#Eugene Gull

[marejadilla]

Eugene Gull, "Woman in yellow dress", oil on canvas. B.1988, Enkhuizen, Noord-Holland, Netherlands.

[classicdavinci]

Eugene Gull

[spidrzfall]

Masks, messages, and secrets ⤑ Peter Parker.

finally, i have time to write again. Oh my goodness. enjoy this one, you guys! Sorry if it's not like totally action packed honestly this is a slow burn, and with a ton of small ideas, im working on, so bare with me, please. Im trying, i promise, but this is bound to have some just generic normal people living life scenes, so yeah! Sorry if this is disappointing, though. love you all xoxo - A.

☆° Peter Parker x Male Reader

☆° part two of Tough Night.

☆°• FLUFF - just some banter splice of life stuff babes.

°•▪︎ Fem readers DNI ♡♡

♧ warnings: Language, all characters are 21+ ♧

♡ READ PART ONE : Click me!

♡ Part Three : Coming Soon !

(M/N) didn’t have the gulls to tell Eugene he was secretly texting Peter on the side, after their small dispute the week after, it was almost impossible to even bring up the subject of Peter. It wasn’t hard to see that Eugene was little to not a fan of Peter at all, talking (M/N)’s ear off about how much of a push over he was and he wasn’t someone he wanted his brother to be associated with. Eugene since a young age cared deeply about his brother, from the second his parents brought him from the adoption center a part of him felt the spark of keeping him close, that brotherly instinct to care more about the other and teach him to fend off for himself. Even at a young age Eugene made sure (M/N) knew how to protect himself, not be a pushover to anybody and especially not take shit from anyone. 

Home life wasn’t easy on the two, Their father was a drunk who actively threatened their lives and well beings whilst their mother aside from being absent anytime she was in their lives she only instigated the yelling and mental drainess that came along with even living with their father and an absent mother. Eugene always made sure to protect his brother from then, basically taking him into his own care with making them food, getting supplies for their classes in school, driving (M/N) half across Queens to school because the two were enrolled in different schools, making sure his brother didn’t endure everything that happened at home by taking every yelling from their dad. Even with taking bullets for the other he basically trained (M/N) to defend himself, times where he influenced him to not be a pushover…

Everything he claimed Peter was, he never wanted his brother to be. 

Was it a surprise to anyone when (M/N) was secretly texting Peter behind Eugene’s back? No. A part of (M/N) was rebellious, whilst he did appreciate Eugene’s protectiveness he couldn’t help but admit sometimes it was overbearing, he knew Eugene had good intentions but there were times he felt he couldn’t even become friends with anyone because of his brother. That of course struck rebelion, the rebellion of (M/N) Thompson. Secretly being a lot more sympathetic, being friends with (what his brother called) losers, not mixing in with the crowd, letting his heart weave the way into life and not his judgment. He allowed himself to be free, something Eugene couldn’t be. Though (M/N) knew why, it was how the guy was born it wasn’t like he had a choice but be a close minded and rough guy. He let his own anger and judgment cloud his decisions and way of expression that was toxic and cruel, which (M/N) would be lying if he said his brother wasn’t changing those old ways now that he was an adult. But that was just still in the works.

Another ding came from (M/N)’s phone, as he slurred in his sleep before another one came through…and another..and another. As he groaned, putting a pillow atop his head trying to tune out the noise, knowing it was probably Eugene texting him something stupid or a string of memes, though it came to the slight realization that (M/N) had Eugene muted on his phone. As he slowly peaked his eye from underneath the pillow as he tiredly grabbed his phone, groaning at the light immiting as his eyes adjusted before checking his notifications Peter’s contact showing through as he looked at the time, what the fuck was this guy doing up at 5 A.M.

(M/N) chuckled as he rolled his eyes before grabbing his phone and rolling over to get comfortable as he opened up his phone and went over to messages, taking note of the 10+ notifications from Eugene’s silenced contact as he ignored them before going to Peters contact, a stiff laugh leaving his lips as he replied.

(M/N) set his phone back down before settling back into bed and drifted into his deep state of sleep. The room, dark some hints of the sunshine occasionally shining through but not enough to separate him from his sleep, his snores echoing in the four walls of his bedroom as the slow quiet hum of the apartment's A.C can be heard. The cold breeze substituting the once warm bedroom.

It wasn’t that late by the time (M/N) woke up, shuffling out of bed and grabbing his towel before tiredly making his way to the bathroom and beginning his day with a fresh cold shower, the cold water that hit his skin slowly dissolving the fatigue from his body and into a state of mind where he was finally ready to start the day. Stepping out the shower and into his towel as he dried himself and put on clothes that were much more comfortable yet presentable as he dried his damp hair, adding some coconut oil just to enhance his hair's health and get rid of any damage. Putting on his shoes before tackling his messenger bag that looked like it was massively decorated by a 5 year old who was handed unlimited access to pins and buttons, stepping out the door and to the more lively part of where he lived. Eventually stumbling across his favorite breakfast joint, SoBal Forest Hills, stepping inside as he ordered his usual which was an Acai Bowl, eating it peacefully before stepping out only for somebody to bump into him, making his breakfast splatter on his shirt, staining it a magenta color with sprinkles of the granola that laid atop of it. 

“Watch it! God dammit this was my favorite shirt..” (M/N) mumbled as he tried to take off the remains of the now ruined food. Turning to the guy he had bumped into only for a flash of red and blue to pass by him, Spider-Man. Of course, only the one person who bumped into him the whole day was a criminal being chased down by the well known vigilante, looks like he wasn’t getting an apology anytime soon. Deciding to live with the stain as the salvaged the little of acai left in the bowl as he ate it up before throwing it away and making his way towards the small supermarket nearby as he picked up some food he thought he needed to survive the next couple of weeks before finally going back home, stepping inside, placing the groceries onto the wooden dining table and quickly taking off the stained shirt, dragging himself into his bedroom before placing on a brand new shirt, shuffling out his jeans and into some basketball shorts before going to unpack his groceries. 

Nightfall not taking to long to arrive before he heard his phone buzz in the midst of him ordering some food ,feeling too lazy to cook,  as he looked at the notification, falling in from Peter who was asking him to call which (M/N) gladly accepted as he looked at his phone that had an incoming call as he accepted, a loud windy sound coming from the speaker as he chuckled. “Dude, where are you? A giant fan?” (M/N) was the first to speak as Peter let out a dry laugh “No, I’m just running. Mother hubbard, I’m exhausted.” Peter panted, his voice partially muffled which (M/N) assumed was the sound quality as the windy sound finally came to an end, most likely from him stopping to take a breath. “So Acai bowl huh?” Peter continued after finally catching his breath, a small pant still leaving his lips.

“How’d you know?” (M/N) leaned against this counter, as he crossed his arm. His phone on the counter and on speaker, Peter's voice echoing from the phone's speakers. “I was doing some outdoor photography for work and I saw you, I was gonna call out but you seemed frustrated so I let you be.” – “Could’ve bought me another Acai bowl, just saying could’ve put me in a much better mood.” (M/N) joked as it managed to get a laugh out of Peter which made the other smile. “SoBal Forest Hills, right? It’s near where we live so I might at some point, when I’m feeling nice.” Peter replied. “Oh when he feels nice, what an honor.” 

“yeah yeah, don’t get flustered on me now- shit I gotta go, sorry man. I’ll text you! Bye- Hey!” Peter had a small outburst before the call hung up as (M/N) stood in his kitchen, a confused look on his face before shaking his head and continuing to order his food. Awaiting for it, cuddling up into a blanket on his couch, Forest Gump playing on his television, his attention drawn away as a small knock came from his balcony. As he raised a brow, not sure if he heard it before it happened again as he stood up and cautiously peeked through the curtains. A glimpse of red and blue shining from outside as his eyes made contact with the familiar almost diamond oval shaped lenses as he took a double take. Opening the curtains as it revealed Spider-Man on the other side which caused (M/N) to rub his eyes before opening his balcony.

  “Spider-Man?” (M/N)’s voice was laced with uncertainty as he looked at the masked vigilante who waved at him, the other hand behind the hero's back. “You’re the guy the car thief bumped into this morning, right? Acai bowl guy.” Spider-Man finally spoke as he faced (M/N) settling on the edge of the balcony, the question earning him a nod from the man. Spider-Man’s hand came out from hiding to reveal an acai bowl, “Here. As an apology for this morning.” The hero handed him the small bowl as (M/N) hesitated but took it. “Thanks…How’d you know I live here?” There’s a question the hero didn’t expect as he let out a nervous laugh, it’s not like he could tell the other he was Peter so he came up with an obvious lie, “It’s a part of the powers.”

“The powers?” (M/N) crossed his arm over the other as he raised a brow, skeptical. “Yeah. the powers.” Spider-Man repeated, affirming him. “So where does my friend Shane live?” (M/N) asked as he eyed the hero who scrambled for a reply. “Okay it’s not the powers but I have my ways to know these things.” – “So a stalker.” – “No, gross. I’m not some weirdo.” Spider-Man scoffed as he waved his hand as a dismissal. “You’re a guy in red and blue spandex who can thwip out webs from the wrist and climb walls, I don’t think you get a pass from not being called a weirdo.” (M/N) replied. “I take it back, i want the bowl back.” Spider-Man joked as he extended out a hand to take the bowl back. “Hey! No. this was an apology gift” (M/N) replied, laughing. “Well i take back my apology.” Spider-Man protested, enjoying the familiar banter.

“You are so much more rude than what people let on.” (M/N) spoke before temporarily going inside to put away the acai bowl. Going back outside where he had left the vigilante. “Only when I need to.” The other replied. “Your voice sounds familiar…has anyone ever told you that?” (M/N) asked as he leaned against the railing of the balcony “Only a few dozen people, I have a handsome recognizable voice, probably a celebrity.” 

“Yeah? You’re probably some celebrity named Andrew Garfield or something weird like that…”

“Andrew?Jees no. ”

“Is your name Andrew”

“You’re off by a landslide.” 

The two laughed, before staring at each other. Quickly interrupted by a knock coming from inside as (M/N) stepped in for a while hearing it again, “that’s my dinner…say do you wanna split..it…” (M/N) paused as he turned around only to see nobody looking back at him, the hero long gone as he frowned before closing the balconies glass door and curtains and getting his food, thanking the delivery person, in the midst of it all finding himself wishing the hero stayed longer. A text interrupting his thoughts, It was Peter, telling him he was home from his run as (M/N) texted back a ‘glad your home safe’ only for a request of a call to come in which he accepted. Eugene on the other line, “You’ll never guess who came by tonight” (M/N) began interrupting Eugene’s hello. “Who?” Alex adjusted himself on the floor, chewing his food quickly and swallowed it before replying back to Eugene.

“Spider-Man!”

“Bullshit.” Eugene laughed. “He brought me an acai bowl.” (M/N) replied before adding another piece of food into his mouth a satisfied hum leaving his mouth as he savored it. “Why?” Eugene asked as he can be heard shuffling, blankets rustling given he was most likely on his bed. “Some guy ran into me this morning throwing my breakfast onto my shirt and he felt sorry so he brought me some.” Eugene only hummed in reply “How’d he know where you live?” 

“His powers.”

“His powers?”

“Yep. His powers.”

credit :: enchanthings - dividers !!

@darknessbringer the ideas !!

[rfsnyder]

Eugene Gull,

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 12.6

Beer Birthdays

Henry Liebmann (1836)

Henry Rahr (1856)

Rich Link (1956)

Natalie Cilurzo (1968)

Dave Gull (1974)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Dave Brubeck; jazz pianist, composer (1920)

Peter Buck; rock guitarist (1956)

Tom Hulce; actor (1953)

Nick Park; British animator (1958)

Steven Wright; comedian (1955)

Famous Birthdays

Judd Apatow; film director, screenwriter (1967)

Johann Christoph Bach; German composer (1642)

Larry Bowa; Philadelphia Phillies SS (1945)

Rick Buckler; English drummer (1955)

Wally Cox; actor (1924)

Gabriel Duvall; U.S. Supreme Court justice (1752)

Alfred Eisenstaedt; German photographer (1898)

Ira Gershwin; lyricist (1896)

Otto Graham; Cleveland Browns QB (1921)

Charles Martin Hall; chemist (1863)

Jean Eugene Robert Houdin; French magician (1805)

Joyce Kilmer; poet (1886)

Don King; boxing promoter (1932)

Joseph Lamb; ragtime composer (1887)

Tony Lazzeri; New York Yankess SS (1903)

Christina Lindberg; Swedish actress (1950)

Agnes Moorehead; actor (1906)

John S. "Gray Ghost" Mosby; confederate calvary commander (1833)

James Naughton; actor (1945)

David Ossman; comedian, writer, actor (1936)

George Porter; British chemist (1920)

Randy Rhoads; rock guitarist (1956)

Will Shriner; comedian (1953)

Frank Springer; comic book artist (1929)

Janine Turner; actor (1962)

Bobby Van; actor, dancer (1928)

JoBeth Williams; actor (1948)

[writer59january13]

What happened to my sex drive?

(sung – in a round pussy willow warble - to the tune of --

Oh Where Oh Where has my little dog gone).

Once pronounced libido of mine

took kamikaze nose dive,

whereby about two thirds of mein kampf ago, I yearned to be sought after beaux

yet as severely socially

anxious and withdrawn lad

present day ofttimes repeated laments find me to crow slamming self NOT losing

my virginity at a precocious ago,

cursing lack of tangible results courtesy

feeble attempts delivered deathblow

to a fragile ego,

and now only

as a married celibate sexagenarian

dearth of rutting thoughts

along the unforgettable lines sketched out

by storied author Eugene O'Neill

includes lustful and romantic desire,

largely illustrated by the relationship

between Eben and Abbie

hashtagged within tragedy

Desire Under the Elms

ricochets with salient significance

an attempt by O'Neill

to adapt plot elements

and themes of Greek tragedy

to a rural New England setting

inspired by the myth of Phaedra,

Hippolytus, and Theseus,

which story of five characters on a rural farm

in 1850s' New England, how their lives both pushed together and pulled apart by their conflicting desires

such aboriginal, primal,

optimal, animal, et cetera characteristics

once figuratively bounces

hither and yon, to and fro within testosterone

powered windmills in my mind.

