#our brains are wired different in a way you cannot change is it that fucking surprising

[skylordhorus]

😐

[thefatherlord]

as much as i love inner peace zuko i need him to be insane. he’s already insane! stop declawing him let him tear up the furniture! unfortunately rebelling against ur abusive father doesn’t make ur trauma less impactful. he’s literally mentally ill please let him be traumatized outside of the “acceptable” amount. just because he knows what side he’s on doesn’t mean he’s suddenly not haunted by what happened to him throughout his childhood. as someone with cptsd zuko definitely has it. and probably something else too. we’re not pretty victims! we aren’t all anxious depressives! i get that’s the easiest to portray and most sympathetic version of mental illness to neurotypicals but. i don’t know. we don’t always act morally or contained. giving him silent breakdowns every now and then doesn’t really match up to his experiences. his brain is going to work differently and he’s not going to be perfect. stop writing him like a declawed cat who just needs a snuggle to feel better. he’s not going to stop blowing up and wrecking relationships and hurting himself just because he’s on the avatars side. that’s not therapy that’s just changing his environment which! is beneficial! but that doesn’t just change the way your brain is wired. let him be insane and unpretty and an actual fucking trainwreck. trauma doesnt make you mysterious and attractive and fixable. you cannot fix him! sorry! zuko is not fixable! traumatized people are not diy projects! we will be abnormal and difficult and that is part of it! it’s our responsibility to take care of ourselves and support systems are great but that doesn’t erase the way our brains are permanently changed from other peoples.

[dredshirtroberts]

pardon me while i emotionally process all over everything

Monday's just decided to kick off really hard - it's only the one thing, and it's just stewing in the back of my mind really hard and has been for *checks time stamps* 2.5 hours.

the important thing for me to remember is my dad (and my mom too) is not owed nor does he deserve an explanation for why i cut him and mom off. They truly honestly probably do not understand why I made that choice and frankly i think the fact that that hasn't changed over the past year is telling about how little they truly look at their own actions.

I want to explain but as soon as I put it into words, I can immediately strike myself down with the things that I know they will say. Any attempt at giving any explanation will be met with denial and that's just not a battle I feel like participating in.

I spent my whole life doing the emotional heavy lifting for my family of origin and I got tired of it. I'm struggling with the way my brain is wired because of it on a daily basis. This effects my whole life and my loved ones. And it didn't even do what it was supposed to when i developed the coping mechanisms.

I am really really cognizant of it because we've added a 4th person to our home and I'm scrambling to learn them and their tells and their moods quickly so I can be The Best At Helping in any situation. And I'm running into the wall of "that's not my job and is generally unwelcome unless asked for specifically" and so I am sat here taking in footsteps and movement styles and tones of voice trying to catalog them for future reference and not being able to do anything with that and knowing it's a flawed coping skill to deal with an unstable and volatile home life in my early childhood and I just want more than ANYTHING to be able to backsass and confront my parents about the way they've fucked me up and I can't.

i will type it all out and immediately change my mind - the words aren't correct, they can never be correct because the words don't matter. I could say everything perfectly and it wouldn't make any difference because my parents are dead set on invalidating any stance I make for myself and myself alone.

And also guilt tripping at the end of truly bad news (but like, neutral truly bad news) is not the way to get an explanation. It's a way to make me angry that I cannot begin the proper grieving process ahead of time because you're making a last ditch attempt to dig into me and not let me get away without an answer to the question you do not deserve to have answered. There was no indication they have looked at themselves and seen the way that they treated me was bad enough to cause my brain to splinter into multiple different people just in order to get by. They do not understand how much i wanted to die when I was trying to be a good kid for them. And they can't understand because they didn't pay attention then so me telling them about it now will look like i'm making things up.

They also have in the past given me large sums of money that I didn't have to work for dad to get, but it always came with other - more fraught - strings to deal with. and knowing that they bailed me out makes me feel super guilty for not giving them an explanation but it also really hammers home how much I just cannot say "you treated me badly" because they will throw that money in my face and say "we did everything for you, we deserve your love for the bare minimum of affection!" and money, btw, is not affection but they don't know that and now I have to figure that shit out.

and also we never repaired our relationship after I stopped working for him. I'm pretty sure he took my leaving the company personally - and he should, it was because of him I couldn't work for him anymore - but i know it's been worked around in their minds as my choice for completely unfathomable reasons that they clearly just cannot wrap their heads around because it doesn't make sense. why would i just cut them off, they've been good parents! why would I just leave the company, he was a great boss!

but they weren't, and he wasn't, and I suffered for it and I hid my suffering and because i hid my pain (as i was taught to do from VERY early on because i have been in pain MY WHOLE LIFE) they will never believe i was in it in the first place. because they don't believe me about my physical pains either and never have. why would they care about the mental and emotional pains?

they'd probably also come back with "Everyone's messed up by their parents, you need to just get over it" if I did bring up that their behavior towards me fucked me over. Because that's what they've said in the past - maybe not directly to me but in general.

a lot of my assumptions of their responses are based on what they used to just say. or continue to say. or how they'd say it. or how they'd talk about specific other people who i didn't think were bad people but boy did the way they talk about them make me go "well i guess i can't like that person now" and it isolated me from everyone. I had no way out, I had no escape i had no one but myself.

well and my internet friends but for a very long time I had a hard time remembering those were real fucking people on the other end of the internet connection, because i didn't have anyone else but the computer and those who i had a connection to through said computer.

oh and the reason this all came up?

my grandpa's going into hospice - he was in the hospital all weekend. he's the one with cancer that he stopped treating because the treatments were taking too much of a toll on his body. They had to cut their vacation short to take my grandparents back home and that same day my grandpa went into the hospital - dad made sure to mention the vacation to me, because i guess that's important. Didn't tell me any details on how the hospice thing is going to work (maybe he didn't know, maybe he didn't think that's important for me coordinating how to contact my grandparents to check in but whatever), but it was imperative that i know that their vacation ended early so they could take him home. And it was important to guilt trip me at the end to try and reopen communication with me on the email i deliberately did not give out to them, and they had to circumvent my blocks elsewhere in order to acquire because they didn't ask me for it.

I don't know how many people in my family know I'm not talking to my parents. I don't know how far that information has spread I don't know who leaked my email to them (that's a strong way of phrasing it but it feels about as violating, since i rock up into my inbox today and get jumpscared by my fucking dad's name and his absolutely abysmal choice in subject lines. literally could have said "grandpa update" or something similar. no he just said "Stuff" and then opens with "Hope you're doing well. Grandpa's in the hospital" and like????

he got lucky i opened it because i can see the message preview and knew it had important information. I might have seen it and gone "y'know, I don't care what he has to say about "stuff"" and hit delete and not known.

but like WTF dad. wtf.

go to hell, my dude. go to the absolute eebiest of deebies you cuntwaffle.

and take mom with you.

[blouisparadise]

Upon request, here is a rec list of bottom Louis fics where Louis is pining for Harry. We hope you’ll enjoy this list. We also have a mutual pining rec list here and we will have a pining Harry rec list eventually. Happy reading!

1) Down On Your Knees, You Don’t Look So Tall | Explicit | 3445 words

Louis and Harry are friends, and best ones at that. Louis loves Harry more fiercely more than he's ever loved anyone, so he doesn't really have a problem with it when they start doing this thing. this wonderful, wonderful thing.

2) You Had Me At Hello | Explicit | 4529 words

Louis works in the shop next to Harry's cupcake shop.   Louis pines after Harry until he goes into a heat and Harry finally catches up.

3) Just Like Live Wires | Explicit | 5427 words

Harry climbs into Louis’ bed when he’s cold. Louis pines.

4) Something To Live For | Mature | 5535 words

After over a century of waiting for Harry to realize they're mates,  Louis gets his heart broken when his friend announces he's found his 'one' in a human girl named Teresa. Wanting only happiness for Harry, Louis accepts that it just wasn't meant to be and decides it's time to let go of the immortal life.

5) Five Times Harry Styles Was Jealous | Mature | 6184 words

Harry's jealous all the time but there were five times that definitely stand out. Five times that changed Louis and Harry's relationship.

6) On My Mind All The Time, Say You're Mine | Explicit | 9261 words

“Dude, we’re inside, and it’s night time. Those don’t look as cool as you think they do.” Louis could kick himself, he sounded so stupid, but it certainly got the guy’s attention.

It was at that unfortunate moment that he noticed several other things about this hot asshole, that he hadn’t noticed just staring from afar. First, when Louis spoke to him, his gaze was kind of unfocused behind his sunglasses, and secondly, that he had a red and white cane folded up under his arm.

“I’m… Blind,” the man chuckled, awkwardly.  

Louis wanted to melt into a puddle out of pure embarrassment.

“I— am so sorry. I have to go.”

“Hey, wait, wait,” the man soothed, grabbing at Louis’ shoulders before he could get away.

“I’m sorry,” Louis repeated, looking down at his shoes.

“It’s alright,” He cackled. “I get it a lot. More than you know.”

7) Let The Beating Waves Come Drag Me Down | Explicit | 9447 words

“Just try it, the worst thing that could ever happen it’s that you won’t like it” Niall had told him. And there he was, on the way to one of these pubs created for perverts, willing to break up the routine to try something new, something that terrified as much as excited him.

One night to get swept up in passion, one night to let the devil get in.

"Tonight, I’m going to make you scream of ecstasy Louis,” he said with a raspy voice full of control, making him tremble with anticipation.

8) Got It Right Such A Long Time Ago | Explicit | 9699

There are a lot of people Harry might expect to find on his doorstep at three o’clock in the afternoon these days.

It could be the delivery man, come to drop off the pair of boots Harry impulsively ordered online last week. It could be one of his neighbors, dropping by to complain about how a party he’d thrown weeks ago had clogged up the street. It could also be any number of his friends in L.A., who stop by unannounced most days to mooch off Harry’s food or whisk him away to try some new yogurt shop.

As a rule, it definitely cannot be Louis Tomlinson, although Harry’s blinked at least three times now, and it’s still Louis standing there, a backpack slung over his shoulder and a duffel bag at his feet.

9) You Know What They Say | Explicit | 10232 words

Nice guys always finish last.

10) Call If You Need Me | Explicit | 10770 words

If anyone asks later on, Louis plans to tell them that it’s all Niall’s fault.

11) Love Is Like This; Not A Heartbeat, But A Moan | Explicit | 13150 words

Note: This fic is locked and can only be read by AO3 users.

In which Harry loves Louis, but Louis has been cold to him ever since he presented as an omega at age fifteen.

Eight years later, Louis approaches Harry with a request, and who is Harry to deny him?

12) Just Let Me | Mature | 14714 words

The party was going well. So well, Niall had already sworn undying love to one multi-tiered chocolate cake, two friendly corgi-poodle mixes, Zayn’s hair, and the entire population of Los Angeles. So well, Zayn had only laughed and ruffled Niall’s hair and not even twitched towards a cigarette. So well, nearly everyone had spilled far past the boundaries of the night’s original plans, extracting bottles of vodka from the cabinets and losing a lot of clothes. Harry had proclaimed that he was finally going to throw a small and very grownup dinner party and of course here they were three hours later, fifty people half-naked in the pool. Soon to be full-naked, if Louis had to guess. Everybody in LA loved a heated pool. Everybody loved Harry.

13) We’re the New Romantics | Explicit | 16054 words

Alternatively, a high school au where Louis pines and Harry is not who he seems to be. Featuring peanut butter banana milkshakes, motorcycles, and first times.

14) Wait For Me (To Come Home) | Explicit | 16066 words

A future fic of time stamps where Louis finally comes to grips with a love he'd denied for too long.

15) Deflower Me | Explicit | 20154 words

Louis is a proud virgin, and no matter how much society tries to make him feel like a freak for not acting on his natural urges, he doesn't suffer from his lack of experience. He has never felt drawn to someone in a way that made him want to get involved sexually with them, and he isn't planning on rushing himself so he can get some because people think it's what he should do.

In walks Fratboy, the Serial Haunter of His (wet) Dreams, who thankfully has a little business going on that might be just what Louis needs.

16) I Wanna Be More Than Friends | Not Rated | 20721 words

The one where Harry’s an alpha with no sense of smell, Louis’ an omega who isn’t allowed to scent his best friend, and that’s all they’ll ever be. Obviously.

17) The Way The Storm Blows | Explicit | 21649 words

Louis doesn’t have a habit of thinking about Harry’s dick.

That would be weird, seeing as they’re best mates, and they share a flat, and they’ve spent holidays at each other’s family homes. Their friendship hasn’t ever risen to a point where Louis should want to see his mate’s dick, and he’s happy to keep it that way.

Except, all that Louis can think about is exactly that. The size of it. The shape. The amount of people it’s been in.

Maybe it’s the tequila talking, or the fact that Louis’ just recently walked in to an eyeful of Harry taking turns on some slags that he’s never seen before, but. Louis’ mind can’t stop obsessing over the idea.

18) Ours Are The Moments I Play In The Dark | Mature | 30830 words

Jane Austen's Persuasion AU. Nine years ago Louis Tomlinson was persuaded to break off his engagement to Harry Styles, a poor sailor. Since then Louis has come to regret being so easily convinced to give up his one chance of happiness. Now Louis' family is in debt and his childhood home is being sold. In a complete reversal of fortune, Harry has returned to England a wealthy bachelor looking to settle down. Events conspire to bring them together once more though Louis is- must surely be- the last man on earth that Captain Styles would think of now.

19) If Ignorance Be Bliss | Mature | 30429 words

Uni AU: Harry is too experienced, and Louis just wants to get to experience him.

20) Where The Lights Are Beautiful | Mature | 31170 words

The accidental bonding a/b/o fic.

21) Mark My Word (We Gon’ Be Alright) | Explicit | 35524 words

"He’s always known that there would come a time when Harry would bond with some beautiful, quiet omega, and they would have lots of curly-haired pups and live happily ever after.

Knowing it and living it are two very different things, though. Watching the object of your affection desperately search for a mate and completely disregard you as an option is all sorts of painful, but it is what it is, and Louis is just going to have to learn to live with that."

22) Before We Knew | Explicit | 39831 words

Louis has been skeptical of soulmates for years so it seems like fate when he finally bumps into the owner of the obnoxiously large signature printed into his skin since age sixteen: Harry Styles, a human rights attorney who is firmly against soulmates.

23) Eyes Off You I Explicit | 39396 words

A Charlie’s Angels inspired fic where Louis is the brains, Harry is the charm, Liam is the muscle, and Niall drives the getaway car - and Zayn is there, too. sometimes.

24) Kiss Me On The Mouth And Set Me Free (Nut Please Don't Bite) | Mature | 42074 words

Harry is the CEO of Flora Corp, Louis is his new secretary.

"...Louis wanted him so badly. Wanted Harry to pick him up, bite him, and break him. Make Louis his, make Louis cry, make Louis a beautiful, plump, pregnant omega..."

25) Let Me Touch You Where Your Heart Aches | Explicit | 46625 words

A Friends with Benefits AU, in which Louis falls in love and Harry is jealous. There is some Karaoke singing somewhere in there, because how do you write a romantic comedy without a Karaoke scene?

26) Underneath The Moon | Mature | 46927 words

In five years’ time, Louis would be the one saying to his students about how he knew the great Harry Styles, in a time before he had ever put out an album or performed on a real stage. Harry fucking Styles had been his best friend and he still loved him, he always would. But they couldn’t stay that way.

27) The Sidelines | Explicit | 47078 words

Note: There are mentions of Top Louis.

Or Harry and Louis play hockey for Penn state and can’t stand one another, since they can’t keep their hatred off the ice their coach and team do what they can to keep their hard earned spot in the playoffs and their two star players from killing each other.

28) Waiting For The Tides To Meet | Explicit | 59873 words

Soulmate AU. Everyone is born with heterochromia — one eye is their own eye colour, while the other is the colour of their soulmate's. It's only when they meet their soulmate for the first time that their own eyes match properly. After a hazy night at a frat party, Louis wakes up to blue eyes and the shocking realization that he had met his soulmate, without any sober recollection. Seven years pass where Louis comes to terms with the fact that he'll never know who his soulmate is. Then one fated summer, a beautiful green-eyed photographer arrives at Louis' workplace, with promises of endless laughter and a familiar feeling in Louis' heart.

29) Pinkies Never Lie | Explicit | 83615 words | Sequel

AU in which Louis hates his job and loves Harry, Harry just wants a distraction, everyone else wants them to get their shit together, and Louis learns the hard way that new beginnings are only possible when something ends.

30) Inevitable | Explicit | 185917 words

AU where Louis and Harry used to be more than friends, but everything had to change the day Harry introduces Louis to his new girlfriend.

Check out our other fic rec lists by category here and by title here.

[jonghoshoe]

Here's your friendly reminder that neurodivergent folks brains are literally wired differently from neurotypicals and as a result, our experiences are often minimized and/or gaslit, whether intentional or not.

I can vividly remember that ever since I was a child, I was incredibly heat sensitive and my bath water would be burning even though my mother would insist it was practically cold. I always felt like I was too sensitive for that, that there was something wrong with me, I had no explanation for this due to no diagnosis.

I've always been emotionally sensitive too, freaking out over the smallest changes to a routine and wondering what was wrong with me for being such a pathetic cry baby.

I'm also texture sensitive. It wasn't so bad in primary but as I moved on to highschool I can vividly remember how much of a nightmare the uniforms were. They were too baggy or too tight, the shirt was an awful texture against my bare skin, my skin was so sensitive that the heat that resulted in having to wear tights in any season aside from summer resulted in UTIs, the blazers weren't meant to be taken off during class and it was impossible for me to focus even in winter because I was so hot and sweaty.

For all these years I thought there was something wrong with me to make me such a pathetic, sensitive cry baby who couldn't handle the world. The truth is that the world does not accommodate for those who are not neurotypical. Enforced uniforms in schools that cause sensory hell, being told to 'just get over' all the noises and fluorescent lights of a shopping centre, hardly any accommodations for those who cannot handle certain spaces. Being too forward is rude, not making eye contact is rude, not knowing social cues is rude, being too overtly neurodivergent can lose you your job, or prevent it entirely.

Neurotypical people don't understand how draining it is to try and thrive in their world when your brain is not wired the way theirs is. When the clacking of a keyboard in a classroom is deafening, when more than a few noises at a time send you into sensory overload, when the fabric of your jacket causes a meltdown. When your brain is wired so that yes, that bath water was cold; but whatever receptors are in my brain that are responsible for feeling temperature, they have my body convinced its scalding. That yes, plenty of people are just fine in Tesco, but the bright lights, the sounds of the trolleys and scanners and all the people talking frequently made me have a meltdown, a total shutdown where I stimmed by hurting myself and was so anxious that my throat felt as if it had closed up and I couldn't speak.

That standing in line to order a kfc and hearing a babies piercing cries made me stim by kicking my leg until it left marks from my boot because that's the only way I knew how to deal with the situation because I'd wanted the kfc all month and having to cancel that plan and admit defeat would cause me to break down.

It is so goddamn painful to try and survive a neurotypical world and I am sick and fucking tired of nobody believing how much of a struggle it is until someone is worn out or harming themselves. It is living fucking hell that made me miss all but my first year of highschool, barely attend more than a month of college, unable to leave the house more than twice a week and having a meltdown over the sounds of construction on a flat in my building. It is fucking tiring and I am sick of it.

[trashcanreddiefan]

Richie Tozier Does the Wired Autocomplete Interview

Summary: Richie does the Wired Autocomplete Interview. Little does he know, there’s a surprise waiting for him at the end.

Word Count: 1150-ish

Warnings: None whatsoever. This is pure fluff.

Author’s Note: Post-Chapter 2. All of the Losers are alive in this fic, including Stan, because I promised.

CROSS-POSTED AT AO3.

Richie took a sip of his coffee before setting his take-out cup down next to his chair. "Okay, let's do this."

He waited for his cue then looked at the camera. "Hi, I'm Richie Tozier and I'm here to do the Wired Autocomplete Interview."

He paused and picked up the first poster board. "Is Richie Tozier…" he read out loud, then pulled off the first strip covering the rest of the question. "Gay?

"Yep," he answered, popping the 'p' with a grin. "I'm strictly dickly, and only interested in one guy's dick in particular these days. Next question!"

He pulled off the next strip. "Is Richie Tozier an actor?" He shrugged. "Well sure, if you count all those years I acted like I was straight. Otherwise, no, I've never been in a movie or on a TV show, unless you count hosting duties on SNL or talk show appearances. Moving on!"

