#it is not a life sprouting in spite of the misery

[vyllaynark]

i always end up defaulting to just a couple brushes and characters, but since i made this blog specifically for experimentation. here. a tree made with a bunch of Awez's incredible krita brush bundles. (seriously check them out)

does it make any sense? no! and i don't give a shit! because i'm the vyllayn here and i do what i want!!!!11!

[theindescribable1]

Saw that one anon about a creepy dream a little while ago, and wanted to pitch in with a little retelling of my own, prologued by how the morning afterward went. Sorry if any of it sounds a little off—I’m not exactly an author, but I’ll do my best.

3:19 AM I woke up, slick with sweat. And I’m not talking about wet in the pits or wet in the brow. I’m talking scalp wet, sheet wet, and at that hour, an hour already lost in a new year—shivering wet. I’m so cold my temples hurt but before I can really focus on the question of temperature I realize I’ve remembered my first dream.

Only later after I find some candles, stomp around my room, splash water on the old face, micturate, light a sterno can and put the kettle on, only then can I respond to my cold head and my general physical misery, which I do, relishing every bit of it in fact. Anything is better than that unexpected and awful dream, made all the more unsettling because now for some reason I can recall it. Nor do I have an inkling why. I cannot imagine what has changed in my life to bring this thing to the surface.

My guns sure as hell were useless, instantly confiscated at sleep’s border, even if I did manage to pick up the Weatherby before my credit ran out.

An hour passes. I’m blinking in the light, boiling more water for more coffee, ramming my head into another wool hat, sneezing again though all I can see is the fucking dream, torn straight out of the old raphé nuclei care of the very brainstem I thought had been soundly severed.

This is how it starts:

I’m deep in the hull of some enormous vessel, wandering its narrow passages of black steel and rust. Something tells me I’ve been here a long time, endlessly descending into dead ends, turning around to find other ways which in the end lead only to still more ends. This, however, does not bother me. Memories seem to suggest I’ve at one point lingered in the engine room, the container holds, scrambled up a ladder to find myself alone in a deserted kitchen, the only place still shimmering in the mirror magic of stainless steel. But those visits took place many years ago, and even though I could go back there at any time, I choose instead to wander these cramped routes which in spite of their ability to lose me still retain in every turn an almost indiscreet sense of familiarity. It’s as if I know the way perfectly but I walk them to forget.

And then something changes. Suddenly I sense for the first time ever, the presence of another. I quicken my pace, npt quite running but close. I am either glad, startled or terrified, but before I can figure out which I complete two quick turns and there he is, this drunken frat boy wearing a plum-colored Topha Beta sweatshirt, carrying the lid of a garbage can in his right hand and a large fireman’s ax in his left. I’m scared alright but I’m also confused. “Excuse me, mind explaining why you’re coming after me?” which I actually try to say except the words don’t come out right. More like grunts and clouds, big clouds of steam.

That’s when I notice my hands. They look melted, as if they were made of plastic and had been dipped in boiling oil, only they’re not plastic, they’re the thin effects of skin which have in fact been dipped in boiling oil. I know this and I even know tje story. I’m just unable to resurrect it there in my dream. Stiff hair sprouts up all over the fingers and around the long, yellow fingernails. Even worse, this awful scarring doesn’t end at my wrists, but continues down my arms, making the scars I know I have when I’m not dreaming seem childish in comparison. These ones reach over my shoulders, down my back, extend even across my chest, where I know ribs still protrude like violet bows.

When I touch my face, I can instantly tell there’s something wrong there too. I feel plenty of hair covering strange lumps of flesh on m chin, my nose and along the ridge of my cheeks. On my forehead there’s an enormous bulge harder than stone. And even though I have no idea how I got to be so deformed, I do know. And this knowledge comes suddenly. I’m here because I am deformed, because when I speak my words come out in cracks and groans, and what’s more Ive been put here by an old man, a dead man, by one who called me son even though he was not my father.

Which is when this frat boy, swaying back and forth before me like an idiot, raises his ax even higher above his head. His plan I see is not too complicated: he intends to drive that heavy blade into my skull, across the bridge of my nose, cleave the roof of my mouth, thr core of my brain, split apart the very vertebrae in my neck, and he won’t stop there either. He’ll hack my hands from my wrists, my thighs from my knees, pry out my sternum into tiny fragments. He’ll do the same to my toes and my fingers and he’ll even pop my eyes with the butt of the handle and then with the heal of the blade attempt to crush my teeth, despite the fact that they’re long, serrated and unusually strong. At least in this effort, he will fail; give up finally; collect a few. Where my internal organs are concerned, these too he’ll treat with the same respect, hewing, smashing adn slicing until he’s too tired and covered with blood to finish, even though of course he really finished awhile ago, and then he’ll slouch exhausted, panting like some stupid dog, drunk on his beer, this killing, this victory, while I lie strewn about that bleak place, der absolute Zerrissenheit. I’m awful at German, I don’t know why I bother even putting it here. Anyway back to the dream, me chopped up into tiny pieces, spread and splattered in the bowels of that ship, and all at the hands of a drunken frat boy who upon beholding his heroic deed pukes all over what’s left of me. Except before he achieves any of this, I realize that now, for some reason, for the first time, I have a choice: I don’t have to die, I can kill him instead. Not only are my teeth and nails long, sharp and stromg, I too am strong, remarkably strong and remarkably fast. I can rip that fucking ax out of his hands before he even swings it once, shatter it with one jerk of my wrist, and then I can watch the terror deep into his eyes as I grab him by the throat, carve out his insides and tear him to pieces.

But as I take a step forward, everything changes. The frat boy I realize is not the frat boy anymore but someone else. At first I think it’s my first crush Kyrie, until I realize it’s not Kyrie but Ashley, which is when I realize it’s neither Kyrie or Ashley but Simone, though something tells me that even that’s not exactly right. Either way, her face glows with adoration and warmth and her eyes communicate in a blink an understanding of all the gestures I’ve ever made, all the thoughts I’ve ever had. So extroardinary is this gaze, in fact, that I suddenly realize I’m unable to move. I just stand there, every sinew and nerve easing me into a world of relief, my breath slowing, arms dangling at my sides, my jaw slack, legs melting me into ancient waters, until suddenly my eyes on their own accord, commanded by instincts darker and older than empathy or anything resembling emotional need, dart from her beautiful and strangely familiar face to the ax she still holds, the ax she is now lifting, the smile she is still making even as she starts to shake, suddenly swinging the axe down on me, at my head, though she will miss my head, barely, the ax floating down instead toward my sholder, finally cutting into the bone and lodging there, producing shrieks of blood, so much blood, and pain, so much pain, and instantly I understand Im dying, though I’m not dead yet, even if I am beyond repair, and she has started to cry, even as she dislodges the ax and raises it again, to swing again, again at my head, though she is crying hardwr and she is much weaker than I thought, and she needs more time than I thought, to get ready, to swing again, while I’m bleeding and dying, which now doesn’t compare to the feeling inside, also so familiar, as the atriums of my heart on their own accord suddenly rupture, like my father’s ruptured. So this, I suddenly muse in a peculiarly detatched way, was this how he felt?

I’ve made a terrible mistake, but it’s too late and I’m now full of fury & hate to do anything but look up as the blade slices down with appalling force, this time the right arc, not too far left, not too far right, but right center, descending forever it seems, though it’s not forever, not even close, and I realize with a shade of citric joy, that at least, at last, it will put an end to the far more terrible ache inside me, born decades ago, long before I finally beheld a dream the face and meaning of my horror.

And then, well, I woke up. 3:19 AM, sweaty and cold, yadda yadda yadda. I still think about that night sometimes, housing one of the few dreams I can actually recall with any sense of clarity, though I wish it had been something more pleasant. Though I guess we all wish for that kind of thing, eh?

Ok I'm just gonna say this took so long to read..

I won't spoil this post, its lkke a whole horror movie. No spoilers or a summary, read it yourself guys! HAHA! Pure evil.

[spines-tvo]

Saw that one anon about a creepy dream a little while ago, and wanted to pitch in with a little retelling of my own, prologued by how the morning afterward went. Sorry if any of it sounds a little off—I’m not exactly an author, but I’ll do my best.

3:19 AM I woke up, slick with sweat. And I’m not talking about wet in the pits or wet in the brow. I’m talking scalp wet, sheet wet, and at that hour, an hour already lost in a new year—shivering wet. I’m so cold my temples hurt but before I can really focus on the question of temperature I realize I’ve remembered my first dream.

Only later after I find some candles, stomp around my room, splash water on the old face, micturate, light a sterno can and put the kettle on, only then can I respond to my cold head and my general physical misery, which I do, relishing every bit of it in fact. Anything is better than that unexpected and awful dream, made all the more unsettling because now for some reason I can recall it. Nor do I have an inkling why. I cannot imagine what has changed in my life to bring this thing to the surface.

My guns sure as hell were useless, instantly confiscated at sleep’s border, even if I did manage to pick up the Weatherby before my credit ran out.

An hour passes. I’m blinking in the light, boiling more water for more coffee, ramming my head into another wool hat, sneezing again though all I can see is the fucking dream, torn straight out of the old raphé nuclei care of the very brainstem I thought had been soundly severed.

This is how it starts:

I’m deep in the hull of some enormous vessel, wandering its narrow passages of black steel and rust. Something tells me I’ve been here a long time, endlessly descending into dead ends, turning around to find other ways which in the end lead only to still more ends. This, however, does not bother me. Memories seem to suggest I’ve at one point lingered in the engine room, the container holds, scrambled up a ladder to find myself alone in a deserted kitchen, the only place still shimmering in the mirror magic of stainless steel. But those visits took place many years ago, and even though I could go back there at any time, I choose instead to wander these cramped routes which in spite of their ability to lose me still retain in every turn an almost indiscreet sense of familiarity. It’s as if I know the way perfectly but I walk them to forget.

And then something changes. Suddenly I sense for the first time ever, the presence of another. I quicken my pace, npt quite running but close. I am either glad, startled or terrified, but before I can figure out which I complete two quick turns and there he is, this drunken frat boy wearing a plum-colored Topha Beta sweatshirt, carrying the lid of a garbage can in his right hand and a large fireman’s ax in his left. I’m scared alright but I’m also confused. “Excuse me, mind explaining why you’re coming after me?” which I actually try to say except the words don’t come out right. More like grunts and clouds, big clouds of steam.

That’s when I notice my hands. They look melted, as if they were made of plastic and had been dipped in boiling oil, only they’re not plastic, they’re the thin effects of skin which have in fact been dipped in boiling oil. I know this and I even know tje story. I’m just unable to resurrect it there in my dream. Stiff hair sprouts up all over the fingers and around the long, yellow fingernails. Even worse, this awful scarring doesn’t end at my wrists, but continues down my arms, making the scars I know I have when I’m not dreaming seem childish in comparison. These ones reach over my shoulders, down my back, extend even across my chest, where I know ribs still protrude like violet bows.

When I touch my face, I can instantly tell there’s something wrong there too. I feel plenty of hair covering strange lumps of flesh on m chin, my nose and along the ridge of my cheeks. On my forehead there’s an enormous bulge harder than stone. And even though I have no idea how I got to be so deformed, I do know. And this knowledge comes suddenly. I’m here because I am deformed, because when I speak my words come out in cracks and groans, and what’s more Ive been put here by an old man, a dead man, by one who called me son even though he was not my father.

Which is when this frat boy, swaying back and forth before me like an idiot, raises his ax even higher above his head. His plan I see is not too complicated: he intends to drive that heavy blade into my skull, across the bridge of my nose, cleave the roof of my mouth, thr core of my brain, split apart the very vertebrae in my neck, and he won’t stop there either. He’ll hack my hands from my wrists, my thighs from my knees, pry out my sternum into tiny fragments. He’ll do the same to my toes and my fingers and he’ll even pop my eyes with the butt of the handle and then with the heal of the blade attempt to crush my teeth, despite the fact that they’re long, serrated and unusually strong. At least in this effort, he will fail; give up finally; collect a few. Where my internal organs are concerned, these too he’ll treat with the same respect, hewing, smashing adn slicing until he’s too tired and covered with blood to finish, even though of course he really finished awhile ago, and then he’ll slouch exhausted, panting like some stupid dog, drunk on his beer, this killing, this victory, while I lie strewn about that bleak place, der absolute Zerrissenheit. I’m awful at German, I don’t know why I bother even putting it here. Anyway back to the dream, me chopped up into tiny pieces, spread and splattered in the bowels of that ship, and all at the hands of a drunken frat boy who upon beholding his heroic deed pukes all over what’s left of me. Except before he achieves any of this, I realize that now, for some reason, for the first time, I have a choice: I don’t have to die, I can kill him instead. Not only are my teeth and nails long, sharp and stromg, I too am strong, remarkably strong and remarkably fast. I can rip that fucking ax out of his hands before he even swings it once, shatter it with one jerk of my wrist, and then I can watch the terror deep into his eyes as I grab him by the throat, carve out his insides and tear him to pieces.

But as I take a step forward, everything changes. The frat boy I realize is not the frat boy anymore but someone else. At first I think it’s my first crush Kyrie, until I realize it’s not Kyrie but Ashley, which is when I realize it’s neither Kyrie or Ashley but Simone, though something tells me that even that’s not exactly right. Either way, her face glows with adoration and warmth and her eyes communicate in a blink an understanding of all the gestures I’ve ever made, all the thoughts I’ve ever had. So extroardinary is this gaze, in fact, that I suddenly realize I’m unable to move. I just stand there, every sinew and nerve easing me into a world of relief, my breath slowing, arms dangling at my sides, my jaw slack, legs melting me into ancient waters, until suddenly my eyes on their own accord, commanded by instincts darker and older than empathy or anything resembling emotional need, dart from her beautiful and strangely familiar face to the ax she still holds, the ax she is now lifting, the smile she is still making even as she starts to shake, suddenly swinging the axe down on me, at my head, though she will miss my head, barely, the ax floating down instead toward my sholder, finally cutting into the bone and lodging there, producing shrieks of blood, so much blood, and pain, so much pain, and instantly I understand Im dying, though I’m not dead yet, even if I am beyond repair, and she has started to cry, even as she dislodges the ax and raises it again, to swing again, again at my head, though she is crying hardwr and she is much weaker than I thought, and she needs more time than I thought, to get ready, to swing again, while I’m bleeding and dying, which now doesn’t compare to the feeling inside, also so familiar, as the atriums of my heart on their own accord suddenly rupture, like my father’s ruptured. So this, I suddenly muse in a peculiarly detatched way, was this how he felt?

