#I think I’m just sensitive all around since i remember her interlude also made me sniffle despite the story but even being a sad one

[tariah23]

Literally

[moonlightchess]

a brief interlude in which a young mortician finally meets his patron saint.

(Diaphanous).

Around five years old, when he first started hearing them. Soft, muted weeping echoing lightly through the cavernous halls just beyond his bedroom door, and by ten he was accustomed to sliding out of bed, yawning, padding to his doorway to step out into the endlessly shadowed maw veining through the upstairs of his family’s home. The moaning creak of the floorboards was easily avoidable if you knew where to slide your feet, which by then he did, and he’d whisper into the dark: “You’re okay. It’s all over now, but stay as long as you need to. You’ll be getting along when you’re ready.” And even then, there was something profoundly tender and melancholy wrapping itself around little Theodore like an aura, to which the ghosts usually responded favorably. On occasion, they’d even slip into his bedroom after he climbed back into bed, gently tugging his duvet over him in thanks.

Sixteen, and Pere introduced him to the family business in the most definitive sense yet, bringing him down into the embalming room. There, he was shown how to drain the bodies, to sew their gums securely closed, to carefully apply powders and lotions to suggest sleep despite death. Pere helped him to remove the heart and lungs of a corpse in the preparation process of the old fashion, despite it having fallen out of favor in more recent years. Bellefontaine, Louisiana, lingered a decade or two behind much of the nation, in every way from embalming practices to racial sensitivity, both topics having already been addressed with young Theodore. “A person is a person, deserving of respect and love and dignity regardless of their skin, wealth, or any other such thing that the ignorant might think defines them,” Theodore senior had informed his small son firmly, long ago, meeting his midnight-blue eyes that were so solemn and sympathetic even then. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, Pere.” Theodore had not understood, not entirely, back then. But at sixteen, hunched over the dead body of a local bait shop owner whose wife made the softest, sweetest beignets he’d ever tasted, clarity rose sharp and bitter. “Monsieur Dumonde,” had escaped him before he could swallow the words in the interest of professionalism. “I knew him. Used to buy worms from him when the boys wanted to go fishing, but it’s been so long. I didn’t know he was sick.”

“Everyone dies, ti-Theodore,” and he’d been in love with the way his name rolled from his father’s tongue in a thicker cajun accent than his own - tee-tay-oh-doure, Theodore junior. It was enormously soothing, even now as he considered shaving Monsieur Dumonde’s thick mustache away for his funeral - but in the end, he placed the straight razor back onto his father’s table of sharp tools, aware that his decision had been a test. “No. We leave the mustache, he always had one when he was alive. He used to tug on it and laugh at our homemade fishing poles whenever we went into his shop. His mustache was a part of him, and it’s important that we send him to the next with as much of the man he was intact as we can.” He’d been a little nervous, meeting the dusk-colored eyes that he’d inherited from his beloved father, holding his breath.

“Good boy,” and he’d exhaled. “There are many who would have shaved him, cut his hair, put on some strange new clothes he never would have chosen himself. But you, my sweet and quiet boy, you understand.”

Mere had been a dancer, once. Ballet had been her life, her identity, until a careless would-be principal prince had stumbled into her leap - during a rehearsal no less, she’d been denied even the dignity of a grand disaster to end her career in the middle of a soaringly tragic performance - and her ankle had snapped, had never healed properly. She limped a touch even then, bringing sweet tea out to their wraparound porch thick with creeping ivy and heavy flowers bursting open at random, studding the lush green like jewels in a necklace, where her teenage son sat cross-legged on a battered loveseat long since dragged out to face the elements of the swampland. Together, they would count the darting fireflies, tiny pinpricks of golden light waging a valiant war against the encroaching southern dark. “I was beautiful once,” she’d said to him. “They all used to come watch me dance, in the city.”

“You’re still beautiful, Mere.”

She’d only sighed, slipping a hand into the pocket of her pea-green silk skirt to retrieve a shot bottle of bourbon, hoarded from the liquor store in town, and poured it into her tea.

They were both gone now, six, seven years proper. He’d prepared their bodies, and in death all of his mother’s pain and longing had been exposed to him with the first incision into her cold and rigid flesh for the draining, sixty-two years of ballet and resentment filling up the glass reservoir of the tubing’s end, dark red. She’d always done up her soft, honey-colored hair into elaborate braids, draped over one shoulder or both or trailing down her back or even wound up into a twisted crown if she was in a happier mood than usual. Theodore had sat beside her, holding her stiff milky hand with his own and with the other, scrolling through youtube tutorials on how to create the perfect fishtail braid until he was confident.

Pere had gone five years after, the light in him having drained out as clear and real as every fluid in his wife’s body had eventually found its way into the belly of their aspirator in the basement. Pneumonia had taken his mother - she’d always had a poor and fragile immune system - but his father had been just shy of seventy and to this day, at thirty-two years old, Theodore had never been offered a satisfying cause of death for him. “Just his time, sug,” a nurse in powder blue scrubs had tried, patting his hand soothingly and because this was the south, “I’ll be praying for y’all - well, just you I suppose. Oh lord, you’re the only Bissonette left now, ain’tcha?”

He was. They’d left the entire mortuary to him, and with it all the responsibilities of being the local mortician and funeral director at such a tender age, and his head had at first swum dizzily with all the pressure and expectations. Theodore senior and his wife Lisette had been fixtures of their country community, familiar and comforting, always there whenever someone had passed on to arrange flowers and platters of cold cuts, to deliver gentle words to cushion the grief. They’d been known, trusted, but Theodore junior, well. Ti-Theodore Bissonette, so young to be running the whole house himself, and the folk of Bellefontaine just weren’t sure. Until the death of little Suzette Marchande.

Hit by a car, she’d been, some hideous beast driving drunk through the winding access road circling their little cajun town and pointed out toward Nola proper. He was in prison now, but Suzette remained dead, and in his huge, capable hands Theodore had poured every bit of his father’s knowledge and sensitivity into that girl. He’d dressed her in yellow, one of her own dresses supplied by her mother, but he’d also remembered that she’d loved frogs. She’d catch them in the swamp and hold them in both hands, laughing at their croaky sounds, but then she’d carefully deposit them onto some leaf somewhere. “They got big ones, in the jungle. The Amazon,” he remembered her saying when the Bissonettes had run into she and her parents in town once, years ago. “Big as cars, they are. I’m gonna go there someday and study ‘em.”

So he’d bought sparkly little green frog clips for her hair online, pinning it back from her freckled face. Her favorite stuffed froggie, named Monsieur Ourauron, Mister Ribbitt, had been lost in the crash, but he’d found one in the Amazon - or at least on amazon - that looked largely the same. When her parents had seen her during the open-casket service, they’d wept and clutched his hands, thanking him in a babbling blend of French, English and grief. That day had declared the end of one life and the beginning of another, as little Suzette had been delivered unto whatever waited after, but thirty-year-old ti-tay-oh-doure had been manifest and confirmed.

There was something to be said for how tall he was. He would have thought some would find it intimidating, difficult to relate to considering that he was six-seven or perhaps a touch over, impossibly long limbs and a hawkish nose, soft mouth borne of his Mere and his father’s nearly indigo eyes the color of a sky five minutes before the moonrise. His was soft, floppy, peanut-brown hair and a quiet timbre resonating in his voice that was immediately associated with the unthreatening sense of calm authority that his father had once carried around easy as an old sweater. Theodore would take care of everything, Bellefontaine knew. They’d be left free to grieve their lost, because he was here with his huge hands and endless legs and fleeting smile.

He lived alone, now. There had been flings, lovers, Audrey from Nola with her autumn-brown skin and fox-gold eyes, elegant and sure, but she hadn’t stayed long. “This place is charming, but you can’t actually expect to stay here all your life, can you?” she’d told him once, after the sex, the two of them naked and wrapped around each other in his sprawling bed with a gentle breeze from outside floating through his open window. She didn’t understand, and neither did the men, not even sweet Peter with his auburn curls and dimples.

