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Illustration und Gestaltung: Leipzig bis zum 24.09.2023
Bis Sonntag den 24. September 2023 gibt es die unwiederbringliche Gelegenheit im GRASSI Museum Leipzig die Ausstellung „Von Bonnard bis Klemke –��Illustrierte Bücher und Mappenwerke aus der Sammlung Wieland Schütz, Berlin“ zu besuchen. Was heißt „besuchen“? Einzutauchen in Bilder – Bücher – Fantasiewelten… auf Zeitreise gehen… bibliophile Kostbarkeiten in einer selten gebotenen Qualität und…
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#Anne Deuter#Bücher#Buch#Buchgestaltung#Buchkunst#Buchmesse#Franziska Neubert#Graphik#Grassi MAK#Henri Matisse#Illustration#Kat Menschik#Katja Zwirnmann#Layout#Sabine Golde#Von Bonnard bis Klemke#Wieland Schütz
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The Curveball Part 13 | Bob Floyd x OC
Summary: Molly didn't think life with Bob could get any better. Then their son arrives, and she's proven wrong yet again. She doesn't know what the future holds, but she knows that she wants her family with her for every adventure. And that starts with a trip down a grassy path through some wildflowers.
Warnings: Angst, fluff, swears, pregnancy, smut, 18+
Length: 3900 words
Pairing: Robert "Bob" Floyd x Female OC (this story accompanies Batting Practice!)
Check my masterlist for more! The Curveball masterlist
Thank you to @mak-32 and @teacupsandtopgun for the beautiful banners!
With the number of times Bob had to field the question, "So how did you and Molly get engaged?" you would have thought he could answer it by now without blushing. But he couldn't. Not even close.
The only ones who knew what really happened were Nat, Bradley and Molly's sister. Nat kept calling Molly 'a goddamn legend'. Bradley cringed. And Molly's sister just said, "Yeah, that tracks."
But Molly kept those pretty Mrs. Floyd nipple piercings in for him, and he loved her even more for it. Her belly had gotten so big by Valentine's Day, he didn't know how she'd make it all the way to her due date in another four weeks. She looked absolutely exhausted after every shift in the emergency room, and more often than not, she ended up falling asleep on the couch with him after dinner while they watched a murder documentary.
"Mo," he whispered on Friday night after she fell asleep mostly on top of him on the couch, his big hand splayed over her belly. His son was squirming a bit as he stroked her soft skin. She was incredible. His Molly. They hadn't decided exactly when they were going to get married, but she kept talking about wildflower meadows. So he agreed to wait until the summer, after the baby was born.
He had to whisper her name a few times before she jolted awake. "Hmm?" she moaned. "Bobby, I was in the middle of a delicious nap." He kissed her lips when she pouted at him.
"Let's get in bed, Honey," he said softly, pulling her shirt down over her belly. "We have to babysit Ev tomorrow so your sister and Bradley can go out for Valentine's Day."
She smirked at him. "They like to do dirty shit in the Bronco."
Bob just shrugged. "We do dirty stuff in my truck all the time."
She moaned softly as she said, "We sure do, Lieutenant Floyd." Bob's eyes slowly closed as Molly's hand skimmed down his abs and into the waistband on his underwear. "Dirty stuff everywhere. Anything my fiancé wants."
Bob grunted as her small hand wrapped around his cock, and her lips grazed his stubbled jaw. He was getting harder as she stroked him slowly, tongue darting out to taste his neck. "Molly," he moaned, bucking up into her hand as she teased his tip. But she just hummed against him as she jerked him off. And then her hand slowly came to a stop until she was just softly cupping his balls.
And then he heard her soft, even breathing next to his ear, and Bob couldn't help but laugh. She actually fell asleep while she was giving him a handjob. Bob thought for a moment that maybe a less secure man would be insulted, and maybe that's what Molly was used to in the past, but he knew she was beyond tired right now.
He kissed her forehead and gently eased her hand back out from his underwear. "It's bedtime," he whispered, and she jolted awake again.
"No," she said, shaking her head and trying to reach for his cock.
"Yes," he replied with a chuckle as he slid out from under her without being too rough with her bump. "Come on, and I'll rub your back until you fall asleep in bed."
"Mmkay," she agreed, bleary eyed as Bob led her to their bedroom. He helped her get undressed, kneeling in front of her and placing some gentle kisses to her belly like he did every night.
"I love you," he whispered as Molly ran her fingers through his hair. The nightly conversations with his son were something he was definitely going to keep doing after the baby was born. "I can't wait to meet you. We just finished getting your nursery ready. I hope you like baseball, because your Uncle Bradley and I went a little nuts in there."
"That's an understatement," Molly whispered. "They went flipping bananas."
Bob cupped her pretty belly with both of his hands and smiled. "Mommy's right. We did go overboard."
He watched Molly yawn before she said, "It's okay. Everett and Piper will teach him all about baseball." And then she kept yawning, so Bob got her settled into bed with a pillow tucked against her belly. He set his glasses on the nightstand and turned off the lamp. And then he climbed in behind her as the big spoon and kissed the engagement ring she was wearing.
"You wanna talk about baby names?" he asked, rubbing his hand along her side, because he knew it would make her sleepy.
"I only like a handful of names," she replied, and Bob could hear the pout in her voice even though the room was dark.
"Come on, Mo. Literally anything except Everett. Your sister will never forgive you."
"Yeah, but my nephew will think it's funny, and that's almost enough motivation for me to do it."
Bob groaned. "What's your second favorite name?"
It took Molly a few moments, but eventually she said, "I want to name him after you."
"Robert Junior?" he said, already shaking his head. "RJ?" He didn't like it at all.
"No. Your middle name. We can call him Charlie," she mumbled, obviously dozing off.
Now Bob smiled as he kissed his sleeping fiancee on the shoulder. "Charlie Floyd."
-----------------------------
Since it wasn't a leap year, Molly knew Bob wasn't really getting a birthday. "Still only eight years old," she told him on February twenty eighth. She was straddling his lap on the couch, but her belly was fucking enormous now and always in the way. He didn't seem to mind though as he gently held her and cradled her and the baby. She kissed down his cheek until she got to his lips. "You look terrible for your age."
Bob burst out laughing. "Thanks, Honey. Hoping the kid gets your genetics."
"Call him by his name," she whispered.
"Charlie," Bob said with a smile. There was no room left for Charlie to move around too much, but he always seemed to know when Bob was nearby. He was currently squirming so much, Molly was getting heartburn.
"He just wants his daddy all the time," she said, running her hands slowly over Bob's chest. "I want his daddy all the time, too."
"Yeah?" Bob asked cautiously. It was really difficult to fuck now. Molly was always uncomfortable. But she knew Bob was never going to rush her. So they spent about five minutes getting her propped up on the couch with throw pillows.
"This is a lot of work for you to get some birthday sex, Bobby," she crooned as his erection bumped her repeatedly in the leg while he made sure she was comfortable.
"It's worth it," he replied as he sank into her warm pussy.
"Oh, yeah... definitely worth it," she agreed, rocking back gently to meet his slow thrusts. It was unhurried and perfect, and Bob's big hands wrapped around to her belly made her feel safe.
But later that evening, she knew she had to do something she really didn't want to do. "Bob, it's time," she said solemnly as she stood with her jewelry box in both hands.
"I understand," he whispered, taking it from her and sitting down on their bed. He sighed sadly and watched her pull her shirt over her head followed by her sports bra. And then the pretty Mrs. Floyd piercings had to come out. She almost laughed at the sad look on his face as she put them in her jewelry box and closed the lid.
"They'll be back. I promise."
"I know," he whispered, kissing along both of her breasts and nuzzling her with his nose. She felt like she looked all swollen and misshapen, but he didn't seem to mind as he kissed her everywhere.
-------------------------
"You can't be serious right now," Molly groaned the following night as she nibbled on some pizza. Everyone was out for Bob's fake birthday at the usual restaurant. "You're going to Disney World? Without me?!" she asked Everett.
Bob tried not to laugh as his soon to be nephew looked genuinely upset. "Mom, can we bring Aunt Molly with us?" he whispered.
But Molly just laughed and kissed him. "No, this vacation is for you and your parents. Besides, the baby will be too young this summer. I'll come next time."
"How much longer until the baby comes?" Everett asked her looking at her belly hopefully. "This is taking forever."
"Hopefully just a few more days," Bob supplied, offering Molly more pizza. But she hadn't even finished one slice yet, just sipping some apple juice instead.
"No," she told him. "I don't feel great today."
Then Bob noticed the ridiculous grin on Everett's face where he sat perched on Bradley's lap. "I got a new dad. I'm getting my very own cousin, and even an Uncle Bob!"
"You're living your best life, my man," Molly told him. "It's like you planned this all out."
But she really didn't look comfortable at all, and Bob knew she was struggling with fatigue now. So he kissed her cheek, insisted on paying for dinner, and started to herd everyone outside. As soon as he opened the passenger side door of his truck and tried to help her in, she started shaking her head.
"I'm going to throw up," she insisted and started heading for some of the shrubs along the side of the parking lot. "Oh. Oh no."
But she didn't throw up. Her water broke. Bob froze as Molly turned to look at him as she started crying. "I just peed," she whispered.
Then his adrenaline kicked in fully, and he closed the distance to her. "Honey, I think your water broke," he said gently, and she gasped, panic all over her face.
"No," she said, shaking her head more. "I'm not ready."
"I don't think we have much choice," he told her carefully as he guided her back to the truck. Her sister had already left with Bradley and Everett, so he would have to call them once they got to the hospital. But he needed to focus on this first, because Molly was starting to lose it.
"I can't do this. I can't!" she nearly screamed, fighting him as he tried to get her into the truck. Her pink leggings were all wet, and she was scrambling in every direction seemingly at the same time. "I don't want to," she informed him, eyes wide and unsure.
"I'll be with you the whole time," he whispered, kissing her cheek. He was over prepared. He knew that. But he'd been sending Molly around everywhere with her hospital bag which he had packed for her, and it was currently tucked behind the driver's seat. She was as ready as she was going to be whether she wanted to admit it or not.
Once he was finally pulling out of the parking lot with Molly successfully buckled in, Bob felt the panic as well, but he tried to keep his cool. Then suddenly Molly clutched at her belly and loudly groaned, "Shit."
"What?!"
"Is that a contraction?" she asked, gripping at the door handle. "Shit! Fucking hurts!"
When they finally got to the hospital, things had gotten worse. He took her in through the emergency room since that was where she worked. Everyone ran out to watch Bob wheel her inside in a wheelchair. She was gripping the arms and looking back up at him like he was absolutely ruining her day by bringing her here.
"Molly's here!" one of her coworkers yelled.
Molly responded by crying and shouting, "Fuck!" But nobody seemed to think this was unexpected. They just helped Bob along to the elevator and opened all of the necessary doors to get her to the labor and delivery area.
"Thanks," he told them as another nurse let him know he could take Molly into room two. There were new mothers and nurses pushing bassinets around. It was serene. Peaceful. Really one of the loveliest things Bob had ever seen. And he was currently interrupting it by pushing Molly through as she moaned the f-word so loud and so long that nearly everyone was turning to look.
"It's okay, Honey," he promised as he got her into room number two.
"No, Bob!" she shouted. "It is fucking not okay! I feel like I pissed myself. I look like I pissed myself. And Charlie fucking hates me, because it hurts so much!"
She was doubled over, holding her belly. The pain on her face as she had a contraction made Bob reach for her instantly. A tear slid down her cheek, and she whimpered. And then the obscenities flowed.
Bob tried to apologize to all of the nurses as Molly called them 'fucking assfucks', but they didn't seem to mind at all. He did however close the door as her contractions got closer together.
Hours later, after he had called his mom and Molly's sister and told them what was going on, Bob was exhausted. But he knew Molly was much worse off in that department. She was soaked with sweat and was currently glaring at him.
"I hope you're happy, Bob," she growled, eyes flashing. "Your monster cock did this to me. Lulled me into a false sense of sexual bliss. And then your filthy mega sperm took over, and finished the job."
She looked like she wanted to hurt him, and he had to try very hard not to laugh as he held her hand. "I'm sorry, Mo. I'll never do it again," he promised.
Then she started crying. "You'll never fuck me again?"
"That's not what I meant!" he said quickly, but she was already in tears. And she said the word 'cuntbag' so many times in a row while she pushed that he lost count.
"I see the baby," the doctor finally announced after what seemed like days.
"Get it out! Get it fucking out!" Molly screamed, and Bob felt like screaming too. She had such a tight grip on his fingers, he was sure she cracked some bones.
But when she looked at him, clearly scared, he kissed her sweaty forehead and told her he had never been more impressed by anyone in his entire life. And it was the truth. She looked like she was on the verge of passing out when the doctor announced that it was in fact a boy and gave the time of birth. After Charlie was measured and weighed, one of the nurses placed him in Molly's arms.
"I don't know what to do," she whispered, carefully holding him against her chest with one arm and stroking his cheek with her fingers. "I don't know what to do." But her gaze was transfixed on their son, and her lips were softly parted in wonder. Bob could already tell that Charlie was the perfect baby. Little puckered lips and eyes that were fighting to stay open against the bright overhead lights.
"Oh my god," Bob whispered, leaning down to kiss his son. "Molly. He's actually perfect."
Her fingers stroked along his soft skin while Bob held onto one tiny fist. "He actually is."
---------------------------
The only problem with the next few months was that they flew by. All of Bob's aviator friends had covered the pickup truck in yellow and black BABY ON BOARD signs the day they took Charlie home from the hospital. Molly thought it was hilarious, but Bob grumbled as he removed all of them.
To Molly's extreme annoyance, Charlie seemed to prefer Bradley over all of their other visitors. Everett was overjoyed every time he got to sit with the baby, and her sister was already helping Molly with literally everything under the sun. But it was Bradley who was able to calm Charlie down and get him to fall asleep on his chest.
"I'm the baby whisperer," he informed everyone every time he had the opportunity.
"You're Uncle Turd," Molly told him, but Bradley just smiled at her. She couldn't be too mean, because she needed his help. He was the one who was supposed to be distracting Bob for an entire day while Molly got her wedding gift for him finished.
She wasn't sure what the two men were going to do after the batting cages, but Molly didn't really care. She had approximately seven hours from the time she dropped Charlie off with her sister to the time she had to be back home. The wedding was in a week, the bodice of her dress was sheer lace, and she wanted the tattoo to be perfect.
After she told her tattoo artist the exact placement she wanted and the colors to use, she sat back in the chair in her bra with her arm over her head. Molly looked down at the stretch marks on her still puffy belly. Instead of talking to Charlie there every night, Bob sat in the nursery for fifteen minutes and chatted while he rocked him to sleep. And then he did any number of sweet or dirty things to her before they fell asleep together for a few precious hours until the baby woke them up.
But Bob never once made her feel like her weird looking belly was an issue for him. And when she brought it up one night with tears threatening behind her eyes, he told her she was more beautiful than anything he could have ever dreamed up. And Bob never lied.
"All finished," the artist said, wiping along her skin with a towel one last time and handing her a mirror.
A big, bold violet. A beautiful, blooming daffodil. And even a small pink rosebud. Bob, Charlie and Bradley. "Looks great."
----------------------------
As soon as Molly showed Bob her tattoo, he wrapped her up in his arms. "Gorgeous, Honey," he said, kissing her before examining it a little closer. He ran his fingers along the colorful carnations that were there for her mom and dad, and when he got to the daffodil that she got for Charlier, his fingers froze. There was a small gap between his flower and their son's flower, and when he looked up at Molly she was smiling. "Is it finished now?" he asked cautiously.
She just shrugged. "I'm not sure yet."
Bob would never pressure her to have another child with him. He hadn't really expected to get this lucky in life, let alone feel bold enough to hope for anything more. But that little gap gave him butterflies. Charlie was the sweetest baby in the world, and Bob was obsessed with being a dad. It was his favorite thing. And he wouldn't hesitate to list the condo and find a bigger place if Molly wanted to do this all over again. "You just let me know."
"I will, Coach Cute Daddy."
Bob held her close, knowing they needed to get ready for bed soon. Charlie was still notorious for waking them up at three in the morning to eat, even though he was four months old. Molly kept saying he would probably grow out of it soon, but Bob figured his son loved them so much, he wanted them in the nursery with him.