With a flame boy hunt

deft jais nais sais quois

firm lickey split tongue

and two bell yule yar pissant

little nippy nappy noopy ruck berry

filled up paul ling sacks

viz peppy la pew doth not peter out,

and weathers clawed rained swipes

from hello kitty when faux pas gets swung

assisting climbing Jacob's ladder

(without pussy footing,

orb bing a putz like the president)

advancing quick to attain orgasmic rung

while heading into a slippery sloping sluice

(with prickly endeavor emitting cleat trill

smooth sailing along a cunt

re coarse upon phallic shaped pung

crossing la brea tar pits (peppered

with lai bee ha tricky

bridge over the River Kwai)

comprising ideal place de la resistance

to woo tang clan foreign nee Kate,

where two puckered

rill lee fleshy ruffling rills

tinged pinkish lips overhung

a challenging escarpment,

where many a brave

Tom, Harry or Dick get hung

up, particularly while searching

for fabled “G” spot,

Fear of Flying (a bildungsroman

whose central theme couched

in the search

for self-discovery) by Erica Jung

cuz portcullis hamstrung

even the most fiercely determined

Engelbert Hump per dink

necessitating the moist risky ski maneuver

as most studs know tubby gelandesprung

though booby prize

wool worth any slimy setbacks,

where sticky gook gets flung

from angry cat,

who does not in the least find amusing,

and if further pricked with rage

not averse to hurl dung

gar (with) ease at snaky,

retractable hardened foo fighting

beastie boy twill clung

for dear life and limb

(er, or twig and berries),

while applying crampons (bivouacked

within his maxipad), viz bung

gull low, essentially a ball peen size cove

screwed and hammered out by Dashiell Hammitt, where coiled,

kinked follicles strewn tightly inlet among

pheromone laced verboten fruit.

[sadbirder]

In What Ways Can Speculative Engagement With The More Than Human World Contradict Human Exceptionalism?

Creating New Narratives Around the Position of Human Beings as Participants of Life During an Age of Mass Extinction.

The following writing was my dissertation submitted for the BA(Hons) Contemporary Art Practice Course at Gray’s School of Art. Please excuse the garbage title. It was fun to write this, but if I was to be self critical, I’m not too sure I really conclude the essay. Anyway, I’m pretty stoked on some of what I had to say, but some of it seems embarrassing already. It’s a long read and pretty tangental. I hope you make it through and find something interesting.

The following dissertation is dedicated with love to my Father.

“A cool wind blows in the city of beans.” - Fergus Connor, Gray’s School of Art Photography Studio Technician.

Introduction

It feels dumb to be hammering at a keyboard after writing the phrase age of mass extinction. I look out of my window and I can see my big, loud neighbour – the industrial structures of the international Port of Aberdeen – invade the personal space of my bigger but quieter neighbours the River Dee and the wild North Sea as a mild early season storm pushes through. The storm is an occasional visitor from whom we all recoil because it has a habit of getting so close that we can feel its breath. Herring Gulls and Common Seals defiantly travel into the bounds of the port, inaccessible to me by force of human law, but no one seems to mind them. There is a world full of life out there that is apparently becoming less and less alive with every passing moment but I am in here, in my little rented abode, that I cannot afford.

Shifting my gaze from window to screen, I question the value of what I am writing in spite of my strange enjoyment of the aggravatingly cortisol spiking activity. I am attempting to convince you that the conclusions I have arrived at after reading a dozen or so books are interesting enough to receive an abstract but quantitative mark of endorsement which may lead to a set of circumstances where I can buy, rather than borrow, a dwelling that I still cannot afford. A promise of more, when I know I want less.

The following words will explore the ways that self-contained attention and being inside (by multiple definitions) can corrupt the potential of our species to participate in living intentionally at the scale of life. The act of speculation will be considered as a mode of attention for accessing the outside, other or more than human world by exploring the activity of birding in relation to the art of Tom Sewell. Speculation will then be augmented by harmony in a discussion of Surfing as a more than human sport demonstrated by it’s connection to Birding as an activity of speculative attention. Surfing experiences will then provide demonstrations of Speculative Realist philosophy and Object Oriented Ontology guided by Steven Shaviro, Eugene Thacker and Timothy Morton in showing how participation with life contradicts human exceptionalism.

The chapter It’s Not The End Of The World will confront my personal difficulty with finding space to write about contemporary art throughout this work. This chapter will assess the place of art in my own life and its role in the wider context of the art world. Interior and exterior modes of thinking and living are questioned in the context of art as life by exploring the work of Marie Angeletti and the philosophical meaning of Roland Barthe’s concept of Studium and Punctum. An argument will be made for art as life as a state of self-contained attention that denies living through its interiority.

The final chapter will go outside by looking at the value of the world outside of art to art itself and how this is echoed by the value of experience and time spent out of doors. This will include a discussion of Emily Strachan’s navigation of employment with a fine art skillset resulting in finding more authenticity for the application of this skillset in the world of gardening rather than the world of art. This will be an examination of how limited funding and a devaluing narrative about the arts is causing artists to retrain and considers the benefits of this skill diversity.

There’s More Than One Way To Clean Your Asshole

I miss Covid-19. Lockdown was the best time of my life. I mean it - no hyperbole. Partying is overrated and busy places overwhelm me. I was a lucky dude. My furlough pay from my employer - warehouse paying minimum wage - was based on my average hours of the previous three months and I had worked 4 – 5 days a week instead of my usual 3-day week for most of that time. My pay to not go to work was more than my usual income, I was just about to become a student again, I was living with my the love of my life and we had almost zero financial obligations.

Does anyone from the UK even remember when the only time outdoors or exercise permitted was one run, walk or cycle a day for one-hour maximum, within five kilometres of where you lived? I do.

My partner, Emily Strachan, and I walked forever, 100% breaking that one-hour time limit rule. We walked slowly, inspired by Hamish Fulton’s Group Walk at Curzon Park, for hours around the ghost town Aberdeen had become. For some reason, a large portion of the population of our city had evacuated and we had both rural and urban areas within our 5km. I recognise our privilege and I know people were suffering. For us though, the pandemic was authentically wonderful.

Fig 1.

Before lockdown, while people were running around in a media-induced panic, buying towers of toilet paper and pasta, we were very scared. It was intimidating to see people flock from out of town to so willingly ransack our local supermarket because theirs were already empty. Their ravenousness eventually inspired our calm. We soon realised that we still had a shower, and that no one was buying the fresh fruit and vegetables. At the risk of sounding crude, we decided that, if it came to it, we did not need toilet paper for survival because there is more than one way to clean your asshole. Water being one of a few glaringly obvious methods, which in Scotland is almost free. Our eating became rich with a variety of nutrition and flavour as we were forced to explore the world of vegetables in more depth than we ever had before. This exposed a gap between the ways that people seem to think things should be, versus the potential for living in radically new ways within the same system.

We were questioning what normal is, in an era of narratives hallmarked by: debating the significance of upsettingly high death tolls, the greed of hoarding household provisions and the scary argument that emerged about how vulnerable people should just accept that Covid-19 may kill them rather than continue to cause inconvenience for everyone else as society grew bored of lockdown rules. The choice was between quote-unquote the new normal; a version of normal that favoured selfishness and a lack of accountability for decisions made allowing people to live in denial of how their extremely limited view of life has resulted in a fundamental change in life itself. Or; if it was not the new normal then there was desperate need to get back to normal as if normal was anything close to satisfying. What has getting back to normal got us? War in Europe for the first time this century, more of all that fun climate stuff (fires, floods, storms, extreme temperature variation etc…), global nuclear war is kind of back on the table (yay!) and at home in Britain all that ever so tasty sewerage flows into the waterways and austerity has done so much damage that strikes are once again commonplace. But, you know, actually we had a cold snap in winter, so things will probably be ok maybe actually.

Fig 2.

Emily and I realised that things could be done differently. Between us, a continuing dialogue has developed around ideas of separating ourselves from the mainstream yet narrow view of life being something oriented by the mediating actions of economy (Latour 2020) where the organisation of the world is limited to human perception as being the highest degree of reality (Shaviro 2016). We seek to free our attention from the limits of containment.

Birds Have Better Lives than Humans

Animals have always fascinated me. Birds in particular excite me in an unusually sincere way. During the planning of this piece of writing, it was unthinkable to me that I would include any evidence of my enthusiasm for birding. In a discussion with my tutor about my research for this dissertation Chris Fremantle said something about birds having better lives than humans. This comment resonated with much of my thinking and revealed to me that my interest in birds was a way to make my own research more accessible to myself.

In late 2019 Emily bought me The Hamlyn Guide To Birds of Britain and Europe. Birding was a mostly secret part of my life that I rarely indulged because my other 20-something year old peers were not that interested, often dismissing it mockingly.

Receiving that book, I realised my partner enjoys and actively participates in the same niche cross-section of interests and lifestyle choices as I do. Together: birding, surfing, watching cartoons, eating plant-based, ignoring texts and walking aimlessly, we lead a life that for the most part is dedicated to the immediacy of our tangible surroundings, enchanted by our “ongoing attention to a world that is also attending to us.” (Ingold 2018 pVI)

Today, I am a straight up birder. I love birding so much because it is boring yet substantially engaging. The feeling of gratification after seeing a bird is similar but more comprehensively fulfilling than time spent using online media. The existential dread of online encounters is pushed aside by an encounter with a bird because the bird encounter pulls my attention into the living world rather than out of it whereby instead of being a spectator of life, I become an active participant (Haladyn 2015). Of course, by my use of the word life here I do not necessarily mean exclusively an individual’s own lived experience but a more expansive idea of life as a whole collective system of processes and entities on Earth (Latour 2020).

Fig 3.

Slough - Tom Sewell; Mixed media sculpture.

Spider crab shell, plastic, willow, paracord, glow stick, shark’s tooth, ammonite, claws, bone, rubber, shells, mushrooms, iron, mermaid’s purse, flint.

Tom Sewell is a British artist who makes work concerned with active participation of life in recognition of the more-than-human world. Pictured; is a sculpture by Sewell titled Slough. This sculpture is constructed out of materials found during immersive walks in unfamiliar landscapes. The process is about giving attention to the living world and participating in being with it. Slough creates a single structure by unifying human-made objects with living and non-living natural entities. It is through this unification that Slough offers the viewer access into experiences of immersion in the landscape of the tangible realm of the outdoors. Sewell invites speculation around the conflict between the internal human-only world and the external more-than–human world. It is through this act of speculation that the viewer of Slough is able to consider life as something beyond individual experience and question the connectivity between humans and nonhumans (Birt, Shin and Clara 2020).‌

I believe the origin of many a birder’s love for the activity lies with a similar type of speculation. Much like the walks of Tom Sewell, the act of birding is an intentional attempt to participate - without interfering - in a world that is other than human. In discussing the importance of speculation in relation to realism, Steven Shaviro references what Eugene Thacker “calls the world-without-us” (Shaviro 2016 p67). A human cannot possibly know what it is like to be a bird from a bird’s perspective (Nagel 2016) but nonetheless the ways in which birds live entice the observation and attention of birders to create a phenomenon that resembles a non-dominative approach to interspecies connectivity.

The human birder has a devotional practice of speculative attention, offering time and thought to birdlife by observing, appreciating and attending to a world (Ingold 2018) that is indifferent to these actions (Tamás 2020). The act of speculation here is directing attention into the external “world-without-us” (Thacker 2011 p6) and in doing so; birders are being outside in both that they leave the internal environment of the human-constructed indoors to be outdoors and that they leave the limited, internal human perspective to actively seek and consider other experiences that are different and external to the human-centric “world-for-us” (Thacker 2011 p6). It is by being outside, out-of-doors and exterior to the human only world that birders become realists because of their recognition of a world without them that is only accessible to them through their speculative practice of attention.

Surfing; A More Than Human Sport

In May 2022, an online Stab Magazine article titled “Surfing’s Dark Secret: Birding” was published. This was another moment where two activities I participate in, surfing and birding, harmonised. In the piece, Paul Evans explains that other activities often paired with surfing such as: golf, MMA fighting and fishing are mismatched. The argument is that surfing is an activity where one engages actively but - and this distinction is important – harmoniously with multiple elemental and cosmic processes. Birding is a harmonious engagement with these processes but the other activities are not. These activities are all dominant, oppressive and contradict what surfing actually is through their violence. Indeed, as Evans points out, golf courses are chemical soaked monocultures that dominate landscapes through their denial of space for other human and nonhuman uses of the land. In Britain for example, there is “more land devoted to golf courses than to housing” (Evans 2022). The violence in MMA fighting is juxtaposed with “surfing ohana” (Evans 2022). Ohana is a Hawaiian word that means family; it is a word for addressing those with whom one has compassion. Surfing originated in Hawaii, where the most important surfing events are held today. Hawaiian cultural customs, including ohana, are still valued highly and respected throughout surfing’s now global following, to such an extent that even the best surfer, hoping to succeed in Hawaii, will not get very far without observing ohana. Both MMA fighting and fishing (when not for survival) are not practices of compassion. Finally, Paul Evans points out the absurdity of fishing for sport as a mode of appreciating nature:

“Fishing is a great one for nature lovers, marine wildlife enthusiasts or folk who just adore the great outdoors. You sense a wild creature swimming around free in the sea, perhaps even for decades, and instinctively think: “I’d love to hook you through the face, stove your fucking skull in with a mallet whilst you suffocate, then share pictures of your corpse.”” (Evans 2022).

Surfing, like birding, is a devotional practice that demands participation in the more than human world. It takes a long time to gain skill in the sport and the more experience a surfer gains, the more auxiliary skills are practiced in developing an understanding of the elemental and cosmic processes that feed and shape the surfing experience. Truly skilled surfers seek not to overpower the ocean, knowing that this is impossible; they try instead to flow with it. Surfing is a cosmic action because of the fugitive endeavour of the participants’ seeking of flow with a singular and fleeting pulse of energy. No ocean wave happens the same twice and for this reason surfing is also elemental. The multitude of ecological and environmental factors that create surfing situations ranging from local bathymetry, to global weather systems and further to the impact of the moon phases upon tidal action must be observed, understood and depended upon. This necessarily demands an awareness of interconnectedness and interdependence in an appreciation of uncertainty. It is this premise that causes me to find connections between surfing and speculative aesthetics. I believe surfing to be a practical demonstration of the claim that the philosophical concept of finitude is about more than simply the limits of knowledge. Exemplified by the following quote from The Universe of Things On Speculative Realism by Steven Shaviro:

“Finitude, therefore, means not only that there are limits to our knowledge of the moon but also – and much more importantly – that there are limits to our independence from the moon.” (Shaviro 2016 p137).