“You’re all alone out here, doesn’t it get boring? Lonely? My god, you live in a mortuary.” His shiver had been all that Theodore had needed to kiss him tenderly and send him on his way. His father had been extraordinarily lucky to find Mere, he knew - so few understood, the nature of a curator of death. The ancient contract they’d signed, the tradition they’d inherited. It was sacred but horrifying to most, because everyone wanted the convenience of their holy order at the end of all things, but no one actually wanted to have to think about dying. About the fact that literally all of them, rich or poor, pious or skeptical, afraid or unafraid, was going to die. The repulsion, he understood, was instinctive, and he’d only made his lovers breakfast in the morning and never called any of them back.

Some of the ghosts never left, as it was, and there were mornings in which he’d make his way into the kitchen to find his black tea already steaming, his chair already pulled away from the table. Some of them had found their peace here with him, and so he’d leave his cello out on occasion so that they could pluck the strings or plink a few keys on his mother’s old baby grand in the living room. He was happy too, his natural introversion leaving him largely content in his solitary life. There were those who sought comfort in his touch after the funerals of their loved ones, holding onto his hands a beat too long as he bade them goodbye, meeting his eyes meaningfully, but he always released them to the hazy swamp air outside. They were hurting, vulnerable, and he was a gentleman.

It rained the night the stranger arrived, or stormed rather - Theodore’s lights had been flickering throughout the manor all night. He’d collected candles and charged his phone, but his power had soldiered on even as the thunder crashed and jagged needles of lightning slashed open the churning charcoal sky outside. He’d yanked open the heavy oak door in response to some insistent knocking, only to find a man roughly his age standing there on the porch. He was oddly untouched by the rain despite no car present behind him, moon-pale, spilled-ink hair thick and soft over limpid, silver-mirror eyes, colorless as a deep-sea creature’s, slicing through the dark.

“Saints alive, are you lost? Are you all right?” The man, he didn’t know personally, but a truth and clarity rolled from him like steam off the swamp, and he felt enormously familiar somehow.

“I wouldn’t say lost, no. May I come in?” His voice, soft and polite, still clear and steady over the storm.

“Yes, forgive me. Please.” He stepped aside, watching him enter, translucent eyes sweeping over the yawning, shadowed maw of the grand old manor’s entryway. “Who are you? I’m sorry, but I’m not taking in any bodies until morning.”

“I understand. Terribly sorry to intrude upon your evening like this, but you and I, we have a matter to discuss.” His accent was not local, nor was it unfamiliar. It felt like a forgotten dream, abruptly remembered, an old song once loved playing on the radio years later.

“I’m afraid I don’t recognize you, Sir. Have you been to one of my funerals?”

“Sweet Theodore, I have been to all of them.”

“I don’t understand.”

The stranger clasped his hands behind his back, idle as a museum patron, gazing thoughtfully up to the enormous and heavily framed oil paintings of Bissonettes past lining the walls of the entryway. “It’s my fault for allowing myself to become so fond of you, but you’ve never really understood just how rare a person you are, have you Theodore? I shouldn’t have come here, but I had no choice. I couldn’t let you leave here tonight, that tree would have rendered your car to a smoking wreck and your body to worse. And you, sweet Theodore, you deserve so much better. After all the respect and care and compassion you have shown so unfailingly to myself and my vocation over the years - I’ve come to love you, and you deserve a soft and quiet end. So much sweeter than the one planned for you, I had to make sure you didn’t die in that crash. I had to come here, on this night. For all your kindness, tonight I will be kind to you.”

Drunk, perhaps. Some sauced-up tourist stumbling through the bayou after a bar crawl, but - this far from the city proper? “I’m afraid that you’re still losing me, will you please tell me who you are?”

He turned then, colorless gaze meeting Theodore’s, an echo of sorrow in his faint smile.

“You know who I am.”

In the end, it was true. He supposed at least a part of him had known from the moment he’d opened the door.

“I do. I didn’t think I’d meet you this young in life, but I’m pleased to find you a gentleman, Sir. I can only hope that in the time you’ve allowed me, I’ve done you proud.”

“You and your whole dear family. You don’t know how much I owe you, all of you. You would have lingered, in pain, on life support, for months. It was unbearable, unacceptable. Not you, not my Theodore who has served me so gently and so diligently for so much of your life.”

“I suppose it’s time, then.” He was not afraid. Death, he knew. He’d existed out here in a kind of stasis for years, honoring his patron saint, the man standing before him in a soft black sweater and reaching out to slip an arm through his.

“It is. But I think the storm is winding to a close, and the mists are always so lovely. Why don’t we go see.”

Nodding, Theodore allowed himself to be led to the door, turning briefly to look back just one last time into his beautiful old house, his shrine to a softer death than most knew existed. He’d always done his best, to make the transition as easy as possible for those on their way to some other place, and now it was time to go.

“Will it hurt?”

“Not for you, no.” The stranger opened the door then, and Theodore couldn’t be sure that the new world laid before him looked the same to both of them, but he smiled at what he saw.

“You were right. It’s beautiful.”

The house and the ghosts left wandering its halls signed in unison with the departure of their beloved Theodore, but the rain had slowed and the moon had risen and they were patient enough to wait a while. Someone would come, someone as warm and bright as him, someone who would take care of them as tenderly as he had, some new Theodore born. In the end, after all, nothing ever really died, and daylight was coming on soon, sure as a promise.

[allthefilmsiveseenforfree]

Dangerous Minds

Those of my readers who haven’t known me long may not know that I was once a corps member of Teach for America. I taught 10th and 11th grade English for about 5 weeks, then I was told on a Friday about my “involuntary transfer” to another school in the district, where I’d be teaching 7th and 8th grade English instead. I went from having about 110 students to about 190. My classroom had no books (textbook or otherwise), no pencils, no paper, no markers or chalk, but it DID have one of those folding lamps that come out of the ceiling at the dentist’s office. The kids had been in there for 5 weeks with a rotating roster of subs; they’d done no schoolwork of any kind. I was teaching in a very poor area of the city, and my students were predominantly Black and Hispanic. One of my 10th graders wrote his first personal essay about getting shot the previous year. I say all this to tell you that when Chad asked that I review Dangerous Minds, the 1995 adaptation starring Michelle Pfeiffer of the true story of Louanne Johnson’s experience teaching in inner city schools in California, I was prepared to laugh it off as a cringey, Lifetime-movie representation of my experience. Is that what I got? Well...

For the most part, what I got was a ball of anxiety in my chest. It’s well-worn territory, obviously. A teacher bonds with their students from the wrong side of the tracks, and ends up learning just as much from them as they learn from him/her. Usually poetry or music features heavily as a tool that can set the students free from the depressing circumstances of their lives. Depending on the rating, usually a student dies, and the teacher learns just how Important their job is, so they commit to it even harder even though it pays no money and garners no respect from the administration who just doesn’t “get it.” But these cliches and stereotypes and broad strokes exist because at their core, they’re true, and they make me anxious and uncomfortable and I can’t laugh at them or Michelle Pfeiffer being a Nice White Lady because I’m too busy being angry about the systems we put in place that straight up abandon so many kids, all in the name of white supremacy.

Some thoughts:

Oh we’re starting right off the BAT with “Gangsta’s Paradise.” Fantastic news. Two things I associate so strongly with this song is skating around the skating rink in 2nd grade and buying the Weird Al cassingle of “Amish Paradise” and wearing it out. 

Ooh, the score was composed and performed by Wendy & Lisa! Love that, you don’t see nearly as many film scores as you should composed by women.

God, the salary is $24,700 a year and Louanne acts as though that is appealing - I can’t tell if that’s because it was 1995 or because teacher salaries are so dismally low that this feels like a good salary?

This scene in which Louanne goes into her classroom for the first time and the kids are all shouting at her and getting in her face and sexually harassing her and throwing paper balls at her is giving me stress hives. 

