#she likes gardening and dropping lsd

[hinokavevo]

miwa astraltrip: psychonaut, astronaut, alien cutiepie traits: captivating, perfect pitch, genius, cold-blooded, heroic

[menlove]

i’m new to the whole beatles rpf (i am an rpf veteran though i wrote 75k words of michael jackson fanfiction in middle school and 15k of queen freshman year of hs 😐) so what are like the tenets of beatles rpf. what’s the need to know.

YELLS that's so fucking valid of you I can't even lie

and HMMMM okay I can only speak for mclennon bc I observe the other ships from a distance but don't chomp at the bit about it but here's some things that come up A Lot in fics

john & paul met on july 6, 1957 at a church garden party. john played "come go with me" & got the words wrong while paul watched from the audience and Fell In Love. after, they officially met. paul took john's guitar, tuned it, then flipped it upside down (he's left handed) and played 20 flight rock perfectly. john was smitten and the rest was history

oh shit edit I forgot! john used to climb the drainpipe into pauls room. VITAL info that comes up so often

they had group wanking sessions (beat the meatles lmfao) & they'd call out the names of various female celebrities during it (john would apparently call out male names as a joke to throw people off which 💀)

STUUUUUU. we love stu, paul hates stu. stuart sutcliffe was a boy john met at art college & he became His Boy Bestie instead of paul for a while which had paul FUMING. john & stuart lived together for a while & in mclennon lore john was in love with him (& I do also think that lmao). which brings us to

HAMBURG. in 1960 the beatles went to hamburg & stayed several months in the world's dingiest room. they shared bunk beds & stayed up all night playing music & took pills (prellies) to stay the fuck awake. stuart went with as their bassist & paul hated him soooo bad so bad. in part bc stu did not take the band very seriously & was not good at playing and paul is a notorious perfectionist. fun hamburg facts! here stuart met astrid, his future fiance. and she took them to a gay bar lmao. also, at one point, in the most heinous and toxic move, john walked in on paul fucking a girl and lost it. he cut up her clothes with a pair of scissors and then started stabbing the wardrobe 💀 normal behavior. the whole thing was just drugs and sex and music. great fic setting always.

eventually they got back. george was deported first bc he was underage & then paul and the drummer lit a fucking condom on fire where they were staying and got deported too. john stayed an extra bit & when he got back didn't tell anyone. in the meantime, stu stayed in germany w astrid and paul Got A Job at his dad's insistence bc they all thought the band was over when john didn't show back up. but eventually he did. and made paul pick between the job and the band...... or rather, his dad and john. and paul picked john.

Some Months Later john took paul to paris for his 21st birthday. 200000000000 fics about this. all legendary all gay.

stu died </3

there's barely any fics of the touring days which is tragic I think there should be 60000. I guess the only thing that comes up semi often from that era is that they played lovers in a play, pyramus & thisbe, and paul named two kittens pyramus & thisbe. and gave pyramus (the character he played) to john. not joking at all.

next biggest Canon McLennon Event everyone brings up is lsd. george & john got into lsd first & ringo tried it as well. paul was extremely reluctant to and this caused a bit of a rift between him and john. eventually though, they did trip together and the first night is McLennon Fic Lore. john accidentally dropped acid in the studio (smth he avoided) & was out of it. almost jumped off the roof. paul took him back to his home (cavendish) & took lsd with him. there's a lot to this trip I can't even summarize but it was gay and there's lots of fics abt this incident

was Not the first time paul took lsd though which brings us to the Next Big Tropey Players: tara browne and robert fraser. both are men paul hung around in 1967 and there's looots of fics where he was gay w them and john is Seething

india! I'm not an india truther so I don't really get into these but the fandom at large thinks Something Happened during the beatles' 1968 trip to india. this usually takes the form of john confessing to paul and them fucking and then paul turning him down. background lore for many many breakup fics

and that's the stuff that tends to come up Most Often. there's so much lore I could probably write an entire novel & a lot of it gets referenced but these are some of the biggest players lmao

[sixminutestoriesblog]

morning glory and aster flowers

"The Michaelmas daisies, among dead weeds, Bloom for St Michael's valorous deeds…"

if you're like @royal-ossa than September is your birth month! Which means you get two flowers. Both morning glory and aster make an appearance during this late summer, early fall time of year and, if its your birthday and you're anything like your flowers, its safe to say that pollinators love you. Both the morning glory and the aster flowers have big fans when it comes to butterflies, bees and hummingbirds, especially the late blooming aster that continues to flower long after most other pollen giving plants have closed up shop for the year. Both flowers are also associated with hours of the day, with morning glories opening their flower petals to catch the first rays of the sunrise and asters being literally named after stars for their resemblance to their nighttime mirrored partners in the dark sky. Both flowers are also associated with love, with the morning glory representing unrequited or fleeting love while the sturdy aster represents enduring and patient love. So let's jump in and talk plants.

Did you know that the morning glory comes from the same family as the sweet potato? The hint is in their large, dark, heart-shaped leaves. While some morning glory have edible leaves, others are highly poisonous, with some of them even going so far as to have seeds laced with LSA which, if ingested in large enough amounts, can have similar effects to LSD. With flowers that sometimes only last a day, Chinese view the morning glory as representing a single day for lovers to meet. Two sweethearts, the story goes, were so enamored with each other that they forgot everything else, including their duties. In response, the gods separated them, except for one day of the year when they were allowed to meet. The flowers only lasting a day is also a reason the morning glory symbolizes unrequited love, though like many vines, it can also represent enduring love as well. In Japan, morning glory are sometimes a gift between young lovers. Busy not living up to their names, some morning glory plants actually bloom at night with some claiming those are the most fragrant of all. Be careful when planting morning glory though! They can easily outgrow their original plot and start to take over the rest of the garden. Morning glory are considered the flower that signifies the eleventh year of a marriage.

While morning glory have been busy sweeping up all the modern - well, glory, the aster has much deeper roots. Named after the Greek titan-goddess Asteria, the flowers were said to have formed when she wept at how few stars there were left in the sky. Her falling tears dropped to earth and sprung up as flowers that mimicked her lost stars above. The little flowers have been giving ever since, used in the past in folk remedies for skin infections, muscle pain, colds and headaches. Burning their leaves was supposed to drive away snakes and bad luck. Asters are sometimes called 'Michaelmas daisies' because they are one of the last flowers to bloom, often still alive and vibrant among the otherwise dead plants of the garden on St. Michael's feast day, a day which marks the calendar shift to autumn. In Victorian England, the aster was seen as representing charm and daintiness. The Aster Revolution in Hungary that took place in October 1918 was so called because many of the protestors wore aster flowers in their hats, which at the time were a symbol for valor and the fallen soldiers for WWI. Aster are also considered the 20th wedding anniversary flower.

[childpolh]

Year walk secret ending

Wenner assigned a full-court press on the Stones’s deadly concert at the Altamont Speedway in 1969 after the Hells Angels, brought in to handle security, killed an 18-year-old Black man in front of the stage. When the record review editor put four stars on the review, Mr. Wenner watched them at a recording session producing what he considered a “bewitching” sound - “especially after a little pot” - and then reviewed it for the magazine. Jagger put out a solo album with Wyclef Jean called “Goddess in the Doorway” in 2001, Mr. Jagger, who, according to Rolling Stone’s count, has been on the cover 21 times, topped only by Paul McCartney with 24, agreed to finance a British version of the magazine, which shortly tanked. Wenner became fast friends with Mick Jagger. When John Belushi fell off a stage doing his samurai skit and ended up in the hospital, with his leg in a cast suspended by wires, he mischievously pulled out a vial of coke hidden in the cast to show his friend Jann.Ĭonflict-of-interest rules at the magazine were blurry. “Drugs were the coin of the realm, enabling bad behavior, bad relationships, and lapses of judgment all around.”ĭinner parties might have silver trays of neatly arranged lines of coke passed around every half-hour. “Cocaine had a stranglehold on the music business,” Mr. Leibovitz dropped three large rocks of coke on his desk as “a gift from Keith for you.” Wenner recounts one day early in the magazine when Mick Jagger stopped by for blow and a long visit. Wenner’s secret was that “he kept it personal,” building “a family out of geeky music lovers, hopeful upstarts, gunslinger professionals.” Thompson’s first dispatch from D.C., when he covered George McGovern’s 1972 campaign, began like this: “I feel the fear coming on, and the only cure for that is to chew up a fat black wad of blood-opium about the size of a young meatball.”Ĭameron Crowe, the moviemaker, was 15 when he began writing for the magazine. Thompson, who loved his cocaine and whose office supplies included Wild Turkey and beer on tap, and an air horn. Wenner had to mold the copy into something readable after drug-fueled interviews, like the one he did with Jimi Hendrix. Running Rolling Stone required special skills. As a freshman at Berkeley, he was ripping wire copy for Chet Huntley and David Brinkley at the 1964 Republican National Convention in San Francisco, where Barry Goldwater became the nominee. He liked to sing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas.īy sixth grade, he was already the editor and publisher of The Weekly Trumpet. Wenner grew up in the rural suburbs of San Rafael, Calif., the son of former military officers who started a baby formula company. We ate gazpacho with caviar and roasted Montauk black sea bass, prepared by his chef, and drank rosé. Wenner’s spectacular modern home, featuring a basketball court, swimming pool, tomato garden, a sculpture of a huge metal head lying on its side and Ralph Lauren and Bill O’Reilly as neighbors. We had lunch by the ocean on the deck of Mr. He had just gotten back from taking his family on a safari with the family of Bette Midler, one of his favorite traveling companions, who says she finds him “peculiarly optimistic, even in the darkest of his days.” “Coke is fun for parties but then it’s useless.” “Pot is too difficult on my throat to smoke, and edibles last too long,” he said. Looking a bit chagrined, he confessed that he enjoyed a bit of LSD a month ago at the beach, listening to Bruce Springsteen, U2, Dire Straits and Bob Dylan. But even sitting quietly with his cane at his side, eating a bowl of cherries, he still has something of the whirlwind about him.

[midnight-moonlight-and-mars]

Carbon Monoxide (Requested)

Warnings: Depression, Swearing, Fluff?

Summary: Tak is convinced Y/n is dead. The love his life was killed saving him from an impulsive mistake he made. Between the blame, the drinks, and depression everything was bleak and pointless. Until he arrives a Bancroft party to find what he knew was nothing at all. What really happened?

Requested by: @ravenclawsstolemybunies 

A pulse flows through the air in a gushing wave. Tak felt his whole body fall to the gorund and go completely numb as well the rest of the swarming mob of people.

Stack Shocker... FUCK

He looked for Y/n in the now fallen crowd of battered and bruised people. She had been thrown by the blast in the middle of the road. Blood pooled around her body pushed around by the freezing rain.

Tak fights through using every ounce of strength to get himself to her lifeless body, the blurring his vision and making his body numb.

Her heart beat was slow. The noise and chaos that erupted around them disappeared into a static and blurry cloud. His mind went fuzzy with adrenaline and ears ringing from all of the hits to his head. 

“Y/N??? Y/N!!!!”

Nothing.

Cold skin... Blood... wound. Cover it... Pressure...

“Y/n please... oh god please...”

....Analyzing Stack.... No signs of activity. Lifeless

Too much... too many... guns... police....Leave....Leave her...now. Go!

~Present Day~

Tak sat in the outside garden at Suntouch waiting on Bancroft to finish whatever the fuck rich people do in their spare time. It was nice and all but he saw past the pretty flowers and statues. He saw everything scum like these people stood for. But, he needed the money if he was going to ever get out of this shit hole.

“Mr. Kovacs! You’re early.” Bancroft made his way through garden alongside his wife, who just seemed to be very interested in Tak anytime he was around.

“I need to speak with your associates or friends. See if they have any grudges against you or your family. I need you to get them all into one place without raising suspicion. Can you do that within the next few days?”

“Of course Mr. Kovacs whatever you need to get this done. I assume you have a plan? Do you plan on someone confessing to you or do you have someone in mind? I will tell you they are snakes with their own secrets and scandals. Turning over these stones will likely cause some fuss. More than the one you’re causing already my friend...”

"It does work in our favor though. Many people seem more interested in attending now that you are honored guest." Bancroft's wife said eyeing him a little too hard for her husband being a foot away.

“If you can get it done leave the rest to me.” Tak waiting for no contest left as quickly as he came. He couldn’t stand to be there, let alone work for them to save his life. Besides, he needed a cigarette and a drink to prepare for whatever the fuck he was about to step into.

When Tak arrived at the Raven Hotel, Poe was quick to spark conversation that he was just not in the mood for. Something about news or the maybe the weather? He didn’t know and he really didn’t care honestly. The headaches were getting worse not to mention the weird hallucinations. Maybe it was the drugs he took yesterday... What was it? LSD maybe?

“Master Kovacs I also think it’s imperative that you...”

“Poe. Seriously? Shut the fuck up my head hurts and I really don’t have time for your questions or whaatever other shit you have to bother me with.”

“Are the headaches getting progressively worse now?” Poe asked worriedly. He knew the cause, but hardly knew what to do anymore, Nothing seemed to remedy these episodes.

“You’re not helping it either.” Tak took a long awaited drag of a cigarette out his pocket and tilted his back. He closed his eyes and let the smoke curl out of his mouth as he felt the flood gates in his mind give way. He could see Y/n's face appear out of the mist of darkness. The dark splattered blood on her face and the way her eyes looked so dead. He felt the same pain swallow his chest as before. The same one that tears through his skin and coils around his heart.

“Master Kovacs are you still with us?” Poe asked observing him closely.

Waking from his trance, Tak gave Poe one last glare before he finally took the hint and fazed somewhere else. Closing his eyes again, he resumed his dream. This time, though, was different.

He could still see her face, but there was no blood. She was smiling even. It seemed so real and she looked so lively. She was speaking incherently almost in a whisper, but he couldn't understand a single word. Tak reached for her but no matter how close he got, she would just grow farther and farther away. At one point he even began to chase her, but taking a final leap to catch her woke him from his dream. Why was this one different? What could it mean?

Getting up from his chair Tak felt his head spin in a whirlwind of thought. There was no way she could be alive. None. From what he can remember Y/n’s stack and sleeve were destroyed. Anyone that found her remains would have never let her live and surely destroyed her stack. Everything now is fuzzy but hes sure. What Tak remembered had to be true.

It just had to be... right?

Now Tak was questioning everything he remembered about what happened. The headaches were becoming worse and even came down with a fever from all the strain on his body and mind.

Poe appeared next to Tak who was lying in bed dripping in sweat. “Do you need anything? I can make myself rather useful in a variety of areas. Cooking, cleaning, or just simply an ear for someone to talk to.” Poe said avoiding eye contact.

“Fine.” Giving in, Tak talked about Y/n. he talked about her smile, her strength, courage, and of course how beautiful she was inside and out. Poe listened intently smiling at how much Tak was gushing about this mystery woman. But when Tak explained how he thought she died and how the details aren’t adding up, it sounded familiar. She died before Poe could meet her, which he disappointed to hear, but he was more saddened by the fact that Y/n’s death was still killing him.

“She sounds wonderful. You two seemed very compatible.”

