savetheupholstery

[savetheupholstery]

I do have a piece of writing advice, actually.

See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.

But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.

I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.

The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.

Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.

[savetheupholstery]

open a new window somewhere in the world. 

[savetheupholstery]

[savetheupholstery]

[savetheupholstery]

thinking about telemachus recently and how odysseus was gone for like. his entire life. strictly speaking, telemachus wasn't the child of a single parent but he may as well have been. do you think that showed through, when odysseus did finally return home?

certainly, he was always a mama's boy. no one doubted that. he had no one else, after all. there was laertes, and the men around the palace (who harbored a disgust for the horde of suitors that almost rivalled penelope's) and he loved them all dearly, but it was not the same. telemachus grew up loving his mother with all of his heart, and defending her with all his strength.

and then this man comes home, and he has telemachus' smile and he knows things that only telemachus' father would know, but he is a stranger. odysseus arrives home as a creature of myth, the misty stuff of fables that you could almost touch if you reached, but never quite grasp. telemachus does not know this man, but seeing him that day in the throne room is the first time in twenty years that penelope has shed tears of joy instead of pain, so he decides there must be something to him. he smiles at this man's jokes and listens raptly to his stories (and he does have so many stories!) but there is always that distance there. a gap in the planks of the bridge, a crevasse that's just too wide to jump across. he tries to know him, but it is not as easy as either of them would like it to be.

it is penelope that finally bridges the gap. telemachus finds her in tears again one day, tucked away somewhere odysseus would not see, and he rushes to his mother's side, but when he reaches her she cups his face the way she did when he was a boy. her hands are thinner now than they were then, and there are lines on her face that had not been there before, but behind the glimmer of tears is that spark. that strong, intelligent spark that first drew odysseus to her; that spark that convinced young telemachus that his mother could rival athena in wisdom if she wished to be so bold.

but these tears, he finds, are not the ones he expected. as penelope takes her son into her arms she whispers, you're just like him. you're so much like your father, and i am so proud.

and that sticks.

telemachus meets the stranger with his father's face and thinks, he's just like me. he watches him laugh the way he himself does, he compares his face and odysseus' in a mirror and the similarities make him smile this time. he hears others in the palace tell of the king's courage and his wit and he thinks, perhaps i can be like him. perhaps he is like me.

telemachus greets odysseus that night and calls him father, and for the first time, the word does not feel strange on his tongue.

it feels right.

[savetheupholstery]

i’m starting a collection

[savetheupholstery]

me every day without fail: I'll do [chore] when I get home

me when I get home:

[savetheupholstery]

765874 Unification - Short Film from The Roddenberry Archive, OTOY, William Shatner and the Nimoy estate, in commemoration of 30th anniversary of Generation being released.

[savetheupholstery]

[savetheupholstery]

laughing at the entire conceit of live action httyd being "animation is for babies so we HAVE to remake this shot-for-shot in live action" but also they need to sell a new wave of plushies at universal studios orlando so toothless still looks like a fucking cartoon character

[savetheupholstery]

How long until Dr Oz becomes Surgeon General

[savetheupholstery]

Goncharov (1973) dir. Martin Scorsese

“The greatest mafia movie (n)ever made.”

[savetheupholstery]

another night passes, and once again i find myself mourning the loss of ezra's gunsaber

[savetheupholstery]

i’m so glad earth only has one moon, if there were more i’d have to pick a favorite and that sounds too emotionally taxing to even fathom

[savetheupholstery]

life really is just like. you meet people you love them and then you lose them and you never see them again. and it's inevitable and it happens to everyone and there's nothing you can do about it

[savetheupholstery]

Worst pain

[savetheupholstery]

Every time they say probie I take a drag out of my cigarette like "they used to call my good friend Ravi Panikkar that"