Also her friend Griffith (George Dzundza) saying, “You wanna teach, so teach! All you gotta do is get their attention” is rather disingenuous. Trust me, you can have their attention, and still not be able to teach. 

I’m excited to see Sally-Can’t-Dance from Con Air as Raul (Renoly Santiago). He’s honestly fantastic in this, with a tough exterior but a sensitive and gooey inner sweet boy. All of the teens give pretty solid performances, but he’s a real standout.

I recognize this is based on a true story and Louanne Johnson’s lived experience, but I am not sure it’s wise for any teacher, regardless of grade or subject, to be teaching her students how to fight each other. Or taking them to dinner on what looks to outsiders like a date. I know some people have a problem with the bribery (giving her students candy for speaking up in class) but I have no problem with it - you get paid to do all the dumb stuff you don’t want to do at work, why shouldn’t kids be compensated for going to school if they don’t want to be there? External motivation goes a long way to building up internal motivation.

Mm I do love me some Courtney B. Vance, but he’s such a quiet, condescending ass in this. It’s a different vibe than I’m used to seeing in a principal in a movie like this. 

Ooh, Griffith grading papers and saying “What a fuckin’ idiot” is a real mood. 

“Since when has the Board of Education done anything for us? We barely get fuckin lunch” is legit. The lunches my students were served in summer school were some of the most horrifying things I’ve ever seen. One day it was spoiled milk, white bread, and pickles. And one of my students put his in a microwave that was hidden in the back of my classroom behind some dividers and left it for a week. And just so you know, as stomach-churningly awful as that sounds, the day I found “pickle man” as my student called him, isn’t even in my top 5 worst days teaching list. 

I like Griffith, and I’m glad Louanne has a friend, but frankly I’m not that interested in these interludes between them - they really feel like they slow down the momentum from the scenes of her in the classroom slowly earning the kids’ trust. The pacing is kind of a mess, because the most dynamic sections all revolve around the kids in the classroom, and I feel like that only makes up about a third of the movie. 

One thing I know for sure is you do not get in the middle of a fight between students. I have a friend who worked in the same district I did who interrupted a fight and got punched in the face because of it. And her principal blamed her. 

Oh wow the way the soundtrack picks up when Emilio finally engages in the class is some kinda cheesy. And it continues through the rest of the scene to a distracting degree. Oh Wendy and Lisa, I hoped for better. 

Can I just emphasize that to reach these kids, Louanne uses her experience as a LITERAL MARINE by demonstrating she can kick all their asses, and then she bribes them by paying for 25 kids to go to an amusement park for the entire day with her?

Also, even if they like and respect her now, I call bullshit at any scene in which ALL of  the kids are A) sitting in their seats or B) silent, and especially C) both. 

Um suddenly feeling some weird vibes with Louanne and Raul having a dinner date at this fancy restaurant by themselves. Also, the double standard here is pretty telling - there’s no way this scene makes the movie if Louanne had been a male teacher and Raul was a female student.

Wait wait wait, she’s also loaning Raul $200? Like, is this why I didn’t make it as a teacher? Because I wasn’t a former Marine taking students to amusement parks and fancy dinners and lending them money? I was 25 and could barely afford rent. Maybe teachers who have enough money to take care of themselves are better equipped to take care of others. Idk, I’m just spitballin here.

Oh “Gangsta’s Paradise” is happening again! We already heard the whole song over the opening credits but now it’s happening again about 3/4 way through. I mean this song is definitely the best thing about the film, so I get it, but it feels weird that they think we wouldn’t notice it playing to completion twice.

Michelle Pfeiffer is doing everything she can to make this movie feel less cheesy and more real. Like, you can tell she’s really trying with her performance. Of course, it’s not like the character is a huge challenge acting-wise, but she is definitely committed to the part and can walk the line of both accessible and tough. 

This scene where Louanne tells her class she is not going to be there next year, that what happened to Durell and Lionel and Callie and Emilio made her too sad to stay has not aged well at all. And it’s certainly true to life, and I say that as someone who did the same thing. It’s not something I’m proud of, but it’s a reality - the fact that I’m a nice white lady is exactly the reason that I can choose to leave when things get too hard. Just because the kids convince her to stay at the end in this very rushed “all’s well that ends well” way doesn’t sweep this scene under the rug, and it shouldn’t. 

Ope, “Gangsta’s Paradise” shows up one last time in the credits for good measure. 

Side note: after the film, I researched Louanne, and she’s still teaching, which honestly made me emotional (in a good way). And I’d like to point out the racist ass bullshit the studio and screenwriter Ronald Bass pulled by changing the poems the students read to Bob Dylan lyrics when Louanne originally used rap lyrics from popular artists in ‘89-’90 to teach the kids about poetry. 

Did I Cry? No, but I did get heartburn from anxiety flashbacks.

This genre of film is easy to mock and parody because it tells the same story and hits the same beats to the point that they’ve become cliche. Ultimately, the truth at the heart of the movie (which is the un-nuanced and candy-coated depiction of Johnson’s real memoir, My Posse Don’t Do Homework) is that high schoolers crave someone who will see them and validate them, someone who is willing to put in the effort. The quality of the package that truth is wrapped in varies, and this one certainly leans in hard on stereotypes that feel like cheat codes rather than any real illuminating depictions of living teenagers. But as cringey as it is to watch, maybe it’s not a bad thing to remember that all people - including those who are trapped in poverty and all the cruel injustices that entails - want to be seen and valued for who they really are. 

If you liked this review, please consider reblogging or subscribing to my Patreon! For as low as $1, you can access bonus content and movie reviews, or even request that I review any movie of your choice.

[edenfalling]

[Fic] “Roll for Seduction” - Homestuck

Summary: Jade's attempt to make New Year's cookies derails into an impromptu singalong. (1,175 words)

Note: This fic was written in response to the prompt we wanted to cook but now we are dramatically singing a duet with kitchen utensils in our hands, this is quality PerformanceTM from snogfairy's wholesome domestic prompts list. It's also a Ladies Bingo fill for the square: Sigh No More, Ladies, on the grounds that that's notionally a song, and specifically a song telling women to stop paying attention to men and just have fun. ;) Part of the Leaf and Letter AU.

--------------------------------------------- Roll for Seduction ---------------------------------------------

"Explain to me again the thought process behind this disaster?" Rose said as she ran a dubious eye over the previously clean and bare counters of her kitchen. "And possibly also how you talked me into it?"

Jade smiled sheepishly from the far side of the granite-topped island, and Rose allowed herself a moment to appreciate how unselfconsciously sexy she looked with her hair tied up and back in a sloppy tail and an apron bearing a terrible pun -- sin(gerine)/cos(gerine) = a picture of a small orange -- tied over her old college hoodie and jeans. Then Jade raised one peanut-butter coated finger toward the ceiling and said, "Well! As for the first, I wanted to do something nice for my employees, and who doesn't like cookies? Even Karkat un-grumps a little in the face of baked goods! But holidays are messy and awkward both for larger cultural reasons and often for smaller personal reasons, so I figured it was more logical to make New Year's cookies. Which also conveniently lets me decorate everything with rainbow sprinkles, because fireworks!"

"Hurrah for fireworks," Rose said dryly.

"Exactly!" Jade said, stabbing her finger toward the ceiling. "Then, of course, we run into the slight problem that while I'm an excellent cook, I'm not an experienced baker of anything other than bread. On a related note, I also can't leave What Pumpkin closed indefinitely, so I figured I'd get everything baked in one day. You have a larger kitchen than I do, which allows me to mix up several batches of dough simultaneously, so as to maximize the efficiency of my baking process."

"I believe you're missing a 'theoretically' in that last sentence," Rose said.

Jade looked over the chaos of bowls, utensils, baking trays, and ingredients, and made a face. "Point conceded. But anyway, that's the thought process. As for why you agreed... I got nothing. Either my seduction skills are higher than I thought, or you're just a hopeless sucker."

Rose raised her eyebrows. "Those aren't mutually exclusive options."