“She was wonderful... Everything that I thought I knew and thought was solid proof is falling through my hands. I can’t think straight I can’t sleep... A part of me still thinks she’s alive but it can’t be true. Y/n would have found me by now she would be looking for me or let me know what was happening but...”

“Mr. Kovacs if she were alive.” Poe interrupted, “Y/n would very slim of an opportunity to meet you. We don’t know the circumstances she is in or even her whereabouts if Y/n were to actually be alive. Perhaps it is better to take what you have left of Y/n and hold onto it. If she is alive, it is completely out of your hands.”

Tak walked away from Poe trying not to agree with what he was saying. He took a moment to stand on the balcony, letting the cigarette slowly burn away. He looked at the lively and bright city before him, his heart slowly but surely breaking. Rain soon engulfed the city like a flame, completely soaking his clothes, and camouflaging his tears.

~Flashback~

“You know Taki, although I do hate being in the city, it always looks so beautiful at night. The lights, the noise. It’s all so... surreal.” Y/n spoke looking out onto the cityscape from their room.

Aside from the pollution and screaming and yelling, the lights mixing with the thundering rain painted a beautiful picture. The way the colors mixed in water drops and the way skies lit up with lightning had Y/n in awe.

“I hate it no matter what it looks like. It’s nothing but criminals, sex, and secrets and everyone else having to deal with it” Tak said snaking his arms around her and holding her close placing small kisses on her neck.

“Sex sounds pretty good right about now...” Y/n gave smiled giving Tak a kiss.

Tak took in her all of her features and the way the wind combed through her hair perfectly and her eyes were just endless. It was her original body, but she was more than just looks. He loved every part of her no matter what body she was wearing, and being with her made him the happiest man in the world.

“God you're beautiful.” he said pulling her slose as possible

“You’re not too bad yourself, Taki.”

“Ugh. Stop calling me that. It sounds awful.”

“Make me.”

 ~Present~

At Bancroft’s Party, Tak was observing all of his friends and how they interacted with each other, especially Bancroft himself. He didn’t see anyone suspicious, actually all of them seemed like it, but there were several people that stood out. For all the wrong reasons anyway. Aside from the frilly dresses to eight pounds of makeup to some people just completely naked, all seemed normal.

Tak continued to down a few more shots when the mood of the room seemed to calm. People began to buzz amongst themselves and cluster together when this woman appeared. She was pretty, everyone at the party was supposed to be. Yet, she had something they didn’t, it was a certain way she looked down at even the highest of the high of people that caught his attention as well as everyone else's.

She didn’t mingle with the other guests, in fact, she made her way straight to the bar paying no attention to anyone or anything but the drink she would take in her hand. The burning liquor seemed to relieve the now noticeable anxious expression on her face.

“Not a fan of parties I take it?” Tak asked watching this woman down two more shots of really strong liquor with ease.

The sound of Tak’s voice caused her to slowly turn her head towards him. Her expression was unreadable, and she was trying to find the words to say but couldn’t. After a moment she steadied herself and spoke.

“Not a fan of these assholes that's for sure. I have never been to a party like this in a while, and never without a certain special someone. Now that I am here I think I can manage these clowns all night. And by the looks of it, you don’t seem to be enjoying yourself either mister.” She took a moment to take him in, she noticing he was fighting his own battle in this miserable place.

“Same situation you’re in I guess. Having to deal with their shit is a real fucking pain in the ass. You know these people?”

“I know of them, but they’re not why I’m here. I was looking for that special someone, it was rumored that they would be here tonight. Huge guest of honor I hear. I pulled all the strings I had in my back pocket to get into this party.”

“Over a rumor? Everyone likes an optimist I guess. I hope they’re worth it.” Tak downed one last drink before he tried to leave but her words stopped him.

"At least I think you are."

Tak paused for a moment. At first he was confused, he didn’t know this woman. But the more he thought about it, the more it actually didn’t make sense.

"Who the fuck are you?" He said more than aggitated thinking she was there to kill him or start something he had to finish.

“Taki, you still haven’t figured it out? So much for that envoy intuition.”

Taki?

“Y/N? It can't be. That's impossible your stack was...”

“It was ok. It was damaged only slightly but I needed a new sleeve for sure. This sleeve took a while to make and I had severe sleeve sickness afterwards. I was desperate to find you Taki. There is so much buzz around you now it was hard to get to you. I am so sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner... Maybe I could’ve helped you with all of this I...”

Tak swooped Y/n into an embraced and kissed her. Even holding her was long overdue. He felt the grip on his mind release and felt his heart throb out his chest. Y/n melted in his arms and felt all tension leave her body. Between the tears and the I love yous, the time they spent apart was slowly erased.

Completely not caring about Bancroft and his death anymore Tak and Y/n navigated through the crowd and out the back door. Bancroft would have his head on a pike later but he didn't care.

Using the elevator they did their best to avoid cameras and other party goers who could point them out or stop them.

Tak waved down a cab and let Y/n slide in first. After taking a moment to breathe after practically running out of the place they both started laughing hysterically. He missed that laugh. Despite the new sleeve it sounded the same.

They began exchanging stories of their time apart, and Tak realized he had forgotten how badass Y/n can be. Her stories seemed more eventful and dramatic than he thought possible. It made Bancroft's death and party and cheap soiree.

When Tak took a turn spoke about how her 'death' affected him, Y/n's heart sank at every word. His whole demeanor changed and did her hardest to hold back the waterfall of tears in her eyes. All she wanted to was cradle him in her arms forever. He already had lost Quell, he shouldn't of had to lose her too.

They let the heaviness in the air between them fill the silence. There would be longer be a need for pain anymore. It was over.

The car soon came to a halt in front of the hotel and Tak had to brace Y/n for the storm that was Poe. In all honesty she couldn't wait to meet Tak's only friend through everything.

After an hour long interview with Poe, Y/n headed upstairs to Tak's room. He stayed behind to grab something to eat off of Poe to bring up.

The amount of bottles on the floor made her feel guilty. She knew he was alive and what happened but he didn't know about her. Even when he thought she was dead he looked for her and found nothing. There were times she questioned going back to him at all. Not because she didn't love him, because she thought he was better off. She thought wrong.

Hearing the elevator make it's way up she quickly got out her clothes and into one of his shirts on the floor. She laid on the bed trying not fall asleep on the extremely comfy mattress.

Tak stepped out of the elevator with drinks and something fancy on a plate but seeing Y/n he didn't think the food would even be touched. He just set it on the floor, took off his clothes, and slid into bed beside her.

She slid in closer to him and laid her head on his chest. His body felt so warm despite being out in the cold. Y/n didn't have a care in the world. Being in his arms was the only world she wanted any part of.

Tak took a deep breath and closed his eyes for just a moment and for once didn't feel any pain or guilt. At long last it was just silence and darkeness. He began to stroke her back just make sure she hadn't disappeared. Laying there in silence, just being in each other's presence after so long and given how exhausted they were from the last few hours was more than enough.

"I love you Taki. More than anything."

"I love you too Y/n/n."

"Ew don't call me that." Y/n giggled. "Never use it again."

"Make me."

There something Tak wanted to do before they closed in for the night. Something that took a moment for him to gather the nerve for. Despite the anxiety he was feeling, he had to make sure he wouldn't lose her again.

Sensing his anxiety, Y/n looked up at him.

"What's on your mind Taki?"

...

"Marry me"

***************

Tags: @ittie-bittie-tittie @pixelsinspace @umbrellabrass @fandomalert31

[krisanderwrites]

Malachite and Sparrow 02

My second summer there was a mix up in the paperwork and I had to vacate the dorms for two weeks until it was sorted out. None of my classmates lived close enough to make couch surfing a viable option, so I eventually swallowed my apprehension and called my mother. Although I attempted to keep the conversation short, she was elated to hear that I would be coming home this year. When I finally hung up, I knew that there was no way Malachite had not overheard my given name. Of course she was considerate enough to not mention it.

The long trip home was peppered with anxiety attacks and countless worries. By the time I finally arrived in the airport, I was exhausted. Thankfully that gave me the excuse to ignore the way my parents did not recognize me until after a second glance. They shuffled me into the car, berating my tardiness and how it was messing with my sister's schedule since she had an important meeting. Everything felt dull and far away, much worse than my depression ever was while at college.

I took it easy, as much as someone going to Elsewhere University can on break. Unable to break the habit of watching every word I uttered, I found solace in furthering my research online and at the local library. I cleaned out my old room, throwing away most of the things I had no use for anymore. I visited my great-aunt Hazel in her nursing home. When she pressed a plastic bag full of small boxes into my hands, I gave her a strange look.

"For exchanges," she said, smiling. Opening one, I found a kitschy set of matching topaz earrings and necklace. Realizing the gift, I gave a small gasp. She would not accept me doing anything for her in exchange, simply saying that she had no use for all of them anyway. I still have no clue how she knew about the Gentry. However, she had certainly given me ideas.

I began to talk to my sister and mother, telling them about Malachite's love of jewelry of all kinds- how she even made her own on occasion. In response, they gave me all of their old things that they no longer wanted to pass along to her. A few of my cousins even dropped off their old mismatched earrings and pendants and charm bracelets. I went to the nursery and picked up seeds of plants I had not been able to get my hands on while on campus. In the back of my closet I found my old fighting gear and packed it into an old gym bag my brother was going to throw out.

To make sure there were no debts I mowed lawns, weeded gardens, cleaned out gutters, scrubbed bathrooms, and bathed dogs. Each present got a chore in payment. Money exchanged hands as well, but I tried to reserve as much of that as possible for more important things than trinkets to trade. In the end I left with two more bags than I had come back with, full of all sorts of helpful things. I think somehow I knew even then that I was never really coming back.

"You know... you really have changed," my mother remarked as she dropped me off at the airport.

My mouth was dry, "Yeah, I think I have too."

"I'm not sure it is for the better," she snidely added.

"Well, I do," I shrugged and grabbed the last bag out of the trunk.

She seemed uneasy, "I suppose this is goodbye then."

"Yep," I said.

"Will you at least call?" she asked.

"Probably not," I answered, not even attempting to stretch the truth. "I think we both have very different ideas about who I am, and it would probably just hurt more."

There were tears in her eyes when she laughed, "You really have changed. I will wish you luck, then. Don't worry about your father; he already knows. He's considered you dead for at least six months now."

"That does explain the lack of conversation," I had quipped. "Well, I have to somehow get through security with all this."

I walked away without looking back even once. Somehow it felt like I was shedding my old skin. I checked my bags and got onto the plane with no troubles. Smooth sailing for the Captain. The feeling of overall sluggishness left upon entering campus again. Dropped off in front of the dorm building with my bags, I was delighted to see a greeting party of crows waiting for me. They were rewarded with the best sugar cookies my hometown had to offer. Overall it felt more like coming home than visiting my family ever had.

        *        *        *        *

Settling back down into a dorm room felt strange knowing that it was going to be just me on my own again. I planted all the seeds I had bought in trays that I placed upon the windowsill. I sorted through all the jewelry I had amassed and threw away the unnecessary packaging; it still filled most of a duffel bag. My old fighting gear was relegated to the back of yet another closet; I could not bear to throw it away but for now it served no purpose. Perhaps I could find a new group to practice with on campus later. I took a part-time job at a local veterinary clinic to help expand my knowledge and experience.

To be truthful, everything was just a distraction until Malachite returned. Without her nearby I felt the pull of the Else at my veins. Sometimes I would stare out at the forest with a longing- an urge- to simply walk among the trees and then keep walking. Realistically I knew that this was a terrible idea, but it was true all the same. The Fair Folk were more numerous on campus as autumn drew closer, all eagerly anticipating the return of the students as much as I was.

With no small amount of glee, I showed off my acquisitions to Malachite. She stared, wide-eyed, and asked what in the world I was planning on doing with all of that jewelry. I laughed her off, claiming that I was just going to save it all for a rainy day. It was mostly true. (I was something of a zombie-survival plan person anyway.) I did not tell her that my intuition said that there were storms coming.

Still, things continued on much as normal for quite some time, if perhaps a bit busier. I gave presents to Jimothy- as many beads as my cousins had managed to trade for me doing their chores. Clients at the veterinary clinic occasionally brought me gifts for helping to care for their animals, which I in turn gifted to fae or other students. My study group commandeered a room in the library where the time distortion was not too terrible. I set a broken wing for one crow and stemmed the bleeding broken beak of another.

Sometimes I attended parties just to escort people back to their dorms safely. Ever curious, I worked endlessly on ideas and inventions that I never intended to see the light of day. After all, knowledge of how to heal and soothe comes only after knowledge of how to hurt and break. The contraptions piled in my closet next to my unused fighting gear.

It took some time for me to realize that Malachite had plans of her own.

By helping others and trading in offerings of homemade bread or sweets for crystals and gemstones, she had amassed quite a literal treasure trove. Taking these precious finds, she then created jewelry from them. Homemade trinkets are always worth more to the fae than ones that you buy in a store. As I watched her collection grow, I suddenly understood her concerns with my own hoard.

Then one day I walked in during a break from classes and realized something had happened. Malachite was burning sage in the room which showed evidence of a recent bout of furious cleaning. When pressed, she simply said that the salt lines had been worn away over time and needed replacing. The fearful glances to the corner of the room, however, spoke a different story.

I decided that though my hands were often burned with silver nitrate (so useful in stopping small bleeds), perhaps having the Sight was something I should keep around more often. Just in case. I began wearing a mood ring on my middle finger. It immediately turned to black and then remained that color whenever I wore it. I tried not to feel anxious about this and failed miserably.

        *        *        *        *

Right at midterms there was a brief flurry of activity before things settled down again. Hardly anyone got taken over midterms that year, as there were several days that were designated safe due to the school fair. Then there was a night where all the signs were there for A Hunt. There was a new moon and strange yelling that could be mistaken for baying. Everyone kept to their dorm rooms and locked the entrances.

What came knocking at our door was our new RA, who was a nice enough woman studying business and law.

"Captain," she had said.

I had tilted my head and informed her that was not my official nickname.

"No," she laughed, "but it suits you well. You're already rather well known as a Knight." Something about that title rang true in my bones and I had to suppress a shiver as she continued, "Anyway, there is a bit of a situation. They are asking for you to come out and see to one of their hounds."

"What they?" Malachite had demanded.

"You know, the Fair Folk," she explained.

"Absolutely not."

Blinking, we both turned to the side. Malachite pushed forward to stand in the doorway, hands on her hips.

"I'm not letting Sparrow take one step outside on a night of A Hunt. Even if it were not suicide, the chances of being stolen are far too great."

I laughed, "All my new surgical tools are made of steel. I doubt any of Them would want me."

Despite her protests, we both ended up following the RA to the threshold of the dorm hall. Standing there was a perfectly respectable attempt at a humanoid form, albeit with an extra limb or two. At least they were trying. The hound itself was, as typical, an eldritch abomination that could possibly be construed as canine if you were on LSD and also only had ever known dogs from the story of The Hound of the Baskervilles. However, the long, hungry glances the Good Neighbor kept sending towards Malachite were disconcerting.

"I will heal, for that is what is right," I offered readily, "but should you attempt to take or harm my companions, I will fight, as that is also right. Do we have an understanding here?"