I’ve made a terrible mistake, but it’s too late and I’m now full of fury & hate to do anything but look up as the blade slices down with appalling force, this time the right arc, not too far left, not too far right, but right center, descending forever it seems, though it’s not forever, not even close, and I realize with a shade of citric joy, that at least, at last, it will put an end to the far more terrible ache inside me, born decades ago, long before I finally beheld a dream the face and meaning of my horror.

And then, well, I woke up. 3:19 AM, sweaty and cold, yadda yadda yadda. I still think about that night sometimes, housing one of the few dreams I can actually recall with any sense of clarity, though I wish it had been something more pleasant. Though I guess we all wish for that kind of thing, eh?

*_* You said you WEREN'T an author? Geez, that makes my worst dreams sound like a slightly annoying breeze... Uh... I'd need, like, a month to unpack all this. Are you alright?

[offbeatcappuccino]

all the things I hate about you ~ our beloved summer episode 3 recap+ analysis

If I had to choose a favorite episode of Our Beloved Summer, I would say it's a tie between Episode 3 and Episode 6. One of the biggest challenges with the screenplay is trying to seamlessly interweave the past and present to create an engaging narrative. The creators of Our Beloved Summer do this effortlessly in conjunction with character narration. In this episode, the narration allows us to examine Choi Ung's perspective of Kook Yeon Soo.

The episode starts off with Choi Ung narrating everything he hates about Yeon Soo.

She's too selfish, he says and we witness Yeon Soo refusing to share her notes with a fellow classmate. Instead, she rips apart her notes.

She's too competitive, Choi Ung complains and we see a college-aged Ung and Yeon Soo at a bar, where he lets her know that she can drink as much as she wants because he'll take her home. The comment irks Yeon Soo and sparks her competitive spirit. Ung is forced to partake in an intense soju shot battle with Yeon Soo that leaves him intoxicated and nauseous.

She's too aggressive. Ung is trying to de-escalate a fight that Yeon Soo appears to be picking with senior college students

She always prioritizes her work over me. A college-aged Ung asks Yeon Soo to come with him to see the last day of cherry blossoms. Yeon Soo swiftly refuses to take a day off from her part-time job at the library.

As this montage ends, Choi Ung's classmate remarks to Ung that his girlfriend has a terrible personality and Ung swiftly comes to her defense. This is when Ung narrates perhaps his least favorite thing about Yeon Soo, which is that he's the only person who has seen a side to Yeon Soo that no one else has seen. Then, there are these beautiful moments of tenderness that follow.

Yeon Soo tapes her notes back up for Ung to study for the quiz.

Yeon Soo carries Ung on her back when he's too intoxicated to walk back home.

Yeon Soo shares a laugh with him and his mother as they clean bean sprouts together

Yeon Soo stands up to Choi Ung's bullies and threatens them when they try to haze Ung

Yeon Soo makes up for not being able to see the cherry blossoms with Ung. She gathers the fallen petals by hand and showers them on Ung while he waits for her outside of the convenience store.

For a boy who voluntarily closed himself off from the miseries of reality and chose to instead live in a constructed world of afternoon naps and sunny daydreams, Yeon Soo showed him that reality could be beautiful. She brought an unquantifiable amount of joy and light into Ung's life. The five years that Ung spent with Yeon Soo were his happiest. When Yeon Soo unexpectedly breaks up with Ung, he's left mourning all the special and unique memories he's had with her. He knows aside from Yeon Soo that is non-existent for others, which is why he can't simply brush her off by saying he deserves better. For Ung, Yeon Soo was flawed yet perfect. Cold yet warm. Stubborn yet yielding. Selfish yet generous. Apathetic yet compassionate. Ung's first love was a beautiful enigma of haphazardly tangled contradictions.

Ung's response to the breakup is like a helicopter crashing into a multiple vehicle car collision on the I-10 with a growing wildfire razing the California palm trees in the background. Ung becomes unhinged as he sets off on a mission to do everything possible to spite Yeon Soo. He starts to get obnoxiously drunk because Yeon Soo hates drunk people. He splurges on convenience food snacks because Yeon Soo hates people who waste money. His friends try to pull his life back together by signing him up for spin classes and encouraging him to work part-time jobs and study the stock market, Ung's depression and heartbreak, cumulate in him locking himself up in his room for days. His parents and friends are frantically worried and just when they're ready to break open the door, they find Ung's soulless eyes overlooking a multitude of drawings- Ung has been spending his self-imposed exclusion doing nothing but drawing constantly.

A recurring motif throughout the show is Ung's hyper-focused state of productivity. With most other shows, such as Run On, where Mi Joo pulls all-nighters to translate English films, we see passion and joy. The scenery is bright and we see Mi Joo at her most content. On the other hand, in Our Beloved Summer, Ung works in his basement with mellow music playing in the background. He's buried in his work and we see passion, but there are hints of melancholy. Ung isolates himself from the rest of the world as his way of expressing his discontent with reality. As an audience, we are proud of him, but there's an understated and palpable pain present in Ung's art. It's disheartening to see a boy, who wanted nothing more than a restful peaceful life battling chronic insomnia. Ung has always valued the simple things in life. Even his name, "Ung" (monosyllabic) is uncomplicated in comparison to most Korean first names, which are bisyllabic ( e.g. Yeon Soo, Ji Woong, Sol Yi). Yet, his art is painstakingly and paradoxically intricate Baroque-esque drawings of lofty buildings. Ung has the classic underdog story, but his professional success does little to conceal the fact that his life has strayed far from his humble ambitions.

Considering his complicated past with Yeon Soo, Choi Ung is quick to decline Ji Woong's request to reshoot the documentary with Yeon Soo. As he starts to encounter Yeon Soo more frequently throughout his everyday life, he's left frustrated and annoyed that Yeon Soo doesn't seem to be affected at all by their breakup. Choi Ung is petty and he realizes that making Yeon Soo participate in the documentary, is an excellent opportunity for him to relish Yeon Soo's misery, even though he will be equally as miserable. Knowing that Yeon Soo is desperate to sign him as an artist for her company partner's event, Ung takes advantage of the situation, setting into motion the reshooting of the very documentary that brought them together nearly a decade ago.

It's easy to dismiss Ung as the immature goofy high school boyfriend with anxious attachment issues. However, through his portrayal, Choi Woo Shik paints hues to the multidimensional character of Choi Ung. Woo Shik excels in acting cute and innocent when necessary ( remember Hogu's Love), but he's shown time and time again that he's one of Korea's finest actors. No wonder that he has won accolades for his acting in some of Korea's most beloved works- Train to Busan, Parasite, The Witcher Part I- Subversion, and an unforgettable cameo in Okja. The lingering subtle sadness and frustration of Ung are expressed beautifully through Woo Shik's expressive eyes. Dialogues that matter are given the attention they deserve. Each syllable feels like an arrow piercing the center of a dartboard. There are so many moments in this show, where Ung pushes us to be more than an indifferent spectators. We start to see ourselves and our lives collide with the lives of Kook Yeon Soo and Choi Ung.

[laurore-stormwitch]

Post rule of wolves, about Zoya and Nikolai being soft with each other in one of the many moment of hardship they face. Zoya gets a letter that unsettles her and leans on Nikolai to face more of her demons and move on. I love how Zoya is slowly learning to open up and face her wounds, and how Nikolai is there to catch her. Feedback are always appreciated, so much love to you all 

the blood in our veins - ao3

When the sound of leaves crunching under someone’s steps reached her, Zoya did not startle. She knew Nikolai would appear at some point, as he always did, as if he could sense her despair. Or as if someone played the snitch on my escape, more likely. He was the only one to have the key, beside her, and the only one to know she would take refuge here. For a moment, she lingered on what a strange sight she was making; a steel spined harpy perched amongst the wildflowers, her kefta smeared by dirt and pollen, her eyes trained on the ground and a sprout in her hands. She felt his intense gaze on her, his worry. The scent of his skin; Nikolai always tasted like salt and sunburnt skin, like the sea. 

“Who ratted me out?”, she asked. He lowered himself toward her, brushing a kiss on her head before kneeling beside her on the ground. 

“Tamar”, he answered, “told me you got a letter and dismissed the meeting.” More like run away from it. She would have to thank Tamar for her regard. 

Zoya clicked her tongue. A letter. Her hand went in her pocket and pulled out a folded piece of paper, handing it to Nikolai. She sensed his concern turn into outrage. Zoya knew it was a matter of time before Sabina reached out to her. After all, her daughter had just become the queen of Ravka. There was no hope left in her heart that her estranged mother would not try to exploit this particular advantage. As long as she was not dead, she supposed. Which, as far as she knew of, could very well be. As it turned out Sabina was not the one Zoya should have been wondering about.

“It’s a long list of arrogant pleading. Get to the end”, she instructed Nikolai. Zoya glanced at him and saw him shook his head with a sigh when he came to the last lines. 

“Zoya – “, he tried, his tone insecure, weary of what was the right thing to say. Was there a right thing to say when you lost a father you had already wiped from your mind? The word lost probably was not even fit for the situation. 

“He’s been dead a couple of years, apparently. She did not even bother to say how.”

There was no grief left inside her to tug at. No sentiment to pull and mourn over. Nothing left for them, for him. There was just a void lurking next to the well inside her, in which so many stones had tumbled. It was not endless anymore; it stopped right beside her, where Nikolai’s light flooded in through the cracks in her walls. Zoya tried to look for something to hold on to, something to guide her over this empty sea of nothingness. No love, no regret, no pain. The sorrow in the well had always been for Lilyiana, for Lada. For David, for the Grisha, maybe even for herself. A monument to her solitude. None of it was dedicated to the two young people who had given her breath. Yet she felt the void, like it had form and claws that pierced at her heart. Its fingers tied around her throat, squeezed the air out of her lungs. 

“I thought maybe I should plant something for him, too. I – I don’t know.” 

She murmured. Her voice came out more frail than she had desired to, more vulnerable. Nikolai moved closer, his shoulder brushing on hers. She grasped at that touch that anchored her on this moment, that prevented her from losing herself. 

“I don’t know what the Suli ritual is.” The defeat in her tone sparked a flicker of injustice. It was supposed to have been over; the child that did not look back on a wretched church was supposed to have grown. Such restless waters she had had to navigate. How does one separate hatred from fear, love from abandonment, rage from regret? 

“We could find out.”

“There’s no time. There’s no time anymore.” To know him. To understand. To take the child in her hand and protect her in an embrace. Faintly, in the distance, Zoya felt Nikolai’s hand on her back, his lips landing again on her cheek. 

“Why did you choose this?”, he asked, bobbing his chin at the sprout she was holding, at his light blue blossoms.

“I’m not sure”, she sighed. “When I was very little, there was always a glass of forget-me-nots on the kitchen table. My father used to bring them from the fields at sundown. He stopped before my sixth birthday.”

Zoya never knew what they meant. Her mother told her they were the colour of their eyes, weaving them in her hair. She had felt like a princess in a fairytale, with a crown of blossoms.

“Inej told me the Suli have a saying about love. Her father says that you would know a boy truly loves you when he brings you your favourite flowers. I figured that is why our house was full of them, at first. Maybe these are for both of them. Maybe I should bury my mother too.”

What a sombre, depressing thought, she half expected Nikolai to say. Instead, he just reached for her, tucking a strand of her hair behind her ear, watching her in silence. So she forced another sentence out, one that stung to admit. “I thought I did that already the moment I set foot in the Little Palace. I thought they could float away like a river in the sea, instead I just built a dam that feels dangerously close to shatter.”

The quiet stretched on. “I don’t know what they are”, Nikolai admitted. “Your favourite flowers. I don’t know them.”

She moved her gaze to him and wondered what he was seeing. If he had already grown tired of her, of her dark moods and brooding tendencies. Those fears clutched her heart on her worst nights. Was he catching the sheer sentiment in her eyes, the fire that burned for him inside her? How she grasped at his voice like it was the thread that tied her to safety, to belonging? Whatever her failings were, Nikolai’s look never wavered. His certainty, affection. He was the one keeping the dam from falling, keeping her from breaking. 

“You told me once I could be branches without blossoms and wait for the summer to come. The way you love…it’s not the fleeting beauty of petals. It’s the strength of roots.”

She spoke before having the chance to think about her words, not sure what she had wanted to convey, pressed by an unfamiliar urge to let him know. Saints, Nikolai was rubbing off on her. His eyes sparkled and he looked taken aback, a fond and surprised smile tugging at his lips. Zoya let his warmth creep into her, before moving back to look at the flowers still resting in her hands. 

“I don’t have a favourite one. I like them all.” 

Nikolai nodded, his fingers lingering in her hair, brushing through them. “Good to know. See? You are not such a difficult person after all.” Zoya heard him move beside her, sensed his fingers draw away. He gently pulled the plant in front of her. “Let me do it for you”, his voice soft, caring. Let me carry this weight for you. Her hands dug into her kefta, clinging into it as if it could make her remember who she was.

Nikolai pulled his gloves away.  She snatched them from him, huffing impatiently. It really was an unnerving habit of his. “Would you stop with these? You do not need them around me. Or anyone, for that matter.”

“Don’t take it out on my gloves”, he grinned at her. Yet, she caught the shadow sweeping through his eyes; the darkness Zoya had never wanted him to hide. He worked in silence, moving the terrain away, placing the sprouts and watering them. Zoya stood still, one hand clung to her kefta, the other tightened around his gloves, watching him as he took care of her garden for her. 