Richie laughed at the next question. "Is Richie Tozier on drugs? One would think, huh, especially after my public breakdown on stage a few years ago. No, contrary to popular belief the only drugs I've ever been on are the ones that have been legally prescribed to keep me as a mostly-functional human being.

"Ok, next. Is Richie Tozier friends with William Denbrough?" He smiled. "Ahh, Billy Boy. Big Bill. Billiam. Yes, Bill and I were friends when we were growing up together in a little backwards-as-fuck town in Maine. We lost touch for a long time but reconnected a few years ago along with the rest of our group of friends and all hang out as much as we can.

"Last question on this card. Is Richie Tozier funny? Depends on who you ask. My friends would probably say no but the Emmy award sitting on my mantel would disagree with them."

Richie tossed the poster to the side. "NEXT!"

He picked up the next poster. "Does Richie Tozier…" He pulled off the first strip. "...Live in California? Yes, my home base is in L.A., but I currently split my time between L.A. and New York.

"Next question… Does Richie Tozier have any pets? Sadly, no, not at the moment. It's too difficult with my travel schedule to have a pet right now.

"Does Richie Tozier write his own jokes?" Richie winced. "I didn't for a long time, as made obvious by all the past jokes about the fake girlfriend that I most definitely did not have, but I have been for a few years now and they mostly seem to be going over well.

"Does Richie Tozier have a wife? Again, gay as fuck, so no.

"And the last question for this one… Does Richie Tozier wear contacts? I have them, but I never wear them. Contacts make my eyes itchy. Besides, my glasses have been part of my signature look for so long that they're basically part of my brand."

Richie tossed that poster aside and picked up the next one. "Moving right along! How did Richie Tozier get the nickname 'Trashmouth'?" Richie chuckled.  "It was a childhood nickname that stuck. I was always making jokes and talking trash as a kid, so one day my friend Stan apparently had had enough and told me to shut my trash mouth, and it stuck. Actually the other day Stan called me 'dumpster fire', so the old nickname might be changing.

"How old is Richie Tozier? Let's just say I'm a Gen X'er and leave it at that.

"How did Richie Tozier become a comedian?" Richie looked directly at the camera. "Through a little luck and a lot of hard work.

"How did Richie Tozier win an Emmy? Honestly I have no idea. See above answer, I guess."

He set the poster down. "Is that it? Oh no, wait, there's one more set of questions."

Unlike the previous posters that had the beginning of the question revealed, the last poster had the entirety of each question hidden.

Richie pulled off the first strip before reading the question. "Is Richie Tozier in a relationship?" Richie put a hand over his heart. "The answer to this, and I honestly cannot be more happy to say this, is yes. My boyfriend Eddie and I have been together for two glorious years.

"How did Richie Tozier meet his boyfriend?" Richie grinned. "I'm sensing a pattern here. He was part of the friend group that I mentioned earlier, but my feelings for Eds were always different than my feelings for the rest of my friends, as in I loved to piss him off extra just to get him to touch me. While we were all back together in our hometown a few years ago Eddie was in a serious accident and almost died, and I was so relieved when he woke up in the hospital that I cried like a little bitch and confessed my love for him. Luckily for me, he reciprocated, and the rest, as they say, is history.

"Does Richie Tozier love his boyfriend?" Richie snorted. "People must see our Twitter exchanges. Don't worry, we don't actually hate each other -- roasting each other is basically foreplay for us. Eds gives as good as he gets -- in more ways than one, if you know what I mean. So to answer the question, yes, I love my boyfriend more and more every single fucking day. He's a tiny little ball of rage and I wouldn't trade him for anything."

Richie adjusted his glasses. "Okay, last question." He pulled off the final strip. "Will you marry me?" He blinked. "Wait, what the fuck?"

He looked at the question again just to make sure he read it correctly, then looked around in confusion until he saw Eddie joining him. He turned to face Eddie instead of the camera. "Eds, what the fuck ? What are you doing here? I thought you were in Bumfuck, Ohio on a business trip."

"You didn't answer the last question, Rich," Eddie replied.

"What the fuck do you mean, I didn't answer the last-- HOLY FUCKING SHIT."

Eddie had gotten down on one knee, pulling a platinum band out of his pocket and holding it up. "Marry me, Richie."

Richie blinked, willing his brain to form a coherent thought. "Yes." That sounds right.

Eddie grinned. "Yes?"

"Yes, yes, fucking yes ." Richie started to tear up.

Eddie stood and slid the ring onto Richie's finger before pulling him into a kiss. "I love you."

Richie sniffled and wrapped his arms around Eddie, realizing that Eddie had planned this out. "Oh my God, you clever, clever asshole. I love you so much," he murmured into Eddie's neck.

"Wanna wrap this up and go celebrate back at the hotel?"

Richie nodded and turned back towards the camera. "Once again, I'm Richie Tozier and this gorgeous specimen is my fiancé. Look for my new special, My Boyfriend is Hotter than Yours, premiering April 12th only on Netflix."

[rootfauna]

A Handmaiden’s Tale. Specifically, Mine.

I’e been debating on whether or not to make this post for a while now, and I’ve decided that the benefits of saying my piece outweigh any hate I’ll get for this. It’s really long but I have no more fucks to give. 

I am so, so, sick of the trend in radical feminism of calling women who aren’t radical feminists “cocksuckers” “wastes of time” “dick riders” “sellouts” “cowards” and “handmaidens”. Anti feminist women and liberal feminist women can be incredibly annoying and have made me want to put my head through a wall, and I honestly can’t blame anyone for making a snide remark about them here or there. But I absolutely cannot wrap my mind around the fact that a group of women who supposedly A) understands the misogyny of using a woman’s (real of hypothetical) sexual interactions with a man as an insult against her, B) acknowledges the realities of female socialization in a patriarchal society and C) understands the potential dangerous outcomes of a woman speaking up against misogyny, can go around unabashedly talking about women this way. Every time I scroll through my dash I’ll come across at least one post lamenting how young girls are indoctrinated into believing their worth lies in their beauty, femininity, and (hetero)sexuality. Why then, do I see so much vitriol directed at the ones who believed it? 

The last time I spoke about this I was accused of ‘making it all about myself’ because I shared a snippet of my personal experience. Well, I’m about to share more than a snippet. Yet this isn’t about me, and I will be the first one to tell you that I am nowhere near unique in this sense. So I guess this is actually the experience of thousands and thousands of women, this is just how it happened to me:

To start with, y’all need to understand where I grew up. If the ‘y’all’ wasn’t a big enough clue, I grew up in bumfuck nowhere USA. Here’s another fact that’s vital to my story: I was born in 1991. That fact, coupled with my geographic location, meant that when I started school in 1996, corporal punishment was still legal (to be carried out by the principal) and up until around that time my mother could still legally sign documents as “mrs” *insert my father’s name*. 

Growing up in this environment meant that gender roles were highly enforced around me and that at an early age I saw deviance from them met with hatred and scorn. I could name plenty of examples, but really, haven’t we all seen that? Even the respectable women who dared not be housewives never rose to a more prominent position than a teacher, bank clerk, or selling Mary Kay. Before the age of about 10 I have absolutely no memory of seeing a woman in a position of skill and power beyond these things except for Terry Irwin on tv. It might be noted that I grew up wanting to be a zookeeper. I don’t remember the first time I heard the word “feminist” but from my earliest recollection it was not a good word. Then, as today in my neck of the woods, “feminist” is an insult. I can remember sitting in the back seat of the car listening to my father and his friend ranting about something they heard on the radio about how “the feminists” (word spat out like tobacco juice) were ruining something or other. It was clear to me that whatever these feminists were, they were bad. 

Things really kicked into gear once I got into middle school. What had been a vague concept in the back of my mind was now pulled to the front of the classroom. I distinctly remember sitting in 7th grade biology and learning about the inherent differences between male and female brains. The teacher explained how our brains were wired differently, and that male brains were designed so that logical and analytical thought came naturally to them, but expressing emotion and communicating did not. This, the teacher said, is why men often erupt into fits of anger rather than say how they feel. On the other hand, female brains were designed to have ease of communication, and to be more aware of our own emotions and those of others. They were not designed for quick, logical, rational thinking. Don’t get me wrong; it was never taught to me that women were incapable of logical, rational, thinking, just that we were biologically at a disadvantage to men in that regard. I tried (like other girls in the class) to have some pride in my lady-brain. I’m wired to be better at something than a boy! Ha! Though it was around this time I began to shift my focus away from scientific pursuits and towards the arts. 7th grade was also the beginning of outright public sexual harassment that no adult seemed to give a shit about. There was “thong Thursday”, for example. We 12-13 year old girls were encouraged by the boys to wear thongs and lean over so that they could see the tops of them, or to wear our jeans low enough for them to peek over. This happened openly in the halls, but never once addressed by the adults. And woe to any girl who spoke out about it. That much feared “feminist!” accusation could be hurled at her, and she’d be publicly humiliated and mocked, and no one would dare help her lest they be feminist by association. There was also ‘grab-ass Wednesday’ which makes absolutely no sense but is exactly what you’re thinking. 

The official school lesson on male and female brains resurfaced again, this time in 10th grade sociology class. This time in addition to the physical differences in the brains, we learned about inherent differences in behavior and societal roles. It was honestly something taken straight from some MRA’s drivel; men evolved to be the Strong Hunter Protector of the species, brain different, this why big words make man ANGRY he hit you because his brain can’t make his mouth talk feelings he want to BREED. Woman want BABY lots of emotions need man to protec blah blah blah. To us at this point, all of this was objective fact. Also at this point, the effects and impact of female socialization were starting to become disgustingly apparent. Around this time the security officer at the school was fired for ‘having sex’ with a fourteen year old freshman. It was so SCANDALOUS because...what a SLUT! It would not occur to me until YEARS later that maybe sex between a 14 year old girl and the adult male security officer hired to protect her was...uh, rape. As high school continued, so did the development of our female anti-feminism. I’ve seen radfems on here discuss how men are socialized to think that their thoughts and emotions are objective fact, but I’ve never seen it pointed out that women are socialized to believe so, too. As interactions with boys became more frequent their attention became more and more prized. When a boy said “you’re beautiful” or “you’re not like the other girls” or “you’re smart” it was seen as a pure and shining compliment, a shining nugget of truth. If a girl said the same thing? You never knew, she could just be two-faced, she would change her mind in a matter of seconds, or just be on her period. Of course, we began to strive to receive more compliments from boys because what teenager DOESN’T want to be respected and valued by their peers? 

By the end of high school several of my peers were married and/or had a baby already. I had intended to go to school for journalism, but in a sudden fit of either teenage rebellion or wisdom, I took the plunge into working with animals. This saw me moving about a thousand miles away from my home town, my parents, friends, and all forms of social support. As it turns out, animal training and handling, particularly dog training and handling, is an incredibly male dominated field. Even compared to my previous life experience, it was extremely misogynistic. I found myself working long shifts at night, often with only male coworkers who were near universally older, larger, and stronger than I was. Here, I was expected to laugh it off when one of them said that if the world were about to end, the first thing he’d do was rape me. Or when my boss joked about raping me. Or when one of them (more or less out of nowhere) said that he didn’t think there would ever be a female president because “when I think “president” I think “man””. I did what I was supposed to do and took some satisfaction in their approval despite my first, suppressed, twinge of discomfort. In a strange city, in a strange area of the country, sleeping during the day and working long hours, I had little elsewhere to look for friendship and social interaction. So I made friends. Long night shifts with no one else to talk to and little else to do will do that to people. Of course, I wasn’t the ONLY woman at my place of work. I was friendly with the other women but the lifelong effects of being socialized to view women as inferior kept any of us from growing too close to each other. After all, despite growing up elsewhere they had similar upbringings. When they weren’t present the men openly chatted about who they thought the woman had slept with, how smelly her vagina must be, what her nipples probably looked like, and I held my tongue still under the delusion that if I was Good and Not Like the Other Girls, they wouldn’t speak like that about me behind my back. Feminism was only mentioned to mock women, or, more importantly, to bring up how the the country was sexist against men. The men lamented about how “in this country a man can’t be raped I guess” and “female special privileges” and “the DRAFT” and I believed them, because I didn’t have much of a reason or incentive not to. Women were viewed and treated as walking cries of rape unless they laughed when groped. 

I called one of these male friends one night, in tears. My kitten, a tiny little thing named Ginkgo, had escaped from my apartment and I pleaded with him to help me search for her. He came over and we searched in vain for her. I was heartbroken, sobbing, and desperate for comfort and when the hug I was given became lustful I tried to refuse. He argued that I had woken him up in the middle of the night to come all the way to my home to look for a lost kitten; I owed it to him. That it wasn’t fair for me to refuse him and that it was selfish of me to expect compassion and company for nothing in return. And at that time in my life, I believed him. It was only fair. Afterwards, alone in my apartment, I was confronted with the reality that the only reason anyone would ever show me compassion, love, or kindness was because I was female and therefore potential sex. At the time, I was beginning to realize I was asexual (though it would be many years before I had a word for it). It was like I had been shown that my worth, my worthiness of love and life, and all my achievements were housed in my sensuality and sexuality. And I didn’t posses either. Dark times, I tell ya. Of course, there was no chance of me seeking sympathy from any female friends or acquaintances for what took place. Years later when a man in a bar shoved his finger inside me and I smashed a beer mug over his head I was berated by my female companions for overreacting and ruining the night. Further blows to any sense of being anything other than “woman” came in the form, ironically, of my achievements. I excelled at dog handling, particularly scent detection and received many an award for it, each time being told by my male peers that the only reason I received it was because I was a woman. I took my awards with a pinch of shame, believing I had taken it from a more deserving man. 

 It was around this time I first dipped my toes in the shallow end of feminism. I got a Tumblr! I was about 23. The internet wasn’t too big a thing when I was growing up and I got my first social media account when I was 17, the year I moved out. Until I logged onto the blue hell site, I didn’t use the internet outside of facebook (with only my irl friends there to form an echo chamber) and looking up definitions of words. Now, for the first time, I discovered that feminism wasn’t taboo everywhere. Fascinating! Of course, the “feminism” I found was pretty much identical to the patriarchal world I lived in, just with more lipstick. But it was a step. Secret radfem blog? Shit, I had a secret libfem blog and was still terrified of being found out by people I knew. I had good reason, too. When I tried to, very tentatively, voice some opinions that were not male-approved, I was met with swift and immediate backlash. I mentioned to a male coworker that I didn’t want children, which ended with him screaming at me to go out and have a hysterectomy right now if I really didn’t want any because I was being stupid and of course I wasn’t serious otherwise I’d just rip my uterus out. Or when I voiced concern over that one politician that said women should be forced to deliver stillbirths naturally because that’s what happened on his farm and was publicly berated for being a crybaby and a little girl, freaking out over ‘one weird fluke’. Still, I grew more and more interested in feminism. I spent a year deeeep in the libbiest-of libfem glitter-choked hells until one fateful day: I saw a study that proved there was no such thing as brainsex. 

My entire perception of reality was irreparably shattered. Over the course of a few days, I was forced to realize that I had been lied to my entire life. I had been lied to by my teachers and the adults in my life as a kid, I was forced to realize how deeply sexist and inappropriate the boys at schools were being, that I was taught in school to excuse male violence as not their fault, that no one ever owed anyone sex, that what my coworkers and ‘friends’ were saying was blatantly false and not ok, that I was just as capable of pursuing a scientific field as a man, to realize just how much the most important people in my life really hated me. And I was forced to confront the fact that I had backed myself into a corner, cut off any escape routes, and that I relied on the acceptance of these men for my safety and job security. That made the next few years......uncomfortable. And yet, bit by bit, little by little, I’ve pulled myself away from that world and set up a new life for myself. I’ve said goodbye to a lot of people. I’ve hurt a lot. I’ve cringed a lot. The antifeminist keyboard smashing seen on radfem posts is something I could have (and probably would have) typed myself back then, safe in the conviction that I was right. 

“No one held a gun to your head and forced you to be an antifeminist” I’ve been told. That’s true, I guess. At nine, after riding my bike to the one small library in town I could have checked out a book by Dworkin (whom I’d never heard of) from the feminist section (which may or may not have existed) instead of Animorphs. I could have walked around shouting “hey, anyone want to be a feminist so I can see how it’s done?” to try and find someone to look up to. I could have, upon getting internet in my late teens, immediately googled “how to be a feminist”, but I didn’t so my bad. Certainly there were girls who grew up in similar circumstances who were always feminists, and certainly there are women who grew up with outlets for feminism that are antifeminist, but I feel my story is a much more common one and in the end at least I made it. I think most radfems have had a libfem phase and I think most of us would cringe at it, but in so many ways I’m grateful for it. Not only did it introduce me to the movement that would change my life, but it was inviting and welcoming. I cannot, and DO NOT want to imagine what would have happened if, seeking to find voice for my discomfort, I had come across radical feminism first and saw the words that were beginning to cut so deeply echoed by the women who claimed to be for women. Cocksucker. Waste of time. Stupid. Coward. Being told I ‘lapped it all up’. The thought of it really makes me uncomfortable, and I think the only message it all would have sent was “Your entire world is against you and hates you but also you wanted it and it’s your fault.”. 

I see radfems speak often about non western women and how they face and view sexism. It’s quite universally accepted that non western women are acutely aware of biological sex and wouldn’t stand for this gemgender floridesexual nonsense and that’s lauded as a sort of....kinship I guess. When I see radfems speak about non western women in this way, I feel they have a sense of kinship with them, like they’re one of the radfem crowd. I wonder, however, what the women who grew up and lived in those environments would really think about everything radical feminism stands for? Surely some would agree completely, but how often do you see women in these situations agree that rape is sometimes (or always) the girl’s fault? Or that women should not be educated? Are they still our sisters, or cock sucking cowards? And is the extension of sisterhood dependent on their hypothetical ability to, if they hold these beliefs, listen to what feminists have to say and change their minds to agree? Let’s say the woman in your gifsets is presented with these resources and never changes her mind. What then? Even still I've seen it said that anti feminist women will never change so there’s no point in trying. I see libfems pointing to non western cultures with ‘other’ genders and saying ‘see? see? THEY agree with me! They’d agree with liberal feminism!’ and I see radfems pointing to non western women and saying ‘see? see? THEY agree with me! They’d agree with radical feminism!’ and I can’t help but see these cultures and women within them being pressed into an ideal of one argument or the other purely for internet posturing. 

I’m very disheartened to see the movement which once seemed so academic and helpful to me seeming to become a ‘cool girls’ club. Sisterhood, compassion, and help, but only for women who think the way we do. Others are there to be mocked. It’s eerily similar to the way we laughed at the ‘other’ girls in high school, completely full of ourselves and thinking we were so much better. 

When I think of anti feminist women, I see the little girl being told men were prone to violence instead of talking because that’s how they were built, I see the girl being called a whore for being raped by someone she was told to trust, and I see the women pitted against each other, who have never had a feminist role model, and the girls who harbor a strange feeling of discontent and isolation they can’t articulate. I don’t see wastes of time. 

If you’re still reading, thank you. 

[so-tell-me-will]

Color 2 Taste

Taste: 2nd Design Color
 Internal and External Determination by Ra

(Part 1)

We‘re going to look at the 2nd Color. But before we get to the 2nd Color of Taste a couple of things I want to go through. First of all, I want to go back to these definitions and make sure that—they‘re sort of like a mantra. And I think because we are operating on new ground and that the terminology is unfamiliar, I think it‘s very important to keep it fresh.

Determination and Determination Transference

So, let‘s talk about this determination: A genetic predisposition to form differentia- tion. This is the thing that is at the very bedrock of what we are examining. In oth- er words, what we are trying to see clearly is what is the genetic predisposition to form differentiation. And once we understand what it is, that is, once we have been able to see it through its chains, then the ability to be able to devise both holistic programs to maintain this predisposition, and at the same time to help people who have operated as not-self to realign to what is their correct predisposition.

You can see determination transference is the fundamental binary to determination. Rather than a genetic predisposition we have a conditioned predisposition. Again, it‘s clear to see that at the root of the dilemma of what it is to be awakened both physically and in terms of the mind of the passenger that we are dealing with the phenomena of conditioning. The way in which conditioning changes the way in which our biology functions. I think probably the most startling thing to really grasp is that the conditioning impact of somebody in your aura, when you are not operating cor- rectly, is a conditioning impact that is more than a psychological dilemma. It‘s more than dealing with somebody‘s way of trying to turn your thoughts or your emotions or whatever the case may be you‘re really talking about the way in which, at least temporarily, the wiring operates in the physical form.