Jade paused, then grinned. "Both?"

"Both."

"Both is good! And on that note, since you're already here and not wearing anything froofy, come help me fight your stand mixer. I think it's decided I'm its new nemesis, and I'd really like to get this butter creamed sometime this year."

"So, within the next twelve hours," Rose said. "Well, since we've established that you're extremely seductive and I'm congenitally weak to your batted eyes--"

"--shouldn't that be battered eyes, considering?" Jade interrupted.

"...good pun, terrible connotations, maybe let's not."

"Oh. Ugh. Yeah, that's fair." Jade flicked her fingers as if banishing any unwelcome connotations from her baking process. "Anyway, bring your weak-willed butt into your kitchen and lend me your eldritch touch. I prefer to rule appliances with mutual respect, but I'm willing to use fear when gentler methods fail."

"I'm stealing that line for Senior Librarian Nalyx," Rose said as she walked into the kitchen. She poked at the stand mixer, then detoured to the sink to grab a damp rag. "Also, I think you got peanut butter onto the sensors. Sir Mixalot is a sensitive soul and won't turn on if he can't judge the distance from his beaters to the bowl."

"There are so many potential dirty puns in that statement that I can't decide which to make first," Jade said. "How do you just say things like that with a straight face?"

Rose shot her girlfriend a mock glare. "Excuse you? I haven't had a straight face in my life."

Jade dissolved into giggles. Rose took that as her rightful due, and began wiping down Sir Mixalot. "Oh, baby, look at you. How did you get into such a state? Peanut butter everywhere. Yes, yes, I know it's terrible. Hold still and I'll get you all cleaned up so you can get back to work. I know it's not your fault, you just can't do your best under these circumstances. Don't worry, I'll be handling you from now on, no more of Jade and her sticky fingers."

"That's not what you said last night," Jade put in, waggling her eyebrows.

Rose clapped her hands to Sir Mixalot's sides. "Language! Not in front of the impressionable appliances!"

Jade dissolved back into giggles. "Oh my god," she managed between laughs, "what got into you today? Not that I'm complaining! But if you were anyone else, I'd be wondering if you were--"

She trailed off.

"Drunk?" Rose finished wryly. "High? Well, how should I know what mysteries might have been lurking in the depths of my morning coffee? You were the one who brewed it and then waved it temptingly under my nose while I was attempting to steal another hour of warm, delicious sleep before steeling myself to face the stygian chill of midwinter."

"I feel like this is where we should be narratively compelled to break into 'Baby, It's Cold Outside'," Jade said, "only I don't remember the lyrics."

Rose snickered and then sang, deliberately off-key, "'Memory, all alone in the moonlight--'"

"You stop that," Jade said, pointing a wooden rolling pin sternly across the island.

"Right, right, you're a dog person. And anyway, you're more of a Disney princess than a washed-up starlet. Hmm. Princesses, memory problems..." Rose grinned. "I have it! 'Dancing bears, painted wings, things I almost remember--'"

"Anastasia isn't actually Disney, you know."

"Who cares? 'And a song someone sings, once upon a December. Someone holds me safe and warm'--"

Jade joined in, her voice clear and strong, and Rose pulled up just enough of her high school choral training to drop down into makeshift harmony: "'Horses prance through a silver storm, figures dancing gracefully across my memory--'"

Rose caught Jade's eyes, and without needing to exchange words they mutually decided to jump over the instrumental interlude and go straight for the final verse. Jade raised her rolling pin like a microphone, and Rose felt something -- maybe the music, maybe longing for a better childhood than the ones either of them had had, maybe love... or maybe all three together -- swell in her chest and her throat as she sang.

"'Far away, long ago, 'Glowing dim as an ember, 'Things my heart used to know, 'Things it yearns to remember 'And a song someone sings 'Once upon a December.'"

Rose switched on Sir Mixalot by way of providing applause. It seemed less fraught than either rushing around the island to kiss Jade or letting the moment fade into awkward silence.

Sure enough, Jade snorted as she lowered her rolling pin. "Thank you, thank you, we'll be here all afternoon. Repeat performances unlikely, but the stars can probably be persuaded into other songs given the right incentive."

"Such incentive being?" Rose inquired over Sir Mixalot's steady whirr.

Jade licked peanut butter off her fingers, and winked. "I hear cookies work well."

After a hopefully unnoticeable pause to steady her voice, Rose said, "Then I suppose we'll have to bake some."

"And that," Jade said triumphantly, "is exactly how I got you to agree to this disaster in the first place."

---------------------------------------------

End of Ficlet

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I am not entirely sure why puns ended up being the running theme of this ficlet, but whatever. Also, as you can probably tell this was intended as an actual New Year's fic. I didn't get it done in time (alas!) but late is better than never. :)

For the curious, here is a link to Jade's apron, though I think hers is probably light blue.

[ioftenthinkoftragedies]

I got tagged by my beloved @kingink2 (thank you so much dear! sorry for the delay) 

1: A song you like with a color in the title

Lavender Fields by Lebanon Hanover.

Great band, I really like them. This song is so great in so many ways. 

2: A song you like with a number in the title

Sweet Sixteen by Billy Idol 

It’s always been a favourite song of mine, it brings back good memories of my teenage years. Quite dear to me as a matter of fact. 

3: A song that reminds you of summertime

Nancy From Now On by Father John Misty. 

I love this one, it has such a sweet melodie. Somehow it has always given me summer vibes, I don’t know if I’m correct but at least that’s what I feel. 

4: A song that reminds you of someone you would rather forget about

There are quite a few but I got over him. Forgave him. He was a music lover like myself, so you can figure there are a few songs but even though they still remind me of him, I think of him now with fondness and tranquility. 

5: A song that needs to be played LOUD

Beyondless by Iceage. One of my favourite songs by my favourite band, I get endless goosebumps with this song. I love it so so much. 

6: A song that makes you want to dance

Better Looking Brother by Lust For Youth

I loooove dancing so I could probably list a lot of songs here, however, this is one of my favourite songs to dance to lately. It’s amazing. 

7: A song that makes you happy

Let The Night Come Seeping In by Josiah Konder

If you haven’t listened to this band, I highly reccomend it to you, it’s one of the finest new stuff, their debut album Songs For The Stunned is so good and beautiful. This song always makes me feel happy no matter how bad my day gets to be sometimes. It just makes my heart warm up, so-to-speak.  

8: A song that you never get tired of

Talk To Me by Stevie Nicks 

It never gets old 

9: A song that you would 😍 played at your wedding

I don’t know if I’ll get married, but if I ever do, I would like to slow dance to If You Were The Woman And I Was The Man By Cowboy Junkies. When I fall in love, I act a lot like the lyrics in this one, like, being quite romantic and just wearing my heart in my sleeve I suppose. 

10: A song that is a cover by another artist

Chelse Hotel No. 2 by Lana Del Rey 

I know this is from the great and all around amazing Leonard Cohen, and I also know a lot of people don’t like Lana, but as many of you know, I’m a huge fan of hers, and I love both versions, but I think Lana did a great job when she covered this. 

11: A song that would sing a duet with on karaoke

Interlude by Morrissey and Siouxsie Sioux. 

I love this song, as I likely remember it is also a cover. It has a very special place in my heart, sometimes I listen to it when I’m about to sleep. 

12: A song that makes you think about life

Autobahn 66 by Primal Scream 

I always feel like life is such a mysterious thing whenever I listen to this. Plus, I’m such a daydreamer it’s hard not to relate. Sometimes I listen to a song and I’ll think to myself “this is life”. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it happens to me a lot. Another example is when I listen to a song and I’ll go “this sound like (insert here name of a person), it just sounds like their essence”. Anyway, got to deep in this answer hahaha.  

13: A favorite song with a person’s name in the title

Believe Me Natalie by The Killers. 

I think this is an underrated song, when Hot Fuss came out, everyone just stuck with Mr. Brightside and trust me, The Killers are waaay more than just Mr Brightside. The last 44 seconds of the song are everything.