“My mother was loud”, she said abruptly. Water leaking from the cracks. Nikolai’s gaze swept toward her as he kept going. There was no other person she could tell this to. Stories needed to be told, She had learned. “Sabina kicked and screamed her way into our misery. She shouted her wrath; she broke the ceramics on the floors, spewing spite. She weaved sweet lies that stuck like sap into my ears, before wiping my tears as I stood in a ridiculous ruffled dress.” Zoya sighed, seeing her memories flash in her mind. She did not want to feel this. She did not want to know. But Juris’ wisdom was unforgiving. “Her frustration, her selfishness. Everything was like thunder. Maybe that’s where I take it from.” A dry laugh escaped her lips, as she forced herself to say what she knew had been the truth this whole time. “My mother was loud. Yet, it was my father’s silence that broke me. That was what carved the hole inside of me. The way he let everything happen, his head slumped on his shoulders, his mouth shut. The emptiness of his affection. It gave me the guilt of not being enough, of not being worthy.”

Zoya kept going, averting Nikolai’s eyes. “Yelling is easy to counter. It enrages you, fires you up, picks at your pride. Silence is different; it cuts you slowly, drains your blood drop by drop, renders you powerless. How do you fight a wall made of nothing?”

His gentle touch moved to her jaw, tracing the lines of her face, grounding her to earth. 

“I feel it. I can see it.” Every word she got out seemed to force a split into the void. Warmth flood in, rage went out, passing through her like a blade. The dragon's eyes had opened, whether she had wanted it or not. She felt like drowning. “How unprepared they were. How powerless. The hatred that grew around their souls like thorn wood. It’s the same they have set upon me. I do not want that. I do not want this to be their legacy for me.”

Legacy. What was hers, in this life, and what was theirs? Zoya had Sabina’s eyes, Suhm’s wavy black hair. It gave her comfort to think her pride and her strength came from Lilyiana. Her wind and lightning was born from the making at the heart of the world. What, then? What had they been like, when they were just a boy and a girl in love, dancing under the moonlight? She had shrugged her name as if she could be born anew. Tossed the memories of them as if she could build a new life. That she supposed she had done, at least. Even with this new name, this new life, something of them still remained. The poisoned blood in her veins if nothing else. She could not cut them open and change it, and she had spent her life feeling it flow like a curse through her. 

“I cannot go on hating them.” The words were spoken as a shameful confession, as a defeat. As a realization too, however. Nikolai laced their fingers together, making her relent the hold on the kefta.

“Perhaps we should not hate them”, he said, careful and gentle. “Maybe the secret is that we need not pass judgment over them. Maybe the secret is to forgive them.” 

Zoya shook her head at Nikolai’s relentless goodwill and optimism. He had forgiven his mother that day in Os Kervo. He had forgiven the one who was not his father, he had delivered his punishment and moved on. And Zoya? She did not have any forgiveness left in her. The hatred, though. Whatever remained of it, she guessed she could try and leave it here, with the blue blossoms thriving from the earth like forgotten hope. 

Their legacy might have been just thorns, storms, and thunders. It might have been just the spite that had threatened to rot her insides. Still, it was an inheritance she could find the strength to relent. She could keep their eyes, their blood, Sabina combing her hair and Suhm telling her a goodnight story in his arms, even if she did not miss it, even if she did not remember what that felt like. Zoya was not Nikolai, she was not golden nor kind. She could not justify their weakness; she could not pardon both the screams and the silence. Maybe you could let go, though. She wasn’t sure if it was Juris’ voice or her own to cut through the mist of thoughts. Zoya bleeding in the snow. Zoya crying on her own. Let go.

The dam had broken, but the dragon queen did not drown. Hours could have passed, or minutes. Nikolai had put his jacket on her shoulders, the fabric thick and warm. He had not spoken anymore, just sat with her in the quiet as the sun disappeared. At some point, when the chill had started creeping in her bones, he had tugged her up and walked her to her chambers, dismissing the Heartrender twins who stood guard on her door with a wave of his hand. Zoya had let him handle her, leaning in his touch. Only when the lock clicked, she had let herself release her breath, slumping in her favourite velvet sofa. The crackle of the fire was comforting. Nikolai had called for tea, murmured something in her ear she did not remember. He had sat on her desk next to her, working through some documents while she got back to herself. The familiar rhythm of their quiet caught on, enveloping the room, soothing as a cold cloth on an open wound.

Time did not matter anymore. Zoya had the cup in her hands, the fire in front of her, and Nikolai’s jacket still curled around her. His scent was tight on the fabric. It lulled her into a silent calm, along with the rhythmic pounding of her heart, the sound of Nikolai’s pen scraping the paper, of his hands scribbling, the muffled huff of his breath. Peace washed over her in a tide. 

“What is it like?” 

Zoya suddenly spoke, after what felt like an eternity. The tea had turned cold. She kept her look trained on the fire. Nikolai stilled, relenting whatever piece of work he was doing, arching a brow at her. The question was vague, at the very best. “Not being an only child”, she added. Now his attention peaked on her. 

He shuffled back the papers on her desk, got up and came to her. Moving her feet away, he eased himself on her sofa, letting Zoya stretch her legs over him, resting his hands on her calves and leaning his head on a cushion. His careful look never left her face, turned thoughtful as her question travelled his mind. 

“I adored my brother”, Nikolai started, slowly, “Worshipped him. Loved him with every fibre of my being. Until I did not anymore. We were not bound, or tight, and well – we all know how that turned out. It was an embarrassment and a weight, more than an anchor like I desired him to be. And I did desire that a lot.”

Zoya looked at him. She left the cup on the nightstand; as soon as her hands were free, Nikolai snatched one of them in his. “And Linnea?”, she asked. An affectionate smile curled his lips. 

“Linnea is…different. I feel the kinship – and not just because we both have a soft heart for ships. I know she is me, for some part, and I am her. She’s more grounded than me, more quiet, more practical.” He brushed a thumb over her palm, tightening the hold. “I guess that’s why she likes you. I am quite scared at how much you two get along, frankly. And she has this creative, restless energy, she is charming in her own silent way, brilliant. Sometimes it’s like I’m looking inside some sort of distorted mirror. In some life I may have had if I took a different path.” 

Yet, the choices they had been forced to make forged a solitary childhood for them. A lonely boy looking for sounds to fill his deafening silence, a vengeful girl screaming her rage over lost love. Had they been choices at all? When had they stopped being their parents’ sins, and had they become their own? How long can you blame a mother’s failings, how long can a daughter or a son be defined by rage and guilt? Zoya could see the same query behind Nikolai’s eyes. He spoke again, tentative, a vulnerable edge to his voice. The lonely boy, looking for hope in the vengeful girl. 

“I want her to know me. I want her to care for me, to be honest. I feel protective of her. I feel like I cannot wait to show her every wonder I know of. The wonder of life, of adventure. The wonder of romance”, he managed to wink at her, “I wish to be for her the brother Vasily never was for me. To make up for lost time. This is idiotic, right?” 

He huffed at the end, as if he could dismiss the intense desire for a family that still haunted him; there was a slight plea in his look, darkened under the dim light of the fire. Zoya felt an ache in her throat, and she knew there were tears in her eyes. She could feel them clouding her sight. They belonged to the little raven-haired child that silently cried alone in a corner, in all her nightmares. It was not a cry for grief, but one of deluded wanting. She leaned in, brushing some golden strands from Nikolai’s face. He was looking at her like she was his light in the storm, even though he had just been the one to pull her back from a devouring pain. 

“We should have her here more often”, she said. Nikolai wiped one of her tears away. “We should have them here more often. Linnea and your father. You deserve to have this family, Nikolai.” 

Nikolai stopped his hand on her neck, grinning wider at her. 

“Zoya, I already have one.” She frowned at him.

“I hardly count as a family. I am just me.”

“Then I’ll have two. So long as you stop referring to yourself as just you.” Zoya rolled her eyes, feigning annoyance. He started fidgeting with a loose silver bead on her kefta’s cuff. Another unnerving habit of his, the way he always snatched those away. “Why do you ask?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “Sometimes I wonder what it would have been like if I wasn’t an only child. I would have had someone to shield and someone to shelter in. To give me purpose, I suppose.”

A little brother, a little sister whom she could watch grow up and think how much better than her they were, how much softer, how much worth preserving. Though it had not been like that, for Sabina and Lilyiana. It was best not to linger on what ifs. She huffed and shifted, suddenly nervous; time to face this problem head on. “You think I should help her, right?”, she asked, knowing damn well what the answer was. Needless to say, Sabina’s letter pleaded for Zoya’s support, lamenting her misfortunes, and praising her daughter’s victories. Especially the gifts she could share. Even if she had not stated it, Zoya was sure that a jewel or two would be just fine. Greedy and hollow like she remembered. 

“I think you should do what makes you comfortable.” Zoya shot him a threatening glare, and he chuckled. “Fine”, Nikolai added, “but don’t kill me. I think you’ll keep the weight on your chest as long as you do not help her. I think maybe it would bring you some peace to do it. Still, I support whatever decision you make.” He marked the last words, and she knew he meant it. 

“I don’t want to be the bearer of my mother’s misery.” Zoya despised herself a little while admitting it. An exasperated grunt erupted from her as she threw her hands in the air. “How can I feel responsible for her?”

“I guess that’s the curse of being a daughter. You can’t relent the blood in your veins, not anymore that you can ignore the good heart that thrived inside you behind all of your spite.”

Maybe the secret is that we need not pass judgment over them. Maybe the secret is to forgive them.

How she loathed when Nikolai was right. It made him insufferable. And unfortunately, he was right most of the time. Unbearably reasonable. He smirked, as if he could read her thoughts and sense his victory.

Zoya might have been an angry and unloved little thing, but that was not what she was anymore. She had been a soldier, a general, a loyal friend. She was a queen now. And most certainly not alone, she thought, gazing at the confident ball of sunshine seated next to her. Had this happened before the war, before knowing Nikolai, her crueler and colder heart would have prevailed and she wouldn’t have thought twice on this, burning the letter along with her sentiment. The beaming boy had definitely rubbed off on her.

“I can not forgive her, or them. I do not have it in me. And I cannot forget, not for now”, she said, cautious. That was what Lilyiana had always desired for her: to release the hold on her anger. For her, she could try. “But I can start by letting go. We can find her work in a factory, with a salary and some retirement money. I can provide her with a dignified life. That is all I can do. I will not get a letter from her anymore; I will not grant her audience or listen to her words. Someone will have to deal with this.” 

Juris roared inside her, clearly displeased. Hush, you lizard. How irritating of him. Be a dragon, bide your time and stop harassing me. Enough progress for today. Nikolai, on the contrary, smiled at her with relief, nudging her closer. 

“We will arrange it.” He let her rest her head in the crook of his neck, curling his arms around her. “Do you think you can close your eyes and rest for a while now?”. His voice was already coming from afar, as she inhaled deeply in his skin and her lashes fluttered closed with exhaustion. Zoya wished her days as queen would become less tiring, and she also wished they could always end in Nikolai’s safe hold. Her mind fell silent; the last thing she heard was his whisper hovering around her. “I got you, Zoya.”

Zoya could still be a daughter, could take the raven-haired child in her arms. Daughter of the wind. She could still be whole, worthy, and loved. We see you. She could be at peace. The world went black; yet, it was not dark.

[sasorikigai]

“  i’m here. and i’m not going anywhere.  ” (( marzena to hanzo uvu ))

comfort starters || @drecmcrcfters || accepting

▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 ||  Everything reduces into a thickened fog, as a firestorm brews in the sky and in his mind. Scorpion’s heart thumping in tandem with the rhythmic reverberation of his bleeding heart below, as the charcoal depth, hidden effectively beneath the scalded iridescent white of his eternally glazed two moons, as torn-up viscera spills like rapidly descending wax, as his pallid, transparent visage struggles to focus upward as excruciating, yet familiarly exquisite pain wracks through every inch of his body. The sanguine-coated wakizashi lays near his peripheral, with all the amounted bitterness and spite resulting in the failure of having not being able to save the massacred Shirai Ryu.

The spring’s splendor, how it had awakened Scorpion’s spirits so calmly modestly kissing life back into each blackened stem of his veins and bud of the long-wilted flora petals, whispering the sweetest of nothings to the flowers and encouraging all to great the day once more, only condemned to remain as memories. How the stretched life’s optimism fluttered between branches and penetrating through the spectral nothingness of his corporeality, rousing all the hopes and aspirations that drifted off like winter’s glacier wind to wake to the baptism’s alluring presence, rejuvenated from the cold times of motionless dormancy for his passion and eagerness to thrive. 

The demon’s explosive wrath did leave him sinking and screaming; probing his heart, their searing flames of destruction threatening to excavate all that he has held dear, erasing his envisioned happy place on the desecrated grounds of the Old Shirai Ryu. All he could do is to delve into the deepest layer of his core, to have all his senses occupied with nothing, but treasured memories of Harumi and Satoshi, along with Marzena’s. For his personal, wretched hell would shift from the coordinates of his expansive map to being wrapped in her arms, for that is the place Scorpion is the most serene. And it’s terrifying, because he knows, despite fitting so perfectly, the space in the crook of her neck where his head rests, and where her arms snake around his taut waist while his legs and comfortably entwined with hers, isn’t actually his in the devil’s sequence. 

“I wanted to be gone, ever since I dealt with the architecture of my suffering, for abundant agony and guilt tormented me, and it still does, as if I was only meant to be the firefly eternally drawn to the flame, as not only my dreams, but our unrealized dreams charred to the bone, and eventually, dust,” perhaps Scorpion should have given up, spend the rest of his nonexistent days in the Death’s arms, take solace in the shadows, celebrating this love that will never see the light. But no longer, he would rip out all the roses in his garden with his bare hands, let all the stubborn thorns impale and torture him to draw copious blood, as he would continue to trickle blood in unsolicited misery. 

