph.

Renée sat on the couch, her fingers tapping nervously on her knee as she scrolled through the flood of messages and well-wishes pouring in from fans, friends, and fellow artists. Y/N sat beside her, offering a reassuring presence and occasional words of encouragement.

"You've got this, Renée. The world is going to love your music," Y/N said, squeezing Renée's hand.

Renée offered a grateful smile. "I hope so. It's just surreal, you know? Putting something so personal out there for everyone to hear."

The living room, adorned with flickering candles and the soft glow of fairy lights, provided a comforting backdrop. Renée took a deep breath, centering herself for the day ahead. Social media was abuzz with fans sharing their favorite snippets from the teasers and expressing their anticipation for the full album.

As the clock ticked closer to the official release, Renée and Y/N decided to take a break from the online frenzy. They retreated to the kitchen, preparing a simple breakfast together. The scent of coffee wafted through the air, a familiar and grounding ritual amid the whirlwind of emotions.

"Remember when we used to spend hours in this kitchen, just talking and getting to know each other?" Renée mused, a fond smile playing on her lips.

Y/N nodded, stirring creamer into her coffee. "Those were some of the best times. It's amazing how far we've come since then."

The living room, having witnessed the highs and lows of their relationship, now bore witness to a new chapter unfolding. Renée's album, a musical testament to their love and resilience, was poised to make its mark on the world.

As the release time approached, Renée and Y/N returned to the living room. Renée, holding a physical copy of the album, took a moment to reflect on the journey that had brought them to this point.

"I want to thank you, Y/N. For being my inspiration, my support, and my love. This album wouldn't exist without you," Renée expressed, her voice tinged with emotion.

Y/N smiled, brushing a stray strand of hair from Renée's face. "And I want to thank you for turning our story into something beautiful. I'm so proud of you, Renée."

With a deep breath, Renée clicked the button to release the album to the world. Social media platforms exploded with activity as fans eagerly streamed the tracks. Renée's vulnerability, laid bare in the lyrics, resonated with listeners on a profound level.

The living room, now filled with the harmonious melodies of the album, became a space where the echoes of their journey reverberated. The world listened, captivated by the stories woven into each song.

Renée and Y/N sat together, hand in hand, absorbing the waves of emotion. The living room, once a sanctuary of solace, now transformed into a stage where vulnerability and creativity merged into a beautiful symphony.

As the day unfolded, the couple watched as the album climbed the charts, garnering praise and recognition. Messages of gratitude flooded in from fans who found solace and resonance in Renée's music.

With the album gaining momentum and resonating with audiences worldwide, Renée found herself thrust into a whirlwind of promotional events and interviews. Y/N, always a steadfast presence in Renée's life, accompanied her to each venue, providing unwavering support from backstage.

As Renée navigated the demands of interviews, photo shoots, and public appearances, the living room, once the epicenter of their private moments, now echoed with the excitement of newfound success. Y/N, watching proudly from the wings, marveled at Renée's ability to articulate the deeply personal inspiration behind each song.

One particular track, "Abyss," emerged as a fan favorite, maintaining its position at the top of the charts since release day. The haunting melodies and poignant lyrics seemed to strike a chord with listeners, solidifying Renée's place as a songwriter capable of capturing raw emotion.

Backstage, after a particularly intense interview, Renée and Y/N found a moment of solace in the dressing room. Renée, still buzzing with adrenaline, collapsed onto the sofa.

"That was intense," Renée remarked, running a hand through her hair.

Y/N chuckled, offering a comforting presence. "You handled it like a pro, babe. They love you out there."

Renée sighed, a mix of exhaustion and satisfaction in her eyes. "I just want the music to speak for itself, you know? I never expected all of this."

Y/N took Renée's hand, giving it a reassuring squeeze. "You deserve every bit of it. Your music is making a difference in people's lives."

As the tour progressed, each city brought new challenges and triumphs. The living room, though physically absent, remained a symbolic space where Renée and Y/N found solace amid the chaos of the spotlight.

One evening, as they returned to their hotel room after a successful performance, Renée reflected on the impact the album was having.

"Can you believe 'Abyss' is still at number one?" Renée said, a mixture of disbelief and joy in her voice.

Y/N grinned. "It's an incredible song, just like the others. But 'Abyss' has something special that resonates with people."

Renée nodded, a sense of humility in her eyes. "I'm grateful for every person who's connecting with the music. It makes all the vulnerability worth it."

As the week unfolded, Renée's promotional events continued to skyrocket, and Y/N, although silently struggling with the weight she felt she had imposed on Renée, decided it was time to plan something special. With the living room as the setting for their romantic evening, Y/N aimed to express her gratitude for Renée's unwavering support.

One evening, Y/N surprised Renée with a reservation at a quaint, candlelit restaurant. The ambiance was cozy, and the aroma of delicious dishes filled the air. As they sat across from each other, Y/N couldn't help but smile at the thought of the surprise awaiting them at home.

Renée noticed Y/N's secretive grin and raised an eyebrow. "What's going on in that mischievous mind of yours?"

Y/N chuckled, reaching across the table to hold Renée's hand. "Just wait, babe. Dinner is just the beginning."

The evening unfolded with laughter, shared memories, and the kind of intimacy that only a quiet restaurant could provide. As they finished their dessert, Y/N suggested heading home for the surprise.

Back in the living room, soft music played in the background, casting a warm glow on the room. Y/N had set up an array of candles, creating a romantic atmosphere. Renée, still curious about the surprise, couldn't contain her excitement.

"What's all this?" Renée asked, a playful glint in her eyes.

Y/N grinned, pulling Renée into a slow dance in the middle of the living room. "Just a little something to show my appreciation for everything you've done."

The dance led them closer to a strategically placed blanket, adorned with strawberries and a bottle of champagne. Renée's eyes sparkled with delight as she realized the thought and effort Y/N had put into the surprise.

"Wow, Y/N. This is amazing," Renée said, settling onto the blanket. "I love it."

As they indulged in the strawberries and champagne, Y/N couldn't help but express her feelings. "Renée, you've been my rock, and I just wanted to do something special for you. You deserve all the love in the world."

Renée, touched by the gesture, reached for Y/N's hand. "This is perfect, babe. But you know you don't have to go to such lengths to show your appreciation. Just having you by my side is more than enough."

Y/N smiled, leaning in for a sweet kiss. "I know, but I wanted to make tonight special for you. Now, there's one more surprise."

With a mischievous glint in her eyes, Y/N gently placed her hands on Renée's shoulders, guiding her towards the bedroom. "Close your eyes, babe. I've got one more surprise for you."

Renée, intrigued and a bit flustered, complied, closing her eyes with an anticipatory smile. The soft glow of candles and the scent of vanilla filled the room as Y/N disappeared behind the bedroom door.

In the dim light, Y/N emerged wearing a stunning red lingerie set that perfectly complemented her features. The lace and silk adorned her figure, leaving Renée momentarily breathless as she opened her eyes to the sight.

Renée's eyes widened, and her cheeks flushed with a rosy hue. "Wow, Y/N," she whispered, a mix of surprise and admiration in her voice.

Y/N, reveling in the reaction, approached Renée with a playful sway in her step. "I thought I'd give you a little sneak peek under the dress."

Renée let out a nervous laugh, her gaze dancing over Y/N's figure. "You really know how to catch a girl off guard, huh?"

Y/N chuckled, gently taking Renée's hands. "Just a little something to spice up our night. You like it?"

Renée, still a bit flustered, nodded appreciatively. "Like it? I love it. But, uh, you're making it hard for me to focus here."

Y/N smirked, leaning in to place a gentle kiss on Renée's lips. "That's the idea, babe. I wanted to make tonight unforgettable."

As Y/N continued to tease and seduce, the atmosphere in the room shifted from playful to intimate. Renée, her initial surprise giving way to desire, responded eagerly to Y/N's advances.

"You're irresistible, you know that?" Renée admitted, her voice a soft murmur.

Y/N grinned, keeping the seduction alive. "Well, tonight is all about us, about celebrating everything we've been through."

Y/N, fully embracing her seductive side, couldn't resist playing a little game with Renée. With a sultry grin, she decided to make her wait, teasing and savoring the anticipation in the air.

Renée, now fully turned on by Y/N's alluring presence, couldn't help but make seductive comments of her own. "You're playing with fire, Y/N. But I like it," she whispered, her voice low and husky.

Y/N, still in control, straddled Renée's lap, leaning in to leave a trail of soft kisses along her neck. "Patience, my love. The best things come to those who wait," Y/N purred, her fingers tracing delicate patterns on Renée's thighs.

Renée let out a soft groan, her hands finding their way to Y/N's waist. "You're making it very hard to be patient right now."

Y/N chuckled, enjoying the playful banter. "That's the idea, babe. But you know what they say — anticipation is part of the fun."

The room was filled with a magnetic energy as the couple continued to exchange playful remarks, their desire growing with each passing moment. Y/N, reveling in the control she had over Renée's senses, couldn't resist adding a final touch to the playful game.

Leaning in with a mischievous glint in her eyes, Y/N whispered, "Alright, my impatient love, I think it's time to unwrap the final surprise."

Renée, her hunger and lust evident in her eyes, eagerly embraced the opportunity to unwrap her girlfriend. Y/N, ever playful and wanting to maintain a sense of control, turned the act into a delightful game.

With a teasing smirk, Y/N slowly slid off Renée's lap, standing just out of reach. "You've got to earn the prize, babe," she declared, her tone a playful challenge.

Renée, not one to back down from a challenge, rose to her feet with a determined look. "Challenge accepted," she replied, her eyes locking onto Y/N's.

The room buzzed with a delightful tension as Y/N led Renée through a series of playful maneuvers. Each movement, each teasing glance, heightened the anticipation of what awaited beneath the layers.

As Renée reached out to grasp Y/N, she found herself met with a sly evasion. "You've got to catch me first," Y/N teased, her laughter filling the room.

The playful chase continued, a dance of desire and laughter, until Y/N finally allowed herself to be caught. With a triumphant grin, Renée pulled Y/N close, their eyes locked in a shared moment of victory.

"Now, let's see what my prize is," Renée whispered, her hands slowly unraveling the layers that concealed Y/N's enticing surprise.

Renée, fueled by a newfound sense of dominance and desire, embraced the opportunity to take charge. Y/N, still reveling in the playful atmosphere, welcomed the shift, their connection deepening with each passing moment.

With a sultry gaze, Renée guided Y/N to the bed, the playful banter transforming into a more intense exchange. "You teased me long enough, my love. Now it's my turn to take control," Renée whispered, her voice a seductive melody.

Y/N, captivated by the change in dynamic, responded with a teasing grin. "I like it when you're in charge, babe. Show me what you've got."

Renée, now fully in her element, leaned in with a hunger in her eyes. "You asked for it," she murmured before initiating a series of passionate kisses that left no room for doubt about her intentions.

As clothes were discarded and the room filled with the intoxicating scent of desire, Renée's dominant energy took center stage. Each touch, each whispered command, became a dance of pleasure and connection between the two.

Y/N, still maintaining a sense of playfulness, couldn't resist a cheeky comment between breaths. "Well, someone's feeling extra spicy tonight."

