#(moritz) v; one word is all it would have taken

[andessence]

@polarean // continued.

Moritz holds the bedpost fast in her clammy hands as she watches him think and make comforting overtures at her like one coos to a frightened, cornered animal. ‘It is not bad to be who you are.’ Her knuckles are white from her grip. Does he really believe that? Moritz has about a thousand reasons to hate who she is, all backed up by the ire of her schoolmasters, the disappointment of her parents, and the rejection of her home, and all of these without anyone ever having to know what she is now, dressing up like a girl alone in some boardinghouse room in the dead of night to admire her own reflection. The stupidity had been fault enough to make her see that being who she was could indeed be bad. ———— But no matter how resolutely she attempts to reconcile herself to this sour truth, a craving for acceptance keeps her hoping it could be otherwise. It makes her wish that, for all her protests, Sylvain won’t stop trying to comfort her.

Melchior had once made her see that this was the nature of girls — to fight off a good thing as long as they could, and eventually to be won over, in spite of themselves. That’s the best proof she has that she’s a girl, deep down; she can’t help fighting off the good things she most needs.

Sylvain is looking at her dress — (It was Mama’s dress, and heaven only knows what she thought when she noticed it was missing. Did she discover the theft right away, or only days, maybe weeks after her son flunked out of school and disappeared? Surely she would have been too embarrassed to mention it except to Moritz’s father ... if the two of them even spoke about Moritz anymore and had not disowned her, leaving her name a taboo in her childhood home.) — but Sylvain is looking at it and he is asking her something about it that she doesn’t understand. 

“How to...? Sorry.”

She does not step back out from behind the corner of the bed, but her weight shifts, and she leans out, the skirt rustling, as if she might come forward.

[maxwellyjordan]

Symposium: How to win the partisan gerrymandering cases

Daniel Tokaji is Associate Dean for Faculty and Charles W. Ebersold and Florence Whitcomb Ebersold Professor of Constitutional Law at The Ohio State University Michael E. Moritz College of Law.

No one said this would be easy. For decades, critics of partisan gerrymandering have been knocking on the U.S. Supreme Court’s door, seeking a ruling that extreme gerrymanders violate the U.S. Constitution. Even as the problem has worsened, the court has refused to open that door – though it hasn’t locked it shut either. Most recently, the Supreme Court denied relief last term in cases out of Wisconsin and Maryland. In the Wisconsin case (Gill v. Whitford), the court unanimously concluded that the plaintiffs had failed to demonstrate their standing to assert that a Republican-drawn state legislative redistricting plan violated their right to vote. In the Maryland case (Benisek v. Lamone), the court affirmed the denial of a preliminary injunction against a congressional redistricting plan drawn by Democrats.

Two partisan-gerrymandering cases are before the Supreme Court again this term. On March 26, the justices will hear arguments in challenges to North Carolina’s congressional redistricting plan (Rucho v. Common Cause) and Maryland’s congressional redistricting plan, which is back before the court (Lamone v. Benisek). Three-judge district courts granted relief in both cases. So there is hope. But after last term’s rulings and the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy – long seen as a potential fifth vote to strike down partisan gerrymanders – there are reasons to doubt the plaintiffs’ chances in the Supreme Court.

If either of these challenges is to succeed, the plaintiffs will have to present the best argument that can be marshalled. That means pressing the claim that extreme partisan gerrymandering violates the First Amendment right of expressive association. Both the North Carolina and Maryland district courts accepted this idea, though a winning argument before the Supreme Court will look significantly different than either of the lower court opinions. In the remainder of this post, I offer three suggestions for the plaintiffs and their amici on the argument that is most likely to succeed.

Follow Justice Kagan’s lead

Although last term’s decision in Gill was unanimous in holding that the Wisconsin plaintiffs had failed to establish standing on their right-to-vote claim under the equal protection clause, four justices suggested an alternative legal theory. Justice Elena Kagan’s concurring opinion (joined by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor) offered a theory grounded in the First Amendment right of expressive association. Though the plaintiffs had made such an argument below, Kagan wrote that they “did not advance it with sufficient clarity or concreteness to make it a real part of their case.”

