#the dog discourse possessed me. i suppose.

[clogginbloggingoggin]

[ramblesinshamblesgreenbus]

i talk to T and I tell him, i'm doing to you what he's doing to me - why are we both so stupid? why do we both consent? why can't i treat you like a respectable human being instead of an emotional crutch. why do i get mad at you, like those shit owners that yell at their dogs when they yap in joy that they're finally home.

i tell him, you have the softness i crave. the gentleness i was robbed of. you disbarred the winding road to your heart, so why do i just wish to squash it? i would hope it's more than ego - i was hurt, i need to hurt someone else. maybe i need to teach you a lesson. maybe i need someone to really relate to. to look at and ask "see how it feels?". maybe. to do to someone what was done to me and hear "what you did was shit - you're a bad person" because then maybe I'd believe it about him.

late november and the bad mood comes from inside but the culprit is external.

what vexes me so about T? the fact that he admits his weakness? the fact that he doesn't lash out or act high and mighty when i hurt him? the fact that he is what i crave to be and what i loathe becoming? I'm puking my anxieties into the air, hoping they'll drift toward the ceiling but of course they rain back down on me. I’m not stupid—I know I’m creating my own misery.

I remember a man at the head of a seminar table saying that character should be able to be summed up simply by describing the way the moon appears over their shoulders. most writing advice gives me secondhand embarrassment but this made me sit up and pay attention. did I really understand what it meant? I was nineteen, chickpea-brained and perpetually high (should i give that a try? helped me navigate much shittier situations), hard to trust any assertion from that version of myself, but the idea that the world looks a particular way to everyone is an old one. every set of eyes sees differently and its up to the author to tether the moon to the character’s particular vision, individualize it. I suppose the revolutionary goal of all writing is to show someone else the inside of your own head, or inside the head of a character you made up, which is also your own head but with a specific kind of filter overlaid. at that seminar table, I thought to myself: to G, the moon looks like a curled-up girl crying in his bed. it came to me like that—easy. obviously he was an abuser and not my character, although I had invented enough good qualities of his for that to be considered a work of fiction. T can only see full moons - if I were to look him in the eye while he was looking at the moon, I'd see it reflected full in the blue of his gaze. why is that. make a joke about it being made of cheese. what's the moon like to B - probably a dark void right now, all-consuming, endless pit of a black hole. to me the moon is jagged and slim and pointy, and past me would want to resemble her, and present me just begs for it to be more, to shine brighter - my eyes hurt in the dark.

I think I was nine when I came home with the question of do you see the same colors I see and my mother said, “i don't know, tell me about them,” which meant nothing in the grand scheme of things, stuff rarely does - but it meant everything to me. let's create together. Dante and Aristotle or some shit like that. I want someone to get me like mum does.

the work has been good, better than good, but I can't articulate, or don't wanna articulate what has gripped me over the past few months even though it’s been transformative because the thing that’s gripped me also feels drenched in what the storm cloud discourse decided was Bad. obsession, perception, possession, boundary dissolving sublimity. art, I guess. creation. I don't fucking know. yeah I’m still haunted by all that same old shit, really wish that I weren’t. hard to write without thinking about it. my problem is certain arguments still ring thru my head because I found them so stupid and therefore chilling.

writing without righteousness makes me feel like a maniac, like a villain straddling a rocket aimed for a stranger's brain, whipping its flank like, faster faster. it also feels really good. C always warned that I was the kind of girl destined to ruin a life, but it can't be mine that’s destroyed because look where I am: quiet mornings with the cat on my lap, afternoons of work directed by me, produced by me, conjured by the sorcerer within me who either stands arms spread like angel wings or lies in wait, a fox curled in my heart-den. a girl curled in a bed, nose tucked into her tail. I really don't think I'll be able to live like this forever, don't believe I’m actually charmed. this has to be a trick, some kind of glitch that eventually will be corrected, but in the meantime I'll play the bandit, the congirl with an opal heart. I'm getting away with it. another corridor revealed, cobwebbed and stale. doubt does creep in, like maybe I shouldn't be searching so relentlessly, maybe I'm going to find something I shouldn't, maybe regret is around the corner.

[thegeminisage]

sometimes i see people talk about discourse on their dashes that i haven’t actually seen on my dash and i am SOOO profoundly grateful. maybe it’s just bc i’m old but the fact that there is “destroy the impala” discourse is THE DUMBEST FUCKING THING i have ever heard in my LIFE and i have witnessed some SERIOUSLY rank takes since signing up for this bullshit in 2010. this website is incapable of critical thought and it’s driving me bonkers so i’m making a post listing all the reasons that’s fucking stupid

so like: dean loves the car the same giddy and possessive way he loves his bedroom - because she’s HIS and something he’s allowed to have, and because she’s safe, and because she’s always been there for him, to the point of LITERALLY holding him up when lucifer-in-sam was beating him to death. it doesn’t have jack shit to do with john winchester. it doesn’t even have to be about him valuing the car as part of his childhood or his childhood home. the car is metaphorically a physical and spiritual extension of dean himself - caring so much about her and lovingly maintaining her is the closest dean ever got to self-love and self-care in canon

furthermore, saying u have to destroy the impala just because it has any correlation at all whatsoever with john is like. the exact problem i have with every john fic ever written (which is why i’m having to write my own). there’s absolutely no nuance in that take. that’s the opposite of nuance. that black-and-white thinking is literally sooo unhealthy like y’all might need therapy? dean’s always gonna love his dad no matter what his dad did and no matter whether YOU think that’s healthy or not. sometimes our parents are shitty people and we love them anyway because they’re our parents?? that’s how unconditional love works. dean is full of unconditional love. that’s part of what makes him dean.

i don’t think dean would EVER totally cut john out of his life, but the POINT of doing that to an abuser is STOP THE ABUSE. but john IS already out of dean’s life and the abuse HAS stopped (even if the effects linger) because john is already fucking dead - dean can’t cut him out anymore than that without shredding himself to pieces! is he supposed to stop liking classic rock? is he supposed to give up hunting and drinking and heart attack food and sarcasm? pool and poker and making food and fixing cars? is he supposed to say that he no longer cares about family, especially sam, because sam is john’s kid and john’s charge that dean had to care for during his abusive childhood? we’re all informed by who our parents were and how they raised (or didn’t raise) us. asking dean to get rid of the parts of him that were or still are john’s handiwork is asking him to become an entirely new person, someone utterly unrecognizable as dean. it’s much more healthy to want him to find peace in self-acceptance than it is to teach him to despise what came from john just BECAUSE it came from john. 

sure, fine, your sober salad-eating openly gay pta dad who doesn’t hunt and drives a minivan and likes dogs seems like a healthy and well-adjusted guy, but he doesn’t seem interesting, and he certainly doesn’t seem like dean winchester. in 14.13 dean even canonically talks about what his life might be like if john hadn’t been abusive - he seems to believe that he’d be so different as to be unrecognizable, but he also seems to find that idea horrifying. it’s a bad episode, but a good speech; it’s the closest we ever see him get to casting off his self-loathing and accepting and even valuing who he is instead. 

in real life, pressuring people to cut out their abusive parents just because you think you know best and they’ve been brainwashed into loving bad people is actually super sketchy. real people who aren’t fictional characters get to decide on what terms they interact with their abusers, even if it’s not terms other people are comfortable with. the abused person is the only one with the right to decide and their opinion matters more than everyone else’s combined. it is possible to become so obsessed with saving someone that you destroy them (dean does exactly that to sam in season 9, and even season 9, which is a bad season, condemns this as WILDLY unhealthy behavior. again i say: y’all need therapy.) 

wanting john to suffer for what he did is understandable, but it’s never worth it if dean gets caught in the crossfire. “destroy the car” feels like it’s more about hating john and getting back at him for his abuse than it is about caring about dean and wanting him to heal. killing the car would be way more upsetting for dean than it would be for john -  john didn’t even value the car that much.  

like, if the car is dean and dean is the car we can meta this up a little and say that OUR desire to have dean destroy it as a way of cutting john out of his life even when john is ALREADY DEAD is pushy and creepy, and betrays a willingness to see dean destroy himself if it means becoming someone we find sanitized and palatable, by getting everything connected to john out of the picture, because hating john is more important than loving dean.  

even when dean gets angry at john, he doesn’t and will never hate his father, or want to hurt him or see him be hurt. hurting john IS hurting dean by proxy, because dean loves him, even if that’s unhealthy, or inconvenient for you. so who do you want to kill that car for, really? if it’s not dean, it must be yourself.

[spn masterpost]

[the-portrait-of-seraph]

Arthur Rimbaud and Sakaguchi Ango bday post!

      Happy birthday to these two literary figures! I love both of them so much and their works are so lovely to me.

     Born on Oct. 20th, 1854, Jean Nicholas Arthur Rimbaud was born and grew to become one of my favorite poets. He's lived a pretty complicated life with many trials and tribulations, but is also known for his sometimes violent, yet romantic relationship with fellow poet Paul Verlaine. He embodies an essence similar to that of Baudelaire, but I suppose that's because he used conventional forms and used poetry as a way to experment with unconventional patterns of behavoir and thought. His work influenced and made an opening for the Surrealist and Dadaist movements. If you have watched Bungou Stray Dogs, you will know that Rimbaud's character possesses an ability known as Illuminations, which is a collection of poems written before his death in 1891. I highly recommend this along with some others that I will mention in the end.

