#meaning that the*old* J.G. is dead

[hairtusk]

sense impressions from my first two days as a teaching assistant ::

TA'd a graphic design class where all the boys were making magazines about football, and all the girls were making magazines about horror movies

^^ in that same class i spent 30minutes talking to a 13 year old girl about jennifer's body 2009 (she was shocked i'd heard of it at my frankly prehistoric age) (she was not alive in 2009)

spent two hours teaching kids about dystopia using j.g. ballard and felt weird about it

teenage boys are as cruel as i remember

i don't know if it's the pandemic, or technology, or what :: but these teens literally cannot read, cannot write, cannot comprehend. i mean this deeply and truly and with fear in my heart.

even my students who don't special education needs can't sit through a single 5 minute video clip

i'm much better at this than i thought i would be

jesus christ why can't these kids write a single comprehensible sentence oh my god

i am so unimaginably tired. absolutely dead on my feet.

[ripeteeth]

Writing Patterns

Rules: List the first line of your last 10 (posted) fics and see if there’s a pattern! Tagged by @perverse-idyll, thanks for tagging me! This is really interesting, especially as I’ve been playing with my writing style and changing it up lately.

1. “A long cloak of night has fallen across the bed.” [Milk Teeth, MDZS, Jiang Yanli/Jiang Cheng. If I’m ENTIRELY honest, this is an inside joke with myself, as an old livejournal friend once described Snape by saying “pick up your long cloak of darkness and get to therapy”, which is a statement I think describes Jiang Cheng quite well.

2. “The trouble with stories is that they don’t always line up quite right.” [Over My Dead Body, MDZS, Wangxian, WIP. I like to bullshit about storytelling and story structure. There’s something fascinating about the interplay of author and reader, and of reminding the reader that they are sitting down to a story. There’s a special charm when the author editorializes and goes off on tangents - such as Victor Hugo in Les Mis - and while I am no Victor Hugo, it IS extremely fun to do.]

3. “‘Please,’ you say, and he likes it when you say it.” [empty, save you and i, Good Omens, Aziraphale/Crowley. I just love the cadence of this and the way it establishes the close, confessional second person POV.]

4. “Naked, wrapped in silk, and turned away on his side.” [say it like you mean it (with your fists for once), Kinnporsche, Gun/Vegas. Does the lyric “why is the bedroom so cold / you’ve turned away on your side” from Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart haunt you like it does me? I like how this established the feeling of isolation and loneliness.]

5. “This is how it goes.” [Zoetrope, MDZS, songxuexiao. Again with the storytelling.]

6. “The day he meets them is a red-sky day.” [blood, bones, and butter, MDZS, songxuexiao. Red sky at warning, sailors take warning! How else should you introduce my babygirl Xue Yang? I’m realizing a lot of my lines have tucked-in references, allusions, and inside jokes with myself.]

7. “Spring is pale in Revachol.” [Revachol Calling, Disco Elysium, Harry/Kim, WIP. Honestly, I don’t like this line and if I ever rewrite it, I hope to have something that fits better. This doesn’t grab in the way a DE fic should grab the reader. God, this WIP haunts me. Someday I WILL finish it, but it’s been three years since I’ve played the game and I absolutely need to play it again to get a feel for the voices.]

8. “The walk home is lonely.” [long slow love song, TGCF, fengqing, WIP. I really like short first sentences, huh? I suppose this is just brief scene-setting. Mu Qing seems like a guy who takes a lot to open up, so a short opening line suits him.]

9. “He wonders how he’ll die.” [impact, Beyond Evil, lee dongsik/han juwon. I’m proud of this one. I feel like this sets the tone and grabs attention. It’s just a short fic inspired by J.G. Ballard’s Crash, so I can’t think of a better way to begin.]

10. “When Kinn had been a boy, he’d had an old tomcat that liked to sleep in his bed.” [shotgunning, Kinnporsche, vegas/kinn/porsche, WIP. Introduces this as a Kinn character piece.]

Bonus from unposted Frankensmut: “One should not travel these woods alone; the Wild Hunt is strong here, and all are prey.” [Introduction to Natural Philosophy, Frankenstein, The Creature/Victor Frankenstein, WIP. An opening line that promises you that the hunter WILL get his prey. I promise you this.]

What I’m really learning here is that 1. I need to work on finishing my goddamn wips, and 2. wow I really rely on passive voice to open. Huh. Are there any other patterns? Maybe some authorial direction to remind the reader of the story structure. I’ve also got a bit of a penchant for short opening sentences followed by paragraphs that either elaborate on it or negate it, usually heavier in length and description as a counterbalance. Like adding acid to balance fat or sugar. Truthfully, I’ve kinda grown bored with my typical writing style, which is partly why I haven’t posted much fic lately. Art is all about pushing yourself and trying new things and innovating. I’m dead sick of writing present-tense third person limited and am vibing with first and second-person POV, which aren’t fan favorites for fic. I’d also LOVE to try something much more zoomed out, like omniscient third-person.

This was fun! Tagging @brawlite-archive, @iodhadh, @jaggededges123, @rcmclachlan, @weatheredlaw, and @darcylindbergh if you’re vibing, and anyone else who’s interested!

[ophthalmotropy]

Filmmaker: There’s always been that kinship between Ballard and the surrealist artists, the idea of the exterior world as a kind of projection of the subconscious —

Cronenberg: Yes! Exactly.

Filmmaker: But Ballard was certainly interested in the 20th-century landscape and its relationship to psychology. I can understand not having Elizabeth Taylor in the movie, but what about billboards, advertising, the media —

Cronenberg: Television —

Filmmaker: Right. That’s not in the movie at all.

Cronenberg: That’s correct. And I feel that I must say its presence isn’t particularly dynamic in the book either. Elizabeth Taylor — even Elizabeth Taylor isn’t Elizabeth Taylor anymore. She does not that that iconic Hollywood value she had 25 years ago. To have Vaughn crash with a 65-year-old lady does not have the same meaning!

Filmmaker: But you could have had Sharon Stone in there or something.

Cronenberg: I don’t think you could. I don’t think the Hollywood icons now have the same function or power they had then. They’re not the same. Also, to turn Vaughn into a celebrity stalker, which wasn’t exactly a fixed category when Ballard was writing but has become one now, would diminish him. I wanted him to be more slippery and difficult to pinpoint. So those were the two main reasons I got rid of that whole “stalking Elizabeth Taylor” routine and substituted James Dean — safely dead, safely a ’50s Hollywood icon.

Braking and Entering: Director David Cronenberg on His Austere and Unnerving J.G. Ballard Adaptation, Crash

[nox-artemis]

Even though J.G. left me without a word,

Even though they've caused me a lot of pain in doing that,

Even though I have every reason to wish death on them...

I definitely believe I'd be much worse off if I did find out that they died.

And I hope that they're okay

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

The New Nihilism

It feels increasingly difficult to tell the difference between—on one hand—being old, sick, and defeated, and—on the other hand—living in a time-&-place that is itself senile, tired, and defeated. Sometimes I think it’s just me—but then I find that some younger, healthier people seem to be undergoing similar sensations of ennui, despair, and impotent anger. Maybe it’s not just me.

A friend of mine attributed the turn to disillusion with “everything”, including old-fashioned radical/activist positions, to disappointment over the present political regime in the US, which was somehow expected to usher in a turn away from the reactionary decades since the 1980s, or even a “progress” toward some sort of democratic socialism. Although I myself didn’t share this optimism (I always assume that anyone who even wants to be President of the US must be a psychopathic murderer) I can see that “youth” suffered a powerful disillusionment at the utter failure of Liberalism to turn the tide against Capitalism Triumphalism. The disillusion gave rise to OCCUPY and the failure of OCCUPY led to a move toward sheer negation.

However I think this merely political analysis of the “new nothing” may be too two-dimensional to do justice to the extent to which all hope of “change” has died under Kognitive Kapital and the technopathocracy. Despite my remnant hippy flower- power sentiments I too feel this “terminal” condition (as Nietzsche called it), which I express by saying, only half-jokingly, that we have at last reached the Future, and that the truly horrible truth of the End of the World is that it doesn’t end.

One big J.G. Ballard/Philip K. Dick shopping mall from now till eternity, basically.

This IS the future—how do you like it so far? Life in the Ruins: not so bad for the bourgeoisie, the loyal servants of the One Percent. Air-conditioned ruins! No Ragnarok, no Rapture, no dramatic closure: just an endless re-run of reality TV cop shows. 2012 has come and gone, and we’re still in debt to some faceless bank, still chained to our screens.

Most people—in order to live at all—seem to need around themselves a penumbra of “illusion” (to quote Nietzsche again):—that the world is just rolling along as usual, some good days some bad, but in essence no different now than in 10000 BC or 1492 AD or next year. Some even need to believe in Progress, that the Future will solve all our problems, and even that life is much better for us now than for (say) people in the 5th century AD. We live longer thanx to Modern Science—of course our extra years are largely spent as “medical objects”—sick and worn out but kept ticking by Machines & Pills that spin huge profits for a few megacorporations & insurance companies. Nation of Struldbugs.

True, we’re suffocating in the mire generated by our rule of sick machines under the Numisphere of Money. At least ten times as much money now exists than it would take to buy the whole world—and yet species are vanishing space itself is vanishing, icecaps melting, air and water grown toxic, culture grown toxic, landscape sacrificed to fracking and megamalls, noise-fascism, etc, etc. But Science will cure all that ills that Science has created—in the Future (in the “long run”, when we’re all dead, as Lord Keynes put it); so meanwhile we’ll carry on consuming the world and shitting it out as waste—because it’s convenient & efficient & profitable to do so, and because we like it.