This conditioned predisposition, as opposed to genetic, leads not to differentiation but it leads to homogenization. It is here at the physical level that we see the fundamental dilemma of what it is to be an incarnated being. The dilemma is: Are we going to take the road of differentiation, or are we going to take the road of homogenization?

It‘s interesting to note, because it‘s very important to keep these things in perspective, that the road to homogenization has been the victor. That‘s just one of those things to recognize. It‘s like studying ancient history. If you study ancient history it‘s actually quite astonishing that you don‘t get to study very many people. There are these exceptions that stand out, usually because of the power they hold for whatever reason, but the great flotsam and jetsam of their societies they‘re totally undistinguished. We know very little about the common person of 1,000 years ago, 2,000 years ago, and 3,000 years ago, and so forth and so on. We know something about the rights and the dilemmas of those that are exalted and most of it probably is lies anyway because history was written by those that were part of the court.

What I‘m really getting at is homogenization has been part of the way in which we have been designed to operate until we can get to a point of transcendence. It‘s something to see. It‘s like the blame game. You can‘t blame the first half of your life for being fucked up because you honestly didn‘t know. There‘s no point in blame in that. And there‘s no point in looking at humanity and wondering what it would have been like from the beginning if everybody was differentiated, because obviously that‘s not the way the evolutionary process works.

I like the Eden myth for nothing more than it‘s a grand metaphor. This metaphor of going out into the world and finding knowledge, well, it‘s not like it‘s under the next stone. It‘s a long process. So there is vast ignorance over vast periods of time that deter humankind‘s ability to truly differentiate.

What is fascinating for me is that we are given the predisposition; that is in our nature. This is the thing that is beautiful and the thing we must hold onto. In other words, we all have a predisposition in our form to be perfect. That is, to be the perfect differentiated being. And even those among us who are deeply involved in this process, experiment in this process, we still have gone through very long periods in our lives, myself included, where we were not-self and where our form was homogenized in one way or another.

The thing to understand about the body, it‘s why when I first began to introduce Human Design one of the things that I talked about and continue to talk about is the seven year cycle. It‘s an ongoing process. The seven year cycles of cellular renewal. It‘s quite a job to realign the form to the predisposition of its differentiation. For many beings, being caught, for example, in the auras of those that are there in their lives, can end up being unable to leave behind the conditioning power that homogenizes their form. And the homogenized form is a dead-end street. It really is.

It‘s so interesting to think about that, is that though the plan is towards homogeniza- tion, pure homogenization, total homogenization has never been something that has been viable and could never happen. It could never happen because of the genetic imperative. If everything is homogenized then the gene pool is really messed up. You need to have the differentiation in order to enliven the gene pool.

So, it says statistically that out of the mass of incarnating beings moment-by- moment entering onto this plane, that there are always those that are predisposed to have greater form differentiation than others. Now, don‘t ask why. It‘s always nice not to ask why. These are the fractal lines of hierarchical development. One of the saddest things, at least from the perspective of somebody like me who is a teacher, is the recognition that the nature of our planet is such that the best you could ever dream for is a half differentiated planet. That would be the best; that would be the balance. And yet, we all well know it doesn‘t work that way.

If you look out in society as a whole, I was looking at statistics today, for example, for the State of Spain. There is this incredible statistic that there is something like 15 million people that earn 12,000 euros a year, that‘s about $18,000 a year. And there are 3,000 people that earn about 1 million dollars a year. This is just salary people; this is not entrepreneurs so it‘s not to be judged on the nation as whole. It‘s just something to understand about the way in which society is hierarchical. And it‘s not just simply hierarchical in the material sense. It‘s hierarchical in the intellectual sense—not everybody is going to get a Nobel. It‘s hierarchical in the awareness sense.

So, there is a dilemma out there. And one of the things that is so interesting about the health potential of PHS is the ability to move people away from homogenization who in fact in many senses can never truly escape it. That is, to realign their form towards therapies that will in almost the Ayurvedic sense balance the negatives, or in the macrobiotic sense, the negatives with the positives. Anyway, I didn‘t want to get into a long drift about that. I just wanted to make sure these themes are there.

Part 2

Part 2

Internal Determination

Then the 2nd binary, that is, the relationship between internal determination and ex- ternal determination, these two areas are enormously important to where we have to go in our process and truly have to be dealt with differently. In other words, they are truly different things. This balancing between the demands of what the intake of the vehicle requires, what the vehicle needs inside as opposed to what the vehicle needs on the outside.

Internal determination is the Sun/Earth in terms of what it relates to specifically. This is a predisposition that drives differentiated brain function. I cannot stress how important it is to understand what the binary of internal determination is. Think of it: A conditioned predisposition that drives homogenized brain function.

Think about the planet out there. Think about the 600 million people that can barely read if at all. Think about the impact of homogenized brain function. I think you get the drift. One of the things to really understand is that dysfunction in the vehicle isn‘t simply a matter that you‘ve got a planet that‘s sick, because that‘s not really what it‘s about. There is an astonishing vibrancy to the survival instincts of a human being. But then again, the thing that makes a human being ―superior‖ to other mammals is our brain functions, the level of strategic consciousness that we have. Without strategic consciousness there‘s no way for us to master the material plane.

So, it‘s essential to grasp that this internal determination, this predisposition that drives differentiated brain function, the less differentiated your brain function it‘s not simply about intelligence. Grasp that. It is about you having a self-reflected consciousness that is correct for you, that is correct for your vehicle. When we‘re talk- ing about the Design, again, we‘re not talking about mind. We‘re talking about the way the brain functions, which means that we are talking about the pituitary glands and their relationship to the thyroid. We‘re talking about information transference. We‘re talking about hormone production. We‘re talking about the quality of it. We‘re talking about the level of chemical information that is inherent in the messaging that is taking place. We‘re talking about the synaptic roots that are going to be taken. And whether they‘re going to be taken in, whether they‘ll be taken this way or that way, all of this is about brain function and how easy it is for us when conditioned to move towards this homogenized brain function. Slowly, when you look out at the 6 billion people you‘ll begin to see that the homogenized brain function is in evidence out there, deeply in evidence.

External Determination

External determination: A predisposition that aligns to differentiated environments. We are objects moving in space. And we‘re really, in a sense, going to talk about that today. We are objects moving in space. We have specific geometries, specific geometries that we ride on specific fractal lines.

Our form is always seeking alignment, always. It‘s not just seeking alignment, it needs that alignment. Just think about it this way, think about it in terms of a mov- ing object and resistance. What resistance does to a moving object is slowly but surely it wears it down. So, what we do is that we devise ways to deflect the resistance. So, we create an airfoil. We drive the air around our moving object and we reduce the resistance.

Basically, what you‘re looking at in external determination is a predisposition to avoid as much resistance as possible. So, your body‘s consciousness—remember we are talking about body consciousness; a design crystal is a consciousness crystal. It‘s not the way we understand consciousness through the Personality crystal be- cause this is directly connected to our self-reflected ideas about what we think mind is. This is body consciousness, and that your body has within it a radar, sensory, neural mechanism, all these things, they have different mechanisms in order to be able to check out the environments around it and to seek out those environments that are correct for it. It‘s inherent in the vehicle. But you can see what happens with conditioning. What conditioning does is that it conditions what we‘re going to align to and puts into homogenized environments.

About 10 years from now, or next year, it‘s very close, I mentioned it awhile ago but I have forgotten the date exactly, that for the first time in human history there are going to be more people living in cities than living on the land. You can see what happens when you have a predisposition to homogenized environments that are conditioned by a world of not-self. It‘s very easy to see that. The denser the environment, the more conditioned the environment is, and the more everyone is homogenized through that environment. So you have all these homogenized brain functions in all these homogenized cities. What a lovely thought.

Part 3

Part 3

How the Crystal Functions

All right, I just wanted to do that little review with you to keep that fresh for you. Let‘s go into what I think is one of the main challenges for me, to try to get across to you is the way in which the crystal operates. After all, that‘s our job; that‘s the job here in PHS is to understand the way in which the Design crystal functions. Last week I gave you this illustration to give you a sense of the interplay between the layer in the process that we call Color with the tonal layer which is the level below Color in the structure.

It was just to give you a taste of that. What my hope is, is that if I can show you this illustration, I hope you all see that, I‘m really pleased with this illustration; it‘s one of my favorites. It‘s quite something to try to come up with ways just to be able to illustrate some of these concepts. What I want you to understand is that what

we‘re looking at when we‘re talking about Color is that we‘re only talking about a frequency in a certain place in the crystal. It‘s a frequency in a certain place in the crystal. And it‘s a frequency that‘s there as the result of neutrinos pouring through the crystal.

When you have the neutrino stream going through the crystal, the inner structure of the crystal spirals the effect. What you basically have is that there are six spirals that are operating within the crystal. They don‘t all operate in the same direction, and they don‘t operate in a balanced way in the same direction. It‘s like if you can think

about the way in which, let‘s take the example of a single neutrino on its journey through a Design crystal. That single neutrino is going to enter the crystal by the Base. So, when we‘re looking at our levels we have Base, Tone, Color and that is the limit of what we can call crystal—Base, Tone, Color. Remember that. It‘s very important to grasp.

When you talk about line you cannot talk about crystal. You can talk about body or passenger, but you can‘t talk about crystal. You can talk about the unconscious, if you will. But remember that the way in which the quantum that is us comes into existence is that the magnetic monopole pulls together these two crystals and pulls them together into a quantum.

The way it pulls it together is that it latches on to the end frequency, which happens to be the Color frequency. So, for example, if you‘re looking at the way that neutrino is going to pass through the Design crystal it is going to come in from the Base, it is going to go to the tonal level, and then from the tonal level it is then going to go to the Color level. And the Color level is the last frequency.

Basically what‘s happening is that it‘s the spin, in a sense, of the neutrino that is giving off a frequency and it gives off a different frequency in different places as it moves through the Design crystal. It‘s so important to grasp this as an inner image so that you can begin to understand how our programming operates.

The Prime Design Crystal

When you‘re looking at the Design crystal, it is officially called the Prime Design Crystal. And it is a Prime Design Crystal because the body is full of Design crystals. There are billions of them, every single cell, for that matter, coming in and going out. All of those Design crystals are communicated to, all of them; all of the body‘s Design crystals are communicated to through the influence of the Prime Design Crystal.

It is the Prime Design Crystal that takes in the basic programming, and that basic programming—think about what we just looked at, this predisposition to be differentiated. There are no two crystals alike. They‘re not alike. So there is a difference in the inner structure of each of and all of these crystals. It is these various differences in the inner structure that is in fact the predisposition. In other words, as the neutrino is moving through the particular crystal the frequency that is the by-product of its movement through the crystal is unique.

It begins with being shaped, if I can use that language, from the Base to the Tone and when it finally gets to the Color frequency which is where the neutrino leaves the Design Crystal. It‘s at this Color frequency which ultimately is going to be very, very important in our studies because it is this Color frequency that the monopole is going to latch on to, that the monopole is going to pull together into this extraordinary quantum that we call our lives.

So, let me take you into this illustration a little deeper. Again, none of this in es- sence, is to scale or anything, if you know what I mean. This is not necessarily what a Design crystal is going to look like. I‘m just abstractly trying to give you a way to see the process. By the way, the spirals inside are made up of 61 hexagons, just in case you‘re a number spiral freak and there are two of them, it‘s a binary spiral. It‘s important for us to grasp that there are some very, very interesting things that is going on in this process.

So, first let‘s talk about, again we‘re only talking about the Color level here, we‘re talking about the exit level. When we get eventually to working with the Color/Tone relationship then I will take you into the tonal frequencies and the way the tonal spirals work in relationship to the Color spirals.

Part 4

Part 4

The Beginning of a Color Process

It‘s quite something to grasp all this. So, don‘t feel overwhelmed at any given point because we will work our way through it. But anyway, let‘s talk about the beginning of a Color process. Everything is layered. So, when you‘re coming up from the Tones, or whatever, when you‘re getting to the Color frequency there are three bands. And there is an opening band, there is the central band and there is the clos- ing band. And you can see these bands are listed as A, B and C. The band that is closest to the tonal level is the 1, so we‘re talking about the 1st Color, and the 6. And you can see that they are going in opposite directions. This is something very important. You can see that the 6 is going clockwise and you can see that the 1 is going counterclockwise.

You can see up here under the anticlockwise and the clockwise that you do not have a 3/3 balance. The reason you do not have a 3/3 balance is because of the 4. Re- member one of the underlying themes of transference is that it is the 4 that is re- sponsible for transference, and if it were not for transference, the monopole would not be able to grab on and hold us. So, because of the 4 we end up with an unba- lanced configuration.

But let me complete the image. You have the 1 and the 6 and you can see that they are point/counterpoint with each other, they go either way. And if you go to the outside you can see the 4 and the 3. This is going to be the closing of that; you can see it‘s the same thing. In other words, you have the anticlockwise 4 and you have the clockwise 3. So, you have this inner one, which is the first level above Tone. You have the outer one, which is the last level that is before the quantum of line. Then in the middle of this, and in essence if you‘re looking at this orange band here and you can see that they both come from the clockwise side you can see that they‘re both running in the same direction, it‘s almost as if this middle one runs from the Tone level all the way up and these two are like rings around the bottom and rings around the top. So, if you could imagine a pipe and you could imagine that the pipe is the 2 and the 5 then the bottom ring around it would be the 1 and the 6, and the top ring around it would be the 4 and the 3. I hope I haven‘t confused the hell out of you, but anyway.

It is a very complex spiraling system that is going on. What is interesting about it is that there are specific relationships here that are quite unusual. There is nothing unusual about this central band that is operating all clockwise. That‘s the 2-5. And of course, the 2-5 already have a relationship because they are natural harmonics in the way in which the Colors operate with each other. But when you‘re looking at band A, which is the low band, and band C which is the high band, when you‘re look- ing at them they‘re very different. This is a 1-6 relationship, it‘s not like that‘s something we see, nor do we see the 3-4.

In fact, at the Color level, obviously because of the way in which these bands work, there is a relationship between the 1-6 and the 3-4 that is a new relationship that in many ways needs to be explored. So much of that relationship is about the demands of the 4 in terms of the way it transfers. And you can see that in the harmony of the 1-4 that the 1 has certain qualities that are similar to the 4, though it doesn‘t have the endless transference dilemma that the 4 has.

Inner Crystal Dynamics

This inner crystal dynamic, it is from this point that the vehicle is informed. I guess this is the most important thing that I want to bring out at this point. We‘ll be look- ing at a lot of inner dynamics and they will get even more complex because we will eventually bring in both the Tone and the Base. But what I want you to see is that in terms of the body, the Prime Magnetic Monopole does not deliver the information to the cellular Design crystals when it becomes the unconscious. In other words, it is not about the information going to the vehicle through its line positions. In other words, it has nothing to do with the quantum because as we well know the quantum itself is just an illusion. It‘s just an illusion held together by the monopole despite however attached we happened to be to our particular illusions.

However, when we‘re talking about the way in which the biology of the body is programmed what we have to see is that it is this final frequency, the Color frequency that is sending the information to the vehicle. That is, sending the information to all of the other Design crystals, all of the cellular crystals that are there in the body. That‘s something very important to grasp. In other words, when we‘re going to be looking at working specifically with aligning the vehicle to its true frequency, because that‘s what this is all about, there is a predisposition to a specific frequency and it‘s only homogenization that moves one away from it, so we‘re aligning people to what‘s their correct frequency, what that means is that their Prime Magnetic Monopole is then going to be giving out correct information at the cellular level. And you go through this process where you go through this renewal process that takes place over time.

It‘s why I endlessly remind everybody to follow their strategy. This is one of the things that truly benefits the physical vehicle. But more than that, to begin to see what it‘s really benefiting. It‘s benefiting the capacity of the Design crystal to fulfill its function which is to differentiate. That is literally what it‘s all about.

But anyway, in this particular examination what I really want to show you is that we have this—people are always asking how the information is passed, how does the information move. It‘s not simply a matter that here‘s your Design data when you look at somebody‘s bodygraph, it‘s really about understanding what that Design crystal actually does and the way it actually functions. Because it‘s only when we begin to see that, that we begin to understand the dilemma is that we need to rea- lign human beings to what is their natural frequency, because it‘s all frequency.

So, that‘s your taste of inner crystal dynamics. We‘ll also, and it will be a continued point of discussion as I go through outlining the overview for each of these Colors, each class I‘m going to introduce another level of information like this so that slowly, but surely, we can begin to have all the tools we need to really grasp the way these things operate. It‘s a good one to meditate on, and particularly this relationship that is here where you see this imbalance because this imbalance is very, very important. It‘s very important.

It also says something very important about the 2-5 and the continuity of the 2 and the 5 and how important these two particular determinations happen to be, because they are the central spiral of the whole Color system. They‘re the most consistent aspect of the Color system; just something to think about. Let‘s move on.

Part 5

Part 5

2nd Design Color: Taste

We come to the 2nd Design Color and we come to the determination of Taste. This is an area that is particularly fascinating for me. Aside from what I was just looking at, and here we are look- ing at the 2-5 as an example, and the significance of it, the balance that is there in the way in which the construct works. That is, the way in which the Color dynamic is built into the graph. They‘re extraordinary mirrors of each other; very beautiful mirrors of each other. As a frequency, this is the central spiral of the way

in which the whole Color frequency operates.

When we‘re looking at Taste, I don‘t want to get into what were the general conversations about Taste and looking at the various olfactory functions and all of these things because I‘m much more interested in laying out for you these new keynotes in order for you to have Color keynotes that specifically relate to both internal and external determination. These are essential tools for analysis for us; and to be familiar with these keynotes is one of those things that is important. Obviously, as we work through it and use the language enough it will settle in.

So, in talking about Taste, again keep in mind that we‘re looking at two different binaries here. When we‘re looking above we are looking at the Sun/Earth so we are looking at brain function. When we‘re looking below we‘re looking at the Nodes and we‘re looking at the environment. When I say Sun/Earth and Nodes I‘m just talking thematically.

An Open/Closed System

So, let‘s take a look at brain function and taking in, and think about Taste in terms of what it‘s really about. We have this open/closed phenomenon. Everything about being open is so important at the mental level. In other words, for brain function this is a way of—the 2 has two sides to it. What it takes in transforms it in the deep- est possible sense. Yet, at the same time what it takes in can be so dangerous. So, Taste is an open/closed system. That is something very, very important to under- stand.

It is open in terms of what it takes in. It is closed in terms of its external environment. In other words, one of the things to see about 2nd Color determination in the externalized world is that it is closed off from the external. In the external world it is closed off. And that‘s very, very important for it. These barriers are necessary in the external environment.

It is the tendency—we‘re dealing with binaries, after all—it‘s so important to see that everything about Taste is that the vehicle itself needs to experiment with what goes in, and needs to avoid the experimentation on the outside. So, when we‘re dealing with Taste we‘re dealing with something very interesting. It is about building bar- riers and breaking barriers. You can be open on the outside but external, or closed on the inside. There are all these binaries that are working here, and it‘s all about barriers.

The most important thing to understand is that in terms of what you take into the vehicle that everything is a discernment process. In other words, it‘s not about this thing or that thing is the perfect thing, it is try this and see, try this and see, try this and see. In other words, it is a developmental process in order to establish what the barriers are actually going to be.

The 2nd Color has a Natural Resonance to the 2nd Tone

One of the most interesting things, the Taste being the 2nd Color, is its natural resonance to the 2nd Tone. If you remember from our previous illustrations, and I will go back and show you that if you look at what‘s called the base line, or the foundation line, in the hexagon for each of the Colors you‘ll see that the Tone that is always running along the foundation line is the 2, the 2nd Tone.

So, when you‘re dealing with the 2nd Color, there is a very deep resonance to the 2nd Tone. One of the things about the 2nd Tone is that this is a Splenic Tone and it‘s very much connected to identification and alert systems. One of the things to see so clearly about Taste is that one has to submit to many things that aren‘t correct in order to find what is correct, which is just an interesting way of looking at the way in which this determination operates.

For example, if you have a 2nd Color child, a 2nd Color baby, just because it likes a particular applesauce doesn‘t mean that you should just stay with that. In other words, that child needs a number of options. It‘s very important for them, particularly at an early stage in their development to be able to go through the Taste Selective process and then to be able to wean it down and put up barriers against what isn‘t correct for it.