    Also born on Oct. 20th, but in 1906, we have Sakaguchi Ango! Known for his affliation with the Buraiah school of writers and fellow Japanese literary giants Dazai Osamu and Oda Sakunosuke, he wrote about post WWII Japan and its people. One prime example would be his short story One Woman and the War. His characters don't have a specific goal or motive to act upon, they're just living for the sake of the reader's entertainment. He is also known for his most famous essay Darakuron, an essay on the bushido code in Japan's time of war. (Has nothing to do with the idea of decadence, I felt lied to while reading this lol.)

Recommended works

Rimbaud:

Illuminations

Sensation and Teardrop from Selected Works in Translation by A.S Kline

Narration

Sakaguchi:

Darakuron: A Discourse on Decadence

Zokudarakuron: A Discourse on Decadence II

Pearls

One Woman and the War

[raven-m-3]

The Jane Eyre Solution

Hi nonny!

Thank you for the ask. I absolutely agree: from what we’ve seen so far in the ST, Ben and Rey are equals in terms of their Force powers, but not their morality. And indeed Ben, not Rey, is the one in need of a redemption arc.

Personally, I find the recent discourse about Ben and Rey’s equality and relative “strength” fascinating. I’ve been trying to make sense of it, which has led me to one of my favorite topics: what Jane Eyre tells us about Reylo. 

Buckle in, my dears. 

Are they equals?

I’ve talked to many GA members and casual fans, and I think it’s fair to say that the average reasonable viewer (who isn’t sexist or bigoted) has a similar take as I did on Reylo’s equality / strength before I joined active fandom. That is:

(1) Ben was a force to be reckoned with in TFA, but Rey ultimately overpowered him and “won”; and

(2) in TLJ, we saw that unequivocally that Rey and Ben were equally badass / powerful in the Force. 

However, since joining active fandom and devouring tons of evidence, I now think the outcome of the fight on SKB is more complicated than Rey "winning.” After all, Ben was greatly weakened at the time, and chose not to kill Rey himself. 

The thing is: both of these views on Reylo’s SKB duel are valid. It is fair to say that:

(1) Rey definitively defeated Ben on SKB; and

(2) the SKB duel is consistent with their status as equals in the Force.

Both conclusions are true precisely because of what you mention above, nonny. Because although Ben and Rey are physical equals in the Force, Rey is Ben’s moral superior so far. This explains the key reason Ben “lost” to Rey.

In other words, when we watch this moment:

...we are NOT supposed to conclude that Ben is weaker in the Force than Rey. Rather, we are supposed to see Ben’s defeat as a consequence of his own (im)moral choices. 

So: Kill Han-- > be spiritually weakened by the “evil act” --> be physically wounded by an avatar of your father (Chewie)--> channel your pain into anger  when you realize that something you want is getting away (Rey)--> get defeated by the very thing you tried to possess and dominate.

Further, Ben losing the duel says as much about his own moral failings in this moment as it does about Rey embracing her own moral strengths-- by facing her fears, standing her ground, and channeling the Force to win. 

Is Ben emotionally weaker than Rey? 

The discourse has extended beyond the question of who is stronger in the Force to include who is stronger in other respects. 

Once concern I’ve seen: maybe Rey and Ben are equally powerful in the Force, but Ben has a weaker constitution than Rey. (e.g., he makes puppy dog eyes at her at the end of TLJ, whereas she is firm and resolute).  

 I think this take completely misses the point. 

When we watch Ben stare at Rey here, looking utterly dejected and lost:

 ... we are not supposed to conclude that he is a weaker and more “pathetic.” Rather, we are supposed to see him suffering due to the poor moral choices he just made. 

Yes, Rey made mistakes. The TLJ novel itself says that Rey made a mistake by thinking that Ben turning on his master would be the same as him turning from the darkness. She oversimplified Ben’s situation. She also inadvertently triggered him by pulling the saber.

But Rey’s mistakes in the Throne Room are not nearly the same in magnitude as Ben’s mistakes in the final act of TLJ. Ben’s mistakes are far greater. 

Ben is the one who chose to continue on his dark path of power and destruction over being with the woman he loves. Ben is the one who tried to make Rey feel alone and dependent on him during his proposal so that she would give in. (RJ stated this flat out in an interview with Empire). 

Ben’s puppy dog eyes in the final FB were a necessary display of regret, guilt, and sorrow for his wrongdoing. 

Now, I want to be clear that Ben is clearly coded a victim of abuse, which should shape how we view his character. 

But keep in mind that Ben isn’t merely a passive victim. Seeing him as such takes away all of his agency. 

Yes, he’s been victimized, and his scenes with Snoke show us that he deserves sympathy. But after killing Snoke, he made a choice to seize power while urging Rey to “let it all die”-- and this was a choice he made freely. 

In fact, RJ made it clear that Ben had agency in his choices here. 

 “I wanted to bring him closer to being the villain he wanted to be in The Force Awakens” (RJ’s TLJ Director’s commentary- 1:55:20)

Ben’s primary motive in killing Snoke was to save Rey, but Snoke’s death also gave him the opportunity to seize something he wanted. And he took it, despite Rey begging him not to. 

Of course we are supposed to sympathize with Ben despite his poor choices in the Throne Room and on Crait.  After all, he has been neglected, brainwashed, and abused throughout his life, and gaining power has been his single-minded focus for some time-- he thinks it’s the right thing to do. And abandonment and betrayal are his triggers.

And yet. 

The simple fact is that we can sympathize with Ben, understanding why he made those choices, while still not condoning them.  

 Which brings me to:

The Jane Eyre Solution

I’m far from the first to say that Jane Eyre is a strong inspiration in Reylo.  

However, an appreciation of how strongly Jane / Rochester inspired Reylo’s dynamic as spiritual and intellectual equals, but not moral equals (yet) is woefully lacking. And it’s high time we rectified that. 

Just take the case of P&P. It’s incorrect to think that Reylo closely emulates that dynamic, because the assumption is that Reylo will eventually come to a place of understanding by rectifying their (comparable) sins-- just like Lizzy and Darcy (e.g., Darcy is proud, Lizzy is prejudiced; Darcy starts things off on the wrong foot, but Lizzy is in the wrong, too). 

That’s not Reylo. Because Rey and Ben’s sins are not, and have never been, comparable in magnitude. 

With Reylo, just like in Jane / Rochester, we have a significant moral divide between our male and female leads, even though they are soulmates and spiritual / mental equals. 

Like Rey, Jane: 

Is orphaned and had abusive caretakers

Has a low status in society 

Follows a moral code that her modern audience approves of (e.g., showing compassion, protecting the vulnerable, refusing to live in “sin”)

Maintains a strong sense of self 

Is desperately seeking her place of belonging

Challenges tauthority figures in her life   

Eventually finds friends and a temporary home, but still feels lost without her beloved

Like Ben, Rochester:

Has a tragic backstory that was not his fault, and prompted his moral wrongdoing.

Follows a moral code that Jane and her modern audience finds unacceptable. 

Tries to strong arm Jane into seeing his perspective and doing what he wants her to do, even though it contradicts her morals.

Vacillates between being forceful / domineering and vulnerable / pleading  in order to get Jane to stay. 

 Is possessive. (“I must have you for my own–entirely my own. Will you be mine? Say yes, quickly.”) 

Tries to make Jane feel alone and dependent on him right before he proposes. 

Has a “You’re nothing” line during his proposal (“You–poor and obscure, and small and plain as you are–I entreat to accept me as a husband.”). 

Is completely despondent and has a meltdown when Jane leaves him

Thus, the moral divide in Reylo, like in Jane / Rochester, favors the woman-- it’s the man who makes the critical moral mistakes, and chooses a path that the woman cannot follow. 

This is precisely why it’s not a problem that Rey defeated Ben on SKB, and why Ben doesn’t have to defeat Rey and spare her life in order to prove that they are equals. Rey’s journey is not about rectifying her “sins.” Rey is on an entirely different arc than Ben is. 

Rey and Ben are going to complete their journeys in different ways. 

Just like Jane, Rey’s journey is about discovering her own identity, strength, purpose, and self-worth.  In IX, we need to see Rey coming to terms with who she is and what she stands for, despite temptations and obstacles that lead her away from the truth. 

 Perhaps this is why there are rumors that Rey is filming on a Jakku-like location.

Just like Rochester, Ben’s journey is about rectifying his wrongs and choosing a better moral path. This is inextricably tied to him accepting his true identity as Ben Solo. Learning to chose compassion over possession / his sense of self will also be key. (However, unlike Rochester, Ben won’t be “castrated” to earn his redemption, because that would be a puritanical cop-out.)

In conclusion...

Reylo is going to be the consummately equal couple in SW. They are already equal in terms of their Force powers. However, Rey is morally superior to Ben, and she will likely remain that way until the climax of the film-- much in the way that Jane was morally superior to Rochester until the end of Jane Eyre. 

To be clear, I’m not talking about the morality of using the dark vs. light side of the Force--  that’s a separate beast. What I mean to say is that Ben has made choices (e.g., Han, seizing power, arguing for death and destruction in building a new order), that are immoral. He hasn’t realized this yet-- but he will in Ep. IX. And he will become Rey’s moral equal. 

So really, the differences we see in Rey vs. Ben’s vulnerabilities, mistakes, and “losses” in the ST reflects the fact that they have different journeys as characters. 

