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franeridart · 7 years ago

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Happy 1000th post to one off my absolute favorite artists on Tumblr!

This is it!!! The 1k post on this blog!!! It’s me finally getting my ass into gear and answering the asks in my inbox!!! As good charm in hope of not waiting so long from now on hahaha thank you so so much, by the way!!!! :D

Anon said:LITERALLY YOUR TODOROKI IS THE BEST THING IN THIS CRUEL WORLD I LIVE THE WAY U DRAW HIM IM EMOTIONAL HHECK ALSO ALL THE REST OF UR ART IS GOOOOOOOOOOOOOD ITS SO NICE UR CHARACTERS ARE LIKE VERY LONG NOODLES THEYRE GOOD™

THANK YOU FOR EVERY KIND WORD AND ESPECIALLY ABOUT THE TODOROKI ONES HOLY SMOKES!!! I don’t draw him much sadly but he’s super fun and comfortable to draw for me, it’s nice to know he also comes out well!!!

Anon said:So like,,, I really miss your bokuroo ;^; Will you ever post with them again???

I haven’t taken a vow that forces me to never draw them again, so, possibly! At the moment posting for the haikyuu fandom is giving me more sad feelings than anything else though, so I can’t promise that’s gonna be any time soon, I’m sorry

Anon said:bruhh i listened to that chiodos song under ur halo, and that one by memphis may fire that was w that bakugo art that was called not enough and uhhhhh ur music taste is dope care to share some more songs?

SURE I’m glad you liked those! Everything by Memphis is A+ and I love it so if you haven’t you should check out more stuff by them ( No Ordinary Love is super nice, That’s Just Life is very dear to me and so is Divinity, Speechless is… my otp song for every otp ever tbh) - Bring Me The Horizon is my fav post-hardcore band and both MMF and Chiodos are that genre so if you don’t know them give them a try! (Blasphemy, Run and Doomed are between my faves out of the latest album, and since you liked Under Your Halo you’re probably gonna like Follow You too) the album right before is amazing too if you’re okay with less melodic stuff, but the further back you go with BMtH the harder to listen to they get, just a heads up - Sleeping With Sirens are on the softer side of post-hardcore lately, Fly, Left Alone, Trouble, Fire and Empire To Ashes are some great ones, between the many, and, uhhhh, at this point I might have recced Nothing More a hundred times but let’s make it a hundred and one, try Funny Little Creatures, Do You Really Want It and Go To War out of the newest album! If you’re into punk and female voices you should check out Tonight Alive too, Jenna has one of my two fav female voices in rock right now (Crack My Heart and Temple are the latest two songs out!) and since I always rec stuff but I never rec anything by my favorite band ever, you ever heard of Alter Bridge? They’re more towards hard-rock/alternative metal, but check out Blackbird, Fortress, I Know It Hurts, Cradle To The Grave and Broken Wings just to make it one for every album I really, really adore this band and everything they ever made

Anon said:I adore all of your art, especially your bnha art!!! I had so many of your drawings saved to my drafts before I read the manga and was really looking forward to catching up so I could look at them all!! They’re all fantastic

AHHH THANK YOU!!! This made me smile lots, I’m so glad you like them!!!

Anon said:What’s coming up? Fluffy, dorky or angsty? (I’m talking about your next work XD just to be sure) Have a great day my friend!

LMAO this was about this one right? I’m sort of a fool honestly cause as I drew it it… didn’t feel actually all that angsty to me? I mean, obviously it doesn’t come after anything happy, but they’re working things out! Making an effort! Loving each other enough to try and understand each other better!! I drew it as something positive but in hindsight I should have expected the reactions lmao so I honestly dunno, I feel like telling you it’s most probably gonna be something happy but as it seems I angst without even realizing, lately #rip

@not-enough-kaneki said:Pass the happy! 💛 When you get this, reply with 5 things that make you happy and send this to the last 10 people in your notifications! 😊

!!!!! my cats!!!! tea and coffee!!! Bakugou and Kirishima and Bakugou-and-Kirishima and the squad!!!! not having an headache!!!!!! the sound of ocean waves and the sun on winter days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! new music I like!!!!!! nice asks and lovely tags under my art!!!! that’s more than five things but a lot of stuff makes me happy tbh !!!

Anon said:one of my favorite parts (i love every bit of it) of the holiday pic you drew of the squad, is they each have their own personal mug. 10/10

I didn’t think you’d be able to notice Mina’s!!! I’m glad it was visible, I thought I had made it disappear into the background hahaha thank you!!!

Anon said:i just went through your entire kiribaku tag and, honestly, gay (also ur art is soooo good and pure and thank u so much for all the content u make for bnha 💖💖)

It is very gay, isn’t it? The other day I was going through my old stuff and I think I might have slowly turned them mushier oh my hahaha I’m glad you like my stuff, by the way!! Thank you so so so so much!!!!!!!!

Anon said:Thank you for sharing the beautiful Bakusquad Christmas! It’s very colorful and warm & it gives me such a comforting feeling! I love looking at all the details! Kami & Sero’s ribbons, everyone’s mugs, the decorations, all so cute! Especially Mina’s bulletin board with the photos, charms of the boys, & the little alien dude (?) Each time I look at it, I see other cute details!! Sorry to bother you, but thanks again for sharing your art with us! I hope you had a very Merry Christmas!!!!!

It’s not a bother at all!!! Thank you so so much for looking at it long enough to notice all those details!!!!

Anon said:You are so good at giving advice omg

I wouldn’t say I’m especially good at it, I just say what was useful to me lol but thank you! It’s a nice thing to be told

Anon said:Dude, your bakusquad drawings are awesome! Keep up the great work!

Thank you!!!!!!!!!!! I’m super glad you like them!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anon said:The new chapter made me think about Bakugou dealing with his squad as babies all over again. Toddlers would probably be worse.

Depends?? Actually??? Like, at least toddlers aren’t gonna steal his gauntlets and tell him he’s lame and punch him just for the hell of it and be a bunch of smartasses and assholes like. Compared to this bunch of baby-Bakugous he has to deal with in the new arc maybe the squad as toddlers would actually be refreshing lol

Anon said:Um I have a very real crush on ila? Can we please know more about her??