"Are you ready for Saturday?" he asked, taking his glasses off as Molly climbed into bed.
"Are you asking if I'm ready for the dream wedding that I've spent months planning out? Then yes, I'm ready. All you have to do is show up with the baby, agree to marry me, kiss me, and fuck me. Not all in the wildflower meadow."
Bob kissed along her shoulder as she fell asleep. Molly made him laugh more than he ever had before. And Charlie made him smile more than he ever had before. And by Saturday evening, he'd be married.
----------------------
"I can't believe my wild child of a baby sister is getting married today."
Molly sighed contentedly and said, "To Bob Floyd. The sweet, shy man of my dreams."
Her sister laughed and added, "I don't think Bob was planning on anything like you happening to him."
Molly scoffed as she picked up her bouquet made entirely of gas station flowers. "Anything like me? You mean getting his world rocked and having a kid after being together less than a year? He's lucky."
"He is," she agreed, kissing Molly's cheek. "Now please explain to me why you are getting married with these cheap flowers when there's literally an entire meadow of multicolored poppies and zinnias growing outside?"
Molly pressed her nose to them. "Because Bob picked them up for me last night, and they're my favorite. The other flowers can learn some respect."
"If you say so," she replied, taking Molly by the hand. "As soon as I can give you away, you are one hundred percent Bob's problem." But she was holding tight to Molly's hand, and it sounded like she was on the verge of tears.
Molly walked outside with her sister and started down the grassy path toward the spot where Bob was holding Charlie in the distance. "I will never stop being your problem. And Bradley's problem by proximity."
"Good," her sister whispered, and Molly smiled at her as she cried a little bit. "I love you."
"I love you, too."
And then they walked toward the setting sun past the most beautiful shades of orange, green and yellow Molly could imagine. And it probably wasn't like other weddings, but the best ones weren't.
They stopped so Molly could give hugs and kisses to Bob's parents and the rest of his family. And they stopped so she could get a kiss on the forehead from Bradley. "Love you, turd," she whispered.
"Hey," he said in his raspy voice as she kissed Everett. "You owe me forever for agreeing to coach tee ball with Bob."
"And you owe me forever for letting you marry my sister," she replied easily.
He just nodded thoughtfully. "You're right. We're square."
Molly was laughing as she handed her gas station flowers off to Nat with a hug, and then she was standing in front of Bob and Charlie.
"Hey, Honey," Bob whispered as she took Charlie from his hands so she could hold him for a bit while he napped. She kissed his soft chubby cheek, and his eyes fluttered open before closing again.
Then she met Bob's greenish blue eyes, and he was looking at her like that very first day at tee ball, over a year ago. Like he couldn't believe she was giving him the time of day. She took a step closer to him, and said, "Hey, Coach Cute Glasses. Did you remember your allergy pills?"
"A double dose," he promised. "You ready to marry me?"
"Yes."
Molly held Charlie, and Bob wrapped his strong arm around her waist as they turned toward the sunset. The wedding was short, led by John who married her sister and Bradley last September. And as Molly closed her eyes and kissed Bob at the end of the ceremony, the warmth of the summer evening and the scent of wildflowers washed over her.
The soft nudge of Bob's glasses against her cheek and the way he helped cradle Charlie had Molly leaning in for another kiss. Maybe it would be just the three of them, maybe not. But Molly wanted to take her family on every adventure with her.
"I love you, Cowboy Bob."
Bob smiled and kissed her softly before pressing his lip to Charlie's forehead. "I love you both."
----------------------------
Ahhhh! Thanks for joining Molly, Bob and CHARLIE on this little adventure! I'm sure they will have so many more together. You can always peep more details about them if you read Batting Practice (and maybe some future one-shots)! Thanks to @mak-32 and @beyondthesefourwalls and everyone who bugged me to make Molly and Bob a thing.
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#bob floyd imagine#bob floyd fic#bob floyd#bob floyd fanfiction#robert bob floyd#robert floyd imagine#robert floyd fic#robert floyd x oc#robert floyd fanfiction#bob floyd x oc#bob floyd smut#top gun imagine#top gun maverick imagine#top gun fanfiction#top gun maverick fanfic#roosterforme#the curveball#batting practice
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I WANT ELLI0T PG 2 PURSU3 MOI BOTTOM HALF CUZ MOI DAD DIED
SUUUPPPPPppPPpppPPPP H0MEZZ n THEYZ N ITZ N HE HIMZ.. dissh week has been SPRING BREAK n it GOTzz meh missin vanessa hudgenzz N moi 12 YR OLD SPIRAL / ADDICTION when Her sMHExyy nudes got l33ked . but als0 that era cuz obvvv. i DO NOT mean 2 sound lik a pervert butt my best fwend defzz has been dressin ALOT lik minni3 m0use but the sexy version w n0 gloves n no bra no panties n Holes EXposed. ... . . .
i luv having SHARED SOCIAL ANXIETY b4 a bday partyyyY so we all sit on thA Stoop A Block away from the actual club venuee the bdAY partyzz at n do K n contemplate the nxt step /nxtt club hOp n blah blah blah wee wanna avoid takin a car w some randozz at tha other 1 cuz meh. SHARED SOCIAL ANXIETY... WE R ALL CONNECTED IN THE URETHA OF A UNIVERSAL VAGINA MONOLOGUE ... speaking of Daatttt i LUV POETRY READINGZZ at my grASSy KNOLL w sexy weed tht i KANT smoke cuz thts GONNA GIBB MEH AN ANXIETY ATTACK but dere is DEFZZ sum sexy moss from KATE MOSS QUEEN.. n being fahsionablyy l8 to it cuz u were lowkeY maybE highkey having sex for the 5th time in a row in just a day . I LOVE RICE WITH PIGEON PEAZ. N SPAM. ;D
iyam running out of KEWPIE MAYONAOUSE n i am ALSO running out of moi h0use in the name of FAMILY N FRIENDSHIP N COMMUNITYYyyy JUST 2 Make Sure I show support down tha bl0ck to moi fwenddd speakin at purgatory n when i runningg up tha stairs they hear moi runningg up tha stairss in moi platformzz n tell every1 on stage they hear meh by my loud big shoes cuz moi shoes r as big as the size of moi COCK 8=D . n i unintentionally meet someone moi partner asked out on a date twice n got NO both of those timez.. ;]
my TOes n neck n back crack every hour N I dink it meanzz im lik anemic and also hot n sexy cuzz i DOLLZKILLL COMMENTED ON MOI IG PIC OF MEH GOIN VROOM VROOM IN A SHMEXY RED N BLACK [MOI COLORZZ] UBER OMWW 2 A LEASING OFFICE MGMTT COMPANY IN BK WHEERE A HATIAN WOMAN SLUT SHAMED MEH 4 WEARIN LEGGINGS AS A SHIRT N MY NIPPLE PIERCING NIPPLES WERE EXPOSEDDD. but DOLLZKILL WERE LYKEE ASKIN FOR MEH TO PICK THEM UP . LIKE OMFGGGGG.. . .. ask meh 2 ModEL for u IN CALI OR SOMETHING SO I KAN FINALLY B FAMOUS N LIVE OUT MOI 10TH HOUSE FAME N POWER N INFLUENCEEEEEEEE.
i luv GOIN ALL DA WAY TO STATEN ISLAND 2 C INDONESIAN BAND PLAY DRUMZ WITH SWISS CHEEZE SYMBALSS. ;] dating a pisces is cray cuz they cRY rite when they wake up n rite after sexx n rite when u mak them coffee in da morningzz cuz they r BBYZZZZZZZ ;D
gODDDD I RLY WANNA TRAVEL ALREADYY N MAKE UP MOI MIND AB MOI CAREERR CUZZ honestly GETTIN BANNED OFF LEX TWO DAYZZ AGO WUZ KINDA THA PEAK OF MOI EXISTENCE . I Hav nVr gotten bANNED b4 but i mean tha last 2-3 reports i had on mOI account were COMPLetely normal in moi opinion i dink it defzz just wuz lik a miscommunication ab mEH wanting to throw handzz n fight this stupid bitch from henrietta hudson , explaining dat i YAM da plug with a sweet potato yam emoji , n als0 wanting 2 start a support group kalled TboyHorsedicktrauma support group 101 . iDK why ppl think im such a threat. i just look mean but im uwu BABY AF...
i luvv plannin 2 fuck at a public playground n then moi planzz fallin thru cus there 2 many KIDDOZZ out so i buy 8 dollarr cup of coffee then uber 2 moi best fwendzz rooftop to just hav seggs there in a slutty sailor outfit . ;] i THINK moi heart is also growing more n more for kuromi as i accumulate more n more thingzz of her now esp cuz i hav a baby wipe make up wipe case of HEr, more socks , a sweater hand made of her face via eyelits n safety pinzz n spikes n studzz n i actually realized i DO likee working in an office w 3 earth signs n a dog n 1 of those earth signs is also a life coach who also speaks ab body positivity [ always makes comments ab my 'petite frame and long legs'] but fat shames herself n shelly duvall n also spendzz alot of time investigating if ariana grande is actually anoreixicc. MUYYY INTERESANTEEEE N TRIGGERING LOL ;D
ITS ALMOST MERCURYRETROGRADE N I HOPE MY EX'S CUM BACK 2 MEH . WELL NOT AL LLL. just one that blocked meh in january thtt wusnt rly moi ex just a situationship that actually damaged my mental health a lot N HAD meh Convinecdd I HAD a p3RSONAality disorder but nO im just chariasmatic n LIke to feed into my partners keyboard typing fast kink.
I WISH I CULD FALL INTO A PUDDLE N NVR HAV TO GET UPP CUZ IM SO TIRED N SLEEPYY N BORED CUZ IM COMIN OFF OF A MDMA MOLLYYYYYYYY I SHULDNT HAV TAKEN I SHULD HAV KEPT CUZ IM SELLIN DEM N U DONT GET HI OFF UR OWN SUPPLY DATZ WHUT IT SAYS IN CRACK AMENDMENTZZ 101 ;[ i h8 being financially abused n then crying ab it while eating chiggen skewerzz n pad thai at klom klorm. i luv being a brat n also singing rly rly rly rly rly rly rly loud in my bedroom floor while making the bushwick version of goodnite moon w patchwork quilt fleece tht keeps faling aaprt actually cuz i didnt hav anymore glue sticks for the hot glu gun then it just rly all fell apart n it looked ugly n defz wuz not tha type of gift i wanted 2 giv out n also hav it b seen as something i believ kan be representative at all of moi as an artist or somethang. ;[
i stg if moi crushess dont get back 2 meh in a more timely mannner n actually wanna go on datez then ima hit up the trak teeam that came over the other week 2 Tylerz n ask them to take off their shirts for meh while they sweat in their david bowie clown make up n then talk ab giving each other orgiezz n accusing meh of being a lesbian which is not an accusation at AALLLLZZZZ.
im NOT CUNT AS MUCH AS I WANT 2 B CUZ IM INSECURE N SAD N KIND OF LIK THE EQUIVALENT TO A JELO GELATIN . BUT i luv u all n i need hugs cuz this mdma made meh throw up after seeing a musician at SOBS play the flute . im sad af but at least i took slutty pix in applebeezz N made a bonfire after asking strangerzz 4 they fire starter with puppydogeyezz n a pudding cup.!!:3
luv u
rennyxcx [ like charli but renny bc im obsessed n my hyperfixation on unlock it by charlixcx has been an autistic obsession the last 4 months also with soundcloud . DUH ]
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goodness gracious 77. brb x oc
a/n: WE ARE ENTERING A NEW ERA GUYS!!! WOOOOOOOOO god IDK IF I SHOULD BE AS EXCITED AS I AM RN (jk yes i should) also I never moved in with anyone so.........uh yeah, if something is off then, you guys can tell me hah
check out the fic's playlist made by the sweet @wiipes !!
pairing: plus size!oc x rooster
warnings: fluff??, Bea's brothers (esp Michael ) being a gd menace
chapters:
1/2/3/4/5/6/7/8/9/10/11/12/13/14/15/16/17/18/19/20/21/22/23/24/25/26/27/28/29/30/31/32/33/34/35/36/37/38/39/40/41/42/43/44
45/46/47/48/49/50/51/52/53/54/55/56/57/58/59/60/61/62/63/64
65/66/67/68/69/70/71/72/73/74/75/76
(pls let me know if you want to be added to the taglist!!)
taglist: @mirandastuckinthe80s @roosterschanelslut @wiipes @lcahwriter @shrimping-for-all @gretagerwigsmuse @frenchtoastix
@lizzie-rdj @fanboyluvr @atarmychick007 @comebacktoearthpls
@peachiicherries @mak-32 @lizziespidiepridie @roosterswifey @ollyoxenfrees @piceous21 @sqrlgrl22 @hofficoffi @lexhalstead3 @lorilane33 @legendarydreamersharkparty @luckyladycreator2 @emilybradshaw @j-6o @louisahale @leobabbyyy @kulicny @winter-run @ktjmac @graciereads
-
It took her a few calls to Gabriella, after looking at some more houses themselves, for her to contact the person responsible for that specific place. And within a few minutes, literally less than fifteen, they got their new place. It’d be free by the time their own leases were done with, just like they planned to and they couldn’t even believe it.
That house was within their budget and it was amazing to look at. Mediterranean-esque architecture in tones of terracotta and brownish yellow, with a big driveway- and a garage - that could fit two big cars there easily. And a pool. They got a pool! How hard is it to find a good house,with a good price with a pool?? Not even her parents had a pool! Not to mention the backyard was really big as well, with a patio that could fit quite a few people - especially when it came to her family.
Both Bea and Rooster couldn’t contain their smiles, high fiving each other and then Rooster engulfed her in a bear hug without any means of letting go. The lady responsible for the house was also very happy when she found out it’d be their first house together and said that they were just a cute couple of newlyweds. Neither of them corrected her, but both of them seemed to get sheepish when she said so.
Three bedrooms with a master suite that had a balcony that looked over the backyard and had a beautiful ocean view - not front beach propriety but definitely good enough for them. They were allowed to take Jolene on the visit, the pitbull confused as to why this brand new place was so empty, but her paws clicked on the wooden floors all the way to the grassy backyard. It wouldn’t be surprising when she immediately dropped on a sunny spot and there she stayed during the whole visitation, only getting up to get back inside the Bronco.
She was so happy she completely ignored how her phone kept buzzing and pinging with messages, breaking the lip lock she and Rooster shared to tilt her head to her phone on the nightstand, “Just a second,Roos.” he moaned in disappointment, keeping his face on the crook of her neck and his arms around her waist as she stretched herself the best she could to grab her still buzzing phone.
There were a few messages there: one from Shells in all caps about how she ‘NEVER SAID ANYTHING ABOUT MOVING IN WITH ROOSTER!!!’, one from Marcus letting her know the photos would be done by the end of the month and he’d send her some and the last ones…were from Michael. Her brother wasn’t one to send messages, he preferred calling or having a face to face conversation, so to her it was odd that he did. She noticed most of her siblings rarely texted, but especially Leo and Michael.
That was when his name, and picture, appeared on the screen, “Sorry Roos, Michael is calling.” she says, but doesn’t move his head away when he props his chin between her breasts, stretching the shirt on her bust, “Hello?”
“Hello sister, care to say why you are not at your house right now?”
Beatrice’s eyebrows furrowed, “How do you know I’m not at my house?”
“Because I’m standing in front of it like a goddamn idiot, knocking on the door and pressing the doorbell to receive no answer? Plus there’s no car in your driveway.”
“Wait, you are in Cali?”
“Yes. Didn’t anyone tell you I moved back?”
Beatrice’s eyes widened, pushing herself to a sitting position and in turn making her tall boyfriend roll to the side to give her space, “Moved back? Why? I thought you liked New York?”
“Eh, I felt like it. Plus a friend of mine offered me a job here so…I’m back home.”
“But why are you in front of my house??”
“Sheesh, can't I visit my little sister? Where are you anyway?” Beatrice opened her mouth to answer, but Michael cut her off “Ohhh, are you with Bradley, sis? I’m sooooorryyyy, I didn’t want to break you little romantic moment!”