This exact example that Steven Shaviro has chosen to use, the unseen – but definitely there – effects of the moon upon which humans depend, happens to be something that is already widely recognised by surfers. The activity of surfing compels surfers not only to consider their knowledge of the moon but also their dependence upon the actions of the moon in itself, which are autonomously separate to any human knowledge of the moon.

Ok, I am sorry. You, presumably an artist, the reader of this essay, have just read several paragraphs by me, some sporty jock and somehow also an artist, about why my sport is better than other sports. Hopefully I have not lost you yet because here is where things get exciting.

When we (artists) think of sports, we tend to think of the objectivity and rigidity within them. The lack of space for the intrinsically weird (Morton 2021) in sports is probably what makes the relationship between artists and the world of sport an uncomfortable one. Surfing however is uncomfortable with the idea of itself as a sport. All that stuff about Hawaii and Ohana and golf being “a bit Trumpy” (Evan 2022) is more important than the ramblings of just some dude that likes to surf.

Surfing originating in Hawaii and being developed by Native Hawaiians means that this particular sport grew out of something completely isolated from the sports that developed out of western or European agricultural and theistic practices. This is because western colonial contact was first made with Hawaii in 1778, which happens to be after the invention of golf for instance. Obviously, surfing has been colonised, westernised and objectified; so extensively in fact that 2020 saw it becoming an Olympic sport. Yet somehow, surfing has not been completely assimilated into western anthropocentric ideals, it still sits somewhere in the margins, shrouded in something more mysterious than sport.

Surfing seeks flow with a more than human entity through nurturing awareness of unintended consequences between the interaction of wind transferring kinetic energy into bodies of water and that same energy interacting with specifically contoured areas of near-shore sea floor shaped favourably but completely coincidentally by deep-time and geological force. This would make surfing an act of ecological awareness in accordance with Object Oriented Ontology because as Timothy Morton (2021 p16) writes; “Ecological awareness is awareness of unintended consequences”. Furthermore, the seeking of harmony with the cosmic and elemental energy of ocean waves, through surfing, is not an exclusively human desire and act. Many animals have been observed surfing. I personally have seen Dolphins surfing the same stretch of beach as me and many surf films and nature documentaries depict not only Dolphins but also Seals and Penguins engaged in the act of surfing for no apparent reason other than fun. Birds of course, are Earth’s most graceful surfers. They ride the air currents produced by an ocean wave meeting the shore and they engage in much the same ballet-esque performance of stylish manoeuvres upon the wave face as humans aim to do (Evans 2022). Surfing may be the only human sport that nonhuman beings participate in through their own autonomous choice to do so, outside the coercion or force of humans. Although humans do unfortunately, force some animals to surf, such as pet dogs.

It is my position that surfing, emerging from something outside of western anthropocentrism as a harmony with elemental and cosmic processes, is a way to relate to nonhuman beings because it comes from and alludes to an alternative to anthropocentric ideals through both its origins and its unintended consequence of purposeless collaboration with something that is more than and other than human. Or, as Timothy Morton (2021 p37) puts it when referring to art, “a glimpse of living less definitively, in a world comprised almost entirely not of ourselves.” It is this window into the “world-without-us” (Thacker 2011 p6) that surfing shares with birding and with art.

It’s Not The End Of The World

I start to question myself when I feel this uncomfortable about mentioning contemporary art despite being a few thousand words deep into an essay about contemporary art. There is a tension in the relationship between art and sports as in philosophy there is tension between the subjective and objective. Certainly, it is exceptional to be a sponsored athlete and an exhibiting artist.

Art has been central for me since birth as a completion of the whole. It has been ingrained in me that art is paramount to a holistic and healthy navigation of my thoughts, emotions and experiences in pursuit of understanding and peace. And yes, I can confirm that it is indeed traumatic knowing this and growing up in a society that almost entirely rejects this. Art has become something that does not need justification for me. It is a completely essential part of my life, but like essential things in life (such as staying hydrated) it exists in a place that also renders art somewhat banal. I think that this primacy of relating everything through art has contradictorily made art hold a secondary place on account of its obviousness. Art is already. It is necessary but it is not valuable, but it does have worth. Art has something Timothy Morton (2021 p54) calls “alreadiness”. This alreadiness is something we are conditioned to deny in the same way that much of life in global-westernised society conditions humans to exist in denial (Zerzan 2012) of Life with a capital L(Watts and Latour 2020).

“Alreadiness hints at our tuning to something else, which is a dance in which that something else is also, already, tuning to us.” (Morton 2021 p54-55).

What Timothy Morton means is that there are certain experiences in life that upset the grossly-utilitarian, survival before living, paradigm that humans have organised themselves into because these experiences do “something to you” (Morton 2021 p67) and I agree with Morton that art is one of these things. The encouraging and optimistic tone that Timothy Morton uses in their subjunctive writing in All Art Is Ecological is something I value deeply about the book however, due to this, it frames art as some kind of insurmountable and singularly special thing. This is where I have points of my own to add to Morton’s.

In his book – with a contrasting and perhaps unnecessarily extreme tone of pessimism – Future Primitive Revisited, John Zerzan (2012) explains that an art practice emerges out of a lack of earnest connection with the more than human, natural world. For Zerzan, art becomes a placeholder for a sincerely fulfilling life as it expresses the need for an absent interconnectedness and a will to disengage with mainstream narratives of what it means to be alive. Indeed, anecdotally I find this to repeat itself as at least partially true in my own experience.

Personally, I find that the established norm for us artists practicing art, particularly in the academic setting, has very little room for embodied lived experience despite any celebration or encouragement of it. Simply put, art practice demands immobility to some extent and time spent in lifeless indoor, interior environments. I must be sitting down to read, sitting to write this essay or – in the future – writing funding applications of similar density. We are always sitting. Sitting in the crit, sitting through a lecture, sitting for a seminar and sitting to invigilate a gallery. Sitting vacantly, looking interiorly. Staring at a computer screen, the white cube gallery empty of character. Staring at artefacts decontextualized by their museum setting (Haladyn 2015) searching everywhere for the absent, highly coveted contexts to serve our own academic needs. We love our little void, the white washed artist studio, with no windows and the air strong with toxic chemicals accented by the dense energy of passionate thought. Of course, we claim that art has a transformative power over these places and actions that can enchant them and I am inclined to agree but all this sitting still and being indoors is excruciating. As my favourite surf coach Cris Mills (2022) will tell you; sitting destroys mobility and posture. Too much dysfunction in those bodily systems will significantly impair the capacity of a person, named Jess Connor, to do something like surfing.

There is an undeniable vacuous toxicity, literally and figuratively, present in the space that art operates in. All this time spent in empty rooms, filling them up with manifestations of traumatic experience may well lead an artist to believe that it is the end of the world, as some of my peers do. Artists, surrounded by artists in arts environments constantly reflecting back to each other that the interior art world is life, questioning the authenticity of life lived outside the production of art. For me there is no boundary to this circle because I can walk into the photography studio at school at almost any time and talk to my father (who is also staff at Gray’s School of Art) about the exact same things I talk to my tutors about except this room has no natural light, must be mechanically ventilated and the relationship is simultaneously nuclear family and student/teacher. How much further inside the interior can it get than that?

This containment brings to mind the Studium and Punctum of Roland Barthes (1988). David Barker (2014) explains that Studium and Punctum are useful in determining if photographs are worth occupying the viewer’s attention. I find that the Studium and Punctum concept transfers well to assess attention in itself. Studium is “a kind of general, enthusiastic commitment” (Barthes 1988 p26) much like the previously stated interiority of art as a mode of living. It is a humdrum and necessary kind of attention. Art as life is a Studium because it exists within the familiar. Punctum is the disruption of the familiar. Art output can be a Punctum by the enchanting and imaginative productions of its attention. Art as life however, posits art as the exclusive input for art production whereby art operates in substitute for the other inputs of being alive. Exclusivity of input produces self-contained attention or a Studium. David Barker (2014) interprets Studium to mean kitsch, defining kitsch as “the categorical denial of shit.” (Barker 2014). Barker refers to the novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera to further develop his definition of kitsch; “Kitsch is a folding screen set up to curtain off death.” (Kundera 2004 p196). This definition of Kitsch is then used to define Punctum as “the element of a photograph that forces us to acknowledge the existence of shit, or (since shit is probably used as a metaphor) the inevitability of death.” (Barker 2014).

It is through Barker’s definition of Punctum as the acknowledgement of death that we can deduce kitsch to mean the denial of death through his explanation that kitsch is the denial of shit and that shit is a metaphor for death. If art as life is an interior reflection of itself operating in substitute of other inputs to produce self-contained attention, it is a denial of the exterior. Life is happening elsewhere (Hannula, Suoranta and Vadén 2005) in an outside realm that is unknowable from the inside. An entity operating exclusively in interior to itself can only produce reflections of itself whereby its self-contained attention only serves to deny life through denial of the exterior. Art as life, or art as a Studium becomes a refusal of life because of its interiority to itself. Art as life cannot die because it is not alive and in this way it raises Kundera’s “folding screen” by seeking to be a way of being that escapes death. It is by this reasoning that I find the concept of art as life to be kitsch. It seems as though that for most artists, art as life is something to be leaned into and celebrated as some sort of quantitative indicator of commitment. For me however, art as life is something I seek to escape because of the echo chamber that causes me uneasiness through its interiority to itself.

Studio days and art events feel much the same as doom scrolling. It has something to do with being stuck indoors, it also has something to do with my ADHD but I think it has a lot to do with it being the net effect of scrollers discussing their scrolling. Not that this is unique to artists because everybody scrolls but the agonistic and speculative interrogation of information exists in few domains outside art. The denial of the outside through embracing the closed-circle of niche interest and algorithmic reification creates a separation between human and world. The human becomes less than human and the world becomes unworldly.

“Doom is humanity given over to unhumanity” (Thacker 2015 p20)

It’s not the end of the world. All this reflection inwards removes the human from the position of a participant of life. The process of interiorisation serves to decontextualize and the human becomes a spectator of life (Haladyn 2015).

An online review written by Sean Tatol for The Manhattan Art Review compares two exhibitions, The Painter’s New Tools at Nahmad Contemporary and Manhattan by Claude Balls Int. that happened over the summer of 2022.

The Painter’s New Tools showed painting, from a list of artists too long to mention, who did not use exclusively paint but used instead some variation of digital assistance to create paintings. The press release for the show makes bold claims that Sean Tatol argues the show does not meet at all. Claims such as:

“Now is the moment for art that expresses how it feels to be alive now” (Cayre and Kissick 2022)

“We want to show painting that is vital and of the moment.” (Cayre and Kissick 2022)

There are clues in the hyperbolic syntax and the repetitious assertion of newness. Tatol (2022) explains that the show achieved the opposite of the quoted aims precisely because of its use of digital media framed as something new. His key points being that while the technology that the digital field offers is recent, collaboration with it in contemporary art is already dated by a decade. Digital images are so prevalent in life at this moment but the work in the show fails to do anything to sincerely address this and serves instead only to offer reflections or extensions of the alienation of our digital lives in 2022. The show erroneously commits to a gratuitous faith in the idea of technological progress being equal to progress for the lived experiences of human and nonhuman life on Earth in a way that completely denies how unsatisfactory things actually are (Tatol 2022).

“To be sure, you couldn't physically make most of the work without modern technology, so it is literally contemporary, but that doesn't guarantee a new expression of life in 2022.” (Tatol 2022)

“Moreover, this belief in the present is now dated, ironically, because such an attitude has been untenable for nearly a decade and just comes off ridiculous in the face of our manifest reality. Positing the newness of new tools is little more than burying one's head in the sand, a naive willingness to believe in exactly what will never save anyone.” (Tatol 2022)

What Sean Tatol writes of Manhattan is much more encouraging. The ephemeral art works made using old tools were installed at night and shown in a courtyard where Marie Angeletti, one of the exhibiting artists, lived. Sean Tatol praises the work in Manhattan as definitively contemporary, not because of new tools but the new ideas the show has to offer. Much of the show was comprised of found materials and Marie Angeletti’s piece was a pile of broken glass and asphalt displayed under a spotlight that exhibition visitors were allowed to walk on and touch.

Fig 4.

The work put together by Marie Angeletti here shows a willingness to disengage with the production of spectacular but safe artworks that serve to please the conservative tastes of the financial elite (Tatol 2022). She chooses instead to engage with the tangible and immediate surroundings of Manhattan to create work that participates in life through her actions in collecting the materials for the piece. The work then maintains its tangibility through its tactility and lack of collaboration with any new or novel technology. The piece indicates a series of real world interactions between Angeletti and the people and structures of the surrounding Manhattan area in realising the work that the viewer can access through speculation upon the work’s scale and ephemerality (Tatol 2022).

“The realm of virtual fantasies has proved itself to be a hollow simulacrum, and tangible reality has therefore turned back into a new space.” (Tatol 2022).

I find the discordance revealed by Sean Tatol in the comparison of these two exhibitions to be compelling evidence of how art can be used to either look beyond by going outside of what is known or to remain inside of itself and familiar. The Painter’s New Tools straddles the familiar and the interior. It celebrates the interiority of digital media as an exclusivity of input for human thinking and progress by an output that duplicates the already known, human only realm of the digital. The work (output) is stuck in repetition of its input, forcing all momentum of thought into the inside where it can only move further inward. The work assumes the position of art as life through the presentation of its human exceptionalism and therefore becomes kitsch in its denial of life. The Painter’s New Tools is thereby Studium and doom by means of its unhumanity.

The artworks in Manhattan go beyond the interiority of the human and digital to go outside with the world by seeking inputs that are external to art from a life that includes within its scope much more than human survival. Its lack of aesthetic prettiness allows it to operate outside of commercialism (Tatol 2022) by bringing forward “how empty everything we're given to fill our emptiness is.”(Tatol 2022). The work of Marie Angeletti in Manhattan is an example of uncontained attention because it broadens the scope of input by its generation occurring outside, out of doors and in recognition of the external. This break in the eternal interiorisation of art and life becomes an allowance of being alive by producing external outputs through a diversity of input.

Get Out

The world is still there. Out there. I find it too easy to forget. It is also easy to be convinced by others that one should not be out there. When humans cannot go outside of themselves, outside of what is known and into the indifferent space that is other than human and out of doors, it places a restriction upon the scope and sufficiency of thought which becomes sour and decrepit (Tamás 2020).