The hissing reply was not pleased-sounding, but not being attacked outright was a good sign. When finally it nodded petulantly, I stepped forward to the heaving mass on the grass and kneeled down. Luckily it turned out to be a small favor. The monster had thorns in its hide from a hawthorn tree dipped in iron. Snarling at the wicked items, I palmed them with the thought to destroy it later by fire. A small salve applied to the wounded areas and the Hunt was once again ready to leave.

"Freely given," I said as they vanished into the mists.

"You're foolish," noted the RA. "You should have asked for something."

"Asking for payment is more foolish than being a good person," I replied. "All my aid is freely given, and I won't charge the Gentry any more than the crows. I am a healer, after all."

"Talk softly, treat others kindly, and carry a big damn stick," supplied Malachite.

"Exactly," I smiled as I closed my fist around the iron-tipped thorns.

        *        *        *        *

The hungry eyes of the Gentry were long forgotten as time slipped past. There was too much to do and too many who needed aiding for paranoia to set in fully. It did not catch my attention at the time that my plants were starting to grow a little too well or my newly acquired pet fish seemed more colorful than was natural. I did not notice when I began to avoid eating my food with excess salt.

No, my first sign that something was terribly wrong was an itching, sore rash across the back of my neck.

It took some time, but eventually we figured out the trusty iron chain that our talisman rested upon was causing the problem. For a few days, neither of us spoke about it. Suddenly developing an allergy to iron was greatly concerning. And telling. We both knew what it meant, despite trying to ignore it.

Slowly, things began to change. The salt lines in the doorways and windows became complex symbols and runes. The gemstone satchels somehow migrated away from my side of the room. I began to take my coffee with creamer and sugar, despite always having had it black before.

"Fae-touched," someone told us when they noted me sitting on the grass to avoid the iron bench. "Not quite a Changeling, but not entirely human either. You've gained a lot a favor with the Gentry. Or a lot of ire, I suppose."

"Don't listen to her," another student rolled their eyes. "Everyone knows Captain Sparrow's a knight and a healer. The Good Neighbors like you just where you are."

It explained a little, we supposed. My family was mixed, but both sides had come from areas steeped in tales of the Fair Folk. Those with links to the old countries always were a little more at risk. So we simply decided to take more care and discuss our options. And we agreed. Neither of us would leave for the Else without the other. We would remain together through thick and thin.

Thus our third year at Elsewhere University ended with us just as close as before.

[feelingfolegandros]

Day 36 - 41: December 1 - 6 2020

I’m writing this, sitting outside, listening to goats bleat away and the goat master (I’m sure there’s an official word for this) making amusing noises and shouting at them. 

The sun will start to set in about an hour, I’m guessing. I feel so incredibly lucky to be able to spend so much time outdoors. I’ve been warned that December isn’t really winter yet here in Folegandros, that January and February will bring colder temperatures and days in a row of rain. I know I can handle it. For now, I’m enjoying swimming in December. 

Yesterday, Saturday, K.P. and I headed to Agios Georgios on the North side of the island, past Ano Meria. On the way, we stopped by the supermarket and the bakery. We each picked up a mikro (small) loaf of bread and some Christmas cookies to share. I met her and the man she’s staying with, A.L., in Chora outside a café where some people had gathered, semi-respecting social distancing. The sun was glorious. We dropped off A.L. at Agali, and he planned to walk to meet some fellow fishing companions at Agios Nikolaus, 15 minutes or so by foot. Fishing is not permitted at the moment, which is odd to me and I’d imagine most other people. It’s just you and the fish, right? Maybe you’re out there with other people, but are you really rubbing up against each other? Do people who fish like to embrace each other a lot? I have no clue!

When we arrived at Agios Georgios, we saw the two men who were supposed to be fishing with A.L., so K.P. went to pick him up and bring him back, so the fishing trio could unite. I laid in the sun in my bathing suit, listening to the metal playing on a small speaker they brought on the dock. It was glorious. I wrote in my notebook a bit, and then slowly but surely made my way into the water. Having a soundtrack to lazily swim around to was fun. 

K.P. returned with A.L., and K.P. helped one of the other fishermen retrieve one of his lures, borrowing some goggles to get the job done. I took photos of her after she completed the task. She looked incredible. A man she sent the photo to afterward said she looked like a Bond girl, and I wholeheartedly agreed. 

Unfortunately no fish were caught by our friends, but two spearfishers caught some! As K.P. and I played cards on the beach while the sun was still out, she joked that they should give us a fish. On the way home, we stopped to watch the sunset and danced on the roof of an abandoned building, listening to music on our phone speakers. Later, we made a Greek rice dish with carrots, leeks, and dill, I brought a fish from the store that had defrosted in my fridge and needed to be eaten, and K.P. grabbed some vegetables from the garden to make a salad. H.U., a friend of A.L.’s who fished with him earlier stuck around for a bit. The two of them drank vodka and raki (a spirit popular in Greek, Turkey, Albania, the Balkans, etc made of grape) and listened to music as we cooked. Another great meal! 

We had started watching The Rose starring Bette Midler the day before but were rudely interrupted by a power outage, so we finished it after dinner. Midler was nominated for an Oscar for it. I liked it. Apparently, it was loosely based on the life of Janis Joplin. On Friday, before we watched The Rose, K.P. and I went for a walk in Ano Meria to a bay that is named after trees or something. Déntro (δέντρο or maybe it’s the plural δέντρα) I believe it’s called, simply because there’s a couple of trees there. She spotted wild dandelion on the way there, so we picked a bunch on the way back. It made me so happy to be able to pull my own food from the earth. We confirmed it was dandelion for sure thanks to Ireni of Ireni’s Restaurant fame. She said it was poly kala (really good), so definitely edible! We ordered some food from her to take home - meatballs with fried potatoes and bean soup. Delicious and comforting, as per usual. 

Later, Z.X. brought over some souvlaki (no extra patates for me this time), then we watched Keeping up with the Kardashians together. Back to season 1 since we finished season 4 and on the TV’s mysterious Spanish Netflix account, only the first four seasons are available. After joking that Z.X. would fall asleep in 30 minutes, I fell asleep in 30 minutes. 

The week before Friday wasn’t super eventful...Tuesday stands out to me as it’s the day I found out I have shingles... Ha! Last weekend, I had asked Z.X. to scratch my back, and when he looked at it, he was concerned. He took a photo of it and sent it to the doctor. We went to the doctor on Tuesday, and she said it was herpes. I spent an entire day freaking out, but then later figured out it’s Herpes Zosta - which is the same as Chickenpox and NOT the sexually-transmitted kind… The nurse, who I had met earlier this summer and is also a Cancer, put a bandage over it and gave me a small stack of more to take home along with some anti-histamines. I read about what foods to avoid and chocolate is one of them, unfortunately, so since then, I haven’t eaten any chocolate and I’m eating much less sugar than before. Boring, but it’s rarely a bad idea to consume less sugar. Today, Sunday, December 6, I stayed in bed for a while, finishing the latest episode of Love After Lockup and then a documentary called My Psychedelic Love Story. The latter is about Joanna Harcourt-Smith, who had a love affair with Timothy Leary (the LSD guy) in the early to mid 70s, while Leary was on the lam from the U.S. feds in Europe, and then subsequently brought back to the U.S. and sentenced. I really enjoyed it and she’s a fascinating woman that passed away shortly before the documentary debuted at the end of November. After sweeping the floors, I decided to take a walk without my phone to the Panagia, a church up a hill that’s an icon of the island. It’s a zigzag promenade to get to the top, and I stopped at the first zig. I sat on a rock and wrote. The sun was so strong and I was a bit sweaty so I took off my shirt. A copy of The Alchemist was in my backpack, and I finished the last 60 pages or so on the grass below the rock. Watching the clouds move past the sun again and again was wonderful. I definitely felt more connected to God, my destiny, etc. finishing that book in that setting. 

Tonight, I think I’ll make the dandelion for dinner and count every single one of my blessings. The sun is beginning to set now, turning the sky the most magnificent colours.

Thanks for reading, once again! Love and light to you and yours.

[x-bones-please-x]

Mal Dickens

   I stand before the junk yard, waiting for the little girl. She had come here every night for the last two weeks. I've seen her from my old wooden porch as I eat my dinner. Always there at the same time at night; never too early or late, sometimes meeting other people. I know whatever she is doing is something that is unwelcome in our small community because the little girl seemed nervous. Even from far away I could see that she didn’t want to be at that old junk yard. But I don’t blame her; I wouldn’t want to be there either. It smelled of old fish and rotten furniture, because of all the people dumping their trash in huge piles. Even if you were across the street your nose would cringe at the smell. Each little pile of trash looked like its very own mountain, claimed by the old raccoons that sleep in it every night.    I hide behind a small rusty desk chair that smelled strongly of old metal and wet dog fur. I hover my hands over the sides of the chair; too afraid to touch it in case I get cut. This girl’s secrets wouldn't be worth the visit to the ER. Just like every other night, as it hit nine-thirty, the girl arrives at the junk yard. I hear her small, quick footsteps as she scurries to the edge of the yard. She is wearing a black, oversized hoodie and old blue jeans. She is meeting someone; a tall young man in a green trench coat that hides his face. He is standing right next to the junk yard, pacing. I hold my breath, I hadn't seen him when he arrived. If he had seen me he would know I was here. I would just have to hope that he didn’t notice. The girl went up to the man and quietly spoke to him. She then proceeded to run into the junk yard jumping over different piles of trash. Moments later she comes out with a small cardboard box. She looks around, trying to see if anyone was watching. I quickly duck my head, straining it in a side position to keep it hidden. My knees are covered in dirt and are already sore from staying in one place for so long. The young man quickly takes the box out of the girl’s hand and hides it in his coat. He holds out his left hand, giving the girl a nod and murmuring indecipherably.  I couldn’t hear what the girl responds with but suddenly, they were walking away from each other, trying to make sure no one caught them in the act. It must be drugs. There is no other reason that this transaction would happen. It made sense, why else would they want to hide what they were doing? I wait, I have to make sure that they don’t see me. They were only there for a few minutes, so I couldn’t figure out all that was happening but now I have a general idea. I've been living in an old rundown apartment since I was eighteen. I haven't talked to my family since I moved out. I haven't found a stable job in three years and I'm getting desperate. I need some way to pay rent and if there are drugs hidden somewhere in this old junk yard I could sell them. That would help me get back on my feet for a little if there is enough to sell. I stand up, stretching my arms and legs. I need to find where she is hiding the drugs. I know the general direction of where it's been hidden because of where the girl had run, but if it is under something, it will be obvious that someone disrupted the surrounding trash. I’ll also have a much harder time finding the drugs. I begin to scan the section the girl ran through. Piles of old furniture and trash stood in a line, but I could see a tiny trail of old smooshed trash that lead further into the junk yard. The last thing I want to do is walk through a bunch of old food and furniture, but I need to find the drugs. If it even is drugs at all. I take a deep breath and begin walking slowly through the trail that the girl left behind. I could smell of all the different piles of garbage combining into one the further I venture into the junk yard. I could see different scraps of old bedding laying on top of old kids' toys that no longer had a purpose. They held the memories of old childhoods that no longer existed. This yard was once a clean spot of land until people decided that this looked like a good place to put all their unwanted items. One person left a small pile of toys, causing most people in the area to begin dumping everything they didn’t need in the yard. It wasn’t a problem till the smell started creeping into everyone's homes. It's been years, and no one has done anything to fix the problem because they know it will just start right back up again.   The path went straight into the heart of the junk yard. As I weave through piles upon piles of precariously placed revolting waste, I began to ponder what this little girl was doing possessing drugs. Old dusty furniture and rotten food marked the end of the path. To the left of me is a small, old, red refrigerator that has a small, brown, soil covered trowel next to it. It must be used to dig up the things that she is hiding. Freshly turned dirt sat in front of the old refrigerator, she must be hiding her drugs in there. I drop to my knees and wince, as the ground isn’t exactly soft out here. I grab the old trowel and begin the dig the loose dirt. In mere seconds I reach a small box just like the one the girl had given the other man. I drop the trowel and pull up the small cardboard box. It is covered in moist dirt that smelt of old rags. I open the box carefully. I don’t want to break it, as it is fragile from sitting in such wet dirt for so long. Inside sit a bunch of different drugs, some I'd never seen in my life. The only drug I could recognize was LSD. I knew I would be able to sell all of this for a lot of money. This is exactly what I needed. I stand up, holding the box under my shirt. I need to go home and hide this now. The quicker I sell this the better. I begin to jog out of the yard, attempting not to fall.                                                       *A MONTH LATER* I look outside at the plot of clean land that was once the junk yard. A garden was beginning to form. Little sprouts of tomatoes and flowers were all throughout the yard. People walking around, talking to each other, and I had a front row view to watch it all. I had sold all the drugs a week after I found them. I made enough money to pay for rent and food for a little while, but I am now running out of the cash. Now that food was beginning to grow, stealing some of it every now and then to sell doesn’t seem like a bad idea. It was the people’s fault for letting it stay out in the open anyway, so I shouldn’t be blamed. I walk out of my small apartment and head down the stairs. Taking a few flowers and selling them wouldn’t harm anyone. I walk out of my old red building and jog across the street. Not many people were in the garden, so I think I will be able to take a few things and not get caught. Maybe I can just say that they are my flowers anyway, so I can take what I want. Although that would never work, it’s the only option I have other than admitting I’m a thief. I walk through the garden and spot a section of tall sunflowers. That sat still, looking into the sun’s eyes, absorbing its heat and enjoying its peace. I might be able to take a few of those and sell them for a couple dollars if I get good flowers. It would be risky but desperate times calls for desperate measures. I crouch down and begin twisting one flower’s stem. I need to do this quickly, so I won't get caught. Just as I rip off the first flower I hear footsteps approach me. “whatcha doin’ bud?” I hear a gruff voice demand.  I freeze. I don’t know what to do; I've been caught. I turn around slowly, waiting for my fate. A tall, blond haired boy stands in front of me, a huge smirk plastered on his face. He knows what I'm doing. There is no excuse. “I- I was just-” I tried to begin my lame excuse, but he cuts me off. “Stealing from my garden?” he exclaims, gesturing to what I assume were his supplies sitting next to a patch of sunflowers. “I didn’t expect anyone to come after my sunflowers. Definitely not such a handsome guy such as yourself!” he crosses his arms. His amused grin tells me he’s obviously enjoying my embarrassment. I slowly stand up. I need to leave. I shouldn’t have come here to begin with. Now I’ve been caught by this lad, with his fringe that I wanted to run my fingers through. “I'm sorry, I just- I had to-” I hung my head. There was nothing I could say to fix this. And trying to find the right things to say didn’t seem to help either. “It's okay,” fringe guy said in a cheery voice. “Here, come help me plant some more flowers.” He grabs my arm and drags me to an empty section of the garden. He plops down on the hard-packed dirt, motioning for me to sit next to him. Good thing I know how to plant. We planted for hours on end. Once we started talking, we didn’t stop. We traded stories about life and other uninteresting topics. He told me about his alcoholic mother and taking care of his brother. I told him about how my parents kicked me out because of my sexuality. I listened to every word out of his mouth, paid attention to every detail he said. We could be talking about water and I would still listen to him. It was captivating the way he spoke. The day was declared over when the rain started falling. The tiny droplets transformed into heavy droplets in minutes, leaving us with no choice but to flee to our separate apartments. For the first time in a while I enjoyed doing something. I kind of liked gardening and talking to fringe guy, who I later found out was named Grayson. I might just come back to garden again.                *3 MONTHS LATER* It only took a week for Grayson and I to start dating. We found out that we had a lot more in common than just enjoying gardening. After our first few dates I told him about finding the drugs and what I did with them. He took it extremely well. We are still dating and taking care of the garden. Even though our relationship was new I had a feeling that I would be with him for life. I have started my own little garden full of different flowers next to Grayson and his sunflowers. I made friends with the gardeners around me. All of which are extremely friendly and kindhearted. I saw the girl who was selling the drugs sitting by herself in the garden. I was able to introduce myself and found out that she is doing much better now. Whenever I see her in the garden I always make sure to say hello. She is the reason I'm here now anyways. Since I started the little flower garden, Grayson was able to find me a job at a nice flower shop near my apartment. I was able to get a better apartment because of it and we are planning on moving in together in a few months. This is the happiest I have ever been in all my life. And I have the garden to thank for that.    