Although both Ben and Rey are seeking belonging, Ben’s journey is about making better moral choices and accepting his true self, whereas Rey’s is about finding herself. 

In Reylo, just like in Jane/Rochester, they will enjoy a HEA after undergoing their necessary growth / transformation as individual characters, and finally meet as true equals at last-- in every sense of the word. 

Nonny, you got way, way more than you bargained for. 😂 But this was too much fun, and it gave me an excuse to write about Reylo and Jane Eyre- my two all-time favorite ships. Thank you for the ask! 

[lhaewiel]

Watership Down (2018): the review no one asked for

But the review I am going to do anyway because of all the feels.

Premise

Not so many of you know that I LOVE Watership Down to bits. The book has been a huge presence in my life and I have read it countless times. Especially during the times where I was hopeless and those times where I nearly let myself go into dangerous areas like suicide, I would read the book and it would console me.

This is also a huge memory from my mum, who passed away, and this book was handed to me by her. This book is a huge deal for me and this is also why I am doing this today.

I have seen also the 1978 animated adaptation and I’ve seen the 1999 animated series. I will talk briefly about them in a few moments.

I will keep the rest under the Read More, as this will be long.

Without further ado, I’ll start the review.

The book

As mentioned, the book is a huge deal for me. The story, besides the already mentioned emotional hang on me, is a very interesting one. It tackles themes like the fear of changing, the dangers of the unknown, plus the dangers of a regime, there’s a bit of environmentalism and it’s overall well written and a 11/10 would recommend.

It is a story about growth.

It is told from the point of view of wild rabbits, which is unusual. Richard Adams, the writer, is passionate about the subject and has read/consulted/conducted studies on wild rabbits, their language and their behaviour before writing this masterpiece. There are notes and explanations and every chapter starts with a literary quote that hints on what the chapter is about - and I sometimes propose this structure when writing down my fics.

Anyway.

I was really happy to see the 1978 adaptation, although not completely satisfied, and I also watched the animated series, which deviates a ,lot, but creates an interesting storyline and I would love a reboot of it at a certain point in time. I was not particularly thrilled at the beginning, but then it grew on me and this series is a beloved of mine.

The 2018 adaptation: the five stages of grief

I have written, in these two days, a lot of comments, which I will be listing here as FYI. They illustrate perfectly how I feel overall about the 2018 movie.

1 / 2 / 3 / 4 / 5 / 6 / 7 / 8 / 9 / 10 / 11 /  12 / 13 / 14 / 15 / 16 / 17 / 18 / 19 / 20 / 21 / 22 / 23 / 24 / 25 / 26 / 27 / 28 / 29 / 30 / 31 / 32 / 33 / 34 / 35

For the full comprehension of how fucking livid I am I suggest you read the comments above, they are all one-liners, quick to read and easy to understand.

I think, as mentioned above, this movie has made me pass through the 5 stages of grief and I think I’m still processing part of it. The problem, I think, it’s because this whole miniseries was 99.9% aimed at those who don’t know anything about the book, or the 1978 adaptation, or the 1999 series. As a standalone piece, without the knowledge of anything prior to this, the movie can be considered good.

But, considering that Watership Down is a niche work and not so many know about it, the whole fanbase is made of people who know this work and any adaptation by heart - trust me, this is not a huge fandom, it’s not DC or Marvel, it’s something you need to have read about previously because otherwise you wouldn’t know anything about it. We are the same 15 people in this fandom - let’s call it fandom ok?

I barely missed this because this new series was not even advertised and I did not miss it because 1. I am a huge nerd and b. I LOVE WATERSHIP DOWN.

So to say, the 99.9% of people don’t know about Watership Down, the 0.1% does, therefore only the 0.1% is watching this movie, which is not aimed at this 0.1%, but at the 99.9% who knows nothing. Of course there will be backlash. Of course there will be discourse. The 99.9% of people who know nothing will look at the 0.1% in the discourse and go “WTF, this movie is amazing!” and the 0.1% will probably yell “GO READ THE BOOK!” and there will be more discourse. Well done. Slow clap to BBC and Netflix. SARCASM.

*inhales*

To be honest, there were moments where I liked the movie, and I am going to go more into detail now.

What I liked

I want to give props for the cast chosen to voice the characters. I mean, Peter Capaldi, John Boyega and everyone else? I am pretty satisfied with the choices and I think the voices compliment each other really well.

I do like the soundtrack and the songs. I mean, “Bright eyes” by Simon and Garfunkel is iconic, but “Fire on fire” gives more atmosphere to the whole series.

I do like the animation a lot, I like the scenery and the various shifts. The warren of the snares was something out of a horror movie and I loved it, I think the scenes were created very well. Fiver’s visions were well rendered and Efrafa actually gave me chills on how it was rendered better than the other adaptations.

I liked Strawberry, she was very sweet and I guess I can see why they chose to make them a doe instead of a buck. Oh and the relationship between Dandelion and Hawkbit, and Blueberry and Blackberry, that was gold.

Unfortunately here it ends.

What I disliked

The overall OOC of the characters. Like, Hazel questions his abilities, but he is charismatic and is a born leader and this is why everyone follows him. He’s respected and the sentence “My Chief Rabbit told me to defend this burrow” is said by Bigwig out of pure and sincere respect for Hazel and the Efrafans literally shit themselves.

Ah, Bigwig. Yes, he’s big, he’s angry, but he’s also POLITE, with a HEART OF GOLD, and YES HE GETS FRUSTRATED, but he’s always RESPECTFUL and APOLOGISES. I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS FOR BIGWIG OKAY?

THEY DECIDED TO MAKE KEHAAR A HUGE JERK, when in fact he loves those rabbits to bits and never thinks twice about defending them. Also YOU BLOODY COWARDS, KEHAAR DOES NOT SPEAK THE RABBITS LANGUAGE, THERE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE A HUGE LANGUAGE BARRIER AND BIGWIG TEACHING KEHAAR TO SPEAK THE RABBITS LANGUAGE YOU

FOOLS

THE “BIG WATER” IS ACTUALLY SOMEWHERE AROUND THE BALTIC AREA YOU

DOUBLE FOOLS

*inhales*

You cut off the whole boat scene. THAT WAS A FUCKING PLOT POINT!! What was the point of showing that the rabbits could use a piece of floating junk to cross a river if then this was not employed later on?! The whole plan of actually make it out of Efrafa was created around that boat you

TRIPLE FOOLS

The plan was for Bigwig and the does + Blackavar to reach the bridge next to which Efrafa was built, jump in the boat and FLEE, leaving Woundworth and his Owsla so surprised they would not even have the mental and physical strength to follow Hazel, Bigwig & co. any further.

Also, during the Siege you cut off the scene where Fiver gets possessed by El-ahrairah and makes the Efrafans Shit Themselves Pt. 2

And what was the point of showing that Dandelion was the Flash of the rabbits, if he didn’t make the dog run after him to bring mayhem and destruction to the Efrafans?

Anyway, most of my commentary is linked above.

I also noticed the overusage of terms in rabbit language. If someone is not a fan of the series, they would not understand terms like “flayara”, “hrairoo”, “Tzorn”, “silflay hraka”, “Fu-Inlé” etc. You could have put some note at the bottom of the screen, like Lord of the Rings did with Elvish and Dwarvish.

Final thoughts

This whole thing gives me the feels. As a standalone piece, this movie is great, were I not to know anything about the series, then I would say a nice “well done”.

Unfortunately, with the knowledge I have, I can’t say I’m satisfied. I can’t say I’m okay. Was it nice? Yes, overall, but the whole storyline is not something I’m satisfied with. There were important pieces sacrificed for the sake of having something and considering that this was a miniseries, therefore something not to be necessarily crammed in 2 hours or so there were things that could have been better dealt with.

I’ll end this here, but feel free to come to me if you want to talk about this.

[genderassignment]

Borderland Creatures: Lise Haller Baggesen & Iris Bernblum at Goldfinch

Installation view of I am the horse, Goldfinch, Chicago. Photo credit: Daniel Hojnacki. Left: Iris Bernblum. Pretty baby 3, 2018, spray paint on photo. Right: Iris Bernblum. Pour, 2018, paint on wall, dimensions variable.

Gender Assignment Guest Blogger, Matt Morris

This is a story of biopower and biosociality…those bitches insisted on the history of companion species, a very mundane and ongoing sort of tale, one full of misunderstandings, achievements, crimes, and renewable hopes. (1)

To begin, rest assured that in my epigraph above, Donna Haraway writes ‘bitches’ in reference to dogs designed to service breeding and the interests of humans. However, it occurs to me how language demonstrates its potential to transmigrate across species (a system that is itself, language), and marks out a contentious zone in which femininity is denigrated, and the fact of our animal-ness is charged with a capacity for social abuse and enforced disparities across gender and race. Language is appropriated, and then reappropriated in common parlance, how one might clap back, confirming, ‘Yes, I’m that bitch.’ One wonders, and the wondering is overwhelming, at the intricacies of how language and organism and the institution of gender have been made to conspire in obfuscating life’s interdependencies. Haraway goes on to remind readers that to consider companion species is not only to account for pets, but also the plant- and animal-based foods we consume, cellular genetic modifications, products with less obvious origins among the living (horses, glue, etc.), and techno-hybrid aspects of contemporary life. The challenge to grasp either the particulars or scope of this paradigm is certainly an (intentional) effect of power. That artists Lise Haller Baggesen and Iris Bernblum succeed at finding starting points to contemplate these entanglements by revisiting the much-maligned genre of ‘horse art’ mostly relegated to the sphere of female adolescence is both novel and moving. In the years I’ve known both artists’ practices, I’ve come to trust that neither are squeamish around topics that are often avoided as much because of how easily they are dismissed as for how problematic they prove to be in their deconstruction. Motherhood, passé disco, unicorns, bucolic landscapes: both artists brave themes that even many other feminists avoid. Their exhibition I Am the Horse now on view at Goldfinch in Garfield Park proves to be écriture feminine (2) équestre par excellence.

