portablefrailty

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Pablo's Jedha: a Star Wars war crime recast as Spanish Civil War atrocity via Hemingway's prose style and Picasso's artistic vision.

The sky was not right. Not the color of sky at all. It was the color of a fresh bruise, and in it hung a globe, a moon that was not a moon. It was a metal thing, a machine, and it was the color of a winter sky, grey and hard. In the streets of Jedha, the dust blew, and the wind was cold. A man held his child close to him, his eyes looking up at the metal moon, and the child looked too, but without understanding. The man knew. He had seen the guns of the Imperials, and the heavy boots that stomped the dust into a fine powder. This was a bigger gun. The biggest gun. The man's throat was dry. The city was silent now. The usual noise, the shouts of the vendors, the cry of the animals, was gone. There was only the wind and the high, thin whine that began in the sky. It was a sound that made a man's teeth ache. The man held his child tighter, and the child began to cry. The man did not say anything. There was nothing to say. He looked at the face of his child, and the small, wet eyes, and then he looked back up at the sky. The whine grew louder, sharper, until it filled the world. A green beam of light, thin at first, lanced out from the metal moon. It was the color of poison, and it moved faster than a man could blink. It struck the city, and where it struck, the world ended. The man saw a flash, brighter than the sun, and he felt a heat that was not the sun's heat. It was a heat that burned the air and his skin. He did not hear the sound, the sound of the world ending, because the sound was inside of him, a great rushing that filled his ears and his head. He held his child still, and then there was nothing. No light, no sound, no pain. Only the end.

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the ADHD writer's guide to actually finishing a draft (no, seriously) 📝

okay, tumblr, writers... we need to TALK about how to actually finish a damn draft when your executive functioning decided to pack its bags and leave for a permanent vacation in the bahamas.

i'm not here to give you that basic "just set a timer!" advice that makes me want to throw my laptop into the sun. we all know those productivity hacks that work for neurotypicals make us want to scream into the void. (been there, screamed that.)

so here's the ACTUAL guide from someone who's written three novels while her brain was actively trying to sabotage her the entire time.

FIRST: accept that linear writing is a capitalist construct designed to torture us.

i'm serious. whoever decided writers should start at chapter 1 and proceed neatly to THE END clearly didn't have dopamine playing hide-and-seek in their prefrontal cortex.

write whatever scene has your brain chemicals SINGING today. that climactic fight scene that's six chapters away? the tender moment between your characters that happens in the middle? WRITE IT NOW while your brain is actually interested. i have finished entire novels by writing them in chunks and stitching them together like the beautiful frankenstein's monster they are.

SECOND: the 10-minute lie (that actually works???)

tell yourself you're only going to write for 10 minutes. that's it. no pressure. your adhd brain can handle anything for 10 minutes, right? the secret is that once you start, momentum becomes your best friend. sometimes you'll actually stop at 10 minutes (congrats, you still wrote something!) but often you'll look up and realize it's been two hours and you've written 2,000 words. and yes i've seen this a lot, like everywhere, where they tell you "set a timer for 5, and by the time you realize it's 2 hours" i've seen this many times before, and it actually works. at first i thought it didn't but boy, i was wrong.

THIRD: use your hyperfixation powers for good, not evil.

we all know that adhd comes with the superpower of becoming obsessed with random things for unpredictable amounts of time. WEAPONIZE THIS. create artificial urgency around your project. tell people about your deadline. make elaborate aesthetic pinterest boards. create a spotify playlist that you only listen to while writing this specific project. trick your brain into making your WIP the shiny new hyperfixation.

FOURTH: body-doubling saved my writing career and it can save yours too.

find another writer friend (or any friend who needs to do focused work) and sit together - virtually or physically - while you both work. something about having another human witnessing your work process bypasses the executive dysfunction. i swear it's actual magic. discord writing sprints, zoom sessions with cameras off but mics on - whatever works.

FIFTH: embrace the chaos of your natural writing cycle.

some days you'll write 5,000 words in a frenzy at 3am. other days you'll stare at the document for an hour and write "the." BOTH ARE VALID WRITING DAYS. the only consistency we need is returning to the document, not some arbitrary daily word count.

SIXTH: create external accountability that doesn't make you want to die.

deadlines from publishers? great. deadlines you set for yourself? your brain laughs and says "or what?" find the sweet spot - maybe it's a writing buddy you check in with, maybe it's a public progress tracker, maybe it's promising your sister you'll take her to dinner when you finish a chapter.

SEVENTH: the frankendraft approach.

your first draft DOES NOT need to be good, coherent, or even make sense. it just needs to exist. leave yourself notes like [FIGURE OUT HOW SHE GETS FROM THE CASTLE TO THE BEACH LATER] and keep moving. your adhd brain will thank you for not getting stuck in research rabbit holes for six hours.