[lothirielswanmarvel]

Love and Alex Russo’s Bitchy Pills [13]

Continue the journey of Avengers: Love and Lightning here, part II of new series, The Collector’s Cosmic Romance Saga! Love, fortune and glory to you!!

~*~

Thor was right on one thing: sickness did tremble before him. After hours of naps and cuddling (and the discovery that it was impossible to gross out Thor) I could actually breathe again through my nose. The plague was just a twenty-four hour thing, but I couldn't say the same for the cramps.

The Avengers returned later, and judging by the glum looks, we hadn't made any progress.

“I never thought I’d say this, but, I think I prefer fighting Loki instead,” Steve muttered and walked up to us. Thor’s arm was wrapped around my waist while I held Loki the Cat. I still had to explain that, somehow.

Steve scratched underneath Loki the Cat’s chin. I couldn't tell for sure, but it seemed like Loki had an amused expression.

“There’s too many people here from the holidays,” Rhodey remarked, easing onto one of the armchairs. A sheen of sweat glittered across his forehead.

Natasha’s eyes narrowed at Thor’s arm around my waist. She made a soft “hmm” sound and looked away. She was smirking.

“Why are you smiling?” Sam asked her.

“ ‘Cause Clint and Tony owe me money.”

I decided not to comment, although I was sure that my new relationship with Thor had been gambled on. Steve and Rhodey exchanged a few bucks.

Stephen approached us next. His gaze drifted to me first, “How do you feel?”

“Better, thanks.” I had endless apologies lined up on my tongue, for my sucky immune system and stealing Thor from everyone. But I didn't want to linger on it. “Where to next?”

“The trail went east,” Stephen explained. “The sooner we get out of this city, the better.”

~G R E E C E~

“I think I should stay with Evangeline. Amora picked her out before, I think the Strongest Avenger should be by her side,” Thor said, practically bursting with confidence. His voice boomed slightly against the gleaming white walls of the alleyway.

Stephen looked between the two of us. “The only reason I'm allowing this is because it could work to our advantage. It might draw out Amora.”

Scott was back and part of the new group. He was off to the side, nodding along with Natasha. “I ship them so hard. What should be their ship name? Evor? Thoreline—? The last one kinda sounds like a hair product, that could work.”

“We can hear you, Scott.”

“Sorry, Gelo—oh! Gelo! Sounds like jello.”

“We’ll set up a perimeter,” Sam said, thrusting up his hood as he went into incognito mode. “I miss my wings.”

The Avengers started to empty the alleyway one by one. Stephen came up to me, “Could I speak with you alone for a minute, please?”

I felt Thor’s grip slightly tighten on my waist. I glanced up at him. He was wearing that full-lipped, too-placid smile.

“Can I catch up with you after?” I said.

“Of course,” Thor’s fake smile seemed to grow wider. He leaned down and planted a kiss on my cheek. He stared down at me for a second too long.

Thor’s arm dropped from my waist. I listened to his loud, thunderous steps as he left. Loki the Cat wiggled out of my grasp and followed him, casting a warning glare back at me.

We were alone in the alleyway. A cool dampness pressed against me in the absence of Thor’s warmth. Most buildings in the city were a gleaming white, like they were made of pearl. The alleyway was much more dank and grimy.

“Never thought you would fall for a guy so grandstanding,” Stephen remarked.

“I put up with you,” I pointed out.

Stephen’s face broke into a smile. “Fair enough. I have something for you. A little Valentine’s Day gift,”

He held out an unwrapped box. I flipped it over. I smirked at the cover.

“Claritin,” I read out loud, laughing as I did so. “Thank you. That's very thoughtful. I'm sorry, Stephen, but I didn't get you anything.”

He dismissed it. “It doesn't matter. But I had to do something, because you are the most important woman in my life.”

My gaze snapped back to him. “That's very...sweet.”

“Not in that way,” He explained as he read my facial expression. “You are the one woman in my life that I will never sleep with, and that’s a good thing—and that came out wrong, dammit.”

“Stephen, I don't understand. And it's not because I haven't taken one of these yet,” I lightly shook the box of Claritin.

He sighed. “Look, let me start from the beginning. I have no romantic feelings for you. At all. Whatsoever. You are the one woman I’ve seen in a while as a friend, and that friendship keeps me sane.”

I studied Stephen very carefully. We spent a lot of time together, but I never saw it as anything more than that. We were close; that was all.

He continued, “I'm happy for you and him. I really am, I just...I’m not ready to lose you yet.”

My face scrunched up at his words. “What do you mean? Lose me?”

“Angie, Thor’s not from Earth. Who knows how long he's sticking around, and you’ll probably go with him, and—” He paused, taking a deep breath. “You’re the one person who gets...all of this. You get the weirdness. And you’re the only person I can talk to without sounding like I'm addicted to LSD. You’re the only part left of my life that’s human.”

There were too many details to take in. I focused on the one that scared me the most. “Thor's leaving?”

Stephen huffed, and paced the small alleyway. “He has to. He's the prince of an entire race, Angie—did you really think he would stay?”

The realization stung. I bit my lip. I whispered, “I didn't think that far ahead.”

Suddenly I was thinking of Jane. Thor had left her for two years. He came back, but only to hunt down Loki’s scepter and to fight Ultron. Thor was back in space, until I dragged him back to Earth with my cosmic engagement scandal. How long would he stay?

I could go with him. I could leave Earth. And in the process, I would abandon my broken Avengers, and my poor aunt. My cupcake business, all of my contacts...my future. It would be left behind.

“I don't think I’ll leave with him,” I croaked. I would endure the pain. I was an independent person, anyway. I had my own life. I wasn't living for someone else—but the new anticipation for Thor’s absence was excruciating.

Stephen stopped pacing. I knew he was relieved, but he wasn't smiling. Stephen spoke in a gentle tone, that was otherworldly to his usual formal, croaky voice, “It's probably for the best. It’s safer. It would be easier to end it now, in the beginning—”

“End it?” I hissed. End it...end the kisses that tickled from Thor’s stubble. End the near-constant handholds and the huge smiles. End the reign of the sun, right when dawn just broke across the horizon.

Stephen nodded hesitantly. “It's not a healthy relationship, Evie. Thor lives a dangerous life—”

“Oh, come on!” I threw up my hands. I didn't care if my voice was bouncing off the grimy stone walls, “That's the best you got? Are the Avengers too dangerous now? Are you too dangerous?”

“At least I stick to one planet,” Stephen remarked.

“Yeah, overlooking the other dimensions you flit to day by day!”

“That seems as ordinary as an office job, compared to you choosing to live your life with someone who will leave you, who won't age a day in a hundred years,” Stephen’s words were extra raspy as they flew out, without restriction. “the sex would probably kill you.”

He stopped abruptly. Either he realized the error of what he said, or it was because my hand whipped across his face.

I was starting to feel sick, but not in the way I had the last twenty-four hours. My insides were gnarled and twisted, like a garden infested with weeds.

My hand lowered to my side, and I curled it back into a fist. Stephen’s face was still slightly turned to the side from my slap. His gaze eventually lifted to mine.

“It's my life. It's none of your business.” I said in a stern, venomous tone.

“I'm sorry. I was out of line.” Stephen’s voice sounded strangled and wounded.

“Out of line—? Should’ve given me aspirin instead!” I remarked, holding up the claritin.

“...Actually, I could prescribe something.”

“I would say to stick you on something, but I don't know what would make this better!” I gestured at all of him.

I stomped off, and yelled without looking back at him, “Let me know when you stop taking Alex Russo’s bitchy pills!”

“They’re strawberry flavored.”

“Oh, shut up!”

~Author’s Note~

Tony Stark: Stephen, I like to think of myself as a woman expert, and after provoking a woman during the wrong time of the month, you should leave the country.

Stephen Strange: Should I really be taking advice from someone who just got dumped on their ass?

Scott Lang: Pepper left him :( Poor guy, he's spending Valentine's Day all alone...good thing we're here!!

Tony Stark: Yes. Terrific.

Peter Quill: Okay dudes, but we all know who the TRUE woman expert is here.

Thor: You are right, Quill.

Peter Quill: That's a first. Thanks, man—

Thor: It's me :D

Wanda Maximoff: Did it ever occur to you morons that a woman expert is a woman?

Shuri: Americans. Aliens. They are all the same. Literally, I cannot tell them apart. Love, fortune and glory to you, Awesome Adventurers!!

[artangel3993]

this is pt 2 of this drabble and it wont rlly make sense w/o it!  time 4 violet. cw for i mean general fuckery that is conditionally present in the box boy universe, contracts n ownership discussed, also mention of drugs

the inspiration for the setting of the underground military bunker turned psychedelic warehouse is from a real case that was i think still the largest lsd bust in the 2000s which is neat. drug history! that link has pics of the actual bunker too and im p sure vice also did a documentary on it, its a really interesting case! anyways i just want to get to bunker time so i can introduce poppy bc i love her. 

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Safiya could not, for the life of her, figure out what the fuck was wrong with this algorithm. She kept running it through her IDE over and over, checked all the spellings of the variables, and it still wouldn’t run the way she needed it to, or be a functional block of code in any way, intended or not (she got that sometimes, when a program would run but it would do something completely fucking different than her intentions.) She dragged her hands down her eyes, and took another long sip of her energy drink. She hadn’t slept in two days and she was still behind on her end of the code for her company’s new game- which fucking sucked, but at the same time, Saf liked the challenge, the conflict. Having something to do. Vi left her with enough money that she’d never have to work a day in her life again and still be fine, but she was good at game development- well. Not right now, but in general. Right now, she was about to ring whoever invented C++ by the neck.

Safiya was set up at the table by the kitchen, hosting her computer, a jumble of folders and piles of unorganized papers, at least three finished Monster’s scattered in between it all, and herself: wrapped in a knitted blanket, the monitor’s blue light bathing her dark skin. Summer was a couple steps away on the couch, lying down on her stomach and watercoloring, her legs idly kicking this way and that in the air (when Saf was working, Summer liked to create with her, she’d put on one of Saf’s records and make all kinds of art in a concentrated, comfortable silence, but watercoloring was always her favorite. Sometimes she’d give Saf painted pictures of the characters in whatever game she was working on, which made Saf smile like an idiot every time and put them someplace safe.) There were still wildflowers and weeds weaved into Summer’s golden hair, mud caking her tennis shoes laid forgotten by the door, and a soft smile on her face; all clues that made Saf infer she’d probably been out in the garden this morning that Summer had recently started. Saf had a lot of land extending from the cottage she’d never explored and left wholly wild and uncared for, so Summer kind of took over. 

Now when Saf looked out one of the front windows, there were all kinds of flowers lining the house, fluffy bumblebees laying on their petals, the beginnings of an apple tree supported by two wooden poles on either side as big as the sapling was. Once, she got dressed in all of her protective clothing because Summer asked if she could bring her outside and show her the full tour, just to see her get excited talking about all the different seeds she’d planted, her plans to tie a swing to the big oak tree out front. Safiya, in those moments, felt like she knew Summer, really. Felt like she knew what she could do to keep her in that good place, and even if she still slipped into being far away, Saf could handle it.

(There were other kinds of days, too, when Summer felt like a completely different person and Safiya was out kicking in the fucking deep end with no understanding of what to do, if anything she could do would make a difference anyways. Sometimes Summer wouldn’t talk for days. Sometimes, she’d sit poised and elegant- on the couch or the rocking chair or her bed in what used to be the spare room- for hours and hours and hours with the only movement being her blinking every so often, her face otherwise looked like it was as trapped in a pose as the rest of her. Safiya would try sitting down with her, and talking as quiet and gentle as her voice would allow, ask her if she was alright, if she wanted to maybe stand up with her and they could take a little walk around the rooms of the cottage, maybe, or- or Saf could put on all of her gear and they could go outside together- take my hand, everything’s okay, you’re safe I promise- but Summer would be unresponsive at that point, staring straight ahead, and Safiya would realize just how fucking unqualified she was to try and help her at all.)

Safiya fell out of her thoughts as the record Summer put on got caught in a groove, and started repeating the same chord over and over. Summer’s head peeked up from the couch, and she walked over to the record player, delicately flipping the vinyl and motioning towards putting it back onto the player.

She never got the chance, though. The front door made a clicking sound, the hinges sighed, and Violet Lowe was standing in the doorframe. Summer dropped the vinyl and it shattered. 

“I thought I changed my locks.” Safiya didn’t move from where she spoke.

Violet shrugged. “You did.” There was quiet. She closed the door behind her to keep the light out.

Safiya stood up, her blanket dropping to the floor, and she felt stupid for being in her sweats and a pair of fucking crocs because it would be really great if she was anything close to intimidating right now. Still, she walked over to Vi, putting herself in between her and Summer. 

Safiya intended to say a lot of things to her, everything that had been boiling in her mind since the morning Vi left and didn’t come back, insults and how could yous and I deserve better than thats. Instead, this is what came out: “I missed you, Vi. So much.” If, Saf thought, she was just a little less emotionally stunted, there’d be tears in her eyes. She really thought Vi wasn’t going to come back this time.

Violet smiled, but it was unreadable behind her sunglasses. She was definitely selling again, it showed in the gold and silver coiling around her fingers in serpentine rings and  dripping down her neck, contrasted starkly against her black cocktail dress. She had new heeled boots that made her stand almost as tall as Summer was, their glossy cold-black finish the exact same shade as her perfectly maintained bob. “I know you missed me. It’s why I came back.”

“Where have you been selling?” Saf knew Vi had friends in the business with mansions up and down the west coast they’d hop around, going from city to city giving out all kinds of compounds and getting rich as fuck in the process, living like psychedelic royalty. But this felt different, she’d been gone for too long.

Vi shook her head. “Not selling. Manufacturing. That’s where the real money is. We don’t have to move around, either, we bought this underground military bunker-”

“A bunker. An underground military bunker.” How the fuck do you just buy an underground military bunker.