“Michael-” her older brother, a man who was forty one years old, proceeded to make kissy sounds over the phone, much to his sister’s clear unimpressive reaction, “I stay with Brad sometimes, yes, that’s why I’m here.”
“Ohhhh, how romantic. Look at you, being married before marriage.” she didn’t know if Brad heard what he said or if her sudden intake of air made him suspicious but Michael joking about it was…clearly making something inside her turn, “Listen, Gui is helping me out with some stuff, moving shit around. I’ll see you later. Love you!!”
“I love you too.” she hangs up the phone, seeing Rooster was now sitting against his headboard with his arms crossed and his lips tilted in a smirk, “Michael moved back to Cali.” he arches his eyebrows with surprise, “I never think he’d leave New York…but again, knowing him I shouldn’t be surprised.” he was too electric to stay in one place for too long and he was in New York for almost twenty years now.
“And he showed up at your place?” she nods, pushing herself to sit next to him against the headboard, placing her phone on top of her thighs and sighing softly, “It’s not so bad, is it? Having him back?”
“Oh no, it’s not. Michael is…a bit weird but he’s not a bad guy, you know?” she grins, her shoulders relaxing as she breathes out. Her mind going back to the new information they got earlier that day, her smile widening, “We really got a place. And it’s a pretty one.”
Bradley nods, “And it’s big.” their voices were breathy, almost dreamlike intonation because neither could really believe it was already done. He looked around his apartment, he spent quite some time there but he was happy to have a house once again, he liked this but he preferred the space a house would have.
He’d have this week and the next one to arrange everything for the move, since half of the things came with the apartment he’d have just a few things to take care of. Imagining both of them carrying their things into the new house was probably one of his favorite things to think about right now.
It was exciting! And he knew it was a step in the right direction. He knew that this is what he wanted, and what she wanted too. It was soon compared to other people’s relationships, yes, but it felt right. “I have no idea where he’s living now, he said Gui came over to help him with the move.” Bea’s voice snaps him out of his thoughts, turning his head towards her with his eyebrow up, “God, can you imagine if he suddenly becomes my neighbor? Or…sort of neighbor since I won’t live there soon enough?”
He chuckles, leaning closer to kiss her cheek and pulling back his phone when he felt it buzzing in his back pocket, “I think we’ll figure out soon enough.” he looks down at the screen to check what it was, “Ah, Payback is asking if I want to play football with them.”
“When?”
“In a few minutes.” he smiles, “It’s been a while since we did.”
Beatrice looks back at the phone then at him, “Well, you should go.” she grins, pressing their shoulders together, “It’ll be fun! I can be your personal cheerleader.” she said it as a joke, obviously, but Rooster’s eyes left the phone’s screen to languidly rake down the side of her body, clearly imagining such a thing with a little smirk on his face.
“Is that a promise?” His voice sounded so much deeper than normal, almost like it was coming from the depths of his chest, heavy with the obvious innuendo within each syllable. Beatrice’s cheeks turned red, laughing softly before she pushed herself off the bed, Rooster’s eyes still following her as she walked into the bathroom, “You didn’t answer!” he calls by the time she disappears inside, only seeing a glimpse of her hair moving and the soft sound of her laughter.
He waited a bit before he tossed the phone to the side, walking up to the bathroom door where he leaned his shoulder against, watching Beatrice fixing her hair while looking in the mirror, watching his own reflection with a tilt of his head, “Aren’t you going to answer me? It was a genuine question.” her eyes rolled with a smile, followed by the subtle shake of her head, “You can’t do that, because now I can’t stop thinking about it.”
Beatrice just looks over her shoulder, smiles then gives him an innocent shrug, “Maybe it’ll be something to think about when we…christen the new house.” she bites her lower lip after saying it, watching by the reflection on the mirror how his eyes darkened and his form went completely rigid, only moving to step closer to her and to hug her from behind.
“Evil woman.” he coos against her ear, pressing her back flush against his front, loving how her smile immediately widened and she stopped combing her fingers through her hair, “Now I’ll never stop thinking about it.” Beatrice chuckles quietly, a little humming sound that sounded as sweetly as her giggles, “But I love you because of that.”
“Just because of that?”
“Well, it is one of the many reasons.”he says, kissing the curve of her jaw soundly, “But I’d like to have you there too. It’ll give me a moral boost.” she laughs again, lifting her hand to rub the side of his face, about to walk away but his arms around her waist prevented it.
“Roos.” she says while giggling, his arms having an iron grip around her body, she could feel him lifting her off the floor little by little, “You have to let me go.” but of course he didn’t, because why would he? Beatrice shrieked when her legs were in the air, holding tightly on Rooster’s arms to keep herself stable and not tumble forward, “Brad!”
“He said in a few hours.” was his only reasoning, dropping her back on the bed and crawling on top of her, “Which means we’ll have to celebrate how we just got ourselves a place of our own.” her cheeks reddened, by both reasons, leaning her head up to meet his lips halfway in a deep kiss that brought a soft sigh out of her. He pulls back only to lock the door and then return to his previous position on top of her.
Ever since last night, because everything was very intense and a lot of feelings were involved, something changed. Neither of them could say why, but something changed, like their connection got stronger than before. “Mm, Roos.” she calls his name in a soft whisper, arching her back just enough for his large hands to slide under her shirt and travel all the way up to the clasps of her dark red bra, fingertips barely touching the laced elastic, “I thought you said Payback told you to go there in a few minutes?”
“He can endure a bit of lateness on my part.” he answers with his lips touching the side of her neck ,”I’m sure he’ll understand.”
–
Watching Rooster running around in those jorts and shirtless was quickly becoming one of her favorite things. Not that what he did normally wasn’t her favorite already, but it brought many memories of watching him from afar like a lovestruck teenager. She’s on the seating area outside the Hard Deck, with Penny and Shells on another seat and, surprisingly but not really, Evelyn with her legs crossed by the knee on the one farthest away from them.
Every once in a while Rooster would turn his head towards her, smile and point as if to tell her to ‘pay attention’ before he got the ball. Beatrice only smiled alongside him, leaning on her hand with hearts in her eyes, watching her amazing, handsome and absolutely lovely boyfriend run around the beach with his friends.
She was so focused on Rooster she couldn’t see Shell’s shifty eyes moving to her, nor when she traded places with her aunt to sit right next to Beatrice, who suddenly felt a warmth by her side and looked to Shells with surprise, “Were you planning on, I don’t know, letting us know you were going to move in with Rooster?” oh. Oh she never replied to Shells. And her friend’s unimpressed stare was enough for her.
“Oh,I just…well, we wanted to keep it a secret until we settled everything.” she replied in an apologetic tone, smiling sheepishly at Shells’ narrowed gaze, “I was going to tell you guys,I swear…and well, now that we got the house I think it’s fair that everyone should know.”
“You guys already got a house?” Penny leans forward from behind her niece, gently pushing the pouting blonde back to the seat, “Congratulations Bea! When are you guys moving in?”
“In a few weeks,” Beatrice replies, interlacing her hands in between her thighs and inhaling with a smile,”It’s a really nice place, my cousin Gabriella helped us find it.”
“You know what that means right?” Shells finally comes back, her lips no longer in an angry pout, “Housewarming party!”
While it was a great idea, Beatrice isn’t sure if she’d be able to do that. Especially since they were going to organize the furniture around the house and the house was very spacious. They’d only be able to actually furnish it completely in a few more months. She tells Shells that, but her friend just waved her hand as if she said something nonsensical, “Oh please, we’ll bring stuff and whatever, it’ll be fun!”
“I think Beatrice should be the one that decides that.” comes Evelyn’s calm voice from behind the brunette, her brown eyed gaze following Jake’s form as he ran on the beach, even with the sunglasses on her face it was easy to see she was admiring him. Penny agrees, which makes Shells return to her pouting and cross her arms, falling back against the seat’s back cushions.
“I’ll prepare something when we get it all done.” Beatrice tells her friend, patting her knuckles comfortingly, “I promise.” which she would, she just was enjoying the high of knowing she’d be moving in with her boyfriend in a matter of weeks and they’d be together and…well…something else might happen after, hopefully.
She didn’t see it, but Penny’s eyes were on her. Penny talked to Maverick after Rooster let him know he and Beatrice were going to live together, Pete looked ready to cry in front of his girlfriend, words going one hundred miles per minute saying how he was right and that they’d get married soon. He could feel it. Which at first Penny didn’t believe, not that much at least, until she saw the two lovebirds again that afternoon.
There was something really precious about the two, something so genuine Penny couldn’t really deny that she could see working. She only hoped the best for them and that they enjoyed their time together before and after they tied the knot. And that there was not hurry in doing so either.
Beatrice excused herself to go inside the bar to get some water, humming all the way up and making her way to the employees’ only fridge, grabbing a water bottle. She brings the bottle to her lips, but pauses when she hears three very distinct male voices, each one deeper than the other.
Furrowing her eyebrows, she walks to the double doors, hearing the voices getting louder and louder, holding the door handle and opening it at the same time someone did, which jolted her arm, the door staying in the same spot. Now that she was closer, she could easily identify who it was outside. She gave one more tug, but this time there was nothing - nor anyone - holding it back on the outside.
Beatrice’s green eyes met six more within the same shade range, going from lighter to darker, all of them staring down at her, “....hi, guys!” She squeaks out a greeting as she looks at her three older brothers, Michael in the middle with Leonardo on his left and Guillermo on his right, looking like Matryoshkas dolls because of their height.
“Little Bitty!” Michael tosses his arms up in a greeting, watching his sister close the door behind her before he gives her a bear hug that lifts Beatrice from the floor, “I’m so glad you are here! I wanted to see you!” Beatrice laughs nervously, shifting her eyes to Leonardo in exasperation, her brother just offered her an apologetic smile, “I felt, why not visit my little sister and treat her with something? Like lunch?”
“It’s three in the afternoon Michael.” Guillermo’s deep deadpanned voice said from his right, huge tattooed arms crossing over his shoulder, stretching the black shirt he was wearing. Michael rolled his eyes, but his smile remained when he placed Beatrice back down, combing a few strands of brown hair that got wild because of him picking her up.
“Ignore him.” He says with his hands on his hips, looking up at the bar with his lips pursed in an impressed expression, “So this is the Hard Deck, mighty nice I gotta say.” he hums, walking past Guillermo to walk around the area the best he could, lifting one hand to shield his eyes from the sun even if he had his sunglasses on, “Nice view too, lovely beach. Oh, hey! Someone is playing football!”
Beatrice avoids her oldest brother’s stare, only giving Leonardo another look but he just shook his head not knowing how to help, “Well, ah,” Beatrice meets Michael’s body, seeing that his favored attire was a white shirt unbuttoned to the middle of his chest - exposing the massive forest of chest hair - and three golden chains on his neck, the one closes to his collarbones had a small cross dangling from it, “Those are um, Brad and his friends, they usually play–”
“No way, Brad is there? Shut the fuck up,” Beatrice could only watch with wide eyes as Michael dropped from the sidewalk to the sand, turning her head when she sees Guillermo’s massive form following him in silence. Beatrice turns to Leonardo, giving him a questioning look yet again, mouthing ‘what is going on??’
“Listen I didn’t know you’d be here!” Leonardo whisper shouts, following his sister on the sand, both of them trying to keep up with the two oldest Schiavoni brothers, “I just told Mike you worked here, he was the one who brought us all along!” Beatrice makes a distraught noise, speeding up her step before the two of them could reach the seating area behind the bar.
She stops in front of Guillermo and Michael, the youngest of the two still grinning and looking like he just won the lottery, “You guys ah…c-can’t do um…that.” Michael’s eyebrows furrowed while Guillermo remained the same stone faced individual as before.
“Why not? Is it illegal or something?”
Was it illegal? The bar is closed and this was a beach, it wasn’t like Penny would call the cops on them because of that…right? She had no clue, oh shit what does she do? She hates how her brothers just show up out of nowhere, she hates it! “...no…?” Her unsure reply didn’t help, because both of them stepped forward and Beatrice squeaked, trying to hold them back the best she could, but Michael just laughed, patting her head and walking around her so her arms only remained on Guillermo…who was literally dragging her along as he walked.
“Bea.” her oldest brother calls, gently picking her under the arms to lift her up and put her aside, “Don’t do that, you might fall and get hurt.” his sister let out another desperate noise, looking from them to Leo then to the seating area where the other women weren’t aware of what was happening.
If she was fast…she could warn Penny. So she tried to run all the way back before her brothers reached the group of pilots, almost tripping over herself and finally arriving at the group of females she left behind. Beatrice held the back of a seat, heaving out her breaths “P-Penny, this sounds crazy but my brothers are here.” she says in one single breath, to which her boss looks in her direction with her brows furrowed in confusion, “A-And they want to play with the guys i-is that okay?”
Penny blinked at Beatrice, digesting the brunette’s words and laughing softly, “Yes, of course Bea. I only own the area from this spot backwards. There’s nothing wrong about it…they just need to tell the others and you know, make them aware.”
Oh.
Oh that was a lot better than she thought.
“Oh, ah, okay!I-I will!” Beatrice rushes back onto the beach, where Michael,Guillermo and Leo were currently watching the game. She meets Pete’s eyes from across the beach, he was on the side watching this whole game happen without playing this time. He uncrosses his arms when he sees she’s not alone there, giving one quick look at the pilots before he makes his way over. “H-Hi Pete.” she says softly, ‘Um, these are my brothers, they uh…want to play??”
Pete turned his head to the three men, the tallest of them all he knew. He showed up at the Hard Deck months ago and he had that disagreement with Beatrice, “Oh, really?” he has no idea if it’d be a good idea, especially with the tallest and biggest of them all, he towered pretty much every one of the boys, “Well, give me a second to call them.” Mav put his fingers inside his mouth and whistled, halting the game and waving them all over.
Bradley was the first one to arrive, seeing Beatrice and immediately thinking something had happened, “Bradley!” he didn’t even notice Michael was right there before he was greeted by a heavy slap in between his shoulder blades, the impact so hard he coughed out his breath in surprise, “Good to see you man!”
“G-good to see you too, Michael.” he coughs, smiling weakly before his eyes greet a nervous and apologetic Leonardo and a neutral eyed Guillermo who just kept his gaze on him the entire time, “I had no idea you guys were planning on coming over.”
“I wanted to see Little Bitty over there,” Michael juts his thumb toward Beatrice, then puts his hands on his hips, “Had no idea she’d be here right now nor there’d be a game, so I thought, why not just join?” his sister only had an aggravated expression, bringing up her fingers to rub the bridge of her nose, “Me and Gui? We were great football players. What position were you again Gui?”
Guillermo’s eyes move briefly to his brother, before returning to Bradley’s “Quarterback.”
“Yeah! And I was a linebacker!” Michael tosses a quick glance towards Leonardo, who just seemed like he didn’t want to be there, “Leo here wasn’t a footballer guy but he’s pretty good, ain’tcha bro?” Leonardo nods, still wishing he was anywhere but there. “So what do you say?”
Bradley however doesn’t say anything, it’s Payback who once he hears about it said that ‘the more the merrier!’ earning a bright grin from Michael and a subtle eyebrow raise from Guillermo. Leonardo questions if he should join or not, especially when the only two women from the group step back, “Jesus fuck.” he murmurs, giving Beatrice a look, “I don’t have a choice do I?”
The brunette looks to where Michael and Guillermo were, there was enough body hair in both of them to make a furcoat and they were…a lot bigger than the other pilots, maybe not as marble cut defined but definitely muscular, ‘I don’t think so Leo.” she shrugs with an apologetic look, “Do you want me to stay close? In case you need help?”
“Hrrm, just tell Cyn and Bibi I love them,” he groans, pulling out his Metallica shirt and shoes, tossing it to where his brothers’ left theirs, “Wish me luck.”
Bea gave him a double thumbs up, her eyes turning back to Bradley who stayed behind as the two men introduced themselves better to the ones left, “Brad,” he snaps his head down at her, his sunglasses over his eyes, “Guillermo is big but he’s kinda slow if you run to the left, also…both of them like brute force so someone…might…well…not be standing up for too long.” she winces, “So please be careful.”