Even when his internal crisis sprouts beneath his shallow triumphs, the war inside of his will be much stronger than any wrath that transfigures Hanzo Hasashi’s entire history. The cleaved skin will heal, clamp itself back together multiple times if it has to, and he will continue to fight this war, despite the enemy’s strategy is to convince him that the very war isn’t actually happening. Perhaps he was already the conquered, the one who was already rendered powerless, but his eternally burning flames and the fearlessness of his heart speaks otherwise. “All I have to remind myself is that everything I perceive is an opinion, not a fact, and everything I see is perspective, never, ever the damned bloody truth.” ▬▬ι═══════ﺤ 🔥 || 

[comparatist]

Sabitribai Phule: The First Dalit Woman To Be A Teacher

Savitribai Phule, was the first Dalit woman to be the pioneer of spreading education among the impoverished section of the society by working day and night, firmly sticking to resolution of making academia inclusive. She always raised her voice against unfair segregational terms of the society. During her time, education was reserved for the dominant caste, class and gender but then, she was brave enough to breakthrough the notions of dominant hegemony and was hell bent to provide for the oppressed communities.

• Personal Life:

Born in 3rd January, 1831, in Naigaon, 50 KM from Pune, Savitribai was the eldest daughter of Lakshmi and Khandoji Neveshe Patil. She got married to Jyotirao Phule at the age of 10 in 1840. The couple started living in a Dalit working locality. Jyotirao took interest in educating his wife and trained her to become a teacher. Shakharam Yashwant Paranjpe and Keshav Shivam Bhavalkar (Joshi), his two associates took the further responsibility of helping in the progress of Savitribai's education. She went through the formal teacher’s training at Ms. Farar's Institute in Ahmadnagar and Normal School of Ms Mitchell in Pune.

A Voice Of Dissent Ensuring Social Justice:

Savitribai was the first person in the country to become a teacher and headmistress as a woman. The couple started their first female school and set up a Native Library in 1863. They also built a ‘home' in their own house, which was a safe haven for tortured widows and pregnant women, meant for the prevention of infanticide. Together they established the Satyashodhak Samaj which preached of marriage devoid of dowry and extravaganza, supporting widow remarriage and protesting against child marriage alongside. Savitribai and Jyotirao had no child of their own, so they adopted the child of a brahmin widow, educated him, and arranged an inter-caste marriage for him.

Their constant resistance against the brahminical hegemony was a ray of hope for the Shudra and Atishudra women. She started a school for Mangs and Mahads but then a lightening struck their fortune when Jyotirao's father threw them out while the training was going on. Govande immediately arrived Pune and took the responsibility of Savitribai. When she returned, Bhavalkar looked after her education requirements. Throughout the training process, the couple encouraged vocational and the practical form of learning for both sexes, so that the students can flourish their own independent thought process. The believed in the attachment of an industrial educational sector along with the school so the children can learn useful trades and acquire craftsmanship to lead a comfortable life. Education should provide the agency of free choice, they preached. The school they created had special zones for children’s creative freedom. The planning and their dedication sprouted shoots of success when the parents of girls studying there, complained about the ‘overindulgence' of their daughters in studies.

• A Staunch Personality Overthrowing Obstacles : She was one of the flagbearers of gender justice during that time. Women weren’t allowed to access education then. She went forth against the normalised patriarchal set up enough, to make men wait for her in street, passing lewd comments, pelting stones or cow dung at her. She always kept 2 saris with her and change into the cleaned one after reaching the school, which would again get soiled on her way back. This happened everyday but she refused to back down. The guard who was appointed for a safety had in his memoirs written about what she would say to those men who teased her for making education available for women, “As I do the sacred task of teaching my fellow sisters, the stones or cow dung that he threw seemed like flowers to me. May God bless you!”

In July 1887, when Jyotirao suffered from massive heart attack and got paralysed from his right side, she nursed him from dawn to dusk and was always by his side. Her intense support made him recover quickly. However the financial system of the family was in tatters by that time. Mama Paramanand, a well known political sage and a well wisher tried to help them the most. In the letter to the King of Baroda, Sayajirao Gaekwad, Paramanand mentioned the historical ground breaking work the couple was doing and said the following about Savitribai, “More than Jyotirao, his wife deserves praise. No matter how much we praise her, it would not be enough. How can one describe her stature? She cooperated with her husband completely and along with him, faced all the trials and tribulations that came their way. It is difficult to find such a sacrificing woman even among the highly educated woman from the upper castes.” The couple had literally spent their whole time working for the marginalised sections.

Students living in their hostel had praises for the couple for their contributions. Laxman Karadi Jaaya from Mumbai said, “I have not seen another woman as kind and loving as Savitribai. She gave us more love than a mother could.” Another student named Mahadu Sahadu Waghole wrote, “Savitribai was very generous and her heart was full of kindness. She would be very compassionate to the poor and needy. She would constantly give the gift of food, she would offer everyone meals. If she saw torn clothes on the body of poor women, she would give them saris from her own house. Tatya(Jyotirao) would sometimes say to her, “One should not spend so much.” To this she would smile and ask, “What do we have to take with us when we die?” Tatya would sit quietly for some time after this as he had no response to the question. They loved each other immensely.”

When Jyotirao passed away, she was present there. As municipality had refused the burial of his body with salt as he wished, the last rites were performed in the pyre. Savitribai had courageously approached for the earthen pot to be held, then, and consigned his body to the flames. It was the first time in the Indian history, that a woman performed the funeral rites. Savitribai later erected ‘Tulsi Vrindavan' with his ashes on the spot where he wanted to be buried. After his demise, she took the reins of Satyashodhak movement in her own hands and was the chairperson of the Satyashodhak Conference in 1893 at Saswad, Pune.

• Her writings:

Poems that she had pinned down, along with other forms of creative outlets, are full of anti caste hegemony sentiments and provide boost towards harbouring a thought of attaining a gender equal society. Her works continued to be an inspiration to many, not only in the present time, bearing the reflection of struggles of past, but in the near future too.

The list of her writings is presented here:-

1. Kavyaphule- Collection of Poems, 1854

2. Jyotirao’s speeches, Edited by Savitribai Phule, 25th December 1856

3. Savitribai's letters to Jyotirao

4. Speeches of Matoshree Savitribai, 1892

5. Bavankashi Subodh Ratnakar, 1892

• Death: The year was 1897. The plague had overtaken the city of Pune. People were dying in clouts. The Government assisted by the officer Rand went out for helping the needy. Savitribai with the help of Yashwant set up a hospital and would herself go to pick up people, hospitalise them and ensure treatment. She continued to serve selflessly in spite of being fully aware of the contagious nature of the disease. The son of Pandurang Babaji Gaekwad from the Mahad community was affected by the plague. As soon as the news reached her ears, she wasted no time, to rush him to the hospital, carrying the sick child on her back. This way the disease reached her too. On 10th March, 1897 she passed away at 9 PM.

• Teacher's Day:

Go, get education

Be self-reliant, be industrious

Work-gather wisdom and riches,

All gets lost without knowledge

We become animal without wisdom,

Sit idle no more, go, get education

End misery of the oppressed and forsaken

You've got a golden chance to learn

So learn and break the chains of caste

Throw away Brahman's scriptures fast.

Since 1962, 5th September is regarded to be the Teacher's Day and calls for apparently an unanimous celebration on the birth anniversary of independent India’s 1st Vice President and 2nd President, Dr. Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan. The popular understanding of teachers, educators and gurus has been moulded by upper caste brains and has been always represented through the upper class and patriarchal lenses in the form of Dronacharya, Manu etc. The ‘meritorious' men shaping the history with their social-political and economical dominance over the forsaked is just a version of excluding the contribution of the marginalised and emphasising on the insurance of the right to education for the privileged only.

For a counter, a section of people are already speaking up against such dire injustice and celebrating Teacher’s Day on January 3rd as Education day or National Teacher’s Day, on the birth anniversary of Savitribai Phule.

Our academia, nation has disregarded her works in the context of societal upliftment, to a great extent, by erasing her contributions from history books, nationalistic discourses and our memory. Her resistive stamina against brutalities performed upon the non-dominant sections is a stain in the brahmin dominated and appropriated knowledge system in India.

[cosmoclast]

Withdrawl

My life has been taken over with school applications and exam study.

 The good news is I have been accepted to every one I have applied to (that certainly did wonders for my self-esteem), the bad news is I feel overwhelmed because they will not leave me alone.

Here are a few of my loose thoughts:

Succinct || Syncopate || Sycophant

... Succinct sounds like Sect-synct or suc-synct…

It looks like it would be pronounced Suck-inkt

Suck ink-t? This is why I can’t spell worth a shit

Poinsettia || Poindexter || Poignant

… Why is that g in there, tho?

Why is this language like this?

Reading:

"Into The Gray" - A Neuroscientist exploring the border between life and death.

I have a predilection for this brand of existential non-fiction, so this fits in perfectly with my copies of “Ghost Boy” and “The Diving Bell & The Butterfly”...

Thus far:

The marriage of two neuroscientists has failed after one pursues psychiatric medicine, losing their passion for the science of the brain itself for the compassionate pursuit of treating the mentally ill. That ex-partner falls suddenly into a coma after an intense infection and became unresponsive in what is called a ‘vegetrative’ state. This leads to them to be a patient for the experimental research of the neuroscientist. Only through PET scans is it discovered that their brain is still sorting information into appropriate regions of their mind - indicating that they are consciously aware of everything but utterly unreachable.

Described poignantly as sending out a beacon into space and receiving a ping back from the void, it is aweing and terrifying there is something locked in the darkness desperate to make contact.

Years later the patient will recount:

   “... They said I could not feel pain, but they were so wrong…”

   “... I cannot tell you how frightening it was, especially the suctioning from the mouth into the lungs…”

   “Sometimes, I would manage to cry out but they only thought it was a reflex…”

I’m enjoying this book. There's something sharply fascinating about the unresolved substance of ‘consciousness’ and identity stripping process of dying, the twilight inbetween, something that brings us down to the morrow of what we are. It’s titillating in a uniquely horrific sense.

Transient Aphasia?

  Within the last few days I’ve found that when I cannot conjure a particular word, I can follow the blind-sight of another part of my mind and it guides me to write out the word… without my knowing beforehand what I am trying to spell until it is there in front of me. 

  It is probably exhaustion or stress.

 But, I’ve seen a similar phenomenon demonstrated in ⪻split-brain documentaries⪼ -  when the two hemispheres of the brain cannot communicate directly after mechanical separation. 

 In patients, when one eye is covered they may know the meaning of a word but not how to say it.

When the other is covered they may say the word but not know the meaning.

An experiment that demonstrates the communication between both hemispheres is as follows:  draw the left image with your left hand and the right image with your right - simultaneously:

  Most struggle to keep both hands drawing independently of commands coming from the other side. My information tends to cross towards the end, rendering something like this:

The two parts of my mind are not communicating effectively on particular parts of my lexicon.

 I hope it’s a lack of sleep.

 Depression

The word as phonetically innocuous as black ice.

 Why is the same term for the pressure that bends bedsprings meant to capture an experience more akin to being imprisoned in a windowless room as the temperature rises, until all mental energy is consumed with the thought of escaping..?

I am not    depressed.

 We are not a part of one another.

Depression is one of two scavenging birds fighting over my remains. Prying me open with stabbing maws, tearing my spirit from it’s cradle. My airway occluded, blood blooming into my lungs, I am embroiled in a battle for air within a battle for my purpose - a battle over what keeps me alive within a battle for why I want to live.

A note to Love through despair: 

Loving you is a sucking chest wound. Your embrace is like open heart surgery, a brutal, gory performance, a dangerous endeavour of killing a part of me to save the rest. 

Break open my unity with kissing claws and rescue what I haven’t burnt to the ground. Do I want to live through this excoriation of self?

Locked behind the veneer of white wall banality, waiting room chairs, my pressed shirts, triple zero lenses, I am undergoing a rearrangement of my soul as everyone waits on desert blossoms, his fingers lace into my hair.

Wrapped in his arms, a broken thing, denied the brutal salvation of natures order, perpetual purgatory,

Even your tender mercies are cruel…

Post-Depression:

It fell like sandcastles to ocean surf. I woke one day to find it had gone, like a regretful lover who didn’t leave me their number and I was glad.

 I’ve felt like a pumpkin left out past December, Autumn having passed me over, rotting in the solstice heat and forgotten, but rather than fading silently into the earth, I have begun to sprout and bud sunshine yellow trumpets,

   to my surprise - I am not dead at all... 

Day 2: Turning off my phone

It’s the second day I’ve utilized airplane mode.

I wish I could break the pretense and tell you it isn't your fault.

We have come to a temporary impasse; my nature & your persistence.

Your message has been received - You urgently need to advance.    

But, I am a mule, fighting the grander pullings of linnaean predisposition which I cannot abruptly suspend for an impromptu wrangling… even if it is ‘at my soonest convenience’.

Sometimes, I wish I wasn’t this way.

 But, my mind is like a steam engine, slow to warm then, a freight train rolling on coal with the momentum of an asteroid-  your disruption is like a dental extraction, graceless and jarring, hauled out of the depths of my study with such suddenness, the question sticks to my ribs -have you ever heard of decompression sickness?

I attempted to stumble out of the assiduous fugue, like waking from a furtive nap - dazey eyed and agitated,

    - God, what now- ...?

It’s not just you.

My connection is turbulent, every few minutes a device loses contact and unfailingly lets me know it;

⪻ DISCONNECTED CONNECTED RECONNECTING TRYING TO CONNECT DISCONNECTED RECONNECTING CONNECTED ⪼

This static in the background of every 15 minutes is excruciating...

Thinking of you,

You've crossed my mind every now and then.

It isn't that you deserve it.

In some way it's a betrayal to my own better sense, giving you the tiny space in my thoughts when something more consequential could occupy it.

After all, there's nothing I can do with my thoughts of you.