I’m ??? so happy you like her!!!!! I don’t wanna say too much about her cause until I draw her in comics I won’t be too sure about who she really is, but she’s!! a pianist, very tall and sorta insecure about her physical appearance, very soft spoken, incredibly gay, scared of sensory deprivation of any kind. Her full name is Ilaria! Dav calls her Aria, which means air in Italian~ they’re pretty good friends, I have a comic about that I’ve been meaning to draw…

Anon said:So, you like KiriBaku with songs, so what do you think of You Had Me At Hello by A Day to Remember? Particularly the lines, “What have I gotten into this time around, I know that I had sworn I’d never trust anyone again, but I didn’t have to. You had me at hello. I’ve never seen a smile that can light a room like yours, it’s simply radiant, I feel more with every day that goes by.”

s o f t…………. ;; also incredibly fitting considering Bakugou decided Kirishima was his new favorite hero the second time he spoke to him, like, god bless I love those two s o m u ch this one I’m listening to it right now and having feelings (is it Baku to Kiri? Kiri to Baku? why not both for double the feels)

Anon said:Hey Fran!! Have you been keeping up with haikyuu? If so what do you think about the Miya twins? (Personally I think they’re pretty okay, they’re funny when they interact with each other. My favorite of the two is Osamu haha)

I don’t mind them! My fav out of Inari is Kita tho, have to admit - that said I have… sort of been ready for this game to be over for months, now………………

Anon said:Okay but imagine….. Kirishima with freckles

I’ve drawn that, now and again!!! the latest one was this one, and another one I remember is this one :D I’ve been liking the idea of him with freckles even more since it’s become official his hair isn’t naturally red? So now and again I add them in, even though they’re usually not much noticeable haha I do so with Bakugou too from time to time, actually… and the rest of the squad… I just… love freckles a lot… haha

Anon said:Love the squad, love the squad kisses.

HECK YES the goal is to draw at least one smooch for every couple sooner or later !!!

Anon said:I hadn’t even realize that I stuck around for a whole year OwO, anyways, congratulations! Your art style has improved much more than you think, especially since you’ve gotten more into coloring ^o^ I noticed that you’ve also been doing more complicated poses too, so, it’s the little stuff that counts ♥️👍 Hope to see more spontaneous art next year, love you Fran!

THANK YOU SO MUCH I love you lots too??? honestly??? This ask means the whole world to me, I really can’t see much improvement after all but knowing you can DOES help a whole damn lot

Anon said:So I came across this fanfic where Uraraka and Todoroki were a thing. I’m personally not a fan of this rare pair, but the whole scenario was the cutest thing ever. Todoroki basically asks Uraraka to help him confess to Midoriya, but in the process falls in love with her instead.

Awwww that sounds cute! Can’t say I have any particular feelings about the ship, but I am up for Todoroki with nearly anyone so why not!

Anon said:Bro bro bro I’m sorry if this is the wrong channel to go through or something but holy shit I just spent hours going through your entire tumblr and your. Art. And. Concepts. I… can’t??? DUDE YOU’RE AMAZING AND YOUR TATTOO AU!! I?? Just thank you so much for all the awesome work you do honestly made my entire fuckin week with your blog, you are WICKED GOOD AND FUNNY AF. That’s all I got go on with your day you talented ass fiend

I’M CRYING!!! OH MY GOD THANK YOU!!!!!!! I’m gonna pick this ask and frame it right on top of my desk!! The heck!!!!!!

Anon said:Why is Bakugou such a fuckin meme

The real question is why is everyone in class 1A a meme. How do they even keep up. How much of the shit they say on a day to day basis is actually just catchphrases from other 1A kids repeated over and over again. How much of the deadpan ridiculous shit Todoroki says has become an inside-joke. How many 1A kids move and talk like Iida just for the hell of it. How often do they yell DIE at inanimate stuff when it pisses them off. How much stuff is defined as manly even though it has nothing to do with manliness. Do they say “going wheey” instead of “frying one’s brain”. Can anyone outside of 1A even understand them when they speak at this point.

Anon said:You are amazing human bean and I love you 💖 Keep being great ✨👏

Thank you??? ;O; I’ll do my best!!!

Anon said:Just annonly passing by to tell you I F'ing love your take on Ashido And the Kids XD … Way to much fluff And laugh for my heart

THANK YOU!!! I’m happy I can make you laugh!!!! :D :D :D

Anon said:I love you god bless you and your art! THANK YOU!

NAH THANK YOU FOR BEING THIS NICE!!!

Anon said:Hi! I absolutely /adore/ your BakuKiriKami art! I was wondering if you had any headcanons about them/what inspires you to draw them?

More than headcanons for them I have an incredible amount of scenarios I’d like to see them in! And when they’re compact, complete things I usually draw them, which is what inspires me really haha that, and seeing them interact in the manga! Lately I’ve been really drawn to Bakugou and Kaminari’s friendship, actually, so the romantic stuff has fallen in the background while my mind is preoccupied with thinking about them as platonic good pals ahhhhhhh as soon as I’ll work through it I’ll probably get back to drawing them as romantics, that’s just how my mind works lol

Anon said:I love the casual clothes you design for MHA characters! And I really enjoy reading your headcanons-always creative and fun! Is there anything you’d add to anyone’s hero costumes in class 1-A (something that might prove useful/practical for them, or something you’d add just for the heck of it)? Sorry if this is a stupid question or if you’ve answered a similar question before. Thanks for your time!

It’s not a stupid question, don’t worry!! But I generally like to leave myself in Horikoshi’s hands for this sort of stuff, since I both enjoy the costumes as they are AND don’t want to be disappointed in case what I hope for doesn’t actually happen - that said, I’ve mentioned before that I’d really like Aoyama to get redirectors for his laser on his palms and for Kaminari to get a close combat weapon, since with the quirk he has anything metal would actually work wonders for him! He mentioned a sword, but I rest my case that tonfas would be cool, I really want him to use tonfas. A “costume” I don’t understand is Hagakure’s, by the way - would be nice if she got an actual costume and also I don’t really get why she’d wear gloves at all?? Mirio’s costume was made using his hair, I really want her to get something similar! That’s about it tho, I haven’t really thought much about anyone else in that sense~

Anon said:Hello! A few weeks ago I asked about the bracelets you drew for Baku & Kiri. (That art is so beautiful!!) I was wondering if there’s a story behind them; such as, did one of them buy the pair, or did they pick them out together? I’m sorry if it’s a dumb question and if I’m bothering you.

THIS ASK I had lost it, thank you so much for sending it my way again! Actually, Kirishima bought it for himself and Bakugou - I mean to draw a small thing for it, be patient with me while I try to get my ass into gear for it ;O;

Anon said:It’s been a while since you’ve done any BakuKiriKami, do you still like that ship?

I do - as I said a few answers above this one, I’m just finding myself weirdly invested in a platonic relationship between Bakugou and Kaminari at the moment, and also Bakushima stole my focus and soul, but I do still like the ship a whole damn lot, definitely still my fav ot3 in the manga~

Anon said:I love your drawings so much, they always make my day seeing them. But I gotta say that kiri with his hair down is my weakness. He just looks so pure, the cuteness factor goes through the roof.