Renée, a playful smirk gracing her lips, replied, "You bring out the spice in me, Y/N. Can't help myself."

The night unfolded in a symphony of passion, laughter, and shared intimacy. The living room, witness to their playful games and newfound intensity, became a sacred space for the celebration of their love.

In a playful twist, Y/N decided it was her turn to take control, igniting a spark of dominance that left Renée both surprised and thrilled. The atmosphere in the room shifted, and Y/N, with a mischievous glint in her eyes, was ready to lead the dance.

"Well, well, looks like the tables have turned," Y/N teased, a confident smirk on her lips as she gently pushed Renée onto the bed.

Renée, with a mixture of surprise and excitement, grinned back. "I like where this is going. Surprise me, love."

With newfound determination, Y/N leaned in, capturing Renée's lips in a passionate kiss. The room buzzed with a delightful energy as Y/N's dominant side took center stage. Renée, willingly surrendering to the playful power exchange, let out a soft sigh of anticipation.

As clothes were shed and the intimacy deepened, Y/N maintained a sense of control, exploring every inch of Renée's skin with a touch that conveyed both tenderness and desire.

Renée, caught up in the moment, playfully quipped, "I didn't see this coming. Someone's been practicing their moves."

Y/N, their eyes locked in a shared moment of connection, responded with a sultry laugh. "Just trying to keep things interesting, babe."

The night unfolded in a dance of pleasure and shared exploration, the couple seamlessly transitioning between moments of dominance and submission. The living room, a silent witness to their intimate connection, held the echoes of laughter, desire, and love.

As the night reached its peak, Y/N and Renée found themselves wrapped in the warmth of their shared passion.

After the intensity of their playful escapade, Y/N and Renée found themselves nestled in each other's arms, the air heavy with a mix of satisfaction and contentment. The shift from dominance to tenderness was a seamless transition, and Y/N was quick to initiate the aftercare, ensuring Renée felt safe and cherished.

Y/N, with a gentle touch, traced patterns on Renée's skin, her fingers a soothing caress. "You good, babe? I hope I didn't go too wild there."

Renée, still catching her breath, offered a sweet smile. "Wild can be good, especially when it's with you. I'm more than good, love."

The room, now filled with a quiet intimacy, became a sanctuary for the couple to bask in the aftermath of their shared passion. Y/N continued her tender ministrations, planting soft kisses along Renée's shoulder, creating a comforting rhythm.

Renée, feeling a sense of warmth and gratitude, cupped Y/N's face, her eyes locking onto Y/N's with an affectionate gaze. "You always know how to make me feel special, even in the most unexpected ways."

Y/N, her voice a gentle murmur, replied, "It's because you are special, Renée. And you deserve all the love and attention in the world."

As the aftercare continued, Y/N and Renée engaged in whispered conversations, sharing sweet affirmations and playful banter. The living room, witness to the various facets of their relationship, held the echoes of laughter, desire, and the comforting reassurance of aftercare.

In the quiet moments that followed, Y/N and Renée reveled in the deep connection they shared.

Renée, feeling a surge of tenderness, suggested, "How about we take a nice, relaxing bath together? It'll be soothing, and we can enjoy each other's company."

Y/N, still a bit hesitant due to the recent wounds, looked down at herself, a hint of insecurity in her eyes. "I don't know, babe. What if the water stings or something?"

Renée, determined to reassure her, gently cupped Y/N's face. "Hey, we'll make sure the water is just right, and I'll be with you every step of the way. Besides, it could be a nice way for us to unwind and pamper ourselves."

Y/N, sensing the sincerity in Renée's words, offered a shy smile. "Okay, but promise you'll be careful with the water temperature?"

Renée chuckled softly. "Scout's honor. I'll make it perfect for us."

As they prepared the bath together, Renée made sure the water was at a comfortable temperature. She added a few drops of Y/N's favorite bath oils, creating a fragrant and relaxing atmosphere in the bathroom. Candles flickered, casting a warm glow around the room.

Once everything was ready, Renée took Y/N's hand and led her into the inviting tub. They settled in, the warm water enveloping them in a cocoon of comfort. Renée, ever attentive, ran her fingers through Y/N's hair, gently massaging her scalp.

Y/N, gradually letting go of her initial reservations, sighed contentedly. "This is actually nice. Thanks for convincing me, babe."

Renée pressed a loving kiss to Y/N's forehead. "Anything for you, my love. We deserve a bit of pampering, don't we?"

As they soaked in the tranquility of the bath, the living room, though silent, held the echoes of their shared moments – a testament to the healing power of love and the simple joys found in the comfort of each other's company.

Renée, noticing the aftermath of their passionate encounter, couldn't help but chuckle at the sight of the freshly formed hickeys adorning Y/N's skin. She traced a gentle finger over one of them, a mischievous glint in her eyes.

"Oops, looks like I got a bit carried away there," Renée teased, a playful smile on her lips.

Y/N blushed, feeling the warmth rise to her cheeks. "Carried away is an understatement, Renée. I think you've left your mark."

Renée leaned in, placing a soft kiss on one of the hickeys. "Well, I can't resist leaving a mark on the most beautiful canvas."

Y/N, still blushing but with a smile, rolled her eyes. "Smooth talker. But seriously, what if someone sees these?"

Renée grinned, her fingers lightly dancing over the hickeys. "Let them see. It's just a visible reminder of our love, a little secret that only we know."

Y/N playfully nudged Renée. "You're impossible. But I guess I can live with our little secret."

As they continued to banter and enjoy the comforting warmth of the bath, the living room remained a sanctuary for their playful exchanges and intimate moments. The flickering candles and soothing atmosphere became witnesses to the love that filled the air – a love marked by laughter, tenderness, and the delightful traces of hickeys that adorned Y/N's skin, each one telling a story of passion and connection.

[lint-beetle4]

Could you do a three way involving Wukong (switch), Macaque (ftm, sub), and Nüwa (mostly inexperienced, later dom)

Which essentially boils down to our two chaotic monkeys showing her the ropes and how love-making is supposed to be between partners, as her only experience involves her being coerced and sometimes SA’d by her abusive ex-husband (Fuxi).

(Bonus Wukong and Macaque use nicknames like jewel, starlight, and mango for Nüwa, and for each other they use King/Queen, sunlight/moonlight, and peaches/plum)

(I won't write any smut with Nuwa in it, but this request is a bit important to me, so I'm doing it in a more platonic manner with some details shifted around.)

Breaking Traditions (Nuwa-centric, Shadowpeach, fluff and angst)

Below discusses themes of abusive relationships and emotional+physical abuse. Be warned if you are sensitive to those topics.

Nuwa's hands were stained with clay, her hard work finally done as she dragged a stick through mud, watching as the final humans forms, looking at their world with hope and joy. The snake goddess laid in the heavens, watching over as her creations explored the large Earth before them. Time passed quickly, humans falling in love, making children, forming families and countries alike.

In that moment, Nuwa lowered her hand once more to five stones scattered across the earth. Four hatched one after the other in their own corner of the world, celestial primates with powers beyond anything the celestial realm could comprehend. The final stone was laid, left to incubate until its demise was ready. With sad eyes, Nuwa watched her newly created children left their stone egg, the thrum of power and intelligence running through them.

Slowly, the goddess grew lonely, watching as her creations interacted and mingled, battles creating friends and slaying loved ones.

The serpent goddess had longed for connection, the scars of her brother and partner still singed in her soul. Fuxi had left her long ago, a shell of the bright, nuturing person Nuwa once knew. He helped create humans, guiding lost souls and implementing their morals and social order. They were a duo, passionate and tender.

Yet, as humans became crueler, so too, did Nuwa's lover.

Her body hid away scars and faded bruises, yet the biggest wound would forever be in her heart as Fuxi left with nothing more than the words.

"Your heart is fat for the love of children, yet empty of your love for me."

Nuwa stayed in her corner of the universe, watching over children with newfound duty. She would ensure that they survive with what little they have been given.

The celestial monkeys had grown up, centuries of experience on their back with their own respective journeys. Humans had grown to a wonderful species--violence and peace in harmony. Nuwa had gazed down upon the Earth, watching as two celestial monkeys circled each other, laying their eyes upon each other with interest and surprise.

Nuwa witnessed how their life progressed, how the sun shone so brightly that the moon burned in its light. The sun's fire extinguished, only to be sparked anew as light entered the world once more. A journey west happened, the pillar nearly broke, yet here they were--Nuwa's little creations made of love and empty promises--alive and still thriving. The cycle was near completion, and the egg was likely still incubating peacefully, Nuwa thought.

The moon and the sun revolved around each other once more, both slightly dimmer and more broken than they were before, yet they still glowed happily in each other's shattered presence.

Nuwa felt a pang curiosity run through her-- a sensation she hadn't felt in a while.

Seeing her children were together alone, Nuwa summoned them, watching their surprised faces as light enveloped them. The two monkeys landed sounded on the ground, the two of them looking around before their eyes settled on the patient goddess.

"Oh, great. What now?" The ginger monkey--Wukong, she recalls-- growled at her. "Haven't you done enough?"

The Six-Eared Macaque--thankfully, he kept his name-- merely stared expectantly, eyes flickering the plane in a hidden show of nervousness.

"Children, I've watched you live your lives for eons now, watching through every cycle, every reincarnation, and yet, I have only but one question for you." Nuwa leaned down to them, trying to get to eye level of the two expectant monkeys. "How is it that you hurt yet fall in love again?"

"What?" The Six-Eared Macaque scoffed, a bitter, confused expression on his face. "You brought us here to ask us for--for relationship advice?"

Nuwa's face did not betray her, stony and relaxed despite the growing shame she felt--briefly, the snake goddess thought to send them back, to have questions unanswered; yet, she persevered, the hot lashes of her lover fresh on her immortal skin.

"Yes." Her tone was cold--it needed to be, lest her children gain an upper hand.

The two monkeys glanced at each other, silence questions and conversations shared between them before Wukong sighed with a nod.

"Fine, but that question of yours is loaded. Start with something simple--and don't take too much of our time, surely you know how time passes here."

Nuwa nodded, accepting the demand. "I will send you along your way after a few questions. I won't keep you here for long."

Pausing slightly, Nuwa's silence rang through the celestial harmonies along her plane, soon a question formed in her mind.

"Six-Eared Macaque, Wukong has hurt you, yet you come back to him. Why?"

Macaque huffed, his fur pricking slightly at the question before he sent a hesitant gaze to Wukong. At the sight of the ginger monkey's welcoming smile, one of comfort and acceptance, Macaque spoke.

"I was angry--at first. I heard he had a new student, decided to mess with his student. That was supposed to be last of our interactions, but...I owed someone a favor--a big favor, and that meant I had to go against Wukong again."

Macaque's eyes looked away, slight shame in his posture before Wukong laid a hand on his shoulder. Macaque's body relaxed, his shoulder's lowering.

"After I settled my debt, I just...Kept coming back. Whether it because I wanted to mess with Wukong, or his student needed help--I couldn't keep away for long."

Nuwa's eyes spelled interest, her serpent tail coiling into her body.

"Eventually, Wukong and I talked--through everything. We found a middle-ground, something to start off of. I still don't forgive everything that happened, but I know I made my mistakes too. I admitted to them, tried to make up for them, and I keep those memories in my mind, so that I can work on not repeating history."