14: A song that you think everybody should listen to

Lion’s Den by Marching Church

I know I am saying this a lot, but fuck man I love this song sooo much. So fucking much. It just puts me in a trance I swear. 

15: A song by a band you wish were still together

Oh Baby by Siouxsie & The Banshees 

16: A song by an artist no longer living

Waiting For That Day by George Michael. 

17: A song that makes you want to fall 😍

I am terribly in love at the moment, and the song that has seen me lose my shit to this current boy is Some Days by Mrch. 

18: A song that breaks your ❤️

Another No One by Suede. I have a playlist I made full of songs that make me cry, you know, for the sad days. This one gets me everytime. 

19: A song that you remember from your childhood

Fly, Robin, Fly by Silver Convention

My parents used to play this a lot when I was like 4 or 5, I remember running around our apartment, playing with my toys, as my mum was doing household chores. 

20: A song that reminds you of yourself

Duchess by Suede 

Not to sound cocky at all, if you listen to the lyrics you’ll see why. I’ve always thought I sort of come from the same world Brett Anderson has written about, I relate to his words so much. So, ever since I became a Suedehead xD I noticed I was like this character Brett describes a lot, the lonely, sensitive girl who dreams a lot. 

I now tag @blue-disorder @iariotact @new-brat-in-town @psycho-rats if you want to do it, if not it’s totally ok. Love you all, thank you for reading 

[rilenerocks]

 I know that the deepest part of the ocean is the Marianas trench. I learned from a brilliant scientist who taught a class called Emergence of Life that water in the takes up between 50-70% of a human body.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve spent time submerged in the liquidy depths of me. While out in the world, doing the average activities that people do, I know I appear to be just like anyone else. I pass for normal. But I don’t really think I am and I never have. While lots of people seem just fine skimming along on the surface of daily life, I was always digging and probing and pondering. I rarely had a conversation with anyone that I didn’t rerun in my head, dissecting it, trying to figure out what else was there that didn’t show up on the first cursory pass. I always thought there was something else below the surface. Additionally I generally seemed to remember a lot more than other people. For example, I’d remember an incident or a series of them which I’d try to recall with someone. I received a lot of blank looks and comments stating that they had no idea what I was talking about. I realized that while it’s impossible to access all of our memories, some people actually do what I call “papering over” the things they’d prefer to forget.

While I was growing up I learned that my constant analyzing and revisiting certain topics was not popular with my family and friends. I heard “let it go,” plenty of times. But I didn’t want to and really couldn’t, until I’d exhausted every single possible interpretation of the smallest event to the largest, I couldn’t be satisfied. I think most people just wanted me to shut my mouth. That’s still true today. When I was young and sensed that I’d pushed the limits of patience with people, I’d back away from what I really wanted to do with them. It felt like dancing without a partner. I made people impatient. Always talking too much, digging too much and not leaving well enough alone. I got it then and I get it now. I don’t know if I was born this way or if I developed this trait to try protecting myself from all the uncertainties and fearful events in my childhood. At this point it doesn’t matter. I wish people were more understanding and patient with me.

From my standpoint I think patience is an underrated quality. For the most part, I don’t think people are patient enough. And as our culture becomes more of a pressure cooker, I don’t expect that to improve. Long ago, to help myself survive the rejection of my individual style. I’d turn inward. Withdrawal. I could seem present in a moment but I was actually away, submerged in myself.  I don’t think I’ll ever get to the bottom of me. I can swim around my interior for long periods of time, trying to get to some point in my self-discovery that feels complete. I have an anecdote about that. I was mentioning a story to my son the other day and he said, “I know, I know, I’ve heard this a thousand times.” That might be right. But the story was a seminal moment for me, the moment when I found Michael, my best friend and the only person I knew who was willing to go with me deep under, even when it drove him crazy and when he wished I could just be, instead of working everything to the bone. It was the morning after we first met at a wedding and had spent the entire night before, hanging out together and feeling what for me is still hard to describe, an electrifying fitting together that was outside my previous experience. There was nothing cerebral about it. This was a strange sensory phenomenon that we both recognized and were eager to keep. I was leaving for Chicago the next day and we went to the home of my ride where a number of mutual friends were gathered. There were people struggling emotionally with their relationships, including Michael’s girlfriend who wasn’t thrilled by his lack of attention to her the evening before. Always a helper, I plunged into all the dynamics around me, trying to smooth things over and make some sort of peace that jangly morning. Michael sat silent, stonily staring straight ahead and after awhile, I realized I was getting nowhere with anyone. So I announced my apparent failure and said, “now I’m going to withdraw.” That drew Michael’s only response, one word – “don’t.”

That was a stunner that changed my life. When I returned from my trip home, I found Michael and asked him to come to my house so that we could continue to build whatever this thing was between us. After some months of deepening our friendship, I realized that I’d found my spot, my safe place, my best friend, my life partner. And luckily for me, he felt the same way. I was twenty years old. During our forty five years together, we had our issues like everyone else. But in the worst of times, our powerful friendship and the way we fit together carried us through everything. When he died, I knew that kind of steady backup and trust through anything was over for me. A part of me has been deeply immersed in myself with the years of our bond still helping me navigate my new daily life. But I’ve recognized that his steady  presence in my life lent me the ability to be patient and understanding out there in the big world. After all the juggling of my younger days, trying to negotiate the relationships of people around me, I no longer have the impetus to absorb the parts of others that don’t satisfy who I am and how I feel. I am a different version of myself.

I am more than ever likely to withdraw now to my go-to place, internal pool that existed before Michael, that was still in me when he was here, and that is now where I feel my only true fit. He was always sensitive to my departures whereas others had no clue that I was actually totally detached and absent from whatever was happening in front of me. Much of my external behavior is performance. I am lurking below the surface because I truly don’t believe that most people want to be a part of me in the ways that work best for me. They like my parts that work best for them. Some think that having family and good friends is enough to breach the gap I created to process hard times long ago. My experience tells me otherwise. So I’m trying to find ways to survive this life with myself as my only anchor. I still have the strength of what existed in that magical way between Michael and me. I have skills. I’m strong. But I’m tired too. And holding on to what was isn’t an easy thing to do every day. I’m thinking about what I’ve taught myself to try to stay balanced while struggling.

I remember the day of my dad’s funeral. A September morning 30 years ago,  cool and sunny. I was driving by Mt. Hope cemetery to the bakery to pick up cakes and pastries that family and friends would share at my mom’s place after a graveside service. As I drove along, feeling surreal, I found myself thinking what I’d thought so many times before and so many times since. Out there in the world, while I’m engulfed in grief or whatever other feelings of the moment, people are running. They’re playing sports or going for walks. They’re sleeping, making love, birthing babies, dying, crying, working, hiding and virtually any other verb you may want to insert here. Living their lives, dying their deaths, feeling their feels. You have no idea what those outside appearances are concealing. Sometimes they don’t know either. All over the world, life and death go on, and no matter how important your own particular event feels, there is always someone else’s that’s worse. That’s one of my most successful go-to strategies for coping with life, realistic thinking. Sometimes I can make a small event feel like it may have long-range positive consequences to help myself cope with staying balanced.

I was working out in my garden in late August. School was back in session and my house is on a pathway home for lots of kids who come rushing by at the end of their day. Two middle school-aged boys were riding their bikes down the street when the smaller one of the two screeched on his brakes and careened over to the sidewalk in front of my house yelling, “dude, you have to see this giant flower!” He’d spied one of my massive hydrangeas and was knocked out by it. I smiled and said, “pretty cool, right? I think you guys are very special for paying attention to nature. Lots of kids wouldn’t have noticed.” They smiled and rode away. I saw them in a different place about two weeks later and recognized them. I said, “hey, aren’t you those smart guys who stopped to look at my garden?” They looked surprised but pleased. Yesterday, I was out again and they were going by the house, dressed in pajamas for what I surmised was a special day at school. I hadn’t noticed them but the small one said hi and waved as he went by. I hope what I said to them and my presence during their time going up and back to school will stick with them, both in regard to the nature stuff and in the fact that an old lady can be someone worth engaging. I draw energy from stuff like that.