Well, this is all a bunch of whiney left-liberal cliches, no? Heard it before a million times. Yawn. How boring, how infantile, how useless. Even if it were all true... what can we do about it? If our Anointed Leaders can’t or won’t stop it, who will? God? Satan? The “People”?

All the fashionable “solutions” to the “crisis”, from electronic democracy to revolutionary violence, from locavorism to solar-powered dingbats, from financial market regulation to the General Strike—all of them, however ridiculous or sublime, depend on one preliminary radical change—a seismic shift in human consciousness. Without such a change all the hope of reform is futile. And if such a change were somehow to occur, no “reform” would be necessary. The world would simply change. The whales would be saved. War no more. And so on.

What force could (even in theory) bring about such a shift? Religion? In 6,000 years of organized religion matters have only gotten worse. Psychedelic drugs in the reservoirs? The Mayan calendar? Nostalgia? Terror?

If catastrophic disaster is now inevitable, perhaps the “Survivalist” scenario will ensue, and a few brave millions will create a green utopia in the smoking waste. But won’t Capitalism find a way to profit even from the End of the World? Some would claim that it’s doing so already. The true catastrophe may be the final apotheosis of commodity fetishism.

Let’s assume for the sake of argument that this paradise of power tools and back-up alarms is all we’ve got & all we’re going to get. Capitalism can deal with global warming—it can sell water-wings and disaster insurance. So it’s all over, let’s say—but we’ve still got television & Twitter. Childhood’s End—i.e. the child as ultimate consumer, eager for the brand. Terrorism or home shopping network—take yr pick (democracy means choice).

Since the death of the Historical Movement of the Social in 1989 (last gasp of the hideous “short” XXth century that started in 1914) the only “alternative” to Capitalist Neo-Liberal totalitarianism that seems to have emerged is religious neo-fascism. I understand why someone would want to be a violent fundamentalist bigot—I even sympathize—but just because I feel sorry for lepers doesn’t mean I want to be one.

When I attempt to retain some shreds of my former antipessimism I fantasize that History may not be over, that some sort of Populist Green Social Democracy might yet emerge to challenge the obscene smugness of “Money Interests”—something along the lines of 1970s Scandinavian monarcho-socialism—which in retrospect now looks the most humane form of the State ever to have emerged from the putrid suck-hole of Civilization. (Think of Amsterdam in its heyday.) Of course as an anarchist I’d still have to oppose it—but at least I’d have the luxury of believing that, in such a situation, anarchy might actually stand some chance of success. Even if such a movement were to emerge, however, we can rest damn-well assured it won’t happen in the USA. Or anywhere in the ghost-realm of dead Marxism, either. Maybe Scotland!

It would seem quite pointless to wait around for such a rebirth of the Social. Years ago many radicals gave up all hope of The Revolution, and the few who still adhere to it remind me of religious fanatics. It might be soothing to lapse into such doctrinaire revolutionism, just as it might be soothing to sink into mystical religion—but for me at least both options have lost their savor. Again, I sympathize with those true believers (although not so much when they lapse into authoritarian leftism or fascism)— nevertheless, frankly, I’m too depressed to embrace their Illusions.

If the End-Time scenario sketched above be considered actually true, what alternatives might exist besides suicidal despair? After much thought I’ve come up with three basic strategies.

1) Passive Escapism. Keep your head down, don’t make waves. Capitalism permits all sorts of “lifestyles” (I hate that word)—just pick one & try to enjoy it. You’re even allowed to live as a dirt farmer without electricity & infernal combustion, like a sort of secular Amish refusnik. Well, maybe not. But at least you could flirt with such a life. “Smoke Pot, Eat Chicken, Drink Tea,” as we used to say in the 60s in the Moorish Church of America, our psychedelic cult. Hope they don’t catch you. Fit yourself into some Permitted Category such as Neo-Hippy or even Anabaptist.

2) Active Escapism. In this scenario you attempt to create the optimal conditions for the emergence of Autonomous Zones, whether temporary, periodic or even (semi)permanent. In 1984 when I first coined the term Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ)

I envisioned it as a complement to The Revolution—although I was already, to be truthful, tired of waiting for a moment that seemed to have failed in 1968. The TAZ would give a taste or premonition of real liberties: in effect you would attempt to live as if the Revolution had already occurred, so as not to die without ever having experienced “free freedom” (as Rimbaud called it, liberte libre). Create your own pirate utopia.

Of course the TAZ can be as brief & simple as a really good dinner party, but the true autonomist will want to maximize the potential for longer & deeper experiences of authentic lived life. Almost inevitably this will involve crime, so it’s necessary to think like a criminal, not a victim. A “Johnson” as Burroughs used to say—not a “mark”. How else can one live (and live well) without Work. Work, the curse of the thinking class. Wage slavery. If you’re lucky enough to be a successful artist, you can perhaps achieve relative autonomy without breaking any obvious laws (except the laws of good taste, perhaps). Or you could inherit a million. (More than a million would be a curse.) Forget revolutionary morality—the question is, can you afford your taste of freedom? For most of us, crime will be not only a pleasure but a necessity. The old anarcho-Illegalists showed the way: individual expropriation. Getting caught of course spoils the whole thing—but risk is an aspect of self-authenticity.

One scenario I’ve imagined for active Escapism would be to move to a remote rural area along with several hundred other libertarian socialists—enough to take over the local government (municipal or even county) and elect or control the sheriffs & judges, the parent/teacher association, volunteer fire department and even the water authority. Fund the venture with cultivation of illegal phantastice and carry on a discreet trade. Organize as a “Union of Egoists” for mutual benefit & ecstatic pleasures—perhaps under the guise of “communes” or even monasteries, who cares. Enjoy it as long as it lasts.

I know for a fact that this plan is being worked on in several places in America—but of course I’m not going to say where.

Another possible model for individual escapists might be the nomadic adventurer. Given that the whole world seems to be turning into a giant parking lot or social network, I don’t know if this option remains open, but I suspect that it might. The trick would be to travel in places where tourists don’t—if such places still exist—and to involve oneself in fascinating and dangerous situations. For example if I were young and healthy I’d’ve gone to France to take part in the TAZ that grew around resistance to the new airport—or to Greece—or Mexico—wherever the perverse spirit of rebellion crops up. The problem here is of course funding. (Sending back statues stuffed with hash is no longer a good idea.) How to pay for yr life of adventure? Love will find a way. It doesn’t matter so much if one agrees with the ideals of Tahrir Square or Zucotti Park—the point is just to be there.

3. Revenge. I call it Zarathustra’s Revenge because as Nietzsche said, revenge may be second rate but it’s not nothing. One might enjoy the satisfaction of terrifying the bastards for at least a few moments. Formerly I advocated “Poetic Terrorism” rather than actual violence, the idea being that art could be wielded as a weapon. Now I’ve rather come to doubt it. But perhaps weapons might be wielded as art. From the sledgehammer of the Luddites to the black bomb of the attentat, destruction could serve as a form of creativity, for its own sake, or for purely aesthetic reasons, without any illusions about revolution. Oscar Wilde meets the acte gratuit: a dandyism of despair.

What troubles me about this idea is that it seems impossible to distinguish here between the action of post-leftist anarcho-nihilists and the action of post-rightist neo-traditionalist reactionaries. For that matter, a bomb may as well be detonated by fundamentalist fanatics—what difference would it make to the victims or the “innocent bystanders”? Blowing up a nanotechnology lab—why shouldn’t this be the act of a desperate monarchist as easily as that of a Nietzschean anarchist?

In a recent book by Tiqqun (Theory of Bloom), it was fascinating to come suddenly across the constellation of Nietzsche, Rene Guenon, Julius Evola, et al. as examples of a sharp and just critique of the Bloom syndrome—i.e., of progress-as-illusion. Of course the “beyond left and right” position has two sides—one approaching from the left, the other from the right. The European New Right (Alain de Benoist & his gang) are big admirers of Guy Debord, for a similar reason (his critique, not his proposals).

The post-left can now appreciate Traditionalism as a reaction against modernity just as the neo-traditionalists can appreciate Situationism. But this doesn’t mean that post-anarchist anarchists are identical with post-fascism fascists!

I’m reminded of the situation in fin-de-siecle France that gave rise to the strange alliance between anarchists and monarchists; for example the Cerce Proudhon. This surreal conjunction came about for two reasons: a) both factions hated liberal democracy, and b) the monarchists had money. The marriage gave birth to weird progeny, such as Georges Sorel. And Mussolini famously began his career as an Individualist anarchist!

Another link between left & right could be analyzed as a kind of existentialism; once again Nietzsche is the founding parent here, I think. On the left there were thinkers like Gide or Camus. On the right, that illuminated villain Baron Julius Evola used to tell his little ultra-right groupuscules in Rome to attack the Modern World—even though the restoraton of tradition was a hopeless dream—if only as an act of magical self-creation. Being trumps essence. One must cherish no attachment to mere results. Surely Tiqqun’s advocacy of the “perfect Surrealist act” (firing a revolver at random into a crowd of “innocent by-standers”) partakes of this form of action-as-despair. (Incidentally I have to confess that this is the sort of thing that has always—to my regret—prevented my embracing Surrealism: it’s just too cruel. I don’t admire de Sade, either.)