Nuwa nodded slowly, her eyes clouding with certain memories. Perhaps she was the problem--too clingy, too passive; so much yin, but never enough yang.

Should she return to her husband, beg for forgiveness for things she knows not of?

Should she grovel at her lover's feet, worship him as human once did?

"Wukong, you allowed the Six-Eared Macaque back in your life as did he. You've killed him for trying to kill your master--an eye for an eye. Why is it that you keep him with you?"

"Didn't hear Macaque?" Wukong scoffed, restrained hatred clear in his expression. "We talked. We both made mistakes, some unforgivable, some that we've healed through."

"We worked on our issues, present and past, and when we were ready, we--we decided to test the water, to try and love each other again."

Macaque's eyes softened at Wukong, his tail secretly wrapping around Wukong's.

"We still fight, we still have to step away from each other, but we do so knowing that we have each other's back like we did before. We're trying to heal, and I know that Macaque is trying just as much as I am."

"So you two have accepted each other equally?" Nuwa finished with further intrigue. "How...strange."

Macaque raised an eyebrow, a silent question in the air that Nuwa couldn't avoid.

"I, too, have fallen in love." Nuwa's voice went quiet, a secret shared between the three of them. "A love that has scorn me like fire, as if I gotten too close to the sun and its rays had burnt away my scales and seeped into my skin."

Wukong and Macaque shared another exchanged glance, regret and surprise in their eyes as Nuwa continued.

"I was out-shined by my lover, and for my failures, the sun never soothed my wounds, instead it simply left with nothing more than words I could never forget."

Nuwa lowered herself further--a bow so low that she nearly prostrated herself in her pleas.

"I have one last question to ask of you: how are you able to return to a love that may scorn you once again?"

Macaque took a slight step back, his claws trembling as he clenched them into his hand. Wukong's shock was evident, his hatred turning into a burning pity that further prodded at Nuwa's growing regrets. Yet, it was the dark monkey that spoke, his voice near silent in the white noise of Nuwa's home.

"The sun has hurt you and left you to fend for yourself--tell me, do you wish to return to that life when the sun has given you nothing? Did his rays warm you? Did they merely burn? Have his words even soothed you, softened the blow of his action?"

Nuwa's only response was shame, her eyes avoid the angered stone monkey.

"Why should you return to a star that never shined for you? Why chose to be hurt when there's more to your existence than scars?"

Wukong nodded, his words overpowering the goddess.

"Did he ever say sorry?"

Nuwa shook her head, her eyes filled with sadness and despair. "I've abandoned him--too focused on the welfare of my children, never on him. He worked so hard to create morality and order, yet what have I given him?"

"Suddenly your work is now invisible?" Macaque hissed, eyes boring into hers. "You made all of us, and yet he's the person who put in work."

"It was in equal parts." Wukong argued to Nuwa. "You both have done an equal amount of work into humanity, yet he leaves? What has he done for you?"

"He's helped with so much. Surely, you've all heard." Nuwa held back a sigh, determined to keep her composure.

Macaque growled under his breath, stepping closer to the snake goddess as his whispered to her harshly. "What has he done for you?"

Nothing, the answer was clear. The two worked together, simply claimed the other as their lover. There was nothing between them aside from two lonely gods in an empty universe. Fuxi loved his humans as Nuwa did, yet outside of their work, nothing existed.

Nuwa lowered her head a simple shake of her head. Her heart was full of love for both Fuxi and her children.

Yet, did Fuxi see her as the same?

Were they nothing but shared words and empty promises?

Was his treatment out of irritation for Nuwa or their children?

"Let me repeat myself," Macaque's voice demanded, holding no room for question. "If the sun chooses to hurt you so much with nothing more than lashing fires and burning scares, why choose to chase after it? You, too, are a star yourself, are you not--burning bright with passion and giving warmth and life to those around you?"

Nuwa looked at Macaque with a mixed expression, her expression finally betraying her will, walls crumbling around her mind.

"You choose who you give your light too. Sounds to me like your 'sun,' was simply too proud to lessen his flames, to allow you to shine with him."

Perhaps. Yet, Nuwa couldn't accept it. She longed for her Fuxi to return, the thought of simply never seeing again was unbearable.

"You deserve someone who respects you, goddess or not." Wukong reasoned, his tone softening greatly. "Anyone who doesn't view you an equal is someone who shouldn't be with you, period."

Nuwa lowered her eyes, thoughts buzzing through her brain as she lifted her head, mending her broken expression as she simply released any tension in her with a sigh.

"You've given me much to think about, my children." Nuwa lifted her hands, watching as light sparked throughout the air. "I won't waste your time further."

"Hey." Wukong reached out, calling Nuwa one last time. "Don't settle for less. If you truly want to return to him, don't allow him to hurt you again. You deserve to be loved just as much as you love your creations."

Nuwa eyes widened, understanding rushing through her as a warm feeling replaced the bitter cold in her chest.

To love someone as she loved her children...An interesting thought, a fascinating comparison. Wukong faded into the light, brought back to the mortal world as Nuwa let her thoughts linger.

Such a warm, tender love...sounds so nice to experience.

[thegreatzombieartisan]

Melkor:

Hungry Ghost, Demon-God, Hellion — Me and You

He had gone often alone into the void places seeking the Imperishable Flame; for desire grew hot within him to bring into Being things of his own, and it seemed to him that Ilúvatar took no thought for the Void, and he was impatient of its emptiness.

What is the reason for Melkor being so bothered by Illuvatar's decision?

The Buddhist tradition offers an answer in the concept of emptiness. This is not emptiness like tea poured from a cup. Emptiness means empty of a separate self. It is full of everything; and everything is, therefore, interconnected. This concept overlaps with Catholic doctrine which itself means “wholeness”.

The Void is not empty but emptiness — and therefore pure creative potential

Melkor cannot tolerate the “unknowingness” of the Void because he perceives himself to be separate from it and the entirety of Illuvatar’s Creation. He hates and fears the Void, and so seeks to usurp it and fill it with his “things”. And that’s when the drama begins.

In Buddhism, there are six realms of existence and rebirth — or mental states. We cycle through different realms depending on our actions or karma.

In roaming the Void, Melkor enters the realm of the Hungry Ghosts

“Hungry ghost” is a metaphor for strong emotional attachments: craving, lusting, consuming, vying, competing, conflicting, wasting, warring -- all evil dramas come from this fundamental choice.

The image of a hungry ghost is grotesque: a too-small mouths, needle-thin necks, and giant swollen bellies. Ravenous is their hunger, unquenchable is their thirst — never to be satisfied through craving.

Melkor is the hungry ghost that can be reborn inside each of us

Zen Master Seng Chao said:

“Human beings' sickness is anxiety with emptiness.”

His venture into the Void symbolize our own experiences with existential anxiety or restlessness. Like Melkor, when we encounter that which gives us anxiety or fear, our primitive instinct is to engage in constant activities and creation in an attempt to reinforce our identity and sense of self.

In other words, when we see ourselves as separate from what we loathe and fear, we seek safety through grasping control.

We don't understand that this “separate” identity is merely an adopted construct and that our true nature has always been in the image and likeness of Ilúvatar: vast, inconceivable, boundless, all-embracing, complete, pure, open, and light—aware, awake, and alive.

for desire grew hot within [Melkor] to bring into Being things of his own

Our mistaken belief about being separate from Creation leads us to direct our focus on trivial matters. We become attached to material goods and chase after 'things' in the hope that they will save us or — as the current zeitgeist would have it — “liberate” us.

The ‘things’ we own, the items we produce, the ideas we have, our opinions and perspectives, the ‘things’ we like or dislike or pay no mind to, 'my' belongings as opposed to 'yours,' our political alliances and self-identities... constant activity, constant activity. More and more, we reinforce the notion of a separate self through our actions, creations, desires, and viewpoints.

Our mistake — and Melkor’s — about our true nature leads us to develop poor ideas and take harmful actions, resulting in suffering for ourselves and those around us.

In corrupting creation, Melkor enters the realm of the Demon-Gods

Imagine if you owed it money

It is the realm of angry, warlike beings who are susceptible to angry impulses. It is based in the belief that you have to prove that you are the best of the best, whatever arena you are in.

In this realm, Melkor pours discord into the Music, destroys the works of the Valar; and corrupts the Children. Terrible deeds too great in number to list.

Back and forth, Melkor oscillates between realms of the hungry ghosts and demon-gods, between craving and tumultuous fury, until he finally crosses an unpardonable line.

When the Valar send him into the Void, Melkor enters the realm of Hell

A realm that needs no explanation. The Void is not hell, per se — that is, it’s not innately a purposed for punishment. Yet, because his sub-creative powers are tied to Arda, the Void is to Melkor is like a blank canvas is to a painter without supplies. He still can’t create but worse— he can’t even corrupt creation.

For Melkor, this is hell.

How Melkor and we can be reborn into the Heaven realm

Though he hates and fears the Void, Melkor also feels incomplete and isolated without it. The Void is Iluvatar because all things are sourced from him. As a creation of Ilúvatar himself, Melkor will always subconsciously long for reunion with divine perfection — even while in hell.

And as long as we keep churning out opinions and other possession, we distract ourselves from the underlying anxiety about the Void until we, or our life span, is exhausted. A life of accumulated avoidance when could face emptiness and stay in harmony with Creation.

The Buddha offers liberation from the realms of suffering: let go of our attachments in the material world; and recognize all things are impermanent. The Void just be, and be here now. We inseparable from the Ultimate.

[tailoroffates]

About this blog...

This blog was made to tell fantasy stories and talk about the struggles of anxiety, be it minor or severe. The majority of what you'll see here will likely be the former, however, there will also be posts about tips for those who struggle with anxiety as well. To find these posts search for the tag. "Anxiety tips."

Anything else you need to know about this blog is below, so if you're interested read on. :D

In a world once used as a battleground by the divines, the Guardians of Eden banded several ancient races together to place a multidimensional lock on the gateway linking all realms. The gods were physically sealed within their own realms and the mortals were left to pick up their pieces.

During the War of Gods, the divines fought as titans. Massive deities kicked holes through mountains, splashed the sea onto the mainland, and devastated mortals throughout Eden. Two races went extinct and the continents were left forever changed

Centuries later, the threat of a second coming arises when the lock securing the Omni Gate begins to crack, however, the world is divided. It's up to Danny, the last Guardian, and their friends to ally the armies of Eden's races before the lock on the Omni Gate breaks.

Meet the protagonists! (or at least the ones I've had time to draw :P)

The lady on the left is Karma, the last Guardian of Eden. The spitfire in the middle is Freitza, a Valkorri who is a savant with Pyromancy, and the one on young'un on the right is Danny. A Terranian who is adept with Geomancy and struggles against a curse he doesn't understand.

This is the main party of protagonists in The Garden That Burned series in the year 6276 TN.

I intend to release 3 different book series based in the same world in order to tell the full story. Though the timelines of the stories told will vary. The series will be released in the following order:

The Garden That Burned - The second coming of the War of Gods. I'll be releasing 5 books in this series. The first is in its final editing process right now and the second has already been started. I originally intended to release 3 books in the TGTB series, but it turns out I'm way too overopinionated to have only 3, so... Yeah...