As my dive goes further, I find I’m trying to work things out in my dreams. I don’t know a lot about how the subconscious functions but in recent days I’ve dreamed that Michael was just outside, mowing the lawn. Then I dreamed that though I knew he was dead, I also knew part of him was alive and living with another family. So I went to retrieve him. As I approached where he lived, he appeared, looking wonderful and accompanied by our beloved collie Flash who looked like he did at six months old. That dream woke me from the sheer joy of it. I also dreamed of my dear friend Julie who’s in hospice now. I had driven back to her home for a second visit and she answered the door looking healthy, feeling stronger, and again I felt relief and delight. My sleeping mind is swimming with with these images which are wishes and small comforts compared to reality. I don’t pretend to get it but the days following these nighttime interludes start better than the ones that have no evening respite from reality. And then there are my daydreams usually brought on my music or activities that remind me of old times or a surprise photo that can elicit powerful surges of desire and ache.

While preparing a sizable family meal which I’d done so often in the past, my day was infused with essence of Michael, to the point when I stopped to write him this letter: Dear Michael,

I’ve spent the day chopping and mixing and cooking all the food that goes along with preparing for company and a festive holiday meal. So that means you are huge in both your absence and your presence. I wish I could talk to you about what this feels like and have you answer me in real time. Maybe you are. The other day I realized that I hadn’t seen monarchs in a few days so I made a note for my records that they’d departed for the year. When I peeked out into the back yard this morning, the white butterfly bush was alive with them in addition to the painted ladies and the sulphurs that are still hanging around. That bush is smack in the middle of what was your tomato garden and I’m not kidding, that shrub is massive and still producing new blooms that I’ve coaxed along by diligent deadheading. But the ground is full of your sweat and love and I don’t give a flying fuck about how mystical and bizarre it all seems – I know you’re in there. One day we both will be because when I finally become ash and am rejoined with yours I want the kids to dump at least part of us there. Part amongst my flowers too and the rest? Apparently we’ll become some piece of glass art, showing up as silvery streaks in the middle of our colors which you know will be red and black. Maybe a little green for depth but definitely our political colors. In any case, when the monarchs were there this morning, was I wrong to feel you’d sent a few back my way? But no more. Those guys need to get out of Dodge because it’s getting chilly. Thanks, though. So back to the kitchen. It’s about a thousand degrees in there and I’m at the sink, cleaning carrots and you come in and I say, “man, I’m really hot,” and you say, “you’re telling me.” That same old line which I pretend I don’t like but of course I love it. Then you come up behind me and grab some random body part and move suggestively and I say, “go on, you perverse old man, get out of here so I can finish up.” I smirk and make some wisecrack but I adore the familiar intimacy. And then you stick your finger into a bowl for a taste and I tell you it’s unsanitary and you laugh and drift into the living room. You have the day off when I’m cooking because you do so much of it in daily life. But you don’t get a pass on the cleanup. I shimmer through these daydreams like an apparition with you and they cloak me in a happiness that’s so transient and ephemeral. I’d love to catch up with a wavelength in time where we are solid and physical instead of the myth we’ve become. My precious boy.

So there that is. I am away for large swaths of time in this watery internal cave because I don’t like a lot of what’s going on in reality. As I slide through my days in real time, I remembered when I read The English Patient back in the early ‘90’s. It was one of those rare films that wasn’t a disappointment to me as so many films based on books can be. Sweeping, beautiful, romantic, passionate and ultimately sad.

  I’ve been taking a class on Persia and Greece and there has been mention of Herodotus and his histories. In the movie, a tragic plane crash in the Egyptian desert leaves the wounded heroine in need of medical attention. Her lover carries into a cave where the walls are filled with petroglyphs that include swimmers. As he leaves her with food and water, he also gives her his copy of Herodotus, a “good read” as she awaits his return with aid. That’s how I feel now, swimming in a my interior cave with a good read for company hidden away from the rest of the world. Wondering when I’ll come to the surface.

    Withdrawn in the Depths  I know that the deepest part of the ocean is the Marianas trench. I learned from a brilliant scientist who taught a class called Emergence of Life that water in the takes up between 50-70% of a human body.

[athyrabunlord]

[Animus AU] Our Contract

Concept Arts /Character Backgrounds: [Law Enforcement] [Fuurin Shrine] [Ohara Apothecary] [Chibi Icons]

Blips: [Of Cats and Thieves] (pilot blip) | [Our Contract]

A/N: Here’s the Yohariko + Guilty Kiss family blip, which came first in this poll. Note that while this is technically the first ever blip written for the Animus AU, treat this like an interlude chapter that happened after a few story arcs. (Since this AU doesn’t have consecutive chapters, anything I write will be all over the place in terms of the ‘timeline’) Summary: Yohane shared an intimate moment with Riko, and pondered about their stay here at Uchiura with Mari. Words: 2,804 Rated R-15 (I think? I can’t rate lol)

Yohane’s eyes snapped open, her senses high on alert and sleepiness vanishing. Ever since her body’s drastic transformation, she had been finding it difficult to fall asleep at night and any minute noise or movement could wake her. Her eyes rapidly adjusted to the darkness and soon, she found the source of disturbance.

Her tail reached for the box underneath the bed and deftly scooped up a candle. She gingerly lit it up and placed it on the nightstand before turning around to gaze at the woman curled up beside her.

Riko’s brows were furrowed in distress with beads of cold sweat and tears trickling down her cheeks. Her whimpering, though muffled by her gritted teeth, made Yohane’s heart clench in helplessness. She twirled the tip of her tail near the small flame, prompting it to blaze and illuminate the room more for Riko’s benefit.

“Lily…” She whispered. “Wake up.”

Her lover grimaced but remained trapped in her nightmare.

“Lily!”

Yohane frowned and carefully shook her but to no avail. She licked her dry lips and uttered with more urgency. “Riko!”

Amber eyes slowly blinked open, her gaze blank in terror and bewilderment. Riko blindly reached for Yohane, who interlaced their fingers and squeezed her hand in comfort.

“I’m here, Riko.”

The burgundy-haired woman winced and shook her head as if to regain composure. Her voice, however, was hoarse and trembled in fatigue while she wiped at her face. “I’m s-sorry, Yocchan, for waking you up again. I’m okay, really, so you-”

“Stop that. It’s only me here… Lily.” Their eyes met and Yohane pulled her lover’s hand towards her lips, kissing it. “It’s only me here. You don’t have to put up a tough front, yeah?”

People saw Riko as an aloof and even intimidating bodyguard, or a quiet and nice nurse who took her job seriously, but Yohane and Mari understood her true self. Even then, Mari only knew that much. Yohane knew all of Riko. Such privilege came with responsibility, though she would still try her best to assuage her lover’s fears regardless of anything else.

“You’ve been having nightmares again since we came to this country, right?”

Riko nodded slowly, her thumb daintily brushing over Yohane’s cheek. “I thought I’ve gotten better. But those butterflies, youkais and all those… incidents, they are doing something to us, aren’t they?”

Likewise, Yohane also felt off here in Uchiura. She liked the town, liked it a lot in fact, but something in the air made her restless. It was maddening, really, to be unable to pinpoint the source. Sometimes her emotions took control so strongly that half of the time she wasn’t even aware what she had said or done until a moment after the fact.

She shifted closer, her lips curving at the sensation of her lover’s body heat so intimately close against her own. “I suppose, but as long as I’m around you, I still feel like myself.”

Perhaps, due to their unwitting contract.

Riko smiled a little, a pretty but sad smile. The light from the candle’s ember flickered in her amber eyes, yet its brilliance did not conceal the remorse seeping from her gaze. She reached over Yohane’s shoulder and gently caressed the bony wings, mindful of the delicate membranes. It felt itchy and even a bit pleasant, compelling her to stretch one wing.