Of course, as we know, the problem with the Traditionalists is that they were never traditional enough. They looked back at a lost civilization as their “goal” (religion, mysticism, monarchism, arts-&-crafts, etc.) whereas they should have realized that the real tradition is the “primordial anarchy” of the Stone Age, tribalism, hunting/gathering, animism—what I call the Neanderthal Liberation Front. Paul Goodman used the term “Neolithic Conservatism” to describe his brand of anarchism—but “Paleolithic Reaction” might be more appropriate!

The other major problem with the Traditionalist Right is that the entire emotional tone of the movement is rooted in self-repression. Here a rough Reichean analysis suffices to demonstrate that the authoritarian body reflects a damaged soul, and that only anarchy is compatible with real self-realization.

The European New Right that arose in the 90s still carries on its propaganda—and these chaps are not just vulgar nationalist chauvenist anti-semitic homophobic thugs—they’re intellectuals & artists. I think they’re evil, but that doesn’t mean I find them boring. Or even wrong on certain points. They also hate the nanotechnologists!

Although I attempted to set off a few bombs back in the 1960s (against the war in Vietnam) I’m glad, on the whole, that they failed to detonate (technology was never my metier). It saves me from wondering if I would’ve experienced “moral qualms”. Instead I chose the path of the propagandist and remained an activist in anarchist media from 1984 to about 2004. I collaborated with the Autonomedia publishing collective, the IWW, the John Henry Mackay Society (Left Stirnerites) and the old NYC Libertarian Book Club (founded by comrades of Emma Goldman, some of whom I knew, & who are now all dead). I had a radio show on WBAI (Pacifica) for 18 years. I lectured all over Europe and East Europe in the 90s. I had a very nice time, thank you. But anarchism seems even farther off now than it looked in 1984, or indeed in 1958, when I first became an anarchist by reading George Harriman’s Krazy Kat. Well, being an existentialist means you never have to say you’re sorry.

In the last few years in anarchist circles there’s appeared a trend “back” to Stirner/Nietzsche Individualism—because after all, who can take revolutionary anarcho-communism or syndicalism seriously anymore? Since I’ve adhered to this Individualist position for decades (although tempered by admiration for Charles Fourier and certain “spiritual anarchists” like Gustave Landauer) I naturally find this trend agreeable.

“Green anarchists” & AntiCivilization Neo-primitivists seem (some of them) to be moving toward a new pole of attraction, nihilism. Perhaps neo-nihilism would serve as a better label, since this tendency is not simply replicating the nihilism of the Russian narodniks or the French attentatists of circa 1890 to 1912, however much the new nihilists look to the old ones as precursors. I share their critique—in fact I think I’ve been mirroring it to a large extent in this essay: creative despair, let’s call it. What I do not understand however is their proposal—if any. “What is to be done?” was originally a nihilist slogan, after all, before Lenin appropriated it. I presume that my option #1, passive escape, would not suit the agenda. As for Active Escapism, to use the suffix “ism” implies some form not only of ideology but also some action. What is the logical outcome of this train of thought?

As an animist I experience the world (outside Civilization) as essentially sentient. The death of God means the rebirth of the gods, as Nietzsche implied in his last “mad” letters from Turin— the resurrection of the great god PAN—chaos, Eros, Gaia, & Old Night, as Hesiod put it—Ontological anarchy, Desire, Life itself, & the Darkness of revolt & negation—all seem to me as real as they need to be.

I still adhere to a certain kind of spiritual anarchism—but only as heresy and paganism, not as orthodoxy and monotheism. I have great respect for Dorothy Day—her writing influenced me in the 60s—and Ivan Illich, whom I knew personally—but in the end I cannot deal with the cognitive dissonance between anarchism and the Pope! Nevertheless I can believe in the re-paganaziation of monotheism. I hold to this pagan tradition because I sense the universe as alive, not as “dead matter.” As a life-long psychedelicist I have always thought that matter & spirit are identical, and that this fact alone legitimizes what Theory calls “desire”.

From this p.o.v. the phrase “revolution of everyday life” still seems to have some validity—if only in terms of the second proposal, Active Escapism or the TAZ. As for the third possibility— Zarathustra’s Revenge—this seems like a possible path for the new nihilism, at least from a philosophical perspective. But since I am unable personally to advocate it, I leave the question open.

But here—I think—is the point at which I both meet with & diverge from the new nihilism. I too seem to believe that Predatory Capitalism has won and that no revolution is possible in the classical sense of that term. But somehow I can’t bring myself to be “against everything.” Within the Temporary Autonomous Zone there still seems to persist the possibility of “authentic life,” if only for a moment—and if this position amounts to mere Escapism, then let us become Houdini. The new surge of interest in Individualism is obviously a response to the Death of the Social. But does the new nihilism imply the death even of the individual and the “union of egoists” or Nietzschean free spirits? On my good days, I like to think not.

No matter which of the three paths one takes (or others I can’t yet imagine) it seems to me that the essential thing is not to collapse into mere apathy. Depression we may have to accept, impotent rage we may have to accept, revolutionary pessimism we may have to accept. But as e.e. cummings (anarchist poet) said, there is some shit we will not take, lest we simply become the enemy by default. Can’t go on, must go on. Cultivate rosebuds, even selfish pleasures, as long as a few birds & flowers still remain. Even love may not be impossible...

[takeiteasypeasybaby]

Save Me: Chapter 37 - Hard and Slow Path

~Hey guys! Chapter 37 is out now! I hope everyone enjoys this one and is having a good week <3~

Both Molly and Negan would have to face the difficult path to their happiness. But was that what they both wanted?

Negan's POV//

Gabe had just come to see me for our weekly chat which he took over after Rick.

The fucker wanted my 'confession' or to see my progress into becoming someone they wanted.

He tried to get me to do some meditation shit but I just bounced a ball Judith had given me against the wall.

I wasn't gonna give him shit, I had changed, that was true, but I wasn't about to become this fairy fucking godmother.

Soon enough he grew tired and left my cell, slamming the door behind him.

He stormed off and while I didn't notice at first, I saw a small gap between the door and the wall.

He had left it open.

It was early in the morning so I knew people would be still in their houses.

I pushed open the door slowly and smirked at my freedom.

I grabbed a nearby shovel from outside the cell and made my way to Michonne's house.

I knew she was still at Hilltop.

I opened the door slowly and crept up the stairs, opening all the doors till I came across the door which was where I first held Judith.

It was now her bedroom, she wasn't there but I looked around and saw the painting above her bed.

It was a drawing she had made of Michonne, Rick, Carl, RJ and her, all holding hands.

I sighed, feeling guilty about Rick and Carl. I rested my hand against the bedpost and felt a chain.

I looked down and saw a compass.

I grabbed it, put it around my neck and took a rucksack from downstairs, filled it with tomatoes and some tins of food from the pantry then made my way towards the side fence.

I needed to escape.

I wanted to go back to the Sanctuary and Michonne had told me of its ruin so I knew no one would be there.

I started to climb up the wall and threw my shovel over the side just as I was stopped by a voice.

'Thought you were smarter than this. Guess not...' she said.

It was Judith.

I turned around and saw her pointing a gun at me.

I chuckled, saying 'you're not gonna shoot me kid'.

'Um yeah, I will' she retorted.

I sighed.

'I'm not going back, so you just pull that trigger if that's what you're gonna do lil' lady' I replied, clinging onto the wall.

She cocked the gun at this point.

I continued, 'how bout this, how bout I go my way and you go yours and we never see each other again'.

It hurt me to say this.

'How bout no' she retorted as she ushered me down with her gun.

I chuckled as I climbed back down and stood facing her.

'You know when your mom and dad, when they locked me up, they told me that I would be good for somethin'. That I would help people see that things could change and they did. Holy shit did they ever. But, for everybody but me. I mean look around, Alexandria is a goddamn wonderland! But my part? It's just four walls and a bed pan. Just tell Molly I tried okay?' I said softly.

She still pointed the gun at me, saying softly 'my mom makes the rules, not me'.

'But you can. You know it's just like when we have our chats. You're not letting me go, you're just not letting me leave' I said smirking.

'You know there's nothing out there for you, for anyone' she said sternly.

I just nodded.

'Yeah...you know me, you're one of the people whose known me better than most for a very long time. So, I promise, I promise you that I won't hurt anybody, even if they try to hurt me. But, I gotta go' I said sadly.

'Thank you' I added as she lowered her gun and I climbed back up the wall.

She noticed the compass and said 'hey! Were you in my room?'.

I grabbed the compass and smiled saying, 'you want it back?'.

She frowned before saying 'keep it, it'll help you find your way. But if I see you again I'll shoot!'.

This made me chuckle.

'Yeah, I would' I replied as I climbed over the top.

I walked for miles, stopping for water at nearby rivers and eating some tins of food I brought, all the while thinking about Molly.

I knew she would hate that I escaped but I had to get out of there, that cell was killing me.

I came across some abandoned shops which I found an ace leather jacket in.

I knew my way to the Sanctuary from Alexandria so it only took a couple days.

Once I got there, my heart sank at its ruin.

Glass and plastic was all over the courtyard, old crops were dead and the doors were wide open with walkers lurking everywhere.

I smirked at seeing Simon still on the fence and I took out the other walkers who were roaming freely with my shovel.

I walked inside and saw the state of our old main hall.

It was completely flooded with chairs and cabinets knocked over and empty crates across the floor.

I looked up to the balcony where I had once stood with Molly, I looked over to the table where we sat together for the first time.

It brought tears to my eyes and I tried to flip over the strewn furniture and just sat in the chair.

I positioned the shovel over my shoulders as I reminisced about Lucille and my people who were gone now.

I walked upstairs, passing down the hallway to Molly's room which was completely flipped upside down.