If we reside in an oft-unacknowledged natureculture system, Baggesen and Bernblum’s art manifests naturecultureculture, at turns instinctively poetic, strategically conceptual, activist, collaborative, whimsical, and stark. Through paintings (on canvas, on photographs), photographic documentation of playful activations of sculptures (objects that are themselves also on view elsewhere in the space), projected video, drawing, and two audio soundtracks, both artists weave Borromean knots through Lacan’s imaginary and real.

(Why would I invoke such an old model of describing experience and consciousness as Lacan, when Baudrillard’s postulations decades ago of a madness of simulations detached from the real seem to be reaching new climaxes of surreal if not unbearable proportions in our present day? I’ll admit, I’m desperate to find means of surviving even thriving, and it’s in my personal bias that I find Lacan useful. It’s certainly a mere mirage of organization, but as with the ‘horse art’ I’m pondering here, it offers me some manageability with which to encounter immense entanglements with which I am otherwise inundated. I am struggling with being in the world, sometimes struggling to even face exhibition openings like this one about which I write. I’m searching for how to be—ethically, aesthetically, politically.)  

Lise Haller Baggesen. Refusenik on the beach, 2018, Photographic transparency, lightbox. Image courtesy of the artist

It’s in this present state that I feel such affinity for Baggesen’s Refuseniks, a series of costumes that propose hybridity for their wearers (across individuals, across species), by combining structural aspects of jockey shirts and horse blankets, often with multiplied arm holes and equine-shaped hoods. Refusenik (double wearable), 2017, is a melancholic confection draped in the gallery space, possessing all the pluralism of Rei Kawakubo and the lightly floral palette of Dirk Van Saene. In the accompanying photographs, we see these garments not only worn by people and horses alike, but also behaving architectonically, pitched into tents redolent of the Snoezelen-room-inspired immersive installations of Baggesen’s earlier work.

Make. Believe. Dress. Up. Pause to consider these words and phrases while observing Baggesen’s photographs of Refuseniks in the wild. The lightbox Refusenik on the Beach, 2018, shows a figure swimming offshore like an island-bound pony or a mermaid. These scenarios are acted out as conscious performative disengagements from dominant narratives that taxonomize and restrict across gender, age, and species. These works are efforts in conscious play, what psychoanalyst Ernst Kris termed ‘regression in the service of the ego,’ following on the pronouncement of becoming that names the exhibition. I am the horse.

Installation view of I am the horse, Goldfinch, Chicago. Photo credit: Daniel Hojnacki

What’s regrettable and even misguided within the literature that expounds on the bonds between women and horses—and by this, I’m speaking of a body of discourse inclusive not only of psychoanalysis and other modern modes of theory production, but also more expansive treatments of mythology and lore—is that these relationships are nearly always supposed as a substitution for women oriented toward men. The method of using a virgin to attract a unicorn so it may be caught and its horn severed and used for its healing properties is all misdirection: it seems clear to me that this narrative mostly prepares young women to be penetrated by virile conquests. The unfounded rumors of Catherine the Great’s lust for equine copulation follows on her wresting control of the Russian empire from her mentally ill husband. In her case, her strength of will that surpassed the men with whom she was attached and surrounded had to be distorted into bestial proportions in order to maintain a culture organized around male domination. A nebula of dildonic hobby horses, penis envy, the introduction of women riding side-saddle as early as the 14th century as a means of protecting their virginity if not also their decency—horses gallop through all sorts of conceptualizations that would portray women’s sexuality as vulnerable and in need of protection, and also a site of lack, a cavity designed to be filled. It would seem that across the literature that characterizes women’s relationships to horses, men can’t help but recast these attachments as metaphoric pussy grabbing of a most intimate order, territorializing the horse’s body as a prosthetic extension of their own desire and dread and anger (read: misogyny) to control women and their object choices, erotic or otherwise. This is a consuming violence further materialized by the litany of ways that the unchecked, unexamined, privileged marker of ‘men’ is scripted with an entitlement to possess whatever the holder of that sign wishes to possess, to possess and then destroy, and the absolute conviction held within that position that any alternative narratives produced within the culture is metaphoric to them.

It is against this violence and the symbolic order that reifies it that Bernblum and Baggesen act. Upon entering the exhibition, Baggesen’s audio piece, Stallion, 2018, is played on white headphones beneath one of several lightbox photographs in the exhibition that show her piecework Refusenik garments used in tropical landscapes. The sound piece is a sort of audio guide, as if a didactic for a museum collection—a format for working that recurs across Baggesen’s oeuvre and shows how her research operates across writing and studio production. The audio speaks to The Lady and the Unicorn tapestries in Paris’ Musée de Cluny, noting possible symbols for virginity, chastity, and maternity within the textiles’ imagery, with frequent departures into lullaby-like singing and theoretical proposals such as: “’Our selves’ are not located within ‘ourselves’…but are a function of it and vice versa, and personhood is acquired, along with ‘soul,’ gradually and suddenly….” From the start, the logic of this exhibition proceeds counter to any linear theory of development in which a monolithic subject is constituted.

Iris Bernblum. Pretty baby 2, 2018, spray paint on photo. Image courtesy of the artist and Aspect/Ratio Gallery, Chicago

Also from the start, the titular horse in both artists’ projects is haunted by a spectral unicorn. In Bernblum’s Pretty baby 3, 2018, a mottled horse is photographed in black and white. Where a unicorn’s horn might emerge from its head, the artist has sprayed the print with a hazy, glowing pink paint. Is this the body from which her ten-foot-tall unicorn horn-cum-lightning rod Struck, 2016, was removed? While the image conjures fantasies both telepathic and amputating, the action of it as an object—the spray of paint that Bernblum repeats across numerous works—belongs to a nouveau réaliste mode of painting that recalls Niki de Saint Phalle’s Shooting Pictures of the 1960s. The pigment dispersions and drips in Bernblum’s paintings—on photographs, paper, and for Pour, 2018, down the gallery wall itself—are jouissance gestures held at an ambiguous point of rupture, appearing to spill forth, but understood as applied onto the bodies (of horses, of gallery-institution) depicted. This, I have come to feel, is the zone in which Bernblum and her audiences are held—threshold spaces, subtle but provocatively suspenseful, with all the erotic, energetic potential of bodies together pressing into the moment of her artwork. She commands an art herstory that swells from Benglis’ ejaculated spills and Judy Chicago’s spray-painted ‘flesh gates,’ ‘cunts,’ and ‘Great Ladies’ works. Here is one of the linkages between artistic praxis and the horse bodies that roam through the exhibition: these painterly forerunners pushed past pictorial illusionism into the expressive potential of material itself, understood simultaneously through being looked upon (imaginary) and acted with (real). So too, it would seem, do horses. History of science scholar Laurel Braitman notes in her research of how animals are thought about within human culture, "Horses and…unicorns—these are all borderland creatures; gateway animals to other worlds," she says. "They help us imagine wonderful other ways of being in the world,” of harnessing one’s own power and potential for transformation. (3)

Lise Haller Baggesen. Grown up Refusenik, Copenhagen, October 2017, 2017. Photographic transparency, lightbox. Image courtesy of the artist

The efforts of these two artists sensitize their audiences to the means by which such transformative tools are restricted from use by their situation into early periods of development that are made difficult to access, through stigmas of some sort of arrested adolescence and the assigned roles and responsibilities of adulthood. The assembled artworks, the excursions they document, and the desires they manifest act against capitalist time, the work shift of the laborer, the demands on the time of mothers and working mothers, the imposition of a before and after of sexual awakening. Baggesen’s Grown-up Refusenik, Copenhagen, October 2017, 2017, shows an upright figure standing beside a clear-eyed horse named Nellie. One sees a graying beard along the jawline of the figure, whose head is otherwise masked by a pink horse hood. If not for this fanciful headpiece, this image might recall the other tradition in horse art, the status-symbol equestrian portrait that came to prominence in the 16th–18th centuries of European painting. As it is, one is left to quietly rethink the conceptual divisions upon which our political, economic, and ideological systems depend. What if the hierarchies of speciesism are toppled, and with them, the metaphors that would organize all women’s attachments as preludes or parallels to their being dominated by men? What it the right-wing accelerationism’s tenuous reliance on regulated, linear time might be disrupted in order to gain access to modes of play and being that have been restricted to childhood? What if we breathe, as Bernblum’s two-channel video work breathes, or we make space to catch our breath amidst what feels like a world on fire? What if we explore unbridled, libidinal release that transgresses borderlands? Because, interestingly, Baggesen and Bernblum work into and from facets of écriture féminine that are not essentialist in defining a category of womanhood, but even, as Wittig proposes would “destroy the sexes as a sociological reality if we want to start to exist.” Optimistically, she invites forms of becoming beyond a binary: “To refuse to be a woman, however, does not mean that one has to become a man.” What if, in refusal, we become unicorns?