The Rise & Fall - This series will be about the rise and fall of the Guardians of Eden. You'll learn why they broke apart and sneaky, hidden secrets about the next series. I hope to release 3 books in the TRAF series, but I only wanted three in TGTB and it ended up 5 books, so I don't know guys. I just don't know :P

Eldergenesis - This series can't be elaborated on right now because y'all haven't read the first two series and this one has spoilers :O This one will likely be 5 books. EG will tie all three series together.

To find any content in this blog related to these series, search for the tags TGTB, TRAF, and EG.

My actual name is Kat, but I go by TailorOfFates because I like to think that's what we do as writers. We tailor the fates of the characters we create. I struggle pretty often with anxiety, but I'm getting better at working through it. I'd consider myself an amateur writer so far, but my dream is to make a career of writing so I intend to keep at it until I can share my stories with all who will hear them. I've written as a hobby since I was young, and if I wasn't writing, I was drawing. It was sort of a pass time until I was around 21 years old. At that point in my life, I had (quite suddenly) developed agoraphobia. For 4 years I didn't leave my house, not even to enter the backyard. And if I did, I would experience severe panic attacks which usually led to fainting spells. It was a difficult period in my life, but one thing I discovered was that my hobby of writing had actually become therapeutic. It was at that time that I began to study psychology and anxiety to try and learn why my mind was rejecting the world around me. As a self-assigned therapy test, I told myself that I was going to create my own world. One where I knew the rules and I set the laws. Whenever I felt the anxiety coming on I would try and create something new. New flora, fauna, natural laws, magic systems, characters, solar systems, races, etc... Then, I was going to write a story in that setting. Don't get me wrong, I understand the difference between reality and fantasy, but this practice did actually help me feel better. Eventually, a friend of mine noticed my binder and a half worth of content and told me that I should create a D&D homebrew campaign with it. So I did. It was hard at first as I struggle with anxiety when all attention is on me, but I truly believe this helped me start coming back out of my shell. Once the campaign ended, it had gone so well that I decided I was going to build my own TTRPG inspired by D&D, and that's what led me here. Now I'm trying to learn how to be social again :P

My dream is to share my stories and one day make enough funds to create a fully immersive, open-world RPG PC game. Then I could actually be a part of the world I tailored :D

Closing Comments

If you have any questions or concerns don't hesitate to ask me about it. If you'd like to know more about the world the book series is based on then click the link below to check out some articles. https://www.worldanvil.com/w/The%20Garden%20that%20Burned Be warned, I'm not done adding things so it's a bit messy, and it's not formatted well for mobile yet because I suck with coding :P (it'll still work on mobile, it just won't look as good).

[autisticempathydaemon]

in a sky full of stars (I think I see you)

Chapter Two: Le Potage

tags: Lasko/OC, nb!empathy daemon OC who uses they/them pronouns, background Freelancer/Gavin, mentions of disordered eating and unhealthy relationship dynamics in later chapters

It’s the classic story of boy meets girl… except “girl” is more of a genderless being of pure empathy magic and “boy” is the sweet air elemental professor who literally doesn’t know they exist.

Also available to read on AO3

<- Previous chapter | Next chapter ->

If asked what eternal life is like, Bee would not know how to answer. How can they when the only company available to them is other d(a)emons, their companions in this long, unchanging existence? Bee has never had to contemplate immortality, the length of it, the monotony of it. So when Lasko Moore enters their life in a flurry of spring breezes and flushed cheeks and delicious delight, Bee is surprised to feel like their life has finally begun.

Days remain always the blissful, benign, boring same. Newly coalesced daemons are still enthusiastic and vibrant; they are excited to learn, and Bee is still excited to take them into Elegy to teach them. The little stars still bounce off everything and everyone, making friends with mortal children as easily as breathing, soothing scraped knees, and consuming candied, childish joy. Despite the long-held title of teacher, they’re really just a glorified babysitter, keeping an eye on human and daemon children alike as they play. Small Pollux and Castor still get to hold hands with their charge, get to talk to her, get to be seen, and hovering, invisible Bee still watches.

The nights are what have really changed, when they get to feel like they no longer just exist but get to live . The little ones rift back to Aria, sated and delighted, and Bee stays in Elegy to get their fill. 

The eccentric daemon has always enjoyed their escapades through the human world. Aria, though gorgeous and comfortable and home, lacks so many things the mortal realm has in abundance. Everywhere Bee turned, there were new smells and sounds and tastes and sights like nothing they’d ever seen before. The first time they saw cotton candy at a fair, a man spinning sugar and light out of thin air without magic, they had been spellbound and have been ever since. Every opportunity they have, they take to explore and discover the newest thing this world has for them to taste, and there is nothing newer or better than the cornucopia feast that is Lasko Moore. 

Bee thought it couldn’t get any sweeter than the night the stray campus cat let the fidgety air elemental pet her. The daemon had needed to use a little push to get the creature to stay still- nothing nefarious, of course, just a little serenity magic they picked up from a colleague, equivalent to a little catnip and sunlight- but the small thing hadn’t even needed it when Lasko finally laid a gentle, tentative hand on its head. Bee couldn’t taste or feel its feline bliss, but they could see the way its body relaxed beneath his petting, could hear the pleased purring from its belly. They could taste the contentment drifting off Lasko like applewood-smoked barbeque: warm, heady, delectable, coiling around their brain until they were boneless and dangling in the air with loopy pleasure. The empathy daemon thought they’ve could never experience anything more wonderful-

-until the next week, a cozy Friday night where Bee sat in on one of Lasko’s classes. They’ve never quite taken to crowds like some of their kind had, finding the sheer variety and inconsistency of emotions overwhelming, but it was worth it to watch the way Lasko dons the title of Professor so wonderfully. His frenetic energy works well in the classroom, his pacing up and down the aisles keeping all eyes on him and letting him stop by each desk to answer questions with a helpful smile. As the last of his students filed out, Lasko slumped in his desk chair with a drained, contented satisfaction that permeated the lecture hall with a rich, luxurious flavor like melted chocolate, and Bee felt they could float through the very ceiling, could buzz right out of their skin, could never find anything better-

-until two weeks later, when Bee finally got to watch a D&D session. There were a lot more numbers and scribbling on sheets and arguing than the daemon had thought there’d be, but Lasko seemed to be having fun, diffusing the whole room with an anticipation as fizzy and sweet as pop rocks. That feeling only builds throughout the night with each roll and spell and saving throw, and Bee is starting to feel buzzed with the most delicious sugar rush when the night reaches its climax. The actual plot eludes them, something about a necromancer king and his legion; all the daemon knows is that the flavor of the room soon takes a sour turn. Lasko’s face is tense and pinched in concentration, a stream of nervous rambling humming under his breath while he fiddles with the die in his hand. When he casts it on the table, eyes closed in anxious suspense, putting the fate of his party in god’s hands, Bee makes the impulsive decision to take it in their own. 

It takes only a magical drop in the ocean to twist the die from one side to another, from the 14 to the 20, but it unlocks an emotional floodgate of exquisite euphoria from Lasko that could have fed all of Aria. If asked later, Bee could not tell anyone what the critical success did in the story or what his character managed to do. All they can clearly recall is the way Lasko threw his hands in the air, tossed his head back, and laughed with a complete, utter delight and abandon that pushed the daemon over the precipice of tipsy into a dizzy drunkenness.

Eventually, Bee comes to terms with the fact that Lasko Moore is full of surprises. As wonderful amazing transcendent as he may feel one day, the air elemental always finds a way to shock them with the depth and complexity of his joy, and they’ve learned to eagerly anticipate the unexpected.

Even now, a normal Tuesday evening like any other, just sitting in his office with his laptop and paperwork, the raven-haired man is simply, divinely, inexplicably happy. Lasko flips his pencil in between his fingers when he’s not filling out forms with peaceful humming and muttering, and Bee loves to perch on the windowsill behind him, basking in both warm sunset light and his sweet contentment.

“I wonder if I should open up the class to more students,” he mumbles, fiddling with his glasses as he speaks. “It’d be more work for me, but there’s room in the classroom and in my schedule. Surely I can handle the extra workload?”

“ Wouldn’t recommend that, sugar,” Bee hums lazily, pushing on the pen with their magic so Lasko doesn’t accidentally fling it across the room. They don’t want him to hear, so he doesn’t, but he shakes his head all the same, wrinkling his nose at the computer screen. 

“No, I shouldn’t overload myself again. The amount of sessions I’m already holding will be a lot given Gavin attending- oh, god-“ Bee chews on the sweet, sour, salted plum flavor of Lasko’s flustered, anxious pleasure- what a combo- and has only a moment to note the familiarity of that name when rift magic ripples through the room. 

“Thinking of lil ol’ me, Professor?” Gavin says in that low, sultry tone he’s perfected before artfully draping himself over a chair. The beams of sunshine illuminate his tawny, golden-brown skin in a way the incubus knows flusters every human who lays eyes on him, so when Lasko sputters and stutters, hands wringing, that’s typical. He’s used to seeing the shy, sweet air elemental fall to pieces, especially when his shirt rides up just so. 

What he’s not used to seeing is onyx and emerald sheep horns and ponytail peeking over the top of Lasko’s chair as a bashful empathy daemon tries and fails to hide from him. 

[esshetic]

VENUS IN PISCES: THE ARTIST

Venus enters Pisces on the 11th of March 2024 and transit through to April 4th, 2024.

Art work by Friz Von Eric at https://fritzvoneric.com/

As the moon departs from Pisces and blazes into Aries, Venus also transitions from Aquarius into the ethereal realm of Pisces. Prepare for an outpouring of love!

Remember, Venus transits differ from Venus placements in a natal chart. Our individual expressions of love are as unique as we are, and each emotional experience should feel as natural as gravity.

Within each of us resides an artist aching for expression. I've discovered the profound link between art, joy, and love. We cherish the joys of our childhood, incorporating them into our identities and talents. Is it our innate ability or a nostalgic grip on past emotions that drives our creativity? It's the pursuit of unadulterated joy, love, and freedom.

What allows this aspect of ourselves to flourish? It's our Yin, or feminine energy, which channels our emotions and enables us to articulate the contents of our hearts. This transit is a blessing for artists, lovers, misfits, and hypersensitives alike. We're well-equipped to handle the emotional rollercoasters that spring and the eclipse season may throw our way. Our inherent sensitivity allows us to navigate the tumultuous seas of our emotions and the events unfolding in our lives and the broader world. Embrace your sensitive nature during this transit.

Read for your Sun and Rising Sign

Pisces, Venus adores being in your sign. It's like luxuriating in a warm, high-thread-count cotton duvet. This is pure sensuality and pleasure in its simplest form. As with the new moon energy, treat yourself. Get a manicure or change your hairstyle for the season. Celebrate the new season as a fresh chapter in your life.

Aries, Venus is at work in your 12th house during this transit. This time is about self-discovery and building a genuine relationship with yourself, independent of your surroundings. There's a new you waiting to emerge and take you to new heights. An exciting new season of life is starting, and you're in a brief preparatory phase.