The resulting shadow fleetingly encompassed the two women in darkness before the wing folded and allowed the faint light to envelope them again.

“I made you into this…”

“I’ve told you many times already, Lily, I’m fine with it. I’ve long grown used to it-”

“But you shouldn’t have to! You can’t sleep well, you can’t wear whatever you wish. You… you couldn’t live like a normal woman…”

Yohane met Riko’s fierce gaze, unflinchingly. While it was true that her back got sore and her wings turned numb if her sleeping position wasn’t right, it was a minor inconvenience. Her sporadic episodes of insomnia and limited clothing choice were nothing compared to the emotional torments that her lover suffered daily.

“You aren’t either. You’re putting too much responsibility on your shoulders - I was at fault, remember? You were the cautious one, I was the one who convinced you to go ahead with the experiment.”

“Yocchan…”

Displeased by Riko’s guilt-laced tone, Yohane straddled her and shivered at the tingling sensation of her bare legs against the former’s naked hips. As expected, Riko blushed hard and hastily looked away from Yohane’s breasts, now no longer veiled by the blanket and shadows. She was always like this, reserved and bashful, even though she could be quite passionate whenever they made love. Just hours ago, she was the one who arduously etched those hickies over her cleavage. Yohane found this quality, along with countless others, utterly endearing.

“Look at me.”

Riko pursed her lips but obediently looked up. Yohane smiled tenderly and leaned down so that their foreheads were almost touching. Her raven-colored hair cascaded and draped around them like a silken curtain.

“This bonds you to me,” she gently tugged Riko’s hand over her spine, over the sakura tattoos. “And me to you.” Her hand ghosted over Riko’s back and whimsically traced the intricate winged tattoos marring the latter’s smooth skin.

“...our contract, that chained you to me-”

“No, that’s not it,” her voice softened with each word. “A contract to make each other happy.”

Amber eyes widened slightly before they closed for a moment. When they reopened again, they were filled with raw emotions. “You’re right. I’m sorry for all that earlier. It doesn’t matter what happens, in the past or in the future. Only one thing matters.”

“Lily-?”

Riko kissed her chastely then. “I love you.”

Yohane smiled against her lover’s lips and returned the gesture just as softly. “I love you too.”

Indeed, they had each other and that was all that mattered.

Their slow kisses gradually grew deeper and more ardent, with Yohane pressing herself flush against the woman beneath her. Riko hissed in pleasure at the heated friction between their breasts and pulled Yohane into a rough kiss. Yohane parted her lips automatically, moaning as their tongues entwined in fervor. Riko licked at her fang, playfully and sensually. In return, Yohane shifted and tilted her chin, nipping her lower lip and drawing blood.

Growling, Riko grasped at Yohane’s buttocks hard before scratching upwards and caressed the spinal dimple just above her tail. The appendage coiled around Riko’s wrist, feebly attempting to pull it away from the sensitive spot.

“Ah...nngh... Lily…” Yohane panted and rested her head against the crook of her lover’s neck, feeling her legs weakening even more so when the latter deviously rubbed her knee against her inner thigh.

“Yocchan is so cute.”

“Hnff, o-of course the great Yohane is cute.” She tugged Riko’s hand towards her mouth and began licking each finger, twirling her tongue along those slender digits and in between them. She sucked and nibbled languidly, relishing in the inexplicable taste as she dragged her fangs across the soft skin.  

The characteristic blush returned to Riko’s cheeks again. “... Yocchan is erotic…”

She raised an eyebrow and gazed down at her lover. Deep burgundy hair pooled over the sheets like red wine, with several disheveled strands draped over her shapely breasts and flushed skin. So inviting, so tantalizing.

“...Lily is the erotic one...” Yohane swallowed hard, mesmerized by the ambrosia that was solely for her taking. The tips of her fingers brushed over Riko’s cleavage and collar bones until they rested against her parted lips.

Riko flicked her tongue over Yohane’s fingers and nuzzled against them before peering up at her through half-lidded eyes. Such a coy gesture only seemed so much more alluring under the faint glow of the candle light.

Yohane was hopelessly drunk on the woman named Sakurauchi Riko. Her one and only Lily.

She captured Riko’s lips again and again in lustful kisses, and soon the pair of lovers lost themselves in each other.

------------------------

Yohane suppressed a yawn as she slowly descended the stairs. She glanced outside the window and groaned at the sight of breaking dawn. It was almost time to open the Ohara Apothecary, their cover here at Uchiura. Their clinic was surprisingly popular in this little town. Rather than being skeptical about their foreign medicine and methods, the folks found them refreshing and credible, thanks to words of returning patients.

And truthfully, Yohane did not mind the routine life of tending to the Apothecary. She used to take her uneventful life in Britain for granted, and it was abruptly snatched away from her. She will not make the same mistake again.

Although, her opinion about the sun would probably never change. Even prior to her body’s alteration, she had always been a night owl and bright rays of the sunlight irked her to no end.

“Morning~ Looks like it’s going to be a shiny day, no?”

Yohane shrugged and flopped down in her seat at the small round table. It was only then that her sluggish mind noticed a familiar aroma permeating the kitchen.  “Coffee again, Mari?”

“Of course. Best way to start the morning~ Want some strawberry jam, Yoshiko-chan?”

“Do you even have to ask?”

The blonde owner of the Apothecary was humming as she sliced the loaf of bread and smeared the jam over the pieces. Yohane squinted her eyes in contentment, enjoying the domestic atmosphere. It was just breakfast, yet it felt so different than having it elsewhere. The three of them have been living under the same roof since their journey from the West, but it was only here that the feeling of home really settled in.  

“Ara, not very energetic today, are you? I wonder why.”

Yohane sighed and half-heartedly glared at the older woman’s knowing smirk. “Gimme a break, it’s still too early.”

“It’s never too early and you know it.”

“Whatever. Oh, thanks.”

She ignored Mari’s twittering and focused on the yummy toast. They enjoyed the breakfast together in comfortable silence, with her nibbling on the bread and Mari sipping at her coffee. As teasing as she was, the blonde was actually not chatty most of the time. She would usually have this distant look, her eyes unreadable in spite of her ever-present smile. Or else, like now, she would be deep in thoughts and reading her notes and the documents they’ve collected.

In spite of their little banter, Mari still seemed so far away even though she was sitting next to her.

“I like it here, Mari.” Yohane said.

“So do I.” The blonde did not seem surprised by her sudden remark, her gaze never leaving the papers on the desk.

“But I don’t think Lily does.”

“Then we leave, once our purpose here is done.” Mari stated simply.

Yohane frowned, knowing how much Mari loved it here at Uchiura, especially the company of that Police Chief and shrine maiden. Alas, as always, Mari put them before herself. As aloof as she acted sometimes, she really spoiled them.

The younger woman nibbled on her toast a bit more and deliberated on how to continue the subject. As if sensing her dilemma and the need to discuss, Mari pushed away the documents and straightened in her seat.

She took off her reading glasses and carefully cleaned the lens before looking at Yohane. “You don’t want to leave?”

“...yeah. There are just too many memories back in Europe, for all of us. I… I think we can be happy here, the three of us.” She found herself unable to meet Mari’s gaze. Those gleaming chartreuse eyes tended to make her feel vulnerable, like they could see into the depth of her soul. “Sure there are still issues but, I’m sure we can work that out. The friends we’ve made here, they’ll help us, I’m sure.”

“Hmm? Sounds like you’ve placed quite a bit of trust in them. I thought you don’t like Ruby-chan getting my attention-”

“Hnff! I’ll always be your best student, not her!”

“- and Hanamaru-chan smacking you-”

“Zuramaru should not be swinging that club of a fudepen around when she’s got such freakish strength!”

“- and all of Chikacchi’s cats messing up your clothes.”

“...well, cats are cute. Sometimes. She and her Detective buddy. They’re alright. Maybe.”

“Fufu~ glad to see you’re getting along with all them.”