Thank you???? The Kiri thing is true for canon Kiri too, I’m glad I can bring it in my art!!! Mostly cause when I draw him with his hair down I’m never really sure what the hell I’m doing, I’ll be honest with you lmao

Anon said:hello, holy fUCKin shit how are you this damn good at drawing? like, fuck? thank you, bless you, have a nice day

THANK YOU! And all I do is draw, really lmao I wouldn’t say I’m all that good, definitely not anywhere near the artists I admire, but since all I can do is draw as long as I keep doing that I guess I’ll get there, sooner or later hahaha

#fran answers #im gonna use the holidays as my excuse for how long it took me to answer all of these #....yeah #yeah im gonna do that #oc asks #anonymous

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cyberpoetryballoon · 4 years ago

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Instagram's Jelly Cake Revival Turns Vintage Camp Into Modern Art

Jelly first came to Lexie Park in a dream. In her over-10-year career as a fashion designer, Park felt a pull toward texture and transparency, and as she’s transitioned into food over the past year, those qualities drew her to jelly. She wondered what she could suspend and preserve inside a translucent, wobbling mass.

Now, Park has become one of Instagram's most iconic jelly artists. Through Nunchi, which she has developed into a full-time food business, she makes colorful, glassy-looking cakes that her followers fawn over for their pastel hues and glints of sparkle. Often, they have alternating layers of cloudy and clear confection, or pieces of fruit, jelly flowers, and even cartoon bunny heads floating inside. "I feel like [it's] psycho but cute," said Park, of the aesthetic that has earned her collaborations with brands like Nike (a swoosh floating atop tiers of baby pink and blue jelly) and the razor company Billie.

Jelly cakes by Lexie Park/@eatnunchi | Photos courtesy Lexie Park

Not all of Park's work is so dainty. "When I first started, all my previous cakes and posts were a little bit crazier and uglier, in a sense," she said. Her cakes for commissions are primarily cute, but her more experimental jellies have an edge: a fish sliced into four pieces drifts in a jelly aquarium; Pedialyte forms caviar spheres, served in a tin; blobs surround a skin-colored baby, as though it's gestating in an alien womb. "I'm very extreme in my personality, so I don't want to just stick to one [style]—it's really based on how I feel."

In its growing Instagram niche, jelly art is all about duality. Jelly cakes can be adorable and pastel, like a child's toy—or they can be grotesque, making familiar foods look inexplicably foreign. Duality exists in the format of jelly itself: Whether it's made with animal-based gelatin or seaweed-derived agar agar, jelly looks artificial enough to seem almost inedible, and to some, there's still a knee-jerk aversion to Jell-O on premise alone. Despite jelly's niche revival on Instagram and groups like Show Me Your Aspics, which has accumulated more than 42,000 members since 2016, some people still feel that technicolor Jell-O and jiggling, vintage-inspired molds of meat are pieces of the past that they would rather forget.

Jelly cakes by Lexie Park/@eatnunchi | Photos courtesy Lexie Park

But jelly isn't just a medium; it's a state of mind. It engulfs an object and solidifies, making anything set inside visible yet distant, like insects trapped in amber. A photo is a reminder, but jelly is an encapsulation; it has the power to literally suspend items in time and place. The perfect California produce that Park gathers for her cakes, like family farm-grown peaches that taste like "nature's candy," stay pristine in jelly, twinkling in the sun as perfect as they were when Park cut them. For the food artists exploring the scene, jelly can call back the past and capture the present.

Park left fashion for food when she turned 30 as part of a "quarter-life crisis" that prompted her to take risks. "I wanted to try something completely new, but I think I was also holding a part of my youth," she said. She drew from her warm memories of the Sanrio characters and Morning Glory stationery of her childhood when thinking through her jelly cakes. Look at a Little Twin Stars design, and suddenly, the soft shapes and colors of a Nunchi cake carry a pleasing nostalgia. "I was thinking, what will make me feel like a kid again?" she explained.

Jelly cakes by Kiki Cheung/@murder.cake | Photos courtesy Kiki Cheung

Kiki Cheung, who runs the Hong Kong-based cake studio Murder Cake, feels similarly soothed by jelly. As a result of the political protests last year, Cheung felt exhausted; baking cleared her head. Now, her cherub cakes are her most recognizable work: A glossy layer of jelly surrounds a wistful three-dimensional baby angel, pale like a Victorian cameo portrait. "I always imagine my cake is a pond," Cheung said. "There is a cherub antique floating on the water. Perhaps it creates an extreme sense of peace and calm." (The idea of calm might seem dichotomous with a bakery named for murder, but this is because cake is "born to be murdered," Cheung said, unable to be eaten without being destroyed.)

Working as a fashion editor, Cheung is surrounded by eye-catching visuals, and though she loves color, she struggles to incorporate it into her clothing. Jelly cakes, however, give her countless ways to express that creativity, so her work drifts between "kawaii, gothic, vintage, and girlish" depending on her mood or on customer requests.

At times, Cheung tags her cakes with phrases like #uglyfoodisbeautiful. Though the ugliness of Cheung's smooth, pleasingly shaped jellies is debatable, it's a nod to the way a friend once described her work. For this reason, too, Cheung sees her jelly art as a freeing break from the "aesthetic fatigue" of seeing beautiful things. "There is no boundary between pretty and ugly," she said. "Perhaps occasionally we need some 'ugly' things to refresh our tired eyes."

Jelly cakes by Laura Taylor/@laurctay | Photos courtesy Laura Taylor

Still, if Park and Cheung's cakes are dreamlike, like preservations of pleasant moments, then other designs in the Instagram jelly scene might be more like nightmares. A 2014 Globe and Mail piece about the aspic comeback in high-end restaurants concluded that when done right, aspics could be a "culinary horror show" no longer. But what if you want to capture that sense of disgust?

Laura Taylor works in public relations for the fashion industry by day, but she started making jelly cakes as a hobby after discovering her grandmother's vintage Jell-O molds, finding that ideas tend to come to her as she's falling asleep. Once, she suspended hard-boiled eggs in clear jelly, with each section of the mold magnifying and refracting a chalky yolk. She's made jelly in the shape of a koi fish, with lychee fruit inside, and a red jelly cake spiked with yellow plastic fingers, each with a pointy red fingernail.

Jelly is intriguing because it's different from what people see in daily life, Taylor said, though the medium calls to mind the Jell-O she made with her family as a kid. Jelly can look artificial and gross, mirroring a movement within fashion toward the weird and grotesque, she added. "When I saw that people were updating jelly cakes and doing them for modern times and making them super weird and cool, I was, for some reason, super attracted to it," she said. "I think that kind of nostalgic part of it threw me into it a little bit as well."

Jelly cakes by Jasmin Seale/@jasnims | Photos courtesy Jasmin Seale

In Australia, graphic designer and photographer Jasmine Seale makes jelly cakes that are more art project than they are edible, drawing inspiration from "gross aspic recipes" and using ingredients she's scrounged from the garbage or found rotting in the fridge. Currently living out of a van, Seale is trying to find ways to make jelly on the road. Her work, posted on the Instagram page @jasnims, is the type that sears itself into your memory: Coarse, curly hair shakes within pale yellow jelly and falls on the ground with a plop, and ramen noodles dangle in blue goo into which Seale inexplicably inserts a grubby MacBook charger.