Taurus, Venus is transiting your 11th house. This transit brings closure to disagreements with friends or conflicts within larger groups you're involved in. Negotiations are taking place. You may question whether you're happy with the terms and conditions, but for now, you're simply relieved that it's over and you've made your mark by standing up for something.

Gemini, Venus is transiting your 10th house of career and public status. Things are happening around you that you can't control. The best approach is to take it day by day. Try to withhold judgment and simply observe before making a final decision.

Cancer, Venus is transiting your 9th house. Keep the faith and enjoy the transition. You're feeling lovey-dovey these days and are in a period of learning.

Leo, Venus is transiting your 8th house and bringing you financial abundance. Expect a reward for past hard work. As Jupiter, the lord of this house, links up with Venus, keep showing up and doing the work. Maintain your momentum and curiosity.

Virgo, Venus is visiting your 7th house of partnerships, whether romantic or otherwise. It's asking you to build a stable foundation while letting go of your need for perfection. Things don't have to look or be perfect to be good.

Libra, your ruler is settling in your 6th house of daily life and physical health. This transit may feel a bit mundane, as it's asking you to organize your life. It might not be your preferred way of living, but try watching a few tutorials to inspire you.

Scorpio, this transit is lighting up your 5th house of romance, leisure, and creativity. To tap into your creativity and intuition, you need downtime. So please rest!

Sagittarius, this Venus in Pisces transit is touching your 4th house of family, heritage, and home. I see a move to a new place bringing you excitement and curiosity.

Capricorn, this transit is navigating through your 3rd house, the house of local community, friends, and siblings. A quick getaway to visit family or friends could be in your future.

Aquarius, Venus will be stationed in your second house of property, values, and money. This could be a good time to plan for a pay rise at work. Consider your worth and how you can demonstrate it in tangible terms.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

I just posted a tweet from a writer who had only two people show up to their reading. Tons of writers, some of them very well known, responded with similar stories. I've had my own experience of that as the writer with the tiny audience, but it reminded me of the time in 1990 when I was an audience of one and the amazing person gave the workshop anyway and it changed my life and generated books and a friendship that still flourishes, and thank you Bob Fulkerson, who was the giver that day. Here's an essay/chapter of Hope in the Dark about the impact of that first meeting with Bob, the faith of writers, the mystery of how it all unfolds, and other related things. Happily this chapter begins with another dear friend who I had no idea was going to become the great writer he is now recognized as.... ON THE INDIRECTNESS OF DIRECT ACTION A friend, Jaime Cortez, tells me I should consider the difference between hope and faith. Hope, he says, can be based on the evidence, on the track record of what might be possible—and in this book I’ve been trying to shift what the track record might be. But faith endures even when there’s no way to imagine winning in the foreseeable future; faith is more mystical. Jaime sees the American left as pretty devoid of faith and connects faith to what it takes to change things in the long term, beyond what you might live to see or benefit from. I argue that what was once the left is now so full of anomalies—of indigenous intellectuals and Catholic pacifists and the like—that maybe we have faith, some of us. Activism isn’t reliable. It isn’t fast. It isn’t direct either, most of the time, even though the term direct action is used for that confrontation in the streets, those encounters involving lawbreaking and civil disobedience. It may be because activists move like armies through the streets that people imagine effects as direct as armies, but an army assaults the physical world and takes physical possession of it; activists reclaim the streets and occasionally seize a Bastille or topple a Berlin Wall, but the terrain of their action is usually immaterial, the realm of the symbolic, political discourse, collective imagination. They enter the conversation forcefully, but it remains a conversation. Every act is an act of faith, because you don’t know what will happen. You just hope and employ whatever wisdom and experience seems most likely to get you there. I believe all this because I’ve lived it, and I’ve lived it because I’m a writer. For twenty years I have sat alone at a desk tinkering with sentences and then sending them out, and for most of my literary life the difference between throwing something in the trash and publishing it was imperceptible, but in the past several years the work has started coming back to me, or the readers have. Musicians and dancers face their audience and visual artists can spy on them, but reading is mostly as private as writing. Writing is lonely, it’s an intimate talk with the dead, with the unborn, with the absent, with strangers, with the readers who may never come to be and who even if they read you will do so weeks, years, decades later. An essay, a book, is one statement in a long conversation you could call culture or history; you are answering something or questioning something that may have fallen silent long ago, and the response to your words may come long after you’re gone and never reach your ears, if anyone hears you in the first place. After all, this is how it’s been for so many books that count, books that didn’t shake the world when they first appeared but blossomed later. This is a model for how indirect effect can be, how delayed, how invisible; no one is more hopeful than a writer, no one is a bigger gambler. Thoreau’s 1849 essay “Civil Disobedience” finally found its readers in the twentieth century when it was put into practice as part of the movements that changed the world (Thoreau’s voice was little heard in his time, but it echoed across the continent in the 1960s and has not left us since. Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Walter Benjamin, and Arthur Rimbaud, like Thoreau, achieved their greatest impact long after their deaths, long after weeds had grown over the graves of most of the bestsellers of their lifetimes.) You write your books. You scatter your seeds. Rats might eat them, or they might rot. In California, some seeds lie dormant for decades because they only germinate after fire, and sometimes the burned landscape blooms most lavishly. Thought becomes action becomes the order of things, but no straight road takes you there. Nobody can know the full consequences of their actions, and history is full of small acts that changed the world in surprising ways. I was one of thousands of activists at the Nevada Test Site in the late 1980s, an important, forgotten history still unfolding out there where the United States and Great Britain have exploded more than a thousand nuclear bombs with disastrous effects on the environment and human health (and where the Bush administration would like to resume testing, thereby tearing up the last shreds of the unratified Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty). Some of the largest acts of civil disobedience in American history were committed when we would walk into the place to be arrested as trespassers, thousands in a day. There too, as in peace marches, just walking became a form of political speech, one whose directness was a delight after all the usual avenues of politicking: sitting in front of computers, going to meetings, making phone calls, dealing with money. Among the throng arrested were Quakers, Buddhists, Shoshone, Mormons, pagans, anarchists, veterans, and physicists. We would barely make the news in the United States. But we were visible on the other side of the world. Our acts inspired the Kazakh poet Olzhas Suleimenov on February 27, 1989, to read a manifesto instead of poetry on live Kazakh TV, a manifesto demanding a shutdown of the Soviet test site in Semipalatinsk, Kazakhstan, and to call a meeting. Five thousand Kazakhs gathered at the writers’ union the next day and formed a movement that shut down the nuclear test site. They named themselves the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Antinuclear Movement, and they acted in concert with us. Us by that time included the Western Shoshone who had come to endorse our actions and point out that we and the United States government were on their land; the Kazakhs identified with these indigenous people. Anyway, the Soviet test site was shut down. The catalyst was Suleimenov, and though we in Nevada were his inspiration, what gave him his platform was his poetry in a country that loves poets. There’s a wonderful parable by Jorge Luis Borges. In the last years of the thirteenth century, God tells a leopard in a cage, “You live and will die in this prison so that a man I know of may see you a certain number of times and not forget you and place your figure and symbol in a poem which has its precise place in the scheme of the universe. You suffer captivity, but you will have given a word to the poem.” The poem is the Divine Comedy; the man who sees the leopard is Dante. Perhaps Suleimenov wrote all his poems so that one day he could stand up in front of a TV camera and deliver not a poem but a manifesto. And Arundhati Roy wrote a ravishing novel, The God of Small Things, that catapulted her to international stardom, perhaps so that when she stood up to oppose dams and corporations and corruption and the destruction of the local, people would notice. Or perhaps they opposed the ravaging of the earth so that poetry too would survive in the world. A couple of years ago, a friend wrote me to urge me to focus on the lyrical end of my writing rather than activism and I wrote back, “What is the purpose of resisting corporate globalization if not to protect the obscure, the ineffable, the unmarketable, the unmanageable, the local, the poetic, and the eccentric? So they need to be practiced, celebrated, and studied too, right now.” I could have added that these acts themselves become forms of resistance; the two are not necessarily separate practices. All those years that I went to the Nevada Test Site to oppose nuclear testing, the experience was also about camping in the desert, about the beauty of the light and the grandeur of the space, about friendship and discovery. The place gave me far more than I could ever give it. Resistance is usually portrayed as a duty, but it can be a pleasure, an education, a revelation. The year after the birth of the Nevada-Semipalatinsk Antinuclear Movement, when some of its members were already with us at the peace camp next to the Nevada Test Site, I was the only one who attended a workshop there on Nevada and the military. The man giving it was visibly disappointed but gave it splendidly for me alone. As we sat in the rocks and dust and creosote bush of the deep desert on a sunny day, the great Nevada organizer Bob Fulkerson taught me that the atrocities of nuclear testing were not unique in that state with a fifth of all the military land in the country and invited me to travel into its remote reaches. He is still a cherished friend of mine and still the executive director of a coalition he founded a few years later, the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada (PLAN), the most potent statewide group of its kind, bringing together environmental, labor, and human rights groups. What came of Bob’s invitation changed my life and had much to do with my book Savage Dreams, the first half of which is about the Test Site and the strands of its history wrapped around the world, and before there was the book there was an essay version of what the Test Site and Bob taught me that appeared in a magazine with circulation of about half a million. A few years ago I went back to the Test Site for another spring action, and there I met several students from Evergreen College in Washington who had decided to come down because they had been reading Savage Dreams in class. If you’re lucky, you carry a torch into that dark of Virginia Woolf’s, and if you’re really lucky you’ll sometimes see to whom you’ve passed it, as I did on that day (and if you’re polite, you’ll remember who handed it to you). I don’t know if the Evergreen kids have become great activists or died in a car crash on the way home, but I know that for them I was a leopard prompting a word or two of the poem of their own lives, as Bob was for me. Borges’s parable continues. On his deathbed, Dante is told by God what the secret purpose of his life and work was. “Dante, in wonderment, knew at last who and what he was and blessed the bitterness of his life.” One day in Auschwitz, the writer Primo Levi recited a canto of Dante’s Inferno to a companion, and the poem about hell reached out from six hundred years before to roll back Levi’s despair and his dehumanization. It was the canto about Ulysses, and though it ends tragically, it contains the lines “You were not made to live like animals But to pursue virtue and know the world,” which he recited and translated to the man walking with him. Levi lived, and wrote marvelous books of his own, poetry after Auschwitz in the most literal sense. In 1940, in his last letter to a friend before his death, the incomparable, uncategorizable German-Jewish essayist and theorist Walter Benjamin wrote, “Every line we succeed in publishing today—no matter how uncertain the future to which we entrust it—is a victory wrenched from the powers of darkness.”

[many thanks to Rebecca Solnit]

[filmjoyreviews]

REVIEW: Weak Layers

Katie Burrell co-writes, directs, and stars in Weak Layers--a ski comedy follows three roommates--Cleo (Katie Burrell), Lucy (Jadyn Wong), and Tina (Chelsea Conwright)--after they're evicted and in desperate need of some cash to secure a new home. With the overwhelming stress and cramped living space in Cleo's ex's van, the three women decide to enter a ski movie competition.