End Note: I’ve decided that for my series of contributions to Gender Assignment, I want to attach to each essay a selected perfume that I’ve worn through most or all of the drafting of these texts. This can be traced back to my use of perfume in my own art practice, as well as conversations around sensitivity and wellness related to scent that I’ve shared with my host and editor here, Mel Potter, as well as the artists and subjects of this and other forthcoming texts. For this first essay, I have written within a cloud of Mon Musc a Moi, released in 2015 by A Lab on Fire, designed by Dominique Ropion. This scent opens with quick bursts of bergamot and peach blossom before wrapping a sugary heliotrope-vanilla in wet-fur musks. The perfume house recently renamed the scent Messy SexyTM Just Rolled Out of Bed, and it strikes me that the former name possesses an introspection and reticence that is perhaps in keeping with this exhibition, while its updated moniker casts the scent into a narrative tinged with male-gazey sexual-objecthood that may be more salable, but belies some of the poetry of the scent.

Matt Morris is an artist, writer, and sometimes curator based in Chicago. He analyzes forms of attachment and intimacy through painting, perfume, photography, and institutional critique. He has presented artwork at Adds Donna, The Bike Room, Gallery 400, The Franklin, peregrineprogram, Queer Thoughts, Sector 2337, and Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago, IL; The Mary + Leigh Block Museum of Art in Evanston, IL; The Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, IL; Fjord and Vox Populi in Philadelphia, PA; The Contemporary Arts Center, U·turn Art Space, Aisle, and semantics in Cincinnati, OH; Clough-Hanson Gallery and Beige in Memphis, TN; Permanent.Collection in Austin, TX; Cherry + Lucic in Portland, OR; The Poor Farm in Manawa, WI; with additional projects in Reims, France; Greencastle, IN; Lincoln, NE; and Baton Rouge, LA. Morris is a transplant from southern Louisiana who holds a BFA from the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and earned an MFA in Art Theory + Practice from Northwestern University, as well as a Certificate in Gender + Sexuality Studies. In Summer 2017 he earned a Certification in Fairyology from Doreen Virtue, PhD. He is a lecturer at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a contributor to Artforum.com, ARTnews, Art Papers, Flash Art, Pelican Bomb, and Sculpture; and his writing appears in numerous exhibition catalogues and artist monographs.

1. Haraway, Donna. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2007. Print, p. 5.

2. <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Écriture_féminine>

3.  Quoted in Davia Nelson and Niiki Silva’s “Why Do Girls Love Horses, Unicorns and Dolphins?” All Things Considered. National Public Radio, February 9, 2011. <https://www.npr.org/2011/02/09/133600424/why-do-girls-love-horses-unicorns-and-dolphins> 

[dyoun77]

Similarities between Hakumaitou (K) and the Golden trio (Pandora Hearts)

As a great fan of Hakumaitou, the Silver clan of K project, I couldn’t not notice the similarities between this trio and the main characters of Pandora Hearts : Oz, Gil and Alice. When I thought about it, a ton of common points came clear between those two trio ! So I had to put it in a list XD Bear with me, it was so fun to do

(I know there was a discourse about  Shiro being the protagonist are not… Let’s assume it is)

  1) A trio of friends

 - Those trio are made up of 2 guys and 1 girl : the hero, his faithful servant, and a dear friend - The hero is an important person in society : (Shiro = king / Oz = duke), and doesn’t know how to fight (but Oz regains his powers little by little …) - He has a faithful servant who will give his life for him, who knows how to fight and who possesses a weapon ( Kuroh = katana / Gil = gun);

- And a friend who has great powers in spite of herself ( Alice = chain / Neko = strain)

  2) The protagonists : Oz and Shiro

 - the hero is a cheerful, dynamic, friendly but lonely young boy, who conceals a deep sadness / confusion under a charming but false smile… - oz and shiro seek their identity : especially because they are victims of amnesia concerning their past and their origin, and live in a lie without knowing it (Oz = is in reality a stuffed rabbit, a chain -> but he believes to be a Vessalius heir, future duke / Shiro = has an original body, is the Silver King, Adolf k Weismann -> but he believes to be Isana Yashiro, a simple student)

 -The hero, supposed to be young, is in fact much older than one might think! (Shiro = must be ~90 / Oz = lives for more than a century !) - the soul of the hero inhabits the body of someone else (Shiro = is in Hieda Tooru’s body / Oz = is in Jack’s body)

 - They are both immortal (Shiro = because of his powers as the Silver King / Oz = because of the cycles of growing up as an adult and grow young again ability of Jack’s body)

  3) The right hand : Kuroh and Gilbert

- they are both a tall, dark, cold man in appearance, who gets easily angry and is fun to tease ! They hide a big heart and a great kindness. - they both had a master before the protagonist (Gil = Oswald / Kuroh = Ichigen-sama) - they are very loyal to their current master / king, and are ready for all sacrifices for their sake

 - being useful is very important for them, and they base their usefulness on the ability to fight and protect, but also in dealing with the daily life desires of their master (Kuroh = is the one feeding his family, just as a good waifu would xD / Gil = as a servant, this is his job to fulfil his master’s desires, right ?) - Gil and Kuroh are skilled in cooking and know how to take care of household tasks. Plus, I wonder if they are generally “scared” of women ? (Kuroh = we know well how he reacts to Neko’s naked body ! xD / Gil = was surrounded by girls in Lutwidge Academy and he didn’t like it !)

- They also have a nickname some people know (Gilbert = Raven / Kuroh = Black Dog )

  4) The girls : Alice and Neko

 - They are young girls with long hair, playful, free… They are a little simple-minded, always playful, cheerful and support the protagonist by their frank words. They seem to live their own way, detached from all rules. - Neko and Alice can transform (Neko = human-cat / Alice = human-chain) - they lost their memory, just like Oz and Shiro ! (Neko = remembered nothing from the accident of the Kagutsu crater, she even forgot her name / Alice = destroyed her memories, those before becoming B-Rabbit)

- They have both great powers, and it is one of the most powerful / dangerous (Alice = B-Rabbit / Neko = power of illusion) - Neko and Alice looooove eating and are always hungry ! (Neko = fish / Alice = meat) - They also like giving nicknames to their comrade of bickering (Gil is “Seaweed head” / Kuroh is “Kurosuke”), and others (Neko = calls the Blue King “Boss Megane” / Alice = calls Break “Clown”) etc.

 5) Relationships

 - Kuroh-Neko / Gil-Alice : do not support each other at first, bicker all the time for the same things. But they learn to appreciate each other with time ! The girls love the boys’s cooking, give them nicknames, and are never really impressed by their anger xD

- Shiro-Neko / Oz-Alice : the girls are veeeery attached to the protagonist (Neko is Shiro’s cat ! / Oz = is the contractor and the precious plush of Alice), who is the only friend who was there when they were alone ( Shiro = is the first one who paid attention to her as a cat / Oz = was always with Alice when she was alone, in the tour, as the plush)

- Kuroh-Shiro / Oz-Gil : indeed, their is a strong relationship of master-servant, but we can agree that their friendship is stronger. The servants could give their life for the protagonist, and the protagonists count on them for battles.

I didn’t want to study the characters too much, so there is my little list… Nobody can deny that those trios are very alike ! They live in different worlds, but their story and interactions are similar… No wonder why I fell in love with the golden trio from PH, if I already loved Hakumaitou !

This is not very useful if you don’t know both anime/manga, but I hope some people like me will enjoy it !

[4ninnys-blog]

Meet the Ninnys

THE HELLLA NINNYS ARE A BAND WHO CREATES MUSIC

Dundalk, MD - Every 30 or 40 or 500 years, the DNA of culture itself emerges from the translucent blackness of the not-so-shallow underground. You hear a new band, and you think, "This is really something. This is like Toad The Wet Sprocket minus the guitars." But then you think, "No, that's not true. That's not what this is like at all. Plus, there are lots of guitars here. I'm a goddamn idiot." You want to walk away, but now it's too late; now, you start to wonder what makes this music so deeply hypnotic.

You wonder why you are dancing against your will, and you wonder why every other sound you've ever heard suddenly sounds like the insignificant prologue to a moment you're experiencing in the present tense. You find yourself unable to perform the simplest of activities — a Camel Unfiltered becomes impossible to light, a mewing kitten cannot be stroked, a liverish lover cannot be ignored. By the album's third track, there is nothing left in your life; everything is gone, crushed into a beatific sonic wasteland you never want to escape.

This, more than anything else imaginable, is the manifestation of artistic truth ... a truer kind of truth ... the only kind of truth that cannot lie, even with the cold steel of a .357 revolver jammed inside its wet mouth, truculently demanding a random falsehood.

Welcome to the work-a-day world of THE HELLLA NINNYS. Like a hydro-electric Mothra rising from the ashes a third world village burned to the ground by post-rock minotaurs, the music of THE HELLLA NINNYS literally makes you the happiest person who has never lived.

Discovered firsthand by Metal Blade Slovakia A & R man Jim Patulski in the parking lot of a Pasadena, MD strip mall, THE HELLLA NINNYS were signed to the label before anyone at Metal Blade Slovakia heard even a moment of their music – all he needed to experience was a random conversation about what they hoped to achieve as a musical four-piece.