Vi mhm’d impatiently, as if she was puzzled as to Saf not being able to keep up. “It used to be for large weapons storage, but it got auctioned off. One of the smartest decisions me and Nic ever made.” Sometimes Saf didn’t recognize the names Vi would rattle off, but Nic, Nic she knew from the one time she’d been with Saf while she was away on her business trips. She swallowed the memories she, frankly, could not be less prepared to deal with, back down.

Violet took Safiya’s hands in hers, the cold metal of her rings making imprints against Saf’s fingers. “Saf, Elana’s making psychoactive compounds nobody’s even theorized about before, with the amount of privacy we have there. You understand? We’re about to change the drug underbelly of this entire nation. And I want you there with me.”

“I’d go with you?” Vi’d never offered to take her with, ever since everything happened that summer, with her Vi, Elana and Nic. Safiya looked back at Summer in her floral sundress (she only wore that one on days when she was feeling good, Saf knew it was her favorite,) who at that point had pressed herself against the wall, standing straight and dead silent, staring at the both of them, her face unreadably calm to most, but Saf knew she only disconnected like that when she was fucking terrified. The record was still in pieces on the ground. With both eyes on her, Summer peeled herself off of the wall and hurriedly started picking up the shattered bits. Safiya moved towards her, breaking Vi’s grip. “It’s alright, Summer, I’ve got this, don’t worry about it-”

“Summer?” Vi said behind her, and Safiya realized just how badly she does not want these two people in her life to interact ever. Fuck. “It suits her so well. How have you liked my birthday present for you so far?”

Safiya stomped back up to Violet, and in a whisper edging on a growl, “We are not doing this right now Vi.” Saf would make grave eye contact with her if it weren’t for the fact that Vi still had her fucking shades on. 

“Now, if you had such a problem with my generosity, she’d be gone by now, wouldn’t she?” And then, after a moment, she added: “Stop acting like a saint, Safiya. You’ve never been a good liar.”

The room buzzed with the echo of her words, and Safiya stood there, quiet, for a dragged out moment, trying to think of some way to spit back at her. It didn’t happen. With the most calm face she can put on right now, she turned back to Summer. “Summer, maybe you should... go outside, for a little bit. I’ll tell you when I’ve shown Violet out.” She makes those last words taste like venom, matter-of-fact, so Vi can hear her anger. 

“No, she can stay.”

Summer stopped dead in her tracks. Looking at the fear in her eyes, that sinking look that overpowered any kind of calm Summer usually had when Saf was there, Saf knew she was lost. Summer was listening to Vi, now, all Vi, the kind of gone Saf was all too familiar with people getting under Vi’s words.

“Anyways,” Vi said, a tad annoyed, as if all of that had just been a mere blip in the conversation, turning her head to address Saf, “yes, you’re coming with. You’d be safe in the bunker, I made sure of it. All of your special lights. I want…. I want you there. With me.”

If this had been in literally any other context, Safiya would’ve smiled at Vi’s effort to communicate her feelings, Saf had been with her for years and she knew how hard it was for her to even understand her own emotions, much less say them out loud. But she was pissed at her, and she was going to hold onto that feeling for as long as she could to make her feel worse. “Summer stays here.” There was no way in hell she was going to let Summer anywhere near Vi’s fucked up drug empire. 

Vi just fucking shrugged. “She’s coming.”

Saf charged at her again, pointing an accusing finger at her and getting close enough until it buried into the fabric of Vi’s dress. “You can act like I’m as fucked up as you are but I would never trust her with your or your f-”

Vi smiled, and batted Saf’s hand off of her as if she was a somewhat disinterested cat. “Let me rephrase that. My name is on her contract. She’s coming.”

[sinesalvatorem]

One of the things I managed to convey to a bunch of people yesterday is -

The reason I usually dominate every social environment I’m in is because it doesn’t feel safe not to. Because, if I let my attention slip for even a second, the natural state of all social groups is to converge on plotting to hurt me, and I have to always always always be navigating that all the time.

This leads to me having crazy amounts of social modeling overhead all the time. Like, at one point I was talking to @metagorgon on one side of a room while some other people on the other side of the room were talking to them, and even though I was “““ignoring””” the other side of the room to focus on the conversation I was engaged in, I was tracking their conversation well enough to be internally making puns related to them. And, when I mentioned that, Pastel was basically like - how the fuck?

And, well, how the fuck is that I’m not allowed to turn it off. If there are people anywhere in my environment, they are very salient threats and their natural course tends toward hating me. Because, well, I’m a faggot - that bit isn’t surprising. But the important thing is that it is in fact possible to exist nearby to people who are naturally inclined to despise you if they never get upset for any reason whatsoever, because then they don’t have any aggression to take out on you, so I have to make sure that everyone in my vicinity is at the very least not annoyed as a minimum survival condition 110% of the time.

Additionally, I just directly value other people having a good time. Part of this is ridiculously high affective empathy, which means that other people having a good time basically translates into me having a good time, because the membrane between my emotions and the emotions of a group is very permeable. (Both ways, unfortunately, which is why I have to at a minimum perform cheerfulness even when I’m otherwise operating in low-energy mode.) And part of this is just, like, wanting good things for people? Like, the same impulse that leads me to want to help strangers that I’ll never see and never get to do an empathy key-exchange with.

And part of the valuing other people having a good time thing is feeling a sense of responsibility for all the potential mes of the world? Because I feel like someone needs to be flying the plane at all times to ensure that people don’t just start ripping each other apart. Sort of like when I was with my mother she used to ensure that people around me weren’t going to hurt me and I could relax, but when I was at school I was without a saviour.

(Oh, yes, my blog url is partly a reference to the fact that I have PTSD hyperawareness All The Time Always.)

But, if I trusted that someone like my mother existed around me, I’d be great. I’d be so relaxed. I could turn off my hyper-vigilance ever and just turn the responsibility of safety over to someone else. But I don’t trust anyone to ever be both as competent as me at making sure things are OK, and also aligned enough with my values to make sure things are going OK for me.

However, failing that, I feel the need to step in and do it for both myself and others? Like, to ensure that an environment exists in which no one is about to be attacked. And, just as importantly, where no one feels like they’re about to be attacked. So I track if anyone seems like they might be upset or anxious or drained or otherwise not doing well, and try to identify how I can bring them back to a baseline of security, sometimes by just dropping everything else to find an opportunity to ask them what they need.

Anyway, this is all the nice noble bullshit about why I’m doing this. Here are the  failure modes:

Firstly, remember how I never let go of the steering wheel because I don’t trust that anyone else is aligned enough with my goals to actually keep me safe? Well, even though my goals wrt making sure everyone is OK are altruistic goals, they aren’t selfless goals per se. I’m doing this for everyone on a naive do-unto-others model.

But sometimes they don’t want me to be steering the social environment interminably toward safety. Sometimes they have other goals, and they’d like to prioritise them over feeling good, but I can tend to run roughshod over them. Because, well, I’m on that tier-2 Maslow shit where everything is Not Getting Murdered all the time, and I need to steer everything around me as far away from potential for anyone being murdered as possible.

So sometimes people are spending time around me and they’re having a great time and they’re annoyed because they don’t want to be having a great time. They want to be exploring ideas, or having arguments, or purposefully pushing their limits, or otherwise doing things that might be risky relative to a goal of them feeling perfectly comfortable all the time. And I... don’t know how to stop?

Like, sometimes I literally just leave when I realise this is the case, because expending the amount of energy needed to restrain myself from doing this is more exhausting than even doing it. Keeping 10 people happy? Psh, no problem. Not bending the universe toward keeping those people happy? Help, what do. I genuinely want to respect that preference for a different social environment, because I value people getting what they actually want. But I just can’t. Let. Go. Or I die, or someone else dies, or there’s otherwise Bad Shit that I could have prevented.

Secondly, and relatedly, I don’t know how to handle the preferences of people who directly value being in a social environment that isn’t being managed/tended/gardened in real time. Because I see that they’re anxious, and want to pull a social lever to make the thing that’s making them upset go away, and then realise that the thing making them upset is that I have my hands on the levers.

And I am maybe just fundamentally incompatible with this kind of person? Because usually what’s going on is that we’re traumatised in opposite directions. I am accustomed to the universe being inherently hostile to my life, and that the way I had to oppose it was to build the power to reshape the couple meters around me everywhere I step into social flourishing.

Meanwhile, the type of people who hate it when the social environment is being warped are usually people whose threat model is social predators warping their environment to make them less safe. And this totally makes sense, and being freaked out by me is a reasonable response to that. I feel like, if they understood what I’m doing and why they’d be less afraid...

...But the fundamentally important thing is that they have no obligation not to be afraid. It just means we probably need some distance between us because, as much as I genuinely feel sorry for this, I am not actually going to stop protecting myself, even if the process of me doing so makes them feel unsafe. I’m willing to talk to them and learn what they’d need from me in order to feel safe, and I’m willing to avoid them, but I’m not willing to let go of my protection.

Thirdly, I don’t know how to cope with losing my powers. This is what happened to me on LSD both times that I took high enough doses to actually be impaired. Like, when I didn’t have the power to be continuously scanning the room and parsing all the moods and be totally confident no one wished me harm, I straight up couldn’t figure out how to ask anyone for anything. A charger, company, anything.

And I have learned helplessness for not having these powers protecting me all the time because I deep, deep in my gut believe that the universe is hostile to my existence. And, if it notices me without me having the power to fight back, it will squish me. So I need to hide away from everyone until I regain my power levels.

But this also means I have bad coping mechanisms for mental impairment. Like, this is an impairment I deal with so infrequently that I don’t have workarounds for it. It’s like when my non-dyslexic friends are sometimes really intoxicated and lose the ability to read and Freak Out because they don’t know how to handle that. And I’m like... Welcome to me while slightly tired? The world won’t actually fall apart if you can’t read, because look at me, I’m too gay to read and I’m just fine.

Likewise, other people are like... “Why don’t you just ask people for a charger?” and I’m like “How do I know if I’m even mildly inconveniencing them and need to do emotional labour to make it OK?” and they’re like “...Did you know you’re allowed to exist without doing emotional labour?“ and I’m like “Citation FUCKING needed, buddy.”

And that is maybe the first thing I should work on.

[cherry-interlude]

Lana Del Rey Characters Rated

Lana Del Rey has portrayed several characters, some fictional and some based on real historical figures, so I’m rating them in order from favourite to least favourite; my opinion and I am not hating anywhere in this; I like requests:

8. Latina woman (Tropico)

Whilst Lana is absolutely stunning to look at and fits in well with the group of Latina women hanging around on cars - since they’re all so gorgeous and dark-haired - Lana’s still an American girl with Caucasian heritage. Not to say I’m hating on her but I personally don’t gel with it. She still looks and acts incredible in the music video, though could have been a trailer partying housewife without the Latina pretence.

7. Sad lesbian (Summertime Sadness)

It’s difficult to say whether she was actually being a lesbian or if she was just close friends with Jaime King in Summertime Sadness, but many people speculate that was the portrayal. If you prefer to watch the video with that slant, I think it’s beautiful. There are hints of romance and love within the song (they way they mope at each other in the smoke car) and the snippets of them hanging out, which of course makes me feel the feels as a bisexual female. Despite this, it’s most likely they’re just best friends and all feelings are platonic, hence why the ‘sad lesbian’ trope is lower here since it’s probably not even her intention.

6. Mary (Tropico)

We only get snippets of Mary Magdalene - staring in a mirror and raising her hands and such - so this is lower on the list. Even so, Lana is a godly presence and looks just as pure and beautiful as Mary, suiting the role well. Lana’s religious characters always hold such grace and beauty because she’s just an angel, no matter how brief their presence.

5. Sad bride (Ultraviolence)

Lana’s beautiful role as a bride wandering about in a slightly too-sexy dress and eating oranges whilst orally appreciating the cameraman should go down in history. She’s too seductive for the typical virgin bride, which gives it a fresh interpretation, but what interests me is how it could possibly be about her devotion to the notorious Jim in her song. I’ve mentioned before the theory that she is, like a married woman, bonded to the abusive relationship (rather than God being the higher power that ties them together, Jim is). The lack of her husband in the video and the empty church only adds to the theory that this is metaphorical.

4. Eve (Tropico)

Lana’s interpretation of Eve is mesmerising, particularly as she adds her typical sexy spin to it (she clearly likes to take ‘pure’ figures and put a seductive twist on them). The flowery outfit (or lack of), the delicate apple bite and even her look of wonder (complete with heavy make up I’m sure heaven provided her) gives her an ethereal quality, particularly when she and Adam (Shaun Ross) grind to one of her spiciest songs. Lana looks the part and almost acts it with the comparatively innocent way she looks around the Garden.

3. Cult member (Freak)

Freak is a gorgeous music video - stunning girls dancing underwater, Father John Misty giving off a rock ‘n’ roll Manson vibe, need I go on? - and the cult themes are clear within it. Lana is just one of many girls clearly following and adoring the cult leader that is Misty, and it’s interesting when you watch this slightly more heavenly version of such a dark corner of society. It’s one of my favourite characters she has played because it strangely suits her so well and the way it has been shown within the entirety of the music video is great (though perhaps rose-tinted). Subtle things like the many girls with long hair being so close together, the seventies vibe, the darkness when she is alone listening to her records yet seems to be happier when she’s with the leader shoving LSD in his face all add to the haunting music video.

2. Marilyn Monroe (National Anthem)

Lana has praised her “mother” Marilyn Monroe throughout her music and her portrayal is fabulous. Though she puts her own spin on it - long straight hair - she keeps the bubbly, kittenish voice and covers Marilyn’s version of Happy Birthday with perfection. It’s only a short portrayal but it’s a lovely tribute to her icon. If she brings Marilyn back (including the blonde wig for the Halloween Dodgers game she used in one of her Insta videos) it will be wonderful.

1. Jackie Kennedy

Both Lana and Rocky’s portrayals as the Kennedy’s are beautiful, particularly as they add their own modernised, dark hip-hop glamour spin to it. Lana is particularly flawless with the typical sixties bouffant and style, yet also her romantic nature around ‘JFK’ and her motherly ways with the children, showing Jackie as a devoted wife and mother, yet she still drops it like it’s hot and smokes at the breakfast table. It may not be exact but it’s wonderful to watch and holds great meaning, really pulling the emotions when the story takes a darker turn and Lana is left on the back of the car staring in horror at JFK’s lifeless body. I still manage to cry every time I get to the final speech and watch the events - clipped but still showing what happened perfectly - unfold.

Once again, all my opinion, there’s no hate here, my writing sucks today, I like requests!

[owlhuikj]

Therapy Owl Blush

Therapy Owl Blush

by hui kj

It is all to want to end crying naturally - to know better to save one grey, but it is her any way in her holiday summer of sonder she proclaims sincerely: what can I do as long as I am here this morning without space-self-allowed for unearthly, vivid backing that I know she knows I do not have but kindly…? Lightning made us still progressively more simply while it gave her infinity score. 

They never let their cat out; well, the morning thunder, we scared said cat, were  living fast hours ago, adjacent to sound and body rhythm because the drugs would not let us down tired but all sensual us three locators of thing-happenings, kinesis getting away from only me, and shame or not stance, all done with a rain dance - as long as I feel like I am helping - she calls it: Jupiter’s Juniper. The quite quaint house owners, them two over there - the boy tooting and her still hitting the pipe and me involved with true mania: watched the storm come in on the couch near the window and she said the world is not ready to end which was actually strategically spun into sanity - their mouths were not dropped like mine and we smiled for moments.