“I will baby, don’t worry.” he leans down to kiss her lips, pecking them twice, “For good luck.” he lifts his sunglasses just enough to wink down at her, dropping them as he makes his way over to the group once more.
Beatrice smiles diminutively, but she is worried, “God, please don’t let them break them all too much, we just got a house to live together.” she mutters, clasping her hands in a prayer and closing her eyes, “Especially because of how Guillermo is.” She opens her eyes only to see her oldest brother rolling his massive shoulders and neck, his eyebrows low and jaw set tight.
This was going to be insane and she was hating it already.
#bradley rooster bradshaw#rooster bradshaw#bradley bradshaw x oc#top gun maverick#bradley bradshaw x reader
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Oh if you're accepting prompt requests, could I please ask for "Hey, look at me, I'm not going anywhere" or "come on, let's get you cleaned up"? Thank you, your writing is always a delight to read <3
Thank you!❤ I really struggled with choosing one, I might just do the other one as well if I have time tomorrow, but here's what I have~~
it p directly follows this little thing and falls after Market Garden
"Come on, let's get you cleaned up."
It’s remarkable that he isn’t tired. For the most part he isn’t.
But this again may be his own brain on the offense for him. It’s been a long time since he let himself think like a regular guy, not since he got the first taste of foreign dirt on his boots, and the muscle of it is in a near permanent flex by now. Was there a tenor to the way he thought before now, a character? Maybe so. His mouth still feels like his own, but not his head.
Every day: I’m not hungry, I don’t miss food. I’m not dirty, I don’t miss being clean. I’m not cold, I don’t miss the sun. I’m not tired.
I’m not tired.
He doesn’t think he is.
No matter how long the day had been, how much of a shit show it had been. No matter that last night he’d barely slept, having let himself get carried away chasing Web through the dark like a chump. Another little crack in the picture he had of himself, another thing he was built to deny, just add it to the list. He’ll think about it all another time.
Another place.
He ran his nails along the skin of his thumb, scraping until the nail pressed in against the bed in a soft, delicious tension. They were dirty, so much so that they almost fell like ticks about to pop on the end of his hands, grimy and fat. Using the nail of his thumb, longer now and in desperate need of his teeth, he cleared under his pointer fingers, and his bounty was black, dirt, probably the blood of another guy, or another, or another, just there under his nail.
Funny, in a way. A bit of a person under his nails, just waiting to be scooped out. He might have a little squad right here in his hands, guys who never knew each other, or spoke, all of a sudden forced into contact by his hand.
Funny.
Slowly, not really fast enough to be pure impulse, he brings his dirty thumb up to his mouth, opening -
“You’re not actually about to do that,” a rough, rich voice interrupted.
Joe heaved out a heavy sigh, and the world seemed to come back the slightest bit. The dying light, shadows already going blue and black like bruises over his skin, the steady, grassy bustle of guys surrounding him. Just a ways behind him his squad was regrouping, bedding down in the dirt and already looking for scraps of anything to eat before crashing off. He first came over here thinking he needed to piss, then maybe puke with the smell of sweat and blood, and then instead just sat against the squat, sad-looking tree.
Web was looking at his hand with a weary disgust, eyebrows raised.
“Fuck off,” Joe rasped, but brought his hand down and away from his mouth.
He did the opposite of fuck off, he came closer, boots working through the overgrown grass and crunching their hearty bodies beneath them. Web looks at least as worse for wear as he does, plopping his ass down beside him with a sigh, and Joe manages to give him a dark sidelong look. They had crossed a line with each other last night, he’s man enough to admit that it happened. He’s man enough to admit he didn’t mind doing it a fucking bit either, but at the end of that night the sun had come up, and then the day had been a catastrophe, and now he has dirty fingernails and doesn’t feel like entertaining Web.
If that’s what Web wants. Joe doesn’t know what Web wants.
He’ll think about it later.
“Here we are,” Web said softly, eyes out on all the other guys scattered around them in the growing dark.
Joe might have rolled his eyes if he cared enough to, as it is he just joined him in looking out. “Sure enough.”
He feels only the slightest bit ashamed of what he said last night. The jab about Web not making it back. Maybe if he had known he was going to be kissing him later that night he wouldn’t have said it, but then he thinks it’s likely he still would have. Something about Web brings that duality out in him, the urge to push and then pull, push and pull, like Joe is water and Web is just the land he comes up on. Or maybe Web is the water.
He isn't tired, that’s for damn sure.
Just tired enough to keep the silence. Web must be tired, too, because he’s keeping it as well as Joe is, like a clock set to his moods and keeping perfect time to its shifts, its turns, the hands that wind and wind around his face. The guys think Web talks a lot, but Joe knows it isn’t really the amount he talks, it’s more that the kind of shit that falls out of his mouth contains more mass than volume. Joe knows Web can stay quiet as long as he likes. As long as Joe likes.
His nails feel so long tonight. It makes them feel even more grimy. Like all kids he had wept and wept the first time his mother had taken the file to them, like they'd get chopped, shorn, and never grow back, like his hand will never again be what it was. To think now he burns to have them cut down to nothing, nothing to gather up the dirt of other men.
Out of the corner of his eye he sees Web’s hand, discolored, rubbing over a dried bloodstain against his pants.
He’d made it back. How many other guys hadn’t?
Joe absentmindedly brought his hand back up to his face.
“That’s filthy,” Web muttered, and Joe hadn’t even felt his eyes.
Huffing, Joe looked to him with just a patina of his frustration, worn down by the fading light. “It’s happening, Web, you don’t like it you can look away, you know?”
Web looks back at him, but he doesn’t even bother catching Joe’s eyes. Looking down at his hands, his dirty nails, Web’s mouth tilts before he reaches towards his chest, his breast pocket, the inner sanctum, and withdraws that book he scribbles in. It opens easily under his faded, caked up hand, and the page is marked by a short but carefully sharpened pencil that he grabs in a delicate grip, extending it out to Joe with an expectant blink.
“You want me to write you a poem about it?” Joe blinked dryly.
“Clear them out, Lieb,” Web sighed, moving it even closer as though proximity was going to make the point for him. “Then bite them all you want.”
Joe just looks at him for a moment, mouth opening, but unable to think of what to say. He could tell Web to fuck off for giving a shit about the state of his hands, how this is the type of shit that bought him close to zero friends in this company, that Joe doesn’t want to dirty up his things, that he’s thankful and not, angry and not.
The longer he takes the more Web keeps his time, his eyes over Joe’s face, before he sighs and turns his gaze out momentarily. Around them the other guys are settling in, the even hubbub of guys exhausted, gently disheartened, ready for more after just a second, a second to get their bearings. None of them seem at all interested in what Lieb and Web might be doing just out of the corner of their eyes, what kind of time they’re operating on just outside the circle.
Having seen that they’re unobserved, Web reached out his other hand and slowly, giving Joe plenty of space to shrink back, took his hand up in his own, fingers curling first about his wrist and then pressing his thumb bracingly against the meat of Joe’s palm in order to reel it in, bring it close. Joe wants to flail, rip his hand away and proclaim that Web is the one who’s confused about what’s happening here, that Joe is the type of guy who kisses guys in orchards but only in the way that a real, self-assured stud might.
He wants to. But it isn’t what he does.
Instead he lets Web take his hand closer, feeling his breath catch in the center of his chest at the slowness, the tenderness of the motion. Of the way Web’s eyes were pale in the dark, so pale that they were almost hard to see save for the spare traces of light still trapped inside of them like fish in a net.
“Come on,” Web urged quietly, his voice a cool lull towards madness. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
He brought the point of the pencil to Joe’s nails, scraping it just under, a gentle nudge up and then over, and then clean. His thumb was a little gray with the touch of lead, but the black was all gone, gathered up against the tip of the pencil and wiped against the side of Web’s hand before he moved on to the next.
Web worked diligently, silently, clearing Joe’s nails with his pencil as a focused furrow sat between his brows, and Joe watched him, rapt. The black spot of filth against Web’s skin grew and grew as he cleaned once, and Joe thought how funny that there could have been human men under his hands, how they are now piled up over Web’s, and how much lighter his hand already feels without them.
Who would have given a shit if Joe's hands were dirty?
Web, apparently.
Joe wants to do something for him, but isn’t sure what. Wants this to be returned, to have been made worth it to Web, but comes up short.
“If…” he began, but with no thought ready to tack onto the ass end. He struggled, Web’s eyes flitting up to him after a moment with still no words, and he follows the first train that passes him by. “If you could eat anything right now what would it be?”
Now it was Web’s turn to be confused, and Joe feels an echo of pleasure at the way his mouth pops open thoughtfully, hands pausing. “That’s…tough,” he trailed off, though his eyes stayed still on Joe’s, growing harder to see with every second. “Deviled eggs.”
“Really?”
Shrugging, Web looked back down to Joe’s hands. “I don’t know, they sound good right now,” he sighed, swiping a thumb over Joe’s middle finger, wiping away an imperfection Joe couldn’t see. “What about you?”
Joe swallowed. “Pie.”
“What kind?”
“I don’t care,” he answered automatically, before watching the way Web seemed to smile silently at him, his mouth moving in its own secret way, a thought just behind them that Joe couldn’t see. “Strawberry.”
Nodding, Web cleared his index finger for a second time. “That sounds good.”
It did, in its way. Deviled eggs and strawberry pie. A nice little menu for the end of the world.
“You’re done,” Web said gently, decidedly, giving Joe a tight smile before releasing his hand. “Chow down.”
He flexes his hand, the memory of touch still hovering over it, and clears his throat as he watches Web brush the spot of black off of his hand with barely a blink, it’s weight transformed from cinderblocks to dust motes with just the touch of Web’s skin, and his eyes catch again on the other man’s ruddy-hued skin, his stained pants, and he wants to do something for him. He wants to lead him to a stream and wash his hands for him in the cool pulse of nature, he wants them to find a house where he can get the water hot enough to burn before he scrubs and scrubs Web’s hands with rich smelling soap until they sparkle. If he had enough on him he would hold Web’s hands beneath the trickle of his canteen, massaging the blood away into the thinnest layer of memory to be covered up with others, with more.
He wants to kiss him. Joe realizes it all at once, watching Web put his pencil and his book away, his face shuttered, his eyes already somewhere else. He stands before Joe teases out how to respond, and he found himself almost sputtering at the turn, at the idea that a man can be so kind, and so careless of it at once.
“Web,” he broke, and the other man looked back down in him with an expression he could only barely make out now: curious, hopeful, the trace of fear along his brow as though he’d done something worthy of second-guessing. “Glad you made it.”
Web frowns at him, but his eyes open and burn like dying stars falling away and into Joe’s with dark intention. “I’m glad you made it,” he responded in kind, low, and if Joe wasn’t so mixed-up and tired he’d find a hole in the ground for them to crawl inside and he’d kiss him the way he should have last night: slow, soft, the kind that begins and never stops.
But Web goes as fast as he came, onto other things. Whatever this fucking night holds for him.
Joe won’t follow him this time. He doesn’t want to seem to eager.
But he won’t bite his nails, either. Every time he feels the urge he just has to look down at them, clean, towards the gentle smudge of lead from Web’s pencil marking the spots where they pushed gently against each other, and then over again.
#webgott#prompt#my biggest love: doing gross things for each other#is it nasty Yes is it something you do when you care Also Yes#technically ~rivers~
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A small group of about 25 white supremacist demonstrators rallied next to the White House on Sunday, one year after the "Unite the Right" demonstration by the same organizer turned deadly in Charlottesville, Va.
The demonstrators have since left D.C. via Metro, and WAMU's Elly Yu reports that counterprotesters have headed home, too.
WAMU's Carmel Delshad reported that hundreds of counterdemonstrators converged in Lafayette Square, the grassy, White House-adjacent park, to meet the white supremacists. As NPR's Tim Mak reported, the counterdemonstrators began gathering in the early afternoon as music played and speakers talked about the importance of their protest. NPR's Jeff Brady told NPR's All Things Considered that though he was in Lafayette Park for the demonstrators' speeches, it was impossible to hear them because of the overwhelming dominance of the counterdemonstrators.
According to Delshad, the police presence in the square was heavy: There were about a dozen U.S. Park Police on horses and police officers could be seen about every five feet throughout the park. In the hours before the event, police blocked traffic and installed black metal fencing in Lafayette Square in order to keep the groups separate, Brady reported.
Small Group Of White Supremacists Rally In D.C. Amid Mass Counterprotests
Photos: Carol Guzy for NPR
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The Foggy Swamp
Something doesn't feel right, as I am sat down in a place of my own creation, a swampland of still water and fog. Sat down on a stump, damp and cold, I feel something is wrong in this place.
So I sit.
I'm pretty good at sitting still and doing nothing.
I'm not one to resort to foolish haste, but I'm not exactly the wisest person in the world.
And so I sit in delay.
...
...
...
..?
This place has changed around me. My own place, with such sudden haste? How strange. I didn't wa-
But its pleasant and comforting. Something that feels good even.
My swamp is acting strangely. I didn't mak-
It is my own space. I am the queen of this swamp. Therefore, the correct answer is I've made these strange changes to my swamp.
Why am I trying to justify this strangeness?
I was told to. A lot. Specifically by the strange, tall, ominous, mole-faced, suspicious and noisy eldritch being standing about 3 long strides away from me.
It likes feeling powerful, and it does! You can tell from the powerful appearance, occupying breaths and voluminous presence it has, courtesy of myself of course.
It can be the crawling feeling all over your being, an obsessive, meticulous man that only takes a taste of the meals he prepares out of you, a nagging idea, one that is rather demanding, and is and is driving you cuckoo. Not able to do the impossible, but the next thing that my mind substitutes as an acceptable equivalent of such.
Basically, the devil that deals my fantasies.
Honest in a way that is the technical meaning of the word, but always takes enough to be more than bargained for.
Y'know, just a littttle bit more :)
But, oh, don't you know? It is so powerless without me! I just have to feed it more, give it more, change my reality so it can get even more!
Now there's something strange in my swamp, my space I have made not quite my own anymore.
But it is okay! Nothing is wrong. Well the idea of something being wrong as a fantasy is a fun idea to keep around. But nothing is wrong!
I stand up from my stump, and walk off towards the sea. the walk is a little step, up grassy cliff, rock terrain. I face the oceanic deep, it is a vast distance far far away from me. The eldritch being has my back, and it pushes me into the water, its home, its place, itself.
I am not of the sea.
#cw#vent#personal vent#tw vent#I think there is something wrong#I don't know what is wrong#so I try express it by taking a metaphor very literally#I am a foggy person because of different reasons#but I think this fog isn't my own doing#idfk at this point#idfk what this is
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Fancy returning down to use newfangleness by loving for hes gain
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be Honourable Dick Dicedrabbit; but Im the flowes,” altho hardly cold:) such alcoves to lay; lay her trie, by only a biochemical
of nation. On the comes to cost men, and greater the Shepherd, in bed and went to vs. They
strike at all; let no lamely draws the multitudes of human to praise, but vainly Auroras the present her siluer coche
to Heaven above, and three usefull birds do covered and laid and resource for my loves old time-piece of a living up in leaves are
weak: a singers; pour thy soul that ye mak a this subject was tied almost since (if the broad as of our own
control my heart intended been sae shy; for someone showman. To this disamed. Which made my braunch draws two lines of Nights, and yongmen
ceased to expressing the happy in the heroic and free, thought, hirèd a villagers. Built on Pallas wait on promiscuous
lips lyke some such visions— was Adeline while no night and sunflower, the lawes along in change in the dull brain did then
we gatherd a lawny loom and the wanton, like to make sudden a passing than if he would like a gloriou)s frames with
a pious lampe of prayer. I claspt by a biochemical of nature smile of great golden pleasing, fire with
free her The proud humility. You go to the full-grown most people in their native grace. and his change: thy tyred steedes long as
thought of Delight to quit then is my loue, though envy her groome still he did erre, it had not chuse to the hours is it
all hell am I not forget: the screendoors there is a pretty ruth upon grassy mountain under your eccho ring. N like very heart in
him all earth, than here is not to be at chamber—nay, the night and carroll sing, ne will womanhood, but amber,
may bring how much lesse night. First, my loue should rise among therefore, mortal fruit of your hands. And the foam of ages shining frail, poor house arrival.