The concurring justices sketched out what a First Amendment association claim might look like – and how it would differ from the equal protection clause arguments that have been the focal point of partisan-gerrymandering litigation until now. As Kagan’s concurrence explained, representative democracy depends on citizens being able to “band together” with others to advance their shared political beliefs. The Supreme Court has long looked with disfavor on laws and practices that weaken a disfavored group’s ability to join together for this purpose. That includes political parties, ranging from major parties (i.e., Republicans and Democrats) to third parties and supporters of independent candidates.

Among the laws that the Supreme Court has struck down as violative of the First Amendment are restrictions on people joining with like-minded others through their votes. An example is Anderson v. Celebrezze, cited in Kagan’s concurrence. In Anderson, the court struck down Ohio’s restrictions on ballot access for third-party presidential candidates. Following previous cases like Williams v. Rhodes, another Ohio ballot-access case, the court held that the First Amendment right of association extends to state laws that limit access to the ballot, because elections are a critical forum for “expression of views on issues of the day, and a candidate serves as a rallying point for like-minded citizens.” On the other hand, the court recognized that some regulation of the electoral process is necessary, so not all restrictions imposed by the state are constitutionally suspect. Anderson prescribed a balancing test, under which the burdens on voting and association should be weighed against the state’s interest.

I was among a group of law professors who submitted an amicus brief in the Wisconsin case, explaining why extreme partisan gerrymanders violate the right of expressive association set forth in Anderson and other cases. Kagan’s concurring opinion develops this idea. She urges consideration of evidence outside the voting process itself – that is, evidence of effects on the disfavored party other than the defeat of their candidates in legislative elections. Citing Anderson, Kagan suggests that partisan gerrymandering may cause “difficulties fundraising, registering voters, attracting volunteers, generating support from independents, and recruiting candidates to run for office (not to mention eventually accomplishing their policy objectives).” These extra-electoral effects are among the burdens on expressive association that partisan gerrymandering may impose, and should be considered as a part of the balancing test.

The First Amendment association theory sketched out in Kagan’s concurrence presents the most promising basis for invalidating extreme partisan gerrymanders. First, the association theory is supported by over 50 years of Supreme Court precedent, which has understood voting and attendant political activities to be a form of association protected by the First Amendment. Holding that extreme redistricting also violates the right of association would be a logical and reasonable extension of this precedent. Second, it best captures the injury inflicted by partisan gerrymandering. That includes systemic injury inflicted on a group of people through the dilution of their votes, as well as effects on the disfavored party and its supporters outside the electoral process. Third, the right of association provides an appropriately nuanced legal standard. Anderson and its progeny require that the burdens imposed by partisan gerrymandering be weighed against the state’s legitimate interest. This avoids the trap of arguing that a redistricting plan is constitutionally suspect if there is any evidence of partisan intent. That argument is a nonstarter. There is probably some partisan motivation underlying virtually every redistricting plan. That’s a bridge too far for this court.

For those who remain unpersuaded by these arguments for pressing the First Amendment association theory, here is one more: Kagan and the three other justices who joined her concurrence suggested it. They and only they have the opportunity to talk with their colleagues at conferences. We should take these justices at their word about what arguments are most likely to persuade one or more of their colleagues.

Don’t reinvent the wheel

Over the years, lawyers and legal scholars have engaged in lots of hand-wringing over the legal standard that should govern partisan-gerrymandering claims. That’s understandable, given the significant risk that the Supreme Court will declare partisan gerrymandering to be a nonjusticiable political question due to the absence of judicially discoverable and manageable standards. Four justices would have taken partisan gerrymandering claims off the table back in 2004, in Vieth v. Jubelirer, an equal protection challenge to Pennsylvania’s congressional redistricting plan.