Emily Strachan (aforementioned bird-book-gifter) is someone who had to get out. A graduate of Contemporary Art Practice at Gray’s School of Art, Emily is a relentless creative maker and a lover of tactility. The way that post-graduate life is set up in regards to art-job-seeking however, is discouraging because the long applications for short-term work are tedious and often the work is much less than what the artist aspires to. For example, as a result of organisations such as Arts Council England increasingly demanding, as a pre-requisite to funding, a perceived benefit to the public (Jones 2020) many paid roles for graduates or emerging artists are often more aligned with teaching, social or care-work. In her research paper The Chance To Dream: Why Fund Individual Artists? Susan Jones (2020) uncovers that there has been a steady trend, since 2003, of declining investment in “no-strings” (Jones 2020 p3) attached funding for artists. The imposing of limitations upon the working methods of artists through funding limits the potential for the production of challenging and rigorous fine art by targeting and undermining the value of the artists work both in itself and within society (Jones 2020). This forces adaptability and enthusiasm that introverted artists, such as Emily and I, often tend not to have. My ability to produce art and my enthusiasm for making has very little or no cross over to helping an after school club make decorations for a Christmas parade. This is something I have been paid to do by an arts organisation in Aberdeen.

So for Emily, freshly graduated and met with the joy of a pandemic, the scope of things looked bleak. Weeks or even months of work go into applications for jobs that only last equally as long. Enthusiasm is expected for the work as if it is the dream of life to be indoors postulating on world improvement with other artists or being a child-minder with a capital ART somewhere in the job title or description. The art world insists an artist is soooooooo lucky to be graced with any such paid opportunity despite that if one were to remove the word “art” from the description, the job would suddenly start to look a lot like something else and much less glamorous. My point being, an art job needs to involve art and not be glamourized by (limited) association to art. Art, discordantly with its own values, follows the rules of commercialism by subscribing to glamour and in doing so objectifies itself (Tatol 2022). It is as if the art world does not believe that art is necessary. Art is in survival mode. Perhaps that is understandable, if the rest of the world is also in survival mode in an era of mass extinction (Morton 2021). Maybe the world in itself does not need to be improved and maybe artists are not saviours? As I have said, the world actually still is out there and out there feels pretty good. Perhaps it is the role of the artist to be out there to show us that there is a world of life to become immersed in (Ingold 2018).

In the end, the art world’s interiority was too disappointing for Emily and she began to look outside for work. In 2021 Emily became a National Trust for Scotland Apprentice Gardner. One of the key determining factors for Emily getting the role, which was one of only two positions available in the region, was her First Class Honours Degree in Contemporary Art Practice because of the skillset it represents. The success of Emily’s interview guaranteed her paid work, all week, every week for the next 2 years. This exposes something tragic about art. The horticulture industry values Emily’s arts-based skillset enough to pay her for her time in an entry-level position with a job title and training included. The same skillset and qualification is so under-valued by arts organisations that it is often not worth a penny or a job title as volunteer positions at the entry-level prevail in the arts industry.

Perhaps it would be to shoot myself in the foot not to consider that the National Trust for Scotland is likely the recipient of a larger wealth of funding than any arts organisation I should choose to criticise. Should organisations receive more funding, it might result in more paid opportunities for graduates. Indeed, funding for the arts has been systematically slashed (Jones 2020) and the fine work of the UK’s Conservative government sees public opinion swayed by a drip feed of rhetoric that consistently undermines the value of art by positing it as a career not even worth pursuing. Rishi Sunak, Britain’s third Conservative Prime Minister of 2022, suggested in 2020 that artists and musicians should retrain (Burgess 2020) amid a backlash against a poster backed by the government depicting a ballet dancer named Fatima with text saying she should retrain in ‘Cyber’ (Bakare 2020). As Tim Burgess (2020) wrote for the Guardian, a career in the arts is treated by the government as a “luxurious, decadent hobby” despite the arts sector generating billions in revenue (Burgess 2020) for the UK economy.

Fig. 5

In any case, the devaluation of art by the British government, reflected by the state of funding, seems to be working. Emily is retraining in horticulture. Fortunately for Emily, it seems to have put her in touch with something more authentically connected to what she was trying to express in her productions of multi-sensory sculpture. Much of her artwork is concerned with seeking a fulfilling sensory engagement with ecology but worked with ecologically harmful materials such as resin and silicon. Perhaps now that she is involved with the production of plant life in the multi-sensory garden of Crathes Castle, she is experiencing a necessary and true evolution in her relationship with ecology and all of her senses. For me however, things look pretty gross. The demands of maintaining a career in the arts within the current state of governmental deterrence (Bakare 2020) and defunding (Jones 2020) do not appeal to me. Will I achieve my Honours in Contemporary Art Practice only to move on and retrain? It remains to be seen. Certainly, it is often that shifts at the warehouse paying minimum wage are preferential to any time spent hustling, networking or filling out applications for work opportunities. All of these activities could be grouped under a singular heading; having to work while I am not at work (Southwood 2011). I should not have to feel pig-headed when I assert that I am somewhat unwilling to compromise my creative practice to meet the needs of funding bodies that seek to put limitations (Jones 2020) upon the scope of my artistic output.

Conclusion

“To exist is to be sensing continuously, consciously or not, our senses are at the forefront of it all and they build our perception of the world.” (Strachan 2019 p22)

In this piece of writing, I wanted to explore how engagement with the wider more than human world, that is external to the realm of human only knowledge and experience, can challenge the human idea that humans are exceptional in their being. To do so, it was crucial to distinguish the difference between internal and external engagement with life. Reframing human-dominant ideology with a more speculative and co-operative approach to the nonhuman is a narrative that opposes the current mainstream position that humans are the stewards of planet Earth. In the questioning of the human world’s interior containment within itself, the importance of how and where humans utilise their capacity for attention becomes imperative to understanding how humans can participate with life exterior to the operations of humanity.

The Covid-19 pandemic and its lockdown of society provided a break in the onward trajectory of human-centric progress to initiate some ideas pertinent to this dissertation. Firstly, that not all bad things are all bad, all of the time. Things are muddy and never this, or that (Morton 2021). In the case of this essay, the bad thing (Covid-19) became a good thing (Lockdown) for the writer (me) because it provided the opportunity to live more vitally and test new ways of living. In it’s horror, it threw the whole of humanity into a more immediate way of being by halting the globalised capitalist economy (Latour 2020). The second idea initiated was that the internal human only world and the external more than human world are not separate. We see this in how a nonhuman being, an unfriendly virus named SARS-coV-2 (Covid-19), forced the world into an emergency position of economic shutdown with the unintended consequence of giving me a better life than I already had, temporarily allowing me to escape the drudgery of employment (Zerzan 2012) to engage in a more fulfilling life oriented around immersive experiences out of doors. In other words, a nonhuman being changed my life and did not grant me agency or control as to how the change emerged.

At some point during this contemporary art essay about birding and surfing you may have noticed that I actually did mention some art. When I think about how urgently I feel I need to be presently participating with life in the context of art, I find myself questioning the value of art as a useful form ecological awareness in its current state of underfunding and grandiose spectacle. Recently, I have been painting a lot and I have been selling those paintings. I was consequently told that my creation of art as a commodity object is in conflict with my research around speculation, ecology and nonhumans. I agree, but painting is so easy and money is so useful. I am scared to take the risk of being more rigorous with my work. The realisation is that any art that actually is challenging, exciting and genuinely addresses ideas of ecology to me – such as the work of Tom Sewell and Marie Angeletti – is art that does not look like art to many people in my life who are outsiders to the internal world of art. This is why I look to activities like walking, birding, surfing and gardening as valuable operations of a fine arts skillset, because they all present ways of being a participant of life in a way that utilises all of the senses. When I paint, I find my own work to be a disingenuous realisation of the research presented in this essay because it isolates my thinking from embodiment. When I surf however, I am in a synthesis of thought and embodiment and I am “sensing continuously” (Strachan 2019 p22). In the sea I am literally in somethingthat is more than me and more than any other human, I can touch it, I can taste it, I can smell it, I can hear it and I can see it. I have yet to find this kind of vital, multi-sensory participation of being alive in art. I believe I might not be looking hard enough but the point remains that I cannot find something in art that better fulfils speculative engagement with the nonhuman world than active encounters such as birding or surfing.

The main way contemporary art does seem to be able to earnestly engage with this is in the ways that Tom Sewell and Marie Angeletti do. By collecting things from the tangible world and displaying them as art artefacts as a means of slowing down and looking somewhere that is not a screen with internet access. Yet despite finding value and enjoyment in this form of artwork, something in me feels like this is not enough. It does not have the same vitality as surfing and birding and I am scared that this lack of vitality in some way disconnects this kind of art from the initial immersive experiences that bring it into being.

I need to challenge human exceptionalism because humans scare me more than anything else. If humans are the cause of mass extinction then I need to be a part of something else. When I go outdoors and step outside the human world to see the rest of the world, something happens that puts me at ease. This research is about trying to find that within my arts skillset and the acknowledgement that maybe art needs to look like something other than what art is expected to be before I can find it. Perhaps what Emily Strachan finds in the non-productive garden of Crathes Castle to stimulate a multi-sensory fulfilment of interspecies connectivity is the same as what I find in my own non-productive playful engagements with birds through birding and holistic disengagement with the terrestrial realm through surfing. I want to know what this is within art, but I have reached the end of this essay and I cannot conclusively or definitively confirm that I have found it.

Birding, as a form of immersive experience that encourages interspecies connectivity through its speculative engagement with the lives of nonhuman beings, and the artwork of Tom Sewell reveal that there is scope to participate submissively with the more than human world through giving attention to the “world-without-us” (Thacker 2011 p6). We see this exemplified in sport through Surfing in its similarity to Birding. The harmony of surfing and birding, when compared with other activities, suggest that these activities are unique in the way that they place the human as a participant of life without attempting to dominate the other than human realm. This is related to the world of contemporary art because art, unlike surfing or birding, sways toward the denial of life outside of art. The value held by the art world of art is life subscribes to the glamour culture of the mainstream commercial world by refusing the input of the external and remaining internal to itself resulting in contained attention.

I see a growing emergence in contemporary art to embrace inputs exterior to art in the movement towards making work that opposes the commodification of attention by adopting a quiet, somewhat mundane aesthetic to produce artworks that deny commercial glamour and constant distraction by spectacle. This movement in art towards the exterior more than human world, out of doors and external to the known world of humanity, shows us that the internalisation of life has excluded a diversity of input for humans and artists. Operation exclusively in the interior denies life itself through its containment of attention. In a mass extinction age, a speculative approach to the external more than human world could reframe the position of the human from spectator of life to participant of life, whereby immersive experience could create affirmations of life.

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BURGESS, T., 2020. The Arts aren’t a Luxurious hobby, Rishi Sunak. They’re a Lifeline for Millions. [online]. the Guardian. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/oct/08/the-arts-rishi-sunak-job-chancellor-hope [Accessed 16 Dec 2022].

CAYRE, E. and KISSICK, D., 2022. The Painter’s New Tools - Organized by Eleanor Cayre and Dean Kissick - Exhibitions - Nahmad Contemporary. [online]. www.nahmadcontemporary.com. Available from: https://www.nahmadcontemporary.com/exhibitions/the-painters-new-tools#slide:0 [Accessed 26 Oct 2022].

EVANS, P., 2022. Surfing’s Dark Secret: Birding. [online]. Stab Mag. Available from: https://stabmag.com/features/surfings-dark-secret-birding/ [Accessed 18 Oct 2022].

HALADYN, J.J., 2015. Boredom and Art : Passions of the Will to Boredom. Winchester: Zero Books.

HANNULA, M., SUORANTA, J. and VADÉN, T., 2005. Artistic research: theories, Methods and Practices. Helsinki, Finland: Helsinki Academy of Fine Arts.

INGOLD, T., 2018. Anthropology between Art and Science: an Essay on the Meaning of Research | FIELD. [online]. Field Journal. Field. Available from: https://field-journal.com/issue-11/anthropology-between-art-and-science-an-essay-on-the-meaning-of-research [Accessed 10 Oct 2022].

JONES, S., 2020. The Chance to Dream: Why Fund Individual Artists? A-N. A-N the Artists Information Company. Available from: https://static.a-n.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Research-papers-The-chance-to-dream-why-fund-individual-artists.pdf [Accessed 8 Dec 2022].

KUNDERA, M., 2004. The Unbearable Lightness of Being. London: Faber and Faber.

LATOUR, B., 2020. What Protective Measures Can You Think of so We don’t Go Back to the pre-crisis Production model? 1. [online]. Bruno Latour. AOC. Available from: http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/default/files/downloads/P-202-AOC-ENGLISH_1.pdf [Accessed 14 Oct 2022].

MILLS, C., 2022. Mobility Drills for More Fluid Surfing. [online]. Surf Strength Coach. Available from: https://surfstrengthcoach.com/mobility-drills-for-more-fluid-surfing/ [Accessed 31 Oct 2022].

MORTON, T., 2021. All Art Is Ecological. S.L.: Penguin Books.

NAGEL, T., 2016. What Is It like to Be a Bat? Stuttgart: Reclam Universal-Bibliothek.

SHAVIRO, S., 2016. The Universe of Things: on Speculative Realism (Posthumanities). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

SOUTHWOOD, I., 2011. Non-stop Inertia. Winchester: Zero Books.

STRACHAN, E., 2019. Are We Living in a State of Hyperaesthesia or Sensory Deprivation. Undergraduate Dissertation.

TAMÁS, R., 2020. Strangers : Essays on the Human and Nonhuman. London: Makina Books.

TATOL, S., 2022. The Painter’s New Tools & Manhattan. [online]. 19933.biz. Available from: http://19933.biz/newtoolsmanhattan.html [Accessed 14 Oct 2022].

THACKER, E., 2011. In the Dust of This Planet. Winchester: Zero Books.

THACKER, E., 2016. Cosmic Pessimism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

WATTS, J. and LATOUR, B., 2020. Bruno Latour: ‘This Is a Global Catastrophe That Has Come from within’. The Guardian, 6 Jun [online]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jun/06/bruno-latour-coronavirus-gaia-hypothesis-climate-crisis [Accessed 10 Oct 2022].

ZERZAN, J., 2012. Future Primitive Revisited. Port Townsend, WA: Feral House.

‌List Of Illustrations 

Fig. 1 Screenshot from YouTube video of Hamish Fulton’s group walk at Curzon Park.  GALLERY, I. and FULTON, H., 2012. Hamish Fulton Group Walk, Birmingham. [online]. www.youtube.com. Ikon Gallery. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XaX4ktvQ_0 [Accessed 10 Oct 2022].