For Seale, jelly cakes are about the feeling and the format—but not so much the taste. Her worst so far, she said, was a pickle brine jelly with piped mashed potato that required so much gelatin to hold its shape that it had the mouthfeel of rubber. Since much of her work is made with garbage, Seale doesn't usually eat it. "I sometimes give the top a little lick to see how it tastes but it's never nice," she said. When it comes to her work, revulsion is an understandable (and somewhat intentional) response.

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Like Instagram's messy cake scene, the jelly niche is refreshingly transgressive. It's a creator's state of mind molded into a shaky and gelatinous form, blurring the lines between dinner and dessert, past and present, edible and inedible, disgusting and delicious. Jelly congeals a vibe into jiggly layers, trapping a moment in time for viewers to interpret however they please.

"I want people to have a good time looking at them, maybe have a laugh, maybe be a little confused—something that makes you want to zoom right in," Seale said. No matter how you feel about her work, she finds a sense of excitement in grossness, whether that's by photographing moldy food, or by immortalizing waste—like a crusty, half-eaten sausage roll her housemate left in the trash—in jelly.

"You know how people are pretty gross, with all that pus and body fluid, but also beautiful and sexy?" she asked. "That's what I want my jellies to feel like."

Follow Bettina Makalintal on Twitter.

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

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carolrhackett85282 · 4 years ago

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Instagram's Jelly Cake Revival Turns Vintage Camp Into Modern Art

Jelly cakes by Lexie Park/@eatnunchi | Photos courtesy Lexie Park

Jelly cakes by Kiki Cheung/@murder.cake | Photos courtesy Kiki Cheung

Jelly cakes by Laura Taylor/@laurctay | Photos courtesy Laura Taylor

Jelly cakes by Jasmin Seale/@jasnims | Photos courtesy Jasmin Seale

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @jasnims

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"You know how people are pretty gross, with all that pus and body fluid, but also beautiful and sexy?" she asked. "That's what I want my jellies to feel like."

Follow Bettina Makalintal on Twitter.

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

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carolinechanson97838 · 4 years ago

Text

Instagram's Jelly Cake Revival Turns Vintage Camp Into Modern Art

Jelly cakes by Lexie Park/@eatnunchi | Photos courtesy Lexie Park

Jelly cakes by Kiki Cheung/@murder.cake | Photos courtesy Kiki Cheung

Jelly cakes by Laura Taylor/@laurctay | Photos courtesy Laura Taylor

Jelly cakes by Jasmin Seale/@jasnims | Photos courtesy Jasmin Seale

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by @jasnims

instagram

"You know how people are pretty gross, with all that pus and body fluid, but also beautiful and sexy?" she asked. "That's what I want my jellies to feel like."

Follow Bettina Makalintal on Twitter.

via VICE US - Munchies VICE US - Munchies via Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network Mom's Kitchen Recipe Network

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artificialqueens · 8 years ago

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Coming Home Chapter 6 (Shalaska) - Jem

AN: sorry for the horrid wait because I’m terrible and thank you to the anon who told me you really wanted the next chapter. That honestly motivated me to post and any feedback always boosts the drive to write. xoxo Jem

Summary: Violet tries something new.

Tw: very brief past child abuse mention

Violet placed the dress over her body, admiring herself in the mirror. She’d just been wandering around the apartment alone and had stumbled across Sharon and Alaska’s closet. She was shocked to see an entire wall filled with glamorous gowns and more shoes than she really thought any two people could wear. Both women dressed well, but it was surprising to see these pieces that looked like they came entirely from a fantasy world. Violet had decided to just look around for a minute, because she was curious as to what they had in here and why, and she’d found a pretty, floral patterned dress that looked runway ready. She indulged herself, something she never did usually, and allowed herself to imagine wearing the beautiful garment, looking like the fashion editorials she loved so much.

Suddenly the closet door creaked open. “What are you doing in here?” It was Alaska.

Violet dropped the dress to the floor. “Nothing, I-I’m sorry I’ll go. I’m so sorry.”

She was panicking. She never let herself even think about any of this stuff usually and it was incredibly scary to have someone, even if it was just Alaska, know. On top of that, she’d been snooping in her foster parents’ private things, and oh god, she hoped she wasn’t in trouble.

“Hey, it’s ok. I was just looking for you.” Alaska placed a comforting hand on the teen’s shoulder. “You can use any of this stuff, I’m sure Sharon wouldn’t mind.”

“This is all hers?” Violet asked, in awe, trying to brush off her shame. It didn’t seem like Alaska was mad. “Even this?” She pointed to a large silver crown on the highest shelf.

“Most of it is hers.” Alaska said fondly. “And that crown most definitely is.”

“Wow, I had no idea. Was she a model or something?”

“She was for a little while, not really anymore. She used to do pageants, actually we both did, and that’s the crown she won for the Pennsylvania title of Miss United States in 2007.”

“Oh my god, Sharon was Miss Pennsylvania US?!” Violet exclaimed.

“Yeah, she’s a special one.” Alaska meant it, but there was a twinge of hurt in her voice.

“Well, I wouldn’t want to wreck any of this stuff, it must have cost a fortune.”

Alaska saw Violet’s face completely close up. Why was she afraid of letting herself wear nice things? It had been something that was strange to Alaska. Violet loved fashion and beauty but didn’t seem to extend those to her personal life.

“When you’re famous, even on a small scale, people love to throw free stuff at you. Believe me, Sharon probably hates most of what’s in here.” Sharon had always been alternative, even in the pageant world. And since she’d moved away from competitions, most of the designer gowns and costumes went unused. “Why don’t you try on that dress you were holding earlier?” Alaska suggested.

Violet looked reluctant at first.

“Is something wrong?” Alaska asked.

“No, I just. It’s stupid.” Violet brushed it off.

“I’m sure it’s not, it’s ok.”

“I just, I’ve never presented in a feminine way, you know? And even though I feel feminine, I’m afraid I won’t like how I look, or others won’t like it.” Violet rambled quietly. “And I don’t care what they think, not really, but before I got here I would never ever have been allowed to wear stuff like this.”

Alaska could read between the lines enough to know not only would Violet have not been allowed to present in a feminine way in her last homes, but she was probably punished and harassed for even thinking of it. That was all the more reason for Alaska to help her now.

“Listen Violet, me and Sharon not only accept you, but we support you. If you want to try any of this stuff here, you are more than welcome. And if you want to wear any of it out, same goes. We’d never judge you for presenting in any way you like. We just want you to be comfortable and happy.” She picked the dress from earlier off the floor and handed it to Violet, gently. “So, how about you go try this on?”

Violet’s face lit up, and she ran to the bathroom to put it on. When she emerged, she got Alaska to help zip her up. The dress fit her a bit big in the chest and the hips, but not awkwardly so. She was certainly tall enough.

“You look beautiful.” Alaska told her.

Violet turned to the mirror, admiring the feminine silhouette formed by the dress. She finally felt like her body looked how she always wanted. It was just her shaggy hair and face that didn’t match now. She had extremely hooded eyes, and it made her eyebrows look harsh and masculine.