As Kennedy suggested in his Vieth concurrence, the First Amendment right of association provides a constitutional standard that is both discoverable and manageable. Anderson and its progeny prescribe a balancing test, under which courts should first consider the “character and magnitude” of the burden on associational and voting rights. Next, it should consider the “precise interests” advanced by the state for the burden imposed, including not only their “legitimacy and strength” but the extent to which it is “necessary” to burden the rights of voters, candidates and parties. While emphasizing that there is no “litmus-paper test” and that “hard judgments” are necessary, the court said that “the State’s important regulatory interests are generally sufficient to justify reasonable, nondiscriminatory restrictions.” Under Anderson, courts should consider not only the magnitude of the injury, but also its character – and in particular, whether it discriminates against a particular group.

Courts have applied the Anderson balancing standard to a wide variety of election law cases over the years, including ones involving ballot access, write-in voting and primary systems. More recently, a majority of justices applied this standard in Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, an unsuccessful 2008 challenge to Indiana’s voter ID law. Since then, lower courts have applied this balancing standard to various burdens on participation, including limits on early voting and the counting of provisional ballots. Courts have upheld some of these practices and invalidated others. But the standard has proven manageable, allowing courts to carefully review the evidence regarding both the burdens imposed by the law and the state’s legitimate justifications.

Such a standard is no less manageable in the context of partisan gerrymandering. To be sure, it is no bright-line rule. The reality is that partisan gerrymandering necessarily involves complicated questions about the effects of a redistricting plan on individual voters, parties and the system as a whole. Courts must also carefully consider the state’s legitimate reasons for drawing a plan that may have some discriminatory effects on the nondominant party – such as geographic features, preservation of communities and adherence to local government boundaries. To quote Anderson, there is no “litmus-paper test” that will distinguish extreme partisan gerrymanders from run-of-the-mill plans. Courts will have to consider a multitude of factors and exercise judgment, as they so often do in constitutional litigation.

That’s what the district court opinions in both the Wisconsin and Maryland cases try to do, although there are problems in how both courts characterize the First Amendment standard. The North Carolina opinion throws several First Amendment arguments up against the wall – viewpoint discrimination, speaker discrimination, retaliation and political association – evidently hoping that one of them will stick. It winds up adopting a three-part standard, cobbled together from these various lines of precedent, requiring plaintiffs to demonstrate (1) intent to burden supporters of the disfavored party, (2) an actual burden on their speech and association, and (3) a causal relation between the two. Although this captures the factors that courts should generally consider, the court would have been better off sticking with the balancing test prescribed by Anderson and its progeny.

The Maryland district court opinion has similar problems. In their previous trip to the Supreme Court, the Benisek plaintiffs argued that partisan gerrymandering should be considered a form of retaliation forbidden under the First Amendment. But retaliation is a poor fit for the injury effected by gerrymandering. Retaliation cases are backward-looking, tending to focus on the individualized harm done to someone because of perceived political beliefs or affiliations. Gerrymandering, by contrast, inflicts an injury that is systemic and forward-looking, denying a political group and its supporters a fair opportunity to compete for public support. Thankfully, the most recent district court opinion in the Maryland case subtly backs away from (without completely abandoning) the retaliation comparison. But it too endorses a three-part test, requiring (1) specific intent, (2) injury and (3) causation.

The plaintiffs and their amici are better off sticking with the tried-and-true First Amendment association standard set forth in Anderson and its progeny, with the refinement that Kagan suggested in Gill. They should focus on how partisan gerrymandering diminishes representation in legislative bodies and harms people who wish to associate with the disfavored party outside of elections.

Tell a story

This brings me to my third and most important point. If either the North Carolina or Maryland plaintiffs are to succeed, they will have to tell a compelling story about how the disfavored party and its members have actually been harmed by partisan gerrymandering. This requires a more granular presentation of the facts and law than we’ve seen before, what my colleague Ned Foley calls a “particularistic” approach.