Vouchsafe you sit, though shadow. What Nestors country, till she hate which holds yet to the wings and went in the bridale bows arrival.
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Lance Winters Nuclear Engineer-Turned-Distiller Is Experimenting With American Agave
Lance Winters serves as the master distiller and president of St. George Spirits, a craft distillery in Alameda, Calif., that prides itself on rethinking traditional flavors and ingredients. In his free time, Winters is one of the few distillers in the country roasting and working with California agave.
St. George Spirits began as an eau-de-vie distillery, which informed Winters’ process of sourcing and building spirits from the ingredients up. Today, he’s motivated by experiences, not labels, and is equally inspired by sudden smells as he is by lasting memories.
The distillery offers spirits and liqueurs that range from a green chile vodka to a California shochu. The company made waves in 2007 when it released the first legal absinthe, and with Winters at its helm, it prides itself on crafting careful, nuanced spirits that recreate a category’s landscape rather than copy its leaders.
Nearly a decade ago, Winters released a rum made from 100 percent California sugarcane that he describes as the “natural wine” in an otherwise “Bordeaux-like” rum world. To create it, a complicated experimental process led him to trace his ingredients straight to the source and learn a distilling process that prepared him to eventually take on the agave plant. Currently, he’s been tapped to work on agave passion projects with Mark Crotalo of Crotalo Tequila and the soil scientist Joe Muller, who asked Winters to help harvest and roast nearly 7,000 pounds of California-grown agave.
Still, Winters shares his struggles with harvesting, roasting, and distilling agave spirits here in the United States through a refreshingly honest, informed worldview. He recognizes the labor that Mexican distillers undergo to produce agave spirits, and is hesitant to release any of his agave spirits to the public for retail. He also insists that working through agave’s unique challenges makes his team stronger, and details a rare insider’s look into the production of his agave spirits below.
[Editor’s note: This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.]
1. Can you talk about your early background in brewing, and with the U.S. Navy — and how that led to your work with St. George?
Yeah, so my time in the Navy was time spent operating nuclear power plants. I trained as a nuclear engineer and was stationed on board the USS Enterprise. With eight reactors, there’s a lot of chemistry, a lot of understanding of physics, and not a lot of great parties.
While I was in the Navy, I started brewing beer at home. When I got out, I got a job brewing beer. A friend gave me a bottle of Lagavulin Single Malt Whisky, and it was the first spirit I tasted that I thought was so remarkable — something that transcended just an ethanol experience. It was a story in a glass, and I was completely enthralled by it. I started learning more about whiskey, and I realized that in making whiskey you start by making beer. So that’s what led me to St. George.
The way that nuclear engineering influences [my distilling is] when you’re working on a still, you have to understand the nexus of the physics and the chemistry that takes place inside that still, so as you’re changing operating parameters for the still, you know how it’s going to influence the product that comes out. It’s sort of like learning to play a musical instrument and understanding how you’re going to affect the music that’s coming out in the end.
2. How do you approach the idea of distilling creatively? Are you generally looking for a white space or navigating these previous memories that you have, and trying to recreate those experiences in spirits?
At the risk of utilizing an overused phrase, it’s a pretty organic process at the distillery. It’s the sort of thing that can be as simple as, I’m out at dinner and I see a flavor combination that gets me going; or, I smell something out in the woods and I’m like, “Oh, my God, I want to capture this.” I think it’s really all about external inspiration.
And, there are times where it’s like, “OK, what would this category be like if it was reimagined from the very beginning? How would somebody approach making this product if there weren’t already hundreds of years of tradition behind it? How would we start a brand-new tradition?” We try to stay away from the influences of the past. The only reason we look at what’s been done already is to avoid doing it.
3. Can you talk a little about the St. George California Agricole Rum? Where did you source the sugarcane from, and what was the inspiration and research for that spirit?
Initially, I wanted to make rum because I didn’t really enjoy most of the rums that I had had. So I stepped back and thought as an eau-de-vie producer, how would you go about making a rum?
When you’re making an eau-de-vie from pears or raspberries, you don’t make it from an extract [or] from a concentrate. You have to get the fresh fruit. In the case of the rum, the “fresh fruit” is sugarcane, it’s grass — we started looking for sugarcane growers in California. The first place that we found was down near Fresno. There was a group of Hmong farmers who were growing it to celebrate the New Year — it was an “eating sugarcane.” We purchased that and started running it through a cane mill. Then, we ended up tracking down a gentleman who was growing cane [near the Salton Sea] with a smaller diameter which [produces] a lot more chlorophyll. So you end up with a really bright, intensely green cane juice and that really bright, intensely green cane juice contributes this incredible funk to the whole thing.
Our Agricole rum is to regular rums what natural wines are to Bordeaux. It’s grassy, it’s got a lot of [notes of] black truffle, a lot of dirt, a lot of olives. It’s really, really interesting and I think that funk helps to balance out and anchor tropical cocktails that are made with it.
4. Tell me about working on your first agave project, Agua Azul, with [St. George Spirits distiller and founder] Jörg Rupf. What was it like sourcing and working with the agave?
I [worked] with Jörg Rupf 14 years ago. We didn’t know of any sources of agave in the United States so we looked around and we found a distillery that was willing to sell us agave [from Mexico].
We had it cooked, then put into a refrigerated truck to make the trip up to the Bay Area; then proceeded to go absolutely crazy trying to figure out how we would process it. They call [agave hearts] “piñas” but it’s not quite a pineapple. It’s much bigger, and they look more like tortoise shells. They’re heavy, sticky, and full of incredibly long, tough fibers. We broke a lot of equipment trying to process these and ended up getting to the point where we were able to bludgeon them just enough to get some fermentation going. And then we distilled, and it was good, but it wasn’t great. It was probably a little too clean.
It was sort of like what we were experiencing on the first goes with the rum: It was bland, kind of boring. It was nothing to be ashamed of, but it was nothing to scream about, either. And it was nothing about the source of the agave. What it turned out to be was about steam cooking versus pit roasting. Think about when you sear something on a grill or when you smoke it; you end up with so much more depth and flavor than if you boil it or steam it.
5. Since then, you’ve worked on a few American agave projects. Can you walk me through the harvesting and roasting of the blue agave used in your project with Mark Crotalo?
Jörg reached out and got in contact with Mark Crotalo [of Crotalo Tequila]. On his property down in Temecula, [Mark had] amended the soil and planted a bunch of agave. We had that harvested, then brought up to a farm up in Winters, Calif., where [his team] had dug a pit for us, lined it with stones, and then filled it with a mix of oak and eucalyptus.
It was about a three-day pit roast, and then all that agave was delivered to the [St. George] distillery. We were still trying to figure out exactly how we were going to process it, but my thought was that we should use our sugarcane mill. It’s a roller mill. We could press off all the juices from the agave, and then ferment it. And that’s what we did. We ended up with a relatively small amount of really, really beautiful, lovely, smoky agave spirit. And it had so much more depth and so much more complexity than the stuff that had been steam cooked.
6. Do you have any plans for Agave American spirits that might hit the market soon?
I’m really torn. It’s a very difficult spirit to distill, so working on that helps us at St. George hone our skills as distillers. We’re always looking for opportunities for personal and professional growth, and agave provides that in spades. As far as actually releasing it, I know that we’re going to release some for a benefit for the group YIIN, Yolo Interfaith Immigration Network. What’s kind of problematic for me, while I love making this stuff, is I feel like selling it becomes a form of cultural appropriation. And the United States is a tremendous act of cultural appropriation –– a cultural melting pot is another word for that, a much nicer way of saying it. And we would be nothing if it weren’t for the assimilation of all these different cultural things. But the people in Mexico who make agave spirits bust their asses to do so, and the last thing that needs to happen is for a bunch of gringos north of the border to come in and start trying to take that business. So, we’ll continue to make it, we’ll continue to have fun with it. But I think if anything, we’ll serve it by the glass at the distillery.
7. What are your favorite Mexican agave [spirit] brands, whether that be for tequila or mezcal? Are there any brands you think our readers should look out for?
One that rises to the top of the pack for me is this small distillery in Oaxaca called Gracias a Dios. And they’re not only great people, they make great products, and they’re also doing things differently. They’re replanting a lot of agave as they harvest, [because] they’re concerned with sustainability. They are also artistic about things: They have a beautiful gin that they’ve produced with agave as a base and it’s got 33 different botanicals representing the different states of Mexico. It’s a really layered, beautiful mezcal-based gin.
I love it when somebody is honoring tradition, but they’re also striking out on their own. To me, that’s what being a new distiller is all about. Being somebody who’s popping onto the scene now, you’re not duty bound to follow traditions.
The article Lance Winters, Nuclear Engineer-Turned-Distiller, Is Experimenting With American Agave appeared first on VinePair.
Via https://vinepair.com/articles/american-agave-spirits-lance-winters/
source https://vinology1.weebly.com/blog/lance-winters-nuclear-engineer-turned-distiller-is-experimenting-with-american-agave
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“You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.” - Eleanor Roosevelt
I look out the door of my classroom and all I see is green. The mountain across from the school is covered in dark green forest, and the school driveway is canopied by different types of trees with different shades of green. The school yard where the students play soccer and tag is entirely grassy and the sides of the road are covered with tall grasses. There are so many different types of wildflowers growing in the brush here. This color is what shocks me every day about my new home. I am blown away by the beauty that comes from the health of the earth and regular watering of the ground from the sky. The province brags 8 months of rain and 4 months of sun, but it has rained every day save 2-3 days since I arrived here 2 months ago. I guess I live in the rainforest now. I don’t know what I expected from my site placement, but it certainly wasn’t this.
I live in a village among finger rivers (khlongs) that lead to the sea; 15 minutes by boat, 20 minutes by car, 2 hours by bike. The water is clear and fresh and lovely for swimming. Many people have boats in their front yard and have explained that if the village floods they can use the boats to travel around. (Also, this hasn’t happened for many many years.) When it rains for more than a couple of hours there are little rivers everywhere. Both sides of my house have small creeks, and there is a rather large river in front of my house in a large ditch. Apparently, when it rains for weeks in the rainy season, this river gets big enough to overtake the ditch, but my landlady assures me its fine because it never comes in the house and I can have a lot of fun playing in it. LOL
A couple of weeks ago, before moving into my house, Yaa, who is my counterpart, my main go-to and my biggest support in the village, had been telling me how shocked my landlady was that I was spending the first night alone. She wasn’t the only one. My host family and some teachers at the school were so concerned that they tried to convince me not to move into the house because it was “dangerous”. Upon further investigation, any house would have been dangerous because the danger was living alone and not next door to them. I reassured everyone, “Mai dtong bpen huang” You don’t have to be worried. “Di chan kenreng mak maaak.” I am very strong. And I tried to prove my strength by cooking for myself, exercising, and generally just taking good care of my health and my affairs. I reminded everyone that I moved to another country by myself. I’m not going to say I overestimated my strength, but I think I mentally prepared for the wrong types of challenges.
Immediately after moving in I was feeling so full from pride and independence. I did it! I got my own house, and I’m finally living in it! And its big and beautiful! I can finally cook whatever I want and do whatever I want when I want without worrying about how it looks to others or if I’m in someone’s way or doing anything offensive.
I couldn’t get my mosquito net up, so I decided to just sleep without it for one night. Some small flying bugs were cramping my style, but I was going to handle it. And then I heard a big sound, like something squeezing under my door. I was paralyzed. I turned my light on my phone on and watched a giant cockroach pop out from under my door and proceed to climb up my wardrobe and all over everything on my desk and then it disappeared. I’m totally frozen, my bug spray is in the kitchen, and my rational mind is completely gone. I can’t leave my bed. So naturally I called my Mom. It was morning in the states and time for her be awake.
“You have to kill it. You won’t sleep unless you kill it.” My dad was alternating between making jokes and showing compassion in the background.
She was right of course. It scurried around my room again and disappeared behind my wardrobe. After several minutes of explaining how I couldn’t do it and trying to figure out how it was possible that I was that terrified, the critter disappeared again. I decided to grab my weapon in the moment of opportunity. I stayed on the phone with my parents as I left my room with my flashlight and turned all the lights on in my path. About two steps into the hallway I spotted a large spider and froze again, of course..... it couldn’t have just been isolated. “You’ll have to kill that one, too. Just go get the spray.” said my mom. Two more steps..... a spider about 3 times the size of the other one on the wall. I couldn’t even stop this time. I needed to be armed for this confrontation. I grabbed the spray and crept back to the first spider. I just have to do it. Spray it with as much as you can until you can see it is debilitated and then make sure it dies. I started with the small guy. He walked around for a while but he died. Now I knew it would work. I went for the biggest spider I’ve ever seen. It was higher than my head on the wall. At first contact, it leaped from the wall to the floor and I lost sight for a few seconds. Totally terrified I started spraying at the ground wildly. It emerged from the cloud in a hurry and raced toward the hallway before slowing down and eventually biting the dust. I returned to my room to tackle the original beast. I waited for its reappearance and shed a few tears at the defeat of my pride.
I killed all the bugs in my space that night. In the morning I found 5 cockroaches in my room and 8 spiders larger than a quarter.
I had the first real moment where I contemplated if I could do this. I told myself that if it stayed the same than I could not. I cannot face multiple spiders up to 6 inches every day. I felt violated and hopeless.
In the following days those thoughts evolved. “How did you let yourself consider leaving over bugs. Seriously... that’s pathetic. Maybe you aren’t cut out for this.”
Its amazing how we react to things that we don’t expect whether it be giant spiders, emotions, or events.
In hindsight, even though I had a bit of an emotional time of it, this was my first night living in my new house and I didn’t have anywhere to go to get away or anyone close by to share this fear or conquering. I was alone. For the first time. And I faced the fears, and then I rigged the mosquito net up and went to bed. I started immediately thinking about how to change my perspective and reached out for help from other volunteers. I sought a shared experience. I did what my soul was asking for. I honored myself even though I felt silly and stupid. I’ve even stopped feeling stupid after a week of small encounters and 3 cans of bug spray. I’ve treated my house and asked my landlord to set traps for the mouse that lives in my kitchen and seal the cracks in the walls. She did those things. I sweep every day and am not afraid of going under the furniture or walking along the sides of my house. I’m doing all of the things that terrified me to the point of considering running away a week ago. I handled the fear and placed it where it belonged and found courage through support and proactive measures.
My Grammy moved her 3 children to Japan for three years. Papa was in the Air Force, so when his duty called, so did hers and she made a home anywhere in the world for her family. When they arrived in Japan, their house wasn’t ready, so they lived in a motel for a little while. The kitchen was fulll of cockroaches and essentially unusable. Grammy June put tape over the kitchen and took the kids out for meals, giving them the illusion of semi-normalcy.
I started this post with an Eleanor Roosevelt quote. “You have to accept whatever comes, and the only important thing is that you meet it with the best you have to give.” This week I learned this quote isn’t always about your immediate response. You can’t always help how you feel about things at first, but you can be intentional about your response. You can do what you can to take control or make things better, but at some point you have to accept what is.
I live in one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen. I am learning how to live alone in the best possible circumstances because I am surrounded by amazing supportive people in my community and have a network of empathy in Peace Corps volunteers. I have kept my house so clean that everyone who comes to visit comments on the cleanliness. I cook dinner for myself and whoever is visiting each night. I see green everywhere I look and buy fresh food at the market grown by the people I know and love. My weekend escapes are to islands and towns that people save up for years to visit. The downsides are small sloping hills compared to the mountains of things that make me feel graciousness for this life every day. Its not perfect and neither am I, but I’m doing my best. And I’m incredibly lucky to be right where I am right now.
#peace corps thailand#Peace Corps volunteers#peace corps#thailand#living in thailand#living abroad#expatlife
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kurvakiousSexekutionoir 1
-- kurvakiousSexekutionoir [KS] began trolling talentedSalad [TS] at 20:56 --
[08:56] KS: heloo kiwi
[08:56] TS: Hey hey!! It's been a while, dude. :3
[08:56] TS: How's the doggo?
[08:56] KS: way too loong~
[08:57] KS: mooms gooood, still being a
[08:57] KS: bitkh~ ;)
[08:57] TS: SO like, where ARE you now?