I turn wearily to them and think what a pity it is that you squander the tiny reprieves life’s given you, while others receive nothing.

I could use you to harden my heart or rationalize a distrust in those that have not earned it - but I won't.

We were only ever two ships crossing paths in the night, but when there is nothing but this vast tumultuous existence to traverse until it swallows us up, it’s strange that I still encounter others like you (having been here as long as I have), that still attempt to circumvent uncomfortable truths.

Surely, they should know by now that suffering is inevitable, that covering your eyes doesn't make it cease to exist.

I don't wish ill on the person you were.

It is not because I am unduly kind.

It is because I recognize vengefulness is a force too often shaping the world into something I would not want to live in. After reading "Reflections on the Guillotine", I can't quite find it within myself to see where that kind of barbarism fits in a just society. I wonder how great a transgression would have to be for me to shed my rationality and misconstrue such terminal brutality with justice.

I know eventually fate will kick us all in the teeth, there is no reason to force-fit inhumanity into a world view that must already accommodate for an overabundance of misery.

Instead of pain,  I have begun to wish wisdom on you.

It is it's own punishment.

Rather than trying to build a better world on thought-binding torment, I believe wisdom seeks to form a foundation on a recognition that none of us are that far from being the one crushed under the heel of abused 'justice'. And, that is the world I would rather live in - in spite of my natural appetite for retaliatory recompense.

Maybe, one day our paths will cross again.

I hope who I meet then is someone else.

I hope the person I meet has come to see the value of self-honesty, the necessity and dignity in humility, and the fallacy of feeding into powerarchies within a friendship.

And, if you don't, I hope I have the integrity to still treat you as what you are - someone just as lost and fallible,

someone standing where I could have stood.

[cafeleningrad]

In vino veritas + dystopian AU for throbb? :3

Replying to this question took me quiet a while, for one reson:Recently I got into the Drakengard/Nier-Universe by Yoko Taro in which truths spilled in a dystopian setting leads to literally worldshattering mindfucks. So I scrambled around a bit to make this idea not “insert my ship in Nier Automata” - or involving giant flowers,or women somehow able to fight in high heels, or self concious androids, or existencial crisises, or overconvoluted multi-universe worldbuilding.(But if someone would write any Drakengard/Nier/Nier Automata!AU would be the cherry on top of an alread angsty ship cake, thanks. ;D)

In the far future: After a horrific war waged by the most powerful leaders, Westeros is scorched by black magic and dragon fire.During the war massive numbers of human population died, even after the war the effects of black magic cause the weirdest occurences, scaring the remaining population. Some people develop etheral abilities. Some people dissolve with nature, some melting into sea water, some slowly sprouting into plants. Some rumors tell stories about humans loosing their conciousness and turning into beasts.Only the desolate Iron Islands are rumored to be Westeros' last safe heaven for humanity - despite the uprising of orthodox faith of the Drowned God. The military units of the Iron Islands control all ports at the West cost, to controll the traffic to Iron Islands.

Robb Stark and his cousin Jon (it's going to be Brandon + Ashara= J, just to spite the mess D&D made out of R+L=J) mourn the loss of their parents while trying to keep the rest of their family, Robb's younger siblings, together.While the family wanders from one village to the other, the more restless the family becomes. By now Bran grows more silent, trying to keep his clairevoyant dreams secret from his family. Acting on a short fuse, Robb is determinded to get the Iron Islands.On their journey the family finds a small fishing town at the west coast, where they're offered to stay at an empty cottage in exchage to help out in the town. The same evening the Starks arrive at the harbor town Robb tries to negociate with the local Iron Isand military troop. There, their leader is in a good enough mood to talk Robb into drinking with him. One glass of good wine of the Reach after another... the night ends in carnal pleasure but not with anything Robb actually wanted to achieve.The next day the cottage's landlady gosspis about the young Iron island military leader being the Drowned God's priet's youngest nephew, Theon Greyjoy.

In the following the time in the small town focuses on the main story line between Robb and Theon, plus small side stories of all the characters able to catch a break from the former misery and recovering. Rickon becomes king of the playground, Bran finds in the local Medic, Mr. Luwin, and his assistant Osha people listening to his concerns, Arya working with the fishermen, Sansa helping out in different household's and getting out of her shell, Jon panning his potential future for a long time.Robb visits at Theon every evening by now, the result remaining the same, yet theamount of wine lessens. Robb still wonders why Theon wastes elusive bottles of wine like the wine from the Reach. During the nights they begin to talk more, both increasingly admitting regrets fromt the past, how their life used to be before social breakdown.

The end is either drastic or bitter-sweet: Over the story the characters go through a mental and dream sequence transformation for their end.The village falls prey to the dissolving phenomenon, either panic breaks out, or reclusive isolation-At this event Theon confesses to Robb that all efforts of Robb's are fruitless. The Iron Islands are only holding up due the strong magic exerciced by the rigid faith from the Drowned God yet humanity is doomed to barely exist anymore. Either absolute obidience to religious fundamentalism or accepting a peaceful end. Theon's uncle Aeron resists to any ideas questioning his strict doctrine, if there was a chance to find cures against dark magic but his rigid faith. Robb's hope shatters. Finally Theon breaks from his cynism. Panicking he tries to tell Robb maybe someone will, despite all hardships on the Iron Isles, find a a way out of the misery.The next morning Robb dissapeared. None knows where he is.Sansa will dissolve in a field of carnations. Rickon transforms into a wolf. In remebrance of her sister, and determinded to keep her little brother safe, Arya braids the carnations into her hair, and runs into the wild with Rickon.Jon decides to believe in a future prospect, and decides to stay at Bran's side when Theon wants to keeps his promise to Robb, and brings Jon and Bran to the Iron Islands. Maybe there's a chance of a future if Bran can use his new magic abilities. Maybe, at least trying. For Robb.

[picsofsannyas]

Question 1 BELOVED MASTER, IN SPITE OF DREADFUL POLITICAL CATASTROPHES, POLITICAL ACTION SEEMS TO BE THE ONLY MEANS TO FIGHT AGAINST INJUSTICE IN THE WORLD. DOES THE SEARCH YOU ARE INSPIRING EXCLUDE POLITICAL ACTION?

Jean-Francois Held, I am in love with life in its totality. My love excludes nothing; it includes all. Yes, political action too is included in it. That's the worst thing to include, but I can't help it! But everything that is included in my vision of life is included with a difference.

In the past, man has lived without awareness in all the aspects of life. He has loved without awareness and failed in it, and love has brought only misery and nothing else. He has done all kinds of things in the past, but everything has proved a hell. So has been the case with political action.

Each revolution turns into antirevolution. It is time we should understand how this happens, why this happens at all -- that each revolution, each struggle against injustice, finally turns into injustice itself, becomes antirevolutionary. In this century it has happened again and again -- I am not talking about a faraway past. It happened in Russia, it happened in China. It is going to happen if we continue to function in the same old way. Unawareness cannot bring more than that.

When you are powerless, it is easy to fight against injustice; the moment you become powerful, you forget all about injustice. Then repressed desires to dominate assert themselves. Then your unconscious takes over, and you start doing the same things that were done before by the enemies against whom you had been struggling. You had staked your very life for it!

Lord Acton says that power corrupts. It is true only in a sense, and in another sense it is absolutely untrue. It is true if you look at the surface of things: power certainly corrupts, whosoever becomes powerful becomes corrupted. Factually it is true, but if you dive deep into the phenomenon then it is not true. Power does not corrupt: it is the corrupted people who become attracted towards power. It is the people who would like to do things which they cannot do while they are not in power. The moment they are in power, their whole repressed mind asserts itself. Now there is nothing to bar them, nothing to prevent them; they have the power. Power does not corrupt them, it only brings their corruption to the surface. Corruption was there as a seed; now it has sprouted. The power has proved only the right season for it to sprout. Power is only the spring for the poisonous flowers of corruption and injustice in their being.

Power is not the cause of corruption, but only the opportunity for its expression. Hence I say: basically, fundamentally, Lord Acton is wrong.

Who becomes interested in politics? Yes, with beautiful slogans people go into it, but what happens to those people? Joseph Stalin was fighting against the injustice of the czar. What happened? He himself became the greatest czar the world has ever known, worse than Ivan the Terrible! Hitler used to talk about socialism. He had named his party the Nationalist Socialist Party. What happened to socialism when he came into power? All that disappeared.

The same thing had happened in India. Mahatma Gandhi and his followers were talking about nonviolence, love, peace -- all the great values cherished down the ages. And when power came he escaped. Mahatma Gandhi himself escaped because he became aware that if he took power in his hands he would no longer be the mahatma, the sage. And the followers who came into power were all proved as corrupted as anywhere else -- and they were all good people before they were in power, great servants of the people. They had sacrificed much. They were not bad people in any way; in every possible way they were good people. But even good people turn into bad people -- that is something fundamental to be understood.

I would like my sannyasins to live life in its totality, but with an absolute condition, categorical condition: and that condition is awareness, meditation. Go first deep into meditation, so you can cleanse your unconscious of all poisonous seeds, so there is nothing to be corrupted and there is nothing inside you which power can bring forth. And then do whatsoever you feel like doing.

If you want to become a painter, become a painter. Your painting will have a difference; it won't be like Picasso. Picasso's paintings are insane -- he IS insane! In fact, if he had been prevented from painting he would have been in a madhouse. Through his paintings he is catharting, throwing out his insanity onto the canvas, getting rid of it. Yes, he feels better -- it is a kind of vomiting! After vomiting you feel better, but what about others who look at your vomit! But the world is so stupid that if Picasso vomits, people say, "What a great painting -- something never seen before, something unique!"

Vincent van Gogh really went insane, had to be hospitalized for one year, and then he committed suicide. And he was not more than thirty-seven. Now, what kind of paintings had this man been doing? Certainly he had the art, the skill, but the art and the skill were in the hands of a madman, suicidal. Watching his paintings you will feel restless, uneasy. Keep a Picasso painting in your bedroom and you will have nightmares!

A meditator can become a painter, but then something totally different will come out of him -- something of the beyond, because he will be capable to receive God. He can become a dancer; his dance will have a new quality to it: it will allow the divine to be expressed. He can become a musician... or he can go into political action, but his political action will be rooted in meditation. Hence there will be no fear of a Joseph Stalin or Adolf Hitler or Mao Zedong coming out of it; that is impossible.

I don't tell anybody to go in a certain direction; I leave my disciples totally free. I simply teach them meditation. I teach them being more alert, more aware, and then it is up to them. Whatsoever their natural potential is they will find it, but it is going to be with awareness. Then there is no danger.

Jean-Francois Held, I am not against political action -- I am not against anything. I am not life-negative; I affirm life, I am in absolute love with life! And of course, when millions of people are on the earth, there is going to be some kind of politics or other. Politics cannot just disappear. It will be like dissolving the police, the post office, the railway -- it will create a chaos. And I am not an anarchist and I am not in favor of chaos. I want the world to be more beautiful, more harmonious, more of a cosmos than of a chaos. Sometimes I praise chaos, only in order to destroy that which is rotten. I praise destructiveness also, only in order to create. Yes, sometimes I am very negative -- I am against conventions, conformities, traditions -- only to make you free so that you can create new visions, new worlds, so that you need not remain imprisoned with the past, so that you can have a future and a present. But I am not destructive. My whole effort is to help you to be creative.

A few people out of my sannyasins are bound to go into political action, but I will allow them only when they have fulfilled the basic condition: when they are more alert, aware, when their inner being is full of light. Then do whatsoever you want to do -- you can't bring harm to the world. You will bring something good, something beautiful; you will be a blessing to the world. Without it, without that awareness, even if you do something good, it is going to turn into something harmful.

Osho

The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 6 Chapter #4 Chapter title: This too will pass 24 October 1979 am in Buddha Hall

[banderjack]

"I can only give you an hour or so. And you can't bring anything back. I don't normally do this, but..." The high elf trails off, brows pinched sympathetically. The night elf smiles softly in return. "I understand. Thank you, again." The two stand in silence a moment, the occasional ember floating down between them to join the others on the ground. The town is silent but for the distant lapping of waves against the ruined docks and shoreline. The crackling of flame is imperceptible at this distance, but the fire still hungrily consuming the world tree in the background roars in the back of their minds. The night elf doesn't face it, her attention on the other before her. "Are you sure?" Despite her question she knows the answer, already holding up a hand swirling with glowing sand. The night elf nods resolutely and takes her hand. The bronze gives it a reassuring squeeze. "Be careful." Then everything goes white. _____