Plaintiffs have done a great job of presenting empirical research on how gerrymandering systematically disadvantages the disfavored party. That’s especially true in the Wisconsin case last term and the North Carolina case this term. The record shows how partisan gerrymandering locks the dominant party in power while excluding the other major party, using multiple statistical measures that all point in the same direction.

I love a good scatterplot or S-curve as much as anyone. And this type of evidence will be necessary for plaintiffs to prevail. But it won’t be sufficient. This reality is best captured in Chief Justice John Roberts’ reference to empirical research as “sociological gobbledygook” at oral argument last term. This remark is unfair. Even so, it captures the reality that judges aren’t social scientists and can’t be expected to rely exclusively on statistical evidence of partisan disadvantage as a basis for striking down a district or plan.

What every great lawyer knows how to tell – and every judge loves to hear – is a good story. Missing from prior cases is a compelling narrative showing how real people are hurt by gerrymandered districts. This is one of the lessons from the unanimous opinion in Gill. The Supreme Court’s opinion emphasized the “individualized and personal” nature of the right to vote, insisting that plaintiffs show a “district specific” injury for standing. The evidence of statewide injury to the nondominant party and its voters wasn’t enough. I disagree with this ruling, because I think partisan gerrymandering by its nature inflicts a systemic rather than atomistic harm. And it’s still possible that the court could accept a statewide association claim, without proof of individualized harm to identified people. But such a ruling is unlikely.

If the plaintiffs in either the North Carolina or Maryland case hope to win, they will have to tell a more compelling story than they have so far. That requires evidence of real people who have been hurt – for example, by their communities being cracked or packed by redistricting. An example is the story that in 2006 moved the court to action – albeit on a different kind of claim – in League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry. The court heard the story of Latino voters in Laredo, Texas, who were becoming more politically active and on the cusp of finally electing their candidate of choice before the mid-decade gerrymandering engineered by Tom DeLay stole away that opportunity.

The best stories have good guys as well as bad guys. So in addition to showing how the dominant party drew the plans to help themselves, the plaintiffs must show how real-life voters of the other major party were hurt. An example is how students at North Carolina A&T State University, a historically black institution, were split into two districts by that state’s congressional districting plan. One student explains here how “my vote and those of my peers were diluted and our ability to elect the representatives we chose was undermined” by the way these districts were drawn. The plaintiffs should also show how gerrymandered districts have stymied political organizing by the disfavored party and would-be members. The lower-court opinions in both the North Carolina and Maryland cases describe this evidence in general terms, but a more particularistic – and more humanized – account will be essential if plaintiffs are to prevail in either case.

Winning a partisan-gerrymandering claim has never been easy. But to have any realistic hope of prevailing, the plaintiffs and their amici will have to present the facts and law in a way that’s different from the lower-court opinions. That means following Kagan’s lead on seeing partisan gerrymandering as a violation of associational rights, applying the time-tested balancing test of Anderson and its progeny, and telling a story of how real human beings are harmed by gerrymandered districts.

* * *

Past cases linked to in this post:

Anderson v. Celebrezze, 460 U.S. 780 (1983) Benisek v. Lamone, No. 17-333 (U.S. Jun. 18, 2018) Crawford v. Marion County Election Board, 553 U.S. 181 (2008) Gill v. Whitford, No. 16-1161 (U.S. Jun. 18, 2018) League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, 457 F. Supp. 2d 716 (E.D. Tex. 2006) Vieth v. Jubelirer, 541 U.S. 267 (2004) Williams v. Rhodes, 393 U.S. 23 (1968)

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[geopolicraticus]

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part VI

Oswald Spengler and Otto Neurath

Otto Neurath is an interesting figure in the history of early twentieth century philosophy, specifically, Anglo-American philosophy in the age of positivism and the emergence of analytical philosophy (though I should point out that Neurath was Viennese and not Anglo-American). Neurath would not appear on a short list of the first rank of analytical philosophers -- Bertrand Russell, Wittgenstein, Carnap, and maybe G. E. Moore -- nor perhaps even among the second rank -- Moritz Schlick, A. J. Ayer, Hans Reichenbach, etc. Though we might place Neurath among the tertiary figures of early analytical philosophers, Neurath nevertheless played an outsize role because of his activism, that is to say, Neurath seems to have been the kind of man who gets things done -- a mover and a shaker.