“Do you want me to do your makeup?” Alaska asked her, noticing how the teen was scrutinizing her own face in the mirror.

“Really?” Violet looked like all her dreams were coming true. She’d never imagined she’d be able to do any of this until she was much older and out of the foster system.

“I’ll get my stuff, Sharon has too much black and white.” Alaska went to grab her makeup kit from the bathroom and brought it back to the bedroom. She got Violet to sit down at the vanity, and the girl was excited and terrified to see her own transformation. She tried not to get her hopes up, just in case she didn’t end up liking it.

Alaska looked at her straight on for a moment, planning what kind of a look would suit the girl. She got an idea, and smiled.

“I’m gonna do something weird, and you need to not question me.” Alaska told Violet, searching through her drawers for an Elmer’s glue stick. She began to coat the teen’s eyebrows with the thick purple substance, and Violet just looked at her questioningly.

“A bunch of mine and Sharon’s friends do drag.” Alaska told her. “You know what that is?” Violet nodded excitedly. “Well this is a trick they use to cover up their eyebrows so they can draw them on wherever they like. It really helps with hooded eyes.”

After brows Alaska got going with foundation, bringing in highlights with concealer and contouring with a warm brown colour. The two began to chat as Alaska worked.

“You said you did pageants too, is that where you learned all this?” Violet asked.

“Yeah, I did them when I was a kid and it continued into my young adult years.” Alaska replied.

“Is that where you and Sharon met?”

“Oh no.” Alaska said. “Pageants were always more my thing than Sharon’s. We grew up in the same town, and went to the same school. We were friends as teenagers and she used to tease me relentlessly about the pageant thing. She thought it was absurd, and she was right. I always took it way too seriously.”

“Then how’d she end up winning?” As soon as she asked, Violet regretted it, realizing that it was probably a sore point for Alaska. “Sorry, you don’t have to answer.”

“It’s ok.” Alaska assured her. “That year I convinced her to audition with me, partly because I wanted her to see how hard I had to work, and partly because I was head over heels in love with her. I didn’t think she’d even make it in, but she worked her ass off. It was a really big deal, because Sharon doesn’t conform, she is freaky and punk rock but she brought in some glamour too and the judges ate it up. Honestly, her win changed the pageant world forever, and for the better.”

“You had to compete against each other? That must have been hard.”

“Actually, I didn’t even get in that year. It wasn’t Sharon’s fault but I slipped up in the talent portion when I saw her making goofy faces at me from backstage. It was hard, at first, but I just wanted to support her the best I could. Anyways, I found my calling soon after.”

She was talking about art. Violet knew Alaska was smart and creative, and her practice involved multimedia. She was pretty sure she even made strange fashion pieces. It was really cool work, and she could see Alaska enjoyed it.

“Do you miss it?” Violet asked.

“Sometimes. But I’ve outgrown the pettiness and the competition. I’m glad me and Sharon hadn’t started dating yet, because it surely would have been a mess. I just miss performing for an audience, really.”

Alaska finally got to eyes, which were her favourite part. She pulled in some brown and blue tones that suited Violet’s complexion and drew a thick cat eye with eyeliner. The final touch was a classic red lip, which fit nicely on Violet’s bow-shaped mouth.

Violet finally allowed herself to look in the mirror properly, and she was absolutely astounded at her own transformation. She could see her own features beneath the makeup, but it’s like they had finally been enhanced in the way she always hoped they would be. The look wasn’t unnatural, like she’d been afraid it would be. She’d seen a couple drag queens on the internet in her lifetime, and lots of their makeup was intensely exaggerated and beautiful, but what Alaska had done was a bit more simple and classic.

“Come here.” Alaska called from the closet, where she had disappeared again for a few seconds without Violet noticing. The teen followed her in.

“You can pick any colour you’d like.” They were standing in front of a shelf of wigs of every colour and style. Violet couldn’t believe her eyes. She tried a few, before picking a classic, voluminous black wig.

When she looked at herself in the full-length mirror she felt so overwhelmed with happiness that she thought she might cry.

“Do you like it?” Alaska asked her, unsure if the teen was happy or upset.

“I love it!” The girl squealed, turning around to hug Alaska. This was the first time she’d hugged her first, and Alaska was overwhelmed with gratefulness.

“I can really use this stuff anytime?”

Alaska nodded. “We can get you some of your own things too.” Perhaps a new shopping trip was due, now that Violet was obviously a bit more comfortable.

“Will you teach me how to do my makeup like this?”

“Of course.”

“Thank you thank you thank you Alaska.”

Alaska had never seen Violet look so happy, and in the moment she couldn’t stop herself from saying, “You can call me mom.”

Violet went quiet.

“I mean, only if you want. You know what? Never mind it’s ok.” Alaska tried to save herself. It was fine, she understood that it was a bit fast.

“Thanks, mom.” Violet said fondly in response.

——

“We have to adopt her.” Alaska told Sharon when she got home that night.

“Woah there, kitten. We’ve only had her here a couple of months.”

“It doesn’t take more than a couple of months to know you love someone and want them in your life forever.”

“It took you years to fall in love with me.” Sharon reminded her, her voice a tad bitter.

“That’s not fair.” Alaska said. She had always loved Sharon, they’d both just been too messed up in the first years of friendship to work. It had taken leaving behind abusive home lives, and drugs, and alcohol before Alaska could even consider a real relationship. And even after that, there had been the pageants and Sharon’s win holding them back. It had taken more than love to get them where they were today, but it had been worth it. She knew Sharon knew that already.

“I’m sorry.” Sharon said. “You know I didn’t meant that. You were just so uncertain when we first started this, I never expected you to be the one to suggest adoption first.”

“Are you saying you don’t want to?”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying.” Sharon gathered her thoughts. “I love her already, and if you’re ready, I’m ready.”

“I just-” Alaska paused. “We put her in some of your old pageant stuff today, and Sharon, she looked so happy and that was all us, we made her feel happy and loved. She belongs here, and the thought of her going to another home, where the people wouldn’t understand her and see how amazing and smart she is… I can’t bear it.”

The fears that had been holding Alaska back since the start seemed so insignificant now. She knew her and Sharon could love Violet enough to make it through the tough stuff, and god would there certainly be tough stuff. What else could any parent do?

“Ok.” Sharon agreed.

“Ok.” Alaska smiled and captured her lips in a kiss.

——-

Violet was scared shitless.

She didn’t really know why, if she was being honest. Nothing was really different, but the vulnerability had overwhelmed her the second Alaska had dropped her off and she’d stepped out of the car.

“Oh my god, Violet, you look beautiful!” Fame was the first to exclaim out of her friends, her blue eyes wide in awe.

“Really?” She asked, adjusting her hair a bit. She hadn’t quite done the full glam like she had with Alaska, but her face was done, she was wearing a dress, and she’d curled her hair. It was the most feminine she’d ever looked at school.