EIGHTH: find your optimal writing environment through shameless trial and error.

maybe you need complete silence. maybe you need to be in a coffee shop with specific ambient noise. maybe you need to write standing up. maybe you need to dictate your novel while pacing around your apartment. there is no wrong way to get the words out.

i personally write best when i'm slightly uncomfortable (weird, i know) so i often end up writing while sitting on my kitchen floor with my laptop balanced on a chair. whatever works, bestie. a finished messy draft is infinitely more valuable than the perfect novel still trapped in your head. your adhd brain is simultaneously your greatest challenge and your greatest asset as a writer. the connections you make, the unique perspectives, the creativity - all of that comes from the same place as the struggles.

you've got this. now go write something, even if it's just for 10 minutes. i believe in you. ✨ -rin t.

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The clearest image of Venus ever taken !

by Japan's Akatsuki spacecraft

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bronze statuette of a veiled and masked dancer, greek c. 300s-200s b.c.

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USS TEXAS (BB-35) "hitting the rough spots in the Pacific".

"When the bow plunged into high seas, none of the senior officers would go into their water closet (toilet) due to the contents of the toilet bowls shooting upwards, hitting the overhead and soaking anything, and anyone, in that compartment."

memory from a former medical officer.

Photographed sometime between July 1919 and January 1924.

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~ Frost’s Laws and By-Laws of American Society: a Condensed but Thorough Treatise on Etiquette and its Usages in America, Containing Plain and Reliable Directions for Deportment in Every Situation in Life, Besides One Hundred Unclassified Laws Applicable to All Occasions by S. A. Frost, 1869.

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California Beaches travel poster for Southern Pacific, 1923 

Artist Maurice Logan

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100 Years Ago today-Dick Cuthbert USMC

June 4, 1925

"Had tooth filled. Stood quarters. Took bath. Ate chow at 11:00 AM. Went to ball game. Went to Hawaii Theater with Rose Silver."

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Of the many, many girls Dick met during his travels in 1925 (at least the ones he wrote about and kept pictures of), Rose stands out the most. On a very sunny afternoon in Honolulu, Rose posed for a series of pics with Dick and one of his shipmates: a solo portrait of her, another smiling with one guy and then the other, another of her cracking up in a marine corps dress cap, and two kissing scenes (one with each beau).

She's cute, if not gorgeous and slightly flirtatious without trying too hard. As with all 1920s women's fashion, I dig the boyish cut of her hair and style of her clothes. Her tie suggests Rose may have been a nurse or an office worker (perhaps for the navy or some other government office). So too does her air of confidence and independence. She's not afraid to be seen in public with two grown men because she's reached an age when she doesn't have to answer to her parents.

What strikes me most in each picture is the sense of Rose's frank approachability. She's neither coquettish nor overtly proper (like so many of the other women in Dick's journals). She's attractive, slightly flirtatious without trying too hard, and open but still vulnerable. She's not a woman who plays mind games.

The kissing shots are bold but clearly meant to be funny. Dick's caption reads "She led me on!" Though good looking and a bit of a player, Dick was, at heart, a Utah farm boy from Mormon country and, by all accounts, a consummate gentleman.

Dick met three women that year for whom, after reading his journal, I'm quite sure he developed romantic feelings (the last being my great-grandmother). His entries about Rose convey none of that sense. They went out a few times before he shipped out to Australia and then he never mentions her again.

When looking through old pictures, the ones I like best offer a glimpse of the transcendent through a frame of the ordinary and obsolete. What I love about these shots of Rose Silver is the surprisingly modern sense of femininity she seems to convey. Out of all the other girls in Dick's pictures, she seems the most real. She seems like someone I could've dated in another life or just a cool female friend who was always game for a laugh.

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Also on this day: a 43 year old Ohio man shot and killed his mother, brother, sister-in-law, and five of their six children in a fit of violent insanity. Believing the family was about to be evicted from their shared house and wanting to spare them horrors and indignities of destitution, he appears to have shot them as a twisted act of mercy. Sorry for such a morbid inclusion but I think it's important to recognize that people have always been people in ways both good and bad. "In Cold Blood" and "No Country for Old Men" are equally potent reminders that every era, no matter how reputedly great or wholesome--has seen the same tragedies and evils. So don't get too down about the present.

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June 1, 1925

100 Years Ago Today

(according to the files of Edward R. Cuthbert, USMC)

"Tried to sleep a little but couldn't. Stood another 12 and 4, 8 and 12. Got all the coal on about 2:30. 1600 tons full up."

--Dick Cuthbert, June 1st, 1925

Coaling was arguably the most hated and unpleasant duty sailors had to perform in pre-World War I navies. By 1925 nearly every ship in the US fleet had converted to oil and thus their crews were spared the ordeal but not the Seattle boys. Though impressive in appearance, swift and powerful in action, and though she enjoyed the prestige that came with being the flagship of the entire United States fleet, the Seattle was one of the last coal burners remaining in active service and on coaling day all hands who served aboard her--sailors and marines, officers and enlisted men--had to do their part.

Essentially the work entailed shoveling coal massive piles of anthracite coal from a dockside, barge, or the deck of a refueling collier into massive sacks which were then hauled aboard the ship's main deck by winch and pulley rigs. From their the coal was shoveled through purpose-built hatchways down chutes into the storage bunkers that served the engineering plant. Standing knee deep in the stuff with black dust filling the air, men in the bunkers carefully repositioned the coal as it came in until each bunker was stacked from front to back, floor to ceiling. Finally, the crew had to scrub down every surface of the ship followed by their uniforms, skin, and hair until the only remaining trace of coal dust was the coating in each of their lungs.