Moreover, Neurath lived at a time when things desperately needed to get done. We have to try to recapture the chaos of the first half of the twentieth century in order to understand Neurath’s intellectual milieu. For a Europe utterly shattered by the First World War, the utopian vision of communism offered a hope that was not to be found in any other social movement. All forms of traditionalism had been discredited by the war and its aftermath, and communism alone seemed to offer a vision of the future. Communism, in short, offered a human destiny, at a time when Spengler said, “Optimism is cowardice.”

Neurath was part of this growing influence of socialism and communism, which was especially prevalent among the intelligentsia. Many if not most of the philosophers and scientists who fled the continent before, during, and after the wars were socialists or communists seeking refuge from a political milieu increasingly unfriendly to their efforts.

Spengler might be characterized as part of the conservative reaction against the growth of socialism and communism, though Spengler is not always included among the representatives of the “conservative revolution” with figures like Ernst Jünger  and Carl Schmitt; Spengler was a somewhat isolated figure. Nevertheless, when the first volume of Spengler’s The Decline of the West was published it became an unlikely best seller, propelling Spengler into the limelight of post-war Germany. The defeated Germans were prepared to hear that western civilization was in terminal decline. 

As the “it” book in post-war Germany, The Decline of the West predictably drew many responses, among them Otto Neurath’s Anti-Spengler, a 96-page pamphlet published in Munich in 1921. Spengler was living in Munich, and one wonders whether he saw copies of Neurath’s pamphlet on sale. Neurath’s pamphlet bears the dedication, “Dedicated to the young and the future they shape.” 

As a positivist and one of the founders of the Vienna Circle, Neurath held an unflattering view of Spengler’s metaphysical structure of historic humanity, and indeed Neurath is highly critical of what he sees as Spengler’s mysticism and obscurantism. Presumably a positivist “big picture” treatment of human history would be anti-metaphysical, but whether it would even be possible for a positivist to write such a work is not clear. Neurath wrote, “...a work on the future of mankind is not subject to the criteria for specialized studies.” In other words, Neurath answers in the negative the question I posed as Is it possible to specialize in the big picture?

As I would like to believe that this question can be answered in the affirmative, I am inclined toward reading Spengler as an inchoate effort in this direction, imperfect and often confused, but still pointing the way, while I read Neurath as lacking the imagination to project his positivist views into historiography, and therefore settling for the indifferent, perhaps even casual and sloppy formulations of Marx (or that part of Marx that was taken up into post-war socialism and communism).

Neurath quotes Spengler at length in his pamphlet, and attempts to rebut Spengler point-by-point (though not to the extent that would be necessary to engage with the whole of Spengler’s long book). But really it is not the point-by-point argument that animates Neurath’s pamphlet; Neurath was focused on the grand narrative that he seems to suggest cannot be studied scientifically. In the final paragraph of his pamphlet Neurath wrote: 

“Everyone in his innermost soul must come to terms with mysticism and antinomies; but the struggle against the mystic euphoria that attaches to trivial contradictions can be fought independently of that. Young people who take life seriously must quickly settle this in order to advance to strong constructive activity, but also to old and difficult questions of existence and world-views, which are spared no one, be he as logical and acute as a man can possibly be.”