When she steps down she almost expects the crunching of leaves beneath her feet. Instead, her footfall is muted by a layer of ash and her heart aches. Really it's nothing short of a miracle this part of the tree hadn't collapsed into the ocean, that something of Darnassus remained to be mourned. Ash and soot covers the earth and the structures that couldn't burn. Even the sky is a dull, flat grey, casting only a dim light over the ruins. The air is unnaturally still here, like the air died with the tree. The fire died some time long ago, and from the looks of things no one has been here since. She supposes she wanted to be the first. A noise caught her attention, like a choked sob, and her ears perk and her head swivels. The ash looked undisturbed in every direction but where she came from. Where--? Again, another sob. It's desperate and broken, someone trying to heave out their misery through their breath. The night elf moves in the direction of the sound, towards what had once been the approximate center of Darnassus. Who could possibly be here? How? The crying is mostly quiet but the one crying-- a woman, maybe?-- periodically gets louder, then quiets down again as if trying to control herself. Finally the night elf, the traveler, spots the culprit-- unsurprisingly, another elf. A woman sits in the ash, her white dress a stark contrast against the uniform, dead grey. She weeps desperately, head in her hands, struggling to breathe between sobs. Occasionally she manages a near-silent "no, no no" in denial, then resumes. The traveler's heart pounds in her chest; something about this seems so desperately wrong and yet... "Hello?" The crying woman stops the instant she speaks up, head snapping around to face her, and she suddenly realizes what should have been obvious before. She can just see the ruins behind the crying woman. Through the crying woman. Piercing blue eyes regard the night elf-- the living night elf-- for just a moment. "No! No no NO," she screams, the last word coming out as a shattering wail as she rises to her feet then past that. The traveler sucks in a sharp breath and clamps her hands over her ears but the sound is deafening regardless and she stumbles. The banshee surges forward, grasping for the elf with hands that burn like hot irons as they brush her skin. Ash is whipped into a plume as the elf scrambles away from her attacker. Even as the wraith assaults her visitor she chokes out now-furious sobs, her expression a grimace of rage and hopeless despair. Clawed fingers hook into the fleeing elf's vest and flesh, halting her escape and pulling her back. She almost expects words, an explanation for the fury and sadness, but she already understands, soot and tears burning her eyes as she stares into those of the specter. She places her hands on the furious ghost's face, her expression stoic in spite of the tears streaming down her cheeks, in spite of the fiery pain of those hands digging into her shoulders. Her hands glow a soft, warm green and the wails quiet to a whimper. The specter keeps her grip but her rage dies, her body heaving with ghastly sobs. The emerald glow envelopes her and she finally relinquishes her hold on the elf, sinking back down the the ground to her knees, and her visitor sits with her. "I'm sorry," the elf whispers. "Life Binder preserve you." The spirit's crying relents and she stares at the elf opposite her. Wordlessly she fades into a flurry of viridian embers, a well-deserved rest. The traveler remains kneeling for some time in silence, but eventually does return to her feet. She surveys the ruins before her once again, walking to where the spirit had originally been. Just dust and ashes, unmoved by the presence of the dead. The blackened remains of a skull catch her eye and she swallows hard, crouching to reverently dust it off. It collapses in on itself at her touch, dissolving into black ash. She lets out a dejected sigh, unsure of what else she expected, and moves to stand, but something catches her eye. A glimpse of green. Almost entirely buried in the ash lies a tiny, bright-green sprout. The night elf's eyes widen, and she smiles. _____ "Did you see what you needed to?" The high elf remains somber, brows pinched and gaze purposely avoiding the raging inferno engulfing Teldrassil. Despite this, the night elf smiles and she nods. "I did. Thank you again." She bows enthusiastically, her mood drastically improved since she left. The high elf gazes quizzically back. "That's good. You can consider us even, then." "Of course. I'll see you around!" She turns and walks off, waving back at the clearly puzzled bronze. "Let's get you somewhere nice and safe, little buddy," she mutters to herself, patting a pocket gently, within which sits a layer of ash and a tiny, bright-green sprout.

[verbumincarcerem]

you were made to suffer

Prologue, Ch. 1, Ch. 2, Ch. 3

Chapter 4: In the Blood

Heal him.

Melody was certain that one basic command was wrapping itself around her neck like a noose. So simple, so easy. All she needed to do was reach out to Ben and cast out the Scourge from his body.

The daemon—Ben—in the chains thrashed. It hadn’t noticed her slowly nearing yet.

But it would soon. And there was still not even the slightest tingle of magic burning at her fingertips.

It should have been simple. For Lunafreya, it would have been. But Melody’s healing gift was weak, and as of this moment, nothing else was more difficult than saving an innocent man that she’d personally dragged straight to hell.

He’s innocent, true, but still a stranger. I owe him nothing. It’s easier to escape with just yourself.

The thought came to her like a breath, effortless and without censure. Melody paused, revolted and dismayed at herself. When had she become like this? So ruthless and hard-hearted? She had to heal Ben now because he deserved it. Because she still had some decency. Her dreams had not led her to Ardyn because they were secretly alike, one darkness calling to another. She was better than her thoughts, than him.  

Stepping lightly, Melody managed to skirt around Ben and lay a hand on his back, another at his neck. His jugular vein was stiff, as if the miasma was hardening inside him as it hollowed out his humanity. The thing jerked and snarled, and a hand with broken, blackened nails clawed at her wrist. The other worked the chains more frantically. It wouldn’t be long now until he was free, until he turned and attacked her, infecting her with the Scourge, too, if he didn’t kill her first.

In spite of every instinct telling her not to, Melody closed her eyes and tried to think healing thoughts. Bruises fading away. Skin knitting back together. Lungs filling with air instead of damp. Vitality and strength surging through renewed limbs. Hands glowing white as they healed everything that was wrong.

Somewhere in front of her, Ardyn sighed loud enough to echo, the sound a chorus of wraith moans in the dark. “Unbelievable. Is there truly nothing left of my world in this unrecognizable farce? They don’t even make healers like they used to.”

“Shut up,” she hissed, concentration broken. Miasma leaked down her hand at Ben’s neck. She squinted her eyes open, heart pounding to find that a pair of dark, dripping horns were starting to sprout from the top of his bald head.

“Back then, all it would take is an instant,” Ardyn mused, his tone whimsical as he spoke more to himself than to her. But she heard every word clearly. “Someone in dear Ben’s place would have been child’s play, yet here he is, suffering while his healer—” He broke off with a laugh. “Struggles to heal.”

“Even Lunafreya would’ve struggled with this,” she bit out.

“I wasn’t speaking of Lunafreya,” he replied silkily.

Melody clenched her eyes shut and delved deeper, imagining. Miasma drawing away from the body, turning into mist. Veins changing from black to blue. Rot replaced with rebirth. New, unbroken skin in place of those horns, and those gruesome eyes clearing, becoming Ben’s natural seafaring blue. And when he speaks again, it’ll be in his normal, rough, salty scratch, not the inhuman shrieks of a daemon.

“You know what your problem is, don’t you?” Melody jumped as Ardyn’s hands cradled her by the shoulders, his mouth by her ear. “Healers are selfless by nature, but you? You are so deliciously selfish. You care more for your secrets than you do their lives.”

“That’s not true!” She drew her hand from Ben’s neck and shoved Ardyn back. He stumbled away, laughing darkly, with flecks of miasma dripping down the lapels of his coat. “I pick my battles. If I tried to save everyone, then I’d save no one.”

“Oh yes, I’m sure all those people you passed by would agree with you. That poor old woman by the sea, the little boy roaming the Lucian outlands.” Ardyn shook his head, face heavy with mournfulness. “Already lost causes, much like your Benjamin here.”

Ardyn looked and sounded perfectly regretful, perfectly understanding. Save for the glint of amusement in his amber eyes. So many games he was playing. Melody wasn’t sure which one she should try to win, or even if she could win. She was shaken that he knew about those nameless people she’d chosen not to help, each of them beyond her skills, now ghosts she’d been trying to forget. How had he come to know her failures? Just how much about her did he know?

“No, he isn’t,” she replied, and then she drew the knife she’d reclaimed from Ardyn’s chest and swiftly cut open the back of her hand. Not the palm or the wrist. Cutting those areas made it difficult to wield things, could take too long to heal, and be life-threatening if done incorrectly. What she was doing was dangerous enough, and all she needed was a little blood.

The wound stung, blood welling up quickly from the cut. Melody clenched her fist, so the pressure would force the blood out to slide down her hand more easily. Before she could lose a drop of it to the ground, she raised her fist over Ben’s mouth.

The first few drops missed, hitting his face and hair as he thrashed and snapped his jaws, the smell of blood sending him into a frenzy. Once he realized where it was coming from, he stilled and opened his mouth wide, a macabre parody of a child catching raindrops on his tongue.

After he swallowed five or six drops, Melody felt it. Felt him.

Not Ben, but Ardyn. The Scourge. Its source. The separate energies that made up photosynthetic organisms and the human they fed on, intent to take over—and it had come from him. Melody felt the magic in her blood react to the organisms’ presence, awakening at last. Separately, she sensed Ben’s despair and disgust—and anger and sorrow. She sensed an acute willingness to die.

Melody clenched her dagger as Ben grabbed her with a clawed, festering hand, bringing her bloody wound to his mouth.

The action was enough for her magic to flare at last, to protect her blood from being infected with the miasma. Melody latched onto the warmth and forced it to flow out. Her hands burst with white, but that wasn’t where the healing magic was focused.

If she couldn’t heal Ben from the outside, then she would do so from within.

Ben’s back arched, and he threw his head back with a shriek. His skin seemed to burn white-hot from the inside, and miasma wafted from his body in bursts of mist, as if the blackness itself was fleeing from him. The horns, the claws, the rotting skin, everything daemonic was burned away until only the human in tattered clothes was left, yelling out in a ravaged throat what could only be pain.

Melody snatched her hands away. Ben slumped to the floor, face-first and unconscious but no longer screaming. As soon as she’d released him, the connection between them was broken, and her magic followed its host. She peered at him to make sure he was breathing, and he was, but Melody didn’t feel like congratulating herself, didn’t feel thankful that she hadn’t had to gut him to end his misery. She felt like crying.

“What a display!” Ardyn clapped his delight, the sharp sounds echoing hollowly throughout the room. “The novice healer, victorious after all! And quite the miracle you performed, my dear. You should be proud.”

“I did what you asked. Now let him go.”

“Now, why would I do that?” Ardyn paced around Ben’s body, throwing her a condescendingly patient look over his fallen form. “I don’t recall making any such promises.”

Melody fought not to reveal the desperation she was drowning in. “You said this was a game. I won. Winners get something for their victories.”

“But alas you have only won the round. The long game is still at hand. Oh?” Ardyn smirked at her dazed expression. “Did you think I would let you go so easily? Perish the thought. Guards, oh, guards!” he called in a sing-song, hand by his mouth.

Two MTs shuffled into the throne room, their steps perfectly in sync and unnaturally stiff. They looked to Ardyn with their unblinking, eerily-glowing red eyes. Ardyn snapped his fingers and pointed down at Ben.

“Ah, ah, ah,” Ardyn said as Melody took an aggressive step forward to take them out. Her hand was suddenly empty, and a quick inventory check revealed the rest of her weapons were gone as well. Vanished into thin air. “You’ll get those back when I know you can behave yourself around my soldiers.”

“What are you doing?” Melody stared after the MTs helplessly as they dragged Ben away. “Where are they taking him?”

“Somewhere safe until our next little game.” Ardyn closed the distance between them, holding her fast with his hand gripping her chin. “Is the anticipation killing you as much as it’s killing me?”

“I thought you couldn’t die.”

“So you are following along. Good, very good.” He released her and gestured her along with a crook of his finger. “Now keep following.”

What now? Melody didn’t think she could take much more of this, as evident by the strain in her voice as she asked, “Where?” Nevertheless, she did follow as Ardyn led her away from the throne room.

“As you so assiduously pointed out, you did technically win my first gambit against you. It’s time for you to claim your own glorious reward.”

“Which is?”  

“Dinner, with me.” She caught a flash of teeth as he threw over his shoulder, “Aren’t you lucky?”

*

For just two people, the spread of food was impressive. Plump strawberries, grapes, and melons immediately drew the eye, the fruits having become increasingly rare in the wild without sunlight to grow them. Holly had mentioned starting a greenhouse powered by artificial light to preserve the plants they needed to live, and Melody had even found her seeds to get started. She cut off the thought before it could depress her, following the line of the table with a wary gaze. Thickly-sliced cuts of beef and savory breads wafted to her nose, making her realize how hungry she was, and her mouth watered at the sight of grilled carrots, squash, and zucchini arranged prettily on a massive serving dish.

She was starving, but at the same time, her stomach cramped in protest. She knew the reason why. It was the man sitting to her left at the head of the table, holding court and watching her far too closely over a glass of red wine. Melody forced herself to fill her plate before he could prompt her to do so but proceeded to pick at it, eating a bite or two every so often. She hated having strangers watch her eat, but for some reason Ardyn was worse even though he wasn’t exactly a stranger.

The dining room they were in was an intimate one, intended for small, private dinners among family than hosting foreign dignitaries or a surplus of guests. Wall lamps burned low, casting the gray room in a warm, orange light while the night pressed against the windows behind her. There were no MTs guarding the room, and no one else joined them. Melody wondered what the show was for because it certainly wasn’t for her.

She wondered at the appreciative drink Ardyn took of his wine, of his own plate that had been covered in food but was now mostly empty. He couldn’t die, but he needed food? What about sleep?

Ardyn was in the middle of discussing the room’s previous décor and the changes he’d made when she asked, “Will you die if you don’t eat?”

“No.” His voice was light with arrogance. He smiled, a look of surety that said, I know what you’re trying to do. “Nor will I starve.”

“You don’t feel hunger?”

“I don’t feel a great many things.”

“So why bother?” She gestured to the table and the room at large. “With all this?”

His eyes were half-lidded as he purred, “Pleasure.” As if it explained everything.

Melody ignored the low drag of his voice, how it made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “But if you don’t feel—”

“Pleasure, my dear, isn’t something you feel. It’s something you take.” He leaned upon the arm rest, chin propped casually on a hand, and looked her up and down. The amber in his gaze seemed to burn, but he swirled the wineglass in his free hand nonchalantly. "I'm certain you know what I'm talking about."

She smiled, or thought she did. Her mouth made the familiar pull, but there was no emotion behind it. “Not really.” Giving up on her appetite returning, she set down her fork and pushed the plate away. “So. What now, Ardyn Lucis Caelum, or whoever you’re supposed to be? Gonna call in the MTs to drag me away, too?”

“Please,” Ardyn said, dragging out the word and leaning back in his chair. “Call me ‘your Majesty’. It’s only fitting. You’re my dear, sweet subject, after all.”

Melody lifted her chin, proud. Defiant. “I’m from Accordo, and Accordo has no king.”

“Is that so?” His eyebrow arched, but still no anger appeared on his face. No frustration. Melody wasn’t sure why, but the lack of negative emotion bothered her. “I must have missed these past thirty years where Niflheim has gripped Accordo in its fist.”

“No true Accordon has ever acknowledged Aldercapt as their sovereign. Now he’s dead, along with his entire high command.”

“All save for the Chancellor,” Ardyn commented lightly.

“The Chancellor is—”

“Right here.”

Melody stalled. Ardyn raised his glass to her, his growing smirk warped through the glass. Her next words were accusing yet cautious. “The Chancellor’s name was Izunia.”