You‘ll see that a 2nd Color determination baby will very quickly indicate to you that they don‘t want a repeat of this thing or that thing. But they will be very, very open to the test. Even if they go through a number that they don‘t like you‘ll see that they‘re still going to be open to the test. It‘s very much about what they are. And then, that refining process takes place.

At the outside world, this is much more barriers that are pre-structured that need to be broken down ultimately. Yet, at the same time those barriers become physically very, very important; very important in terms of controlling access from the conditioning field of the outside.

Whenever we‘re dealing with Color we have to deal with what transference does. There is a very profound difference between 1, 2, 3 and 4, 5, 6. It is the opposite side of the spectrum. It is the binary, or the polarity. In the case of the 2-5, this is a very, very profound binary.

What is so interesting for me in sound is that there are two qualities here, that is for the brain high frequency and for the body low frequency. And what I mean by that is for brain function - high frequency, and for relationship to the environment, a low frequency. What‘s so curious about that is the way in which that looks when you step to the outside, because when you step to the outside you get the external environment. The external environment is about narrow and wide. In other words, high frequency, very narrowly streamed. And of course, ultimately, this is the way our brain functions. This is synaptic firing of energy. This is a very, very high very fast frequency on a narrow band.

Yet, for the body what is necessary is a low frequency spread out over a wide area so that it is a much less evident, this is a need for not so much quiet as distance be- tween noises. We live in a noise world; it is not a sound world. It is actually a noise world because it is filled with so many artificial sounds. There is a great deal of noise that operates in the environment. And what is interesting is that there are certain high frequencies that are very, very disturbing for the brain. There are certain very deep, low frequencies that can be very uncomfortable for the body. Again, it really comes down to the quality of the environment.

Part 6

Part 6

Transference Shows You How the Physical Body Can be Distorted

But think about what the transference is. The transference really shows you how the physical body can be so distorted. Instead of being open to what you‘re taking in, there is this narrowness to a specific frequency and you‘re not going to let anything else in. The body isn‘t going to get what it needs. It isn‘t going to get the spectrum that‘s necessary. It‘s not going to be able to align itself to what is correct for it and put up barriers to what isn‘t correct for it. It just won‘t happen.

This is the whole thing about the nature of transference anyway. And of course, at the mundane level, because I have discussed this at the mundane level, you get somebody who thinks that the mantra is going to make a difference in their life, or playing Mozart is going to sooth them, when it fact it‘s only going to make them sick. That it‘s not the sound that‘s going to make the difference in their life. And it‘s not the sound that‘s going to make them feel better. It‘s amazing how many people have 2nd Color determination who think that listening to music is healing for them. That‘s about as insane as you get. But in fact, that‘s true.

What‘s so astonishing about that is that if you take that to the extreme, and I do have at times an absurdist sense of humor, it turns some of the greatest composers of all time into destroyers of bodies. There is sweet Mozart rolling in his grave be- cause you‘ve got all these 2nd Color determined beings who think that listening to Mozart is going to make them feel better. All they‘re doing is homogenizing their form and losing their potential for differentiation. Transference is something that is enormously powerful in distorting the vehicle.

Experimenting with the Design is Necessary

Again, I remind you we cannot work with anyone who is not experimenting with their design. That is, it is not possible to heal a body. It is not possible to align a vehicle to its predisposition to differentiation if the vehicle is being run by the not-self. Then you‘re already dealing with somebody that is deep in transference literally all the time. And obviously, they have diminished brain function. That is, it‘s not about intelligence; remember it‘s just narrowed into a homogenized construct where they‘re stuck in their limitation. The more homogenized the brain function, the more difficult it becomes to break out of the mold. It becomes a Catch-22.

Again, it is something to see very clearly about the psychological power that is in the hands of those that seem to be available to heal others. In other words, those clients that will come to you need to be clear that the first message that they‘re going to get is, ―I can‘t help you until you do this. And I can‘t help you until you do this at least for awhile. I can‘t do anything for you.

Taste: 2nd Design Color

It takes us back to I think the most fantastic thing about Human Design that on the surface is the great healing. Step-by-step, as yourself, decision upon decision, every decision aligns you to what is correct for you. Every decision aligns you to your pre- disposition. Every decision that is correct aligns you to your predisposition. Every decision that is not-self aligns you to a conditioned homogenization.

So, in dealing with clients this is a beginning step. Then we can look at how we can help them because obviously their form is infected with not-self homogenization. It‘s not an easy thing to break that. It isn‘t. And of course, to align them, or re-align them to their predisposition means to move them away from their tendency, which is to sound, and move them to the correct determination, to the Taste determination, and enter them into that process. This is always a dilemma for us, that without the experiment the vehicle isn‘t ready.

No Choice

No choice is an incredible thing. It is always so clear to me that people who go through various processes, regardless of the way in which they‘re thinking, there is a choicelessness in all of that. This is just the fulfillment of their process. Somebody who is truly going to be transformed physically by this knowledge it has to be natural for them to enter into the experiment. This is where it begins. It doesn‘t matter whether they‘re spiritual, and it doesn‘t matter whether they‘re looking for the truth, and it doesn‘t matter whether they know about any of this, it doesn‘t matter if they‘re aware or not. Truly it doesn‘t. If they‘re unwell and they want to be healed they will listen, at least temporarily. They will experiment at least temporarily, and if it works then they will continue in the process and you know that they are on their way to being transformed.

It‘s a reminder for all of us that 70 percent of the work is to get the people to expe- riment because that‘s the key. Whatever work we do with them is only going to be effective as long as they are maintaining that. And yet, what we can do can be truly extraordinary the moment that they are in that experiment.

Transference Deadens the Spirit

Transference is devastating what it does to the vehicle. It really is. It‘s a deadener. It‘s deadening the spirit, it really is. Everything about the potential of the Personality, everything about the potential of self-reflected consciousness is determined by the quality of brain function. If you‘re Taste and you‘re listening to Mozart to inspire your brain—I don‘t mean to hammer on poor Mozart—but it‘s not doing you any good. And it‘s so common.

Transference is the great sickness out there. It really is. And of course, what‘s happening is that you‘re changing frequency. And this really is the key. You‘re changing frequency. And the moment you‘re changing frequency there is something that is not you anymore. There is a deep imbalance that is taking place in the way in which you are intended to operate.

Part 7

Part 7

The Crystal is Perfect

This is the whole thing about the crystal. The crystal is perfect, the structure is per- fect. The neutrino going through is just going through. And yet, how amazing it is that we can be conditioned, primarily conditioned, at the level of Color away from our true nature by changing the frequency there. It‘s the same thing, by the way, with the Personality crystal. The conditioning is so deep. This transference level isn‘t something that you have a handle on. Nobody has a handle on Color level. There is no conscious access to anything that is below the line. We‘re not designed that way.

So, the deepest malaise that exists in humanity is something that‘s just simply there below the level and it is a simple thing. Not only is it a simple thing, it‘s not a bad thing. I‘m trying to get to my long-term point in this introduction to crystal dynamics. The vast majority of crystals of consciousness that have ever incarnated are not going to be awake or aware, or truly healthy. The advent of Human Design, the mystical presentation of this knowledge in 1987, it‘s clear to me that it‘s only since then that there is any possibility for anyone to truly transcend because the key knowledge, the basic knowledge is available.

And yet by being clear about the nature of the world and understanding the endless hierarchies of the construct it‘s also obvious to me that this is not for everyone. It‘s one of my standing jokes. The knowledge I share with you is perhaps some of the most extraordinary knowledge available on the planet. But there are 20 of you in the classroom. You know what I mean? It‘s just not the way it works.

Being in Transference is Natural

It is really something to grasp that we have had a very, very short opening of a win- dow. We are coming towards the end of the round. This is the last global cycle with the inherent 61 in it, the ability finally to penetrate through to the inner truth. Here is this opening; here is that opportunity ultimately to be able to hold it together. In stating that, I want to make a point about the fact that being in transference is what is natural. Being not-self is what is natural. That has been the conditioned evolution of humanity, the homogenized humanity that ultimately will go sterile, which is basically what it‘s all about.

So, the work to be done is that those beings that are on your fractal line, those are the ones that can be transformed. Those are the ones that are ready; those are the ones that have that opportunity. There is a great test, it‘s a very simple test—if they live the experiment you know they‘re ready. It‘s very obvious, not everybody is ready to live the experiment.

Brain Function and Open Internal

Taste looks like a left moving fish and sound looks like a right moving fish; it seems kind of fishy to me. But anyway, I don‘t want to get into Piscean humor right now; but nonetheless, it does have that fishy look, doesn‘t it? I can‘t get away from that.

Let‘s talk about some things about Taste for a moment. First of all, about the brain function and the open for the internal. It‘s so important this understanding of the open internal, the closed external; this is the purest quality of the way in which this determination operates. It‘s interesting, it is operating in the sense that it is primarily—let‘s talk about the internal—primarily open. I talked about sampling different tastes, different qualities going in until there is a natural alignment to what is your favorite, what‘s the one you like the best, whatever the case may be.

However, what‘s really important to grasp is that the openness is actually a way of becoming closed. It‘s so�interesting. In other words, the 2nd Color brain function cannot for a long period of time be multi-exposed. In other words, that would be unhealthy for it. So you can see in an awful lot of people who have 2nd Color determination who are transferred over to sound they end up with a differentiated intake, a spread. I shouldn‘t use that word because it will confuse it. They‘ll take in a lot of things they will never have truly honed down that taste, because the whole thing about being open is so that you can figure out what to be closed to.

It‘s almost like the immune system itself in the way in which it operates as an arche-type. Again remember this connection in the pure resonance between the 2nd Color and the foundation quality of the 2nd Tone, is the way in which the immune system needs to experience things coming into it in order to recognize whether it is useful, valuable, or whether it‘s dangerous and so forth and so on. That it‘s a learning process and that the vulnerability of taking it in is remedied by recognition and then there is a resistance that is built up.

Part 8

Part 8

Important for Children

Here when you‘re dealing with the 2nd determination what you can see is that this is very, very important knowledge for children. All of it is, obviously, all of it makes a difference in the way we raise our children. In dealing with 2nd Color determination with a child, though, there are very, very obvious things that are necessary.

One of the things that I notice is that there tends to be homogenized tendency in children to orient to only certain things, and I think a lot of that is the transference to the 5. I think it‘s the transference to the 5 that distorts all of that. There is no real growth process. In other words, they are closed instead of being open because there is a natural tendency to be closed. The barriers are necessary.

The other thing is that in terms of the vehicle and its elimination of resistance you can see that it seeks out being closed in the external world. In other words, where we derive at the 2nd line resonance, and talking of line where we get the theme the- matic that we call hermit. In other words, what we‘re looking at here is that the closed-off environment is a healthy environment to begin with.

You can see that both the open and the closed have ultimately different goals. The open is there to determine what needs to be closed off. The closed is there waiting for what will, in essence, gain access and open it up slowly. So you have the two sides of the coin.

So it means, for example, that these babies, these children need to have a very protected environment. For example in the first 3 1⁄2 years, the first 3 1⁄2 years all of the synaptic development takes place in the brain. As a matter of fact, there is an enormous rush of brain development, then by the time that children get to 3 or 3 1⁄2 years old there is a cut back. In other words, synaptic roots that had been opened up get closed off because they don‘t turn out to be viable for the ongoing development.

It‘s essential for these children that for the development of their brain function how important variety is for them, to be given opportunities for various tastes. I‘m not just talking about variety of dishes or types of food as much as I‘m talking about archetypes of tastes. Again, that‘s something that we‘ll go into later when we look at all these things in chains. But whether it‘s going to be sweet or bitter or sour or whatever, it‘s really much more in that kind of categorization. But it‘s very important for those children to have all of the possibilities in order to be able to discern, differentiate, say, ―No I don‘t want those; this one.‖ The only way they can react that way at that point in their life is that it‘s a natural body thing to like this and not that, and so forth.

The other thing is that at the external how important it is for those babies to be protected. The exact opposite of the 5th Color baby whose low frequency, wide environment, take them out into the great outdoors, take them to the park, let them hear the birds chirp and blah, blah, blah is the worst possible thing for the 2nd Color determination baby that needs to be really sheltered. They go out in a carriage that is bullet proof and has screens and all that kind of stuff—really protected until they are ready to take in the world bit by bit.

Again, to really see what that means that at the very earliest age, this is—I don‘t want to put it into the terminology of tragedy because it sounds like Shakespearean drama, but nonetheless whenever I look at things at this level there‘s a shudder that goes through me because I think about these zillions of babies that are on the planet that are going to have a 2nd Color determination and they are not going to be necessarily given the advantages they need in order to differentiate. They will not have the closed environment that‘s very important for them. They will not have the open- ness and variety. After all, think about how homogenized the way in which we feed our infants are. It‘s absolutely extraordinary.

I have the same thing with my dog all the time. Our dog eats food. It rarely eats so-called dog food. It just eats food. There is this assumption that all creatures have to eat out of a tin because they sell you their food in tins. It is the same thing about the way in which we feed our children. You go into the supermarket and there‘s this jar and that jar and they‘re basically the same things that have been puréed and this is what you‘re supposed to give your baby. You give it this and you give it that.

I always thought that it was astonishing—all kinds of food have been given to my children to try even when they were very young. It‘s just something that‘s interest- ing about, for me, diversity of diet is one of the most important things to enhance mutation. It‘s obvious to me that 2nd Color babies have the potential of being deeply mutative or simply having it all cut off. In other words, that mutative potential can really be sterilized.

Again, we‘re talking about the form itself. And you can see the translation of this. It‘s not like you can say to the baby, ―Look, follow your experiment,‖ because you can‘t. That‘s where the tragic part comes in, you can‘t do that. The baby needs an ally. The baby needs an ally that is aware and conscious.

Part 10

Part 10

Transference is a Scourge

Transference is a scourge. The moment that we can realign beings to correct deci- sion making we begin this process. And when we can give good information, solid information, I think this combination of conception mechanics and being able to look at determination dynamics in babies and being able to give concrete advice based on that whole strand of information—the conception information, the Color information and ultimately the Design information—this is the best stuff that any parent could ever be offered. It‘s Doctor Spock without any bullshit. It is basically, here is the formula for being able to enhance the potential of your child both in terms of their inner development and in terms of what kind of environment is correct for them.

It‘s like the sound child. If you put the sound child in a narrow, or in a small room, it‘s going to be very unhealthy for them. If you have a 5th Color determined child, give them a convertible sofa in the biggest room in the house. There are certain things to grasp about the relationship between what‘s best for the inner development of any child, and what is essential for the well-being of their outer development in their relationship to the world around them.

Two Things to Remember

So, today we touch on something that‘s very important. There are two things to keep in mind about today‘s class. One is to really think about the way in which the crystal works because we have to be able to see the relationship in the inner dynamic, not simply looking at the spiraling of Color, but the spiraling of Tone and the spiraling of Base and how they all work together. This is what we‘re going to see in the chains. In this way to really understand how we are programmed and how the in- formation gets out.

The other thing is to begin to recognize that one of the most powerful tools we‘re going to have, and one of the most rewarding aspects of our work in terms of being practitioners of PHS is what we can do for mothers of young children and the guide- lines that we can give them. Specifically, because we won‘t always have conception data, but the guidelines that we can specifically give them in terms of determination

and its relationship to their specific design—how best and how in the healthiest way not simply to look after the Personality development of your child, but to do some- thing really deep and profound. That is, to help them align to what is correct for them in their world, and to bring to them the full potential of what they were endowed with, the full potential of the neo-cortex that they were given. The full potential of the consciousness that is possible in them.

~

[eminentfocus]

Bravery Despite The Wilderness

“Stop walking through the world looking for confirmation that you don’t belong.  You will always find it because you’ve made that your mission.  Stop scouring people’s faces for evidence that you are not enough.  You will always find it because you have made that your goal.  True belonging and self-worth are not goods; we don’t negotiate their value with the world.  The truth about who we are live in our hearts.  Our call to courage is to protect our wild heart against constant evaluation, especially our own.  No one belongs here more than you do.” - BRENE BROWN. BRAVING THE WILDERNESS.

Full transparency: I am tired y’all!  Not just sick of the “new normal” tired.  Not I had a busy week and need a quiet weekend, tired.  Not the kids have been rambunctious all week, we need a vacation, tired.  I am tired, tired.  I am tired of physically battling chronic illness.  I am tired of mentally rationalizing that any of this “new normal” is normal.  I am tired of emotionally shutting down because it’s “all just too much right now” while new blows continue landing.  I am battle worn and it clearly shows.  My hair hasn’t been washed or combed in almost two weeks.  I have masses of hair on areas of my body where there should not be any.  I change from running leggings back into lounging sweats and live there.  I haven’t scheduled an appointment with my doctor in almost a year.  I haven’t seen friends in months now.  I. Am. Tired. and it shows by my lack of self-care.

Everyone wanted to make a big deal when Brittany Spears chopped off her hair.  They said she was crazy, off the rails, unstable.  What if?  What if she had forgotten to take care of herself so long that she had no choice but to cut it off?  What if her shaving her head was the first step she took toward loving herself in months?  What if what you thought was the downward spiral for her, was actually the start of a healing journey, by caring for her hair for the first time in a long time?  I may have gotten to the point of the big chop myself. We all forgo ourselves when we feel bad, scientifically proven.  So how does one exactly go about walking bravely through the wilderness when they look and feel like a homeless crackhead?  Where we always start: exactly where we are.

Merriam-webster.com defines “bravery” as: “the quality or state of having or showing mental or moral strength to face danger, fear, or difficulty : the quality or state of being brave : COURAGE.”  Brittany was courageous.  She looked in the mirror and realized where she was.  She knew exactly what she had to do to fix it, and she just did the fucking work.  She knew she would become a mockery before she cut it.  Honestly, I don’t think she wanted to, but knew she had to.  That’s why I personally think she sat window side in the salon.  She was inviting the world in to watch her transform, knowing y’all would mock her.  She moved forward despite the fear.  She is brave.  She walked in her wilderness.  Her truth.  Be like Brittany.  Go chop your hair- Er… I mean go do self-care!

Wait, wait!  No.  Not bubble baths, candles and cheat meals.  Yeah, okay.  I mean those are good too, but they are not really the self-care I’m talking about.  That’s marketing mumbo jumbo to get you to purchase the hope of “feeling better” so they can make some money.  The self-care I’m talking about involves YOU, not THINGS for you.  Down the rabbit hole we go!

Caring for our feelings.  Western society teaches that you become stronger when you push your emotions down and bury them.  You show maturity or valor for not having a biologically programmed response to a trauma.  They paint an image that as you pick up all this emotional baggage you become stronger, wiser and smarter.  The actual truth without the sprinkles: You are turning yourself into a trash dump for toxicity.  Pushing down feelings does not do anything but create a pressure cooker.  Be brave enough to hit the release valve.  Sit with your feelings and find the value/moral that is being triggered.  Remember yesterday’s message about emotions- feelings are just signposts to keep us on the path toward our values.  Seeds fall to the ground in nature all the time.  They do not grow from the fall, but from the nurturing of water and light.  Your feelings too need airing out to stop weighing you down and inspire growth.  Bring them to light and water them by setting healthy boundaries when your values are being tested.

Caring for our boundaries.  Everyone pushes our buttons from time-to-time.  We sometimes offend people when we don’t mean to.  Sometimes people have the best intentions but lack an adequate understanding to actually help.  People are people.  We are all broken.  That’s why I talk so much about the importance of giving and receiving grace.  But what about the people or situations that aren’t just annoying or confusing?  What about the people who no matter the time of day, they leave you drained?  The ones who consistently go on doing the things that directly trigger your values, after you’ve told them it hurts.  The ones who exhibit behaviors by choice.  Do you know who they are?  No?  Start a journal of your emotional triggers, you’ll find them quickly!  Once you do know, create a cushion, do not go on a blocking rampage.  I mean it!  Just create a space for you to be in control of how their bullshit comes through the fan of life at you.  That’s what it is, a bullshit storm that they know will draw you back into their castle so they don’t have to be alone in misery.  Don’t fall for it.  If it’s not helpful to you, it’s just distracting bullshit.  Dig a moat and stay on your side.  You do not have to answer that facetime call.  You do not have to respond to that text message.  You. Can. Say. No.  Especially when you really mean it.  You have to control the fan here, not the shit flying through it at your face.          