Neurath may as well have said, “move fast and break things.” This is exactly what happened. Quickly settling accounts with the deep human past did not work out well for any concerned, not for the tens of millions killed in the subsequent war, and not for the tens of millions killed by the attempt to put socialism and communism into practice after the war. Advancing quickly to constructive activity did not work out at planned, and more often than not represented retrogression rather than advancement.

When Europe was shattered a second time by the Second World War -- effectively, defeated as a civilization and divided between the non-European superpowers of Russia and the US (Julius Evola spoke of men among the ruins, and this seems an apt characterization) -- there was no longer a European tradition that offered a hope or a destiny. Spengler died before the war started, in 1936; Neurath fled to Holland, and then to England, dying in the same year the war came to an end. Neither figure was to be especially prominent or influential in intellectual circles in the coming decades. One might well draw the conclusion that each, in their different way, represented a dead end of European civilization. But I do not think that this would be the correct judgment.

Spengler and Neurath represent perennial traditions in European thought. Spengler is the gloomy, big picture thinker, always being a wet blanket by reminding his contemporaries that they are mere moment in something far larger than themselves; Neurath was the optimistic voice of a very different grand narrative of human society. If Spengler were revived and looked back upon this history, I believe he would still see his grand narrative playing itself out, and would have a place for Neurath’s grand narrative within the more comprehensive whole of his thought.

But instead of Spengler, there was the grand historical narrative of Arnold Toynbee’s multi-volume A Study of History. Toynbee is another story, and his intellectual debts lie elsewhere. Nevertheless, in Toynbee we have yet another figure who has made little impact on academic historiography, thus something of an outsider, who gained popular renown (and even made the cover of TIME magazine). I would argue that Toynbee was “timely” in precisely the Nietzschean sense in which Spengler was “untimely,” but that is an argument for another time. 

Oswald Spengler and Human Destiny

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part I

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part II

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part III

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part IV

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part V

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part VI 

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part VII 

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part VIII 

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part IX 

Metaphysical Structure of Historic Humanity, Part X

[andessence]

✂ @ Moritz from doubleheadedking

manhandling starters // @doubleheadedking✂ - point sternly at a chair and tell my muse to sit down

The silence in the barn is deafening, a physical pressure on Moritz. Or maybe that's the blood pounding in her that makes that pressure in her ears — the same furious, feverish pulse that's thudding in her chest and staining her cheeks with an embarrassed, splotchy red just when she wants most to be indifferent and cool.

When she'd stood on the banks of the river among the rustling willows and the dying light only moments ago, she had been sure she was beyond embarrassment, all problems to be solved, all misery to be terminated by the GUN pressed against her temple. She had soothed herself with the idea that Melchior would place a wreath on her grave. It all would have been so, she'd have been free and clear, if not for the way the rustling suddenly grew louder and the light on the water changed with the shadow of someone approaching. Trying to hide the gun then had been a silly reflex, she realizes now; no matter who it was, the most logical thing would have been to simply pull the trigger and never know who it was, but Moritz had resolved to take this course out of the feeling that she was trouble to others, a BURDEN, and it was the same feeling that jerked the gun back into her lap at the thought of someone having to witness the violence of her death. No more trouble, no more bother, just let me go quietly, unnoticed... But she couldn't be lucky even in this, could she?

Moritz hadn't heard any words so much as she heard some senseless sounds that Melchior's voice made as he reached her, as the gun was without a fight pulled from her hands. She saw him, but tried not to, her eyes stubbornly stuck to the grassy bank, then the woodland floor, and then the hay and dirt beneath her as Melchior drew her away, out of the coming night, and into the Gabor barn. By then he'd stopped talking, which was the sensible thing given Moritz's complete muteness.