He told me that he can repair or let go with ease from a weary concern into the stable format regarding the ranking of best at lowest or curious in curious measure, we all with equal, strung out bed headed pose discussion in their living room where I am staying for the weekend. The paranoia passed after long hours, and all the colors changed in this summer of sonder right in the suburbs near campus around Cornell of New York, with the angry clouds scaring them but relieving me because every go at the rush enables me to focus on what is nature and what is nurture but hiss tone via meth until you shifted and stare: think a bunch. 

Save her, but nobody ever knew her like she has her - do not tell a soft heart to switch any lights: believe me tired, believe me I have cried at this. The six red suicides - famous around here: or the psychic nurturing mind submerged, spirit kingdom guide the one here telling us both she got an abortion earlier this month before she even wondered if it was mine or his, she mentioned while all tweaked out and actively bothered, that she progresses thru forward as best, gray pain not letting her make way for lazy insight for anything or anyone to blame; it is just what it is - she did want to tell us, and our lack of comments beneath or opinions at all, our current way of life empowered her immensely and we were more than happy to attempt to get her speaking on as she regarded but never attempted much out of just a extraordinary simplicity but when spoke: all vibrant she. Meth season parties all blend and form the stupid, very real angst of the submerged boys, us two who are looking up to her but the angst very much present - we are mustering power against the wicked bleakness of ourselves, and we, the paused, curious jesters, three conjoined all the way to the god’s and goddesses of Jupiter’s Juniper - we are going to wait around until she finds God one last time, never ending tho and the rain is music for any motion or thought at all to resemble what she could and - at times - could not forecast as our guide while there was definitely channeling effort but a morning for mourning from a complex sincerity which was accepted. 

Even if we waltzed over future from that choice from the woman waving of a one at she be too young to manage care and or just a lack of enthusiasm or exactness at this moment, but with sane and reasonable position; a differing vision that seeing the freedom and the influence: all have her men in her life salivate and scramble, but veined all the same before and after like always but now is in complex tamed release, but the boys seem to shrug it off like me for random, few day binges until my own empathy for myself stretches out the room and out the door until a life is going and manage individuality, although drastically drifted and gardened singularity that the boys think up even if she mentioned ecstasy and love: the brain is worse than the rain and anything or if remaining grays and she will look up with her long hair and she knows our God but they are the ones with the guns for living faced at doom, terror, or something that you could regret and conjure but seemed oriented with choice or not - defensive intruder murder, suicide, or in her mind - why she is blue - at bay tho her all around innocent either, look a rainbow - but she will remain altogether - and moved over where my arms today on the couch pulling her close with her paleness quivered shine as shiny spotlight in the storm, and the tv was muted and the cars beeped in the suburb streets and he, the other but common, would not know Jupiter because that’s her Lucifer Hell and all the staring at walls with her blueprint maps and symbol expression that goes on her shamanic YouTube channel or a simple notebook, and all the meth and the other same one, could be enemy, would not know Jupiter if she pointed to the flashing NASA Channel - but he will read about suicide in the paper in the summer of sonder and the drugs will not kill his empathy but he will let their cat get fat (?!) and invite different boys, and be the one to encourage a re-up but only ever barely chips in because he can barely afford to pay his half of rent with disability for his bipolar and selling his own chill pills all so we can blow holes in our souls and - every time - vaguely successful or not with a woman who does not need me definitely but he stays. They have been a couple for three years and I am past it but remain anyway.

Alaina knew one of the Cornell bridge jumpers who made a couple Poe posts on Facebook, which she saw in fact and liked even and then she felt that a darkness made all smart and emotionally free in a way and that he was nonetheless countering the grim and taking care of himself - she even invited him over but he did not reply. My aunt committed suicide six years ago after a different death in the family after the summer remembered every summer - I want to at least attempt to take the pain away before great goes without hope or the idea in construction…

‘Are y’all okay? Are you good?’ I sat up eager and pulled at my hair and looked back and forth.

She grabbed my shoulder and scratched soft with her nails down my back. She laid in my arms on the couch and she fed herself and offered to feed me strawberries while Zack played with his facial hair cursing at the cat that hid behind the tv. 

‘Zack, you should not have mentioned the gun…’ she said. 

‘Ok, Doc. I thought this is the sonder summer? Buddy may get like us…’

‘I look out for you.’ Her words spelled love. God, I love how she said that. 

It was their hideout-house welcoming a community of sensitivity; I followed the cat to the back door to be let outside, and at the kitchen the food made me sick from the memory of the taste from a couple hours back when bread was little prickly razorblades toxic to desire. Alaina reached for him and let him spoon after he asked for her choice of record to be dim, soothing background noise while my school work was in need of attendance still on the counter. The rain slowed down but the atmosphere emerging inside or out was more acceptable, but still mundane and grey - I looked over to them. She was curled up staring at the wall why Zack stroked her hair and hummed slowly and wonderfully along with the music. I tapped my pen and made underlines and notes on papers for my internship work as an aspiring prose editor - Poe scared us all. Nobody was tired in late afternoon in the sonder summer - dates and days unimportant, to be content if we can together. She started to take notes on her phone for a new video on how facts do not remain facts from the point angle of free choice, all piled up from her recent but at this time polluted indifferences that keeps her psyche buzzing but not shaking the world as she always does, this time damage felt - I love the empathy - she is consistently romantic, and that seemed like a fact to me. We are all thinned out by the grown-up squeeze rioted against and protested, she a leader - the sonder she felt on LSD when the snow dissolved months ago, where the boundaries dissolved. But this summer we became three hearty members of where the world will be when we are finished - but it was her high and thriving in talk of destiny: cannot sleep; wires are loves and the millions of them got scared away and I was not afraid, and every individual will change everything we agreed. I just have other stuff going on.

‘…and a prayer to parthenon floats light discovery against palms that will not clench but let go forever in debt to blissful hope in faith.’ - I read from a sophomore’s essay but the room aura and out the window kept it grey from a potential enthusiasm. Across the room, Alaina shivered, hunched over, still near zero physically and prophetically, and wept quietly while the boy holding her got up and sighed all the way to the fridge, and I thought to myself that losing on purpose in company only wakes up the in-between hope in faith for the new battle of the best hum where the two have the same song, just a different queue. 

‘What were you telling me Zack?’ I asked.

‘Well Buddy, when Doc ain’t here, we ain’t no family - eh?’

~

She was not an accident; who questions? I will see them next month to still wonder. At two in the morning all the clothes were back on and I grabbed my backpack and fled to the McDonald’s on my way across town to my father’s house. There was an old, black fellow wearing a red sweater flipping thru poetry and no one else in the restaurant but us - I just ordered a water and sat down in the back with my laptop all to have wifi to submit for my summer English course that is in fact the only real thing in my life but completely without close company ever hence the visit to home. After I submitted my assignment, I opened Facebook and looked at the Poe boy and then to Alaina’s page to view her Youtube’s latest but posted time ago. 

Every month she provides an optimistic lecture on a tension in a relatable society and has been offered lecture booking at Cornell but she refuses to leave her home no matter what, even if her 100k subscribers worship her undeniable compassion and insight that she is distances herself from, and does not check comments and has a stack of fan-mail she is overly sensitive about but always managing to connect what is highly thought about but no one ever made it a gift like she did. 

Alaina’s fingers ran thru her own brown, short hair, and I let the video play without sound and merely watched her hand movements and her fragile but sincere facial expressions bringing an extreme, opposing jealousy and a fiery infatuation that I was able to mute and mute but jittery. This all is completely asexual to me with a sobering acceptance that if she has herself under control and if a casual, distant friendship is what is exactly the reality and mutual ringing bell it is. At that moment be seeing that the world would be saved, and that change is not what we claim because there is no rupturing chaos: only that what I hold onto is the way it has always been. 

‘Sir, here is the pen you dropped at the counter…’ - then I walked out into the sonder summer night and got in my car; leaving everywhere, all the time as a life half-half there and here but never not going: pool party events on Facebook - I need some sleep. 

Around noon on this Monday there was a familiar voice in dialogue in my father’s house downstairs, and my tweaking drifted almost all away but knew I could not smoke weed for tension-release until the men took off for work again after lunch here. It was my dad’s childhood best friend who was here often because they each lived alone - one divorced, one widowed. In actuality, my only problem now was to not sound gay or scientific but rather wise of adult college things to say and avoid shifting into the words of how I quit my dishwashing job last week or acting like I was used to talking at all with all my zero, daily practice besides with the sonderers - I reminded myself this was the summer, and if I happen to get him to teach me a song on the guitar: maybe I will not feel like such a lost cause and if I am going to slash zen, I am going to get someone out of trouble or simply delighted even but besides myself as that works. When I was little, my dad would sing and his friend would play music - a fond memory.

God still hopes to exist and save even if I do not believe it or hear it witnessed from older men. If the summer of sonder does not exist: do I want it to exist?

‘It is the sonder summer…’

‘Say what?’

‘Community of equal value - held by quotes unsayable but acknowledged and cherished…not witchcraft, it is my friend…she is,…wonderful.’

His younger son’s were funny when we were growing up - my father acknowledged how well-behaved they were but they carried an all-alright-burden of the fact they would never not be good: they are still good of course, and their good will stay around outside of who is home - continuity froze me curious but pale, out for the same good anyways.

Zack sent me six emails. He said something ethereally vibrant had shook their space - he said that not only was the sun coming out and blaring forms in contact coming apparent, but the equation of love Alaina muttered and counted about but never could manage was fluid now, and their cat is on it’s ninth life and bolted for mission but it did not make them sad…he said that she would hold the numbers and every decision’s outcome was beyond apparent before, and saving any would mean pain - unless she redeemed suicide and conjured a contradiction that would undo zen to strengthen faith. I emailed back that I would check my schedule for an odd reason - my house was empty and it was the summer of sonder. He said the police took her away to the Psych and somehow avoid possession, and the other - just the other day was just the other - was on his way to my house. 

~

To me it was just the meth that had me drawn, but now… some things save everything but you just know the destruction pieces will be pursued and lately any system seems to me an unfair way of looking onto pain: an annoying mock-triumph when God let good and evil happen for all and all to take away some all for precious, false perspective on monument that had it’s strength all out, but who knows who that was? I knew her, the one zooming out by herself till Jupiter’s Juniper…even if my faith was small…

‘Her brother says she has never been alone.’ Zack said while moving his rook. 

‘So you want me to come with you to visitation on Wednesday?’ I cared of course.

Yet, in my perspective I was initially just a fan of her channel and close by until they seemed to like me and asked me to stay and never to leave because her channels are true he says, and I know her and I are the skeptics: Zack, the one that differs and is more about the meth and the television, and the one who never checks in on the latest about agreed, open frequencies and all the while the most horny. 

He proclaims Alaina earned her energy like a bird flying over a volcano, but he does not know how, and yet continues to proclaim he caught a glimpse of her wavelength and gave up science and logic to follow her as long she will leave a trail to orbit. Zack does not see that she is recklessly grey; so I open up the window and put on a record to smoke weed while he breathed slowly lying down on my bed. 

One-two-three-one too…this is the life. I miss my mother. She will visit me and I will ask who she is; ‘I told you to dream.’ She would say all peaceful. Alaina let collapses form for the purpose of saying the difficult things and unchanging no matter who was in her house or what was on tv. My mother had been to hospitals when she was young, but my mental state was not similar - she was a worried mess a giver, OCD even and found hardships with all sorts of health interferences like cancer. 

Alaina could not smile - even if she did she would think she was losing it and getting weaker; lazy too or psychotic. The hospital will keep her around people all with a schedule, and hopefully finally give medicine a chance, and give herself a break from cosmic mismatches or rings, both intertwining then imploding for the sake of reaching beyond reincarnation for the slash.

Alaina left me a voice message. 

‘…and that sort of thing - what if it would have shaped and shaped me? I am terrified but will see it thru. My senses are preschool and I have corrupted connections and if I am to disarm violence then it will be odd after. When they look: I wait or not. Ha. Catatonic or conscience angel they think. The doctor put me on a medicine and I blacked out: walked straight into a wall: fell and fell wstraight back onto my skull on  the ground to only ask if I fell. The group sessions at mock-shift pointing - I remember titles of poems but not the words and as long as some of these things keep the sonder as filter for…oops, gotta go! Take care…’ 

~~~~~~~

Someone took my picture and said I would be grateful. An old friend told me she had not kissed anyone ever, but we just jumped on the trampoline anyway. We jumped in the pool - one told one that I read their favorite book. A boy made hamburgers and showed us his printed photography. People embraced each other but I backed away - and the others that were backing away I wanted to embrace, but I just smoked cigarettes standing still as the earth spun in our summer. Even if high school was the thing that kept us on our toes, maybe frightened, and this backyard could actually be lied in and someone will come looking for you or not. You could be playing the piano and someone would fall from a balcony. If you tuck in an upset friend: you do not ever have to go to a party again but still can get free or cheap tattoos. You can refuse a handshake because of sweaty palms, but still turn on a song about spirit there and feeling lost. You will be best friends at a different party but they say you smell bad here. You can see Christians giddy off one shot of vodka, or think of dimensions on the floor where those photographs were laid out. 

You can work on mending your life at work or not. My aunt said she did not want to be called beautiful. She refused help and she said she had tried everything. I will never understand anyone. People will be worse or better off - go to school or do not - have depression or just happy - have purpose or burn out…these things do not determine value, and seeing Alaina maneuver Light while sacrificing her energy for the better of people - to love and look out for others, without ever suggesting guilt or bitterness: can not believe it.

The first time we had sex I cried looking into her eyes, and then alone when I went to the shower. Alaina will be remembered - not only by me but the world. Her video viewers latch onto the string of connections that the source would shape glory - yet, she does not leave the living room but remains the most loving creature with the love finding its way because it rightly should and is the most necessary story the world knows. Alaina will end crying - every woman shines and the rest of the animals of the world, and all the stars in the sky will align in her eyes: looking directly at me changing my sad tears into knowing safety like my aunt and mother are still here. 

Silly, simple me viewing pictures of ladybugs, jazz music, best friendships, dancing, flowers, trees, music, tattoos, laughing, blogs, coffee, paintings, names,…and the rest; all vivid and seeing with new eyes - heroes everywhere and everything everyday. And what a day! This evening the chosen boys will spend some time a girl named Alaina - I sure hope she is rested, and writing stuff down to share or not. 

We are proud of her, and the sun has been shining - we are off the drugs, and against her demons and grayness: we are coming together for her to hear about God and where he is at according to the one I trust. 

Zack and I waited in the cafeteria with other friends and families for the other patients, all will be gathered shortly. Myself, I was running my red pen thru some rough drafts with a new motivation of expression, and seeing how crafts build to reveal a moment in spectacle - Zack was calmly staring up at the clock, running his hands thru his beard, and tapping his foot very so lightly.

~

‘What was that?’

We sat in the parking lot staring forward. He touched my face and kissed me on the cheek. The hour for ourselves on the way home made me think of a specific medicine and guilt. Alaina looked dead - they murdered her with medicine and when she laid her arms on the table, looking at the table: she mentioned that they were telling her she was gay and quite ill with schizophrenia and gave her the disruptiveness shot that she was still drowned by.

‘Doctors do not know shit!’ I said as we pulled into their place. We closed in in the night thru the door.

I found zero inside but an ever glowing new hell that angels hinted that God saved - hint: are you ready? Do I want everyone to know? He told me to still. They, they, they, they, what? He asked, ‘Which ring of grace?’ - mothbethelmeen; familiar. 