I sighed as I scanned the room and saw one of her old t-shirts which she loved in the corner.

So, I picked it up and put it in the rucksack, knowing that I would give it back to her.

I looked at it, crumpled up in my hands as I held the compass in my hands, turning it over I saw the engraving J.G.

I sighed and closed my eyes knowing that I had to go back.

I couldn't abandon Judith or Molly, even if that meant going back to my cell.

There really was nothing here for me anymore.

The only thing that hadn't been taken was an old dirt bike round the side of the courtyard.

I paused for a moment, looking at my old kingdom and then hopped on the bike and drove back to Alexandria.

As I was driving down the empty road I saw in the distance a small figure pointing a gun at me.

I ducked when I heard a shot fired and knowing it had hit the tyre, I swerved and was flipped off the bike and rolled down into the grassy verge.

'Fuck' I said breathlessly as I got up to see Judith standing there.

'Alright slow down kid, I know you said you'd shoot but damn' I said as I held up my hands.

She walked closer, 'whole lotta people are out looking for you' she said sternly.

My first question was Molly, but I didn't ask that.

'I told you there was nothing out there!' she shouted.

I stroked my brow and said 'you sure as shit did'.

She lunged forward slightly and yelled 'language! I'm a kid, asshole'.

I chuckled at that and struggled to stand.

'Yeah you are, agh. What can I say, I like to swear in front of my friends, people that know some shit' I said smirking as I took the compass from around my neck and gave it back to her.

'Thanks for lettin' me borrow that' I said smiling down at her.

She nodded.

'You going back to Alexandria?' she asked as she wrapped the compass around her hand and pointed the gun at me more directly.

'Yep, cell and all' I replied.

She tilted her head and asked, 'why?'.

'Because you were right, I got a good look outside my ten by ten and there is nothing here for me, not anymore' I replied sadly.

'So you go back...then what?' she asked.

I smiled at her consideration.

'I will let you know when I know' I replied softly.

She just exhaled and walked back to Alexandria as I followed.

When we got back they grabbed me and tied my hands, shoving me back into my cell as the fortified the lock.

I sighed as I sat down on my bed, the only thing I had from back there was Molly's t-shirt which I held now in my hands and pressed it to my face.

Molly's POV//

'Molly! Come here it's important' Jesus shouted to me as I was working away in the fields.

I put down my tools, dusted the dirt from my knees and walked over to the house.

'What is it?' I asked as I wiped my brow.

'We've just got word from Alexandria that Negan escaped...' he said seriously.

'What?!' I yelled.

'How did this happen?' I said as I took off my outside clothes and put on my jacket.

'The cell door was left open and he escaped to the Sanctuary. No one was hurt' he said as I grabbed my things frantically and headed for the door.

'Wha?' he started to say just as I spun back around and answered his question.

'I'm going to Alexandria to find out what the fuck is going on' I said as I headed for my bike.

I strapped on my helmet and headed down the road to my home.

What the hell was he up to?

This wasn't what I meant when I asked him to show them who he really was!

I was so pissed.

Did he want to make them trust him even less?

That was the only way we could have a future, a chance.

I revved the bike and accelerated faster down the road till I reached the gates.

I didn't even bother to do anything once I passed the gates but take off my helmet, lean my bike against the wall and made a direct b-line for Negan's cell...

[marginalgloss]

different and worse

‘…There were so many ways in which the vast army of the dead could be drilled, classified, inspected, and made to present their ghostly arms. No end to the institutions, civilian and military, busy drawing up their sombre balance sheet and recording it in wood, stone or metal. But if there was no end to the institutions there was no end to the dead men either. In truth, there were more than enough to go round several times over…’

Troubles was not the first novel by J.G. Farrell, but it was the first to achieve really significant literary success. Farrell wrote three novels set in a loosely connected trilogy set in the twilight of the British empire — I read The Singapore Grip last year, and I’ve been meaning to revisit this one, which I first read many years ago. It might be the best thing Farrell ever wrote, though I now find myself wanting to reread The Siege of Krishnapur as well.

Troubles is set in Ireland, in the immediate aftermath of the First World War. Having been freshly discharged from the army, Brendan Archer (mostly known as ‘the Major’) travels there to visit Angela Spencer; Brendan is more or less convinced that he and Angela are engaged, having met previously while he was on leave from the front lines. They have exchanged letters since, but on arriving at her home — the Majestic hotel — he finds her distant. Her father, Edward, is a model of English strength and reserve. And then there is the hotel itself: a gothic revival falling apart at the seams, overrun by potted plants and cats, populated by a skeleton crew of staff and flocks of elderly women. 

The hotel is labyrinthine and seemingly fathomless, like something out of Ballard or Borges. It is an unmappable confection of turrets and towers, sewn up with catwalks, stairwells, secret corridors. The tennis courts are thick with weeds; the glass ceiling of the ballroom is on the verge of collapse; there are strange things swimming in the murky remnants of the swimming pool. Here, at the end of a lonely peninsula, the residents are cut off from the outside world. The only reminder that the Irish exist at all comes from the figures glimpsed at the roadside, sometime seen standing in the fields, or rummaging in the bins at the house. (Many of them are starving.) 

We soon realise that the Major lives in a state of post-traumatic myopia. Everything around him seems to take place in a sort of dreamlike haze. Like a typical man of his class he makes a point of not seeing things about how the world is operating, but his experiences in the war place him at a further remove from the rest of society. He is typically English; he adopts an attitude of perpetual befuddlement, leaning heavily on privilege and impatience to get himself through the day. He is inflexible and uncommunicative. But he is also deeply traumatised. His memories are shot full of holes:

‘Although he was sure that he had never actually proposed to Angela during the few days of their acquaintance, it was beyond doubt that they were engaged: a certainty fostered by the fact that from the very beginning she had signed her letters ‘Your loving fiancée, Angela’. This had surprised him at first. But, with the odour of death drifting into the dug-out in which he scratched out his replies by the light of a candle, it would have been trivial and discourteous beyond words to split hairs about such purely social distinctions.’

Ireland is riven by violence. Rumours of killings are rife around the hotel. People are shot in ones and twos every day, apparently at random. Interspersed throughout the book are newspaper clippings, many of which seem absurd. It seems a bleak, purposeless cycle of assault and recrimination. But in spite of the resident paranoia, next to nothing actually happens on the grounds of the Majestic. No republican ‘shinners’ appear intent on massacring the residents in their beds. But regardless, the English are determined to make a stand — even if it is only in the bar of the local pub.

This novel was first published in 1970, at a time when Northern Ireland was seeing some of the worst violence in the latter half of the twentieth century. By comparison the level of strife depicted here seems almost parochial by comparison. But this is because the whole text of the novel is sunk within the consciousness of an observer who is too broken himself to see what’s really happening. After all, this is 1919: in historical terms we are in the thick of the Irish war of independence. The country would finally become its own nation state a few years later. But none of it feels that way to the characters in the book.

Perhaps there’s something about it that approximates the feeling of watching the news in the late sixties or early seventies— while living in England, of course. It is a constant drip-feed of appalling atrocity, delivered with the benefit of distance so that the expected response from the audience is to feel exactly as the Major does: ‘An old man is gunned down in the street and within a couple of days this senseless act is both normal and inevitable,’ reflects the Major. For him these killings might as well be happening in a vacuum. Names like De Valera float through the air, but they might as well belong to legendary beings. There’s no awareness of history or context. There is barely a line in this book which affords a glimpse of the world from an Irish perspective. We don’t know how they might feel about it because we aren’t told. 

‘The Major only glanced at the newspaper these days, tired of trying to comprehend a situation which defied comprehension, a war without battles or trenches. Why should one bother with the details: the raids for arms, the shootings of policemen, the intimidations? What could one learn from the details of chaos? Every now and then, however, he would become aware with a feeling of shock that, for all its lack of pattern, the situation was different, and always a little worse.’

We are stuck in the belly of the beast, and the beast is dying. The Major is trapped in ‘the country’s vast and narcotic inertia’. The hotel is falling apart. Angela vanishes not long after the Major arrives, and then she dies. Somehow this is not a cause for much regret. From then on, he has no reason to stay in Ireland, but the place has a strange gravity that seems to draw him back. And there is Sarah, a local woman who seems to have taken an interest in him. She is fiery, direct and open — far more than he — and initially she is mostly confined to a wheelchair. There are shades of Stefan Zweig’s Beware of Pity in their relationship: the Major is a model of polite restraint, while Sarah is openly flirtatious, at times frantic with emotion:

‘One day when he had been speaking, though impersonally, about marriage and its place in the modern world, she interrupted him brutally by saying: ‘It’s not a wife you’re looking for, Brendan. It’s a mother!’ The Major was upset because he had not, in fact, been saying he was looking for either. ‘Why are you so polite the whole time?’ she would ask derisively, while the Major, appalled, wondered what was wrong with being polite. ‘Why are you always fussing around those infernal old women? Can’t you smell how awful they are?’ she would demand, making a disgusted face, and when the Major said nothing she would burst out: ‘Because you’re an old woman yourself, that’s why.’ And since the Major maintained his hurt and dignified silence: ‘And for Jesus’ sake stop looking at me like a stuffed squirrel!’’

It’s a very funny book. Farrell was a masterful stylist, and he wields irony here like a weapon. There is humour to be had at the expense of the English in a way that recalls P. G. Wodehouse. But with Jeeves and Wooster there is the pleasure of retreating inside a world which is entirely its own — for the most part, nothing really awful can happen there. Whereas here, we are never allowed to forget that something awful is perpetually happening only just outside of that friendly bubble. And it isn’t so cosy inside the bubble either. 