“Mm, yes. I’ve answered to that for the past few decades. Ardyn Izunia, the name more fitting than you know. Oh, my dear girl, did you not watch the news? Cameramen were crawling all over this place when the treaty was being”—he laughed to himself—“negotiated.”

No, she hadn’t watched it, even though the event had been the top story even out toward her waters. Melody couldn’t recall now what she’d been doing that day, and whatever it was had been swiftly overshadowed by news of Insomnia’s fall and Lunafreya’s alleged death, which she’d learned about only after arriving home.

But… She did remember hearing a brief radio broadcast. The news anchors had remarked on the unusual sight of seeing the Emperor in the flesh, no longer hidden behind the might of his kingdom. The man walking beside him, Chancellor Izunia, had been described briefly, too, another rare sight. What had they said?

Now here’s something you don’t see every day, folks. A Nif dressed in true colors, all black instead of white. Have you ever seen such a thing, Yrene?

No, Lorin, but Chancellor Izunia’s fashion sense isn’t the only thing that’s been making a splash as of late. You know, they say the Magitek troopers and tech were all his influence, the reason behind Niflheim’s military success being largely attributed to him and Imperial Research Chief Verstael Besithia.

That’s all Melody had to go by, a brief mention and Ardyn’s own word. Unacceptable.

Before she could verbally deny it, Ardyn pulled from his coat and tossed what looked like a newspaper on the table. “As enjoyable as it is to watch you struggle to grasp reality…”

She took her eyes off him to read the headline: “Lucis, Niflheim to Discuss Peace Treaty,” only to land on the black-and-white photo in the middle of the article’s text. The shot was of Aldercapt strolling toward the Citadel, surrounded by armed guards, and at his side was, unmistakably, Ardyn. Same long coat, same hat, turned toward the camera, in mid-conversation with Aldercapt.

He could still be lying, her mind railed. This could be a trick. It’s not real.

But something deep down in her gut clenched, and she knew then that some part of her had recognized the truth and accepted it.

So he was Niflheim’s chancellor. Fitting. He was as mad and inhuman as the rest of them. But so what? That didn’t make him a Lucian king any more than she could claim an Oracle bloodline.

“Imperial Chancellor Izunia,” Melody enunciated every word, getting a feel for their truth. “I don’t know how you did it, but eliminating the Emperor, burning through Niflheim’s high command, assuming control of the military. That’s quite a coup. Was the false treaty with Lucis your idea as well?”

“I like to think of it as more of a collaborative effort.”

“Busy boy. Sure it was.” She braced her arms on the table and leaned towards him, her words entreating. “But none of this has anything to do with me. So why not let me go? I’ll take Ben, and neither of us will ever—”

Ardyn sighed, lowering his glass to the table. “Oh, how quickly she moves towards deflection and deceit! Did you really believe that would work, my dear? A few words of shameless flattery, and I’d be in the palm of your hand like all your little hunters?”

“What I thought would work was speaking to you like a creature of reason.” Melody pushed back into her chair and crossed her arms. “But I forgot: you’re an evil, insane daemon.”

A blur of purple light and miasma-thick shadow rushed toward her. Suddenly, she was standing, the chair and table gone, the dining room replaced with the bedroom she had woken up in, the same as she’d left it with the exception that her weapons were missing. But none of that mattered, because Ardyn was holding her up with a hand around her throat, not squeezing, her feet still touching the ground, but Melody knew if she tried to pull away, all that might change. So she froze as Ardyn said softly, “I’m also your generous host.” His thumb swept across her jumping pulse. “How generous depends on you. And me.” He smirked. “But mostly on you.”

Her mind couldn’t catch up with what that light had been, how she’d gotten here, not just with his hands on her, but in this room, when it was several floors below the dining room. How had he gotten them both here, with what magic, and why was he still not angry, even at being insulted?

The words that came out instead were “Why are you doing this?”

Ardyn’s eyes lit up, as if delighted by the question. “Did you know the gods secretly amuse themselves with mortal affairs? Doomed lovers, exiled princes, a group of young heroes who arrive just in time to slay the great evil threatening all they hold dear. They adore these tales, will sometimes intervene enough so the story ends the way they want them to. The gods are selfish creatures, after all.”

Melody felt his eyes linger upon the bruise on her cheek, and Ardyn’s smile appeared crueler for it.  Hand falling away, the Niflheim Chancellor strolled toward the door. “Why, you ask me? Why you, why here? Why me?” He stopped, turning just enough for her to see his face, and the showman was back, all wistful storytelling and animated anticipation. “Because those tales are currently on hiatus, and, unfortunately for you, my dear, I find myself miserably bored, yearning for them to begin again.”

[ruffoverthinksthings]

You know  what would have been INTENSELY interesting? If the Enchantress Cursed Beast Again before being imprisoned on the Isle/Exiled from Auradon

@screaminginternallyalleternity @saveshootingstar @baby-prince-oppa

Let’s assume she was either considered morally grey, or that she had a long enough delay between being captured by the Royal Guard and thrown on the Isle to get close to Beast and curse him again.

The original hex to turn him as ugly as he was inside was already broken, and thanks to Belle’s true love (despite all of his clear, obvious flaws) it’ll just get lifted as soon as she casts it, if he’s not immune outright.

So instead, she chooses a different route: she curses their first child, “to be as Twisted and Horrifying as the actions you deem Righteous and Good.”

Beast is obviously shook, because now he has a sense of empathy (for his immediate circles, at least), and he’s doomed another completely innocent person to a life of misery and suffering. The currently pregnant Belle assures her that they will make it through once again, and that True Love will find a way.

“Whatever happens, whatever our child will be, we will love him, her, or them with all our hearts.”

All is well and good in the Kingdom of Auradon as they brace themselves for the incoming curse, Quasimodo getting a lot of coin and exposure for helping people acclimate themselves with interacting with someone “terribly deficit in appearance assets,” but an unquestionably good person nonetheless.

Thanks to the Magic Ban, Fairy Godmother refuses to lift the curse because that would be a PR disaster--”no magic period, except for when it benefits my family in particular.”

Beast and Belle brace themselves, spending long nights cuddling, reading to him in utero, and doing normal things like decorating their baby boy’s room, deciding what clothes he will wear for his formal events, what name they will give him:

“Benjamin Florian. It’s a good name, for a good boy.”

It’s a stormy, thunderous night when Belle goes into labour. Castle Beast is unfettered because they already had a crack team of doctors, surgeons, and midwives already on-staff with a top-notch medical facility all ready for Ben. The kingdom prepares themselves as they will finally see the face of their future ruler. Breaths are held, tensions rise, cameras are trained as soon as the doctors give the go ahead that they can see the crown prince now...

... And when the Queen’s wheelchair is personally pushed out the doors by the King, they all smile and congratulate them as the tiny bundle swathed in royal blue blankets is perfectly normal, healthy, and happy.

Then, lightning strikes, the lights go out, the cameras lose transmission and everyone can only see static.

Before the live witnesses eyes, Ben’s features change, his skin sprouting bumps, then fur. The boy cries as his very bones change and morph, sprouting horns, hooves, and ugly claws. Beast roars and curses the enchantress name while Belle shushes and comforts her child, tears in her eyes, unable to see her child, but acutely aware he is suffering.

When the emergency generators finally kick in, and the media gets their connections back, screens all over Auradon are given a full view of their crown prince:

A tiny, ugly, twisted Beast, just like his father.

All over the realm, smelling salts are emptied from shelves, fainted persons are laid down on blankets and pillows on the floor for the lack of chaise lounges, and hundreds of thousands of Fae and magical beings suddenly feel very unsafe with the looks their mortal companions are giving them.

The entire realm is in a tizzy, some using this as a platform to remove the Magic Ban and attempt to remove the curse for Ben’s sake, others saying this was the definitive sign that magic should have been banned long before Beast ever signed that legislation.

Some say this was retribution, and that they should free the prisoners from the Isle to pay for their pride; others say they still belong there, that they did them wrong shouldn’t be the cause for a “right.”

Some believe that the prince should be hidden away and locked in a tower for his own safety, some say no, he should be allowed to live a proper life, and look how well THAT worked out for Rapunzel and Mother Gothel.

But in spite of it all, Belle still reads bedtime stories to Ben, she kisses him on his the patch of fur on his head between the nubs that are his horns, and she brushes his fur every night to make sure it’s not matted or knotted; Beast carries his son on his shoulders, brings him with him to every public event, and playfully wrestles and learns just how hard his son can tackle as soon as his horns grow out; and Cogsworth, Lumiere, and Mrs. Potts shower the prince with as much love, care, and attention as they always planned to.

Ben grows up in a perpetual state of dissonance and duality:

On the one hand, his family loves him, accepts his “beastly” nature, and aside from certain allotments like making him a special Jr. Tourney helmet to compensate for the horns and anti-hair-clogging covers for the drains, he is treated normally.

On the other hand, majority of the aristocracy are unsubtly uncomfortable with interacting with him, the other kids his age all treat him like a freak (except for Audrey, but then again, she’s going on declaring that “(her) love will break his curse and then we can get married and live happily ever after), and when the hurtful words and the shunning gets too much, he wonders if he should run away to the Isle.

At least there, the adults say all the kids are twisted, ugly, and beastly, and what is he but all those things...?

... And then, as Ben grows up, he starts to realize just how superficial, cruel, and meaningless all this is, and all that matters is that you are truly Good, than claiming you are.

[just-a-re-blog]

Boy Meets Evil

It’s short, but I just love Jung Hoseok and that comeback trailer was life-changing.

~HMR

He vows to be the one to save you. He accepts you as a challenge--the problem everyone else is too unsure of themselves to solve. Hoseok dresses himself in the armor of chivalry and weasels his way through the thick shell of conflict you cloak yourself in to keep out all harmful intruders and pests. At first, you attempt retreat, curling further into yourself to save the both of you from the inevitability of pain. But Hoseok sees it as an invitation for further pursuit.

He likes the chase.

And he likes to win.

It takes more weeks than either of you realize for him to coax you into his world. By the time you come around to the idea of embracing something new, he is inescapably ensnared in the mystery you present. Hoseok’s heart and mind wrap themselves around the concept of everything you are, and, if it would allow him to understand your inner workings, he would gladly submit his soul to your cause, too.

You let yourself open up to Hoseok, the slightest bits of caution thrown to the wind with the passage of time. Your cheeks flush when he calls you beautiful and when he messages you first thing in the morning to inquire about your dreams and relay how you graced his. Hoseok becomes synonymous with the dawn, the signal of optimism and promise that rouses you from the troubles of your past midnights. Your mother comments that she hasn’t seen you smile so much in years.

But you realize too late that for one of you to swim, the other has to sink. And you should have known that while you could never be the one to break the surface, you were far too much of a burden not to drag someone below with you.

Hoseok is too entranced in the ideal of everything you can be. He is blind to how dangerously and deeply he yearns for your attention; he denies that he is intoxicated in the moments when he manages to capture it. He forgets his mission to bring you into light and pledges himself to your ways of inadvertent darkness.

You never try to destroy the essence of something so beautiful, but the ruin seems to be fated as Hoseok’s identity crumbles with your every touch. Slowly, he lets the dirty word of compromise taint everything he holds dear. He confuses each of your heartfelt compliments and kind observations for his own self-image, tying himself irrevocably deeper to your existence. Nothing remains unchanged at your fingertips. He concedes pieces of himself to you in the hopes of completely gaining your trust. But soon, he finds that his veins pump with cold blood, and you are startled to see the beginnings of lust and dark devotion swirling underneath the surface of his features. Friday night dinners turn to rich ambrosia, the water to dark, bloodied wine; you are his god, but you are anything but holy.

When you finally realize just how much damage you’ve done, you attempt to sever your connection while there is still a man left to save. But he doesn’t want to forfeit, doesn’t want to lose, doesn’t want to lose you. He would much rather give in to the guilty pleasures of his vice than turn away now and face a hollowed-out reflection of himself swimming in your eyes.

He reluctantly agrees to snip the sapling beginning to emerge from the cracked sidewalks of your combined hearts, but he still can’t manage to kick his addiction completely. You are the salve in the burn you yourself scalded into his flesh. He can't let the temporary relief desert him for his own good. You half-heartedly work anyway to convince yourself that he is still moving on, that he is as determined as you to restore the friendship you skipped over in your whirlwind romance.

Time proves you wrong. Ignored urges percolate behind glass screens, and selfish intentions mingle with the ones that started out selfless until both of you are overflowing with white-hot misery. You don’t think either of you mean to scream, but you bellow until you bawl, your broken figures mirror images reaching out to pull the other closer while sobbing in a plea for time apart. His accusations skip between teeth with ease to root themselves in your body, spears growing between the bones of your ribcage; your weak attempts at admissions and Hail Marys turn into bullets and cannonballs that sprout scarlet craters from every inch of his skin.

In the end, it’s a complete break, but it is anything but clean. Every time you glance at Hoseok’s figure slinking by, your chest clenches at the sight of him replaced by a barely living shadow--disgust, shame, and spite coloring his irises black when his head dares to tilt your way. It would be a lie to say you don’t want him back as much as it would be a lie to say you want him back. You aren’t sure if, in your midnight tears, you are searching for a way to beg his forgiveness or your own. Your entire being crumples from the inside out at the weight of your guilt, but you know there are no apologies left to be said and no policies expensive enough to reimburse your liabilities and pay the replacement cost for what little remains of a once great man.

In the wreckage of Hoseok’s former self, you find your damnation. From your place among the cinders and smoldering ashes, you can see where the colorless debris sticks to his back, black wings adorning his battered soul.

They look just like yours.