~~~~~~~~~~

  ‘What if I dream of morning glee? - and an almost freedom stifled by a company I was born into. I’ll walk a mile in heaviness; starting fires but so putting them out because I just want to be alone. Maybe I’ll float and see the moon; a different, but my darkness around new light. But I get sick quick, become a star killer too. You have to settle and dream about other things. If you don’t, you may get real skinny and cut away. You don’t want that. I don’t want that. So you gain, make some new friends around lamp posts. You stretch out your hands and it is dark. The universe gets patted in and you walk outside and scramble for a match but it’s gone - everything is gone. You wail for friendship and get stuck in a four-walled-derange with nothing but you and your best friend: darkness…’

Dart responses theon / spelling bee AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH 1231_

=)

645372@protonmail.com

[micaramel]

Artist: Justin Caguiat

Venue: Modern Art, London

Exhibition Title: Permutation City 1999

Date: June 25 – August 8, 2020

Click here to view slideshow

Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.

Images:

Images courtesy of Modern Art, London

Press Release:

Modern Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of new paintings by Justin Caguiat titled Permutation City 1999. This is his first solo exhibition with the gallery.

In Caguiat’s large-scale paintings on unstretched canvas or linen displayed in wooden frames, layers of oil and sometimes gouache, pastel and acrylic synthesise into highly detailed patterns which fill and spill out beyond imperfect edges. Now and then, swathes of monochrome washes emanate like filters or planes of light across the surface. From this, landscapes and otherworldly scenes materialise, drifting in and out of legibility, or consciousness.

These are liminal paintings, both corporeal and cryptic. They resist an instantaneous reading, demanding time to decipher, and to search for compositional footholds within their archaic atmosphere.

Caguiat’s idiosyncratic style is informed by varied fields including science fiction literature, the baroque-folk hybrid aesthetic of early Filipino Catholic Santos, 60s psychedelia, les Nabis, Ukiyo-E, urban graphic art and the historical legacy of Manga. In scale and format they can be read like murals and landscapes, and while not narrative, have a reverential or devotional purpose akin to a fresco.

Though suggestive of Romanticism, the paintings are not illusionistic, demonstrating and not concealing their evolution through layers. The transposition of paint – ideas, information, figures and ornament – is fragmented, like the dissolution of memory.

A text of the same title written by the artist accompanies the exhibition.

Justin Caguiat was born in 1989 in Tokyo, Japan. He lives and works in New York City. In 2018 he had a solo exhibition at 15 Orient, New York and his work has been included in group shows at galleries and project spaces throughout North America, in Italy and Switzerland. He has curated exhibitions with themanilainstitute.org and other collectives and is a published poet having participated in readings and performances including in 2017 at the Kunsthalle Zürich, Switzerland.

    Permutation City 1999

After the outbreak he escaped to the Bay Area with his family. They had left New York and ended up crashing at a former youth hostel in downtown Berkeley an art collector had bought. It was under renovation prior to the shut down and was in the process of being turned into

He traded the collector a painting titled My meat is to do the will of him in exchange for room and board. In one of the rooms, by the side of the bed hidden between the bed frame and the wall he found a journal filled with observations written in fragmented prose, punctuated by drawings. He was so struck by the book that it ended up forming the basis of his work for the next three years, using the drawings as sketches, overlapping composites to layer and erase with paint, building up the surface over time.

He compiled some excerpts from the found journal. Each entry in the book was titled, borrowing each title for each painting.

“Thousand Year Old Laughter” He was a young lad. Discovered a video store carrying a large collection of American and Euro films with religious themes. Other half of the store was SFX Horror. Lurking around the store… the instructions have unfolded a spell Entranced by images of suffering grotesque eroticism Fell into images forbidden the name is not what it appears

This way was truly nothing already it disappeared as smoking trails left by the things made seemingly in desires shape

solitary in fluid sunlight reflecting off store window eyes that unsubstantiated the hollow form revealed another presence. generating heat but not light and melting snow it turned into water, we lived for 16 years in Tokyo.

“Extraction and Compassion” When Grandmother came to visit us from Manila she couldn’t be around the Japanese people. Only once she recounted to my mother the horror of the Japanese occupation of the Philippines

During the massacre of innocents their favorite method of killing was the bayonet The hotels in downtown Manila were turned into rape camps they would take women and girls there after they were forced to bury their children, siblings, and neighbors in mass graves Hospitals were set afire after patients were strapped to their beds Pregnant women were raped and their stomachs were ripped open with bayonets Their unborn children drowning in sunlight streaming in from the broken walls and shattered windows “O you dig and I dig, and I dig towards you, on our finger the ring awakes”

In our apartment in Tokyo she made a room for herself in the closet. She was a devout Catholic, she could speak to spirits

She was the matriarch of my grandfathers second and illegitimate bastard family. Grandfather died when mother was one years old, he played piano for the silent films and was a photographer Mother was the youngest and 13th child. when grandfather died, suddenly they were were poor; he had left them nothing

They lived in a tiny garage and slept on the floor in rows they moved dwellings frequently my Mother often didn’t have enough food to eat. Her first job was cleaning public toilets

In Tokyo people always asked me if my mother was a maid the echo of the occupation evolved with the diaspora after the colonization and military campaigns of the Spanish, Japanese, and Americans The Filipina maids of Tokyo are kind and hard working people

When my grandmother died she left my mother her golden crucifix. My mother later gave the crucifix to me,

and after a year my father kicked my grandmother out and sent her back to Manila

They had a broken television in the room and the picture was in black and white. We would watch TV and my Grandmother was happy and said it reminded her of the past.

“Branches Flower Windows” walking down quiet streets of my Tokyo I love the moss covered cinder block walls and overgrown gardens of ferns, parks and Shinto temples and under the shade of trees everywhere, ponds and streams reflecting viridian glow, small waterfalls and stone pathways. Moss grows everywhere Sleepy stray cats and small fields of dirt and wild grass. The hollows of bushes littered with the skeletons of cicadas at the end of summertime and in every apple lays a fetus curled asleep There is no land more beautiful fields of rice paddies from the train window on the outskirts of the city the wind shakes and branches flower windows personalities whistle out of these sectors of apples that are made to be regenerated

Ever-present crows calling from the trees, pockets of nature surrounded by hyper-evolved architecture and a totalized homogeneity. Animism and fascism are alive and vital here, but now the Japanese are pacifists.

“The Approach of Beauty its Body was Fungible” Starting when I was 13 years old I used to sneak out of my house at night. My older sister was secretly taking LSD everyday and going to school, an exercise in appearing to be normal while her mind pushed against the boundaries of reason I would leave at around 1 in the morning after everyone was asleep. Wandering around, sometimes walking as far as Shibuya or Harajuku or to an unfamiliar neighborhood I would break into apartment buildings and go to the rooftops and sleep there. I sleep in parking lots and in nooks in between buildings, hidden places underneath stairwells and behind ventilators and generators whole lifetimes of how we love the escape Forgotten atoms cradled in sweet music and the laughter of our memory of the buildings dropping seeds

Radiant spheres contain their hidden appearance to take the form of different species in the future Growing variegated subjects decay into a lonely view that the preachers of passion have seen through their vector making melody

meted out in pleasure the lyrics recorder quickly to their passing pain

“Anal Staircase of the Eye Reflected in the Fingernail” They began to sleep walk and hallucinate. Floating above their body: walking around the apartment at night, talking uncontrollably

Its psychotic dream state remember waking up on the floor of the bedroom, The walls and ceiling slowly began to shrink, Shrinking to the point of a needle, the point was a pupil, They were trapped inside the pupil, the pupil was the coffin.

Splash water on their face to wake them up, the knock on the head sent us reeling, I’m relieved to find him sleeping. Its safe to be here while I was dreaming I kept forgetting I am living as todays reflection.

I was watching everything, I was watching my body moving dislocated from its host, I was moving from room to room like a fly on the wall, I was walking and talking like a living doll.

“The Saint is Never Busy” I cry because hes dying, now hes dust an older shade of green across my eyes turns to red dust of the heart. now how to keep out of hell are the wheels that are turning, he used to be so violent but now so enfeebled yet His eye still holds violence, his other eye is blind and He has to wear a diaper

The wheels of the sun its done but dont forget about its shadowy child, For its picture you hate to keep even though it always lives developed the horror of an idea that wears you unrendered, Its been 14 years its paralyzed brilliant doors are locked forever, out of waves of memories life times locked.

He looks old He walks so slowly, he shuffles from room to room compulsively the dementia atrophied brain

He doesn’t remember anything about me. He knows I am his son but nothing else, no memories I am a shadow in the periphery of his mind. My mother hid the kitchen knives just in case

He thinks its the year 1999, a maddening coincidence to the primal year of my reveries.

I came to London and went to see him, who had returned to where he grew up in Wales

Mother sleeps with the house keys under her pillow and a change of clothes and money in case he becomes violent and she needs to escape He threatens her when he doesnt recognize her and she has to hide Crushed by her burden I see it in her face

Of course it wasnt supposed to end like this He refers to himself in the plural. pointing to his head Trapped in the year 1999, wandering amongst the reveries of whose youth?

“The Synthetic Memory Forming” –

  We are in California now. Its peaceful here. New York seems so far away. Here in the Bay Area there are lots of crows, whom I love. They remind me of Tokyo. Our son dances in the sun and in the water an ant to the outsider sea.

We have cut a silly figure against the walls crumbling cake with all our bags A cigarette in my mouth my hat is lost against the orbing sun

the light is confusion. This is my last song you yell across laughing after the pale band where you removed your golden ring. The sun is chasing your tanned skin your fingers fan across the buildings in the sand optical trails waving against their warped angles

“Ive got nothing but reason left behind” Events are tiny earthquakes constantly reorienting the same set of histories but for now every one here is perfect standing dreamlike and frozen under the blue sun

A huge mob of crows, in the early hours of the morning on the way back home, that sent me weighing sleep against a walk around the block I turned away and fled as they knocked over the trash cans, The contents strewn like intestines on the street, nourished by the abundance, crying in unison

When the wandering fire Strikes the heart of stone Will you follow? Will you leave your home? Will you leave your life? Will you take the Longest Road?

Link: Justin Caguiat at Modern Art

from Contemporary Art Daily https://bit.ly/2ZS1Wj9

[ebonynightclubblog]