“Yeah, bitch, you clean up well.” Trixie agreed and Katya nodded excitedly next to her. Violet felt immediately more comfortable when she realized that the amount of makeup on her face still probably seemed insignificant compared to her Barbie doll friend.

Fame linked her arm with Violet’s and she immediately relaxed knowing she had a posse of friends supporting her. They all made their way to class without a fuss, and if the other students whispered, Katya and Trixie would shoot them a look that assured they would stop.

The day went quite smoothly, and Violet felt better than she ever had about her appearance. The way she looked was right, there was no other way to explain it. Her clothes weren’t Jason Dardo, the quiet confused (abused) boy, who’d never really been her. She was Violet, with foster parents who cared about her, friends who supported her, and a bright future.

As she left the school at the end of the day, Matt even ran up to talk to her. Since their detention together he’d at least been civil and didn’t directly antagonize her. She knew he was trying to wrap his head around everything but she didn’t always have time to be responsible for his learning.

“Violet!”

“Yeah.” She was a little self conscious around him still, but held her head up high to exude confidence.

“I…” he trailed off, eyes meeting hers.

“You’re not here to laugh at me again, are you?”

“No… fuck no. Um…” he ran a hand through his shaggy hair. “You look hot.”

“Thanks, Matt, I really needed your white male approval to know I’m attractive.” Violet rolled her eyes, but she wasn’t as unimpressed as her tone came across.

“No, it’s not like that. You just confuse me.” Oh and there were the fuckboy tendencies again.

“Wow, bitch, you really know how to make a girl feel good.” She joked.

“Sorry. I’m shitty at this today.” Matt’s face crumpled, and he really did look sorry. Like usual, he seemed to actually be trying to be nice but the words were coming out a little wrong.

Violet was interrupted as Alaska’s car pulled up to the school, and she could see Sharon sitting in the passenger seat.

“This is my ride.” She told Matt, and the boy looked like he might panic.

“Just, one sec, please?” He glanced at the car and smiled sheepishly as Sharon and Alaska waved at Violet.

Violet waited.

“I wanted you to know you look really nice. No matter what you wear you look great, but I can tell you’re happy, and I’m happy for you.”

“Thanks Matthew.” She said, masking the edge of fondness seeping into her voice. She went to the car to meet her foster parents, who greeted Matt through an open window.

They drove home and Violet brushed her fingers through her hair. She smiled.

#coming home #jem #alaska thunderfuck #sharon needles #violet chachki #pearl liaison #miss fame #max malanaphy #jinkx monsoon #shalaska #hurt/comfort #fluff #parent #child #lesbian au #tw past child abuse #tw past addiction #rpdr fanfiction #submission

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The Iowa Town Where Marianne Williamson Is Already President

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/the-iowa-town-where-marianne-williamson-is-already-president/

The Iowa Town Where Marianne Williamson Is Already President

Photos by KC McGinnis for Politico Magazine

Adam Wren is a contributing editor atPolitico MagazineandIndianapolis Monthly.

FAIRFIELD, Iowa—Inside the Raj, an idyllic French country-style spa and resort nestled among cornfields in southeastern Iowa, I asked for the gemstone light therapy, which promised to deluge me with inner peace, expand my consciousness and increase my energy.

But they told me I wasn’t ready. So I had to settle for the tongue reading and pulse assessment. Several minutes into having a bald and shoeless Australian stranger peering at my papillae, I wondered what I had gotten myself into.

I had traveled to Fairfield and nearby Maharishi Vedic City to try to understand the appeal of Marianne Williamson, a spiritual guru running for president. She’s been an object of fascination with the political pundit class, often as the butt of their snarky tweets, but also because her appearances attract hundreds on the campaign trail and thousands on the lecture circuit. She’s been a best-selling author for more than 20years and—not unlike the current president—has a powerful grassroots appeal in precincts far from the knowing zip codes of Washington and New York.

On Thursday, less than a month before the Iowa caucuses, Williamson laid off her entire staff but didn’t suspend her campaign. “The point of my candidacy has been to tell the heart’s truth and that does not cost money,” she wrote. There are a few places in the country where her heart’s truth resonates more than others. If you look at the highest densities of Williamson donors around the U.S.—as depicted in an August analysis by theNew York Times—most fall in the places you might expect: Northern California, Hawaii and seekers’ capitals like Sedona, Arizona. But one is right in the heartland—in fact within a short drive of the gabled white farmhouse made famous inAmerican Gothic.

In these neighboring southeast Iowa burgs of Vedic City and Fairfield—farming communities, dotted by a Family Video, a Pizza King and a Tractor Supply store—Williamson might as well already be president. Long before she declared her 2020 candidacy for the Democratic nomination, Williamson had been cultivating this part of Iowa, holding a number of events for herself-help business—drawing visitors to local haunts such as Revelations, a quirky cafe that prominently sells her books, and staying at the Raj, the resort owned by Williamson’s friends and donors Rogers and Candace Badgett. She campaigned here seven times in 2019—nearly a quarter of the town’s 29 presidential campaign stops, according to theDes Moines Registercandidate tracker.

Head northwest of the Fairfield town square a few blocks, past Everybody’s Whole Foods store, stocked with the finest foods from America’s first all-organic city, and you’ll begin to find out why this place has seen so much Williamson. This is the home of Maharishi International University, a school founded in 1974 by the late Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a famous neo-Hindu practitioner and guru to the Beach Boys and the Beatles. On the edge of campus, the Maharishi Tower of Invincibility towers above the horizon. I would later learn it’s a sign of “perfect inner coherence and integration,” making the space around it “impermeable to disorderly outside influences,” according to MaharishiTower.org.

The tower guards two giant domes that hover above the flat Midwestern earth like golden, grounded flying saucers. Inside these two domes, twice a day, nearly 1,000 locals gather—women in one, men in the other—to take part in transcendental meditation, a key part of Maharishi’s teachings, and yogic flying, a kind of cross-legged hopping that practitioners say can mimic flying. It’s a practice they believe makes the world a more peaceful place. Adherents say that if they can get the square root of 1 percent of the U.S. population—about 1,900 people—here meditating simultaneously, their brain waves can materially improve the world and elevate humankind’s collective consciousness, staving off wars, recessions and, according to a recent dissertation published by a doctoral candidate at the university, car accidents.

“When people will practice meditation together in a large enough group, it has an effect of calming the atmosphere for an extended distance,” Ed Malloy, Fairfield’s nine-term Democratic mayor, told me on a recent visit.

“It’s very real,” said Fred Travis, a professor and chairman of the Department of Maharishi Vedic Science.

Of the nearly dozen residents I spoke with on my trip—from Malloy to a local café owner—all seemed to know Williamson and support her candidacy (though Sen. Bernie Sanders and, given her peacenik platform, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard drew some support, too). And, as remote as these followers of the late Maharishi might seem from in-the-know politics, they are also more relevant than you might think: The people of Jefferson County are classic Obama-Trump voters—Obama won the county by 16 points in 2012, but it flipped for Trump by half a point in 2016.