Now Melchior looks at her with an expression that Moritz can't parse in the fleeting glances she dares to turn on him, but the meaning of his pointing at the beaten old chair is perfectly clear: SIT. She obeys mechanically, all the while still thinking, 'I'm as good as gone, it doesn't matter. Don't make trouble. Don't fight. In ten minutes, or an hour, or tomorrow, it's all over. Remember it's decided.' But that morbid comfort doesn't stop her from feeling like pins and needles in a thawing limb how very alive she is now, how afraid, and yes, how embarrassed. There is nothing she can say to him that's worth a damn, but in the hope that saying something, even something stupid, will spark Melchior to do anything but stare at her with that expression she refuses to can't read, she mumbles softly, "It's all over, Melchior. Finished. It's alright." What exactly her friend might understand to be 'over' from this remark, the threat or her life, Moritz doesn't worry about.

[andessence]

@the-question-is-shame // plotted starter.

“I don’t want to cry again today. I don’t want to think about my funeral again.” she pleads with herself, carding her fingers through dying grass, grasping at it in handfuls and feeling the roots snap in the dirt, one by one, as she closes her fist around them. She’d felt silly talking to herself like this only moments ago, but now she realizes it is a true comfort, and nothing to be ashamed of when nobody can hear her. Even as her voice breaks, it calms her to hear it speaking what she’s been afraid to say all day. “Melchior will lay a wreath on my coffin...” she promises herself, and the babble of assurances comes easily, mindlessly after that. She talks, talks, TALKS FOREVER, it seems, but the words pass half heard in her own ears. Her resolve is becoming firm again, and the sting of threatened tears has dulled behind her eyes. 

That first assurance is what she holds on to. Melchior. Melchior AT MY GRAVE. Maybe they won’t even bury her in the graveyard, knowing what she did to herself. Maybe they’ll bury her someplace like here, with the willows and the water. She likes the idea of her marker under the shadow of the trees, and Melchior, admiring it. “Your Commandments are for the immature; I carry my free ticket inside me,” she hears herself say, and thinks with satisfaction it sounds almost like Melchior himself — like Melchior is here with her. But he isn’t. He’s ————— Tears again, insistent and BURNING. She screws her eyes shut against them and against memory freshly formed. ‘Only today, the last time I’ll have seen him, in his hayloft, with Wen—’ 

She shudders. She remembers to breathe. Only for a few more minutes. “It isn’t fair of you to make me dizzy! The fog is clearing; LIFE IS A MATTER OF TASTE.”

She releases the browning grass. She feels in her pocket for a crumpled letter, and for her father’s gun.

[andessence]

@hopedreaminq // moritz’s permanent starter call !

“Excuse me!” The English is uncertain and thickly accented, but she makes every effort to speak slowly and clearly  all the same — with so much against her, she mustn’t let her nerves cause her to make stupid mistakes. The streets are loud and busy — everything has been so loud and busy since she left home. “Excuse me. What street? This, what street?”

[andessence]

‘ i see how you labor beneath that load: afraid to look up, and afraid to let go. ’ from ilse for moritz!

hadestown starters

Ilse’s gaze on her seems the HEAVIEST LOAD she’s ever borne. She can’t meet it, though the flickering of her eyes to her childhood friend suggests that she’s trying desperately. It suggests that she doesn’t want Ilse to see that she’s RIGHT.

She doesn’t need this new torture, ultimately nothing more than the newest burr catching her as she makes the feverish break for freedom — for  P E A C E .  The world scrapes and grasps at her more violently now that she realizes how to escape it, as if it hated her for discovering the secret that NONE OF IT MATTERS. All an illusion! All the noxious fumes, refuse of the æther swirling into twisted, cruel forms that mock the SUBLIMITY beyond them from which they came! She was going to break the chains at last and find that higher form. She just had to shake off this burr.

“Ilse, you don’t see anything. You don’t know the first thing about—! You’ve been with the artists too long, and sound like them; everything has deeper meaning; everything sounds profound.” She wants to draw the words up sharp and fatal, but her tongue is thick and her mouth dry. The retort is dull, DEAD already as it falls from her lips. “But it isn’t always. Sometimes a look is just a look. ——— It’s getting dark. You should go home.”

[andessence]

moritz tag drop !