Opening to vulnerability.  I know we all HATE, hate, hate this emotion.  We loathe it.  We conjure up images of death, disappointment, fear, loss of control.  We hide it and bury it until an “acceptable” breaking point, usually a tragedy.  I personally struggle with vulnerability.  The second you see me fall off the social radar, I’m struggling.  I shut down and close out.  I suffer alone as to not spread around my negativity.  Sound familiar?  What really is this monster of an emotion that we all want to keep a light on at night around?  Mark Manson so eloquently describes it as: “Vulnerability is consciously choosing to NOT hide your emotions or desires from others.  That’s it. You just freely express your thoughts, feelings, desires, and opinions regardless of what others might think of you.”  Vulnerability is simply authenticity.  Do you still hate it?    

Times of fear and uncertainty.  I’ll say it just because we are all already so sick of it: RONA.  It has been 299 days that our family has been social distancing, working, schooling, eating, exercising, growing and bickering, through a global pandemic.  299 days of news and media propaganda spewing.  299 days of losing the very things that we thought were safe.  299 days we have been watching the economy dump wondering if our financial situation would turn.  That is uncertainty.  That is palpable fear- a signpost that our values are disrupted.  So what do we do?  We feel, decide and adapt; just as we were created to do.  

Every positive has a negative.  Our brains automatically work on a negative feedback loop.  Western social norms go against the way we are organically wired.  Most of what we think we know is wrong and it has been scientifically proven.  We learned all of this together since the beginning of the new year.  We have grown.  Now that we know better, we have to choose to do better.  That’s the work.  We cannot go on doing the same things and expecting a different result, that’s insanity.  Take the first step into your wilderness.  Instead of seeing the losses of 2020, see the opportunities that it made room for.  Take one step forward from exactly where you are today.  Take another tomorrow.  Every day take one step.  Prioritize your time to include yourself.  Be brave. Hit that do not disturb button. Tell a friend that you are struggling and honestly answer their questions of concern to sit with your feelings. Schedule that walk with a friend you’ve put off for too long. It takes bravery to prioritize yourself but you and your values are worth it.  Do the fucking work and ignore the superego!

That’s self care. Not bath bombs.

[tobns]

SNOWED IN: A (Tragic) Christmas Story — part one.

In Which Jackie Jinxes It (Hell Freezing Over, That Is)

There’s a saying that exists – a tad obscure, but a rather accurate saying nonetheless: a true friend’s silence hurts more than an enemy’s rough words. I’m not quite sure who came up with that soundbite of wisdom, but they must have lived on the same wavelength as me for a short period of time. Silence coming from the people that at one point, meant the most to you, stings more than digging out bullets that came from the gun of someone who hates your guts. It’s a bitter pill that’s hard to swallow down, and the only cure that I’ve ever found is to dilute the hollow ache into overall numbness is to just fill yourself with endless other things and people as best you can, and leave absolutely no time to dwell on other thoughts. It’s relatively foolproof.

Relatively is the operative phrase, of course; somehow, I got tripped up in a few loose wires in my oh-so-easy, rock-solid method in avoiding the aftermath of radio signals going quiet. The push that triggered my fall was unlocking my phone to see a new text message waiting for me on the lockscreen.

Jennifer Lawrence is the type of person that swears they don’t need a cell phone, regardless of the situation they find themselves in. She could be out in the middle of the Nevada desert, stranded, on the verge of dehydration, and her chances of survival would be better without the aid of a phone to call for help. She’s attained the level of fame that having only one cell phone no longer cuts it; there’s a work cell phone, a celebrity-personal cell phone, a personal personal cell phone, the whole nine yards and then some. Jen never even liked being the owner of a laptop, so the fact that I’m supposed to believe she has actually picked up a phone for a reason other than being within an inch of her life, much less having used emojis (Jennifer Lawrence is not an emoji person) doesn’t fly. In fact, all it does is signal the arrival of the body snatchers to Planet Earth.

So, there I was, staring down at the glowing screen of my phone with a well-written, proper grammar and punctuation included, paragraph long text message from none other than my former costar whom I haven’t heard from since I turned seventeen looking back up at me, the three emojis tacked on at the end a downright mockery. I briefly contemplated on checking the Internet to see if any news had broken on Jennifer Lawrence’s phone falling into the possession of hackers, and when I tried sending a response to debunk the ridiculousness once and for all (asking if it was really her, if she was sure she had the right number, and the request of a picture of her holding up three fingers for solid proof) all I got was evidence that it really was her and she was as serious as a heart attack. I very quickly decided that the body snatching alien theory was the soundest – I’d give them credit too; these body snatchers were outrageously convincing.

Most of the feeling of having the rug ripped out from underneath my ass came from a place of solitude that I’ve somewhat cocooned myself into over the last few years. Isolating myself away from my former core group of friends just…happened, really. It wasn’t like it took that much work. We were all on different paths, and we still are – just because we all avowed to be friends for life doesn’t mean that life isn’t going to have a few surprises up its sleeve. I’m not fourteen anymore, and I tried not to take too much offense when the numbers started dropping. Most, if not all of us have grown up substantially. It’s completely normal to grow apart and go our separate ways without being the wiser, it’s simply a part of life that occurs. And it didn’t bother me any either, until I’d catch a glimpse of the picture on my night table of myself, Jackie, Dayo, Alexander, and Amandla that I for some reason cannot bring myself to change out and get the overwhelming urge to call all of them at once or cry. I’d usually go with the third option, which was stuffing myself up underneath the covers and sleeping it off.

But now, morning has arrived and Jennifer’s got both hands on the curtains as she yanks them open to wake me up and almost blind me in the process. I’m slightly disoriented, trying my best to remember how in the hell I got to this point. Once upon a time, I had the hard reputation of being the most optimistic in the group – which is a hard lie, seeing as how for as long as I have known him, nothing has been able to sway Dayo of his belief that Tupac is still alive on an island somewhere – and yet here I am, triple-checking the truth value of a text from Jen because I’m simply finding it all that hard to believe.

I took Jen’s long, emoji-filled invitation and ran with it regardless, all the way past my frowning mother to JFK where I’m now waiting on a red-eye flight to Aspen, Colorado. Spending the holidays with Jen was something that didn’t even make the list of things that would ever possibly cross my mind, but I didn’t have anything else to do. It seemed like it’d be fun, much more so than trying to help carry the last-minute Christmas tree up the stairs in the high-rise apartment complex my mother lives in.

Airports are less than pleasant, especially late at night and when alone. I don’t like them much to begin with, but usually I have Madeline or Elina to keep me company – my mom being the preferred choice, as Madeline is on one of two wavelengths at an airport: talk to no one, or bitch at everyone. It’s just me this go ‘round, my only companion the steady flow of noise as surrounding gates are called to board, televisions playing the news, and people around me engage in actual conversations with one another. This is the last place on Earth I want to be, and my face conveys that plain as day.

I’m halfway towards a cat nap, the only plausible option as of what to do with myself before they call my flight to board, when my ears pick up the sound of one particular voice over all the rest.

“Excuse the hell out of me, I didn’t realize that I would be boarding Air Force One this evening!”

On instinct, I sit up a little straighter in this ridiculous chair that is designed to give its occupants a future of poor posture. There’s only one voice that I’ve ever heard in that strangled of a tone, and there’s only one person that would string such words together in the most inappropriate location possible. Spoiler alert: they belong to each other.

Turning around in my seat, I wish I could say that I’m surprised to see Jack Quaid huffing and puffing his way towards the same empty gate I’ve stationed myself at, but I’m not. Surprise is no longer an emotion I feel whenever I come into the vicinity of Jack Quaid.

“Honestly, you’ve been to enough airports in your measly lifetime, why are you acting as though the world has ended over TSA confiscating your bear repellent?” Another voice is added into the mix over the commotion, and the options of who could possibly be with Jack and discussing bear repellent like it’s the daily weather report quickly dwindle down to one. I ask myself if there will ever come a day when I don’t accidentally run into these people. “And why the hell did you have bear repellent in your bag to begin with?”

“We’re going to fucking Colorado, Jacqueline, why would I not pack bear repellent?”

“We’ll be in Colorado, not the middle of fucking nowhere!” she barks in retaliation. I don’t see how they haven’t drawn anyone else’s attention – they’re not exactly good at keeping things at a volume that is to themselves. Jack lets out a long, agitated groan, before puffing out his chest and his voice lifts an octave, all matter-of-fact.

“You just remember this when a bear comes along and you need me to save you.”

Judging by the look on Jackie’s face, she’s considering taking her suitcase and using it to run Jack over. “We are not going to be attacked by bears, and like you would ever be able to hold your own against a bear that wasn’t Winnie the Pooh!”

“I genuinely do not know why I bother spending any time with you,” Jack declares dramatically. The two of them go strolling right past me without giving me so much as a second glance – really feeling the love – when I decide to make my own grand entrance into their conversation.

“It’s because you two are lowkey lovers; you just don’t bother admitting it to anyone even though we’ve all known that you’ve had this little fling going on since the Catching Fire premiere.” Jackie’s head is the first to whip around, fast enough to break her neck and her eyes feral as they land on me. Jack drops his suitcase handle, it clattering onto the floor. It looks as though he may have suffered a minor heart attack from my little intrusion.

They’re burning holes in me as they gape, not a single word to be had between the two of them – which, really, is a feat – and I shrug. “What?” I ask, my lips already beginning to curl up into a smirk. “Did I get it wrong or something?”

It seems as though I have shorted the circuit in Jackie’s brain as she blinks at me in a rapid secession. “Yes, hi Isabelle, it’s so lovely to see you too!” I mimic her, standing up with my arms outstretched for a hug.

Jack seems to shake free of his dumbstruck state before Jackie does, claiming the hug meant for her as his own. “Are you sure you’re actually Isabelle?” he questions. “I mean, the whole evil genius bit is still true to character, but last time I checked, Isabelle was much scrawnier. Had real chicken-y legs and bony elbows.”

To prove a point, I ram one of my elbows into his chest. He winces, nodding. “Yep,” he mutters. “Still bony.”

I turn to face Jackie, holding my arms open once again for her. The look of shock has somewhat dissolved from her features as her eyes meet mine. One of my eyebrows quirks. “Going off on a honeymoon?” I tease.

Jackie’s voice is back from wherever it vanished off to for a few moments. “Nope, try Jen’s.” She folds into my hug at an angle, tucking herself underneath my arm. Those last few inches of my growth spurt, as well as Jackie’s barely-there sandals finally set me taller than her, even though it’s not a hard thing to do to start. Jackie’s always been the shortest out of us Hunger Games kids.  

Jackie has also been the only one out of the bunch I’ve bothered to keep in touch with over the years. There was no trial or tribulation life could hurtle in the way of our friendship that could scratch the surface – she and I had become instant best friends meeting all those years ago and nothing really had an effect on that. She and I liked to think that we were platonic soulmates, and nothing as pesky as distance could dent that. Jack was sort of part of the package deal that came along with Jackie. Just like her mood swings, impromptu Harry Potter marathons, and week-long vegan stints, Jack was something that you got when you signed up for a friendship with Jackie. I saw him less than I saw Jackie, but much more than anyone else out of our little Hunger Games cult.

“Am I wrong to assume you’re here for that very reason as well?”

“Nope, because you’d be very correct.”

“Then I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that you got the exact same text message as us,” Jackie continues, glancing up at me.

“What, the one with perfect grammar and more emojis than we thought Jen knew how to use?”

“That’d be the one.”

Jack sidles up beside me, draping one of his arms around my shoulders. “Isabelle,” he begins, channeling his inner car salesperson. “You’d agree with me that because we’re going to be out in the wilderness for the next few days, it’s only sane that we arm ourselves with necessities such as bear repellent—"

“Give it a fucking rest already!”

After only just barely serving as the wall between Jack’s throat and Jackie’s claws, the two of them join me in my little corner of our flight’s gate. Not only has Jen apparently decided to play the ever so gracious host over the holidays by extending her vacation home to us, but she’s posted the three of us up with first class plane tickets. Here I’d thought it was just Jen trying to make up for the missed birthdays by at least letting me fly in style halfway across the country.

It’s easy to fall back into a routine of sorts with Jackie and Jack, like no time has passed at all. Jack’s telling me all about the alcoholic beverages I ought to try in February (I hate to crush even more of his dreams and tell him that I’ve spent my fair share of time in Europe over the last few years and for my nineteenth birthday, Madeline got me a fake ID as a present) and Jackie’s giving me the full synopsis of her musical, practically trying to sell the lead role to me. For a moment, I almost feel like I’m fifteen once again and time hasn’t passed me by at all. There’s a part of me that’s tempted to check my phone’s background and see if it’s reverted back to me on Dayo’s back with a giant sparkler held over his head from my birthday party.

“Can I ask you a question, Izzy?” Jack asks for permission, the arm that isn’t draped around Jackie’s shoulders lifting in mock arrest. “And you have to promise me that you won’t get offended or throw the knife in your underwear at my head when I do.”

I roll my eyes. “I haven’t thrown a knife in years, Jack,” I tell him. “And besides, TSA would have swiped it just like they did your precious bear repellent.”

Jack slouches a little, the sulking expression returning to his face. “Do you know how much that bear repellent cost?” he groans. From beside him, Jackie’s shooting me daggers for even bringing the subject back up.

“Just ask the question already, Quaid,” she prompts him.

“Right, yeah – okay, so why in the world did you start running for Nike? I love you and support you and all that other bullshit, but you are not the athlete type. You could barely walk on the hotel carpet barefoot without having a near emergency-room-worthy disaster.” He then reaches up to cover his face, most likely a protective gesture.

“I’m not gonna kill you, Jack, Jesus,” I bark. He slowly lowers his arm, still housing a great deal of hesitation. “Besides, you’re not the first person to ask me that, Madeline tried to declare me incompetent when I told her about the gig. One of my hands begins to mess with the ends of my hair absentmindedly. “It was just something different. Nothing wrong with getting outside of your comfort zone.”

“You know what’s outside of my comfort zone?” Jackie pipes back up. “Seeing Ludwig on the History channel. I didn’t even know he knew what history was, aside from that of his browser’s.”

“Ha, ha. Become a comedian, why don’t you?” A new voice enters our conversation, and as if right on cue, I can feel all the blood in my body turn to ice water.

Scratch that – I now feel like I’m fourteen again.

I turn around, and sure enough, there stands Alexander Ludwig. Or at least, who I think is Alexander. I haven’t seen him in person in nearly four years, only going by the guide that Instagram has given me, and even that was a recent development. Somewhere up above, I can hear God laughing at me, because this has to be the doing of his need for quality entertainment.

Alexander is somehow able to avert from the death stare Jackie’s giving him, his eyes finding me. “Hey, Isabelle,” he says, face softening ever so slightly.

From the seat across from me, I hear Jack give a strangled cough, one that sounds oddly similar to, “Just fuck already.” It’s followed by the sound of Jackie slapping Jack in the shoulder.

“Uh…hi?” I now know how the happy couple felt when I materialized out of thin air – at a complete loss for words. Alexander offers me a hopeful smile and still relatively unsure of what I’m supposed to do with myself, I stand up and go in for the hug. It’s awkward, and I’m sure Jackie is snickering behind my back as we attempt to figure our hug out. We both move in the same direction as we extend our arms, stopping almost halfway before we wordlessly try to determine who’s coming in from the left and who isn’t. If there was an award for it, this would win for the most awkward reunion hug ever, hands down.

It takes a second, but we get there – Alexander folds me up underneath his arms, both of them encircling around my shoulders as my hands slip around his waist. It’s been four years since I’ve so much as seen him in the flesh, so I’m sure this sort of hug is too far of a leap forward back into anything resembling the relationship we once had. Throwing caution to the wind just so happened to always be Alexander’s trademark. We stay like that for much too long, but help myself I cannot. I’ve already fallen down the rabbit hole of the familiar, might as well set up shop there.

“Good to see ya,” he mumbles as we pull away. Right back to the formalities, I suppose.

“Yeah, you too.”

Jackie is burning holes in me when I turn back around, tugging down on the hem of my shirt as I head back to my seat. Alexander has never really been Jackie’s favorite person, and I don’t think time and distance has made her heart grow any fonder.

“I suppose that you being on a flight that isn’t to Aspen is too much for me to wish for?” Jackie sighs as she quickly redirects her attention to Alexander, one of her eyebrows kinking in question.

“It’s nice to see you too, Jackie,” Alexander says, the beginnings of a smirk forming on his lips. “If I didn’t already know any better, I’d cross my fingers and hope my seat was next to you.” He then shifts his gaze to Jack, winking.

Both of Jackie’s hands fly out of her lap in exasperation. “How do you people know about this?!”

My reply is simultaneous with Alexander’s.

“You two are about as subtle as a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade.”

“Because I have eyes.”

She frowns. “Whatever.”

Alexander sets his backpack down in an empty seat and sits down in the one next to it, which happens to conveniently be right next to mine. He’s glancing right in my lap, and I’m about to beat Jackie to the punch of telling him to fuck off before I realize what he’s looking at. “6A,” he notes, referring to the seat number on the boarding pass that I’ve had sitting underneath my leg – not the most responsible way to keep up with it, but I really hadn’t planned on moving from this chair unless it was to board the plane itself. “I think we’re sitting next to each other.”

For emphasis, he holds up his own boarding pass for me to see. Sure enough, his seat number is the one right next to mine. Even across the way, I can hear Jackie growl under her breath, and Jack moves his arm from around her shoulder to rest on her thigh. I can’t fight my grin – not because of the thought that I get to spend the next few hours next to Alexander, but at how fucking adorable Jack and Jackie are. The only thing more adorable than that, perhaps, is how oblivious they’ve been towards how oblivious they think we are.

Yep, my mind flashes. Welcome back to 2013.

                                                              …

I don’t know why we decide to bestow the job of chauffer from the airport to Jen’s onto Jack, seeing as how Jackie and I concluded that Jack only ever got his driver’s license by bribing the DMV with signed headshots of his father’s, but we do it. The three of us are much too lazy to be behind the wheel on foreign terrain, and Jack’s never one to turn down a challenge. All Alexander has to do is volunteer to drive since he’s used to driving in the wintry weather and Jack all but pushes him out of the way. Reverse psychology is real.

It’s late when we land, almost the same time now as it was when our plane took off from JFK. Jackie fortunately gives up her shotgun seat to Alexander, the two of us sprawling out in the backseat as we try to get in a few hours of sleep. Jen might have gotten us first class seats on the plane, but she certainly didn’t take note of where the hell the plane was going to be landing in regards to her location.

The plane landed at Denver International, roughly three hours from Jen’s place in Aspen and a small detail that apparently Jack didn’t take into account until our captain was announcing our arrival. Along with his fellow wolf pack buddy Dayo, Jack is an avid conspiracy theorist in the most aggravating way – he doesn’t believe in any of the plausible conspiracies, only the off-the-wall ones. One of those conspiracies that he does opt to buy in on just so happens to be the one about the Denver airport being the gateway to hell.

As we were trekking off the plane, half-dead, Jack was the only one who seemed apprehensive about disembarking. In fact, I had to ram him along using my suitcase, threatening to run over his ankles if he didn’t pick up the pace.

“What’s your deal?” Jackie grumbled sleepily, tugging him along through the terminals only for him to put up quite the deal of resistance as they moved along.

“Hell, Jackie, we’re in hell,” Jack hissed.

Jackie stopped in her tracks, turning around to give him a few love pats to the face. “Are you okay? Did you smuggle more fucking bear repellent onto the plane and accidentally detonate it on yourself?”

The way Jack looked at her, one would have assumed he thought she had three heads. “No!” he demanded, his voice lowering as he pulled me, Jackie, and Alexander closer to him as though we were about to begin trading government secrets. “Look, you cannot tell me that this is not the sketchiest place you’ve ever been in your life.”

“Untrue,” Jackie dismissed almost immediately. “I grew up in a neighborhood of second-rate politicians.”

Jack had glared at her, before turning to look at me and Alexander for some sort of backup. Alexander merely shrugged. “Don’t look at me dude, I’ve been to the red-light district four times.”

“Yeah, of course you have,” Jack muttered under his breath, rolling his eyes. “Have none of you seen pictures of this airport? Been here before? This is literally the entrance to hell – for Christ’s sake, there’s a giant fucking Satanic horse guarding this place like it’s Lucifer’s lapdog!”

“Pretty sure Isabelle and I flew through here for the mall tour stop in Aurora, and we weren’t chased through the concourses by Beelzebub and his horde of demon friends,” Jackie pointed out dryly.