Fig. 2 IMAGE: MIDDLE CLASS FANCY, 2022. Middle Class Fancy on Instagram: ‘Haha I know right? It’s winter and it’s cold out? What’s all that about lol’. [online]. Instagram. Middle Class Fancy. Available from: https://www.instagram.com/p/CmjoQvbOgdt/ [Accessed 25 Dec 2022].

Fig. 3 IMAGE: Tom Sewell. SEWELL, T., 2021. Slough – Tom Sewell. [online]. Tom Sewell. Available from: http://www.tomsewell.co.uk/work/slough/ [Accessed 14 Oct 2022].

Fig. 4 IMAGE: Claude Balls Int. 2022. Manhattan Install Views – Claude Balls Int, 2022. [online]. Claude Balls Int. Available from: http://claudeballsint.com/?exhibition=manhattan-install-views [Accessed 2 Nov 2022].

Fig. 5 IMAGE: HM Government. BAKARE, L., 2020. Minister Distances Himself from Ballet Dancer Reskilling Ad. The Guardian, 12 Oct [online]. Available from: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/oct/12/ballet-dancer-could-reskill-with-job-in-cyber-security-suggests-uk-government-ad [Accessed 16 Dec 2022].

[itcars]

DMC DeLorean

Image by Eugene Tkachenko || IG

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Reading old timey 1800′s books is such a ride, because they’re simultaneously highly enlightening and a delight, and also really, really hard to read. (I’m reading stuff by Eugene Sue rn.) It’s a fine line between appreciating the writer’s compassion and cleverness and nuance / understanding that the really bad stuff is both a rhetorical device and the product of its time and that you can’t demonize one man actually pushing for social reforms for being Problematic™ / and allowing yourself to feel absolutely grossed out or heartbroken by a terrible depiction he meant as neutral or positive.

Really makes you scrutinize your own morals and why they are what they are, and whether you’d have ‘done better’ than the author, and how important those stories were and still are.

[merkissescanhealyou]

[x] @killersolo

The mer’s hand flopped dismissively and giggled lightly. “No, you silly gull! That was a joke! I can’t do anything like that, I don’t have powers like that. But...well, maybe just steer clear if you hear me, uh.....s-singing.” He stumbled, pink blooming across his cheek and his body language shifting from confident to shy and secretive. It’s not that he was being humble, but more like trying to protect him from any possible and unintentional effects that might happen to him, should he hear him sing (or even hum). But the joke was lighthearted and cheerful. There was no malice behind it, though it would be funny if someone like him had the power to possess someone. Small, meek, friendly Marius has too many good morals to cause any kind of harmful mischief with someone else’s life. Judging by his reaction, Eugene must not have realized it was a joke, but he had no problem in debunking that claim.

He wasn’t the type of mer to lure humans to their watery graves with his voice, but he couldn’t deny that his own voice had some kind of effect on them. Truth be told, he never pushed the limit to see how far he could go because of how cautious he was; he didn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s demise, however serious it may be.

[mydailybookquotes]

“It was a great mistake, my being born a man, I would have been much more successful as a sea gull or a fish. As it is, I will always be a stranger who never feels at home, who does not really want and is not really wanted, who can never belong, who must always be a little in love with death!”

-Eugene O’Neill, Long Day’s Journey into Night

[marejadilla]

Eugene Gull, “Clouding of mind”, oil on canvas. B.1988, Enkhuizen, Noord-Holland, Netherlands.

[classicdavinci]

Girl in light dress Painting by Eugene Gull 

[jordankwalker]

"Seal Rock Sunrise" 8" x 10" oil on linen panel, 2020 Morning sunlight illuminates the craggy islands of Seal Rock, OR. Giant waves crash upon the cliff side, and scores of gulls rise from their roosts in a raccus cacophony to begin a new day. This painting is available framed at Tsunami Bookstore and Gallery in Eugene, Or, or online through Daily Painteworks. Follow the link in my profile to find out more! (at Tsunami Books) https://www.instagram.com/p/CL-PPi_D7nR/?igshid=s1v6ipmtmgrm

[freebooter4ever]

Ice Cream And An Apology

Eugene drags his bff Snafu on a vacation to Los Angeles six years after Snafu left him on that train. They end up on Santa Monica beach where they finally admit they might be in love, and it might've been brewing for a long while, and wow are they clueless sometimes. Ace Eugene and Snaf, written for @skelesocks​ who makes the best Ace Eugene content around, thank you! And who was sad that I made Eugene cry, so here is me making him feel better through Snafu. (their vacation date includes a tiki hut, ice cream, swing dancing, secret cliffside hotels)(I took all the parts I do like about living in LA and put them here)(the ballroom existed but it's torn down now, the hotel is a real place I stumbled on while hiking way too far down the beach but it's actually a 1930's pool building called Palos Verdes Athletic Club)(with bonus historical photos cause I'm a fucking nerd)

Two years into grad school Eugene decides he needs a proper vacation. The only reason Snafu knows this is because Eugene also decides Snafu is the person he's gonna vacation with. And apparently Snafu has no say in this decision.

A very curt letter arrives one spring afternoon with a time, a date, and the address of the New Orleans railroad station, as if Snafu needed to be told where that is. Granted, Snafu's track record in being responsive and easy to reach is perhaps not the best, but Gene's known that for years. Snafu doesn't know what's changed with this particular meet up.

He's also a little resentful of the fact that Eugene thinks he can snap his fingers and Snafu will drop everything on a dime and come running. Mostly Snafu resents this on account of how true it is. Six years after the war and Snafu still can't let go.

So Snafu shows up at the train station, right on time, with his duffel packed tight, and his hat a little jaunty.

Eugene steps off the train with his ticket book in hand. He looks right and left, like he can't see Snafu standing a mere three feet in front of him. It must be the hat.

"You lost, Sledgehammer?" Snafu asks.

Eugene's eyes finally find his. Snafu's heart drops out of his chest, and he suddenly remembers why he made his original vow years ago to walk away and never see anybody again.

"Shelton?" Eugene asks, like he can't quite believe his eyes, and the formality stings.

"Miss me?" Snafu smirks.

Eugene doesn't answer. He simply walks up to Snafu, shoulder's Snafu's bag, and climbs back onto the train.

Snafu follows - like fucking always.

Eugene shoves Snafu's duffel into the luggage racks already almost stacked full, and guides Snafu to a private compartment.

Snafu glances admiringly at the plush seats and curtained windows, and whistles, "Adjunct professors must make quite a bit of money these days."

"I'm paying both your way and my way on this trip, so...yes," Eugene says, and Snafu knows it's non negotiable. No matter how many times Snafu offers, Eugene never accepts repayment.

"The truth is…" Eugene says that night after they've converted their plush seats into a bed, "...not making much money doesn't matter so much when you don't use it. I don't go out, I don't do anything, my parents pay my rent. What else am I going to spend it on?"

Snafu shrugs. A lot of things pop into his mind, but it's true Eugene never goes out so Snafu doesn't want to discourage this change. Eugene is the most boring college student ever. Snafu knows because he makes the drive from New Orleans to Auburn every weekend. And every weekend is the same, they spend most of the time lying around Sledge's dorm - Eugene studying and Snafu reading his latest murder mystery novel.

He supposes the sacrifice of Eugene's social life might have been worth it, though, if it meant being able to pay for the sleeper car. Because that night on the train when Eugene wakes Snafu with a yell, there are no prying eyes to judge them. Snafu wraps his arms around Eugene's shoulders in the privacy of their bunk and holds him till he calms down.

Sometimes Snafu wonders who does this for Eugene during the week, on the nights Snafu's not there.

"I just don't sleep those nights," Eugene whispers in the dark, his voice barely audible over the clacking of the train tracks.

Snafu squeezes him tighter. Eugene's back is pressed against Snafu's chest, and Snafu's nose is in Eugene's hair. And sometimes Snafu worries he might be crazy, but he also swears that the smell of Eugene's neck is the only thing capable of stopping Snafu's own nerves from jumping out of his skin. He'll never admit to Eugene how selfish he is. That Snafu doesn't keep dropping everything to run to his side out of some altruistic need to please. No.

Snafu's fucking addicted to the boy in his arms and he can't let go. No matter how much it hurts.

Plus they aren't boys anymore. Eugene is twenty eight, and Snafu is thirty, and he keeps waiting and waiting for Eugene to grow up and leave him behind but it hasn't happened yet.

It takes four days for the train to reach Los Angeles. It's hot - so fucking hot, Snafu wonders why Eugene picked summer of all times to vacation here, but the dry wind and brilliant blue sky is still a relief compared to the sticky humidity of home. He can kinda see why people come out here, even if the baking sun also makes him feel a little like a raisin.

Eugene rents a car. An unnecessary expense in Snafu's mind. The car even has a swamp cooler, which at first Snafu decries as the most absurd waste of cash. But then he presses his face to the passenger window to watch the rocket-like thing work. And sure, he can't feel the wind on his face anymore, but damn if the air in the car doesn't become more bearable faster.

Eugene watches Snafu and just smiles.

The outside heat cools off the closer they get to the coast. Snafu has no idea where Eugene is taking them. Perhaps that's why Eugene invites him everywhere, because he never asks questions. Honestly Eugene could take him anywhere in the world and it'd still be something, simply because it's with Eugene. Except caves. Snafu doesn't mess with caves.

They park in a giant lot, and when Snafu opens the car door he hears the familiar sound of gulls and the ocean. All around his head, though, are two story buildings - not a horizon line in sight. They must still be in the city. But then they turn a corner, walk two blocks down the street, and there it is: the Santa Monica pier.

The hippodrome catches the eye first. Then Snafu sees the long line stretching down a checkerboard walkway. The crowd of people ends at the mirrored doors and box office of the Aragon Ballroom. Something must be happening for it to be so busy in the middle of a random saturday. The crowd is young too, mostly teenagers. Snafu feels old, looking at them.

Snafu stares at the ballroom for a minute and then leers at Eugene. "You taking me dancing?" He asks.

"No," Eugene says, "I don't dance." He turns away from the gigantic world famous dancehall hanging over the ocean on spindly legs, and starts walking down the boardwalk.

Snafu hurries to catch up.

They clamber down tall wooden steps to get to the beach. Snafu touches one and ends up with a splinter in his hand, naturally. He's too busy trying to pick the damn thing out of his finger to notice when Eugene stops. Snafu collides with his back.

Eugene balances precariously at the edge of the bottom step, leaving only a little room for Snafu to squish in behind him. Snafu leans his chin on Eugene's shoulder and tries to figure out what is on the ground that Eugene's so intently marveling at.

"Gene?" Snafu slips his arm underneath Eugene's elbow and wiggles his hand in front of Eugene's face, "Your pa's the doctor."

"What?" Eugene asks in confusion as if brought out of a trance.

"Splinter," Snafu explains.

Eugene very carefully pries the long skinny splinter out of Snafu's finger. And then he goes back to staring down at his feet.

"What are we waiting for?" Snafu asks. He places his hands on either side of Eugene's hips and tries to remain patient.

"An engraved invitation," Eugene intones. He bends over to untie his Chuck Taylors and pull them off.

"That's just asking for splinters," Snafu points out when Eugene's socks come off next.

Eugene leaves his socks neatly tucked into his shoes on the wooden plank and steps into the sand.

Snafu, being more familiar with thievery, hastily threads the shoelaces through his own belt loop and then ties Eugene's two shoes together to hang off his hip. His own shoes stay on as he traipses after Eugene. Snafu's had enough sand between his toes to last him a lifetime.

It doesn't take long to catch up to Eugene. When Snafu reaches him, Eugene is breathing shallowly and clenching his fists, staring at the rolling ocean waves and the handful of beachgoers. To the casual observer, Eugene would appear to be enjoying the view, but Snafu sees the tension. Snafu sidles up to Eugene and leans against his shoulder.

"I thought it would feel different," Eugene says. His voice is calm, he looks calm, but he's anything but. Snafu knows the feeling all too well.

"C'mon," Snafu slips his hand into Eugene's and tugs him away from the shore, "Let's get off the sand."

They make it back to the boardwalk and Snafu gives Eugene back his shoes.

Eugene smiles at him gratefully, and that grin with those eyes is precisely the reason Snafu's always here. And in this case 'here' means 'by Eugene's side come hell or high water.'

Eugene smiles, and Snafu shrugs it off, and lets Eugene use his shoulder to steady himself while he puts his shoes back on one-handed. Those smiles make Snafu want to kiss them off Eugene's face to get rid of them. They're altogether too kind, altogether too caring, and it just worsens the already deep hole Snafu's dug himself.

They walk down the boardwalk for a short distance, eyeing the push carts, and the souvenir stalls, and the hot dog stands that look suspiciously crusty.

"Those aren't for you," Snafu says, pushing Eugene along by the small of his back when the boy lingers a little too long in front of a cheesy sign with a cartoon corn dog dancing on a stick. The dog has eyes, and looks way too happy about being eaten.

"What, why not?" Eugene asks.

"They're un-hi-Gene-ic," Snafu drawls.

"Oh god," Eugene casts his eyes to the sky.

"It's in the name, no Gene's allowed," Snafu adds.

"I got the joke, Snafu," Eugene says.

The next food stand they come to is a tiki hut. There's no other way to describe it. It's the tackiest thing Snafu's ever seen. Snafu  hears about the 'tiki' craze sweeping the nation after all the boys came home from the south pacific. He sees advertisements using the motifs in the magazines at the mechanic shop he works for.

The tiki design is always heavily stylized, and completely fake, and so fucking ugly it makes Snafu's eyes hurt.

He turns to Eugene, and their eyes meet. There's a rush of shared knowing between them, it sends Snafu tingling down to his toes, and a genuine smile breaks out onto his face, and before he knows it they're both laughing. They lean against each other, giggling helplessly at this silly simulacrum of the islands they were trapped on for so long.

"Four nights on a train for this, Gene?" Snafu teases.

Eugene slings an arm around Snafu's waist to steady him and, still laughing, they wobble over to peer at the menu tacked against the entrance to the hut.

"Coconut ice cream," Snafu reads with exaggerated admiration.

Eugene shudders violently, and Snafu can feel it through his body. "I can't stand the smell of coconut," Eugene whines, "All those coconuts on Pavuvu, buried in the sand, rotting with that inescapable stench."

Snafu shakes his head, "You're missing out."

"Nope," Eugene insists and breaks away from Snafu, "We're not eating here. I would rather eat the No-Gene's-Allowed dancing corn dog."

"I bet by the end of this trip I'll get you eating coconut ice cream," Snafu calls.