Either way, we cannot forget that the characters of the novel are all implicated, if only through their vast unthinking ignorance. There is something very dark crouching at the heart of this book, something made all the more tragic by the Major’s essential simplicity, by his constant air of strained incomprehension. We know that he will never learn, that he will never grow. Somehow he is both entirely innocent and fully responsible for everything that goes wrong. 

He is not the only pathetic creature here. The author reserves a special combination of pathos and threat for the animals that reside at the Majestic. They are vehicles for fables in this story. There are the countless stray cats, which ride the dumb-waiters, climb through the chimneys and nest inside the wrecked sofas. (The biggest cat has orange fur and bright green eyes; a noteworthy colouring, perhaps.) And there’s Edward’s old dog, Rover, who has an especially hard time of it:

‘By degrees he was going blind; his eyes had turned to milky blue and he sometimes collided with the furniture. The smells he emitted while sitting at the feet of the whist-players became steadily more redolent of putrefaction. Like the Major, Rover had always enjoyed trotting from one room to another, prowling the corridors on this floor or that. But now, whenever he ventured up the stairs to nose around the upper storeys, as likely as not he would be set upon by an implacable horde of cats and chased up and down the corridors to the brink of exhaustion. More than once the Major found him, wheezing and spent, tumbling in terror down a flight of stairs from some shadowy menace on the landing above. Soon he got into the habit of growling whenever he saw a shadow. Then, as the shadows gathered with his progressively failing sight, he would rouse himself and bark fearfully even in the broadest of daylight, gripped by remorseless nightmares. Day by day, no matter how wide he opened his eyes, the cat-filled darkness continued to creep a little closer.’

There’s another elderly dog in Farrell’s later novel The Singapore Grip — an elderly spaniel who is nicknamed ‘The Human Condition’. The irony there is a bit less subtle, but the implication is equally bleak. By the end of this novel Edward and the Major will both be reduced to growling at shadows, each in their own way. But perhaps the Major has more in common with the deserted pet rabbit who has been left to fend for himself in the grounds of the hotel: 

‘…Old and fat, it had been partly tamed by the twins when they were small children. They had lost interest, of course, as they grew older, and no longer remembered to feed it. The rabbit, however, had not forgotten the halcyon days of carrots and dandelion leaves. Thinner and thinner as time went by, it had nevertheless continued to haunt the fringes of the wood like a forsaken lover…’

Of course the rabbit ends up riddled with bullets. He is shot to death by British soldiers for fun. But the twins are not as upset as the Major expects them to be. They only want to know if they can eat him. 

[favefandomimagines]

Happily Ever After (j.g.)

Request: you’re Stefan and Damon’s little sister who’s a vampire and you and Jeremy used to be in a relationship before he left town. you’re now a vampire mentor at the Salvatore boarding school. when jeremy comes back after finding landon and rafael, lizzie and josie try to get you back together.

Life couldn’t have been harder without your brothers being there with you. It had been years since Stefan died and yet to you it felt like yesterday. Being at the boarding school helped ease the pain a lot. You got to help younger and struggling vampires live amongst humans safely. Maybe they could learn from your mistakes if you couldn’t.

Lizzie and Josie Saltzman were like the younger sisters you always wanted. Especially when you’ve been able to see them grow up. Ever since they were younger, they’ve always wanted to hear about your epic love story with Jeremy Gilbert. For being close to 200 years old, you never had an epic love until you met Jeremy. But then he left and you never saw or heard from again. 

“Y/N!” Lizzie called from down the hall. “Hey, you! How are you feeling after gargoyle incident?” You asked her. “I’m doing okay. But I did save the day and that feels pretty great.” Lizzie answered. “That’s great. I’m happy you’re okay. God knows what I’d do without my daily dose of Lizzie attitude.” You joked. 

Lizzie nudged you slightly until Hope joined the two of you. “Landon and Rafael are back.” She commented looking in the opposite direction. You turned your head and saw Ric talking to the two of them and someone you haven’t seen in years. 

“Oh my god.” You said. “What? Who is that?” Lizzie asked. “Jeremy.” You answered. “Wait, THE Jeremy? The one you’re so hopelessly in love with?” Lizzie questioned. “That’s the one.” You confirmed. “Well, don’t look now but he’s coming over here.” Hope interjected. Your eyes went wide as Lizzie started fixing your hair, making you look good for the most awkward reunion of your very long life. 

“Y/N?” Jeremy questioned as he stopped in front of you. “Hey, Jer.” You greeted. Lizzie and Hope gave each other a look before excusing themselves. 

“We need to get them back together. Where’s Josie?” Lizzie asked Hope. “We can’t meddle in their love lives, Lizzie.” Hope told her. “We’re doing Y/N a favor. She’s been in love with him for years. She’s told me the story a thousand times.” Lizzie rebutted. 

The two finally found Josie, while you and Jeremy walked into Ric’s office to talk. 

“You look good.” You said, breaking the silence. “You do too. Obviously, you haven’t aged a day.” Jeremy replied. You laughed slightly as you looked at him. “How have you been holding up since Stefan?” He asked. 

You swallowed the lump in your throat before replying. “It’s been hard. One brother dead, one left me. Some days can get pretty lonely. But, these kids are great. I’m actually doing something good with my immortality.” You answered. 

“I’m sorry, Y/N. I wish I could have been here for you.” Jeremy said. “I don’t really blame you. You said when you broke up with me you wouldn’t come back for anything. You were just keeping your word.” You replied. “I didn’t exactly have a choice.” He rebutted. “You did though that’s the thing. You didn’t have to leave me. But you did because of Elena, which I get but I thought I was enough for you stay.” You said. 

The room fell silent before you had to get everything off your chest. “I loved you, Jeremy. I’ve been alive for centuries and have never found a single person I loved more than you. You knew that and yet, you broke up with me and left town. Right before the moment I needed you the most.” You finished. 

You sighed, rubbing your temples before walking towards the door but you couldn’t get out. An invisible wall was keeping you and Jeremy inside the office. You sighed and knew who could have been behind this. 

“Barrier spell. Most likely by Lizzie and Josie.” You announced. “So we’re stuck in here.” Jeremy concluded. “They want us to work out our differences.” You said. “They know about us?” Jeremy asked you. “Yeah. When they were little they always wanted to hear about Y/N Salvatore’s epic love.” You answered sarcastically. “Well, it was epic to me anyways.” You muttered. 

You walked to lean against the desk while Jeremy stood by the door. “Y/N, I never wanted to leave you. I wanted you to come with me but I knew you’d never leave your brothers. I didn’t have anything keeping me in Mystic Falls if you came with me but you did. You wouldn’t leave Stefan and Damon.” He told you. 

“Well, now I’m alone.” You said quietly. Jeremy sighed walking to stand in front of you. “Do you know how hard it was for me to leave? Knowing that I was leaving the one person I wanted to spend the rest of my life with? It sucked, Y/N but I couldn’t stay here anymore.” He added. 

You looked up at him and tried your best not to show any weakness. “We’re not exactly getting anywhere. We’re just repeating the same things. So, where do we go from here?” You asked. “Come with me.” Jeremy said. 

For a second you didn’t really think he meant that but when you looked at him and listened to his steady heart beat, you knew he was telling the truth. “W-What?” You questioned. “Leave Mystic Falls and come with me. I left you here once and I won’t do it again.” He explained. 

“I love you, Y/N. I always have and I probably always will. Even if it means growing old while you continue to stay beautiful, I want to be with you.” Jeremy added. 

You were silent for a moment before you left your spot by the desk and walked over to him. “Are you serious? You want me to come with you?” You asked, not really believing him. “Yes. I wanted that years ago and I’m not going to lose my chance again.” He answered. 

Looking at him for a moment, you smiled before you practically jumped in his arms and pressed your lips against his. You’ve both been waiting to do that again for years. 

Finally parting, you heard the doors open and saw Josie and Lizzie standing there after taking down the spell. “It’s about time. I needed my power couple back together.” Lizzie commented. You sent the girls a smile before mouthing the words ‘thank you.’ 

After you left the office, you were in your room packing your bags as you heard Hope knock on the door. “Can I come in?” She asked. “Of course you can. What’s up?” You asked. “Are you really leaving?” She questioned. “Yeah, yeah I am. I think it’s time I go after my happily ever after. Especially after Stefan.” You answered. 

That’s when you remembered something you had from Klaus. “Since I’ll be leaving, I want to give you something.” You said walking to your shelf. On it was a small box that contained two very important pieces of jewelry; Stefan’s daylight ring and a necklace Klaus had given you when you and your brother went to New Orleans. 

You and Klaus were close but it was strictly platonic. He gave you the necklace in hopes you’d give it to his daughter on the day you decide to do something for yourself, instead of doing what you thought was best for others. 

“Your dad gave this to me when you were little. He said to give it to you on the day I decide to do something for me. And since that day is today, this is for you.” You said handing her the necklace. 

It was a small red jewel on a silver chain. You didn’t know where it came from but you knew better than to ask Klaus Mikaelson questions. “He really told you to give it to me?” Hope asked. “Yeah. He loved you a lot, Hope. Don’t forget that.” You answered. 

She gave you a smile before giving you a quick hug. “I hope you come back and visit.” She said. “Of course I will. And do me a favor.” You started. “I know you and Lizzie don’t get along and I get it. But please look out for her. I love that girl as if she were my own sister and how Penelope treats her,” You paused, trying not to get worked up. “Just look out for her, please. Josie says she can handle her sister but we all know Lizzie needs more than one person in her corner.” You finished. “I’ll do my best.” Hope said before leaving your room. 