"They were just sitting around in lawn chairs, dressed like 19th century criminals, casually saying the most remarkable things," recalls Patulski. "It was wild. It was obtuse. One would say, `Oh, I like Led Zeppelin III, but it skews a little dumptruck.' Then another would say, `The problem with those early Prince albums is that he spent too much time shopping.' I really had no idea what they were talking about, but it all somehow made sense.

"We'll be a different kind of group," they said. `We will introduce people to themselves. Impregnate their ear vulvas. We'll inoculate them from discourse.' I was immediately intrigued. I asked them if they wanted to have dinner, so we walked to a Chinese restaurant that was right up the road. I suggested we all get different dishes and share everything family style. They agreed. But then they ordered four identical entrees! So we sat there and ate a mountain of General Tso's Tofu for three straight hours, talking about music and literature, throwing eggs at toll booths and growing up on a mayonnaise farm. Twenty four hours later, they were signed to Sony and inside a studio."

Those studio sessions led to Oh Shit the Statues Are Fighting Back, the indescribable 12-track debut that reconstructs influences as diverse as The Lemonheads, Vampire Weekend, Twisted Sister, Ravi Shankur,, Orbital, Jann Hammer, the first half of OK Computer, the second act of The Wizard of Oz, and the final pages of Hunter S. Thompson's 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'.

Originally conceived as a radio-friendly concept album about the early life of D.B. Cooper, THE HELLLA NINNYS leader Jack Ninny decided to tear away the norm and move everything in a more experimental message focused direction. "We don't intend for middle class America to dig our music," says the soft-spoken Joey. "We write for the fringes – the very, very rich and the very, very poor. That's the audience we relate to, and that's who these songs are about."

THE BAND AT A GLANCE:

Jack Ninny, 33 (guitar/vocals): A savant who plays over 40 instruments, Jack recorded his first "bedroom EP" on a four-track as a 12-year-old ("It was sort of a second-rate Smell the Glove," he scoffs today, "and more than a little derivative."). Known already for his work-ethic and perfectionism (he once studied a single Megadeth guitar riff for an entire summer), Jack is the piston behind THE HELLLA NINNYS and — somewhat paradoxically – the group's harshest critic.

"I named the band THE HELLLA NINNYS as a reminder that we've accomplished nothing as four brothers growing up on a mayonnaise farm with the last name Ninny." he says flatly. "We are as delicate as the wings of a butterfly with AIDS. Anything could crush us. And until we all decide that art is the only thing that makes life livable, we'll just be another four-piece from Dundalk. Emotionally and intellectually, I'm not sure if the rest of the band is there yet. But I am. I'm the oldest and I can kick the crap outta those dick wads with one hand tied behind my back." Jack's goals are to create music that lasts "substantially longer than forever" and to "make people hate Bruce Springsteen."

Micky Ninny, 29 (guitar): A freewheeling hoaxster, Micky provides THE HELLLA NINNYS with a necessary dose of common sense. "Jack can be difficult to work with," says Micky, "but I know how to handle him. Sometimes he just needs to look into the mouth of the lion – and I'm the lion."

An avid horseback rider, Micky is probably better known as the alleged one-time lover of Gossip Girl star Blake Lively (a rumor he denies) What he adds to the band musically is akin to what he adds personally: cobalt charisma and a hunger for flesh. "Do you remember that old song `I Know What Boys Like' by the Waitresses," he asks. "Well, let's just say the scythe slices both ways." Micky's goal is to seduce every female journalist he encounters and one day become a city planner.

Joey Ninny, 23 (bass): No member of THE HELLLA NINNYS has taken a more circuitous path than Joey. A three-sport athlete who rushed for 1400 yards as an option quarterback at Stricker Middle School, Joey received scholarship offers from several Big 10 football powers by age 16 before opting out for family. Joey's decision to put music before education came easy. "Nobody really wants to be the bass player, but I was the youngest." he says today.

"Four strings, sublime heaviness, living inside the pocket, locking into the drums. It eventually spoke to me in its own bizarre bass language, long before I ever possessed the object itself. I knew that bass guitar was something I could, well anyone could excel at. I am a bassist. Bass and mayonnaise are in my blood."

Roger Ninny, 31 (drums): Don't let his boyish looks fool you – Roger is no choirboy. Raised on a steady diet of Stewart Coupland, Neil Peart, Xanax and economic desperation, Roger views drumming as a way to turn his self-described "sociopathic inclinations" into something the world can appreciate.

"I love to brawl," he says. "I'll fight anyone, for any reason. I'll fight a dog for no reason. I've seen the inside of juvenile hall. I've tasted blood in my mouth. I've stepped on throats and I've thrown bottles at strangers. But that was all in the past. It's still part of me, but now I use that intensity for good. I want to attack people with music the same way I used to attack them with my fists." Roger's goal is the political liberation of Quebec.

A WARNING:

This is a press release, and press releases are supposed to be wholly positive. That's the shared expectation, both from the writer and the reader. Typically, press releases hide a band's true reality. But not this one. We need to be straight with you: It's hard to predict what will happen to THE HELLLA NINNYS. Emotions run high in this band, and most of these songs are both too musical and too insane for the typically dim-witted American consumer. In all likelihood, even you won't understand it. This music doesn't directly threaten the status quo, but it certainly makes the status quo nervous. It's not on par with hearing the The Grateful Dead in the summer of 1968, but it's probably like hearing the The Grateful Dead in the winter of 1966. Can THE HELLLA NINNYS become the next big thing to come out of East Baltimore?

Sure, maybe. But maybe not. There might be too much at stake (and too many people in the way). Still, one listen to 'Oh Shit the Statues Are Fighting Back' will irrefutably prove the only thing you really need to know: THE HELLLA NINNYS makes music. And in today's awful world, that's almost all that matters.

[johnhardinsawyer]

Demanding Mercy

John Sawyer

Bedford Presbyterian Church

8 / 20 / 17

 Matthew 15:10-28

Psalm 133

 “Demanding Mercy”

(Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History)

“Listen and understand,” Jesus said, “It is not what goes into the mouth that defiles a person, but it is what comes out of the mouth that defiles. . . But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this is what defiles.  For out of the heart come evil intentions, murder, adultery, fornication, theft, false witness, [and] slander.”  (Matthew 15:10-11, 18-19)

I can think of plenty of examples from my own life in which something that I have done and said have defiled – polluted – some relationship, some idea, some place.  Maybe you can, too.  There are those things that come out of our minds and hearts – those thoughts, those words, those actions – that are self-serving and downright evil.  We are all-too-human, you and I.  But I find Jesus’ words in today’s passage – a passage that was chosen years ago for this day based on the lectionary cycle – to be especially meaningful in a week when our nation has seen and heard slogans of Nazi propaganda and white supremacy spoken in public, spoken by our fellow citizens.  When I saw the marchers in Charlottesville last week with their torches and heard their hateful chants, I felt as if the already-tense discourse in our nation around race became weaponized – defiled and polluted in so many ways.  I know – and am grateful – that free speech is protected in our country.  People are entitled to believe what they want to believe.  But, as the Apostle Paul once wrote, “All things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial.  All things are lawful, but not all things build [others] up.”  (1 Corinthians 10:23-24)

How did it come to this?  There are times when words fail me and all I can pray is “Lord, have mercy!”

These are the words shouted by a woman that Jesus met. We might not know this woman’s name, but we do know that Matthew’s Gospel calls her a “Cannanite woman from [the] region [of Tyre and Sidon].”  (Matthew 15:22)  She lived in part of the countryside that was on the outskirts of Jewish territory.  Her ancestors had lived in the land of Canaan prior to the arrival of Abraham, thousands of years before.  Abraham’s descendants had kicked her people out of the land in the Book of Joshua and they had been fighting each other for generations over who had a right to live in the land.  But, after the land had been conquered by Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and now Romans, both Abraham’s descendants – the Jews – and this woman’s people – the Canannites – could only argue over old grievances about things done long ago.  Needless to say, there was still a lot of suspicion and hostility between Jews and Canaanites – not unlike the suspicion and hostility that is felt today between people of differing ethnic and religious groups, today.

But when Jesus began his ministry, word about him spread far and wide.  People had been traveling down from Tyre and Sidon – on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea – down to Galilee to see Jesus and hear what he had to say.[1]  So, when Jesus traveled up to Tyre and Sidon, there were people who wanted to meet him, including this Cannanite woman.  The woman’s daughter was sick – “tormented by a demon,” as the story goes.  (Matthew 15:22)  We do not know what, exactly, was wrong with the daughter.  Maybe there was a mental illness involved or something else that could not be cured by the so-called “healers” in the area.  In Matthew’s gospel, demon possession was a sign of resistance to the will of God and, possibly, a symbol of imperial control by the Romans.[2]  We don’t know where this Cannanite woman’s husband was, but if he wasn’t out there advocating for her or trying to find Jesus to come and cure his daughter, maybe there was no husband in the picture.  Instead, we just have a woman – all by herself, in desperate need of help – shouting at Jesus from where she was, while Jesus passed by.

“Have mercy on me, Lord,” she shouts. (15:22)  Her prayer for mercy, sympathy, compassion, and pity[3] – kyrie eleison – [4] is one that has been prayed countless times by countless people over the centuries.  “Lord, have mercy!” 

