Is there any interaction with a stranger recently that sticks in your mind? Or if not, a stranger you saw that you still remember for some reason? Also do you think you could beat me in a fist fight?
I've had such cool asks lately, and I do want to answer them all, but time is not on my side. Patience! What can a modern human being do besides getting angry at the Industrial Revolution at this point? And listen to some delta blues, I mean...
Let's go to the ask of the day, made by my beloved friend. I have a story for you related to faith.
Firstly, I absolutely can not beat you or anyone in a fist fight. Maybe if I get angry enough I could? I used to think I could never be violent until I've been through some shit that showed me why some people get violent. Not advocating for it at all, just saying it's a possibility for every human. That would never happen with you, though, because you're an angel.
As for a stranger's story, I must say: not only my memory is bad, but I am distracted all the time, so I rarely remember these situations. However, the other day, I was sitting on a bench downtown when this homeless man walked into me, asking for money. It was a very fortunate timing, for I was about to ask for a car and, "for some reason", I just waited a little longer — just enough for him to pass by and talk to me.
Well, I've seen lots of things in the streets, some really dangerous, some really sad, but this guy was not about to cause any trouble. He told me his story while I went through my purse. Not a single coin! I asked if he smoked and offered to roll him a cigarette. He almost cried: "Would you do that for me?"
At some point, he just went: "I can't blame anyone, not even God, for my life. It's bad choices I made, and the only reason I'm living through this hell is... me."
So I told him about my awful choices as well. I told him about my God and what He did for me. About forgiveness, about His Son on the cross, and then alive. He cried, asking if someone like him could have a second chance. "Jesus walked among sinners like us for a reason", I told him. "We make the wrong choices, but he doesn't".
"I could never get inside a church", he said, "but I guess God took you down here to talk to me!" If he only knew that a church is not a building... But I had no time to explain that. We prayed, we cried, and told me he believed. In fact, the most important thing he said was: "I don't know what happened, I really don't, but I met you as one person, and I'm leaving you a totally different one."
Of course, it was not me. I truly think that guy was born again on the spot. I've seen it happen a few times by now and there is this distinguished atmosphere about it. Not only that, but also a unique smell and taste that I feel at the back of my mouth. It's not something easy to explain, as it is truly supernatural. Although I have had many experiences, this one was remarkable. I still remember his eyes, shining, so full of life.
I met a stranger, but he was my brother. I don't think I will forget that at any time soon.
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'I flirted with the idea that instead of being trans that I was just a cross-dresser (a quirk, I thought, that could be quietly folded into an otherwise average life) and that my dysphoria was sexual in nature, and sexual only. And if my feelings were only sexual, then, I wondered, perhaps I wasn’t actually trans.
I had read about a book called The Man Who Would Be Queen, by a Northwestern University professor who believed that transwomen who were attracted to women were really confused fetishists, they wanted to be women to satisfy an autogynephilia. And though I first read about this book in the context of its debunkment and disparagement, I thought about the electricity of slipping on those tights, zipping up those boots, and a stream of guilt followed. Maybe this professor was right, and maybe I was only a fetishist. Not trans, just a misguided boy.
About a year later, on the Internet, I come across a transwoman who added a unique message to the crowd refuting this professor. Oh, I wish I remember who this woman was, and I wish even more that I could do better than paraphrase her, but I remember her saying something like this: “Well, of course I feel sexy putting on women’s clothing and having a woman’s body. If you feel comfortable in your body for the first time, won’t that probably mean it’ll be the first time you feel comfortable, too, with delighting in your body as a sexual thing?”'
-Casey Plett, Consciousness
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Ok... another thought brought on by these last two, I think it's real important to be able to accept some moral grey areas in your life and accept that you will almost certainly do some kind of harm just by existing
I eat meat, I barely manage to feed myself even doing that, so I don't really personally have it in me to switch away at this point
Eating meat means I have to accept that in order to fill my demand for that, at least some level of harm will have to be done to animals to make that happen
There's so much in my life that's like this, the fact that I have to burn gas any time I want to get into town, the fact that a lot of the things I touch probably have caused some harm somewhere in some way that I'm not even aware of
The point of all this though, is that I think it's better to accept that you may even unintentionally cause harm, and that you may not be able to stop doing that thing yet, than it is to try and rearrange things till what you're doing is actually 100% ok and perfect
If you can't accept that you're capable of doing damage, how will you ever be able to keep an eye out for chances to do better in achievable ways?
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i don’t care that rhaenyra’s oldest are illegitimate not bc i’m a targ stan who thinks she can do no wrong but because legitimacy is a social construct that does nothing more than enforce the patriarchy and class system, and rhaenyra having kids out of wedlock with a man she is consenting to sex with is fine, actually, and if you’re hung up on that it is my opinion that you are clinging to the rules of propriety and patriarchy when analyzing her because you think she should be punished for having sex outside marriage and not like, all the things she actually does that are morally wrong, which is like, textbook misogyny.
“but the lords” so the thing is i don’t give a shit if the lords think she’s a slut. i understand the time period bc not only am i not stupid, i also understand that it is still a big issue in many communities for mothers to have children out of wedlock. i am saying i do not care because it’s a fake issue the way “brienne can’t really be a knight because she’s a woman” and “sansa can’t rule winterfell when she has true born younger brothers” or whatever else. legitimacy is a tool of the patriarchy, of colonialism irl, of classism, and the argument “rhaenyra is a bad person for having children out of wedlock when she knew that would put them in danger” is stupid bc legitimacy doesn’t fucking matter and neither does marriage.
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What sorts of stories do u like writing? Any ideas ur excited about right now??
I’m kind of newish to writing stories, so I guess I don’t have a set genre/preference yet. I wrote a lot of fiction as a kid but got bored of it eventually, and I never finished anything. The most I’ve done since then is creative nonfiction essays, which can be cathartic but definitely a very different skillset.
I haven’t gotten an idea for an original story yet, so for now I’m just working on fanfiction. I’ve been thinking kind of obsessively about the Zelda II backstory ever since I thought it would be fun to imagine what would mean for all that to go down in the context of the canon that’s been established ever since.
Originally I was just going to write a story about Aurora and her brother (who I named Itentio), two Golden Age siblings under immense pressure who are at each other's throats until the bitter end.
But the more I thought about it, the more I became interested in Aurora's life after waking up, so now this idea has evolved into a LU fic. The POV flips from Traveler to Aurora to Dawn, and we get a flashback scene from each of them while the present-day story deals with them confronting their respective pasts.
I'm still kind of in early drafting stages, but so far the story involves Traveler's dad, Aurora's dad (lots of dads), Dawn's political life, uncertainty vs. certainty at the end of the world, rehydrated wizzrobes, the blood curse, monsters who don't want to be monsters, and lots and lots of magic.
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