In September, on the International Day of Peace, Williamson spoke to a crowd gathered here at a local events center. “How insane is it that we have one day that we dedicate to peace?” She asked the audience. “International Day of Peace. One day. So much we could say that 364 days of the year seem pretty much dedicated to war.”

For the next hour or so, she outlined her vision for the country, before leading the audience in a 10-minute guided meditation. “As each of us, in our own hearts, in our own way, look to the creative force from whence peace comes, now we gather in that deeper place, in that perfect place, that place within the human heart, deep within the human psyche, we enter there. We enter there. We enter there.”

The crowd sat in silence.

***

If you build it, they willOm.That was more or less the sentiment that led Rogers and Candace Badgett in the early 1990s to build—in the middle of cornfields—a $7 million, 36,000-square-foot spa known as the Raj, a health retreatdedicated to Ayurvedic, an Indian school of alternative medicine advanced by the Maharishi. (“People don’t useom”in transcendental meditation,” Candace would later tell me, when I ventured the comparison betweenField of Dreamsand the Raj. “It’s a different type of meditation.”)

The Raj is in Maharishi Vedic City, a few miles north of Fairfield and the university. Vedic City, which Oprah Winfrey once called “America’s most unusual town,” follows “natural law”: It’s illegal there to sell nonorganic food and all the buildings face east—in accordance with a spiritual school of architecture believed to promote health and prosperity—and are topped by a golden architectural flourish called a kalash, better connecting residents to heaven. Incorporated as a city on July 25, 2001, Vedic City—named for the Sanskrit word “veda,” meaning life—is more or less the Raj and a collection of houses. Badgett is the town’s mayor.

As I pulled up to the hotel in the middle of seemingly nowhere, I found a half-dozen luxury cars parked out front. As I would later discover, the resort only accepts 15 guests at a time; the enhanced day spa experience is $595 a day, for up to 21 days. It is almost always full.

Inside, as I waited for Rogers and Candace, I perused a menu of spa treatments. My eyes settled upon something called Maharishi Light Therapy with Gems. For $120, I could get the Regular Beamer ($250 for the Big Beamer), a treatment which promised “higher states of consciousness.” After a long time on the campaign trail, it sounded nice, whatever it was. (I would later learn the treatment essentially sends light beams into your body through gems. Practitioners believe the stone’s crystalline molecular structure gives the light a restorative effect. The Big Beamer, by the way, “utilizes 12 times the number of gemstones for a more amplified and therapeutic effect.”)

Rogers, born in Western Kentucky, made his money in coal and oil investments and helped his family acquire the Boston Red Sox in the 1980s before moving here in the 1990s to deepen his transcendental meditation practice and be close to the university. In Iowa, he met Candace, a TM practitioner who grew up in Cleveland. (Their experience is not uncommon, I would learn. Everyone in Fairfield and Vedic City seems to come from somewhere else, drawn by the towns’ peaceful ethos: There are people from all 50 states here, and some 80 different countries. Filmmaker David Lynch, a TM devotee, is a town fixture, having established a master’s in film program at the university.)

Rogers and Candace took me into the parlor, the same room where they’ve entertained Williamson during her stays. The couple befriended Williamson years ago. The place has become something of a home away from home for the candidate, the Badgetts said. After her 2014 failed California congressional campaign, Williamson accepted an invitation from Candace to decompress here. Which treatments did Williamson prefer? We don’t have to go there,” Candace replied. “That’s kind of her private life.”

Over the next hour, the Badgetts sang the praises of Williamson. “I think they misunderstand her brilliance and her practicality because she talks about love, and love seems very kind of abstract,” Candace said. “Marianne’s understanding of love is much more profound than what people take it to be, because she’s just talking about an underlying field of intelligence in reality, and you come back to physics … that there is an underlying field of intelligence that gives rise to matter. … She understands the whole concept of collective consciousness, and that you need to raise collective consciousness to address issues.”

I kept the conversation more or less on politics and asked about Williamson’s lack of experience in most policy areas. The Badgetts informed me that transcendental meditation is more of a policy tool than you’d think:It has lessened conflict in war zones. From 1988 to 1990, 8,000 people known as the TM-Sidhas practiced meditation in the Middle East. Believers say this group was responsible for achieving a cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War, the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the end of the Cold War and, in Mozambique alone, a “12.4% economic growth rate, inflation reducing from 70% to 2% and a liquidation of the national debt,” according to WorldPeaceGroup.org. “The biggest problem is that people probably think it’s a cult or probably New Agey,” Candace told me. “I don’t think people generally appreciate the way it’s evidence-based.”

Later, in the all-organic, non-GMO vegetarian dining room downstairs, I met with Travis, the Maharishi University professor and director of its Center for Brain, Consciousness, and Cognition. He wanted me to know that what I had just heard from the Badgetts wasn’t bunk. He mentioned that one doctoral candidate at the college recently examined the number of car accidents surrounding Fairfield and found that accidents increased the farther you went from the city. “People here are aware that we don’t live in a classical world,” Travis told me over a meal of vegetarian lasagna, broccoli and turnips. “We live in a quantum world.”

The claim to be able to promulgate peace and safety through meditation is one of Williamson and Fairfield’s less controversial beliefs. Williamson has questioned mandatory vaccines. She has written that “sickness is an illusion and does not exist” and that “cancer and AIDS and other physical illnesses are physical manifestations of a psychic scream.” None of this is “evidence-based” or backed by science.

Those pseudoscientific beliefs seem to be shared, in part, by residents of Fairfield. Immunization data from the Iowa Department of Public Health from 2013-2014 found that Maharishi School, the town’s K-12 school, had state’s the lowest vaccination rate, with only 47 percent of the school’s 178 students being vaccinated. Jefferson County had the state’s second-highest rate of vaccination exemptions that year, according to theDes Moines Register.

There is also no credible scientific evidence that sending light through gemstones can cure the body.

In my conversation with the Badgetts at the Raj, I asked what would happen to me if I purchased the gem therapy.

“Different people have different reactions,” Rogers told me.

Should I give it a try right now? I asked Candace.

“I don’t think so,” she said. It needed to be done with a larger program, she told me. I wasn’t ready. Instead, I got the tongue checkup.

I also underwent an Ayurveda Pulse Assessment, which, according to the Raj website, is a diagnostic exam in which an “expert can feel the level of imbalance in the body, even before specific symptoms of imbalance become manifest.”

“That’s your unique music,” Mark Toomey, an Australian with a doctorate in physiology from Maharishi University, told me after pressing on my radial artery and instructing me to close my eyes. I passed both diagnostics, but Toomey said he could tell I needed to get more rest. “Your pulse feels a bit tired to me, a bit rundown. Are you tired?” The campaign trail didn’t seem to be wearing well on me, he said.

Back at Everybody’s, in Fairfield, Mayor Malloy told me he goes to the Raj for three to five days a year as a matter of preventative health. He wears a ruby ring. (“It’s kind of related to more planetary influences,” he tells me.) He told me Williamson’s policies, including her plan fora new federal Department of Peace, are all built on these Vedic beliefs.