"Not happening," Eugene calls back, making his point by already walking away.

Snafu eyes the coconut tiki shack, eyes Gene, and starts plotting.

Blissfully ignorant, and completely confident in his ability to talk Snafu into or out of anything, Eugene continues down the boardwalk.

Meanwhile, Snafu's attention is captured next by the neat row of bicycles at the very end of the small line of makeshift booths. The bicycles are clean, and shiny, with pastel baskets and sparkling handlebar bells, and colorful seats with clean, bright stitching. The kind of bicycles Snafu dreamed of when he was a kid. He slows to a crawl as they pass by and eventually stops, unable to resist going over and putting his hands on one.

Snafu rings the bell and chuckles.

He glances up and Eugene is smiling at him again in that overly fond way that says Snafu could probably get away with practically anything right now.

So, they end up renting two bikes. Snafu's is a mint blue with a grey basket. He pulls his shoes off and drops them into said basket to ride barefoot. The spikey plastic pedals feel hot and firm underneath Snafu's feet. Eugene's bike is a reddish salmon color with a burnt orange basket that when combined with the sun glinting off Eugene's red hair, makes him strike a truly imposing figure.

Snafu laughs about this for at least five minutes straight before they get on their way. He wishes he brought a camera. There's one slung around Eugene's neck, but Eugene blushes and refuses Snafu's request to use it.

"If I can't take embarrassing photos of you with it, what's the point of even having it?" Snafu demands.

Eugene still refuses.

Snafu sticks his tongue out at Eugene and takes the lead on the bicycles. It's incredibly easy to ride along the flat beach. The path isn't paved, and is a little rough, but half the time Snafu is standing on his pedals as he rides, so he hardly notices. Occasionally he looks back to make sure Gene is keeping up.

The only time he loses track of Eugene is when they're pedaling through a dilapidated old pier. Snafu banks a slight curve and notices Eugene isn't appearing around the shops and buildings behind him. He circles back around to find Eugene stopped and straddling his bicycle, looking towards the ocean.

Snafu pulls up alongside him and eyes him quizzically.

"It's two men…" Eugene nods at a couple making out on a beach blanket in the distance, "I saw them walking out there. The one with long hair isn't a girl, he's a guy."

Snafu looks at the couple passionately embracing, and then at Eugene's expression. "Shocking," Snafu says sarcastically, "Scandalous."

"You don't seem surprised," Eugene says.

"I live in New Orleans," Snafu replies, "Not all of us spent most our lives in hicktown Alabama."

"Mobile is not a hicktown," Eugene scowls.

"Stop staring at them, Gene," Snafu warns and nods at the couple, "They might give you a show." He rides off, this time determined to leave Eugene in the dust.

Snafu keeps going on his bicycle for a few hours. They're forced to make a brief detour around a marina, but they end up back on an oceanfront path, and continue on pedaling until suddenly the beach abruptly ends. The sand narrows off into rocks, and rising high above them are towering cliffs.

Eugene coasts to a stop next to Snafu and puts his foot down to rest. He's breathing hard. All that studying and not enough manual labor.

"Guess we're continuing on foot from here," Snafu suggests casually.

Eugene huffs in disbelief, "You're joking."

"Four nights on a train…" Snafu smirks, "I ain't stopping yet."

They bring the bikes back to the nearest beach facilities and lock them up in a rack, then set off across the rocks. At first it's fairly easy, there is a dirt path running directly beneath the cliff face but slightly above the worst of the jagged rocky beach. They've climbed over much worse during the war.

Eugene is an unenthusiastic hiking partner, however. They pass by a beautiful stucco building nestled into the cliffs with a high wall and flanked by old fashioned lamps. Eugene stares longingly at the NCAA sized swimming pool behind the wall.

"Later," Snafu promises him, and leads him on.

The rocks turn a little more treacherous past the wall, and eventually it gets to the point that even Snafu is carefully picking his way across rock by rock. He climbs hand and foot up to the base of the cliff and expertly assesses the narrow ledge leading across a plunging chut to the next rocky beach. The chute is roughly four feet long and ends in churning water. The waves are coming in, crashing against the rocks and zipping up the chute to lap at the ledge. Snafu puts one shoe on the ledge and wiggles it around to test his grip.

"Snaf," Eugene pleads from the rocks below, "I can't…"

Snafu stares down at him unblinkingly. And then turns and starts to walk carefully across the ledge. He makes it to the other side and leaps over the rocky outcrop.

"Merriell!" Eugene cries.

Snafu can no longer see him. After vaulting the end of the ledge he lands on another rocky beach, and in the distance he sees another point where the rocks give way to cliffs. Snafu clambers on tirelessly, but the path soon becomes all but impassable. He's reached the farthest point he can go. Eventually he gives up and turns around.

He climbs back onto the taller rock sticking out from the ledge and sits down on the top to watch the waves break against the rock's front edge. Below him and across the chasm, Eugene sits huddled on his own rock, intently watching the waves. Eugene ignores Snafu's return.

"Eugene?" Snafu calls softly.

Eugene's head jerks up and he looks at Snafu with a painful mixture of worry and anger. "What the hell, Snafu?" Eugene yells, "You jump over the other side and don't answer me for a half hour? I had no way of knowing if you slipped, or fell, or hit your head, or drowned…" Eugene's voice wavers.

"You could'a followed," Snafu argues.

"I cannot cross that ledge," Eugene snaps back, "Not all of us have your super human climbing abilities. You shouldn't go on alone...what if you ended up in the water?"

"Gene, I'm a good swimmer," Snafu says dismissively.

Eugene shakes his head at him in exasperation. "Fuck you, Shelton," he says, and he clearly means it. He turns back to the waves splashing at his feet and rubs his hand into his eye.

Which is when Snafu notices something odd.

He toes back across the ledge and hops down to the rock next to Eugene's to confirm his suspicions. Snafu tilts his head and scoots as close as Eugene will let him.

"Gene?" Snafu prompts gently, "Are you crying?"

Eugene screws his face up and presses his chin against his knees. He's clearly about to start crying in the way anyone starts to cry when they're feeling on the verge and someone asks them about it.

Snafu hastily stands and closes the last few inches between them. He crouches next to Eugene and puts his arm around Gene's shoulders.

"This was a mistake," Eugene breathes.

"I'm sorry," Snafu says. He leans his head in close to Eugene's and leans his weight against him in hopefully a comforting manner.

Eugene shakes his head and a brief sob chokes his next words, "I can't…." he pauses to catch his breath, "I can't do this anymore."

"Then we'll leave," Snafu suggests, "You've got a car. We'll drive out to the desert. You can draw some cacti."

"No, Snaf," Eugene says quietly, his voice goes almost calm, "I mean I can't do this anymore with you."

Snafu stands when he hears those words.

Eugene shivers and starts crying anew.

"You're gonna leave me stuck here without even a train ticket home?" Snafu's mind immediately jumps to how much bus fare will cost, and whether he's got enough cash on him or if he'll have to pick up some odd jobs before he catches the first train back.

"No!" Eugene exclaims, angry again, "I would never do that to you."

"Then what, Gene?" Snafu asks, his own voice rising.

"You can't keep leaving me like this," Eugene insists.

"I just jumped over a goddamn ledge…"

"You left!" Eugene tilts his face up to Snafu and hurtles the accusation at him, "You left without a goodbye and…"

"I came back!" Snafu interrupts.

"Not for my wedding," Eugene says sullenly.

"Nor for Burgie's," Snafu waves it away with a gesture.

"I'm not Burgie!" Eugene declares.

"I came back for your divorce!" Snafu counters.

Eugene drops his head onto his arms.

"For fuck's sake, Eugene haven't you cried over her enough?" Snafu sighs. He climbs back onto the ledge and scoots across over to the jutting rock to put some space between him and Eugene, "It's been four years. You barely knew each other."

"I'm not crying over Edna," Eugene protests sourly and sniffles snot back into his nose.

"Can't imagine why you two didn't work out," Snafu rolls his eyes and swings his legs over the edge of the rock to dangle above the crashing waves, "With names like Edna and Eugene."

A very slight smile tugs at the corner of Eugene's mouth. "E squared," he says.

"She's probably better off," Snafu offers, "No longer saddled with the terrible mouthful 'Edna Sledge'."

"You're one to talk, Merriell," Eugene points out.

"Merriell Sledge has a nice ring to it," Snafu goads him.

"I like Eugene Shelton better," Eugene jokes back.

"Thought you said you were done with me," Snafu says, unable to prevent his big mouth from opening.

Eugene looks up at him with the meanest glare he's ever seen.

It slowly, slowly starts to dawn on Snafu that he might be the reason Eugene Sledge is crying.

That comes as a shock. Snafu takes a moment to think back on his life and all the times he might've made someone cry. And not because he shoved some bully or asshole into the dirt. It's a very short list. One of his earliest memories is visiting his grandma as a child. She cried when he left, and hugged him for longer than he's ever been hugged in his life. His parents died, but they weren't the crying type anyway. His baby sister stopped crying after their parents' deaths. Even when Snafu enlisted, she didn't shed a tear.

And absolutely none of the men Snafu formed attachments to were the crying type either. Till Eugene, till now.

But Snafu can't imagine why Eugene is crying over him. He answered the extremely self-pitying letter Eugene penned in the weeks after Eugene's divorce, he's spent every weekend with Eugene since to keep him company, he tries to be there for whatever Eugene needs. Eugene's got no fucking reason to cry because of him.

Eugene's crying like Snafu broke his heart, except there's no possible way Eugene could care about him that deeply. This love Snafu's got going is a one way street, and he's careful to keep it that way.

Snafu digs into his pocket and pulls out a rather beat up carton of cigarettes. He calmly lights one and tosses the rest to Eugene. Eugene holds the carton like it's something precious.

"Sledgehammer," Snafu says, "Just tell me what you want."

Eugene takes a deep breath to steady himself. He grips the paper cigarette carton hard till it crinkles. "I think I want what those two guys on the beach have…" Eugene tells the waves. And then looks to Snafu for some sort of validation, "...but with you."

Snafu smokes his cigarette and tries to remember there's a ten foot gulf with choppy waves between them and launching himself across it is not physically possible.

"And this is why I can't keep doing this anymore, Snaf," Eugene says when Snafu doesn't answer his request. Eugene turns back to the rocks below his feet and says with great frustration, "Our friendship means everything to me, but it's killing me."

Those last words weigh heavy on Snafu's conscience. "Okay, Gene," he says, "We'll finish out this vacation, and then I promise you'll never have to see me again."

Eugene swallows hard. He squeezes his eyes shut and buries his head in his arms once more, so he doesn't have to see Snafu right now.

Snafu makes his way over the ledge for the last time and carefully places a hand on Eugene's trembling shoulder. "C'mon," he says kindly, "Let's get back to the bikes."

Eugene twines his hand with Snafu's. Snafu bends down, braces Eugene's arm with his own, and helps him stand. Eugene sways into Snafu's chest and for a minute their faces are too close together for comfort. But neither of them are looking at each other. And Eugene isn't smiling, so it makes it easy for Snafu to deny the kiss and pull away.

Eugene's horribly quiet as they make their way back over the rocky beach. He pauses before they pass the wall with the swimming pool.

Snafu looks back questioningly.

"I'm hungry," Eugene announces, "You made me ride my bike for three hours, then scramble over rocks for two. This place looks nice, it's hygienic, there's no palm fronds or fake tiki statues. We're stopping here."

Snafu eyes the iron gate skeptically. The lock is hanging loose and the gate is ajar, but only because a few people from the private pool are swimming in the ocean nearby.

"You object?" Eugene asks stubbornly, ready and looking for a fight.

"It's too fancy," Snafu says and jerks his chin in the direction of the three story building stacked in layers on the cliff like a cake, "I see white lace curtains in those windows. Fucking clean lace curtains."

"The hot dogs were too poor, this place is too rich," Eugene says, "Make up your mind, Snafu."

Snafu sighs, but concedes Eugene may have a point. He gestures for Eugene to go through the gate first.

Sometimes Eugene's ability to take all of his generational wealth and privilege and put it to use comes in handy. After hours of physical exercise they look bedraggled. Both of them are dusty, the armpits of their shirts are damp, Eugene's collar is creased, Snafu never had a collar to begin with, they have sand pouring out of their shoes, and yet when Eugene walks through that gate he owns the place.

Snafu slinks in on his coat tails and settles in to watch the show from a distance. Some pool boy comes up to stop Gene from going any further, and the set of Eugene's shoulders takes on a stubborn slant. Eugene isn't pretentious. But he knows how to be. Snafu's never seen Eugene use his status, or his upbringing to deliberately belittle anyone beneath him. When he does draw out this intangible skill to demand the kind of respect money offers, it's always in defense of someone who doesn't have it.

And Snafu kinda likes being the beneficiary of that benevolent righteousness. It's entertaining to watch people's attitudes change toward Eugene in the blink of an eye when they realize he's someone of means.

All it takes is a few quick sentences, and the attendant who initially stopped Eugene is suddenly apologizing and taking Eugene's ID. Before the attendant reverently carries the ID back towards the main house, he glances nervously at Snafu.

Snafu tilts his head back against the pool wall and lazily smiles. Snafu knows where he belongs but he doesn't give a shit.

The attendant turns tail and runs.

Snafu watches him go with a bit of hypocritical glee till Eugene quietly returns to Snafu's side. 

"We're staying here tonight, huh?" Snafu smirks.

"Yeah," Eugene nods confidently, his hands in his pockets, "It looks comfortable."

Snafu hums and grins at Eugene admiringly.

"You might have to put up with clean lace curtains for longer than expected," Eugene warns.

"Think I can handle that," Snafu replies.

"Swell," Eugene says, only half sarcastic and immediately satisfied with Snafu's agreement. Eugene's eyes start roaming around the pool deck till he spots what he's looking for, "Now that's settled, I see a burger bar with my name on it."

"I believe the name on that sign says 'Hanna's'," Snafu points out drolly.

"Grab that table overlooking the ocean," Eugene says, "I'll bring you a menu."

Snafu climbs a narrow stone staircase built into the cliff face and sits down at one of the three tables hidden in a nook behind a trellis of lavender. He adjusts the tables a little, shoves one closer to the wall at the edge of the cliff, and then sits down.

Eugene comes up a few minutes later and offers Snafu an embossed menu featuring a long list of items and no prices. "I see you removed the lace tablecloth," Eugene notes with a grin.

Snafu briefly glances at the discarded pile of table linens he made on the table next to theirs and scoffs, "Don't need that shit for hamburgers."