“Jackie, there are goddamn Nazis with rainbows behind them on the murals here, nothing about that strikes you as terrifying?”

“Racism is alive in America, you know.”

“If we’re going to have a riveting discussion on what modern airport art means, can we at least go to Starbucks first?” Alexander asked, raising his hand.

Both Jackie and Jack looked at him, shooting him a resounding, “No!” before going right back to their debate as to whether or not we were standing at the flaming gates. It was at that point that I had to intervene, wedging between them and pulling Jackie away from the conversation and towards the baggage claim. Jack, of course, wasn’t done with his running commentary about how he was convinced Satan was going to pop out from behind a kiosk at any second, mumbling under his breath the whole way through the airport.

“You’ll agree with me and my being right on this,” he avowed as we made our way to our rental car, after swearing that someone was breathing down his neck despite bringing up the rear.

“Yeah, when hell freezes over,” Jackie retorted.

“Well, the weather app says the temperature outside is below freezing, so we’re not too far off.”

I’m not too entirely worried about Jack falling asleep behind the wheel, since his close brush with hell and getting a good look at Blucifer shook him wide awake.

All four of us are running on fumes by the time we make it to Jen’s place. Jackie and I have our noses pressed to the glass of our opposite windows, watching as the snow falls down on the four cars out in the driveway. Snow is no longer uncommon now that I’ve been living in New York City for the last few years, but out here it isn’t interfered with by large construction sites and millions of people. It’s pure, untouched, lazily floating down from the sky and covering the ground in a pristine white blanket.

“God, has she invited us to her family’s Christmas?” Alexander asks quietly. “I didn’t know Jen knew this many people.”

“Oh yeah,” Jackie snorts. “Because being an Oscar winner means you lead a lonely, lonely life.”

Swiveling around in his seat, he turns around and feigns cheerfulness as he smiles at Jackie. “You haven’t changed a bit, Emerson.”

“Right back at ‘ya, Ludwig.”

“Alright,” Jack announces as the engine stops running. “I’m not running the risk of getting trapped in by any other Lawrences in case we need to run for the hills, so the curb it is.”

Jackie leans forward, snaking her upper body around the edge of the driver’s seat to look at Jack. “You know how to overnight park?” she asks cheekily, and I have to turn the rising laugh in my throat into a strangled sort of cough.

“Well, duh,” Jack replies, pulling the keys out of the ignition. “Don’t you have to know how to do that in order to pass your driver’s test?”

“You do.” Jackie falls back in her seat, winking at me as she does.

While I’m almost positive that unloading our luggage would have been a struggle regardless of the weather around us, the snow and steadily picking up wind makes things that much more complicated. Jackie’s doing her best to balance her bags on her back so she doesn’t have to stick them in the snow, which is already up to her ankles, but Jackie isn’t Supergirl – she doesn’t have super strength, and her kryptonite happens to be her inability to pack lightly. Jack and Alexander are currently debating over whose generic black suitcase belongs to whom, preventing me from reaching my last duffel bag and going inside where there’s heat.

I’m about to tell them to either move out of the way or help the short person out, when a new voice rings out over all of us.

“Hey guys!”

Peering around the edge of our car, I see Jen standing on the porch wrapped up in a blanket that looks incredibly toasty, smile stretching from ear to ear at the sight of us. She must be really deprived of quality company.

Taking the opportunity of Jack and Alexander being temporarily distracted from the luggage, I dart back around and all but dive into the trunk to get my last duffel bag. It accidentally hits Jack in the gut as I scramble back out, maneuvering around them to make a break for the stairs up to Jen’s porch.

“Damn, Isabelle!”

“It’s cold and I have thin blood, sue me!” I yell over my shoulder.

Jack is happy to yell right back, “You’re a fake New Yorker!”

Jackie is right on my heels as we climb up the stairs to greet an open-armed Jen. The house is massive, as to be expected, and perhaps it’s the sleep-deprived part of me controlling my brain, but I have never been more thankful for Jen and her vast net-worth, being able to afford a vacation home where even with many guests I will still have a large probability of getting my own bed. I barrel right into Jen, mostly because she’s warm and everything else outside is not.

“Aw, Belly,” she croons playfully. “Didja really miss me that much?”

“You have body heat,” I inform her, wrapping my arms tighter around her.

Jen laughs, prying me off of her and away from the thick blanket that I’d been tucked underneath for a few seconds. “So now I fall second to my temperature?” she asks as she gives Jackie a hug, and I simply shrug.

“Hey, next time invite us to the Caribbean.”

“I’ll put it on the list.” Her eyes avert away from me, most likely landing on the boys that are still trudging their way up the stairs. “You guys are late, I thought your flight landed earlier than this?”

“Yeah, you shipped us right through Satan’s abode, which happens to be three hours from here,” Jack informs her. Jackie, Alexander and I all roll our eyes. “And I’m pretty sure the snow has picked up ever since Blucifer and I locked eyes, which I’m sure is some sort of sign.”

“Late?” Alexander asks before Jack can continue his Denver spiel. Jen nods, gesturing towards the front door.

“C’mon in.”

Everything is all warm and glowing inside, the smell of sandalwood and vanilla embracing me in a comforting hug. We walk right in to what I’m guessing is the living room, a large sectional and a few lounge chairs littered around a crackling fireplace, the TV overhead playing A Charlie Brown Christmas on mute.

Jen wiggles her way up to the front of our lineup, pointing towards the spiral staircase behind the fireplace. “You guys are gonna be in the guest rooms upstairs if that’s okay,” she begins, tugging her blanket around her neck tighter like it’s a cape. “It better be okay, seeing as how I had to ward the hellions away from them.”

“Does this place have an elevator?” Jack asks. “Because my soul has already been compromised once today, I’m too tired to climb up some stairs.”

Jackie’s eyebrows furrow together, still hung up on Jen’s words. “Wait, what do you mean by hellions?”

A shadow falls over Jen’s face almost instantly, quickly diverting any and all eye contact with us. “Well,” she starts, her voice rising an octave. My mind is racing much faster than she can speak. Four other cars out in the driveway, the use of the word hellions, the convenient fact that I just so happened to bump into Jackie, Jack, and Alexander at the airport, all of whom had the same destination as me…

“Wait,” I say slowly as the realization starts to crash over me, and already Jen is beginning to cower into the back of her couch. “You don’t mean—"

“Oh hell to the nah.”

The one and only Dayo Okeniyi comes strolling in from god only knows where – probably the kitchen, seeing as how he has an entire pie in one hand and a fork in the other – stopping dead in his tracks the minute he sees us. Or, rather, Alexander.

“What the hell?” Alexander says, equally as stunned.

Jackie, like myself, seems to have put all the pieces together quickly. “Jen,” she utters out. “Have you done what I think you’ve done?”

“Maybe?” she squeaks.

Right on cue, a leggy blonde comes up behind Dayo. “Dayo, are you talking to yourself again, I thought—” Leven’s voice falls off the deep end the second she lays eyes on the five of us, her face falling. “Oh.”

“Oh is right,” Dayo grumbles.

“What is this, the Hunger Games reunion?” Jackie asks, her eyes still on a hoping-to-disappear Jen.

Ever the wise one, Alexander takes it upon himself to answer that question. “I mean, we’re missing a few people, Josh and ‘Mandla aren’t—”

Alexander, apparently, has spoken too soon, because as soon as the names slip off his lips, out emerge Josh, Amandla, and Willow from the kitchen. The three of them may as well be mythical creatures strolling past the way my eyes bug out of my head. It’s been so long since I’ve heard from any of them to the point I began referring to them in the past tense, like they’ve gone on to greener pastures or some shit.  

Josh seems to be the only person who doesn’t seem to be bothered in the slightest by our arrival. He moves past a frozen Amandla and Willow, making his way to one of the recliners in the living room. Something tells me that a) the Charlie Brown Christmas was his idea, and b) he was absolutely in on whatever this is. “Hey Belle, Xander, happy couple!” he greets to each of us individually, a warm smile on his face.  

“Alright Liam, come on out!” Jack calls mockingly, in reference to the only person missing from this shebang aside from Gary Ross himself.

Jen’s face falls a little. “Oh no, Liam’s not here,” she confirms as she shakes her head. “He’s in Australia.”  

“Well he’s about the only one,” Jackie mumbles.

“Okay, seriously Jen,” Leven pipes up. “What is this?”

“What is what?”

“This,” Dayo repeats, motioning his fork in a circle.

“What?” Jen cries out, holding her arms up as she does her best to feign innocence we all know she doesn’t have in this situation. “I can’t want to have a little holiday get together with old friends, all of whom just so happen to be you guys?”

If looks could kill, Dayo would have Alexander’s blood on his hands and this get together would become a burial service. I never did get the full story as to how the great wolf pack fell apart the way it did, but just going out on a limb, my guess is that it wasn’t pretty and left a little bit of bad blood. Their demise, I think, was the other reason aside from life itself that lead all of us to going our own ways – no one wants to break up a fight between men large enough to have their own area code, and most of us wouldn’t have been able to do so just based on physical means alone. “Yeah, no; sorry, Jenny,” Dayo quickly apologizes, breaking his steely glare off of Alexander for only a split second.

“I mean, no offense to you guys, but isn’t this a bit…y’know, outdated?” Leven says, gesturing around the group as she leans up against the wall. “It’s been years since we all hung out together.”

“Yes, which means we’re overdue,” Jen tries to persuade us, her selling smile not very convincing. “No time like the present to remedy that, right?”

My arms fold over my chest. “Why wouldn’t you just tell us the truth, that this is what our ‘holiday extravaganza’ was gonna be?”

“Hey, I didn’t lie to you guys,” Jen protests, and Jackie is quick to counter that.

“You just left out the whole truth.”

We’re all turning on Jen at a rate she didn’t foresee and doesn’t appreciate, because her fuse is beginning to shorten on us. “Look,” she huffs. “I’m sorry I lied by omission, or whatever; I knew if I told you guys that I was inviting the whole gang, I wouldn’t have even gotten some of you to reply to my text. Hell, some of you didn’t anyways.” Her eyes cut over to Alexander, who takes a step behind me. I don’t know what he’s expecting, if I’m going to service as a shield or what. Our hug at the airport and the several-hour conversation we’d wound up in the air might have been nice, but I’m not standing in the line of fire for him.

“Jen, I get the sentiment of wanting to do this…kinda, I guess,” Jackie says, unable to sell even herself on what she’s saying. “But Leven’s right. We haven’t all hung out together in years, you ever think that maybe that was for a reason?”

Jen’s face quickly falls into a deadpan. “I don’t know why all of you are suddenly bitching, you didn’t complain any when I flew you out first class and let you eat my whole fucking chocolate pie.” From behind her, Dayo guiltily lowers the fork from his mouth. “And to be fair, Jackie, you had the chance to make a run for it the minute you realized Alexander was on the same flight as you, but you didn’t.”

“I mean, I certainly thought about it—”

“Really?!”

“Okay, can we just sort this mess out in the morning? I have had to quite literally go through hell this evening,” Jack whines, and Jackie and I both groan. I’m suddenly missing his griping about the bear repellent right about now, and I’d bet serious money Jackie feels the same. “We just all go to sleep for now, and if anyone wants to bow out, they can do it in the morning.”

Never in my life have we all been on the same page as Jack Quaid, and on the same page as a fairly decent idea that came from him at that. Leven nods, Dayo gives him a three-fingered salute before going right back into the pie, and if my eyes aren’t deceiving me, I think Jackie’s already looking for flights back home for three people – either she and Jack have packed a kid in that suitcase, or they’re sweeping me under their wing and providing me with my get out of jail free card.

Jen doesn’t seem too pleased with this, and I can tell she’s about to argue it. Before she even opens her mouth, a shrill alarm goes off without any warning. It scares all of us but really gets me (what can I say, the skittishness never went away) and causes me to jump nearly ten feet in the air. I stumble back against Alexander, who seems more than pleased to catch and steady me. Jackie is less than thrilled by this, her eyes making Alexander’s hands on my shoulders even hotter than before as she tries to set them ablaze.

“What the fuck was that?” Dayo spits, hand resting over his heart as he tries to regulate its beat back to normal.

“Is that your way of punishing us for not liking this little plan of yours?”

“No, it’s my phone,” Jen replies, rolling her eyes. “Although if it’s working, then yes.” She pulls her phone out from her pocket and her eyes quickly begin flitting over the screen. The expression on her face changes as she reads, and already I can tell something is wrong by the time she lifts her head. “Um, so, the whole leaving here tomorrow morning thing you guys have come up with might not be happening.”

“Why not?” Dayo asks. “Are you going to hold us hostage?”

Jen holds up her phone as an explanation. “That was my dear friend the National Weather Service. We’re currently under a winter storm warning for…heavy snow and blowing snow,” she reads off, before looking back up at the rest of us.

“So a blizzard?” Alexander repeats.

“Near blizzard,” Jen corrects. Alexander looks at her, befuddled.

“It’s the same thing as a blizzard, why not just…call it what it is?”

“Because it’s not!”

“Okay,” Leven sings disarmingly. “We can discuss the National Weather Service’s classification criteria later, let’s just go back to the real issue for a second. Are you saying that we’re stuck here?”

Jen nods. “Says that this is in effect until tomorrow night, maybe later—"

“Tomorrow night? Maybe later?!” Jackie splutters.

“Yes, your hearing is as on point as ever, Jackie. There’s no telling how much more snow it’s gonna bring our way.” I can tell that Jen is trying her best not to look too overly pleased at this development fate has seemed to deliver her, while everyone else is in their varying states of shocked, irritated, or flat out tired – I happen fall into the third category, along with Amandla, who is about two steps away from knocking out in Willow’s lap and not moving until morning.  

Josh leans back a little farther in the recliner, both of his hands folded behind his head. “Well, let’s just hope that we don’t get trapped in here or something. That sure would suck.” Everyone immediately turns from wherever they’re standing in the room to glower at him.

Some things just don’t ever change, I guess.

[benxsamuel]

Ian Mackaye on everything

Ian Mackaye’s interview with Huck Magazine is an endless source of practical, life-affirming wisdom. It would be a shame to condense it to a bite-sized quote so this is going to be one long post:    

On navigation versus survival:

I understand that people, melodramatically, may consider life something one has to survive. But you’re alive, that’s what life is, you are surviving. It plays into this idea that people’s lives are narratives – that it’s a film or book and you have to survive all this craziness. I think it’s a disservice, ultimately, because it makes others feel like their lives aren’t crazy enough. In my mind, life is not a war – although human beings create conditions that make it feel that way – and I think that navigation is a fairer term. I see life essentially as an empty field. The construct of that empty space has to do with society, but it also has to do with us. The only real question is how are we going to navigate that space, from beginning to end. If people thought of themselves as navigators, maybe they would have more purchase. Navigation is about having a say in the matter, whereas surviving is about dealing with things being thrown at you. With navigation you get to decide whether you want to be in that situation in the first place.

On success:

You could say society sees success as absolute – you’re either winning or you’re losing. Can success be interpreted as just keeping going? Success is a perpetual state of affairs. With my music for instance, I’m not goal-oriented. The decision to be in a band was huge for me. I came to a realisation that I could do this, because punk gave me the permission slip. I was able to play bass, which is crazy – here’s this animal beating on a wire, and a tune is coming out. That is success. Then I played with other people, and these animals organised those sounds in a way that was recognisable. That is success. We wrote our own songs. That is success. We played a show. That is success. Every day is a success – if you’re in the moment. 

On punk:

My definition of punk is the free space. It’s an area in which new ideas can be presented without having to go through the filtration or perversion of profiteering. So, if we’re not worried about selling things, then we can actually think. The problem with new ideas is that they don’t have audiences. And in terms of the marketplace, an audience equals clientele. If you have no audience, it’s not profitable. Punk was an area, for me at least, where it didn’t seem to matter. I didn’t know any punk rocker who thought, ‘I’m gonna make a living out of this.’ The ones that did quickly left. What I received from the counterculture was a gift; the permission to create freely. And my reaction was to take care of this gift and keep it alive because it continues to give. 

On straight edge:

The structure of society is an oppressive concept. I don’t see self-destruction as a valid form of rebellion. If anything it’s an assistance; you’re a thorn in their side, so help them by taking yourself out. Today, they’re imbibing technology, a new kind of drug, and losing themselves. I never got involved with drugs because I saw the fallout from the ’60s. As a Hendrix fan, I’d talk to people who’d seen him play and they couldn’t remember it because they were high. It doesn’t make sense to me that you wouldn’t want to remember your life. This concept of partying, it’s like you’re sweeping up after yourself constantly. You’re just sweeping away your memories. I like to be present, and keep it with me. Some people think of straight edge as a tee-totaling sobriety movement, but in my mind it was just about self definition. I found it unimpeachably positive. 

On finding your tribe:

But most people go through life as tourists. They’re checking out the sights and eventually they’ll go home. I’m always looking for the long-distance runners. The people who recognise that protest is a form of exercise and that life is there if you want it. You just have to be open, communicative and interested. That’s who I recognise as my tribe.

On anti-narratives:

The reason we like endings is that they’re manageable. Think about the effect of the electronic medium on the way we think. Radio, television, movies, computers. At some point things became serialised as stories. But when you live in a society where you’re constantly being shown stories, our brains become reformatted to create narratives in our own lives. It’s misleading because life does not have a narrative arc. The world does not have a narrative arc. Or if it does, it’s bigger than anything we could ever fucking write about. I remember being in bands where someone would say, ‘Well, that’s the biggest thing I’ll ever do.’ Who thinks like that?! I don’t think of life as phases. I think of life as life.

On getting older:

I don’t believe in youth culture. By embracing it you also embrace the expiration date. Not that I’m always young, fuck that! I’m alive! I’m living! When people say, ‘Urgh, I  feel so old,’ I’m like, ‘What the fuck man! You’re not old, you just are.’ If you’re cold you can put a coat on. If you’re wet you can dry off. But if you’re old you can’t do anything. Let me ask you: what role have you played in terms of becoming thirty-one?

Interviewer: Um? Zero active participation.

Exactly! All you did was wake up! That’s it. We wake up! There’s this notion in American culture that children are not real. It’s pointed out by the statement, ‘Well, at some point you’re gonna have to get real.’ But people are real from the moment they’re born. They’re real and they’re valid. When a fifteen-year-old kid has an idea, it’s not an unreal idea. But if you’re told over and over again that you have to ‘get real’, it creates this mentality that it doesn’t matter what they do. Because once they become real they will be absolved of everything, so they take no responsibility. This experiential thing? It’s a little touristic. Like, ‘I gotta taste it all!’ I know people who fucked one person I know people who fucked 100 people. Their experience may seem different, but outside pressures leave both people wondering if they made a mistake. I wish people wouldn’t spend their lives thinking about what they could’ve or should’ve done. I wish they would live their lives thinking about what they should be doing now.

On insecurities:

I tend to think of insecurities as reminders to go do something. As a teenager I was extremely self-conscious of my body. But at some point I realised there’s nothing constructive about agonising over it. So I filed that away, like, I can’t change this, so just do something – get to work. As a young child, I couldn’t grasp the idea of death. It was so unbearable for me, I freaked the fuck out. But then at some point I realised I would never get an answer from a single person on earth. So I figured – just live. I think the most constructive way to approach a lot of this stuff is to make peace with incomprehensibility. I accept the things that I cannot comprehend, that I will never comprehend, and I have peace with that. If I feel an insecurity, I practise more. I write a song. Just do something.

On perspective:

I have this concept about changing the source of light. The way things appear has a lot to do with where the light is. Sometimes things seem impenetrable, but maybe we just need to change the source of light. For instance, if you felt paralysed by your work – you’re miserable but you’re scared to leave your situation, because  you think you’d become irrelevant – then I would say: stand back. Change the source of light. Look at the situation and realise that, though it is important to you – and I will say this to myself  – though it is important to you, your work is ridiculous. And your fears are unfounded. You said, ‘People are inspired by you,’ but however one rates my ‘celebritydom’ or fame or whatever the fuck I have, it’s worth pointing out that 99.9 per cent of the population of the world never has, doesn’t and never will know of me. I don’t exist. There are entire giant cities in Indonesia where not a single person has ever heard of me. The music I make does not matter. And if it’s causing me duress, I should realise it’s ridiculous and that my fears are unfounded. Because what’s the worse thing that could happen. Like, what would be the worst thing that could happen to you?