Jesus’ response to the pleading prayer of this woman is strange.  He does not even answer her, at first.  His disciples urge him to send her away because she is just so loud and she just won’t stop.  Then Jesus says, “I’ve got my hands full dealing with the lost sheep of Israel.”[5]  There seems to be a question here as to whether Jesus is willing to do something miraculous for someone who is not of the house of Israel – someone like this Cannanite woman.  Then the woman runs up to Jesus and kneels in front of him, begging him.  “Lord, help me,” she says.  (15:25)  “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs,” Jesus says.

Do you see what happens here?  Jesus gives his reasons for not helping her and he calls her a dog, which is not very nice.  Why doesn’t Jesus leap at the chance to help her? Why does he call her names?  John Calvin writes that maybe Jesus is testing her faith,[6] but this doesn’t seem very nice, does it? This really isn’t the Jesus that you and I have come to expect and I’m not going to try to make excuses for him. Maybe he was trying to test the woman’s faith.  Maybe Jesus does not always come through for us like we expect he will.[7]

But when it looks like her window of opportunity with Jesus is closing – when Jesus refers to her as a dog, the woman pushes back.  “Yes, Lord,” the woman replies, quickly, “Yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.”  (15:26-27)

Once, when my mother-in-law was out somewhere, she bought a baseball cap and across the front of the cap were the words, “Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History.”  This funny slogan fit my mother-in-law to a “T.”  She could be loud and brash.  She sometimes spilled things at the table – usually because she was moving her hands, excitedly, as she spoke.  She had a loud laugh and wasn’t afraid to speak up.  And she definitely wasn’t afraid to raise a ruckus in the name of fun or fairness.  

Well-behaved women rarely make history, but the not-so-well-behaved Cannanite woman raised a ruckus in the name of justice and mercy and we are still talking about her 2,000 years later. In this tense moment with Jesus, the Cannanite woman is insistent that God’s mercy is not just for the lost sheep of Israel. Israel is supposed to be a blessing to the nations.[8]  They are not supposed to keep God’s blessing all to themselves.  The woman believes – she has faith – that God’s mercy is for her, too. And if God’s mercy is for her – a Gentile – then God’s mercy knows no limits.  God’s mercy is available to everyone.             

For the Cannanite woman, even just a scrap of the mercy and grace that God offers is enough to work wonders.  This is still true right here and now.

In the case of today’s story, the scraps of God’s mercy and grace take the form of healing – the healing of a daughter’s mind and spirit, the healing of a mother’s worry and grief, perhaps a partial healing of centuries of wrong between Jews and Cannanites.  When we receive God’s mercy, it leads to the healing of our spirits, too.  And when we, in turn, offer God’s mercy, it leads to the healing of the spirits of other people.  This is often the kind of healing that we most need.  This is often the kind of healing from God that is most readily-accessible to us – to receive and to share.  God’s mercy is not just for the few or those who consider themselves righteous.  And the truly demanding part of God’s mercy is that it is not just for those we like, either, or those who are on “our side.”   The mercy of God can break even the hardest of hearts – even our own hearts – allowing some light to shine through the cracks, bringing healing with it.

In recent years – and recent days – it appears that mercy has fallen out of fashion among some people.  There are those who would say that mercy is a sign of weakness and that only strength matters.  But the Apostle Paul writes that God’s power is made perfect in weakness.[9]  There are those who plow cars into pedestrians on purpose, or come to a supposedly peaceful protest literally dressed for battle, or those who defile conversations and human interactions by spouting hatred in the name of free speech, who claim they are willing to die for their cause.  But Jesus tells us that he desires mercy, not sacrifice.[10]  There are those who would say that nobody should be marching in the streets demanding anything – that they are all rabble-rousers who need to be quiet.  But the Cannanite woman was persistent in shouting out for mercy.  Because there are demons that torment daughters and sons, that carry torches in the night, and chant hateful things, that threaten to boil over in anger, that enflame old wounds of racial and religious difference, that breed fear.  The Cannanite woman shows us that there is nothing wrong with speaking up for mercy’s sake.  And the God in whom we put our faith has the power to redeem even the worst sinners.  There are those who say that Gods’s mercy is not realistic or practical, but Jesus says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”[11]  Jesus’ commandment for us to love one another sometimes stands in stark contrast to the “realistic” and “practical” expectations of this world.

Jesus spends plenty of time in the Gospels asking the disciples why their faith is so little – why they are so slow to understand.  But when Jesus sees how sure and certain this Cannanite woman is, he says, “Woman, great is your faith. Let it be done for you as you wish.”  (15:28) This is the only time in the Gospel of Matthew when Jesus tells someone that their faith is “great.”

I’d like to think that most of us would love to have great faith, but we live in cynical times and one of the worst enemies of faith – be it great or little – is cynicism.  There is a singer named Billy Bragg who was being interviewed on the radio a few weeks ago. And he said something about this that really hit home for me.  I’m paraphrasing here, but he said,

. . . [T]he biggest enemy of all of us who want to make the world a better place is. . . actually cynicism.  And not the cynicism of [certain] newspapers or news channels — the cynicism that is our greatest enemy is our own cynicism, our own sense that nothing will ever change, that nobody cares about this stuff, that all politicians [. . . or religious people, or businesspeople, or whatever kind of people] are the same.  If we're gonna make a difference, we have to be able to overcome that.[12]

The Cannanite woman had every right to be cynical.  Life had certainly not gone her way.  Her daughter was sick, her husband wasn’t around. No one had been able to help her. But she set all this aside when she saw Jesus.  She was different in every way from Jesus – in ethnicity, heritage, religion, and gender, but she was not afraid to speak up, to stick out, to stand up and say that something needed to change.  In her demand for mercy, the Cannanite woman refused to be cynical.  Instead, she had hope.  

Hope isn’t practical but hope is the antidote to cynicism. This woman’s faith and hope in what God could do – what Jesus would do – was so great.  So, she went to the only One who could change her life – the only One who could heal her daughter – and she demanded mercy because she knew that Jesus could provide it.

And he did. . .  And he still does.

Sisters and brothers, remember that “God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, [has] made us alive together with Christ. . .” (Ephesians 2:4)  So, as Jesus says, “Be merciful just as [God] your Father is merciful.”  (Luke 6:36) Do not be afraid to err on the side of mercy.  Do not be afraid to demand mercy when and where it is needed most.  

Have hope. . .  And have mercy.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

------ 

[1] See Mark 3:8 and Luke 6:17.

[2] Warren Carter, Matthew and the Margins (Maryknoll:  Orbis Books, 2000)  322.  For other examples of demon possession in Matthew, see Matthew 4:24, 8:16, 28, 33; 9:32; 12:22; 17:14-20.

[3] Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1979) 250.

[4] In the original language, it is “Eleison me, kyrie!”

[5] Eugene Peterson, The Message – Numbered Edition (Colorado Springs:  NAV Press, 2002) 1352.  Matthew 15:24.

[6] John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries – Vol. XVI – Harmony of Matthew, Mark, and Luke (Grand Rapids:  Baker Books, 2009) 268.

[7] David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, ed.  Feasting on the Word (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2011) 361.  Dock Hollingsworth, “Homiletical Perspective.”

[8] See Genesis 22:18.

[9] See 2 Corinthians 12:9.

[10] See Matthew 9:13.

[11] See Matthew 5:7.

[12] Billy Bragg, Fresh Air with Terry Gross, July 19, 2017 - http://www.npr.org/2017/07/19/538079082/billy-bragg-on-skiffle-the-movement-that-brought-guitar-to-british-radio.  “[. . .]” Brackets by JHS.

[hippieman7096]

Random Thoughts

 1. You become a function of the environment you exist in.

2. The thoughts you allow to exist in your mind at any given time define your future.

3. The universe is designed to respond to your thoughts and send you what you are thinking about.

4. What I brought forth at my most recent work experience was something I had created in the months prior with my thinking - Fear, desire to control circumstance, mistrust.

5. If I have the courage to admit that I cannot directly impact or change circumstance without direct support from my higher power then I can move mountains, it’s called faith.

Discourse: I woke up yesterday and realized how much of myself I had given away in my most recent work experience. I had chosen to be passive and allow people and circumstance to be what they were without direct, overt resistance. In the process I held enough distance between myself and the environment to realize how dysfunctional my mind is in those situations and that I had bought into the opinions of the people around me who were, for all intents and purposes, unconscious. I let their views of me and the workplace change my own. In addition I went into the environment with a sponsoring thought of inadequacy, both in myself and in my view of the world around me. I didn’t believe that I was good enough and I also didn’t believe the experience I would have there would be a positive one. I expected to be attacked and to have to fight with people which brings me to my next point - Thoughts define my future.

Three years ago when I moved here to Oregon with my family I fell into a hole of bitterness and frustration. I wasn’t moving forward in my career. I had taken a job in a call center making 20% of the salary that I am worth in this market based on my skill sets. The job was horrible and I hated every second of every day I was there. I kept asking myself how I could get stuck in a place like that with no real hope and no future. What had I done wrong? How had I not been able to create anything of any lasting value in my career? I was 45 years old and all I had to show for it was $12.50 an hour, a pile of bills that weren’t getting paid through my own efforts as they rightfully should’ve been and a nagging feeling of inadequacy that only seemed to get worse not better. I was in a place of desperation. I was supporting a good portion of self-concept on the belief that the person I was, the life I was living and the job I was doing weren’t adequate.

Now instead of letting go like my higher power and the universe had told me a hundred times before I became more determined to overcome. I pushed and pushed and pushed and after 18 months the universe finally brought me my savior, the job of my dreams. It was such a high, I felt so vindicated, so fulfilled.