Eugene bites his lip and concentrates on reading his own menu.

They both order hamburgers, and Eugene deliberates between a milkshake or a soda before eventually settling on the house rootbeer. Snafu additionally orders three extra sides of french fries. The hamburgers are as large as Snafu's hands and the french fry portions are generous enough that Snafu still has a large stack at the end of the meal. He leans back in his chair, props his feet up on the ocean wall, and snacks on fries while surveying the waves.

Meanwhile Snafu can feel Eugene's eyes on him.

Snafu finishes his fries, and lights a cigarette.

Eugene is still watching him. 

Snafu can't bring himself to meet Eugene's gaze. Eugene's eyes are everything good - kindness, vulnerability, trust, smarts...when Snafu looks into them he feels this rush of uncontainable emotion, that drug that makes his nerves calm. And the persistent need in the back of his head to be somewhere doing something quiets down till it goes silent entirely, because he's here, sharing this with Eugene, and somehow that's more than enough.

They're not even doing anything, they're relaxing on the side of a bluff looking out at the ocean and sharing a cigarette. It should be boring as hell, and yet when Snafu does finally get the guts to flick his eyes towards Gene, he's utterly satisfied.

He's going fucking insane, is what it is. All cause of Eugene's eyes. He tries to clumsily explain this to Gene. Snafu feels he owes him that much. It doesn't come out right. None of Snafu's words ever come out right, not like Gene's with his studied elocution and tendency to think long and hard before he speaks.

Except this time, as Snafu speaks, Eugene's face loses his sour expression entirely, and Snafu sees hope there - maybe a little bit of joy.

Eugene places the cigarette back in Snafu's hands and leans his elbows on the table intently. "Snaf," he says very seriously, "how do I explain to you that I feel the exact same way every time I look at you?"

"Not possible," Snafu counters stubbornly.

"Snaf!" Eugene laughs.

"I can't be for you what those guys on the beach are for each other," Snafu says.

"Why not?"

"Just can't."

"Just like I can't fall in love with my asshole gunner during the middle of a war?" Eugene's still grinning like he can't stop now that he's started.

"I'm not enough, Gene."

Eugene sighs. He studies Snafu's profile quietly for a minute, and then switches tactics. "Do you know why mine and Edna's divorce was okay by my parents?"

Snafu shakes his head. He hadn't even given it a thought. Just assumed Eugene's parents knew their son deserved the best, and anyone named Edna was clearly not that.

"We, uh," Eugene coughs, "We never consummated the marriage. I kept putting it off. Easy to do under strict christian values. Till Edna got fed up, realized I wasn't about to give her kids anytime soon or ever. And demanded we split."

"You're still a virgin?" Snafu stares at him in surprise.

"I am," Eugene blushes angrily, "And I'm kinda tired of people shaming me for that."

"No shame," Snafu says fairly, "I remember how you were during the China occupation years. Always thought that was just cause your fear of VD, though."

"Yeah, that was my excuse at the time," Eugene says, "Snaf, you know I love you. Passionately. I want to be able to say that, whenever I feel it, instead of choking it down and trying to hide it. I'd like to kiss you. I very much enjoy holding you. I think we could live together very happily. That's what I want from you, nothing more." Eugene reaches over the table and takes Snafu's hand resting beside the crystal water goblets. "I'll beg you, if that's what it takes to get it through your thick skull." 

Snafu smiles a little despite himself.

"Also, we're both gonna have to work on quitting smoking," Eugene concludes his list, "cause I'm going to need you to grow old with me."

Snafu plucks at the bar menu on the table beside his elbow. He casually picks it up and scans the dessert section. "You know...," he says casually, "...they've got coconut ice cream." He flips the menu around so Eugene can read the list.

Eugene reaches with his free hand and grabs the menu to examine it. "If I buy you coconut ice cream will you finally admit you love me back?"

Snafu looks at him and Eugene is smiling so hard his cheeks must hurt.

Snafu uses their twined hands to pull Eugene closer over the table and press his lips to Eugene's in answer. He looks deep into Eugene's eyes, his gaze as unwavering and cliche as his devotion, and says, "I love you, Gene. Heart and soul."

Eugene threads his free hand into the back of Snafu's curls and touches their foreheads together. There's a knowing between them that's existed in some form since that first day on Pavuvu. Eugene doesn't need to say a word, Snafu can read it all in his eyes. He leans in and kisses Eugene one final time before pulling away and standing up.

"Now that that's settled," Snafu says with a devil grin, "Let's go see about that coconut ice cream."

Eugene groans, but when Snafu wraps his hand tighter around Gene's to help him stand and leads him back down the cliffside stairs to the pool deck, Eugene willingly follows.

Snafu stands on his tiptoes at the poolside bar to order a double scoop ice cream cone with chocolate drizzle. Eugene stands to the side and fiddles with the condiments while he waits. Snafu tilts his head to bat his eyes saccharinely at Eugene while the bartender is in the back with the scoops. And Eugene's reflexive smile in return is bashful and more than a little endearing.

They take Snafu's prodigious two scoop chocolate drizzle coconut ice cream cone outside the gate and onto the ocean rocks. The evening air is finally cooling, but the setting sun melts the ice cream fast. Snafu keeps having to lick at his hands where the milky cream runs down his fingers. Snafu sucks at the edge where cone meets ice cream, and notices Eugene watching him.

He waggles the cone in front of Eugene's face invitingly.

Eugene hastily grabs Snafu's hand so his wiggling doesn't make the double scoop fall off into Eugene's lap. "Fine," Eugene sighs, as if tasting ice cream is a true hardship. He holds Snafu's hand still and takes a tentative lick.

Snafu grins when he sees Gene's eyes light up. "It's only called 'coconut ice cream'," Snafu announces, "Never said it tasted like coconut."

"How…?" Eugene asks.

"They just make it out of coconut milk, it's flavored with vanilla," Snafu says, proud to have won an argument.

Eugene eases the cone out of Snafu's hand in order to better take another bite  of ice cream.

Eugene's hair is blowing wildly in the ocean breeze. Snafu watches strands of hair fall across Eugene's face and Eugene desperately tries to shake it out of his mouth so he can eat. Snafu chuckles and brushes Eugene's hair off his forehead and holds it there to give him easier access. 

Eugene crinkles his eyes at Snafu in amusement and mumbles his thanks in between bites of ice cream.

"I think you've had enough," Snafu comments and draws the cone away from Eugene's grasp after two thirds of the ice cream has magically disappeared. But instead of eating more himself, Snafu kisses Gene and sucks on his bottom lip to get the last drops of ice cream. Eugene tastes sweet, and his lips are refreshingly cold. And when Snafu opens his eyes, he can see that Gene is silently laughing at him - or with him, because Snafu is laughing too.

Snafu grins, kisses the tip of Eugene's long nose because there's some ice cream there, and then turns back to his cone. He barely gets his mouth around it before Eugene is tugging the cone out of his hand a second time.

"Hey, you could'a got your own!" Snafu exclaims, trying to keep the ice cream away.

Gene wins. Because of course he does. "I'll buy you a second one," Eugene promises.

Snafu threads his fingers through Eugene's bangs again to hold them back, and chooses to watch Eugene instead of the sunset. Gene's tinted round sunglasses are brilliantly rosy, casting colored shadows on his cheeks and making them even rosier.

"Gene," Snafu says, just to be able to savor his name.

"Mm?" Eugene cuts his eyes to the side and raises an eyebrow at Snafu even as he licks melted ice cream off his hand.

Snafu tilts his chin up and scoots closer till their sides are pressed tight together. "I think this is gonna be the best vacation I ever have," he confesses.

Eugene turns back to his ice cream and comments, "Thought this was the only vacation you've ever had."

"Yeah, but I mean in the future too," Snafu swipes at his collar and unbuttons it a little to give himself more breathing room.

"Naw," Eugene scoffs, "Don't worry, we'll top it." He licks his lips and hands the almost empty ice cream cone back to Snafu, "That's pretty darn good."

Snafu breaks into a wide grin. "I told you. I told you so, Sledgehammer!" he says proudly, "Next time I suggest new food, you better listen!"

Eugene laughs and agrees, "I will." He maneuvers around on the rock till he can lay his head in Snafu's lap. "If you drip any ice cream on me, try to aim for my mouth," he advises.

"Sure thing, Sledgehammer," Snafu says and bites into the last of the cone with a crunch. It's a bit messy and he does end up dripping some on Eugene, but it lands on Eugene's forehead . It's okay though because Snafu bends over to kiss him clean, and Eugene laughs and complains that it tickles.

When the ice cream disappears, and the sun is set, and the last bit of twilight is slowly fading, Eugene and Snafu make their way back across the rocky beach to their bikes. Nothing's changed, yet everything feels different. This time when Eugene miraculously spots a tiny crab species scuttering over a rock, and stops to admire it, Snafu can openly admire Eugene and Eugene's goofy fascination. And when they're chatting as they walk, and Eugene retorts with something particularly sarcastic, instead of just laughing it off, Snafu gets to tug Eugene back by his hand, spin him around, and lay a kiss on him. Just because he wants to.

Of course, when they do finally reach the bikes and rejoin civilization, Snafu has to reign in his urges somewhat, but from time to time he still manages to smile at Eugene in that way that makes Eugene blush, and usually trip over his own feet if he's not being careful.

They drop the bikes off at the booth, and Eugene pays a rather hefty late fee. They're walking back to their car when Snafu grabs onto Eugene's elbow and stops them both.

He draws Eugene in close and whispers, "Look at the pier, all lit up at night. Like fireflies." 

The hippodrome is dotted with popcorn lights, it's turrets and arches glamorous behind shadow in a way they aren't during the day.

Eugene stands straight, takes a deep breath, locks Snafu's arm under his elbow, and takes off down the street towards the pier.

"Gene, where are we going?" Snafu asks worriedly, slightly alarmed and keeping a sharp eye out for anyone looking at them askance because of being arm-in-arm.

"I want to dance," Eugene decides. He marches them straight up to box office window of the ballroom and slaps a ten dollar bill on the counter. "Can he and I enter the ballroom as a couple?" Eugene asks challengingly.

Snafu nearly chokes. It's late enough there's not many people around outside. Most everyone is in the ballroom where the band is in full swing. Whenever one of the front doors opens and people exit, a cacophony of talking and loud music escapes with them.

The bored and exhausted woman behind the desk takes in Eugene, lingering on Eugene's Marine Corps ring, and then Snafu, and shrugs, "Sure, whatever."

Eugene nods enthusiastically in relief, "Thank you," and slides the money over. Being pressed up against Eugene's side, Snafu can feel him sweating.

The girl behind the counter gives them two tickets and their change. Eugene gratefully pushes five dollars of it back to her, nods once more, and drags a still-in-shock Snafu over to the doors.

Eugene falters once inside the doorway, suddenly shy. He holds his head up high, but there's tension in his neck when Eugene swallows nervously. 

It's up to Snafu to pry his hand out from underneath Eugene's sweaty armpit, and walk them both onto the dance floor.

The first few dances are easy as pie. The songs are familiar, big band numbers both of them recognize from their days during and immediately after the war. Eugene is a horrible dancer, but Snafu more than makes up for it. And with how lively everything is, no one notices two boys in a crowded corner doing the jitterbug with themselves.

Plus Snafu secretly enjoys having to grab Eugene's hips and turn him in the proper direction or place. Even if it also means he nearly trips over Eugene's feet every five minutes. There's a freedom in being able to be naturally affectionate with each other in public.

The only person that bothers them is a short but very handsome man who comes up to compliment Snafu on his dancing.

"How'd you get stuck with this dancing ginger elephant," the guy says to Snafu and sticks his thumb at Eugene, "Why, you're so light on your feet, I bet you could get any girl on the wall in here."

"I'm teaching him how to dance," Snafu says curtly. He shifts his grip on Eugene's hand and swings Gene close into his side protectively.

Meanwhile Eugene is glaring at the newcomer.

"Hey, you're teaching skills must be pretty swell," the guy says admirably, "Can I get a lesson?"

Snafu skids their dance to a stop. There's no way this asshole is going to go away without some kind of placation. Snafu turns around and grins, fully prepared to give this guy a verbal vertical buttstroke to the chin. But Eugene intervenes first.

"You're out of luck, mister," Eugene says. He pushes his way in between the guy and Snafu, "I'm afraid he's all booked up tonight."

"Oh," the guy says affably, completely clueless to Eugene's souring mood, "Well, how about tomorrow?"

"He's busy tomorrow too," Eugene replies.

"But not tomorrow night," Snafu interjects, slipping around Eugene, "Give me your name and number and I'll call you with my lesson schedule."

Once Snafu jots down the guy's information, the man finally goes away satisfied.

"You're not really going to call him?" Eugene asks.

Snafu tries to coax him back into a dance, but Eugene's limbs turn very floppy when he's unenthused. "Of course not," Snafu answers, "But he's gonna leave us alone now. And he won't go complain to someone about the two guys dancing together on the floor."

"True," Eugene sighs.

Snafu spins them around and launches into one of the dance moves Eugene picked up the fastest in order to give Gene something to feel confident about. They link hands and hook opposing arms behind their heads. In one swoop their grips slide down each other's arms till they catch their hands again.

Eugene grins.

Snafu uses their momentum to snap them close together again and they playfully push each other to rotate clockwise.

"Feeling better?" Snafu asks.

"He was smarmy," Eugene states. He switches direction on the beat and touches Snafu's shoulder to follow.

"He was," Snafu agrees, amused.

"He's not your type," Eugene says, turning a second time.

"Definitely not," Snafu agrees again.

"What is your type?" Eugene asks. He sounds slightly worried, as if the thought just occurred to him that Snafu might have a 'type'. And he might not be it.

"I like guys who are smarter than me," Snafu reassures him smarmily.

"Well shit, that rules out at least ninety percent of the population," Eugene declares.

"Yeah," Snafu grins, "Good thing I found you."

"Good thing," Eugene agrees.

Snafu swings out and twists back in till he's tucked neatly under Eugene's arm, and pauses to wink at his dance partner. "Plus, you're no elephant," he reassures him.

Eugene snorts, "Actually he might have been right on that front…"

"No way!" Snafu insists, stepping out and holding their hands at length, "You'll be a great dancer. I think you might be ready for a few aerials."

Eugene furrows his brow and looks concerned, "Please tell me you're joking."

"Nope. Don't worry about it, I'm light, you'll toss me around like I'm nothing," he says.

"Snaf," Eugene exclaims, "I'll end up dropping you is what I'll do."