Weak Layers tells a classic underdog story exploring the often ignored ski town locals and their beloved community in sharp contrast to the professional skiers and rich vacationers. Living in a place most of the world sees as a vacation destination can be challenging, yet rewarding. Weak Layers works the best when it captures the charm and unique lives of the 'nobodies' who call this ski town their home.

Deciding to make an homage to classic ski comedies focusing on women--and highlighting the sexism found within the world of skiing--is brave. And Katie Burrell does a nice job trying to bring back the genre with a new point-of-view.

As a comedy, Weak Layers falls a bit short. There aren't many laugh-out-loud moments, but the film makes up for it with complex emotional stories. Instead of a rehash of a raucous ski comedy, Weak Layers feels like the ski comedy world told through a 2000s indie dramady lens. And this makes for an engaging experience that focuses in on the complexities of growing up and trying to figure out your shit before it's too late.

The comedy in Weak Layers is at its best when it hinges on the awkward moments and the insecurity of Cleo, Lucy, and Tina. These moments are not often enough for this comedy to completely succeed, but what's there is enjoyable.

Too often the comedy falls more in the camp of "it's funny because characters are partying" rather than funny stuff happening in relation to those actions. But there are a few stand-out scenes that made me wish Weak Layers veered more into these moments of awkward relatable humor.

Weak Layers is especially great when it depicts the local Lake Tahoe community--and the affection everyone involves has for skiing is contagious. Even as someone who doesn't know much about skiing, I was drawn in by how much these characters care about their community, especially during the film's final scenes.

Katie Burrell does a wonderful job capturing the sport she loves so much. The footage of skiers--both those involved in the central competition and those just having fun--looks amazing and really drives home how important skiing is to the characters (and filmmakers).

As I watched Weak Layers, I waited for these moments, especially after we got to know the characters more and wanted to see them in their element, skiing down the slopes.

Katie Burrell, Jadyn Wong, and Chelsea Conwright are engaging as the central trio of roommates--especially in scenes highlighting their differences. Jadyn Wong has a strong comedic timing that works perfectly during Lucy's most awkward moments.

The friendship between Cleo, Lucy, and Tina is the driving force behind Weak Layers, especially when Cleo questions why she has younger roommates--and why she's still living this ski afterparty life.

But when the film decides instead to focus on a budding romance between Cleo and professional skier Gabe (Evan Jonigkeit), it loses momentum.

And too much of the film finds itself in this romcom realm. That isn't inherently a bad thing, but Weak Layers works better as a buddy comedy and this romance plotline takes away from more ground they could have covered following Cleo's challenging dynamic with Lucy and Tina.

***

Weak Layers isn't laugh-out-loud funny, but it has heart and works wonderfully as a love letter to the locals who live in every ski town when the vacationers and professional skiers go back to the city.

[tomafome]

I am thrilled to be here, and I want to remind Richard [Move] that I think his film is extraordinary [BloodWork: The Ana Mendieta Story, 2009]. It is a true and deep homage as it clarifies so many dense sources that Ana opened and then tangled again for all of us. 

Facing cultural resistance was something that she and I constantly could discuss once we became friends. I am just going to share some associative connections between the remarkable coincidence and correspondences of our physical actions – because they really have to do with urgent permissions to regard the sensory, psychic realm in which the body manifests its own energy against constrictions and prohibitions. There is usually a 5- or 10-year difference between the images which I will share of our related works.

My influences began with the psychic phenomena of a Scottish nanny; it was she who taught me to pray to the moon and to inhabit the body that belonged with sheep and trees and rivers; and of course it was secret, my family was never to know. We had a pact – I was probably four or five years old, my family must never know what she showed me at midnight looking out the window. These forms of what, for me, would have been described as pantheism, reify themselves when I see the work of Ana, and when we finally meet each other in the mid-70s – when we’ve already produced this relay of connected work. The struggle has to do with the confines of essentialist theory, which was a way of constraining and marginalizing our fuller historic implications. Both of us were committed to the saturation of material, in that the body moves and is sustained by saturation within the extensivity of our sensory energy.

We are both researching, by the mid-70s, Maria Gimbutas, so that the Paleolithic as well as the Yoruba aspect of the inhabited body, the sacral body, are active – coincidentally, and these are very interesting coincidences. So for both of us, it seems there is a phylogeny that recapitulates mythology. It is the sense that there are certain energies and momentums that will be opened and coincidentally discovered and explored: so here’s the explicit body taking the deeper roots of genital sexuality into the recognition of forms of nature, and how we would interact and inhabit those forms of nature. In my notes I say that we have forgotten the danger, the dangers of depicting the explicit sensuous female body, we have forgotten how much hatred and resistance that inspired – rage, envy, domination. The use of the body was truly live and declared narcissistic. In the use of our bodies we shared the confluence of being despised in the art world throughout our early experiments, as mine from the 60s were hugely resisted and then Ana enters the force field of feminist issues in the 70s where feminist theory and research begins to tear down the determinations of narcissism, exhibitionism, but what enters in the field at that moment is the abject and the essentialist! In order to recognize that we were facing a new construct of deflections, that if the identification of the vital energies with nature and the body can only be ‘‘essentialist or abject,’’ we are still going to be denied full aesthetic authority.

In the 1960s any deeper eroticization had been profoundly suppressed: there is no female pronoun used for women until the mid-70s – hard to remember! There was no vocabulary for female genital sexuality. And Ana and I used to ask each other, why has the history of the chastity belt – the chador; clitoridectomy; nunnery; silencing the female – endured? How very lucky we were to exist barely escaping these punishments. We said that the violence against women relates to the whole patriarchal sense of violence against the natural world, and the resistance to gendered integrations, and of course Judeo-Christian traditions had prescribed the denial of sexuality as a source of wisdom and knowledge and the silencing of women’s experience.

I also meant to mention the influence of Maya Deren on both of us. I was very lucky when I first came to New York City in the 1960s to meet her through Stan Brakhage, to visit her place on Morton street and to recognize the very contrary configurations that young artists could go and study, as acolytes to distinguished influential artists; but since she was a woman I saw that the guys, the young guys, expected her to feed us, to give us whiskey and cigarettes – even though she didn’t have enough funds at the time to print her Haitian footage! We were very privileged to have her run the original film through her projector. We faced a very desperate configuration against the authority of women artists, and especially a sexualized vision; and then it begins to break down, it is always breaking down.

In our friendships we like to party, we like to drink. It was very important for Ana that when I came to her house, being tall, I could change her light bulbs.

With her death, it became significant that Ana did not like to even stand on a chair. She could throw herself in the water and onto branches and bury herself in dirt, but she had vertigo. In the mid-70s I’m enduring mud pieces where I’m drying myself in puddles; it’s an ordeal work, it takes forever, and then there’s the silueta of Ana at the same time. We felt a profound affinity; a deep sisterhood as well as we did with Mary Beth Edelson. There was this sisterhood and it was dynamic and helped us do the work. And what has changed is that we’re all here thinking about the power of the work, the sustainable beauty, the incredible presence, how inhabited it is, that it escapes any of the delimitating definitions that surrounded it earlier on. The dream that Ana sent me – which is so well described in Richard’s film, and described by my incredible disbelief when the guys building the shelves in my loft come in and say, ‘‘Gee, look at the newspaper, ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– Carl Andre’s wife is dead!’’ – the dream she sent me was to go out into the snow and make forms with my body. I ran out in a nightgown and made images just with my hands in the snow and then I realized I wanted to stabilize it, to sustain it, so I gathered blood and ashes and what else, maybe there was red paint. The local IGA grocery in the country where I live was very suspicious when I wanted pints of blood; it was for Spanish sausage, I explained! So that’s the homage and as some of you know if you’ve read Naked by the Window, Ana sent quite a few artists dream instructions so this was not a unique manifestation. There’s another realm from our beyond that produced homage to Ana.

Thank you everybody.

Carolee Schneemann, Regarding Ana Mendieta, 2011. Transcribed by Raegan Truax-O’Gorman. From Women & Performance: a journal of feminist theory 21, no. 2 (July 2011): 183–190. ↘︎ https://www.schneemannfoundation.org/writing/regarding-ana-mendieta

[jackjolene]

Vampyr/Alice - Part 1

In November of 1875, Alice Liddell is wandering London in the real world while her mind fights for her survival in Wonderland. At the witching hour, as Alice mentally enters the inner sanctum of the Red Queen in Queensland, she physically enters a central drain far underneath London. A cut on her hand oozes blood, which falls into the drain, and awakens something.

As Alice confronts the former ruler of Wonderland in her mind, another Red Queen, one of blood and hate, rises up out of the darkness beneath on a lake of blood, awoken from her slumber. From Alice's blood, the catalyst for waking her, the being also known as the Morrigan, the Queen of Blood, and the Red Goddess knows that Alice doesn't fulfill the criteria for becoming a Disaster.

While Alice has anger and wrath in her heart, there is still some semblance of hope and good in her, a light within her cynicism and darkness. In order to become a Disaster, Alice's anger needs to have completely consumed her, making her perfect for bringing plague and death upon the Human race.

Still half-asleep and annoyed at being awoken by someone unworthy of becoming a Disaster, the Red Queen decides to simply kill Alice and go back to sleep. However, she stops before striking Alice.

It's obvious that this mortal's mind is broken (her eyes are unfocused and it's like she's talking to someone else), but the Red Queen can sense that not only is her mind working to repair itself, but it is special. There's something about it that sets it apart from ordinary mortal minds.

And that brings the question: What would happen if this mortal with her strange mind were to become one of her children? An immortal drinking the blood of the land?

Maybe it's because of Alice's blood, not fully consumed by wrath, or it's that she's half-asleep, or both, but the Red Queen decides to try this little experiment.

In Queensland, the Red Queen with Lizzie's face wraps up Alice in her tentacles, while in the real world, the Queen of Blood picks up Alice with her two arms, smaller ones appearing out of the lake of blood at her feet to keep the mortal from struggling. In Alice's mind, the Red Queen's jaw unhinges far beyond what it should and she is pulled into it. In the real world, the Morrigan's mouth extends fluidly, and she swallows Alice whole.

From a distance, the Skal known as Old Bridget watches as the Red Queen swallows a mortal whole and then levitates in midair as her stomach bulges outward, as though she's pregnant. After a minute or so, the Red Queen expels Alice from her body into the large pool of blood before disappearing back into the depths to slumber once more. After a bit, the new immortal stirs before getting to her feet and making her way out of the central drain.

In Alice's mind, she wakes up in a version of Rutledge Asylum created from her memories, and then finds herself in the real world, in Hyde Park, before proceeding into the Dollhouse. The newest realm of Wonderland signifies the childhoods that Bumby corrupted and Alice's subconscious noticing it while her conscious mind focused on herself. After realizing the truth about Bumby and finding his Wonderland equivalent, the Dollmaker, Alice awakens once more in the real world.

On the street outside of Houndsditch, Alice looks at the world with new eyes. She sees people as humanoid shadow beings, their features and other things identifying them as Human beings completely indistinguishable, each with their heart, arteries, and veins visible within them. And also, she's very, very thirsty.

Looking around, Alice spies a lone heart, even though its owner is in an underground train station. Somehow knowing that it's Bumby, Alice descends down to meet him.