The photos I inherited from Dick include many images of him and his shipmates performing this dirty chore. The subjects in these photographs usually seem cheerful, despite the drudgery of their task. They were, after all, strong young men born of a more stoic era. Coaling or no, they loved America, the navy and the ship on which they served. Their faces also convey a sense of camaraderie born of shared suffering, a cheer that belies the arduous conditions of their task: a full day's hard labor under a merciless tropical sun with dust got in their eyes, under their fingernails, in their mouths and between their teeth. Apart from their smiles, each man is a Dickensian caricature: shirtless, muscle-bound and caked with soot and sweat.

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In other parts of the world:

On June 1st, 1925 Babe Ruth made his season debut at Yankee Stadium after missing two months with a mysterious abdominal ailment. He went 0-2 in a 5-3 loss to the defending champions, the Washington Senators--a disappointing result that presaged a lost season in the Bronx.

Lost in the shuffle of the otherwise unremarkable game was the 8th inning substitution of shortstop Paul Wanninger for a 21-year-old Lou Gehrig. Despite flying out in his lone at bat, Gehrig’s appearance would mark the first of a string of 2000+ consecutive games played that would go on until 1939 when terminal illness would tragically cut short his career.

Meanwhile, the Maw family of Mendham, New Jersey welcomed a baby girl. She had been due in May and her parents had planned to give her that name but a hard delivery postponed her arrival until the new month and so she was christened June Maw. She would go one to live another 87 years, long enough to attend the marriage of this author with one of her lovely granddaughters, to mail countless packages of rice crispy treats and, in her final hours, knit the first piece of a quilt that would become my son's baby blanket.

Thank you for reading. This is the second of a series of 100 years ago today posts I plan on publishing inspired by the photojournals of my great-grandfather, Edward Richard (Dick) Cuthbert, a US marine who served from 1924-27 aboard the USS Seattle. In inherited the books when I was 13. Five years ago I decided to restore Dick's photographs and transcribe his writings to preserve them for all time--a project that ultimately spurred me to write a full account of what is often overlooked period in American cultural and military history. You see, Dick was a poster marine--a handsome, imposing, paragon of military virtue--and the ship on which he served was the flagship of the entire US Fleet. His travels took him through the Caribbean and Panama Canal, up and down both costs, and across the equator and international date line to the far corners of the South Pacific. Along the way he lived and worked in close proximity to a senior admirals who were heroes of the Spanish American War and WWI and up and coming junior officers (like Chester Nimitz) destined for greatness in WWII. He stood honor guard during diplomatic visits by foreign heads of state, governors, and military brass. He witnessed the dangerous and awkward birth of naval aviation and took part in vast war games that were dress rehearsals for the war against Japan. Dick and his fleet mates were fed, feted and entertained all over the world. They were treated to vaudeville and orchestral performances, horse races, air shows, Samoan dances, and Panamanian bullfights. They swam at Waikiki and Lahaina Roads, played baseball against Australian cricket clubs and golf with Maori caddies in New Zealand. They bought beaded necklaces, grass skirts, and Tahitian pearls. And they met girls. On piers thronged with cheering crowds, at YMCA balls waiting with their dance cards and tiny pencils, along beaches in frumpy bathing costumes, in flapper frocks and pearls at speakeasies from Brooklyn to Honolulu. If I can provide but a glimpse of the fun, excitement and fascination of Dick's experiences, my efforts will not have gone to waste.

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Doc brought along shekels, an Aramaic dictionary, and a shit ton of bottled water.

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OMG

Roger waters Robert plant! 

  (via Facebook)

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Sign for great-great-great grandfather's blacksmith shop on 1st South Street in Salt Lake City some time in the 1850s. Edward Cuthbert was born in Northern Ireland in 1815 and emigrated to the US during the 1830s. After converting to Mormonism Edward relocated to Navuoo, Illinois. In 1844, he and my great-great-great grandmother Susan McGee were married. Hyrum Smith, brother of Joseph Smith, did the honors. They bought a lot adjacent to Brigham Young's house and close to the communal smitthee. Their oldest two sons were born in Nauvoo while a third was born at Winter Quarters Nebraska from whence the growing family set forth in 1848 to reach Salt Lake City . In 1849 a fourth son was born: Campbell Cuthbert, my great-great grandfather. In 1855 Edward was called by the LDS Church to participate in a mission to future site of Las Vegas, Nevada where they were to convert the local Shoshone Indians. Serving as the mission's blacksmith, he shoed the pack animals and provided nails and tools to build the various buildings that represent the first permanent settlement on that site. He died in 1868.

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A dust devil traversing an exposed stretch of lake bed along Lake MacIntosh. Longs Peak in the background.

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You gotta love the bleakness of a Casper David Friedrich.

The Monk by the Sea (1810) by Caspar David Friedrich

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