Once you were all packed, you headed to the driveway where Jeremy was waiting. You gave him a smile as he took your bags from your hand and loaded them into the car. “Y/N, wait!” You heard. 

You turned around and saw the twins running out to catch you. “Promise you’ll come back at some point.” Josie said. “I know this is your happy ending and we’re really happy for you but, it’s going to be weird without you.” Lizzie finished. 

You smiled at them before bringing them in for a hug. “I’ll be here to visit before you know.” You said to them quietly. The three of you stayed like that for a moment before you let them go and gave them one last fleeting smile. 

You walked to the car and got in the passenger seat. Jeremy looked at you and took your hand in his, bring it up to his lips and placed kiss on it. “I love you, Y/N.” He said. “I love you too.” You replied. 

He put the car in drive and the two of you drove down the driveway and out of Mystic Falls. Ready start your happily ever after. 

[aanlaiias-s]

Our strictly human heavens and hells have only recently been abstracted from the sensuous world that surrounds us, from this more-than-human realm that abounds in its own winged intelligences and cloven-hoofed powers. For almost all oral cultures, the enveloping and sensuous earth remains the dwelling place of both the living and the dead. The “body” — whether human or otherwise — is not yet a mechanical object in such cultures, but is a magical entity, the mind’s own sensuous aspect, and at death the body’s decomposition into soil, worms, and dust can only signify the gradual reintegration of one’s ancestors and elders into the living landscape, from which all, too, are born.

Each indigenous culture elaborates this recognition of metamorphosis in its own fashion, taking its clues from the particular terrain in which it is situated. Often the invisible atmosphere that animates the visible world — the subtle presence that circulates both within us and between all things — retains within itself the spirit or breath of the dead person until the time when that breath will enter and animate another visible body — a bird, or a deer, or a field of wild grain. Some cultures may burn, or “cremate,” the body in order to more completely return the person, as smoke, to the swirling air, while that which departs as flame is offered to the sun and stars, and that which lingers as ash is fed to the dense earth. Still other cultures may dismember the body, leaving certain parts in precise locations where they will likely be found by condors, or where they will be consumed by mountain lions or by wolves, thus hastening the re-incarnation of that person into a particular animal realm within the landscape. Such examples illustrate simply that death, in tribal cultures, initiates a metamorphosis wherein the person’s presence does not “vanish” from the sensible world (where would it go?) but rather remains as an animating force within the vastness of the landscape, whether subtly, in the wind, or more visibly, in animal form, or even as the eruptive, ever to be appeased, wrath of the volcano.

excerpted here from David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World (1996)

_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_~_

An obvious risk of this sort of lyricism is its tendency to absorb indigenous death rituals into a romanticized image of archaic / premodern enchantment. Merely affirming the beauty of a form of mortality in which the animacy of the dead never really vanishes may serve to deanimate the people/s for whom that form still lives, freezing their historical presence into a vanishingly remote past.

Not to say that’s the point of this excerpt -- just that the poetic impulse driving its cultural relativism not only borrows its comparative breadth from but also owes its generic legibility to the schizochronism of colonial anthropology. And by schizochronism (a term borrowed from Johannes Fabian) I mean ideological / affective / structural efforts to split indigenous histories and temporalities off from the integrative developmental timeline of Euro-American cultures. 

Also, somewhat tangentially, it’s interesting to read Abram’s lyricism against the grain of a movie like Midsommar, which exploits the same topos -- the nature cosmologies of indigenous ritual -- for different effects. Midsommar turns the romantic aesthetics of cultural relativism inside out until it produces horror.* Lyrical enchantment here draws its energies from an affective continuum that quickly slides into shock, estrangement, and distressed fascination. Nervous-irreverent / dry-ironic / weirded-out laughter edges onto this continuum, too, partly because the existential dread it calls on is labile enough to become silly. By the end of the movie these effects build to a kind of cathartic vengeance on the anomic individualism of the nuclear family / monogamous codependence that organizes the social reproduction of Euro-American culture. Notably, though, Midsommar also knowingly severs the anthropological gaze from its colonialist history by generating these effects from an encounter with a white (”white”?) version of indigenous culture -- a more or less autonomous (if also nominally law-abiding, state-integrated, and in some cases university-educated) Swedish commune. 

At the beginning and end of Midsommar we see the comparative operation at its most graphic: meaningless, biochemical death vs. symbolically dense, enfleshed death; an atomized trio of corpses -- the married couple asleep in their bed and their daughter alone in her bedroom -- found asphyxiated, duct-taped to personal tubes of car exhaust vs. an allegorized tableau of living and ritually mortified bodies consumed together in the flames of a specially built temple, sedated or paralyzed but nonetheless present throughout; murder-suicide by suburban “bipolar” despair unresponsive to attempted communication vs. involuntary / elective sacrifice to the joyous apex of the solstice’s cosmic bipolarity. What differentiates these death scenes is the ritual framework by which the latter converts the impulsive and analgesic destruction of the former into an intentional and hedonic process of regeneration. 

Neither form of death really transcends existential dread, of course: the cosmic good death is as coercive as the suburban bad death is anomic. Midsommar’s generic lability -- its resistance to lyricism -- makes a difference here, however. At the moment the regenerative death ritual brings its coercive design to completion, assembling all the bodies to be burned, its allegorical majesty (to borrow a concept from Wittgenstein) can seem more absurd than cryptic. The impotent confusion of the shitty boyfriend when he finds himself burning to death in a bear-suit moves the moment of cathartic vengeance toward the comic. Dread lapses into silliness insofar as the ritual frame cannot ever fully exclude confrontation from a relativistic outside. And yet the reverse of that confrontation never happens. If the opening murder-suicide evokes dread, it does not even come close to inviting laughter. It is only relativized as pathology -- part of the same cultural logic that leaves old people to die in nursing homes, (one of the movie’s clearest ideologemes of cultural relativism), an isolating / sickening abandonment of the communal forms that used to consecrate death. Maybe it’s just that the inorganic encrusted on the dead -- the exhaust tube taped over the face -- offers none of the density or distance needed to make the meaninglessness (incommunicativeness, inexplicability) of trauma funny.  

* And for this reason it may be more accurately referred to the pre-ethnographic comparative anthropology of smth like J.G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890-1915); see Wittgenstein on the blank or inexplicable horrific in the rituals Frazer describes. 

[vigrxwarning]

frank sommer md premature ejaculation

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SAN ANTONIO – Vardenafil improved premature ejaculation more than sertraline, Frank Sommer, M.D., reported at the annual meeting of the.

SHOCKING LIFE STORY!!! AFTER 9 YEARS OF SUFFERING FROM PREMATURE EJACULATION & WEAK ERECTION, 45 YEAR OLD MAN FINALLY DISCOVERS THE SECRET SOLUTION THAT MYSTERIOUSLY JERKED HIS DEAD MANHOOD BACK.

Correspondence to: Wayne J.G. Hellstrom, MD, facs.. introduction: premature ejaculation (PE) is the most common sexual dysfunction, with the majority of PE.

will enlarged prostate cause premature ejaculation Men with an enlarged prostate should not take medications that contain antihistamines or decongestants. These agents are often found in over-the-counter cold, sinus, and allergy medications. To understand why, it helps to review some prostate anatomy. The prostate is a walnut-sized gland that produces seminal fluid.

MEDLINE 6. Sotomayer M: The burden of premature ejaculation: a patient’sperspective. J Sex Med 2005; 2: 110-4. MEDLINE 7. Waldinger MD, Quinn P, Dilleen M, Mundayat R, Schweitzer DH.

SAN ANTONIO — Vardenafil improved premature ejaculation more than sertraline , Frank Sommer, M.D., reported at the annual meeting of the American.

F. Sommer's 114 research works with 1733 citations and 4651 reads, including: Vaskulre. Coping with Premature Ejaculation: An Online Survey in a Representative Sample of the German Male. Michael J Mathers · Frank Sommer.

premature ejaculation erectile dysfunction What causes erectile dysfunction · Premature ejaculation. This is the inability to keep an erection long enough for mutual pleasure. · Performance anxiety. This is .

Even though meaningful long-term studies are lacking, the authors neither discussed the course of premature ejaculation between individuals and in the same individual nor whether symptoms are due.

F. Sommer's 114 research works with 1730 citations and 4532 reads, including: Vaskulre. Coping with Premature Ejaculation: An Online Survey in a Representative Sample of the German Male. Michael J Mathers · Frank Sommer.