"You won't," Snafu insists. He shim shams into Eugene's space and tilts his head up till they're a breath away from kissing, and smiles disarmingly, "I trust you."

Which, of course, Eugene can never resist so here they are on the dance floor, Snafu explaining the simple physics of launching one body off another to an expert in biology. Hooking their arms together and him rolling over Eugene's back is the easiest so they start there.

For all his nerves, Eugene proves to be a very solid dance partner. He never shies away from a hold, and his feet might be slightly off but they never stumble. The first time Eugene effortlessly swings Snafu over his leg and into a side dip, Snafu's heart is fluttering in his chest and he's gazing up at Eugene in exuberant delight. Eugene sets Snafu down, swings him out, and when they come back together they almost collapse against one another in relieved laughter over their success. Snafu's arms lope around Eugene's neck and they giggle terribly.

Snafu didn't expect this.

He probably should have, Eugene never does anything by half and he always is a quick learner. Eugene picks up the steps so fast, in fact, that by the end of the second hour Snafu has to start shooing wallflower girls away who keep wanting to take Snafu's place.

Eugene, being Eugene, completely fails to notice the girls' interest, which is almost as entertaining as him refusing to take his attention off Snafu all night. A few times Snafu offers to give Eugene a break, and maybe find his own girl to take for a spin in the middle of the dance floor. But Eugene insists he needs no breaks.

When the music finally switches to something slow, Snafu slides to a stop and leans heavily against Eugene's shoulder panting.

"Let's get some water," Eugene suggests, and pats Snafu on the back. He starts off in the direction of the bar but Snafu hangs behind.

"What," Snafu taunts when Eugene glances back at him, "You won't slow dance with me?"

Eugene's eyebrows shoot up, his eyes go wide.

Snafu doesn't give him a chance to overthink things. He takes Eugene's hands, positions them properly for a waltz, and leads him into the dance. At first Eugene is stiff, and he refuses to make eye contact with Snafu, too busy scanning the room.

But after a few steps, after the world doesn't end, Eugene folds in closer to Snafu's body. Their cheeks brush. And Eugene's ear is suddenly right there, in front of Snafu's mouth. So Snafu tightens his embrace, and sings along to the song's romantic lyrics in a whisper meant for Eugene alone.

Snafu can understand Eugene's initial hesitation. After all the years Snafu spent sharing dances with various partners he didn't give a shit about, this feels especially vulnerable, despite the fact that they are one couple among thousands on the floor. There's a part of him that didn't think he'd ever have this moment. That for all the people jumping at the chance to dance with him, Snafu'd never feel the same way about someone else.

Eugene is so fucking gentle, it's easy to mistake him as soft. His hand is light against the small of Snafu's back. It's a little hard to believe not two minutes ago that same hand was gripping Snafu's thigh hard as Eugene spun him into an aerial. But as always, Eugene only uses his strength when necessary.

"When I graduate this year, I'm going to do my PHD in Florida," Eugene says as they slowly sway to the music, "I know I'm asking a lot but...Merriell...would you come with me?"

Snafu remains silent. He hadn't fully considered what loving Eugene might actually mean. That with him came Alabama, the Sledge family, the universities...

"I'll have a stipend, to take the financial pressure off," Eugene hastily elaborates, because Eugene always feels that if he adds more facts into the conversation he'll be more likely to win, "If you can find a job locally, that'd be great, but you wouldn't need to work. I've been budgeting this past year and I've calculated a way for the two of us to live off what I make. Maybe not comfortably, but it wouldn't be for long. When I get my diploma we can go back to New Orleans, or anywhere you want really. There are colleges and universities in almost any city. Snafu, I want you with me. No more pining after you every week and only feeling whole on the weekends…"

"How long've you been thinking about this?" Snafu asks.

Eugene is quiet for a while. "Do you mean how long have I been planning for it, or how long have I wanted it?"

"The second one?" Snafu asks, slightly uncertain.

"That day on the train…" Eugene begins.

"A few days??" Snafu interrupts incredulously, "That's all the thought you've given this, for fucks sake Gene!"

"On the train in 1946!" Eugene corrects sternly.

Which just about shuts Snafu up.

"Why the hell didn't you say anything sooner?" Snafu asks.

"Snaf, if you would just let me finish," Eugene complains, "That day on the train Burgie was talking about marriage, you were asking about jobs, everybody seemed to be thinking about commitments and when you turned to me the only damn certainty I had in my head was you. But then you didn't say goodbye. I thought...I figured…you were done with us in your life...with me."

"If I follow you to Florida will that make up for it?" Snafu asks.

Eugene grins, real slow, like he knows the past four years of Snafu being at Eugene's beck and call is partially Snafu's way of atoning for his abrupt departure. "It just might," Eugene says confidently, "It just might."

One thing about the timeline of everything doesn't add up in Snafu's mind. "So," he says, "I don't say goodbye and six months later you go and get yourself married?"

"I assumed leaving was your hint to me to try to fall back into civilian life. To forget about the war, and war buddies, live normally. And according to everyone, that meant marriage," Eugene sighs.

"Who's everybody?" Snafu smirks.

"Not you, obviously, Mr. Confirmed Bachelor," Eugene smiles back at him slyly, "But my mother, and Sid. Hell, even my brother got on me for still being a virgin."

Snafu laughs and dips his head closer to Eugene as they dance. He rests his cheek on Eugene's shoulder along with most of his weight, relying on Eugene to hold them both upright. "Did you love Edna?" he asks.

"I did, but not in the way she wanted," Eugene says quietly, "She's a lovely person, sometimes I wish I could love her like she deserves, like how I love you. Might've made life easier. But not better, I don't think."

"You saying me walking back into your life after your divorce made things better?" Snafu laughs at the absurdity.

"Yes," Eugene says seriously, "Infinitely better."

Snafu lifts his head from Eugene's shoulder in order to pull away and look into his eyes, to see if he's telling the truth. "Okay," Snafu agrees, "We'll go to Florida together. Till then, I'll see if my boss knows anyone in Auburn who can find me some work up there, and I'll move to Alabama."

Eugene gives Snafu a blank stare, so akin to the ones Snafu usually gives him, that it throws Snafu off and makes him question everything (including the efficacy of his own blank stares, maybe he should try to learn to communicate better).

The song the band is playing comes to an end, and the swing starts up again. The couples around them whirl into motion. But nobody pays attention to the two men standing in the middle of it all with their arms locked around each other.

Till Eugene surges forward and kisses Snafu.

The kiss catches Snafu off guard. Eugene's hand is flat on the small of Snafu's back and is holding Snafu flush against Eugene's body. Good thing too, cause Snafu's knees almost buckle in surprise. Eugene bends him over backwards in his enthusiasm to kiss Snafu harder, and Snafu wraps his arms tight around Eugene's neck and smiles into the kiss.

This is it, this is the 'war-is-over-we-are-going-home-together-in-triumph' kiss Snafu has been waiting for. Not triumph in the form of parades and adulation. But triumph in that against all odds, they survived, they found each other, Eugene fucking loves him, and they're gonna actually, finally...live.

They're about six years late, but Snafu figures that's forgivable when taking into account insecurities and the lingering numbness and fear hanging round their necks.

Eugene breaks the kiss and stares into Snafu's eyes, and Eugene is so pretty - he's so fucking pretty it hurts. Snafu wants to kiss him till all traces of that war weary blankness are gone from his eyes. There's moments - when Eugene comes to life with his sarcasm or sly wit or intellectual curiosity, and Snafu likes to pride himself on being able to bring those moments out. But is it enough?

After a bit Snafu begins to notice that it's not just them gone completely still. The couples around them are stopping and staring, and whispering.

"Shit," Snafu says under his breath to Eugene. He ducks his head and takes his arms off Eugene's shoulders.

"Yeah, we should probably get out of here," Eugene agrees. His hands still grip Snafu's hips.

Snafu laughs, giddy and reckless, and bumps his shoulder playfully into Gene's. If anyone nearby had any doubts after that kiss, all they'd have to do is take one look at Eugene's face and see how damn in love he is.

"Hey!" someone in the crowd calls out and Snafu can see the guy coming at them in the peripheral of his vision.

Snafu grabs Eugene's elbow. "Walk fast, but try to not draw more attention," he whispers and leads Eugene off the dance floor. They make it to the entrance and out the doors. As soon as they get outside, Snafu twines his hand with Eugene's and breaks into a run, their feet hitting the wooden boardwalk with loud hollow thumps. They can hear agitated voices and footsteps behind them, and they don't stop running till they reach the car.

Snafu slams the passenger door shut and turns to Eugene as soon as he gets inside. They're laughing from adrenaline and Snafu's heart is racing. He cups Eugene's cheek and tilts his head for another quick kiss before Eugene starts the engine.

Somehow Eugene knows the drive back to the hotel on the oceanside cliffs. Snafu doesn't pay any attention. He kicks his feet up on the dash and is too busy admiring Gene's long nose and the curve of his jaw backlit by the passing neon lights to give any thought to the car's direction.

The parking lot for the hotel is at the top of the cliff. There's a locked iron gate, nestled between eight foot tall hedges, with the name of the place welded onto it in an arc. The gate is small, and barely noticeable at the edge of the lot. Eugene has a key - it's antique and very decorative - and lets them in. The stairway beyond the gate switchbacks down the cliff, with thick walls protecting people from falling off the path. The air is thick and heavy with the smell of flowers growing abundantly around them.

Snafu pauses under one of the lamps. He folds his elbows over the wall, rests his chin on top, and looks out across the hotel and gardens below, and the ocean beyond. "We stepped into a goddamn fairytale," Snafu says.

Eugene comes up behind him with an embrace and rests his chin on Snafu's head, "Does that make you my prince?"

"No way," Snafu emphatically denies, "If anyone is a prince in this scenario, it's you Gene."

"Impossible," Eugene says with a smile, "Prince Eugene sounds like a pompous ass. Prince Merriell, on the other hand…."

Snafu laughs. "Maybe that's what my ma had in mind when she made up my name."

"Definitely," Eugene agrees, "She knew you'd grow up regal."

"Fuck regal," Snafu rolls his eyes, "Fuck propriety. You willing to give up all that shit for me, Gene? We ain't gonna be accepted into those circles anymore."

"Yes," Eugene says readily.

And Snafu believes him.

Their hotel suite, as expected, has white lace curtains covering each window, holding back the ocean breeze. Snafu's mother hung lace curtains in their home too, but those were already yellowed with age, patched in places, and quickly turned grey with dust. These hotel curtains reach to the floor and yet remain pristine.

Snafu stands on the balcony and smokes before bed. Eugene sits inside and reads. Or at least Snafu thinks Eugene is reading. Snafu turns his gaze away from the ocean only to catch Eugene guiltily ducking his head behind his journal.

"What?" Snafu asks, with a wry smile.

"Nothing," Eugene says, which almost definitely means it's something he's embarrassed about.

Snafu snubs out his cigarette and leans over Eugene's shoulder to investigate.

"Thought you just drew plants?" Snafu asks.

"I'm expanding my range," Eugene says dryly.

"You made me look skinny," Snafu comments.

"You are skinny," Eugene counters. He hooks an arm around Snafu's waist and walks him over to the bed. He sweeps Snafu off his feet in one of the lindy hop holds, and tosses Snafu onto the bed.

"Never should have taught you those aerials," Snafu teases. He stretches out across the pillows and dares Eugene with his eyes to join him.

Eugene says nothing, just grins widely as he climbs onto the bed next to Snafu.

Snafu kisses that self satisfied smile on Eugene's face.

They lie next to each other, their legs entwined, and their noses so close they're almost touching. There's a lightness in Snafu's chest he's never felt before. Happiness he knows, elation he knows - as rare as those things are. But this is new. He knows it can't last. Nightmares will come, they won't just go away, but for now he can lie here and soak up Gene's presence.

"I already knew you loved me," Snafu confesses.

"What do you mean?" Eugene asks.

"Even before you said it today. I think I've known since Okinawa," Snafu says.

"I figured," Eugene replies.

"Were a couple of fucking cowards," Snafu laughs.

"No, the world is cowardly," Eugene counters, "We were just trying too hard to adapt to it."

Snafu bites his bottom lip in consideration. He lifts his chin, thinks about saying something, and then decides words aren't necessary. Gene knows. Gene's always known. Snafu reaches over and gently takes Eugene's hand. Snafu twists around and pulls Eugene's arm across his body till his back is tucked against Eugene's chest.

Eugene folds around him. He's warm, and he's so much in love.

"Snaf," Eugene whispers in his ear before they fall asleep, "Let's get it right this time. Just you and me." 

tagging requests: @xmxisxforxmaybe​ @diasimar (btw i think you have tagging turned off) (also if I am missing anybody on this list I apologize, pls tell me <3)

[brookstonalmanac]

Birthdays 12.6

Beer Birthdays

Henry Liebmann (1836)

Henry Rahr (1856)

Rich Link (1956)

Natalie Cilurzo (1968)

Dave Gull (1974)

Five Favorite Birthdays

Dave Brubeck; jazz pianist, composer (1920)

Peter Buck; rock guitarist (1956)

Tom Hulce; actor (1953)

Nick Park; British animator (1958)

Steven Wright; comedian (1955)

Famous Birthdays

Judd Apatow; film director, screenwriter (1967)

Johann Christoph Bach; German composer (1642)

Larry Bowa; Philadelphia Phillies SS (1945)

Rick Buckler; English drummer (1955)

Wally Cox; actor (1924)

Gabriel Duvall; U.S. Supreme Court justice (1752)

Alfred Eisenstaedt; German photographer (1898)

Ira Gershwin; lyricist (1896)

Otto Graham; Cleveland Browns QB (1921)

Charles Martin Hall; chemist (1863)

Jean Eugene Robert Houdin; French magician (1805)

Joyce Kilmer; poet (1886)

Don King; boxing promoter (1932)

Joseph Lamb; ragtime composer (1887)

Tony Lazzeri; New York Yankess SS (1903)

Christina Lindberg; Swedish actress (1950)

Agnes Moorehead; actor (1906)

John S. "Gray Ghost" Mosby; confederate calvary commander (1833)

James Naughton; actor (1945)

David Ossman; comedian, writer, actor (1936)

George Porter; British chemist (1920)

Randy Rhoads; rock guitarist (1956)

Will Shriner; comedian (1953)

Frank Springer; comic book artist (1929)

Janine Turner; actor (1962)

Bobby Van; actor, dancer (1928)

JoBeth Williams; actor (1948)