Interviewer: That I miss my deadline. I have anxiety every week before we go to print – which is now. One voice in my head says, ‘You’re gonna miss it! You’re a failure!’ The other voice is like, ‘It’s a magazine, get a grip.’

Exactly, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Life is just a straight line. There are two definitive points, one at the beginning and one at the end. It could be argued that should you decide to procreate that may merit another point. Everything else is affection – accoutrements, add-ons, additives. The way we speak, the things we own, the way we identify ourselves, they’re all artifices on some level… While we’ve been talking maybe 100 people have been killed, maybe 1,000, who knows, and yet this development hasn’t affected our conversation whatsoever. If you put things in perspective one realises how it just doesn’t matter. So the value is up to us, and if we’re gonna assign the value, then why would we assign negative values?

Interviewer: I would say you’re in the minority – the enlightened minority – for being liberated by feeling like a speck of dust in the universe. And the rest of society is veering more towards this idea of, ‘I gotta make it!’ Why is the ratio skewed?

Well, I think that your definition of society is a little off base. People working in the fields of Vietnam, or whatever, I don’t think they’re thinking, ‘I gotta make it!’ I think they’re just doing their work. You’re in London. You work in a field that is obsessed with digital. I think probably the pure irrelevance of that medium, when you get down to it, is the reason people are so hellbent on wanting it to matter. It’s almost an inverse. It’s like they’re making cotton candy, yet they’re obsessed with nutrition. ‘It has to have nutrients in it!’ they say, because they know it’s cotton candy. I’m not being dismissive. People freak out when they’re thirty, they freak out when they’re forty, mostly I think people just like to freak out. I guess it’s convention. Convention gives people a sense of comprehension. And people are not at peace with incomprehension. I read an article about a space craft that was tasked with taking photos, I think Carl Sagan was involved. NASA said we’ll only operate this camera until we’re at the edge of the universe. After years and years, when it slipped past the edge of the universe and NASA said let’s cut it off, Sagan lobbied to take one more picture – and it was of the earth. Can you imagine what Earth looked like from outside the universe?

Interviewer: Like a star?

It’s not even a star. It was a tiny little dot. And Sagan pointed to this little dot in this vast sea of stars, more than you can imagine, or ever count, and he said, ‘Every idea that any human has ever thought, every fight, every war, everything that has ever occurred, happened there.’ How insignificant, that people would die over property when it doesn’t even rate as a speck in the universe? I appreciate that idea. Because insignificance is liberating. If you stop thinking this is my land, then you’re free. If it’s your land – my property, my concept, my scene, my society – you have to defend it. You’re hamstrung by it.

On life:

But at some point in my life I decided that the basis of all my reasoning is this: pain hurts. That’s true for you and it’s true for me; I don’t wanna hurt other people because I don’t wanna be hurt. Keep things simple and they suddenly seem doable. I read this book in my early twenties – by C.S. Lewis, I think. There was this image of life as a tree and each decision we made was a branch. And then every decision we made, once we were on that branch, were smaller branches and smaller branches until you got down to the twigs. The author explained that if you are on the wrong branch, if you made a bad decision, you have to go back to the trunk – because once you’re on that branch, every decision will be wrong. That was such a great thing for me. I was just navigating, I made a mistake, so I have to go back to the trunk. Because back at the trunk, life – simple life – is always right.

[swampgallows]

for the first time in a while, at least a month, i woke up screaming again. i fell asleep around 4, which i was proud of, feeling myself slowly sliding back toward a preferred schedule. lately i’d still been falling asleep at 6am but would wake up a bit earlier, getting fewer hours but at least seeing more sunlight. the urge to hurt myself yesterday was strong, but luckily there are understanding and generous people in my life to ease me through it, and i am beyond thankful. 

two things have happened.

one, an old face from my previous WoW server has resurfaced and sought me out specifically. a different friend had namedropped them out of nowhere, but was also drunk and wouldn’t extrapolate on why he had mentioned it. he just said the character’s name, then drunk-dialed me a bunch of times until i picked up and then had their “gay roommate” scream across the room that “asexuals aren’t lgbtq!”, then hung up.

but anyway the old face returned. we’ll call them “Pockets” because it’s 7am and I’ve barely slept and so i’m pullin raver names out of my ass. I met Pockets back on thobro in 2006ish. we’re the same age, and so we’ve known each other for a fairly long time and kind of grew up alongside each other. Pockets eventually got into a relationship with...I guess we’ll say “Dizzy”. Now, Dizzy lives very far away from Pockets. Pockets lives in America, like me, and Dizzy lives in Australia. But as the capabilities of the internet were improving every day (especially with the advent of internet telephony like skype at the time) it was easier than ever to sustain a long-distance relationship. But by the time I had quit WoW in early 2009, Pockets and Dizzy’s relationship had not progressed as one should have. For instance, Pockets had barely seen any pictures of Dizzy. While they chatted all the time, at that point they hadn’t yet had a webcam chat. It had been some years of constant companionship, yet they never had a plan to meet. But that was fair, I thought, since Pockets and I were only 16 in 2006, so planning that thing was kind of difficult. But by 2009, we were 19, and Dizzy was a bit older in the first place, so surely two people who loved each other would want to meet irl, right?

But Pockets said they respected that Dizzy wasn’t so open about their looks or personal life, etc. Okay. Pretty big red flags, though, if someone you’ve spent almost every waking moment with for three years is being this conservative about their identity. They were prominent characters in most of the server’s RP, so there was a lot of talk. “Maybe Dizzy is like... WAY older than they say, and they don’t want to admit it.” “Maybe Dizzy isn’t the gender they say they are.” “Pockets will get fed up with this eventually—they’re young! They can’t just wait around forever.”

So Pockets found me in game, yesterday, and had transferred to WRA, where a lot of thobro refugees (like myself) ended up. And they sought me out specifically because they remember my friendship with them, and that I had known them (and the rest of our community) all that time ago. And Pockets told me, yesterday, that Pockets and Dizzy had finally broken up. They had stopped talking for about two weeks, and for about two solid weeks, Pockets was staring down the cavernous hungry maw of suicide. “Everything was just... so quiet.”

They must have been fucking married by now, I thought. Either way, it had been over ten years! I knew Pockets was taking it really hard. Except... Dizzy and Pockets never met.

Not once. Not once in over ten fucking years of being in a relationship did they ever meet. And Dizzy had actually been to America a handful of times throughout the relationship. Yet Dizzy never went to meet Pockets.

I don’t know what the rest of the situation was like. If they video-chatted every day, if they called each other all the time, or whatever. Regardless of how you look at it or what the situation with Dizzy was, Pockets was catfished and abused for over ten fucking years. “It’s my fault. I should have left when [etc. etc.] happened...” Pockets told me that they hadn’t even seen end-game content past Cataclysm, despite playing WoW the entire time. Dizzy never wanted to do any of it, but would get upset if Pockets did it without them. So all Pockets did from Cataclysm onward was PVP, and once they reached the top achievements, felt there was nowhere else to go from there and stopped. Dizzy only wanted to play alts and quest. No raids, no PVP, no dungeons even. Just running around and questing, and preventing Pockets from doing any of that content. When someone you have never even fucking met is controlling the way you play a video game and what permissions you have within the game that you pay monthly to play, something is wrong.

Pockets knew they were lacking confidence. They were so lonely and so latched on that they let Dizzy run the show. And Dizzy barely cared. Pockets knew they basically only existed when it was convenient for Dizzy, but outside of that, they were nothing. I felt that about halfway through my relationship with my ex qp, and shared those feelings with Pockets. It took so long to break away and I held on past everything, past my own pain and self-torture, because I had some kind of hope that things would change. And part of me, an insidious part, said that this was the best I was going to get. After all, I’m some broken asexual idiot—”I should be so lucky,” the words rang out in my head, yellowed and worn but enduring and broadcasting itself loud and vivid over and over for years and years and years, tattered even during my childhood, “I should be thankful,”—and this person was my best friend. I should take the affection in the times I could get it. I should just accept that they will want other people sexually because I cannot provide that, and my best friend has a right to be sexual, and they are being so generous by fixing me with their limp novice dick. 

So I bit it back and squashed it down and even after asking six times and getting no answer, “Do you have a problem with hurting me?” it took them falling into the pit of legitimate white supremacy and Nazism for me to finally let go. And I had tried a number of times but felt myself being pulled back, and they, too, were so desperate for some sense of power in their shitty meaningless life (if that wasnt obvious), so lacking initiative and direction that when i floated back upstream, they took it in stride like every other aspect of existence, as if i were just some trash that floated down the river that they, some huge, slack-jawed bloated fish, gobbled up regardless. I existed only when it was convenient for me to exist, and the moment I started being consumed by my anxiety, getting combative, demanding more affection, more outward recognition, I was gaslit and told, literally, word for word, in fun little tumblr doublespeak, “Your feelings are valid, but this is all based on things within your head.” me coming to my QP and saying, “I feel like you dont care about me because I keep asking to hang out and you’re completely ambivalent about it, and when i asked you, ‘Do you want to see me?’ you said ‘You can visit if you want,’. It’s a yes or no question. Do you want to see me?” DO YOU HAVE A PROBLEM WITH HURTING ME? and then being told it’s “all in my head”, it’s a perceived disinterest. YES, that is what I’m perceiving, which is why I’m trying to address that you are not giving me enough attention and acknowledgment for someone you claim to care about! But obviously, it was me that was the problem, because i was daring to exist outside those convenient parameters. If you didnt want to fuck me right now then what was I even doing breathing your air?

And I’ve been thinking about them a lot because it was around this time 3 years ago that i had started my job, which i had to quit, and had also had a falling out with them, and was mourning that loss. as well as a, in retrospect, MUCH LARGER LOSS of tokin, who had taken his own life that same week. so i tried to turn it into a new beginning, doing my job and being appreciated, but eventually i crawled back and, one-sided as usual, tried to mend things with the QP. But it didnt matter to them. I didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. “Oh well,” was their shitty little trademark. Yeah buddy, life is fucking just happening to you and you’re stuck in one place without even a dream of things getting better, or worse, just taking things as they are, apathetically, without interest, wanting for nothing except to fuck girls but not enough to do anything about it, only if they’re delivered to your doorstep.

So here’s the second thing that happened.

Yesterday was coming out day, and a sort of friend-of-a-friend posted their story on facebook. I read it this morning upon waking up.

She mentioned her living situation and how she was living with other women who promised that they would help her, which is, in her words, “a huge red flag”. She says things settled into a routine, and eventually the big problem that she needed help with fell to the wayside in the wake of all of the smaller, but more prolific things: “focused on other fires, both making and putting them out.” She talks about the time she wasted living with these women and how she was “on the edge again”. She trusted people she loved and that loved her to help her, and they couldn’t. But then, after hitting a very low point, she had a breakthrough:

I did something I'm not sure I'd ever done before in my life: I took the initiative to help myself. I researched, found, and made an appointment with a therapist who specialized in this sort of thing. I worked through a tremendous amount of repression. I did mental exercises to actively re-wire my brain, and unlearn my unhealthy coping mechanisms. It was painful.

And then, she wrote this:

Maybe my point is that you can't entrust your journey (ugh, hate that term) to anyone else. You can't let other people tell you who you are or are not. No matter how much you love and trust someone, they cannot do the work for you. They can facilitate it, as [redacted] failed to do, but in the end, it's you... get help, get the best and most objective and impartial help you can, do not let yourself be held hostage by people or environments or your own fucking apathy which benefit from you being inert.

When someone you love offers you help, it's normal to want to take the help, and oftentimes you should. But sometimes, it's too much to give, or they have their own problems or motives, and the help is unreasonable to expect. Do not turn yourself over to someone. Deal with these things on your own terms. Define the terms by which you exist. I lost two fucking years of my life...because I believed that someone else could and would do it for me.

But at least I'm there now. You can get there, too.

I do not know how I can start this journey. I have been trying for ten years, but I have very little direction or resources. I’ve spent the last... god, I guess 8 years, just trying to keep my head above water. Basically since my second year of college, all I’ve really done is survive, and the only times I felt truly alive and like myself were within the rave scene. So I have been clinging to that, and it is a definitive part of me, because it helps me breathe. I don’t think it is “holding me back” because I am not heading anywhere. But I have spent so long gasping for air that I’m almost nauseous from taking a breath. Since I was really young I have cared about electronic music, somewhat in defiance of my live musician parents [drum machines have no soul], and going to thunderdome in a week (!!!) or so is like a pilgrimage to gabber mecca, but also a kind of zenith. 

where do i go from here? I’ve said I want to DJ just because parties dont play the music I want to hear, but within the last few years I have felt myself so plugged up and insecure that I don’t know what I want. I’m too old to be precocious and have lost some of my identity in that way because of it. Now that I’m getting older, I feel like I don’t have permission to be new at things. But I have been restrained by permission my whole life. I have earned money yet i’m not allowed to pay for things. I earned my driver’s license by myself yet i’m not allowed to leave my house. i am controlled by my mother’s desperation and neediness and guilt, and by my father’s disconnect and judgment. I am controlled by my siblings’ apathy and my friends’ disappointment in me. i am afraid of not being perfect because then my parents won’t want me, so i put off things that i even want to do and i fear messing up, fear not acquiescing, fear not providing something expected of me, because i will be hurt.

but ultimately i am constrained by my own fears, my fear of pain. i am hurt by the thought that my parents don’t love me and that, to them, i just exist when convenient also, only when they can brag about me, only when they need something done. “I’m worried you don’t get out enough,” my mom says, but all she can offer are words because her heart is closed. she loves by worrying, by stifling, by pity. and i dont want to continue that. i dont want my love to be just good intentions. i want it to be good actions. love, love is a verb.

“I took the initiative to help myself. ... It was painful.”

There is a lot of red tape between my life and my parents’ control. and sometimes doing any action is so exhausting that I cannot do anything for the rest of the day. But I don’t want to be Pockets, waiting for the people who control me to start loving me actively, to have faith in their control benefiting me somehow. I’ve done it before by getting my license by myself. It was slow, and agonizing, and incredibly difficult and drawn-out, but I have it, and it’s mine, and my mom “felt bad”, but I can’t care. Now it’s just a matter of literally getting out the door, without the inquisition, without the mire of their guilt. I am genuinely starving, living on bread and half-expired milk and soda, because I am tired of making my mom cry by asking her to buy things, or coming home with things that, if I had only asked, she would have gotten for me.

I am not asking anymore. I am just going to go get things myself. It will make her cry. She will cry that she is “obsolete”, and that she has “no purpose”, and that she “lives for her kids”, and it will be painful. Like Pockets, I have wasted over ten years of my life banking in good intentions, on the trust that people who love me will help me. Or the trust that even people who are paid to help me will help me. 

"Do not turn yourself over to someone. Deal with these things on your own terms. Define the terms by which you exist."

Asexuality is a term that has helped. It gave me more agency in my verbs, of making a command decision about how I approach sexuality, whereas before I was giving myself, in every imaginable interpretation of the phrase, over to someone else. It hurts that I have to fight so much, that I must fight constantly for personhood, even from those who claim they would do anything to give it to me, even from those who physically did give me personhood. 

For my entire life I have thought my bloodline cursed. I have lived beneath the shadow of my father's greatest failure. I hated him for what he had done. I hated him for the burden he left me. But now... You have shown me truths that I would have never known. You and your allies have gifted me with something that cannot bear a price: Redemption. Thrall, redeemer of the Mag'har, you honor me as none ever have... On this day, a great burden has been lifted from my chest. My heart swells with pride. And for the first time, I can proudly proclaim who I am. I can finally unleash the fury in my heart. 

As long as I know what I stand for, even if I don’t know what I want or how to get it, I can get there. Because I’ve done it before.

When the bread was finished, the tired little red hen asked her friends, “Who will help me eat the bread?” “I will,” barked the lazy dog. “I will,” purred the sleepy cat. “I will,” quacked the noisy yellow duck. “No!” said the little red hen. “I will.” And the little red hen ate the bread all by herself.

Not that I even have my first tattoo yet, but if I ever get a second one, it should be a little red hen on my wrist. It can be my personal shorthand for “take it easy, but take it”. 

[roidespd-blog]

CHAPTER SEVEN : CONVERSION THERAPY

This one is going to be easy. This is an opinion piece. A inflammatory commentary of some monstrous practices. A pile of insults for a pile of shit : CONVERSATION THERAPY, the worst of humanity with genocides and Keeping Up with the Kardashians.

WHAT IS CONVERSATION THERAPY ?

“So-called Conversation Therapy is a range of dangerous and discredited practices that falsely claim to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity or expression” — Human Rights Campaign

I’ll let The Trevor Project explained it to you : Conversion therapy, sometimes referred to as “reparative therapy,” is any of several dangerous and discredited practices aimed at changing an individual’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Conversion therapists use a variety of shaming, emotionally traumatic or physically painful stimuli to make their victims associate those stimuli with their LGBTQ identities. According to studies by the UCLA Williams Institute, more than 700,000 LGBTQ people have been subjected to the horrors of conversion therapy, and an estimated 80,000 LGBTQ youth will experience this unprofessional conduct in coming years, often at the insistence of well-intentioned but misinformed parents or caretakers.

A QUICK HISTORY OF CONVERSATION THERAPY

Early 20th Century. Sigmund Freud stated that homosexuality could sometimes be removed through hypnotic suggestion. In his paper “The Psychogenesis of a Case of Homosexuality in a Woman”, he wrote that changing homosexuality was difficult and possible only under unusually good conditions (fear of society’s disapproval was not considered one of those). Success meant making heterosexual feelings possible, not eliminating homosexual feelings. Sure. Different time. Different ideas. Also, fuck you. I will give points to Freud with his response to a letter from a mother whose son was gay : “I gather from your letter that your son is a homosexual. … it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. … By asking me if I can help [your son], you mean, I suppose, if I can abolish homosexuality and make normal heterosexuality take its place. The answer is, in a general way we cannot promise to achieve it. In a certain number of cases we succeed in developing the blighted germs of heterosexual tendencies, which are present in every homosexual; in the majority of cases it is no more possible. It is a question of the quality and the age of the individual. The result of treatment cannot be predicted”.

When you think about it, the idea of curing homosexuality through therapy was kind of a step forward, as previous solutions were castration, frying one’s brain OR death.

One of the “great” minds behind modern conversation therapy was psychoanalytic theorist Edmund Bergler. His method could essentially be sum up to “BLAME THE VICTIM”. Bergler used confrontational therapy in which gay people were punished in order to make them aware of their masochism. He violated professional ethics to achieve this, breaking patient confidentiality in discussing the cases of patients with other patients, bullying them, calling them liars and telling them they were worthless. His studies and articles helped classify homosexuality as a mental disorder in 1952. From this period until the Stonewall Riot in 1969, conversion therapy received approval from most of the psychiatric establishment in the United States.

AND THEN CAME THE MOVEMENT

After the Riots, conversion therapy came under increasing attack. In 1973, with pressure from numerous activists and newly formed LGBT groups, The American psychiatric Association removed homosexuality as a mental disorder. Then all were saved from trying to change and every Gay rights were approved by the government. Peace and harmony was finally here. Oh, no. Wait.

AND THEN CAME THE CHRISTIANS

If the APA wasn’t going to treat homosexuals as mentally ill, the Religious Right would. Practicing aversion without any therapist licenses (which helps since they cannot be sued for malpractices), Gurus like Joseph Nicolosi and John Smid went on to create successful programs for years, persuading parents to involve their kids into weeks, months, years even, of costly and intense reconditionings.

Take for example Joseph Nicolosi. His website offers “psychological services to Men and Women whose Same-Sex attraction doesn’t define them”. He is described as a pioneer in the history of psychology, which he left as the profession was slowly abandoning the classic understanding of sexuality as being rooted in design and purpose (their words, not mine). He’s the author of masterpieces such as “Healing Homosexuality”, “A Parent’s Guide to Preventing Homosexuality” and “Shame and Attachment Loss : The Practical Work of Reparative Therapy”. They don’t develop any specifics on how they reduce homosexual tendencies or how they cure the fags, but we can easily imagine.

YOU HAVE THE METHODS TO MAKE US STRAIGHT

The techniques that conversion therapy use are quite varied, but have one point that ties them all. They do not work.

Electroconvulsive Therapy (or Electroshock Therapy) : the art of sending electric charge into your brain, put together that the medical body before meds were like “hey! we’re here too!”. It was created in order to provide improvements in severe symptoms of mental health conditions such as depression, mania, catatonia, aggression and dementia. One that goes through ECT risks memory loss, physical side effects, medical complications, seizures, confusion.