. the erectile dysfunction drug Levitra appeared to help premature ejaculation. Frank Sommer, MD, PhD, a urology specialist at the University.

diabetes type 1 premature ejaculation will maeng da kratom help with premature ejaculation This guide will teach you how to use Kratom, choose strains, what dosage to. reduced anxiety; helps people get off of Narcotics/Opiates; Increased. Greatly improved mood; Can eliminate premature ejaculation; Improved. Thai strains are usually fast (like maeng da); indonesian strains are typically.premature ejaculation treatment emedicine electroshock for premature ejaculation variant names. rectal electroejaculation (ree) trans-rectal electro-ejaculation (tree) application to endangered species conservation. The procedure has been adopted and modified as an assisted reproduction technique for managing endangered species, to ensure the production of offspring from incompatible pairs of animals where artificial insemination is feasible.Tramadol appears more effective than placebo or behavioural therapy in the treatment of PE. Phosphodiesterase-5; PE: Premature ejaculation; rct: randomised controlled trial; SSRI: Selective.practice techniques for premature ejaculation premature ejaculation wipes cvs premature ejaculation desensitization premature ejaculation venlafaxine premature ejaculation workout Two hundred and twenty-two married men (mean age, 34 years) with premature ejaculation (pe) were randomly assigned to receive 75 mg of venlafaxine. · 5 Ways To Avoid Premature Ejaculation In Erectile Dysfunction , Premature Ejaculation , Sex by user January 4, 2019 Leave a Comment About 33% of men aged 18 to 59 years-old in the U.S. are afflicted with premature ejaculation (P.E.).The Female Health Company / Veru Healthcare reports interim analysis of Independent Placebo Controlled Clinical Study of PREBOOST®, Its proprietary premature ejaculation MedicationUnderstand what causes premature ejaculation, as well as how to. Common treatment options for premature ejaculation include behavioral techniques, After some practice sessions, the feeling of knowing how to delay.Our results show a similar prevalence of PE in young male patients with Type 1 diabetes and in the age-matched control population; in diabetic patients with PE,

Akpabio’s diatribe came days after the legislative enquiry saw him crossing swords with former NDDC MD, Ms. Joy Nunieh. 9 YEARS OF SUFFERING FROM PREMATURE EJACULATION & WEAK ERECTION.

The authors give an overview of medication options for the treatment of premature orgasm without taking into consideration the biopsychosocial understanding of sexuality that is fundamental to.

premature ejaculation ireland  · Premature ejaculation is super common. Really. youtube.com. This is defined in most studies as ejaculating within one to two minutes of penetration and feeling distressed or anxious about it.

source https://www.vigrxwarning.com/frank-sommer-md-premature-ejaculation/

[testinbeta]

Fictions of Every Kind

Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century. What the writers of modern science fiction invent today, you and I will do tomorrow – or, more exactly, in about 10 years’ time, though the gap is narrowing.

Science fiction is the most important fiction that has been written for the last 100 years. The compassion, imagination, lucidity and vision of H.G. Wells and his successors, and above all their grasp of the real identity of the 20th century, dwarf the alienated and introverted fantasies of James Joyce, Eliot and the writers of the so-called Modern Movement, a 19th century offshoot of bourgeois rejection. Given its subject matter, its eager acceptance of naiveté, optimism and possibility, the role and importance of science fiction can only increase. I believe that the reading of science fiction should be compulsory. Fortunately, compulsion will not be necessary, as more and more people are reading it voluntarily. Even the worst science fiction is better – using as the yardstick of merit the mere survival of its readers and their imaginations – than the best conventional fiction. The future is a better key to the present than the past.

Above all, science fiction is likely to be the only form of literature which will cross the gap between the dying narrative fiction of the present and the cassette and videotape fictions of the near future. What can Saul Bellow and John Updike do that J. Walter Thompson, the world’s largest advertising agency and its greatest producer of fiction, can’t do better? At present science fiction is almost the only form of fiction which is thriving, and certainly the only fiction which has any influence on the world around it. The social novel is reaching fewer and fewer readers, for the clear reason that social relationships are no longer as important as the individual’s relationship with the technological landscape of the late 20th century. In essence, science fiction is a response to science and technology as perceived by the inhabitants of the consumer goods society, and recognizes that the role of the writer today has totally changed – he is now merely one of a huge army of people filling the environment with fictions of every kind. To survive, he must become far more analytic, approaching his subject matter like a scientist or engineer. If he is to produce fiction at all, he must out-imagine everyone else, scream louder, whisper more quietly. For the first time in the history of narrative fiction, it will require more than talent to become a writer. What special skills, proved against those of their fellow members of society, have Muriel Spark or Edna O'Brien, Kingsley Amis or Cyril Connolly? Sliding gradients point the way to their exits. It is now some 15 years since the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi, a powerful and original writer in his own right, remarked that the science fiction magazines produced in the suburbs of Los Angeles contained far more imagination and meaning than anything he could find in the literary periodicals of the day. Subsequent events have proved Paolozzi’s sharp judgment correct in every respect. Fortunately, his own imagination has been able to work primarily within the visual arts, where the main tradition for the last century has been the tradition of the new. Within fiction, unhappily, the main tradition for all too long has been the tradition of the old. Like the inmates of some declining institution, increasingly forgotten and ignored by the people outside, the leading writers and critics count the worn beads of their memories, intoning the names of the dead, dead who were not even the contemporaries of their own grandparents. Meanwhile, science fiction, as my agent remarked to me recently in a pleasant tone, is spreading across the world like a cancer. A benign and tolerant cancer, like the culture of beaches. The time-lag of its acceptance narrows – I estimate it at present to be about 10 years. My guess is that the human being is a nervous and fearful creature, and nervous and fearful people detest change. However, as everyone becomes more confident, so they are prepared to accept change, the possibility of a life radically different from their own. Like green stamps given away at the supermarkets of chance and possibility, science fiction becomes the new currency of an ever-expanding future. The one hazard facing science fiction, the Trojan horse being trundled towards its expanding ghetto – a high-rent area if there ever was one in fiction – is that faceless creature, literary criticism. Almost all the criticism of science fiction has been written by benevolent outsiders, who combine zeal with ignorance, like high-minded missionaries viewing the sex rites of a remarkably fertile aboriginal tribe and finding every laudable influence at work except the outstanding length of penis. The depth of penetration of the earnest couple, Lois and Stephen Rose (authors of The Shattered Ring), is that of a pair of practicing Christians who see in science fiction an attempt to place a new perspective on “man, nature, history and ultimate meaning.” What they fail to realize is that science fiction is totally atheistic: those critics in the past who have found any mystical strains at work have been blinded by the camouflage. Science fiction is much more concerned with the significance of the gleam on an automobile instrument panel than on the deity’s posterior – if Mother Nature has anything in science fiction, it is VD. Most critics of science fiction trip into one of two pitfalls – either, like Kingsley Amis in New Maps of Hell, they try to ignore altogether the technological trappings and relate SF to the “mainstream” of social criticism, anti-utopian fantasies and the like (Amis’s main prophecy for science fiction in 1957 and proved wholly wrong), or they attempt to apostrophize SF in terms of individual personalities, hopelessly rivaling the far-better financed efforts of American and British Publishers to sell their fading Wares by dressing their minor talents in the great-writer mantle. Science fiction has always been very much a corporate activity, its writers sharing a common pool of ideas, and the yardsticks of individual achievement do not measure the worth of the best Writers, Bradbury, Asimov, Bernard Wolfe Limbo 90) and Frederik Pohl, The anonymity of the majority of 20th-century Writers of science fiction is the anonymity of modern technology; no more “great names” stand out than in the design of consumer durables, or for that matter Rheims Cathedral. Who designed the 1971 Cadillac El Dorado, a complex of visual, organic and psychological clues of infinitely more subtlety and relevance, stemming from a vastly older network of crafts and traditions than, say, the writings of Norman Mailer or the latest Weidenfeld or Cape miracle? The subject matter of SF is the subject matter of everyday life: the gleam on refrigerator cabinets, the contours of a wife’s or husband’s thighs passing the newsreel images on a color TV set, the conjunction of musculature and chromium artifact within an automobile interior, the unique postures of passengers on an airport escalator – all in all, close to the world of the Pop painters and sculptors. Paolozzi, Hamilton, Warhol, Wesselmann, Ruscha, among others. The great advantage of SF is that it can add one unique ingredient to this hot mix – words. Write!

J.G. Ballard, 1971

[ernestinehead-blog]

Effective ways to Come to be An Expert Freelance photographer.