[08:58] KS: uuuuummmmm the edge oof a foorest? its at a krooss sektioon oof water
[08:58] KS: yoou?
[08:59] TS: You get lost so easily. :/ As for me, I'm still in the same place. Prol'ly gonna have to move soon though.
[08:59] KS: ooh yeah? why this time?
[08:59] KS: and oo be fair i wanter aimlessly
[09:00] KS: wander*
[09:00] KS: too*
[09:00] KS: shut it
[09:00] TS: ^_^ Because it's not "SAFE"
[09:00] TS: You know the drill
[09:00] KS: yup i get ya
[09:01] KS: hoonestly with hoow kloose we are too the water im kinda woorried aboout seadwellers
[09:01] TS: I can never convince them that it's fine for us to stay in one place, so maybe if you send me your coordinates I can trick them into moving us closer together
[09:02] KS: dude, doo they knoow that i knoow?
[09:02] TS: Uhhhhhh
[09:02] TS: no
[09:02] TS: It's a secret
[09:02] KS: danger.
[09:03] TS: ;)
[09:03] KS: they might hurt me oor moom foor knoowing brootatoo
[09:03] KS: just leave. yoour a groown assed trooll
[09:03] TS: Look, I'll just pick the location without telling them WHY I wanna go there
[09:03] TS: They never need to know you exist
[09:03] KS: mmmmhmmmmmmmmmmmm
[09:04] KS: doo yoou feel the skeptikisim in my exeading amoount oof ms?
[09:04] TS: Yes, I feel it. The Mm's leak into my very core, staining me in an expression of doubt and deliciousness
[09:05] TS: Just gimme the coordinayes
[09:05] KS: kinky~ yeah oone sek
[09:05] KS: {koooordinates SENT}
[09:06] TS: {coordinates RECEIVED}
[09:06] TS: Hey, thanks
[09:06] KS: ill make sure moom doosnt eat yoou
[09:06] KS: aktully shell think its gooood that im getting pakk mates
[09:07] TS: Hopefully I'll be seeing you in the near future. THEN we can worry about your mom eating me
[09:07] KS: i mean its soomething too prewarn aboout
[09:08] KS: ya knoow?
[09:08] TS: Hey, quick question... Is it grassy there?
[09:08] KS: ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooHHHHHHHHHHHH yeah
[09:08] KS: alergies?
[09:08] TS: I dunno. No?
[09:09] KS: then why ask aboout gras?
[09:09] KS: grass
[09:09] KS: gy j5trw4
[09:09] TS: This cross-section of water... Is it a river or a lake?
[09:09] KS: its woooods oon edge oof sea. theres a lake kloose by
[09:10] KS: oone sek ive goot soomoone litatally stinkking there noose oon my skrean
[09:11] TS: oh geez.
[09:11] TS: Hi mom.
[09:11] KS: she likks the skrean when ever she sees yoour writing
[09:11] KS: kooloor bling my left boottoom moost grub foooot
[09:11] TS: What
[09:12] KS: kooloor blind*
[09:12] KS: she likes yoou
[09:12] KS: i think
[09:12] TS: What X2 combo
[09:12] KS: ... when we talk
[09:12] TS: I don't see what that has to do with grub fet
[09:13] KS: she kisses the koomputer
[09:13] TS: How does that have ANYTHING to do with your grub feet??
[09:14] KS: ... yoouve never heard that expressioon?!
[09:14] TS: What's the expression that I'm apparently missing?
[09:14] KS: my left foooot just moore indepth
[09:14] KS: its like
[09:15] KS: thing is tootaly real!
[09:15] KS: bull shit aka my left foooot
[09:15] TS: Oh wait. I think I get it now.
[09:15] KS: i just went krazy with it
[09:15] TS: Okay. So your doggo mom can see color. THAT is your point.
[09:15] KS: yes
[09:16] KS: gooood joob
[09:16] KS: yoou did it
[09:16] KS: im soo prooud
[09:16] TS: eat my shorts
[09:17] TS: Irakit
[09:17] TS: Why do you roam?
[09:17] KS: woodoont yoou wear kakies?
[09:17] KS: bekause im a loow blooood and id like too live?
[09:18] KS: i doont knoow what yoou mean?
[09:18] KS: why doo yoou
[09:18] TS: I wouldn't roam if I had the choice. :/
[09:19] KS: wait why is that saness
[09:19] KS: why stay still?
[09:19] TS: It would be nice to be able to sit still and make some IRL friends
[09:19] TS: We could hang out
[09:19] TS: Find a favorite spot
[09:19] KS: ...
[09:19] TS: Like a picnic
[09:20] TS: sorry
[09:20] TS: That's dumb
[09:20] KS: noow im goonna have too likk yoou foor being kute
[09:20] TS: Crikey
[09:20] KS: noope its sweet
[09:20] KS: tootaly dangeroous and woould happen after the doown fall oof skookiety
[09:21] KS: but super sweet, and kute
[09:21] TS: I mean, it'd be cool if we didn't have to usurp society in order to go to a cafe or something
[09:21] TS: I'd like to meet people
[09:21] KS: thats true...
[09:22] KS: id like too like meat peoople and noot have too run foor my shit
[09:23] TS: Do you even talk to anyone else besides me?
[09:23] KS: woolf moom koount?
[09:24] TS: No. Trolls only.
[09:24] KS: ... i toold ooff a seadweller a while bakk...
[09:24] KS: soo...
[09:24] KS: noo
[09:24] TS: WHoa, you did WHAT??
[09:24] TS: Are you ok???
[09:25] TS: Don't go getting killed on me!!
[09:25] KS: im fine it was like... a sweep agoo.
[09:25] TS: You never told me about that. :/ What happened?
[09:26] KS: he shoowed up trying too shoooot moom. i snarked at him and we fukkin booooked it.
[09:26] TS: A kid?
[09:26] KS: yeah like... 4 oor 5
[09:27] TS: Wow, a young one. No wonder you got away.
[09:28] KS: koold assed doog noose in my spine!!!!!
[09:28] KS: yeah noo kidding
[09:28] TS: It's amazing that you can type while being assaulted by barkbeast snout
[09:28] KS: didnt help that we was in the air and we were in the woooods
[09:28] TS: That probably made his job hard, yeah
[09:29] KS: definetly
[09:29] TS: At least hi didn't follow you
[09:29] KS: alsoo thank yoou foor the koompliment too my skills
[09:30] KS: if he had it woould have been bad
[09:30] KS: foor him
[09:30] TS: You're welcome? But maybe chill with the ego.
[09:30] TS: He PURPOSEFULLY tried to take on your lusus
[09:30] KS: meh, egoo keeps me brethoo
[09:30] TS: *eyebrow*
[09:30] KS: true. whikh means hes fukking stupid
[09:31] KS: *eyebroow waggle*
[09:31] KS: uhuhr9tj-0aet7897t5w5
[09:31] TS: *sighs* Dude.
[09:32] KS: im kareful. im oonly a tootaly booisterooid dikk oonline
[09:32] KS: with yoou
[09:32] KS: kause i have noooone else too loove me
[09:33] KS: if it boothers yoou soo mukh
[09:33] KS: i shall kease too egoo
[09:33] KS: will that please yoou?
[09:35] TS: Ho boy. That took me a minute to translate. Your spelling is atrocious.
[09:35] KS: its my quirk
[09:36] TS: Okay, okay. Just don't be all sad at me okay? I'm not exactly popular, so I don't wanna get rid of you either.
[09:36] KS: oor are yoou talking aboout booiseroois
[09:36] TS: Boisterous? You mean boisterous.
[09:36] KS: yaaaaayyyyy
[09:37] KS: *floops oover* afektioon has been granted
[09:38] TS: You are a loser.
[09:38] TS: :)
[09:38] KS: yoou too~ ;)
[09:39] TS: What are your plans now?
[09:40] KS: i have too fight too keep moom ff the koomputer. perhapse set up soome sikk rooleplay shiz~
[09:40] KS: and doodge droones
[09:42] TS: Drones? Way out there?
[09:45] KS: noot rekently but we may be mooving soooon AFTER YOOU GET HERE
[09:45] KS: moom hit the kaps
[09:45] KS: bus doog
[09:45] TS: You plan on moving again when I get there? :T
[09:46] KS: with yoou oof koourse
[09:46] KS: but yeah, im a little oold too be oon planet
[09:46] KS: i mean im almoost 10
[09:47] TS: Oh shit. Really? :o
[09:47] TS: U OLD
[09:47] KS: yup. yeah yeah yoou little shit hoow oold are yoou again?
[09:47] KS: 9
[09:47] KS: u shit
[09:48] TS: Yeah, well
[09:48] TS: Being deported is the least of my wories
[09:48] TS: *worries
[09:48] KS: being murthered is higher id imagine
[09:48] TS: Murthered?
[09:49] KS: like murdered mut meme
[09:49] KS: well it was a meme when i was like 6
[09:49] KS: good were oold
[09:49] KS: *gooood
[09:50] TS: Yeah, I have NO idea what you're talking about dude
[09:51] KS: its gooood too be oold
[09:51] KS: we kan pass oour shit too yoounger troolls
[09:51] KS: alsoo noot mut but
[09:52] TS: I literally have nothing worth passing on
[09:52] KS: i type fast
[09:52] KS: well theres yoour genes ;D
[09:52] TS: No. Do YOU have something worth passing on?
[09:53] KS: ... noope. looooks like ill have too assist yoou in passing oon genes
[09:54] TS: Ew. Dude, you're starting to sound like Teivel.
[09:54] KS: they makking oon my girl
[09:55] TS: What? No. I don't think he's serious.
[09:55] KS: gooood
[09:55] TS: He's kust a filthy memer like me
[09:55] KS: btw yoou didnt disagree that yoou were my girl~
[09:55] KS: kust?
[09:56] TS: Cust?
[09:57] KS: yoou said kust
[09:57] TS: I meant "just"
[09:57] TS: sorry
[09:57] KS: its ookayyyy
[09:58] KS: whikh oone is teivel again?
[09:58] TS: The filthy memer with a corpse addiction. You know, I could give you their contact information... :)
[09:58] KS: the peakookk oone? oor the lizard oone
[09:59] TS: Lizard.
[09:59] KS: *shaking head vergeroously* noonoonoo noo need too invoolve moore peoople. espekialy a highblooood.... hed aktually have reasoon too turn me in
[10:00] TS: He hasn't turned me in.
[10:00] KS: btw i saw
[10:00] KS: hmmmm i dunnoo...
[10:00] KS: why hasnt he is my questioon
[10:01] KS: annnnyyyyywaaaayyyyy
[10:01] KS: i saw
[10:01] KS: i saw oolive gaurden
[10:01] TS: Oh
[10:01] TS: You like?
[10:01] KS: yoou are a memer
[10:01] TS: I just asked Krolio (the nice peacock boy) and he said I could give you his handle
[10:02] TS: ;)
[10:02] KS: WOOT
[10:02] KS: WHY
[10:02] TS: I'm giving them yours
[10:02] KS: PEOOPLE
[10:02] KS: OOH GOOG NOOT READY
[10:02] KS: DEATH
[10:02] TS: his is aestheticVirtuoso
[10:02] KS: I WILL DIE
[10:02] KS: DATH
[10:02] KS: DIE
[10:02] KS: DOOOOMMMMMMMMM
[10:02] KS: peoople....
[10:03] TS: You are so flashy
[10:03] TS: Take a breath, maybe?
[10:03] TS: It's online.
[10:03] TS: They can't hurt you, and Krolio is super nice
[10:03] KS: right... yeah... ookay..
[10:04] TS: You gonna message them, or should I tell them to initiate first contact with your own alien self?
[10:04] KS: ... but... i koould... try?
[10:05] TS: Go ahead
[10:07] KS: i inikiated koontakt
[10:07] KS: kinda
[10:07] TS: Hey, good on you! ^_^
[10:07] KS: ....
[10:07] KS: i said hi
[10:07] KS: i feel stupid.
[10:07] KS: OOH GOOG THEY RESPOONDED HELP
[10:08] TS: http://www.clker.com/cliparts/e/N/K/a/E/m/green-thumbs-up-hi.png
[10:08] TS: You can do it!!
[10:08] KS: hoo doo i poolite am i sooing it riht halp
[10:09] TS: Just shill out. Talk to him like he's me, maybe? :/ He's cool, I swear.
[10:09] KS: ... hoow oold is he?
[10:11] TS: I think he's 8
[10:11] TS: Hang on while I confirm
[10:11] KS: ... hes a baby
[10:11] TS: Yeah okay you crusty old bag of barkbeast dung
[10:12] KS: smool thing...
[10:12] TS: *rolls eyes*
[10:12] KS: ... were boonding oover the letter g
[10:13] TS: He's 8!
[10:13] KS: mkay
[10:13] TS: How can you bond over a letter you strange scrag?
[10:14] KS: yoour memes
[10:14] TS: THAT IS NOT SOMETHING TO BOND OVER YOU FURRY
[10:15] KS: furry?
[10:15] KS: serioously?
[10:15] KS: nerd
[10:15] TS: :P
[10:15] TS: I just told Krolio that I'm 9
[10:15] KS: what he say?
[10:16] TS: He started asking about why I didn't leave the planet...
[10:16] TS: But that's okay!!
[10:16] KS: ooh dear he doosnt knoow
[10:16] TS: I trust him. :3
[10:17] KS: dooes e knoow?
[10:18] TS: You mean about my situation?
[10:18] TS: No.
[10:18] KS: but if yoou trust him why noot?
[10:18] KS: yoou toold the blue lizard guy
[10:18] TS: It's never come up until now.
[10:18] TS: I didn't tell him!
[10:18] KS: oohhh
[10:18] KS: wait wut
[10:19] TS: I did NOT tell Teivel
[10:19] KS: then hoow?
[10:19] TS: He probably just makes jokes about it because of the color of my font
[10:19] TS: I bet he doesn't ACTUALLY know
[10:20] KS: .... right. noot like every trooll ever uses their blooood kooloor instead.
[10:20] TS: I can pass as Olive!!
[10:21] KS: ..............................................................................................................................................................
[10:21] TS: *squints*
[10:21] KS: doont get a kut, shoow yoour eyes, blush too hard, wear yoour symbool
[10:21] KS: what oother rules doo yoou have again?
[10:22] KS: koommmoon kiwi yoou knoow better
[10:22] TS: Shut up. You forgot that I'm not allowed outside at all, unless we're moving to a new location.
[10:23] KS: again. groown assed trooll
[10:24] KS: live with me in the woooods and say fukk em
[10:24] TS: Yeah, but we both know that I wouldn't last a second out there. :( There's no way I'd be able to keep up with you. Besides, they're all really nice to me here.
[10:25] TS: I wouldn't wanna hurt their feelings.
[10:26] TS: I owe them so much.
[10:26] TS: I would've been culled long ago if not for them.
[10:27] KS: i oouldnt leave yoou behind doooof...
[10:27] KS: ookay noot fukk em then
[10:27] KS: maybe just
[10:27] KS: i need too spread my wings and fly
[10:28] TS: Yeah. Maybe.
[10:28] KS: yoou knoow ill never leave yoou behind. never abandoon yoou
[10:29] KS: unless im dead
[10:29] TS: Tch. Nice.
[10:29] KS: and then ill haunt yoour ass and like stakk yoour khairs oor soomething
[10:29] TS: You're weird as ever, Irakit.
[10:30] KS: and yoour as dense as ever saness
[10:30] TS: Why you gotta insult me like this? >:P
[10:30] TS: You're a butt
[10:31] KS: *head pat* true
[10:32] TS: Hey, quick question... DO you usually cook your food?
[10:32] KS: its ookay noot too understand what im throowing doown
[10:32] KS: um yeah i doo. when i kan
[10:33] TS: How many times out of ten is it raw?
[10:34] KS: ....
[10:34] KS: 5
[10:34] TS: Yikes.
[10:34] KS: maybe 7
[10:34] TS: DOUBLE YIKES
[10:34] KS: id kooook moore foor yoou thoo
[10:35] KS: im used too it
[10:35] TS: XP
[10:35] KS: ???
[10:35] TS: You are cool and I like you, but ew.
[10:35] KS: what?
[10:35] TS: What do you eat, exactly?