Prayers : because God does not love you and you need to repent and be good. Be good. Be straight. Be what you were supposed to be.

Exorcism : when the prayers don’t work. in 2009 Manifested Glory Ministries came under fire for a youtube video showing a 16-year old being subjected to an exorcism to cure him of his homosexuality. Quote “Come on, you homosexual demon! You homosexual spirit ! We call you out right now ! Loose your grip, Lucifer” End quote.

Disconnection from exterior influences : That’s what happened to Mathew Shurka, who was forbidden from seeing his mother and sisters for over 3 years, to help him get rid of any “effeminate behavior”. He also went through extensive unlicensed therapy sessions and his father provided him with unprescribed viagra pills. Shurka is now a spokesman for the National Center for Lesbian Rights’s anti-conversion therapy campaign.

Aversive conditioning : the use of something unpleasant, or a punishment, to stop an unwanted behavior. For example, wire a homosexual to an electric machine, showing him porn and electrocuting him every time something sinful (aka gay porn) appears. You can also induce the patient with nausea or paralysis. Sometimes it’s not as drastic, with the use of elastic band to slap on you wrist.

Behavioral reconditioning : lessons about masculinity and femininity. Ways to improve posture, voice modification, walking patterns, etc.

The 12-step program : borrowed from the Alcoholics Anonymous program. As you try to manage your disease, you truly need to atone from your sins and ask for forgiveness.

MEANWHILE IN FRANCE

As most of the rest of Europe, Conversation Therapy is not strictly banned by law. Malte was the first european country to outlaw CT, with a year in prison and a 10.000 euros fine. Worldwide, only Brazil, Canada and a couple of US states (including California) have laws to protect LGBT+ citizens from this mental genocide that is CT.

In France, though on the marginal side, there is a few groups that provide services to cure someone from the evil of gay life. The government, which doesn’t seem to really care that much about it, had a hard time evaluating how many of them exist. Gay activist and author Louis-George Tin gives an estimate number of five to six. He also warns that licensed therapists still try to heal homosexuality in secret sessions. 

A first crisis of consciousness appeared in 2012 when an evangelical group called “Torrents de vie” offered services to reconnect with a saint heterosexuality, true femininity and true masculinity for the sweet deal of 410 euros. After the intervention of LGBT groups, the government started an investigation under the law that protects citizens against cults (as Conversation Therapy is a cult, don’t mistake it for anything else). Since then, few cases went forward in the country but this year, Majority Deputy Laurence Vanceunebrock-Mailon announced her intentions to write an official text to outlaw groups that pretend to change sexual orientations from gay to straight. It is supposed to be available to the assembly before summer 2019.

A CURE FOR ILLNESS

Guys, I’m launching my own Conversion Therapy in a few weeks.

It’s called “Don’t give up, Sweet Bigot”. As a unlicensed medical expert in anything, I can only give what you can call “life advice” and offer “hang out” sessions to those who seek redemption from the path of bigotry. You don’t like gay people ? You still they are sinful and worthy of burning in Hell ? The worst that society has to offer ? (thought we agreed the Kardashians were, but okay). This program is for YOU. Come and join me (for the extraordinary start-up prize of my monthly rent) and I’ll will show you how to accept more people, all colors, sex, gender, choices, life goals. Practices include midnight showings of my favorite gay porn on pornhub, going to ONE orgy (not multiple, I’m not that much of a party freak), having drinks by the Seine for our monthly Apero Queer, dancing time to the best of modern pop has to offer (see June 4th article, bigots), and off course, Electroconvulsive Therapy. GO TO www.sweetbigot.org AND GET FREE GLITTER NOW !

You may not know what conversion therapy and it may not be as deadly as HIV or daily physical attacks on LGBT+ members around the world, but it kills. Those who went through that torture fest are eight times more likely to commit suicide in the years that follow. Garrard Conley wrote a wonderful memoir about his time at Love in Action. It was adapted in a very informative film also titled “Boy Erased”. There’s also “The Miseducation of Cameron Post”, check it out.

Don’t send your kids there. It’s not love to try and change someone. It’s abuse. I’m gonna follow closely the events of this possible law against conversation therapy in France. We are painfully uninformed about what is going on around us. Time to kick some Jesus Freaks’ butts.

[soyosauce]

Synners: Leaving A Visual Mark

"Who do you love?"

Although published in 1991 the world of Synners and L.A in the late 80's still feels relevant. More relevant than a lot of cyberpunk, even late first wave ones such as this. Pat Cadigan missed the normal technological advancements the genre is known for such as: cell phones. But reading it doesn't feel archaic though, maybe because it's a hard, purposeful look at nostalgia itself. 

"The way we all kept adding to the nets did exactly that, passed a threshold. It got to the point where the net should have collapsed in chaos, but it didn't. Or rather it did, but the collapse was not a collapse in the conventional sense."

GridLid automates your car completely even handles all the traffic jams, resulting in people being fearful of non-automated systems, never having driven "manually" before. Entertainment is imbibed while the bumper-to-bumper traffic takes you hours to get to work. There is porn for everything. Traffic porn, med porn, war porn, food porn. People get off on most anything that's packaged as entertainment. And the stuff that isn't trending now, is gone. Viruses are prevalent and are just a hazard of the world;  most people don't know how to get rid of them. Discarding technical know-how for the ease of products automating their lives. 

That's where the punks come in, the hackers.  

"If you can't fuck it and it doesn't dance. Eat it or throw it away."

A slow build up hampers the book at first. Most of the pages are reserved for introductions to each. Though effective in the long term, it does take a while to get into it. But once it's done showing you the characters and by proxy, the world—the book is undeniably richer for it. 

Where Synners is so interesting compared to some other first wave novels (beyond the world building aspects) is that there is kind of a post-cyberpunk vibe happening throughout, intentional or otherwise.

"We don't grieve for what might have been in rock'n'roll. We just keep rockin' on."

Gina is old enough to remember and venerate "properly," rock'n'roll music. This lauding of a wave that died out, along with the notion that "punk" is also dead is a consistent through line, reinforced with vivid imagery of music videos and lyrics from songs that just won't leave her alone. She is stuck in a self destructive loop that is explained by the impulses of the human body, rooting her problems in her humanity. Her pain seems to stem from her embodiment, yet she still wouldn't change a thing. Hard life, hard love, hard everything.  

"Back in Mexico, when he first put the wires in when you were there. If you'd leaned down then, put your mouth on his, he might have stayed. Because after that nothing could pull him back, not love, not sex, not you. Not nothing, not no-how."

Visual Mark on the other hand chooses the "datalines" (the Internet) instead. Once a close couple, madly in love, eating each other up—now mature and unable to carry on with their relationship; effectively due to the past. Their mistakes, their nostalgia for them, and the various forms of coping so they don't ever have to deal with it, all damning of the societal structures in place. Mark unwilling to take true responsibility for them, instead shrugging them off to the system. 

"He was still wondering what would become of him when he felt the first shock wave, followed by the last message he would ever receive from the meat."

The main thrust of the book is that "sockets" are invented, which would also be antiquated tech in most cyberpunk novels, and the world dives right in because capitalism. Diversifications, a megacorporation disseminates this new and unsafe tech to the masses.  And while Gina hungers for the same power to make music videos "alive" again through the use of this technology, possibly rekindling everyone's love for rock'n'roll again, as well as Mark's own love for her. Mark allows it to consume him whole. 

Through the eyes of many of the characters we see what capitalism has wrought. Only this time it's through this more interesting lens rooted in music; quizzically, not punk. The idea that the first wave was almost gone and along with it, cyberpunk as a subgenre, parallels Gina and Mark's struggle with their past and glory days. How enticing our memories make events that were actually horrible; allowing us to view the wreckage of our lives with rose-coloured glasses. Post-cyberpunk in that it seems to critically evaluate the genre, subverting it in a few places.

"This ain't rock'n'roll. It ain't been rock'n'roll for a long fucking time. This is business, and money, and change for the machines, but it ain't rock'n'roll.

Mark himself could represent the genre as it existed in first wave. He is an anti-hero, unlikeable but attractive in non-conformative ways. His past has destroyed parts of him, including some brain damage that makes him even better at using tech to become more than he is now, transcending himself. Leaving "the meat," as he so often refers to it, behind. He has a particular affinity and knack for something because society has fucked him up; the "system" has damaged him. The typical protagonist for early cyberpunk.

"I'm not really in there, now. I'm maintaining it, but there's nobody home. I know it doesn't happen that way for you, but that's how it is for me. "

Gina can interact with people just fine, though. She is more-or-less "well adjusted" and chooses to be a voice of dissent. Picking physical conflicts and verbal ones, choosing embodiment every step of the way. How she interacts with people, especially if they are seen by her as being a part of the system that has essentially destroyed the love of her life, Visual Mark, is by being angry. Being a punk. She is a part of an older generation,  now been left behind. She's angry, and tired, and does exactly what she wants when she wants to. The only weakness she has is Mark, the personification of this old way of life that she cannot let go. The wound in her mouth that would heal; if she'd only stop tonguing it. 

The book is primarily (as I see it) about examining embodiment; the products of our society and commodification of anything of value. Who power structures benefit and what those wounds might look like in a cyberpunk future becoming an allegory for the targeting of the unlucky few, who grow to be far too many. How powerful nostalgia is, a resurgence of it being inevitable, often; usually by means of any advancement in technologies. It's smart, funny, at times; easy to empathize with, and features good prose mixed with a cyberpunk aesthetic that feels like a prequel while being critical of the genre as it was about to "die."

It's worth reading.

"But it's different when you think you have no choice, and then suddenly you do after all."

[dailywords4dailypeople]

paladin

Like usually, I have no idea where to begin writing. I rarely have an idea when I first start. I just start writing, and sometimes I have a string of thought that pours out of me. Sometimes, I write all day, but then I start writing for the Word of the Day, and I don’t have a single word. I sigh. Sometimes, I feel an emotion, and let it become my everything. That’s the easiest way to write when you are so feed up about something or someone. Writing about people is fun. I enjoy writing about a particular person, but never telling the person who they are. Maybe they will figure it out. Maybe someone else will think it’s meant for them. That’s just uncomfortable. So, I have realized something about writers. Take John Green for example. I’ve read every book he has published, but he hasn’t read a single word of mine. It’s a one way kaleidoscope into the intricacies of his brain, so I begin to relate with him. I feel like I know him, but I’ve never met him. I have a considerable amount of knowledge about how he likes to structure sentences and how he likes to escalate stories. I have watched every video he’s posted on YouTube. I look up to him, and I’m feel like I’m able to picture him in real life. But I’ve never met him. So, any attempt I have of opening up to him seems rather unimpressive. I can love his books, his speeches, his videos, but he doesn’t know that. Like, he knows he has an audience, but he doesn’t know that I specifically am in that audience. Maybe I have the answers to all his problems, but he’ll never know that, and I probably will never met him. Who knows? Maybe, I will. I met Hank. He gave me a pat on the back when I opened up to him. He hugged me. He reminded me of the uncle I never had. Like, like the really cool uncle who wouldn’t be afraid to call out people who I thought were untouchable. I do have those people in my life though. I guess, I have that exact person in my family with the only difference being a woman. But, boys and girls aren’t the same in my family. I wish there were. But they aren’t. Then again, I’m talking in absolutes, and no absolutes are truth. Okay, it’s MLK day. A day where we admire those who stand up for what they believe in. A day where we don’t have to go to school or deal with government things. A day where we can go drinking the night before. Equality is not reached in our nation. Sadly, it will never be reached. We will always have men unconsensually grabbing women’s asses. Men going up to women thinking that cockiness is cool. Just because you are good at making out doesn’t mean people want to make out with you. I’m upset with men if you can’t tell. Women have to deal with men every day. I’m so sorry. I hate the social construct around hooking up with people. I’m the guy that if a girl asked me where I live, I run away. The problem with guys is that when you run away, they follow you. They are driven by sex. They view themselves as paladins in shining armor. They expect everyone to look at them with awe and greatness. I’m sorry. I’m talking in absolutes again. Fuck. Fuck men. They are assholes, and I want nothing to do with them. God. Damn. I hope this is raw enough for you. I hope I can learn how to talk in metaphors, so I didn’t have to reveal so much of my personal life. Men are stupid. They go out of their way to get what they want and don’t care for the repercussion. Be careful around men. They are scary. They don’t care about you. I am searching for someone to prove myself wrong. I look and look and I can only find myself. But, I’m terrified of walking down the path of injustice. I fear I will step out of line. I fear I will make a mistake that cannot be corrected. I look at her and wonder what it is that I will do that will make her never look at me again. I’m a pig, or at least I’m going to be. I’ve seen so many pigs. I don’t want to be a pig. I hate the way they walk and their snouts. They are covered in mud and filth. They are disgusting. They strut through the courtyard taking cantankerous steps. They are so loud. Their stench cuts through the air. Infect all around. But when you call them out on infecting, the stop. Like in Angels in America. They are using a condom, but the condom breaks. Louis then asks the man to infect him, and he stops. He gets up. He walks away. Louis is such a well written character. He wishes his own death but not the death of others. I feel like our brains are wired the other way. We want others to die, so we can live forever. But then, someone calls us out on it, and shit. We start thinking about it. And we begin to care. The asshole wakes up the next morning, and sends an apology on snapchat. And I delete his snapchat. And I wonder how he got my snapchat in the first place. And I don’t really remember what happened, but thankfully I’m safe in the home on my dear brother. My brother who has always been protecting me. Being the youngest child is weird. Fuck men. Fuck snapchat. Use condoms when you fuck, so you don’t get AIDS. Don’t buy into the paladins galloping around trying to “rescue” you. Write with emotion. Learn how to use metaphors. Take notes in class. Read books. Be smart. Don’t do drugs. Don’t black out when you’re drinking. Change your goal of writing 500 words to 1000 because you just did it no problem. Love the authors you read even though they don’t know who you are. Write more. Feminism. Go Bucks. 

[racingtoaredlight]

Tone - Amps vs. Modeling...a guitarist’s perspective

Guitar.com: Right. With the actual tones that I’m hearing on this recording… I mean, you’ve got stuff that sounds like almost sitar-like and all kinds of things…

Henderson: That is a sitar.

Guitar.com: Oh, okay.

Henderson: That’s one of those Jerry Jones electric sitars.

Guitar.com: Oh, okay. Cool. And how are you recording these day?. Are you using amps and mics? Are you recording through plugins? What are you doing?

Henderson: Amps and mics, man. I’m old school. Marshalls turned way, way up.

Guitar.com: Oh, really?

Henderson: A 4×12 cabinet with Greenbacks and ’71 Marshall. I wouldn’t do it any other way, dude. I hate all that bullshit — that guitar modeling crap, man. That’s so much bullshit.

Guitar.com: Okay. So, you just crank way up in the studio to get that tone.

Henderson: Yeah, man. Like a real musician.

Guitar.com: Yeah.

Henderson: I’m sorry I’m so down on that stuff. I just hear it, and It’s just, you know… I’ve had that stuff over at my house, and I just can’t do a single thing with it — all that Axe-FX and all that stuff over at my house. It just sounds like a joke compared to a real cabinet with a mic in front of it.

But, I understand that some people can’t turn up loud at their house, and I get that. And, you know, for the purpose of laying down some tracks for commercial purposes, I totally can understand how you could fool people into thinking that it is a real amplifier, but there’s no way in hell I can get my tone out of a rig like that. I gotta have the real deal.

*h/t...witasick420 i still can’t believe i can’t spell his screen name after all these years

Link to original article.

Thoughts after the jump...

***

There have been few moments in my life where I’ve felt completely overwhelmed by technology to the point where I questioned whether I legitimately had a fighting chance.  That feeling of helplessness that you’ve lived your life to this point, and your worldview was in danger of being wiped clean.

Towards the end of last year, I started a new project with a guitarist I had just met.  We’d played music a little bit together, but it wasn’t until our first rehearsal with a drummer where I experienced this full force.  In terms of skill, we’re very complimentary...he prefers playing rhythm, and while he has good chops, I have extra gears that are suited for lead playing.

I was playing my uncle’s amp...a Dr. Z Maz 18 (that I’m currently in possession of now) that is unanimously considered as one of the finest point-to-point wired workhorses on the market, through a speaker cabinet with 2 10″ very high-quality speakers.  He brought his Line 6 Helix, the guts of which are the 2nd image at the top, and ran it through the PA.

It was such an unmitigated beatdown, I legitimately had thoughts that all my time spent practicing was a waste, because with the Helix modeler unit, it gave you such a tonal world at your fingertips, it legitimately made up for a massive amount of real estate that skill usually had to occupy.

And I’m not saying that as some kind of slam, rather appreciating just how impressive and comprehensively brilliant a tool like the Helix is.  Immediately...and I am about to criticize it in a second...I knew that things like tube amps and the world of electric guitar that I love would be irreversibly marching towards obsolescence.

That’s how powerful it was experiencing one of these new modeling platforms...that was tuned up by someone who knew what they were doing and spent the hours programming it...after about a two and a half hour rehearsal.

***

BUT...

***

Then I played it.

***

As impressive as the unit was on the sidelines, it was missing a single critical element.  Something that you cannot objectify or put in marketing material or...honestly...explain, without having someone experience it for themselves first hand.

***

The reason that, after this and subsequent rehearsals, I remain fully committed to tube amps is because I’m a romantic.  After that first rehearsal, I didn’t need any more evidence...it slapped me in the face for 150 minutes.

AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER...

I could not ignore how powerful a modeler is for making the end product.  When I had no physical connection to the thing...even with a great rig behind me...the evidence was impossible to ignore.  These things crank out studio quality sound...the Henderson interview was from 2015, these things today are quantum leaps beyond what was around back then...right there no matter if you’re gigging or in the studio or at home.  It’s easier to get a consistent, high-quality sound live.  It fits in a fucking backpack!

But I don’t give a shit about the audience.  I don’t play music for other people...that’s what professionals do...I play for myself and my enjoyment, first and foremost.  And, all this theory nonsense and OCD over equipment...it’s all a quixotic quest to find the combinations of notes and tones that get my entire body covered in goosebumps.

And modelers...as of right now...do not do that.

***

If there’s one aspect of music that I hope you all understand, that I’ve been beating you over the heads with for years, it’s that music is a physical being.

If you ignore this aspect of music, you are missing out on the aspect of what has made it such a strangely important part of global culture.  Those sensations you get from listening to music...it’s not the subject matter or the theory or subjective qualities of tone...it’s the acoustic signal created by a vibration being amplified and projected to your eardrums, where that signal is sent to your brain for processing.

And, no matter what emotional response you have to the word “artificial,” a modeler’s tone is legitimately artificial.  It’s digitally recreated.  While I can say that this doesn’t mean it’s worse, if I have a guitar in my hand it’s an entirely different story.

***

If music is in the hands of patrons and the audience...i.e. commercial purposes...who really cares about organic stuff?  Lets not pretend that music has any sanctity left over in Western culture that hasn’t been exploited and grotesquely copied.

But musicians playing music that they actually love and enjoy is a different story.  The stuff musicians actually have a passion for.  The shit they work to create themselves, for free, because that’s how nature wired them...

Here’s a great article about what went down in a semi-famous test where a bunch of Stradivarius and Gesu violins were tested against great modern examples.  

This study certainly doesn't tell us what happens between a player and a fiddle over a long-term relationship, and this is an important factor. Even over the course of this short testing situation, people's opinions changed and evolved. It's sort of like dating; that chemistry on the first date could be the prelude to a blissful, 40-year union. Or, on the third or fourth date, you could begin discovering that your new beau has unbearably bad breath, hates classical music and just wants to watch re-runs of the "Dukes of Hazzard" and listen to Asia.

***

The Helix is impressive for a number of non-digital reasons...things like touch sensitivity and replicating the natural dynamic response of tubes...but that missing ingredient I’ve been alluding to this entire time is a “feel.”

There’s a feel to tube amps that’s organic.  It might be an electrically produced signal, but the signal is organic and intact throughout the signal chain.  It’s never recreated by a digital processing board or run through a filter more advanced than a small bit of oil in a paper cap.  While it’s an electric signal, the guitar through a tube amp is very similar to a human’s voice...but that organic nature is diminished when the signal is digitally reprocessed.

The easiest way I can explain this is the difference between having sex with a condom (modeler) and without a condom (amp).

*just kidding kids, practice safe sex