[margdarsanme]

NCERT Class 12 English Chapter 4 A Thing of Beauty

NCERT Class 12 English Chapter 4 :: A Thing of Beauty

(English Flamingo Poem)

IMPORTANT STANZAS FOR COMPREHENSION :

Read the stanzas given below and answer the questions that follow each:1. A thing of beauty is a joy forever Its loveliness increases, it will never Pass into nothingness; but will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.Questions(a) Name the poem and the poet of these lines.(b) How is a thing of beauty a joy for ever ?(c) What do you understand by a ‘bower’l(d) What kind of sleep does it provide?Answers:(а)The poem is A Thing of Beauty. The poet is John Keats.(b)A thing of beauty is the source of constant joy. Its beauty goes on increasing. It will never pass into nothingness.

(c)A bower is a pleasant place in the shade under a tree. It protects persons/animals from the hot rays of the sun.(d)It provides us a sound sleep, full of sweet dreams, health and peaceful breathing.

2. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth,Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darkened waysMade for our searching: yes, in spite of all,Questions [All India 2014](a)Name the poem and the poet.(b)Why are we despondent?(c)What removes the pall from our dark spirits?(d) What are we doing every day?Answers:(а)The poet is John Keats. The poem is A Thing of Beauty.(b)We possess the evil qualities of malice and disappointment. We suffer from the lack of noble qualities. That is why we feel despondent.(c) Some beautiful shapes or a thing of beauty removes the pall of sadness from our hearts or spirits.(d) We are weaving a flowery wreath to bind us to the beauties of the earth.

3. Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodilsWith the green world they live in; and clear rills That for themselves a cooling covert make ‘Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms;Questions(а)What removes the pall from our dark spirits?(b)What sprouts a shady boon for sheep and how?(c) How do ‘daffodils’ and ‘rills’ enrich the environment?(d) What makes the mid-forest brake rich?Answers:(a)Some beautiful shape or a thing of beauty removes the pall of sadness from our hearts or spirits.(b)Old and young trees sprout to make a green covering. It proves a blessing for simple sheep as it serves them as a shelter.(c)Daffodils bloom among the green surroundings. The rills or small streams of clear water make a cooling shelter for themselves against the hot season.(d)The mid forest brake is made rich by the blooming of beautiful musk-roses.(e)(i) pall, (ii) boon, (Hi) rills, (iv) covert.

4. And such too is the grandeur of the doomsWe have imagined for the mighty dead;Ml lovely tales that we have heard or read;An endless fountain of immortal drink,Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brinkQuestions [Delhi 2014](a)Name the poem and the poet of these lines.(b)Explain: ‘the grandeur of the dooms’.(c)What is the thing of beauty mentioned in these lines’?(d)What image does the poet use in these lines?Answers:(а)The poem is A Thing of Beauty. The poet is John Keats.(b)The magnificence that we imagine for our mighty dead forefathers on the dooms day.(c)The lovely tales of mighty men are mentioned in these lines.(d)The poet uses the image of ‘an endless fountain of immortal drink’ to describe the beautiful bounty of the earth. The earth has bestowed us with sun, moon, flowers, rivers, greenery etc.

QUESTIONS FROM TEXTBOOK SOLVED

Q1. List the things of beauty mentioned in the poem.Ans: Everything of nature is a thing of beauty and a source of pleasure. Some of them are: the sun, the moon, old and young trees, daffodil flowers, small streams with clear water, mass of ferns and the blooming musk-roses. All of them are things of beauty. They are a constant source of joy and pleasure.

Q2. List the things that cause suffering and pain.Ans: There are many things that cause us suffering and pain. Malice and disappointment are “the biggest source of our suffering. Another one is the lack of noble qualities. Our unhealthy and evil ways also give birth to so many troubles and sufferings. They dampen our spirits. They act as a pall of sadness on our lives.

Q3. What does the line, ‘Therefore are we wreathing a flowery band to bind us to earth’ suggest to you?Ans: Keats is a lover of beauty. He employs his senses to discover beauty. The link of man with nature is eternal. The things of beauty are like wreaths of beautiful flowers. We seem to weave a flowery band everyday. It keeps us attached to the beauties of this earth.

Q4. What makes human beings love life in spite of troubles and sufferings?Ans: There are many things that bring us troubles and sufferings. They dampen our spirits. However, ‘some shape of beauty1 brings love and happiness in our lives in spite of such unpleasant things. A thing of beauty removes the pall of sadness and sufferings. It makes us love life.

Q5. Why is ‘grandeur’ associated with the ‘mighty dead’?Ans: The mighty dead were very powerful and dominating persons during their own times. Their achievements made them ‘mighty’ and great. Their noble works dazzle our eyes. We imagine that such mighty dead forefathers will attain more grandeur on the doomsday. Hence ‘grandeur’ is associated with the ‘mighty dead’.

Q6. Do we experience things of beauty only for short moments or do they make a lasting impression on us?Ans: We feel happy by coming into contact with things of beauty. They make a lasting impression on us. Keats makes it clear at the outset. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. It is a constant source of joy and pleasure. Its beauty never declines or diminishes. Its loveliness goes on increasing every moment. Its value remains undiminished. It never passes into nothingness. It removes the pall of sadness that covers our dark spirits.

Q7, What image does the poet use to describe the beautiful bounty of the earth?Ans: John Keats uses a very beautiful image to describe the beautiful bounty of the earth. It is the endless fountain of immortal drink. It pours constantly into our hearts from heaven. Thus, the beautiful bounty of the earth is called “an endless fountain of immortal drink.”

MORE QUESTIONS SOLVED

SHORT ANSWER TYPE QUESTIONS (Word Limit: 30-40 words)Q1. How is a thing of beauty a joy forever?Ans: According to John Keats a thing of beauty is a joy of forever. It is a constant source of happiness and pleasure. Its loveliness increases every moment. It will never pass into nothingness. In other words, a thing of beauty is never devalued.

Q2. How does a thing of beauts provide us shelter and comfort?Ans: John Keats is a great Romantic poet. He is rich in sensuous imagery. Nature provides us things of rare beauty. It keeps a bower quiet for us. A bower is a pleasant place in the shade under a tree. A thing of beauty also provides us peace and security. We enjoy a sound sleep which is full of sweet dreams, health and peaceful breathing.

Q3. How do us bind our self to the earth every morning?Ans: All the Romantic poets stress upon the relationship between man and nature. Keats believes that there is an unbreakable bond which binds man with nature and the earth. The beauties of the earth fascinate man. Every object of nature is a source of beauty and happiness. Everyday we are weaving a wreath of flowers. This flowery band binds us to the beauties of this earth.

Q4. What are the things that cause miseries, sorrows and sufferings to man ?Ans: Man himself is the root cause of all his sufferings. We suffer from malice and distress because we lack human qualities that makes us inhuman. Our life becomes gloomy. We cultivate unhealthy and evil ways. All such things bring miseries, sorrows and sufferings to man.

Q5. What spreads the pall of despondence over our dark spirits? How is it removed?Ans: Man is the creator of his woes. His own nature and actions make his life miserable. He faces miseries and pains. A pall of despondence covers his dark spirits. A thing of beauty provides a ray of hope to man. Some shape of beauty works wonders amid these sorrows and sufferings. It is a thing of beauty that removes the pall of despondence over our dark spirits.

Q6. Name the beauties of nature that are constant source of joy and happiness to man.Ans: Nature is a store house of beauty. The beauties of nature are endless. The sun, the moon, old and young trees, beautiful daffodil flowers and green surroundings are some of such beautiful things. Small streams with clear water, thick mass of ferns, thickets of forest and musk-rose are some other things of beauty. All such things of beauty are a constant source of joy and happiness to man.

Q7. Why and how is ‘grandeur associated with the ‘mighty dead’?Ans: The dooms day is considered the day of judgement, when the dead will receive what is due to them. Our mighty dead forefathers earned name and fame with their noble deeds. It is hoped that they will be rewarded with rare magnificence and grandeur.

Q8. How is a thing of beauty lovelier than all the lovely tales we have heard and read?Ans: All beautiful things of nature are a boon for humanity. The magnificence and beauty of objects of nature surpasses the grandeur of dooms that we have imagined for our mighty dead forefathers. It is lovelier than all the lovely tales that we have heard or read.

Q9. What is the source of the ‘endless fountain’ and what is its effect?Ans: A fountain of eternal joy’and immortality pours into the heart and soul of man. It flows right from the heavens brink and pours into the human heart. It is like an immortal nectar. The immortal drink that nature’s endless fountain pours into our hearts is a source of immense joy for us.

Q10. What is the message for the theme) of the poem ‘A Thing of Beauty’?Ans: The very first line contains the message that John Keats, the great Romantic poet, wants to convey. Keats was a worshipper of beauty. For him beauty was truth and truth, beauty. Hence, for him a thing of beauty is a joy forever. Beauty never fades. Nor is it ever devalued. It never passes into nothingness. When we are full of sorrows and sufferings, some form of beauty comes to our rescue. It removes the pall of sadness and sorrows and gives us joy and pleasure. Thus, beauty is a boon for human beings.

from Blogger http://www.margdarsan.com/2020/09/ncert-class-12-english-chapter-4-thing.html

[sadiyyanesar]

SISTERs Magazine 72nd Issue: “Trials in Life - a Seed Preparing Us to Bloom.”

Like a flower, Sa’diyya Nesar sees trials as a way for us to excel and improve.  Life's reality:

“We have certainly created man into hardship.” (Al-Balad:4)

This world - unlike paradise - is a world where it is required for us to struggle. It is where we taste joy but also sadness, relief but also pain, ease but also hardship.

As described in the Qu’ran,

“And We will surely test you with something of fear and hunger and loss of wealth and lives and fruits, but give good tidings to the patient.” (Al-Baqarah:155)

This verse demonstrates that it is life’s reality to endure some form of test, and we cannot escape it. When enduring a test, we may feel desperate to get out of it. We want to return back to our life of happiness - with our health regained or the loved one that we lost returned - but by not having what we want, we inevitably feel trapped in the situation. Situations that are in the form of trials - trials that bury us deep into helplessness.

Helplessness can lead us to see nothing but darkness; we may feel that the inside of us may break from grief and despair. In that instance, we are just like seeds that are buried beneath the ground and unable to see the light. A seed that is put under so much pressure that it ultimately cracks in preparation to sprout.

A trial’s reality:

We are like seeds when enduring life’s trials, but we do not realise that - just like seeds - our trials are there for us to grow. They are there to prepare us to bloom - being put into pressure and darkness has a purpose and reason. The reason is demonstrated in the aforementioned verse from the Qur’an, that if tests are endured with patience, there will be reward. Trials are therefore a means for us to internally cultivate ourselves through patience so that we may grow in faith and be showered with reward - they are a means to distinguish us as believers and those that are true in faith, through patience.

“A believer is like a stalk. The wind constantly shakes it; the believer is constantly struck by misfortunes. A hypocrite is like a cedar tree (seeming to stand firm) but once it is shaken it is rooted out (not to rise again.)" (Muslim)

As described in the above hadith, those that are true in faith will remain steadfast, in spite of the winds. Their faith will be strong and deep-rooted enough for them to ultimately blossom and bloom.

Cracked seed to bloomed flower:

There comes the question as to how to act when facing trials - how trials in life are like seeds preparing us to bloom.

Seeds need to sprout above ground in order to absorb sunlight and continue to grow. Believers, similarly, may find themselves in darkness when buried in life’s trials. In order to cope they must absorb Allah’s light - His guidance. Believers could turn to Him and rely on Him instead of feeling helpless or alone. Allah (subhana wa ta'ala)’s guidance could bring comfort and light even in the darkest of days. We would be more able to cope with life’s trials by allowing ourselves to absorb His Mercy. Our focus, for this reason, should not be on getting out of the test but rather on turning to Allah (subhana wa ta'ala) with patience - to rely and trust Allah (subhana wa ta'ala) to help us get out of the test according to the timings He sees fit. Seeds, after all, ultimately do sprout from darkness into light but that is after a period of time through cultivation, after the absorption of minerals and water. Water and minerals for believers in times of trials are the teachings of Islam.

To gain Islamic knowledge is to better understand the purpose of trials. We must learn how Islamic figures of the past coped with trials - especially the Prophets. We would be able to further cultivate ourselves when we water ourselves with knowledge from the Qu’ran and Sunnah. We would be able to attain patience through knowledge, even more so after seeing how those in the past went through trials that were far worse than ours and how they were later showered with a victorious reward.

We inadvertently cultivate ourselves into growing internally by seeking Allah (subhana wa ta'ala)’s Light and by learning from our trials. My life with physical ‘disabilities,’* at one point, put me in a total state of darkness where I could not see any hope or point to my trial. I was so focused on getting out of the test that I would feel trapped after not being able to do so. I was going nowhere and drowning in misery. This attitude prevented me from learning from the trial or grow as I always found myself in a state of feeling caged in total darkness. This, however, slowly changed in spite of still facing life with disabilities.

I was still bound to my trial but I found myself seeking Allah’s Mercy instead of feeling trapped with the trial. I started to believe that whatever I was going through was decreed for a reason, and this belief poured in rays of hope. I was then able to focus on what I can learn from the trial and how to grow.

I stumbled across books on the Prophets and saw how their trials were a lot more severe. I learnt that whatever we are going through is temporary, and we should still strive to reach our maximum potential in spite of life’s winds. This shift in attitude towards life’s trials helped me see light in times of darkness. It gave way for me to absorb and accept my trial and later learn to grow.

I was just like a seed that was sprouting from darkness into light. I was not focused on why I was put in the trial - like a seed beneath the ground - but on how I should accept it with patience and strive to grow and reach my maximum potential.

Like seeds, we are bound to this earth where we cannot escape the reality of this life. We can either focus on why life’s trials cracked us open or we can let Allah (subhana wa ta'ala)’s light seep within our lives so that we may grow. So that we may learn, understand and nourish ourselves with His remembrance until we find ourselves transformed as believers - believers of this earth that have managed to blossom and bloom with patience.

*A person is considered disabled due to dependency, but we are all in essence dependent on Allah (subhana wa ta'ala), with different ranges of abilities and inabilities. There is no clear cut categorisation, which gives a sense of ambiguity as to what determined one to be ‘disabled.'