Five weeks later I walked across the threshold of the home I reside in with my possessions in hand and no job. FIVE WEEKS! That’s how long it took for the house I had built to collapse.

So off I went again. More work was done - work on myself, desire to improve, more intention to listen to the higher power and focus myself on releasing control to it. Things did get better. I was able to realize that I was using my work as a drug, as a fix, as a way to shore up the self-esteem I had been carrying around like a sick dog all those years. I didn’t feel adequate, I didn’t feel good enough but if I got the right job and made the right amount of money I’d be worth it. Work was the “fix” that I needed.

Still, in the background I was maintaining the underlying theme...inadequacy and fear. We went through serious financial difficulties at that point with the requisite life experience that followed. Who I had defined myself as, the sense of control I tried to maintain, the identity I created as the sole source of my support all died in a metaphorical sense.

I realized that I wasn’t going to make it unless I found some real, legitimate faith in something outside of myself and learned to live in the present moment.

So fast forward a few months. The universe brought us employment. We got back “on the grid.” We were “saved.” There I was with my new and more sober self ready to take on the future with new life skills and a new perspective on my relationship to my work.

...and five months later I’m out on my ass walking through the door at home with my personal belongings after taking a serious beating and, as previously related, sitting through the single worst exchange with an out-of-control work colleague I’ve very experienced.

So what happened?

It all comes back to where I was the months prior to getting that new employment. Inadequacy, lack of confidence, fear, need to control my environment, resistance. I spent a good deal of time thinking thoughts of that type and radiating the associated feelings at the deeper parts of myself for the six months I was unemployed. Sure, on the outside I was portraying (and I suppose to give myself credit) to a certain extent being diligent in pursuing an internal state of balance and acceptance but the sponsoring thought hadn’t changed and the overall feelings hadn’t changed either.

All the universe did was send me what I was feeling. My thoughts were not being managed effectively. The thoughts created feelings. The feelings radiated the energy and the universe sent it back to me, it’s that simple.

Which brings me to my final, and I believe most important, point - The source and it’s place in my life.

I’ve talked a lot in the past and in this posting as well about controlling and managing my thinking. One thing I haven’t said that I believe I should is that it’s a nice thing to say I need to have thought control and be diligent so as to ensure I am projecting out “right” energy into the universe so I can get what I want and another thing altogether to actually do so. In fact, I might even take it so far as to say it’s impossible.

The fact is, I can’t sit here 24/7 and act like shit is peachy. I mean if I could I’m sure I’d have no need to be here on planet Earth that’s for sure. I do have deep-seated issues with self-esteem, confidence and inadequacy. It’s a pipe dream and unrealistic to sit here and think I can do a goddamned thing to remove these parts of myself.

At this point I see awareness as the first step. I also believe there is a source energy. All things that exist flow from and and part of that energy. I believe that source to be limitless and there at my disposal at all time and in as much quantity as I need. To me it’s not a religious thing. It’s not a “God” as modern western culture espouses in it’s theologies. I might align it more as a belief in “mother earth” as would be attributed to an indigenous tribal population. Being at peace with the environment and with myself, understanding that all things have their time and knowing that I am something more than this flesh and bone human I think myself to be.

At a certain point there just has to be a release of control to something else, something more than myself. So much of my life story to date has been about control. If I can just control my thinking and control the way I view the world and how I respond to it then my life will “work out.” Ultimately, I can’t control any of this shit. I’ve been told I can and the mechanisms around me is happy to reinforce that because we’re a race of beings that have been programmed by other race(s) of beings which control this planet to serve their wishes and agendas which is actually a whole other story for another day.

Right now what I’m saying is I give up. I give up my controls to the greatest extent possible. I believe there is a source energy. I believe I can rely on that source energy to provide me strength and support. I also believe that source can be the catalyst to help me get what I want out of the universe and I intent to use that relationships instead of doing it all on my own.

[girlreadinginpublicspaces]

Silent men in the noise of the world

Dear Diary,

 I am outside a press club. In my city, this has notoriously been the site of resistance for decades, where multiple generations have struggled for press freedom, for land, for rights, for their own lives. It is nearing dusk and the crowds have cleared. I sit under a street lamp and read Fatima Naoot, thinking of balconeys and silent men in the noise of the world. The birds fly over the large buildings towering over the press club, and I think it’s fitting, that corporate power, symbolic or otherwise, beats the power of press, whatever it has. And I consider the space, a cramped gathering area carpeted and flanked by police containers. Freedom of speech, I smirk inwardly. But after a second’s pause, I check myself.

This is a space to protest, and protests often fail, but this is the place of the politically active, those who have not turned off their conscience and thrown it out with the trash and the dog and gone home to their wife and kids. I see them, the multiple classes and creeds that have come here, that lounge about now, buying juice, talking to one another, watching the press conference taking place outside. These people are braver than me. For the longest time, I have not even accessed this place, because to access this place you have to be a public individual. Mental illness stops you from this, being a woman stops you from this, being upper-class and embedded in  a discourse of respectability stops you from this. Your parents’ adherence to a cultural paradigm wherein being political is equated with either immorality or danger, stops you from this. From doing what these people do,  which is occupy space here day after day in an attempt to make people who have wronged them accountable, amongst other things. A few people are having a picnic here, eating roasted corn bought from the vendors that weave in through the protests, through the bodies assembling as one.

I can’t smirk at them, I have only begun to come here and not to be an activist. I am here to observe, today for my diary, on other days for my thesis. All my life I have not engaged in directly confrontational political acts. I suppose when you are a woman in South Asia, you are cut off lines of political mobility, that you leave “your possible rebellions like ghosts in every room”. (Sara Suleri) I suppose when you have anxiety, and depression and chronic shyness, you can’t jump in to protests where you might be beaten, or tear-gassed or jailed. So my praxis is limited. But I have engaged in discourse, that is what I do. I engage in discourse, I read and write.

There is a Kara Walker quote that goes “I often compare my method of working to that of a well-meaning freed woman in a Northern state who is attempting to delineate the horrors of Southern slavery but with next to no resources, other than some paper and a pen knife and some people she’d like to kill”

  I have had no cause for grief or anger. My life is a charmed one. I have not been tortured or raped or assaulted. Violence is inflicted onto my body, sure, because I am a woman, and a woman of color at that. Sediments of the edifice of my colonial past, the past of my people, collects in my memory and gathers at the tip of my tongue, I taste it, the bitterness of Orientalism. But I live in a sphere of privilege of class, of the very privilege of living in peace times, of being educated, of being a child of parents who do not hold my having a vagina against me.

I have no cause for grief, but throughout my body there lies the remembered pain and anger, of the other. Empathy has taught me to feel the fear and rage of the girl like me who lives in Syria, starving, the girl like me who flees war and rape and devastation on the unruly sea. The girl like me who is afraid of slipping, slipping into the abyss of the Mediterranean, slipping into the even darker recesses of her mind that holds memories of grey ash and dust.

Throughout my body, there are scars; History’s scars, and new ones that arrive anytime bad things happen in the world. I remember genocides, I remember wars and death and plagues in insignificant towns and villages that History does not care to recount, I remember the stories history books never tell us. Misery sings in my bones whenever a gender queer person is murdered a thousand miles away.  I know when a child is bonded into labor because his parents could not feed him anymore, I know when a girl child’s genitals are cut, when a bulldozer rolls over entire slums and colonies because poverty will mar the facade of a city meant for the rich. I know when a single mother’s shoulders sag because she can’t feed her baby tonight. I know the indignity of not having enough. 

And I do what the Northern woman does, I remember, I empathize and then I delineate the horrors experienced by others, with a pen and paper, because there are some people I’d like to kill, or rather hold accountable. I write, and I read, the quintessential bookworm cut off from the world.

 It's a cliché isn't it? The girl with her nose perpetually stuck in a book, her world splintered into fantasy and reality, furrowing further away into the former because her connection to the latter was bound with ropes of air. I read and I write the way Tyrion Lannister drinks and knows things.  It has taught me a political vocabulary that I can use to articulate the world’s problems. It has taught me of suffering. It is an exercise in empathy I suppose. And while I am engaging with these multiple forms of struggles, and discourses around them, I suppose I am inserting myself into a public structured through discourse, if not born of assembled bodies in space.

I think of great writing, of political writing, and I think of the sublimity of it. I think of Arundhati Roy’s writings that make profound the ordinary, evoking imagery of varicose veins on beggars, of great rivers shrunken to a stream, of protesting bodies sagging in hunger. I think of how she details the loss and struggle of people who would otherwise disappear from existence without even leaving a footprint in the sand. I think of how she writes their experiences into permanence, writes their lives into perpetual motion. Writing such as this truly confronts power, it comforts the afflicted and afflicts the comfortable.

I suppose this is a way for me to exist politically, to get at the incommunicable, at the ephemeral, to possess the world as I never could otherwise. I read because literature elevates the ordinary into the sublime, it makes us understand life, and makes it bearable. I write to avoid nihilism (an outcome that always comes when a life lacks art). I write to chase metaphors, to recreate the sublimity, the magic that is in what I read. I follow along my favourite writers, tracing their footprints in the sand, to try to see how to write about what makes us human. It is a yearning to see windows like Furough Furrukhzad, to follow Proust down Swann's way, to float in dreams like Anais Nin, to make, like Roy, gods out of people so small, so hunched over and bare-backed that they sweep away their own footprints in history.

-H.