Paul McCartney’s Many Surprise Appearances: A Brief History

[Ebony Nightclub] Rolling Stone Music News: Imagine you’re out having a beer with some friends when Sir Paul McCartney suddenly starts playing a mere coaster’s throw away. Just recently, McCartney shocked punters at Liverpool’s Philharmonic pub by performing a free surprise concert with a full band, part of a special homecoming edition of James Corden’s Carpool Karaoke. But the ex-Beatle doesn’t need a reason to rock out at random. Over the years, McCartney has displayed a knack for popping up in the most unexpected places, usually with a song at the ready. Whether it’s in a rural country inn, a Bavarian hotel lobby, the middle of Times Square or even on a London rooftop, you never know where Macca will appear. Here are just a few of the most surprising – and endearing – examples of the trend. 1. Jamming with a hotel bar band in Bavaria while filming Help! (March 18th, 1965) The Austrian resort town of Obertauern played host to the Beatles when they shot the skiing scenes for their second feature film. While there, they crossed paths with Jacky Spelter, an acquaintance (or so he claimed) from their stint playing nightclubs in Hamburg several years earlier. After a long day of risking life and limb on the Alpine slopes, the band attended a birthday party for Help!’s assistant director held at the Marietta Hotel, where Spelter’s group, Jacky and the Strangers, had a residency. After an untold number of bottles were popped, McCartney and John Lennon climbed onstage for a rowdy and sweaty performance that reportedly drew noise complaints from some guests. It would be the Beatles’ only “show” in Austria. According to legend, the hotel’s owner later requested compensation for some musical equipment damaged during the raucous set. Brian Epstein, the Beatles’ manager, countered by demanding a full concert fee for the Fabs. The owner quickly backed down. 2. Leading a pub sing-along during a break while shooting Magical Mystery Tour (September 1967) In the midst of the troubled production’s weeklong jaunt through Southern England, McCartney led a small group – including Ringo Starr, Beatles confidant Neil Aspinall and BBC journalist Miranda Ward – to the Tywarnhayle pub in the coastal town of Perranporth to meet up with rocker Spencer Davis, who happened to be vacationing in the area. “The punters in the pub couldn’t believe it,” Davis recalled. “Paul, being the sort of character he is, just grins at everybody and shouts out, ‘Evening, all.’ He stuck a pint of beer atop the piano and said, ‘I’m the pub pianist and I’m taking requests.’ Then he sat belting out pub songs all night with everybody singing along until two in the morning.” In Ward’s memory, McCartney performed “every pub standard bar ‘Yellow Submarine,’ which he refused to play.” For years he was reluctant to stray from the old chestnuts in sing-along settings, later telling author Barry Miles, “It didn’t seem kosher.”  3. Unveiling “Hey Jude” for villagers in the English countryside (June 1968) In his recently reprinted memoir As Time Goes By, the Beatles’ friend and press officer Derek Taylor recounts a spur-of-the-moment drive he took with McCartney to the small English village of Harrold. It was a trip in more ways the one – Taylor had begun the day with ‘a dollop’ of LSD – but sojourn ended at a local inn, where McCartney and his entourage were treated like visiting dignitaries. Before long, a little girl presented the world-famous musician with an instrument and persuaded him to play. “She had brought a right-handed guitar and landed it in Paul’s (left-handed) hands,” Taylor described in his breathless prose, “but the wizards were producing this play by now and floating with the splendour of this, the strangest Happening since Harrold was born … and the neighbours as they crowded the windows and the parlour, and the children, all caught their breath as Paul McCartney began to play the song he had written that week: ‘Hey, Jude’ it began.” The inn was kept open past closing time, and McCartney continued serenading patrons with tunes, including “The Fool on the Hill,” until the wee hours of the morning. 4. Capping off the Beatles’ performing career with a now-legendary rooftop concert (January 30th, 1969) McCartney’s most famous surprise set took occurred alongside his fellow Beatles on the roof of their Apple Records headquarters at 3 Savile Row in central London. The unorthodox performance was conceived as a finale to their documentary film project then known as Get Back (later dubbed Let It Be), winning out over splashier venues like the pyramids at Giza and the QE2 ocean liner. For 42 minutes, the band braved the January chill (Lennon and Harrison wore their significant others’ coats) as they plowed through their first truly live concert in more than two years. Though few could see them, the sound certainly carried, throwing the staid neighborhood into chaos. Police quickly intervened, putting a premature end to what would ultimately be the band’s final public performance. 5. Taking over a Liverpool pub with the McCartney clan for a TV special (1973) No, James Corden wasn’t the first to stage this particular stunt. In 1973 McCartney crashed the Chelsea Reach public house while filming the television special James Paul McCartney. He was joined by many of his family members, including his brother Michael, Auntie Gin (both immortalized in his song “Let ‘Em In”), Auntie Dilys and father Jim – who can be seen adorably shoving money into his son’s hand to help foot the drink bill. Together they have a good ol’ fashioned Scouse knees-up (read: good time), with lively reminiscences and warbled versions of traditional pub songs like “April Showers,” “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit-Bag,” and “You Are My Sunshine.” 6. Busking in London for Give My Regards to Broad Street – and getting totally ignored (circa 1982) McCartney has taken a lot of flack over the years for his 1984 musical, but it does include remarkable footage of the former Beatle busking outside London’s Leicester Square tube station. Unlike nearly every other incident mentioned on this list, this time around, no one seemed to care. Granted, he had been given a pretty thorough make-under. “They just made me up and dropped me off,” McCartney told the New York Daily News shortly after the film’s release in 1984. “I told ‘em we’d never get away with it, but they kept putting dirt on and rufflin’ up me hair – I was looking better and better – and I figured, why not.” The disguise worked, and not even a rendition of his most famous tune gave him away. “I was standin’ there plunkin’ chords, doing this silly version of the song, and no one noticed it was me. No one wants to look a busker in the eye of course, ‘cus then they’d get his life story. So they’d toss coins and I’d be going, ‘Yesterday, all my troubles – thank you, sir – seemed so far away.’” Any coins that found their way into his upturned hat were donated to the local Seamen’s Mission. 7. Commandeering David Letterman’s Broadway marquee (July 15th, 2009) McCartney brought new meaning to the phrase “topping the bill” when he strode onto David Letterman’s electric marquee outside the Ed Sullivan Theater to tape a brief concert for his very first Late Show appearance. News of the planned performance spread via social media earlier that day, and soon thousands swarmed the closed-off intersection at 53rd Street and Broadway to watch McCartney and his band play seven songs spanning the catalogs of the Beatles, Wings and the Fireman, his recent collaborative project with producer Martin “Youth” Glover. The occasion had dual significance, marking the 40th anniversary of the Beatles’ rooftop concert (he opened with “Get Back” in tribute), and also his return to the stage where he made his famous American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964. 8. Surprising students at an NYC high school (October 9th, 2013) McCartney spent John Lennon’s 73rd birthday disrupting classroom lessons with a little rock & roll – a move that surely would have made his late bandmate proud. Macca surprised 400 students at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Astoria, Queens, that afternoon with a 13-song set, opening with “Eight Days a Week.” The songs were broken up by Q&A sessions with the aspiring young artists, moderated by veteran New York DJ Jim Kerr. “This beats going to class,” McCartney cracked at the end of his performance. No argument from the audience.  9. Having a ball in Times Square (October 10th, 2013) Just a day after dropping in on high school students, McCartney staged a more elaborate affair in the middle of Times Square. He gave fans just an hour’s notice, tweeting, “Wow! Really excited to be playing New York Times Square at 1pm this afternoon!” By the time his yellow cab rolled up to a makeshift stage on West 46th Street and Broadway, the famous crossroads were overrun with thousands of fans. “I’ll be putting a little hat out here later,” he joked with the crowd. “We’re basically busking.” The 15-minute set featured four songs from his upcoming album, New, including the title track, “Save Us,” “Everybody Out There,” and the live debut of “Queenie Eye.” A week later he would perform a similar “pop up” show in London’s Covent Garden. 10. Teaming up with the cover band at his stepson’s graduation party (May 9th, 2015) In May 2015, McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell celebrated her son Arlen’s graduation from Rollins College with a soiree held at the Interlachen Country Club in Winter Park, Florida. Local band Josh Walther & The Phase5 had been booked to play, but after an hour on the dance floor, McCartney couldn’t resist asking if he could sit in. Needless to say, the band agreed. He requested “I Saw Her Standing There,” which the group didn’t know (!), so they set about learning it on the fly. “Our piano player pulled up a chart off the Internet and we just totally winged it,” Walther told The Examiner.  “It turned out great.” Following the 1963 barnstormer, they launched into a blues jam appropriately called “Graduation Day,” featuring original lyrics by McCartney. Walther found the rock legend to be a “super nice guy and very unassuming. He seemed to want to hang out more with us, but his wife wouldn’t have it.” He joined the hired entertainment again at Russian businessman Roman Abramovich’s New Year’s Eve gathering in 2016, where the Killers had been booked to play. McCartney and Brandon Flowers performed a larynx-shredding version of “Helter Skelter” – and proved that Macca’s urge to jump onstage with a party band remains undiminished even after half a century. http://dlvr.it/QZFhBR #RollingStone #MusicNews

[foursprout-blog]

No Need To Die Twice: Why I’ll Never Do Ketamine Again

New Post has been published on http://foursprout.com/happiness/no-need-to-die-twice-why-ill-never-do-ketamine-again/

No Need To Die Twice: Why I’ll Never Do Ketamine Again

WATCHING THE AMBULANCE PULL AWAY from the curbside, I entered the dark club and asked the bouncer what was happening. “Some guy passed out in the bathroom. Overdosed on Special K.” 

“What the fuck is ‘special K?’ Isn’t that a cereal?”

“It’s an animal tranquilizer. He took too much and went into a K-hole.”

The term ‘K-hole’ was the most frightening slang I’d ever heard for a drug experience. Recreational drugs are supposed to induce euphoria and enlightenment, not shove you down a black hole and force an ambulance to haul away your drooling hulk.

It was at that moment that I knew I would have to try Special K.

ON A BLACK RAINY DECEMBER NIGHT a year later, a twinkly-eyed, goatee-wearing young man stopped me at a party and told me he enjoyed my writing. As we began talking, I pegged him as a “Dr. Buzz” type—my label for a white male who compensates for possible social awkwardness by knowing everything there is to know about illegal drugs. He was with a nerdy friend I’ll dub Mr. Spectacles.

Dr. Buzz revealed that he was on a paid sabbatical from work and, to pass the time, he’d been shooting ketamine hydrochloride—the medical name for Special K—into his ass muscles daily for the past eleven nights. He said that after doing ketamine, the “real” world seemed boring. He seemed bright and well-adjusted enough that I began to trust him. Touting the drug’s glories, he and his bespectacled chum offered to share some K with my female companion and me. I still suffered from the impression that ketamine was merely a tranquilizer that would induce a heavily stoned “body high” rather than the most terrifying psycho-death trip of my life. He cautioned that since K impaired motor skills, it was not a social drug and we’d have to ditch the party and repair to his quiet lair on the city’s far fringes. He promised we’d be lucid after an hour or two and that he’d drive us home.

Foolishly, we agreed.

WHEN WE REACHED HIS SAD, FLAT HOME, the lights were off and a man was already there sitting in darkness, bathed in droning electronic music. When Dr. Buzz flicked on the lights, the man’s eyes were so glassy, he appeared retarded. He had reverted back to Apeman and looked at Dr. Buzz with faint recognition.

Dr. Buzz and Mr. Spectacles had already burned down some liquid ketamine into butter-colored powder for needlephobes such as me and my girl. He cut out three huge lines for us—enough to make a sandwich.

“That seems like a lot,” I protested, sitting on a couch.

“No,” he insisted, carefully drawing two syringefuls of liquid K from a vial with which to ass-spike himself and Mr. Spectacles. “That’s a normal dose. You’ll have to do that much to feel the full effect. You can do two lines, and she can do one.”

He told us to snort it but to avoid trying to swallow it as if it were cocaine—just crush the crystals in our noses using our fingers. He said that within ten seconds, we’d feel a warmth in our feet that would rise through our bodies.

After snuffling my two monster rails, I handed the bill and mirror to my girlfriend, who inhaled her portion. I closed my eyes for a second and then looked over at her. She appeared to be already dead.

BOOM! Almost instantly I felt warmth and a savage disorientation. I began to feel sucked inside a hurricane’s slow-motion roar. The floor dropped out beneath me. Everything was TOO BRIGHT AND TOO LOUD. Wow…wow…wow…somebody turn this music off and turn the goddamned lights off…it’s too much…it’s too much…too much…too much…oh shit oh shit oh shit oh shit. 

The one-level house suddenly had an upper and a lower level. It wasn’t a house anymore—it was a spaceship casino. A deafening strobe effect pounded my head as if I was tied to the bottom of a subway car as it screamed through the Bronx. Faster than I could blink, images and sounds flew by like neon shrapnel. I was being munched alive by a giant digital machine, a computer- screen wonderworld where my identity was pulverized and pasted into a cold, endless tapestry. Pieces of myself were chopped up and spat back with epileptic speed.

I was being smashed down and torn apart and fused with “the one” against my will. I was separated from myself and could observe my identity stolen and broadcast on the Jumbotron screen of existence. Even my voice had become digitized and sounded as if I was speaking into an electric fan.

A crushed pile of plastic chips. Utterly synthetic. Bland virtual-reality mazescapes, the triumph of math over feeling. Dead flat cybernetic soullessness. Mechanical insect brain. The only emotion left was the most primitive one—fear.

I was a biology-class frog, my brain severed from my spinal column, pinned down in a steel tray, unable to move or feel.

Suddenly all was quiet and eternal. All the colors were burned to ash. Cold, dark space and emotionless planets. A dull grey orb surrounded by hissing blackness. Many things are deader than we’d imagined.

Rearing my woozy head, I realized where I was. I just saw shadows of other humans. No one was stirring. The music had stopped and the lights were off. A James Brown bobble-head doll on the table next to me reflected the middle-of-the-night moon rays and radiated cold, sadistic, voodoo death.

I squeezed my girl. I hovered over her as she stood downtown in the city where I met her…I saw where she fit in my life’s thread, all the events that led up to meeting her and winding up here, lost in a K-hole. We both huddled against a blizzard of blackness.

She said she had to leave. She had to go. Had to get out of there. She stood up and I reached after her. Don’t go. As bad as it is here, it’s worse out there. She took two steps and collapsed on the floor.

I stood up. I looked down at my feet, which seemed to be only three or four inches below my chin. On the floor beneath me was the unconscious Mr. Spectacles with a Mongoloid grin.

I began vomiting. On the couch. On the floor. On the doorknob while walking outside. On the rock garden. Power-puking until all I could taste was my own stomach acids and the rank chemical ketamine taste. My eyes were watering, my foggy breath shallow.

My girl and I sat out in the carport in thirty-five-degree December rain for a half-hour, feeling no cold. Every time I opened my eyes to focus, I saw three of everything swirling around kaleidoscopically.

She finally managed to call a cab. Vomit rose in my throat the whole way. At a stop light, I opened the door and sprayed gut juice onto the asphalt.

“Don’t do Special K,” I mumbled to the driver as he pulled up to my building.”

I FELT A SPOOKY MALAISE for the next week. Everything seemed dead or in the process of dying. Cheap computer-generated TV ads and my rattling kitchen-stove fan threatened to suck me back down into the K-hole.

Researching ketamine on the Internet, I discovered that the recommended powder dose is a small “bump” rather than the twin peaks I inhaled. One study determined that users experience memory loss and “mild schizophrenia” for days after ingesting it. I also learned that Special K can induce seizures and cause severe brain damage in epileptics and left-handers.

I’m left-handed and mildly epileptic.

Thanks, Dr. Buzz.

KETAMINE WAS INVENTED IN 1962 as a safer alternative to PCP, the drug of bloodthirsty psycho legend. Its molecular structure is almost identical to that of its scarier older brother.

Ketamine was employed as an anesthetic during the Vietnam War and is still being used on house pets and children worldwide. Its painkilling properties are so powerful, it’s used in burn trauma and for post-amputation stump pain.

Along with PCP, DXM, and nitrous oxide, ketamine belongs to a class of drugs called “dissociatives,” so named because the user experiences a clear split between ego and body. Physicians refer to such a hallucinogenic near-death state as an “emergence reaction.”

Some people find the blotting out of self to be euphoric, an erasure of all self-consciousness; others, like me, find it nightmarish and run screaming back into themselves.

After media horror stories of its use as a “date-rape drug,” the Feds finally declared ketamine illegal in 1999. You can still buy it over the counter in Mexico, which is where Dr. Buzz procured his stash.

Ketamine’s most ardent spokesman was the neurophysiologist John Lilly who invented the isolation tank in the 1950s. The films Day of the Dolphin and Altered States are based on Lilly’s writings and experiences. Lilly is perhaps best known for his extensive studies trying to decipher dolphin communication patterns. What’s not as well-known is that he was a lifelong K addict rumored at one point to be injecting himself with ketamine once an hour twenty times daily for the better part of a year.

After enough time surfing the K-hole with dolphins (he never gave K to dolphins but claimed he once dosed one with acid), Lilly started believing that the gentle cetaceans were intermediary entities between humans and the space-alien agents of the “Earth Coincidence Control Office (ECCO).” In the 1970s, he went so far as to warn President Gerald Ford that the dolphins could save us from ECCO. Lilly once told a reporter:

Dolphins have personalities and are valuable people.…But what about their spiritual life? Can they get out of their bodies and travel?…I suspect that they’re all ready to talk and carry on with us if we are not so blind. So we open up pathways to them with ketamine, LSD, swimming with them, falling in love with them, and them falling in love with us. 

In short, John Lilly was insane, and ketamine probably played a role in his cognitive unspooling. He spent his life in and out of the funny farm.

Marcia Moore, a wealthy heiress and astrologer, was another ketamine cheerleader. She wrote a 1978 book called Journeys into the Bright World, which included this eager endorsement of falling down the K-hole:

If captains of industry, leaders of nations could partake of this love medicine the whole planet might be converted into the Garden Of Eden… 

On a frigid night early in 1979, Moore climbed into a tree, injected ketamine, dozed off, and froze to death.

The creepiest endorsement of ketamine, and the one which came closest to emulating my experience, is by David Woodard, described as a “requiem composer and a Dream Machine fabricator.” His essay “The Ketamine Necromance” includes this psychotic passage:

Although ketamine is a drug administered and experienced by living beings, the necromantic communications facilitated by its use tend to benefit the dead, offering their spirits a tantalizing portal through which they may experience the world of the warmblooded. Perhaps the dead are desperately clustering around an elusive window they have been chasing down for five or six thousand years of gnashing, burning, excruciating torment. Perhaps one of them would manage to claw his way into the ketamine user’s fleshy, nubile brain for a 56- minute respite. Such communication seems a match of spirits—at times fencing, at others playing mah-jongg or a game of decapitate the endless row of tractor drivers or amputate the handicapped. In a ketamine experience, you are likely to become a subatomic particle sniffing at the ominous butt of nuclear war, the pinnacle of NDE-driven necromantic glory and the greatest hope of all dead spirits that are not enjoying themselves. 

I SAW DR. BUZZ AT A CLUB about a month later, at a point when he’d been shooting Special K in his ass every night for seven straight weeks. He asked me if I wanted to do it again.

No more Ku Klux Ketamine for me.

Despite all the psychonautical jibberjabber about ketamine’s satori-inducing potential, or its application as a pharmaceutical biofeedback machine, or even its use in helping the dolphins save the Earth from ECCO, all it taught me is this:

I don’t want to die.