On the train platform as she confronts Bumby, Alice's vision keeps switching between her normal sight and her new "shadow vision", and her mind keeps switching between the real world and Wonderland. After defeating the Dollmaker in Wonderland, Alice can finally face the real world version of him with her full faculties.

After pointing out that nobody would believe her over him, Bumby takes out the key to her sister's room. Alice snatches it from him and turns to leave before a realization comes over her, and she knows exactly what to do.

Turning back to Bumby, she wills him to see her as she sees herself in Wonderland: Clean, healthy, vibrant, powerful, in her blue dress, white blood-spattered apron, black and white stockings, and boots. He is mesmerized by her, staring dumbfounded, mouth agape.

Alice walks back up to him, pulls him down, puts a hand over his mouth, and latches onto his throat with her new sharp fangs. Bumby snaps out of his stupor and struggles, his cries muffled and Alice's strength increased, preventing rescue or escape.

Alice drains Bumby of his blood, before picking up his dying body and throwing him into the path of an oncoming train. As the train passes by, Alice hears his last thoughts in her mind.

"The past must be paid be for, but others have always paid for me. Why must I pay this time?!"

With her family's deaths avenged, Alice turns and leaves the underground train station, her thirst still present but not so severe anymore. After everything, she is in a state of shock, not processing what she did to Bumby, or how she was able to, just glad that she's saved her mind and punished him for killing her sister and parents.

She wanders London again, seeing it and Wonderland mashed together to create a "Londerland". The sun shines down on her and she smiles at the vastly improved scenery. It's like the whole world is celebrating the death of one Dr. Angus Bumby.

Meanwhile, in the deepest depths of her mind, a sphere of glass cracks and then breaks, allowing a spark of light to finally escape, even as darkness moves in to contain it.

[thefadingsystem]

[A12 Complex] Late night talk in Apartment 9

as the door to Mei's and Weaver's shared room opens, Mei sits upright on her bed staring at her phone. She knows it's him. "What happened to 'I'll be back before 12 am?'"

Weaver slowly enters the room, looking utterly unfazed. He stretches his wings lazily before replying. "I still have problems with this concept of time. I lost track of it while watching the sunset from the rooftop. It was quite captivating, you know. How was your evening?"

she puts her phone away "Oh I don't know!? I was worried you were still out in the city! You heard what they said about the gang that's been roaming the neighborhood, right?"

Weaver casually steps onto the circular rug, summoning his cozy-looking bed with a flicker of his fingers. "Ah, yes, the gang. They're quite the topic of discussion, aren't they? But Mei, you worry too much. I can assure you, I'm always a step ahead of any trouble."

He reclines on his bed comfortably. "Speaking of which, I found a charming little café today. Want to hear about it?"

Noticing he's as calm as ever while she's tensed up she tries to let go of the worry and just breathe calmly. "Fine… tell me about it"

Weaver's eyes light up with a hint of enthusiasm. "It's called 'Café Serenity,' and it lives up to its name. Soft jazz playing in the background, warm lighting, and the most delightful assortment of pastries. You'd think they designed it just for me," he chuckles. "People-watching there is quite fascinating too. Humans and their interactions, Mei, they truly are intricate beings."

He reaches out to a small, ornate journal on his nightstand, where he occasionally records his observations. "I couldn't help but wonder, why do they find comfort in such places? What do they seek amidst the chaos of their lives?"

She looks back on her phone "Probably time away from their own problems.. almost everyone is stressed out of their minds nowadays… by the way you know that that's the café Aria works at right? Been there a couple times with her.. she makes the greatest mochas." she pulls out a selfie of her and Aria in the café

Weaver nods thoughtfully, "She does? … Makes sense, the vibe fits her. And I guess I finally have a reason to try her mochas."

He scribbles down a note in his journal for quite a while. "It's intriguing how everyone here seems to have their own little world within the complex. I suppose that's part of what makes this place so captivating."

Mei answers "You tell me.. I don't even really know you and yet I worry about your wellbeing.. how long do we know each other now? Been about a year, right?"

Weaver tilts his head, his gaze drifting toward the portal-like rug. "Time is a bit blurry for me, Mei, but I believe you're right, it has been about a year. And I appreciate your concern, truly."

He gestures to the portal, conjuring a view of the night sky over a serene beach. "You see, I may not share the same sense of urgency as you all do, but I've come to value the connections I've made here. It's a unique experience, observing humanity up close, not from some distant realm."

Weaver's tone sounds more serious than ever before. "And for what it's worth, Mei, I'm here to ensure that humanity's potential for good isn't overlooked in the grand scheme of things."

she turns the light off, but finds herself unable to sleep, thinking about the last thing he said

[riverdamien]

Othering!

Reflections!

on

Othering

The Original Sin of Humanity!

I am a "grocers" son, and I learned from my dad the lesson of not practicing "othering".

He ran a grocery business and Dad told me from the very beginning that we did not talk about religion, race, and political views in the business or outside on the street.  He said: "All who come through our doors are equal and deserve the same service."  At his funeral were people of all races, economic status,  and religions. He did not practice "othering".

The word "othering" is a trendy term in academic circles, an updated version of words such as prejudice, discrimination, difference, bias and scapegoating.

Othering defines and secures one's identity by distancing and stigmatizing another. Its purpose is to reinforce notions of our own "normality" and to set up a difference of an "other" as a point of deviance. It is a process of being 'other-ed", meaning marginalized, dis empowered, and excluded socially.

Othering is very visible in our nation in all of our divisions.  We see it now in the political ads. The "haves' and the "have nots", all racial discrimination and so on.

In San Francisco it is seen as bright as the sun in the treatment of homeless, poor, people of color; especially in the Mayor' s statement on the drug use in the Tenderloin: "It is time we throw out compassion and use force to solve the problem," not looking at the causes around drug use, and compassionately working in that realm.

In the Haight my young adults are simply and completely ignored. Personally I  experience "othering" day in and day out.

We begin "Pride Month" the first of June, raising up the LGBTQ and Questioning community. I will wear a LGBTQ tee shirt each day to remind others of our "othering".

So what can we do to bring us into a circle of differences, caring for each other, and working out all of the problems, from climate change to extreme poverty?

A prayer by Justin McRoberts  says the best way of action of all:

"May I have the strange courage

to embrace a world

I know will hurt me,

offering myself to people

I know will let me down

and giving the best of my energies

to plans that will not work out.

I want to choose

to love the world as it is,

just as I know I am loved as I am.

Deo Gratias! Thanks be to God!

===============================

Father River Damien Sims, sfw, D.Min., D.S.T.

P.O. Box 642656

San Francisco, CA 94164

www.temenos.org

415-305-2124

----------------------------------

As of now I am planning to attend the following course, as my sabbatical as I enter our thirty years of ministry. I have not been accepted as of yet, and because of the political situation it may be cancelled, but there is hope! Would love for someone to join me in this adventure:

The thirteenth Annual INTERNATIONAL COURSE in INDIA “Gandhian Nonviolence: Theory & Application” COST: Tuition, Room & Board FREE (though donations are accepted); all other expenses regarding travel to & from India, visas, healthcare, & other spending is the responsibility each course participant. Once in India, a total personal expense budget equiv. of $300 per month would be reasonable (less, if one is very frugal). DURATION: 4 months (Sept. 30 th , 2023 thru Jan 30 th , 2024). A Course Diploma will be issued in a final graduation ceremony at Gujarat Vidyapith. LOCATION: Gujarat Vidyapith, a university founded by Mahatma Gandhi in 1920, (see: www.gujarat vidyapith.org) will host the first 2 months of the course during which International Students attend classes weekdays, have housing on campus, are provided vegetarian meals, and are given access to exercise facilities including a large indoor swimming pool (free of charge). Centered in the historic city of Ahmadabad (pop. 7.7 million), the urban campus enjoys a mild autumn climate and is near Gandhi’s Sabbatical (Satyagraha) Ashram where the 1930 Salt March began. Faculty associated with India’s oldest Gandhi Studies Program will teach the course while assuming little or no prior knowledge of Gandhi or India. To better understand the application of Gandhian nonviolence theory to practice, December and January will include course field trips involving 5-10 days each at a Nephropathy Center, an Organic Farm, the Institute of Total Revolution at Vedchi, the Gandhi Research Foundation at Jalgoan, and other experiential learning travel opportunities. Students will be accompanied by the Course Coordinator and/or another faculty member with transportation & on-site expenses free of charge. ACADEMIC CREDIT can be earned via arrangements that may be made by each student with an educational institution in their home country. Examples of mechanisms which may exist to be utilized have included credits awarded for “Independent Study”, “Cooperative Education”, “Service Learning Internships” or other devices negotiated by a student with their home institution prior to their departure to India. Such arrangements need not require MOUs for credit transfer.

APPLICATION

SEND TO: registrar@gujaratvidyapith.org with cc to: doctorjhaveri@gmail.com

NAME (First, Middle, Last): ____________________________________ Address: __________________________________________ Country: _________ Email: ___________________________ Cell Phone: ________________________ Brief Bio (including educational background & activist profile):

Why I am interested in taking this course:

SIGNATURE: __________________________________ Date: ____________

DUE DATE: May 31, 2023.

(If accepted, a $20

[creativelyryeblogs]

Month Long Catchup

Time is truly an illusion, especially when it comes to school. There are times when I think about how long it takes to finish a journey, then all of a sudden you see the light at the end of the tunnel. Journeys are so amazing to process and analyze after they happen, which sometimes sucks because your emotions are not present in the moment. Sometimes I enjoy it tho. The past few weeks I have had a lot of time to reflect over my art and life in general. It's hard to balance work, school and personal life but it's becoming easier for me to get the hang of things

Week 5

I was able to work on a lovely piece for the Black Af Exhibition, which allowed me to portray the love of a father and son. With in the black community we have a stereotype that fathers are not in their children's lives, especially young boys. This stereotype is mainly talked about when it comes to violence with in the black community. I wanted a piece to tear down that stereotype and represent love and unity of black men.

Week 6

I submitted a travel proposal for the DAAP SOA scholarships. This was honestly so exciting but also time consuming due to the extensive details I wanted to include. My trip consists of going to London and I was able to write down all the exhibitions, sights and areas I hope to visit! Even if I am not able to go to London, just the idea of being able to potentially be there brought a lot of excitement! I want to explore the works of Claudette Johnson, Sonya Boyce, Keith Piper and many more other Black UK artists. I feel that the black history of London is so rich and full of culture due to the Afro-Carribean history of london. Many people migrated from those areas in 1948 and brought their own style to the city. I am interested in the influence of culture and travel outside of the US and how it can connect to my practice.

Week 7

In the mist of preparing for the Black Af Exhibition, I was able to enjoy the works of my friend and Dayton Local artist, DAVE who put together a phenomenal show with other local artist from Dayton and Cincinnati. It was called the Sage Ultra experience and it really gave a new perspective of the importance of art with in my own familiar community. Growing up in Dayton, I hated the lack of fun the city had to offer. As time progressed and I was able to go to an art school for middle school and high school, I was able to enter a different realm with the importance of being an artist. As time progressed I grew a love for all of the artist in Dayton who have stuck to their roots. Its a small city that needs love and a strong community, art is the perfect way to explore that. February 25th was the Black Af Exhibition and it was AMAZING! I was able to make profit from my prints as well as sell an old painting I had for a while. I also go the opportunity to make 2 more pieces to add. Overall, I am very proud of the experience and support of black people in art. I just want to continue to be apart of this community.