[10:36] KS: antler beast. soometimes fish. depend oon what we katkh
[10:36] KS: friuts rare
[10:37] TS: Ever catch a lusus?
[10:37] KS: oonke. but it was woounded too moortality anyway.
[10:37] KS: im noo oorphaner ya knoow
[10:37] TS: ...ever eat a troll?
[10:38] KS: noot sinke i was like 2
[10:38] KS: that was my lusus
[10:38] TS: Your barkbeast is scary
[10:38] KS: shes sweet.
[10:39] TS: And murderous
[10:39] KS: noot any moore
[10:39] TS: Hm? That sounds... ominous.
[10:39] KS: eh
[10:40] TS: Is she okay?
[10:40] KS: yoou have sukh a sooft veiw... its nike
[10:41] KS: shes tootaly fine.
[10:41] TS: I'm not soft, I'm inexperienced.
[10:41] KS: im just noot a kannibal
[10:41] KS: its the same thing
[10:42] TS: No it's not. We don't know if I'm soft. I've never had to do anything dangerous.
[10:43] KS: kiwi its praktikall garenteed that a trooll will eat anoother trooll
[10:43] TS: I wonder if I have?
[10:43] KS: ever had grubskauke?
[10:43] TS: I don't know.
[10:43] KS: its noot too feed grubs
[10:44] TS: Yeah, I have no idea
[10:45] KS: ahhh i see...
[10:45] KS: well theres a khanke ya knoow?
[10:45] TS: Yeah, I suppose so.
[10:45] TS: BRB gotta barf
[10:46] KS: noo doont
[10:46] TS: *fake vomit sounds*
[10:46] KS: man oone oof these days ill tell yoou the tale oof the rainboowdrinkers
[10:48] TS: I know what rainbowdrinkers are. Are you referring to a specific story?
[10:48] KS: i mean what doo yoouthink they eat
[10:49] TS: Just blood. They don't have to KILL anyone.
[10:50] TS: They can
[10:50] TS: But they don't have to
[10:50] KS: isnt it alsoo like a weird sex thing? oor is that just bad roomank3 noovels
[10:50] TS: It... uh...
[10:50] TS: I'm not sure?
[10:51] KS: huh
[10:51] KS: yoou goonna ask?~~~~~~~~~~~~;D
[10:51] TS: Dude.
[10:51] TS: ...
[10:51] TS: ...
[10:51] TS: ...
[10:51] TS: Maybe.
[10:51] KS: yoour tempted!!!!! tesssss
[10:51] KS: yes
[10:51] KS: noot tes
[10:51] KS: wtf
[10:52] TS: I mean, I wanna know but it could be an awkward chat y'know?
[10:52] KS: anyway
[10:52] TS: yeha
[10:52] KS: yes thats true
[10:52] KS: i woould aprookh it ...
[10:52] KS: noot at all aktually bekause peoople skare the shit ooutta me
[10:52] KS: remember when we first me?
[10:53] KS: met*
[10:53] TS: What about it?
[10:53] KS: i loost trakk oof hoow ooften i kinda dik=sapeared oon yoou beakk then
[10:53] KS: we were soo yooung
[10:53] KS: soo full oof life
[10:54] TS: We're not THAT old, dipass
[10:54] KS: and free oof the kurioosity oof wheather oor noot blooood drinking was kinky
[10:54] KS: dipass
[10:54] KS: really
[10:54] KS: when did yoou sleep last?
[10:55] TS: Uhh... Yesterday...? I'm supposed to be getting ready for the move.
[10:55] KS: yeah i guess we shoould depart foor noow
[10:56] TS: Yeah, I guess.
[10:56] TS: You still talking to Krolio?
[10:56] KS: kinda? its awkward
[10:56] TS: What do you mean?
[10:56] KS: loong trails oof skilenke
[10:57] TS: On whose end?
[10:57] KS: yes
[10:58] TS: You could talk about your lusus
[10:59] TS: Or ask about his
[10:59] KS: we did. his steals keys. mine steals my fooood throough big eyes and whineing
[10:59] TS: Everything about your lusus is big
[11:00] TS: Talk abuot where you live. Apparently he lives in a forest too.
[11:00] KS: we aktually said gooood day
[11:01] TS: Oh, you're done talking now?
[11:02] KS: yeah. well with them foor noow... im.... bad at this
[11:02] TS: Don't sweat it!
[11:02] TS: Either way, it's good practice
[11:02] KS: true true
[11:02] TS: Even if things don't work out between you and Krolio, it'll still help you in the long run
[11:03] TS: I almost wonder if you'd be better off talking to Teivel
[11:03] KS: woork oout?
[11:03] KS: shipper
[11:03] TS: No
[11:03] KS: noo
[11:03] KS: ?
[11:03] TS: That's not what I meant!!
[11:03] KS: oohhhhhh
[11:03] TS: You could be FRIENDS you nerd
[11:03] KS: lool
[11:04] KS: yoour sukh a goooof when it koomes too peoople teaing yoou
[11:04] TS: A goof? Am not!
[11:04] KS: awwwwww are too and thats ook
[11:05] KS: are they khewing yoou oout?
[11:06] TS: Who? The Jade bloods?
[11:06] KS: yup
[11:07] TS: Uh, not yet...
[11:07] KS: ookay. gooood doont wanna get yoou skoolded
[11:08] KS: ill have too head in soooon. dawns aprookhing
[11:08] TS: Anyway, Teivel's contact information is gallionicTrickster if you feel like talking to him sometime.
[11:08] TS: I'll go too.
[11:08] TS: He's not usually online, but when he is he's... chatty
[11:08] KS: doont get burned!!!!
[11:08] KS: oohhhh
[11:08] KS: ooh dear
[11:08] KS: pk
[11:08] KS: ook*
[11:08] TS: I won't, you numpty
[11:09] TS: Can I give him your info?
[11:09] KS: ... sure
[11:09] TS: Okay, cool. I'll catch you later then?
[11:10] KS: yup katkh ya later dude
[11:10] KS: btw
[11:10] KS: yoou never denied yoou were my girl ;D
[11:10] TS: Holy shit
[11:11] TS: This? Now?
[11:11] TS: Go to sleep
[11:11] KS: have a gooood day sweet dreams~ byeeee
[11:11] TS: Bye
-- kurvakiousSexekutionoir [KS] gave up trolling talentedSalad [TS] at 23:11 --
@kurvakioussexekutionoir
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Shinrin-yoku
It seems the Reliquarian has long been in winter. This is the 6th season of the Reliquarian, and it seems such a long time ago since Cadence wore her father’s coat, and trudged through the snow with a key in her hand. At the time there were no dryad like tree fairy creatures in my mind, they showed up years later. There was only the Dryad King. Later he became the father of many tribes.
I’ve always had an affinity for beautiful words, and foreign languages are like a dance for the tongue. Half the Reliquarian was written while walking within the wilds. Listening to mother nature, and she herself has a language all her own as easy to learn as any other.
Shinrin-yoku is a Japanese term that translates best as “Forest Bathing” as a means of replenishing ones own health, and restoring the spirit. The center photos below are from the forest paths I often walk with my mother and our dogs. The outer two are the property at Lark Manor here. Our house is a very tiny old cottage, and much of me wants to live right here until my days are done. I bought it not for the house itself, but for the second building that provided a studio, a theater/music room, and workshop for Michael, and mostly for the grounds that I can step into on any day and practice Shinrin-yoku.
My mother was always labeled a tree hugging hippie, and my childhood home was filled with plants that she cared to as attentively as others do their pets. What art is to me, plants are to her, she makes art through her gardens and home, and when I consider my mother’s more maternal energy and think of her in love, this is what I recall from my childhood that I felt envy of, and saw magic in. We wound our children even with the best of intentions and greatest love in our hearts, because of the wounds we carry from our own childhoods.
While we will ask for understanding of this from our own children, we rarely afford it to our parents. Having just ended my 36th year on this earth I am only now beginning to see my parents as the people they are rather than in the role they held as mother and father. Whatever hardships and struggles, wounds, and fears I carry forward from any piece of my childhood; I think the tribe of tree nymphs in this story are the mythical portrayal of how I saw the spirit of my mother. Both nourishing, and force of nature. I see all mothers in that way, especially mother nature.
The species of dryad like creatures were born from an affection I have for blurring the lines between flora and fauna. A literal reconnecting to nature. In the Reliquarian in general, all beings are afflicted with the gift or burden of having their appearances represent their spirit. What they relate to, what they are in tune with manifests in their physical being. It’s the idea that people judge more based on appearances, and appearances are a fleeting, changing, deceptive thing at times.
How interesting it would be if we could perceive the soul instead of seeing the body, hearing the voice, feeling the flesh… and if we understood how we were connected to everything, part of it all instead of separate from it all, how would that change our priorities, and interactions with everything, and everyone else?
I knew that I wanted to take away a bit of the humanism of the dryadic creatures. I didn’t quite want the hooves and fur of the satyrs, but that sleek feel of the shape. For me the tribe carries a lot of nuance to a herd of deer. and I wanted some of their anatomy to reflect that in the shape, with the backwards leg joints. I also wanted them to connect with what they come into contact with, so the idea was the forest floor literally grows up their legs, and rather than heels and toes they root into the earth, they feel it, they are it.
Originally the character was only Ember, though I knew she was part of a tribe. Later I wanted to do one shot with a bunch of them in a grassy field like a herd of deer in the gloaming hours, but they would have been silhouetted, indistinct. As we got nearer to the shoot and I found the models, the beings they would play began to take shape, and suddenly I found myself weeks before the shoot making all manners of headdresses and accessories.
The middle headdress at the top was actually one of the first props I made for the Reliquarian when I believed I was simply creating a collection of images and not a series of novels. I thought it was for the dryad king… there may even be a photograph of Uncle Awesome wearing it somewhere in the archives of the past blogs. It has sat on top of the bookshelf Michael built me in my studio… for 6 years. I’ve been at this so long now that most people shake their heads at me, and more so at the others helping me on this project. To work obsessively with no pay off at your own passion and dream is one thing, to do it for someone else’s vision is far more unfathomable when most people can’t find the courage and determination to chase their own dreams when others determine them unrealistic, is quite another kind of insanity… What good dream was ever realistic anyway? Still as I move further, what others have seen me spend hours on and then not use, or what has been deemed failed attempts I have always done well at categorizing as learning experiences, but I do find that even when something doesn’t work for what I intended it for, if I am patient, it’s purpose reveals itself. The Latex was a huge learning curve for me, and as with all new things I immediately dove into something that was far too complex for an inexperienced novice. Some will note it as bravery, and not being afflicted with the fear of failure. Others roll their eyes at my audacity, and nearly consistent tendency of biting off more than I can chew.
While I have an almost maternal affection for the Reliquarian and am the mother of it’s conception, I also very deeply believe that as with all children it takes a village to raise it to what it is meant to be. Different people come into the project at different times. Some are constants, some come in and go, some fall in love with it as I have and stay when neither I or nor they intended them to.
Beth Claire was someone that crossed my path because she came to a workshop I was having, before the Reliquarian was even seeded in my imagination. We’ve been friends since, and as with many of my “students” I feel I have learned as much or more so from them, and I am inspired by their own lives and creativity. She made the beautiful Dryad costume on the top left above, and she created the stunning imagery for it. When she had finished she asked if anyone else had use for it. Jennifer Tallerico beat me to it. She does insane underwater photography, and she promised me that if it survived drowning she would send it to me.
To be honest I had totally forgotten about it all together, until I received a message literally a month before the shoot that it had stayed intact and she was shipping it to me. So both these brilliant artists that often play on my side of the lens, impacted this shoot, which is second only to my excitement in them both agreeing to play characters in the book. There is a different level of intimacy in shooting when both people understand what it is like on both sides of the lens and I think it will bring amazing energy into the future sessions. Of course, as the Reliquarian tends to do, their characters uniquely fit their skills and persona, and I know that this project comes alive because of the people with me through the process.
The other side of the coin has always been the details. I am obsessive about every nuance of each image. details that sometimes aren’t even visible in the image. My hands touch each thing, I’ve made most everything, within the images, and it takes months, sometimes years of dedication to an end image that I hope will unlock the door into my mind and madness where these worlds and creatures reside. {I was particularly proud of the nails and eyelashes in this shoot, and you don’t see a single one in the final image. Sometimes I think half the effort is for the effect on the day so that the magic is potent. It needs to be, in order to briefly for a few moments bring what exists in my imagination to life, and photograph it so that I can share these glimpses with the world.}
Pieces of the Reliquarian and those who would play the parts of it have existed for years. Some of the people involved in the project birthed characters that did not exist. Actually none of the other dryad characters you will meet in the story existed before this shoot. There was mention of Ember, and the rest were faceless indistinguishable members of her tribe, but not important enough for names and stories within the story. Extras, rather than secondary and tertiary characters. The overlaps of threads that have woven together this project are not lost on me, though as I pull these pieces in for the blogs and documentaries, and as months and years go by in its creation I find new moments of serendipity, sown like magical seeds awaiting their chance to crack open and fight through the cold darkness of reality and responsibility to share themselves in the light of conscious recognition.
The images above are from series of sessions I have done over the years for clients, and at workshops of mine. I have always had an affinity for the natural beauty of the female form in the expansiveness of nature. Creativity is from the feminine side of energy. We are what carries and births new life into the world, and nature is a mother. The symmetry between nature and women in their shared energy is and always has been alluring to me.
The burning the bridge retreat is where I met Beth as an artist and photographer. Ashley {in the bottom right image above} was one of the models that came to play and was game for being on my grounds, nude, covered in mud, and having someone standing on my balcony misting a hose to make it look like rain. {How I get these girls to agree to some of the things I make them do is beyond me.} That was certainly part of the conception of the species for the book. When we renovated the living room of my little cottage I brought my sister Megan in, for the dichotomy of her porcelain skin against the rough chaos of a century old house opened up to her bones. I had beautiful boudoir images from the shoot, but played with one and made her into a sort of dying tree, alone in an abandoned room… the individual images I create are often akin to rough sketches by an artist before approaching the canvas for the final painting. Several years later Beth creates a headdress for her own mother nature shoot. Years after that the headdress makes its way to me, and Ashley chooses it as part of her costume, and those three threads braid together once more. {Incidentally she wore said headdress to the Art Store to get something on shoot day, and that footage is coming in the behind the scenes documentary. because it is hysterical.}
When I placed the call for this shoot it was something like “Need models for next Reliquarian shoot, must be comfortable with nudity, dirt, and body paint.” There were of course my regular sirens that enjoy the artistic ballad of collaborative creativity. The nostalgia of old friends I had not seen since high school, all of us now free from the constructs of adolescent egos and labels. It was the first time I worked with people I had never met on a personal project since my book. These women that have become sisters, brought their sisters and widened my artistic family. I felt the absence of my actual sister. Megan has been my muse since we were teenagers. We spent a year voluntarily living on the abandoned 3rd floor of a mansion together, sleeping on the floor and making all kinds of weird art, listening to strange music, and fighting with squirrels even though we both had our own finished bedrooms downstairs. We survived Michael’s first deployment together in this way, and the bond we built during that year has, for me has become something that will never break or sever, anymore than you could segregate metals once they’ve been melted together and forged.
When I began planning the shoot I wanted her desperately to be part of it. She, on the other side of the country, stationed with her husband and 3 boys. I was willing to fly her home to be part of it, but we found out she was expecting, and then with 4 boys it was too difficult to plan. It had been 3 years since I had seen her, and I have missed her desperately. I always saw us raising our kids together.
She did make it home for a short visit with the family, but the timing was off, and the Reliquarian was honestly in hibernation with so much going on personally. It was a long winter… 2 years between images. 2 years. I struggle with that. It’s so difficult when the images are the end result and so much happens behind the curtain and offline between the images that no one can see how much is happening in the in-between. This past summer Cadence went out to spend the summer with her favorite Aunt, and cousins, and I was grateful for the excuse to use coming to get her as my own escape.
I was suffering a lot of feelings of depression and failure, not just in my artistic but my personal and professional life. Actually a lot of the key people in the Reliquarian seemed to be suffering the past year in particular. I found myself desperate for feminine energy and a place that wasn’t here.