“We’ve had conversations about [mass meditation] as a technology,” Malloy said. He remembers talking with Williamson about the Department of Peace a decade ago. According to her website, Williamson’s new Cabinet agency would “dramatically ramp up the use of proven powers of peace-building, including dialogue, mediation, conflict resolution, economic and social development, restorative justice, public health approaches to violence prevention, trauma-informed systems of care, social and emotional learning in schools, and many others.”

Malloy didn’t strike me as awoo wookind of guy. He moved here from Long Island, New York, 18 years ago. He’s the CEO of fuel brokerage company that has operations in 10 Midwestern states. In 2016, he supported Hillary Clinton. This time around, he told me, Williamson’s ideas weren’t getting the kind of fair media coverage he thinks they deserve.

“All of her political ideas are well-formulated,” Malloy said. “These are things that Marianne has thought through for years. And I understand that mainstream folks listen to them and find them a little bit off-center, outside what they would normally think or say, but there is no debating, and she has thought about these things. They’re not whimsical ideas.”

We talked about the town’s economic surge. Fairfield saw a 4 percent population spike between 2010 and 2015, according to a 2016Des Moines Registerreport, and gained some 700 new jobs in that same time period, even as other rural parts of the state were hollowed out. I asked him whether he thought the meditation and the city’s way of life were responsible for its relative economic success. “When people are dedicated to developing their own growth and potential, there’s a lot of creative dynamism that comes out of that,” Malloy told me. “And the partnerships that are made in that essential relationship of creative dynamism gives rise to the entrepreneurship that you’ve seen here, to the expressions of art. That has the effect whether you’re practicing meditation or not.”

I mentioned the traffic accident study Travis had told me about. That was nothing compared to the other thing that happened, Malloy said.

“Did he tell you about what happened in the Washington, D.C., study?”

***

In the summer of 1993,4,000 practitioners of transcendental meditation descended on Washington with what seemed like a far-fetched aim: lower the district’s crime rate. They set up their two-month experiment in places such as a conference room at the Washington Hilton and at Gallaudet University. They had tried this with a smaller group for a period of 10 years, but it didn’t work. In fact, until 1991, the national office of transcendental meditation had been in Washington, but the Maharishi had grown irritated with the capital’s seeming intransigence to the powers of transcendental meditation; it had worked in war zones, why couldn’t it work in the District of Columbia?

“I would not advise anyone to stay in the pool of mud,” the Maharishi said in defeat.

Go west, the Maharishi told his disciples. And so the national TM headquarters decamped from Washington to Fairfield.

But in 1993, a group of adherents tried to rescue the nation’s capital again. “It would almost be irresponsible if we didn’t bring this knowledge to the leaders of Washington,” Kamal Sunev, a spokesman for the Citizens for a Crime-Free D.C., a TM nonprofit, told theWashington Postat the time.

Malloy was there, and so were the Badgetts. They meditated for up to four hours a day. “We were going to lower crime,” Rogers said. “In the summer. In Washington, D.C.”

The city’spolice chief at the time, Fred Thomas, said the only thing that would stem crime in the summer was a blizzard. But the adherents, undeterred, believed. And so they meditated.

Under the direction of John Hagelin of Maharishi International University, they spent $4.2 million on the program. “This may be the most far-out project we have endorsed, but it may be the most important,” Haeglin told theNew York Times.

Four weeks in, violent crime dropped by 23.3 percent. In news accounts from the time, the Police Department wouldn’t comment on the statistical drop. One Washington investigator raised an eyebrow at the findings, though: “There has been outstanding work by the officers and leaders of the patrol districts,” Winston Robinson, a commander of the 7th District, told the Post. “I’m not kicking meditation. Tell them to keep on meditating. Crime doesn’t stop.”

A 1999 peer-reviewed paper in the journal Social Indicators Research explored the phenomenon, showing that the drop couldn’t be attributed to police staffing. TM adherents and experts chalk it up to something called “super radiance,” in which the positive vibes from those meditating altered the nearby field of consciousness. As a bonus, researchers of transcendental meditation say, then-President Bill Clinton’s approval rating increased, while hospital trauma cases and accidental deaths decreased—all thanks to the meditating, they argue. But one of the paper’s authors compared crimes that occurred to crimes that might have occurred based on a time-series analysis, a suspect methodology.

“You raise the whole consciousness, the consciousness is going through the galaxy, every word coming through your mouth is traveling through the galaxy,” Mila Urana, a homemaker from Fort Salonga, New York, who did a two-week TM shift, told theTimes. “Everything is positive.”

There was a moment, earlier in the campaign, when America—or at least some of America—seemed readyto take a Williamson campaign seriously, envisioning her as a kind of spiritual Trump slayer who could marshal our better angels and point us toward a “politics of love.” Her campaign launched crystal memes and earned its share of mocking coverage. America is a complex place, not least because a town like Fairfield—with its picturesque white gazebo, town square and nine-term Democratic mayors—can coexist with even the most outré beliefs and candidates.

***

The last person I met in Fairfieldwas Betsy Howland, the owner of Revelations, the coffee shop and New-Agey bookstore where Williamson’s books are prominently displayed just off the town square.

Whenever Williamson is in Fairfield, she makes a stop at Revelations. A couple of years ago, Williamson had a secret to share with Howland: “I think I’m going to run for president,” she whispered across the register.

Howland’s three daughters have taken Williamson’s course in miracles offered online. A Methodist, Howland moved here in 1998, leaving her husband, who had the “old beliefs” and didn’t meditate. Before the move,she had run a department store in Sidney, New York, an old Montgomery Ward that, thanks in part to her meditation she said, set sales records. But one day, she asked herself:What’s the most important thing I could do for the world?She decided it was to sell everything and move to Fairfield to contribute to the group coherence and meditation program. Now, between shifts at the store, she meditates at 5 p.m. and 6 a.m.

“I see her vision,” she told me of Williamson. “That’s what we need.” She’s given somewhere around $1,000 to the candidate. “Every time she asks, I send some.” She caucused for Bernie Sanders in 2016. “I think they’d make a good team” in 2020, she told me.

“A lot of the anger and hate and partisanship comes from stresses in the system. And if nothing more, meditation, in my case TM, it helps relieve those stresses.”

After we talked for a while, I told her I had just one more question. Did she think Williamson was unfairly criticized in September when she suggested individuals could use the power of their minds to turn away Hurricane Dorian? “The Bahamas, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas … may all be in our prayers now,” Williamson tweeted on September 4. “Millions of us seeing Dorian turn away from land is not a wacky idea; it is a creative use of the power of the mind. Two minutes of prayer, visualization, meditation for those in the way of the storm.”

Minutes later the account deleted the tweet. Her team later said “it was a metaphor.”

In the pregnant pause between my question and her answer, Howland shot me a stern but quizzical look.

“You don’t think you can?”

#Already #Foreign #Politics #President

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