Week 8

This week involved a lot of planning for my future projects and first installation for class. It was stressful and time consuming but once I finally figure out exactly what I wanted to do, everything fell in place. My sketches are often limited because I also rely on image boards and imagination as the process begins

Week 9

Installation time! With all the planning and ideas coming together, as well as pieces that I worked on throughout the semester, I finally got to place everything in the Annex gallery. The focus was my art and being an Artist, not a machine. I had a moment during the semester when it was pushed upon me to make 20 pieces in 2 weeks. Something I refused to do because I want my work to reflect quality not quantity. Its hard sometimes being an artist because people try to control your narrative. As soon as you let them know you make art, they follow with "Can you draw me?" No I am not a robot/machine that just makes anything at anytime. I am an artist. The inspiration for this statement was the 1968 Memphis Workers Strike. Due to deaths of 2 workers, being overworked and underpaid, the workers decide to strike. They used the quote "I Am a Man" to take back the power of racial slurs and degrading terms that refer to Black people as less than human. With this, I wanted to gain power and control of my art to show people that I am an artist and Im serious about my shit. Overall, I love the look and vibrancy of this installation. Definitely one for the books!

Week 10

Spring Break!! Got to go to Chicago to celebrate my birthday, enjoy friends and city vibes. Really enjoyed visiting the Art Institute of Chicago. The most memorable piece was Untitled (Portrait of Ross in L.A) by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. It was phenomenal to know the background of his work then to view it in person and actually take a piece of candy. It felt wrong but right at the same time. This put a different perspective on how I can use simple installations to imply a bigger meaning to my work.

Week 11

Brainstorming on the realm of AfroFuturism and Afrosurrealism. I am interested in viewing the future and surrealness of Black people in reference to culture and artistic values. Ironically I have been viewing the past and how the represented the future. Things like y2k culture, 90s-2000s futuristic music videos, and music that has placed the space of black culture into an alternative vibe.

[cosmicangel888]

The Importance & Value of Allowing

Balance

The DF chakra rebalancing, pulling and being in a loving harmony with life is great in the vibration of 'allowing' all that has been in the intending and action of the pure heart of intention - DF is the receiving -

3 A's of Ascension - Acknowledgement which shifts and allows anew; beliefs and perspectives, (the who are you) and such is an evolving & eternal state of becoming with your highest self, soul, and all fragments of what has been; 3D -5D and ways in which old patterns are shifted and forever changed; Acceptance of the now you choose to be and align and realign with new knowing, beliefs and entraining with multi-dimensional tools, gifts, and skills to new codes of earthly templates and or all-ness - cannot be left out - and finally Allowance - the allowing of the dance with Creation to bless and meet you 1/2 way of who you are, what you exist within, and what is within you

The new 5D 4 E's of Soul Evolution & Upliftment to Healing & Expansion ~ How to truly live within exploration, expression, experience and to uplift with re-alignment to the excitement of the divine sacred child; to be so in pure vibration is to do the inner work so that you knowing, beliefs and intention of oneness with God, what is beyond sight, patterns, and conformity ~ the old must be broken away to choose anew - none have power to choose for you, or design your life and health for you and none can knock you off of who you and then never surrender in your divine expression of you -

The awakening, ascension for 3D earth and all involved, all levels of life to enter a 5D consciousness and intelligence of connection and living of all realms - we are embedded with - is our ascension into the expansive oneness of the Christ Consciousness ~ nothing to do with religion and its beliefs - beyond the matrix and intertwined of all sacred crystalline codes of God spark in all life; essence of all life in life - this is sovereignty - the christ consciousness is a connection of and with all life- and expand within all moments of IT ©

The refinement and rebalancing must include all aspects of you - and the more we negate, suppress, depress, deny any aspect of who we are - the greater the knocking and shaking will be ~ God is our peace in our becoming- love is such - when you self love it is a calling to all that you are to love and greater love - why 'true love is self love'

Self love is true love - it brings and becomes anything and all things;

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Blessings and grace

Joanna

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[thetrainforcreationsdaughter]

The Green Row and The Wanderer

I find a silence of calm surrounds me for this is a time to listen and feel rather than a time of journey. I know I must travel to a sacred place in order my claim my ticket to my first travel done by the train.

Carefully I recall the steps that twirled, made of dirt and wood, a waterfall overlooking the distance and hiding the placement of the portal. This is the place where I begin my work carving the words of the realm and then my own and finally the song of home.

The magic begins to move in the light of honoring toward my true selves song as sigils entrap the three circles I have carved and finally the harmony a beautiful and pure green of health and growth, the voice of the realm speaks to me.

‘Follow the word of the land for creation shall guide your every step.’

How wondrous it is to speak to a land which holds so many stories so magical and fantastical and free. The realm welcomes me as the pure song of me sings into the portal creating it, I stand in the center receiving the song and allowing myself the time to simply feel if only for a short time.

Soon after a golden ticket appears and I place it where I know it will remain, a pocket space of light in the center of my belly where I am known to store precious things. Two other tickets are there of which I know of where they belong though I have not yet visited for any length of time other than a brief meeting for the purposes of others though done with the best intent.

I can recall the idea od opening my eyes and seeing nothing and for a moment I think that brings me peace, I found there is a calling in me somewhere the Burrow and its inhabitants but I never truly felt I belonged, an impossible idea to become. But it's not like waking up and being someone else it's waking up and being me I don't think that will ever change, I can carry infinite names but I will always be me.

I suppose the anxiety comes from the knowledge that I am an explorer that has locked herself away out of fear and to take the steps to travel and discover and be true to my soul and to myself is both exhilarating and new. Sometimes we lie to ourselves because we want to stay in the dark but there is a fire in me that I know is home and I wish to reach out into the worlds and find home, gather all the stories and experiences, and remember that I am Core and I have a home.

The first time I take the ticket and enter the train I am terrified, I whisper every reason why I can't even as the fire in me gathers my strength and takes me somewhere new. I land near a creak surrounded by the shade of trees, it feels almost like I am crowding into myself, scared to be seen, to know I am somewhere I have never been before, outside. A leather clasp with a soul jewel.

A green parrot is the first I notice as it notices me, somewhere near someone is keeping track of those that step into this forest, my senses are absolute I find, showing me images or places that are near my body, some are not so far but not so close is a tribe of people though the parrot does not belong to them. The interesting part is that I don't notice anything near me though my eyes were shut closed, anxiety has me ripping the ticket and I return to my inner world.

R. It feels like a warning as if to say someone within that forest had noticed my presence through the parrot. It takes a week to try again this time I decide to travel my inner world more though roughly as I find all the keys I need to travel exist inside me it's simply that fear shadowed the wings of the butterfly which represents the free explorer inside me.

Drawing a blue magi into the snow to help find what I need to enter fully into the train it calls forth the image of baked goods and warmth.

I meet a representative of myself once I enter the winter touched spring in my inner world, she is somewhere warm and cozy, I remember this part of my inner world the forest with the mermaids who sang of serenity and the large tree where I was held in comfort, the way sunshine makes everything golden, my path takes me to a house that reminds me of something taken right out of Hansel and Gretal though lacking the candy.

There are custards and lemon pies. I am dressed for winter whereas my counterpart's hair has silver and gold jewelry interlaced, she is the part of me ready to encourage me to explore and live, she says the cabin is a place for friendship. Offering her my blue core it enters through her and we become one. Packing a brown backpack a fire flashlight for absolute light hidden inside.

We are taken to a cavern where at first a chair made of a black crystal for power and strength and once sat in the chair we found ourselves even deeper in the cave where the secrets of my travels were hidden away from us, carved deep in the cavern a crystal made of my infindium frequencies from my soul is recovered.

Unlocking all the truths hidden in me finally the door of the train is found. The bronze statue of the angel where I place my ticket is right next to the beaming light of the entrance, sitting down I look outside the window of the train noticing the snow-covered mountains.

My reflection is older than my inner world safe, beautiful with white eyelashes and eyebrows and eyes a kaleidoscope of iridescent white that is my soul, dirty blonde hair with silver clasps in my hair for my thoughts to be carefully safe. Red leather pants and a crinkled blouse that fits close to my skin a leather necklace falling like a teardrop.

The ivy green bell of my soul item enters my chest where all my inner power is. I feel the anxiety bubbling inside of me balancing into a calm as I close my eyes and call out to the Green Row Realm. The reasons why intertwining with the allowance to travel, light shaping into movement before finally a door seeped in ancient magic surrounded by light. I enter through it and open my eyes to tall trees as exactly as I remember last time.

Something large and alive a distance behind me though at first, I don't notice exactly what it is only later as I travel deeper following my compass do I recall that it was a toad as large as a building. The light green of the grass and trees becomes darker the more I travel within, a marsh of mud that is surprisingly sticky bending down I pick up a piece of mud to inspect it between my forefinger and thumb before opening my pouch and taking out a small bottle to place the mud. It's nearly sentient the way the mud moves within the confines of the glass bottle.

Someone has enchanted this marsh to keep those from traveling further in. An image of a moss-covered hut with an energy that dwells within reminds me of the old witch from the Disney movie brave. Early on I felt the presence of two small fae-like beings as well. It seems that I have entered into a rather fantastical realm.

The deeper I go into the marsh the larger the trees become, towering as tall as titans as I fight myself from the mud to take steps towards where the compass guides me the center dot hovering between the warm firey hearth of home and the pure white of infindium.

The deeper I go in the more the magic around me seems to resist, my heart beginning to beat much more faster than it should, the markings on my back purifying the magic from me as I hear the fluttering of wings, the parrot through it does not seem to notice spot my presence.

As I step outside the trees and take another step from the sticky mud I notice I have stepped on something. In my panic, I look down and notice it's a toad, for a few moments I fear my weight killed it as it seems nonresponsive, following my instincts I pull using an energy from my hands a strange black smoke which exits from its mouth. The toad seems to come to life a passing thought makes me question if the air in this marsh is some sort of poison.

Communication I find is unique because oftentimes we do not speak the same language as those we wish to take to so for me the best way to bypass this is to send the energetic form of what you wish to communicate. At first, I cannot recall exactly what was said through the communication between the two of us lead to the toad warning me of the danger of this marsh. ‘?’ I communicate and the toad explains that there exists some creature within this forest which the frog had a name for which began with ‘F’, an image of a knight with armor stained entirely black very much dead on the ground comes up. I communicate that I have an object which I must observe in this area which is why I am there, my compass has shown me that while the object is near this creature it should not belong in it's nest.

The toad seems to understand this and shows me a hole which its knowledge of which can be used as a back entrance, I check the compass which shows me the black of danger but not so far from that danger is where my object is, this seems the best way to find the object though my inner knowing understands that this object will be a map towards where something that resonates with home can be found. I have a feeling my adventures in Green Row are far from over. I explain to the toad that I will be leaving but will come to find him and I exchange a glowing green dot to the toad so I can find the toad when I return to Green Row.