MLA (Modern Language Affiliation) type is actually very most generally utilized to write papers and point out sources within the liberal crafts and liberal arts. There was a spurt from panic at the start from the year when the Xbox One list vanished coming from the Xbox Japan internet site leading individuals to suppose that the activity would certainly no more be actually released on the platform. DosBox is actually the go-to simulator for participating in vintage COMPUTER activities coming from the times prior to Microsoft window. So this publication centers on Caraval, the apparently remarkable setting I have actually already moped about for way too long. As well as while, provided, some significant percentage from PCs are never utilized for just about anything besides Outlook as well as simple web, Computers stay the absolute most versatile and also happiest means to video game. I have actually acquired recipe books just before and also a lot of the moment only want to make a few dishes out of it, but I may tell you there are actually a ton of recipes in your manual that I intend to try. If you liked this short article and you would such as to obtain more details concerning had me going kindly see the site. I know that appears a cardinal sin to mention a console will not gain from one thing as terrific as Skyrim, yet the last point Switch needs is actually a launch game that is actually virtually five and also a fifty percent years old - and also one that would certainly have been out on other current-gen hardware (in its rezzed-up form) for a whole 5 months by opportunity Switch over gets there. Thanks for visiting Caraval where the gamers come to join the activity ... Listed below it is actually an activity, certainly not a competitors, beware exactly what you check out as well as strongly believe for some have been owned mad when they get therefore entailed they lose their sense from fact ... that tis but a risky game, as well as if you win-you acquire a desire if you do not ... properly that is actually where traits receive a little bit of messy. On the other hand the video game of soccer is thought to be the greatest from all through me. Its guidelines are 'understandable and also carries out certainly not have very long a time frame to finish like cricket. Shakman, in the meantime, is actually an Activity of Thrones first-timer: the director is most likely better known for his service the humor series This is actually Always Sunny in Philly. With The Walking Dead's Time 3 on the horizon to premiere later in 2016, that's an impressive time for supporters from The Walking Lifeless, and also Warning commitment portion even more details in the coming months! Gamers might check out the Cloud the same way they 'd see their close friends' earths and also get in-game money for accomplishing this. If they wished to, they can additionally click via a mobile landing page and learn more concerning Windows 7. It leveraged activity consumers were actually performing," points out Michael Burke, co-founder from Appssavvy. If they have problem with a concept, the game can present the very same concept in a various circumstance or even lessen the challenge amount up until the pupil gets this. That might seem like an art-house adaption of a J.G. Ballard unfamiliar, however the game is actually absolutely wonderful to roam. This is considering that as quickly as politics comes in the activity the incredibly sense from the activity is actually shed. Although it is actually still in the preparatory stages, this research study and also a number of various other researches propose that a part from young people may come to be more hostile after participating in terrible computer game. Know your blog post for a number of years & this's due time I eventually bring in one! U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan wraps up the Library from Congress 2008-2009 literary season along with a poetry reading in the historical Coolidge Amphitheater, where previous consultants/laureates - like Robert Freeze, Elizabeth Bishop and also Robert Hayden - have actually gone through. Video games enable pupils to place on their own in the shoes from a character or immerse themselves in an area or society that they are actually learning more about in the class. That is actually all the information our company have on the ready right now, but you may browse through the reveal trailer listed below. Varied Gameplay - The video game integrates a variety from gameplay genres, including survival, stealth, melee and ranged battle, exploration, and also more. I'm not one of the screaming/crying fangirls of this trait, however it was actually an actually great little book. Future Updates: This section is actually scheduled for future updates like Incident 5 screenshots as well as the Episode 5 launch trailer. That's hard: some labels are actually costly and also nothing at all greater than just poor ports of a console game. For years, Houser's activities had actually promoted players to act out on-screen violence. Our garden lettuce is actually more or less prepared, so I'll be good to go. Oh, as well as strawberry time just started, so I understand what my best combo is going to be. I've been following the blogging site for fairly a long period of time now, and certainly got your cookbook as soon as this showed up - that is actually therefore well performed. Innovative Setting up's outstanding sale from the Invader movie into a survival video game was actually an unexpected excellence of in 2014. And also does not sit well with me. My worry is actually that the Nintendo Switch over, similar to the Wii U, will definitely be oversaturated through a surplus from knowledgeable video games repackaged for financial gains. Deadline documents that Activity from Thrones" is actually coordinating with Major League Baseball for Season 7.

[couchprofessormag]

Small Village

 His walk brought him towards a small village. He could see the small cottages peering over the hill that he was walking towards. The man had no idea how far he had come, or how long he had been walking. It could have been anywhere between two or three years since he had escaped the city, and since then all he had done was walk, rest, and then walk again.

 The village was dead. No noises sprouted from small corners, no birds chirped from low trees, not even the wind wished to greet the man as he walked across the bridge and into the main part of the village.

 He wandered around the Square, where a series of bungalows stretched on towards a small children’s play park that sat upon a small hill across the green. The man peered through the foggy windows of the bungalows making out small living room suites abandoned a long time ago. Some dining rooms still had small plates of food left waiting. Salad bowls filled and untouched, glasses full of wine sipped away from the brim. The man pressed his head against the window of a room that belonged, presumably, to a small child. A small mobile hung above the made bed, still, patiently anticipating a spin. The desk, cluttered with drawings of sunny days, cradled a hub of what was once a creative den. Pens lay without their lids, the ink now gone dry.

 The man strolled on to the centre of the village and passed a white village hall with one of its back doors open to the park that lay behind it. The man inspected the door and craned his neck around the door frame to look inside the hall. A thick layer of dust lay on the bare wooden floor; soil and gunk spread across the hall, blown in from the open door. Another man stood across the hall on a small stage cluttered with old instruments and deflated balloons. This other man was, however, merely just a large figure printed on a banner that stretched across the back of the stage. The banner read: ‘We did it!’.

   The man found a house at the bottom of the village beside a path that stretched towards a motorway. The front door was open, the house had been left as it was when it was last inhabited. One bed, in a child’s room, was made and the covers smelt nearly fresh. The bed in the parents’ room, a king sized, was unmade and the sheets were covered in flakes of dust, skin and small liquid stains. The man opted to sleep in the child’s room under a lampshade in the design of a hot air balloon. He felt safe in this room. There were plenty of books to read, paper to write on, and games to play… But in the corner of the room was a small door, a door that the man had not checked. He never checked the door and instead chose to stand a chest of drawers in front of it. The man did not like the door or the possibilities that lay behind it. He felt like he had seen the door before, perhaps in a dream, and knew instantly that he did not want to inspect it.

 The man lived modestly. He cleaned out the house’s fridge of what was mainly rotten food, but was able to salvage a couple of unopened packages of ready meals. They did not smell good, but the man could hardly afford to be fussy. There were cans of food in some of the cupboards and snacks in a small pantry. Over the course of time, the man ate cautiously and saved where he could. He often walked into other houses around the village to take food and whatever other useful supplies he could spot. After all, the houses were uninhabited.

   As days passed, eventually weeks passed, probably. At this point the man could not be sure as to when one month began and another started. By the way he felt he was sure he had remained in the village for at least two months, taking into account the amount of food he had eaten and the amount of times he had fallen asleep. However, who was to say he was not sleeping for days at a time? Or even mere minutes at a time.

 The course of the man’s life began to lose all sense of time. It was no longer something he worried about. He had no engagements, appointments, friends or family. His primal concerns were eating, drinking and sleeping. He wondered at times why he even bothered to go out of his way to live. He could not remember. However, when the man posed this question to himself, a small swelling in his chest answered to him that there was a reason for him to stay alive. He just could not remember it.

 It was these moments that prompted the man to take a walk around the village or possibly venture up the path beside the house towards the motorway. He would never go far, but these walks were what made each day different. Each walk invoked new thoughts. Small thoughts about what he would eat next, and bigger thoughts trying to remember why he was in the village in the first place. One day, however, the man did not need his thoughts to change the day; he stumbled across something.

The man’s walk took him up to the top of the village where he had first entered across the bridge. There he spotted a bus shelter that he had never given much thought to before. It stood there, waiting for people to wait with it. No one was waiting though. The man felt a sudden admiration for the shelter. Even today, and every day before, the shelter remained in its spot serving a purpose to wait for the next person that needed it. The man felt moved, for the first time since his escape from the city. He decided to go and wait in the bus shelter.

 Propped up in the corner, looking weary and tired, was a woman. She seemed like she had been waiting for something. The man took two slow steps into the bus shelter, the woman bolted upright and gasped when the man stepped inside. “Sorry, you frightened me,” the woman said. She was clutching the handle of a small suitcase that sat between her legs, her grip tightened when she saw the man. “No, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have startled you like that,” said the man as he took a seat in the shelter, “Have you been waiting long?”

 “I suppose. What time is it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t have a watch.”

 “To be honest, I don’t know why I asked. I don’t know what time I got here anyway. It could have been a few weeks ago for all I know,” the woman laughed softly, or at least exhaled a sharp gust of air from her nose to signify her attempt at being light-hearted.

“A few weeks? I’ve been here for a few months at least and I have never seen you.”

“I’ve been here since you arrived. I saw you coming down the road and over the bridge,” the woman pointed out of a small window in the shelter that looked over the fields and up the road that the man had walked down when he first entered the village. The fields were overgrown with weeds and grass that stood still in the bare air.

“That was months ago,” said the man.

“Was it?”, and then, “Hm.”

“You mean to say you’ve been in here since then?”

“Longer.”

“How have you survived? You can’t have just been waiting here the whole time.”

“I have. It’s not been too long. Besides, I packed some snacks and a book to keep me occupied in the meantime.”

“One book? Only one?”

   “Yes. Why do you seem so perplexed?”

   “It’s just I would’ve packed more books if I knew I was going to be here that long.”

   “It’s a relatively thick book. It’s a collection of J.G. Ballard short stories.” The woman laid her suitcase across her knees and unzipped it. She rummaged through a series of t-shirts and underwear before finding the book stuffed into the bottom underneath a packet of Jelly Babies, half eaten with a peg clipping the bag shut. She handed the J.G. Ballard book to the man. It was quite thick, but the man reckoned he could have read the book at least 10 times between when he arrived and the moment he found himself in. There was a bookmark about a third of the way in. “Is this how many of the stories you have read? Up to here?”

“Yes. He’s my favourite writer so I read his stories very quickly one after the other.”

   “So you’ve read it more than once?”

   “No? This is the first time I’ve ever read his short stories. I’ve only ever read ‘Atrocity Exhibition’ before this.”

   “Have you got that with you?”

   “No. I read that a long time ago.”

 With that a long silence draped over the shelter. The man and woman exchanged short glances at each other occasionally, but let these fleeting moments of company go with short, tight lipped smirks before going back to staring at their feet and reading, respectively.

“Are you waiting for a bus?”

 “Yeah, the 54.”

“Where does that go?”

 “The next town over. I don’t know the place all too well, it’s just the timetable says it’s the only regular service that comes through here.”

“Regular,” the man said before both of them let out a gust of laugh together. It was the first time the man had felt the rumble of a laugh in his stomach in what felt like months. They smiled at each other. “I’m not up to much just now, so if you want, I could wait with you?”

“I’d like that,” the woman said relaxing her shoulders and loosening the grip on her suitcase, “It shouldn’t be too much longer.”  

 The man listened out for the rumblings of an engine to flow down the road towards them. He looked out the small window in the back of the shelter and saw the fields waving slowly as a small breeze yawned over the weeds and grass.