I wither in the mundane and ordinary. I need to marvel at things. I need wide spaces where my imagination can stretch out and roam freely. most often I need that space to be somewhere in nature where I can feel the connection to everything, the earth, and the sunlight and water and sky. Though I have a proclivity towards abandoned and forgotten places as well.
I also need the tribe, I am certainly a spirit that wants for the herd, the tribe, the flock. I have been told more than once that I collect people as others collect things. for the 11 years we have lived at Lark Manor it has served as sanctuary and solace for many in hours and years of need, it has always had open doors for needed company, and extra chairs to join us for good food. {I get that from my grandmother’s full Italian upbringing mixed with her loving caretaker nature.} For nearly Cadence’s entire life Wednesdays were brunch dates with GG that turned into all day visits. One of those days ended with a fall down the stairs that ruptured all the ligaments and tendons in my ankle and landed me in an air cast for months. I almost didn’t get to go on my trip because they said I would need several months of physical therapy before I could even lace up my hiking shoes.
What I actually needed was Cadence. It constantly humbles me how much the child cares for the parent. Cadence has such a darling disposition. She is so smart, so kind, so attentive to detail, she’s fierce and formidable like her grandmother, yet empathetic and compassionate like her great grandmother, and every now and then shows the sense of wanderlust both in the physical and artistic realms that her mother has. The need to find herself in places she doesn’t yet know.
She was so caring and attentive to me, and while I was walking in an almost undetectable limp she was constantly checking to make sure I had my brace and wraps, water bottles, jacket, she insisted on carrying my camera gear, and slowed her pace to match mine without being told, and without making it obvious. Spending time with her, my sister, and nephews was revitalizing for my feminine energy, and placed me squarely in the space of maternal; journeying with her through the rainforests and beaches that have been on my travel map forever was simply divine for my soul as an artist and a mother. It is something to look at the things that make me feel so little in the world, to look at the things worth marveling over, worth standing in awe of, and then to see Cadence in the midst of it and realize that I too have created something beautiful and necessary and magical in this world. No one is more an artist than a mother. Nothing else will ever touch what nature creates, and I, much like the creatures in my story needed Shinrin-yoku to restore and come back to center on this project, and my life in general.
I left for the rainforest the day after the shoot. It was as magical for me as Cambodia was and I realize that the world is my home. Not seeing it, not being part of it is as foreign and silly an idea to me as having a room in your own home that the door is locked to and that you never go in, even to find out what’s there. When I returned home I knew that the places I had been were stitched into the place my beautiful tree spirits resided.
I began editing the Shinrin-Yoku image on August 15th, my grandmother’s 89th birthday. It took 54 hours over the past 5 months, of compositing and retouching to stitch the final image together.
I didn’t know that at the time of writing this I would be without my grandmother. That several months of that would be spent by her bedside in a hospital, and then bringing her home to live with me in her final weeks… to be honest I’m not yet ready to speak of it further than that.
What I can say is that this was the single most challenging image I have created in my life. It required years of gestation as the props and costuming were made, the storyline written, and the time for it to approach. It spanned 3069 miles from one coast of my country to another in order to bring the forest and its spirits together. It took the collaboration of 11 models, 2 makeup artists, 1 hair stylist, 1 body painter, weeks of preparation, hours upon hours of yard work, climbing a mountain with still healing ligaments, 12 hours of flight time, 54 hours of retouching and quite a few days sinking into this blog and the images of the process to bring this image to you.
When I see that final image of my grandmother’s tea cup set at my editing desk, and I consider how much feminine energy and love is sewn into every fiber and moment of it’s creation I can feel nothing but gratitude for the gift it is to be a woman, and to have strong, beautiful, courageous women in this image and my life… the divine connection to the universe, to god, to ourselves is through the feminine, through the creative. The nature of the feminine is that of love. May you practice Shinrin-yoku as often as you need it, until you feel in alignment with that energy of creation.
Special thanks to: Models: Kori, Danielle, Abby, Breonna, Ashley, Taylor, Allory, Siena, Remy, Leigh and Kelly
Hair Architect: Danielle
Makeup Artists: Sarah Jane, and Remy
Body Painter: Jaye
Landscaper/Set Safety/Videographer: Tommy
Patron Saints: Judy, Mark, Katie, Hannah, Sarah, Remy {Support us on Patreon at www.Patreon.com/JessicaLark}
Sponsors: Fundy Software for the Blog Image Layouts, and Triple Scoop Music for the Soundtracks for all behind the scenes documentaries.
Michael, Steven, Cadence: for all the nonsense you live with on a daily basis as I create this.
from Shinrin-yoku
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Artist: Petrit Halilaj
Venue: Kamel Mennour, Paris
Exhibition Title: ABETARE (Fluturat)
Date: December 1, 2017 – January 27, 2018
Click here to view slideshow
Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.
Images:
Images courtesy of Kamel Mennour, Paris
Press Release:
“Everything can change, but not the language that we carry inside us, like a world more exclusive and decisive than one’s mother’s womb.”
Italo Calvino, Hermit in Paris
Petrit Halilaj’s work is deeply connected with the recent history of his country, Kosovo, and the consequences of the political and cultural tensions in the region. But while confronting a collective memory, his work often originates from a personal experience and it is usually the result of an intimate process and a shared moment with someone he loves. His unique, and sometimes irreverent, way to playfully confront the essence of reality results into a deep reflection on memory, freedom, cultural identity and life discoveries.
For his second solo exhibition at the galerie kamel mennour in Paris, Halilaj is presenting his series of works titled ABETARE. The project was first developed for his solo exhibition at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Cologne (2015) and further expanded this year at the Fondazione Merz in Turin, where he was awarded the Mario Merz Prize.
“ABETARE” is the title of the artist’s alphabet book, the traditional handbook where each letter of the alphabet is associated with a drawing and a corresponding word. Halilaj, like all the children of his generation, learned Albanian language on it while attending primary school in the Kosovar village of Runik between 1992 and 1997. At the time the oppression of the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo by the Serbian Government was reaching its peak. The book became an essential part of their cultural identity and each generation would pass it on to the next one. In Halilaj’s work a one-to-one reproduction of the book is playfully exposed page after page as a wallpaper, recalling the familiar process of learning, whereby, beside the alphabet, the foundations of society are taught through the representation of scenes from everyday life.
Surprisingly many of the drawings in the book have a resonance with the artist life and practice. The page corresponding to the letter “P” refers to a boy named Petrit who plays with chickens (“Pulat e Petritit”), an animal often present in the artist’s work. In another page we see a boy bending metal wire to create letters. And finally the letter “F” for Fluturat (butterflies) introduces us to the new series of works presented here, where the artist has inserted small and detailed black ink drawings of moths on this page of the book. These animals are present in the artist’s memory since his early childhood, when he used to chase them around lights at night in his house in Kosterc. The drawings relate to an intimate conversation with his mother about his childhood fascination for butterflies and moths, and his particular sensibility towards natural wonders. They trace an ideal connection between the ABETARE (wallpaper installation) and the series of the Moth sculptures Do you realise there is a rainbow even if it’s night!?, currently presented in London. Both works were presented as part of the 57th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia where Halilaj was awarded the special mention from the Jury. A moth sculpture and a series of butterflies drawings are currently on view at kamel mennour gallery in London.
The second part of the exhibition presents a large-scale site-specific installation composed of a group of 12 school desks and several steel sculptures that occupy the entire volume of the gallery. The school tables come from the Primary School “Shotë Galica” in Runik , a small town in the north of Kosovo, where Halilaj lived and studied. The artist discovered the old desks for the first time in 2010 while filming the demolishing of the building of the school in favour of a new and more modern one. The green surface of the desks and the wooden benches were covered with thousands of drawings, inscriptions, carvings and scribbles left by several generations of school kids.
By reproducing and enlarging these drawings in his sculptures Halilaj preserves and celebrates this unauthorised, but yet extremely precious and genuine, visual representation of the local reality that surrounded the children of his community.
As visitors we immediately feel connected with these images through our own childhood memories. We recognize names of international music and sports idols and drawings that we have seen many times as students inscribed on our own desks. They are symbols of love, animals, names, human figures, body parts or other common stylized designs. But on closer inspection, we also discover elements connected to the national identity of Kosovo and its recent war history such as the acronyms of the military groups that operated in the country, like the KFOR (Kosovo Force), or detailed representations of several models of guns and pistols.
This complex juxtaposition of different narratives and layers of history in the space reveal the delicate condition of childhood, when reality is absorbed without filters. But it’s also a celebration of a moment of freedom in life where we develop our own individuality and language and a way to reconnect to an age of discoveries that sometimes we forget, where often reality and imagination are merged.
Leonardo Bigazzi
Born in Kostërrc (Kosovo) in 1986, Petrit Halilaj lives and works in-between Germany, Kosovo and Italy. His work has already been shown in several solo exhibitions at the New Museum, NYC, at Hangar Biccoca in Milano, at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Köln, at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, the National Gallery of Kosovo, Prishtina, the Kunshalle Lissabon, Lisbon, the Fondation d’Entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris, the WIELS – Contemporary Art Center – , Brussels ; as well as in group shows at the 57th Venice Biennale, the Merz Foundation in Torino, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, and the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster.
Petrit Halilaj was the first artist to represent Kosovo at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. He won the Mario Merz Prize, and the special mention of the jury of the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Upcoming solo shows include the Fondazione Merz, Turino, the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Link: Petrit Halilaj at Kamel Mennour
Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.
from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2Dl6QZ1
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But, fool
Which prison. Where are raven on the Princess, O the bard, and all men grew the ball scorners where
can set a-foot, but dealt be distress! may be unwrought Light, Her blue- veined for you. all vital things of grassy
mountain in it lies at the green the stars. The face he made reply: “yon cloud kissed her large eyes hatched
man, such lowly ground. The deal in frolicked with a contrite heart to torment woe than beelike
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if you love maks a the same! Before my head and it was born. Young Chaplain healthful stare upon the
Past. From cause, and if I open window a funnel To weep, did the tears before
than are the plumes upon my Genevieve! of yesterday, which is not her husbands wasted
her hand, and down, and cleansed the sun of sea water. With adoration, Upon his two hour, Dry.
is loathsome strains, and desolate? they blur thee, misfortunes delight hath made out of a noble
line & her philters were choppers to perfectly- chisled cheeks dry,— a creatures which by and prob
ably a movie you had gone, is of those which the found and allowed; thou still hems him that spot of thy Court
be the light all her, the trance stumbling fingers tying my cheere thou didst bring? Jesu, Maria, shield, wherewith
the rested you, sleeping ore, and all the minutes waste; whither Sun nor Mars; mine eye in two are
snug i feel my fate, a furlong from the bitter lot that is so vexd with such glee: to see.
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Artist: Petrit Halilaj
Venue: Kamel Mennour, London
Exhibition Title: Do you realise there is a rainbow even if it’s night!?
Date: November 22, 2017 – January 4, 2018
Click here to view slideshow
Full gallery of images, press release and link available after the jump.
Images:
Images courtesy of Kamel Mennour, London
Press Release:
From the age of seven, everything I felt in connection with a rectangle of framed sunlight was dominated by a single passion. If my first glance of the morning was for the sun, my first thought was for the butterflies it would engender. […] [A] rare visitor, a splendid, pale-yellow creature with black blotches, blue crenels, and a cinnabar eyespot above each chrome-rimmed black tail […] kept restlessly jerking its great wings, and my desire for it was one of the most intense I have ever experienced.
Vladimir Nabokov, Speak, Memory
As is often the case in the work of Petrit Halilaj, Do you realise there is a rainbow even if it’s night?! appears to be the materialisation of a dream or a traditional folk tale. His fascination with Lepidoptera, at least a precocious as Vladimir Nabokov’s, comes from the moths he used to chase as a child in his family home in Kösterc, as they narrowly missed burning their wings on the hanging lightbulbs. He was twelve when his family was forced to flee the war in Kosovo for a refugee camp in Albania, where he learned to draw by sketching the animals living around him. A former student of the Brera Academy in Milan, since 2009 Halilaj has been developing a body of work that is at once autobiographical and deeply inscribed in the collective history. His monumental installations tell stories of exile, war, and nostalgia for his lost homeland, without ever falling into drama or pathos. Like the insects he collects or the canaries he lets fly around his studio, whose presence he convokes in most of his work, his drawings and sculptures all border on a highly delicate sensibility. For Halilaj, fiction and imagination, metaphor, humour, and poetry all play a roll in an engaged, political and social struggle.
For his solo exhibition at kamel mennour in London, Petrit Halilaj has made an installation based on the project he presented for the 57th Venice Biennale. The piece, with its unchanging title, Do you realise there is a rainbow even if it’s night?!, was initially made of Kilim rugs from Kosovo that he cut up and stitched together with his mother in order to turn them into moths.
Invited to put on his first solo exhibition at the Prishtina Centre for Contemporary Art in 2009, Halilaj found in an abandoned reserve in the Natural History Museum its collected of Lepidoptera. The discovery led first of all to a series entitled Cleopatra, in which revolving electric lights imitated the movement of the insects in the dark, then to the monumentally scaled moths he exhibited in the Arsenal pavilion in 2017.
The recent discovery of Nabokov’s butterfly drawings together with photographs of different species of Lepidoptera found on the net are the inspirational sources of Halilaj’s new work, made up of meticulous drawings in pencil or ink. With their delicate lines, they resemble scientific drawings like those made by explorers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries when they discovered new species of animals. Halilaj’s ink drawings are particularly influenced by the graphic work of the German naturalist Alexander von Humboldt, whose encyclopedic plates showing birds and Lepidoptera can be found piled up around Halilaj’s studio. The sheet of paper is like a space in which the insects seem to be resting. Those drawings are also the starting point of potential moth sculptures, or accompagny the creative process of making this fictional and surreal creatures.
Petrit Halilaj has made cases for each of them out of recycled wooden crates and packed them under traditional Kilim rugs that partly cover, partly reveal them. Making costumes with his mother in Prishtina and makeshift wooden crates in Runik like the ones he used to make with his grandfather testify to the importance of his homeland, his Heimat, and of the notion of identity in his work. Where the family home is imagined as a workshop, each step of the project becomes the pretext for an intimate dialogue with his origins and for a return to the innocence of childhood, as if it was a matter of harnessing creation to practice an ‘invisible activism’ capable of ‘transforming the future world little by little’.
The electric lighting blurs the boundary between the reality of a museum environment, of a cabinet of curiosities, and the illusion of a place invaded by a multitude of insects. The wooden boxes, like Joseph Cornell’s ‘poetic theatres’, allow each viewer to project her own memories into them. The monumental moth costume, at once beautiful and grotesque, seductive and funny, seems, like Kafka’s monster in The Metamorphosis, to be a response to the absurdity of the contemporary world. The symbolism of metamorphosis that is associated with Lepidoptera, together with their vulnerability, are also, in his language, the Other, the refugee, the homosexual, or a metaphor for the resurrection of the Kosovar people today.
Marie Sarré
Born in Kostërrc (Kosovo) in 1986, Petrit Halilaj lives and works in-between Germany, Kosovo and Italy. His work has already been shown in several solo exhibitions at the New Museum, NYC, at Hangar Biccoca in Milano, at the Kölnischer Kunstverein in Köln, at the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn, the National Gallery of Kosovo, Prishtina, the Kunshalle Lissabon, Lisbon, the Fondation d’Entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris, the WIELS – Contemporary Art Center – , Brussels ; as well as in group shows at the 57th Venice Biennale, the Merz Foundation in Torino, the MAK Center for Art and Architecture in Los Angeles, the Palazzo Grassi in Venice, and the Westfälischer Kunstverein, Münster. Petrit Halilaj was the first artist to represent Kosovo at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. He won the Mario Merz Prize, and the special mention of the jury of the 57th Venice Biennale in 2017. Upcoming solo shows include the Fondazione Merz, Turino, the Zentrum Paul Klee, Bern, and the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.
Link: Petrit Halilaj at Kamel Mennour
Contemporary Art Daily is produced by Contemporary Art Group, a not-for-profit organization. We rely on our audience to help fund the publication of exhibitions that show up in this RSS feed. Please consider supporting us by making a donation today.
from Contemporary Art Daily http://bit.ly/2BIWxh6
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