“We’ve been here for a while and a lot has happened,” Yohane folded her arms defensively. “They’re… good people, at least.”

“Indeed they are.” Mari’s playful tone then dropped to a serious octave. “I’ve long promised to help you and Riko-chan however I can, and that’s what I’ll do. I’ll make this a home for you both. You two can stay here, while I will continue with the search-”

Yohane bristled and her wings unfolded subconsciously. “No! This won’t be a home if you’re not around, Mari. Don’t you get it? It’s both of you, you and Lily. The three of us need to be together, that’s where home is.”

Mari stared.

Realizing what she had said, Yohane snarled and jabbed her finger at the blonde. “Look what you made me say! How friggin’ embarrassing, grrr.”

She was glad that she inadvertently blurted it out though, for Mari seemed genuinely happy from the way she smiled.

“Thank you, Yoshiko-chan.”

She only harrumphed when Mari leaned over to give her a brief hug. Before she could ask the blonde for a final answer, her keen ears caught the quiet floor creaks upstairs. They exchanged a look, agreeing to continue their conversation another time.

Not long after, Riko came downstairs and joined them at the table. She looked between them curiously, as if sensing the sombre atmosphere they had earlier. “What happened?”

“Oh, Yoshiko-chan is so sore this morning that she was crying to me about it. Bad Rikocchi.”

The two women blushed, one in mortification and one in indignation. “What!? I’ll have you know that I was the one who-”

“Yocchan!!”

Yohane blushed harder, this time from memories of their passionate night as Riko’s warm hands covered her mouth. She childishly scowled at Mari, whose smirk widened as if knowing exactly what went through her head.

“Anyway, I’ll leave you two lovebirds alone. There are some boiled eggs on the counter, Riko-chan, help yourself to them.”

“E-Eh? Thank you, but how-?” Riko glanced at Yoshiko, who was equally surprised. They heard that there was egg shortage in town, so how did Mari procure them? She really did spoil them, always getting their favorite food or anything else they liked.

Mari merely smiled in that mysterious way of hers and patted their heads. “I’ll be at the lab if anyone needs me. I just need to look over some books then we’ll open the shop, okay?”

Once she was out of hearing range, Yohane pecked her lover on the lips as her tail twirled lazily like how a cat’s would. “Sorry I didn’t wake you, Lily, but you looked like you were having a good dream, so…”

“That’s okay, and I wouldn’t exactly call it good?” Riko was smiling, evidently fond of her dream. “Remember that time when Mari-san first taught us about the base metals?”

Yohane rolled her eyes. She did not want to recall her disastrous attempt to transmute a hunk of lead to gold. She was desperate enough to impress the alchemist that she mixed some of her magic props with the brew so that it had a golden color. It was one of the few times that Mari got angry for real, though everything turned out alright at the end.

“Why would you dream about that of all the things?”

“Well, it was… nice. It has been fun, just learning things,” Riko said wistfully. Yohane agreed full-heartedly, that their pursue for the Philosopher’s Stone has given them tremendous stress.

She no longer cared for it, but Mari sought for its existence for a reason she refused to disclose to them while Riko wanted it to use it to change Yohane back to normal. If only they could just live like a normal family, work in the Ohara Apothecary and move on with their lives without their pasts haunting their every step.

She just didn’t know how to tell them.

Sighing, she led Riko towards the kitchen and tried to lift the mood with a grin. “Well, why don’t we cook something nice for Mari, for lunch? I remember seeing some lemons in the pantry…”

Riko squeezed their entwined hands and nodded. Yohane couldn’t help but steal another quick kiss, filled with affection for her lover.

Until she’s found a solution to their dilemma, she would do anything she could to make Riko happy. That was her contract after all, one she vowed to fulfill no matter what.

[gencottraux]

I hate calling in sick to work. That’s a new thing for me, because for the first time in ages I love my job and miss it when I am not there. Mind you, a day off here and there is welcomed, but generally I’d rather not miss out on anything. Work doesn’t FEEL like work most of the time, and I enjoy all of the people and the animals I’m surrounded with on a daily basis.

Serious moments at work:

    Contrast those moments with this:

Me, at home sick. Not fun.

I used to look for any reason to stay home sick when I was in school. I was a good student, but I was painfully shy. Staying home was much better! Back in the day, when my single mom was at work, she felt it was safe enough that, when I was in about 3rd grade I think, she could leave me home alone. This was the 1960’s in a middle-class suburb on a street of mostly retired people. My older siblings would be home at various points in the day, and mom could check in at lunch. Nothing bad ever happened. The things is, Mom was almost too sympathetic to my dislike of being at school and often let me stay home when I clearly wasn’t sick. I never had to resort to any Ferris Bueller antics to convince her to let me stay home.

  I graduated (with good grades), went on to college, and survived just fine. Then I ended up at some point in a job that I hated. I’ll never forget the morning I burst into tears, threw my hairbrush across the room, and wailed to my then-husband, “Don’t make me go!”  Was that the first time I called in sick to work when it was really just that I was sick of the job?

Things got better. I switched careers after an interlude of graduate school (I hated school through high school, but I loved college), and spent quite a few years only being sick when I was really sick. And then along came the University of California and 12 years of me wishing to be sick, of fantasizing about breaking my leg in the shower so I could go to the hospital instead of work, of reading hopefully about the sysmptoms of appendicitis. My work ethic had died a slow death. I wasn’t so obvious as to call in sick on a regular, clockwork basis, like a colleague in one past job who we all knew would call in sick the day after pay day. Nothing predictable. But maybe calling in sick when I felt a little under the weather but not really sick. I would even gladly go for jury calls and hope to get onto a jury so as to not go to work. I wasn’t precisely a bad employee, just a not very dedicated one. Note to any of my former UC colleagues: there were many times I was genuinely sick. Please don’t think I ever took advantage of you to get out of anything!

That’s all changed now that I am working in animal rescue. Every day brings new rewards and happy endings. Sometimes there are sad endings, too, but I try to keep moving as cheerfully as possible and toast the successes.

I wish I could say I never get sick, but I have whatever this gross lung crud is that’s going around at the end of 2017. I’m coughing like crazy, no energy, sounding like a dog with kennel cough. This would be bad enough in any case, but in addition to animals, I also work with potential adopters, and how bad would it look if I started coughing and wheezing in their faces? That would not bring good customer service marks on a Yelp review. I went in last Sunday and it was not pretty. Nobody ran away screaming, but a lot of hand sanitizer was passed around. I’ve stayed home since then.

I’ve had a lot of time on my hands to think. Too much. Here are some of my reflections.

Cats are better nurses than dogs.  They are sensitive, and pick up on subtle things. Or they just really love blankets and warm bodies. But dogs have Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), like “Aw, hey sick buddy, let me cuddle with you…SQUIRREL! Gotta go!”

    Watching television during the day is no longer fun. When I was home sick as a kid, or even as a teenager, the majority of that time was spent in front of the television. I’d watch anything. Even though we only got 4 channels back in the dark ages, I’d find something. I watched cooking shows, exercise shows, reruns in syndication, old movies…Maybe watching Julia Child and Graham Kerr (The Galloping Gourmet) contributed to my love of food and cooking, but I also watched Jack Lalanne and have no love of exercise. Note that I watched Jack Lalanne, I didn’t ever get off the couch and do any of the stretches or exercises.  I adored Bewitched reruns. At a young age, I got hooked on soap operas, especially All My Children. My favorite movies were those with Ma and Pa Kettle or Henry Aldrich.

It’s a wonder I have any brain cells left!

  Now we have TiVo, Netflix streaming, binge watching, endless channels, and I can’t stand the idea of watching television during the day. I feel like I have succumbed to true hopelessness if I watch. Nighttime is another story altogether, though. Which leads to:

Folding TV trays are a great 20th century invention. They don’t have to be for eating meals in front of television, although we use the old set we bought for $25 at the flea market for that pretty much every night. They are great for holding all of your medications, tissues, water glass, etc. next to you while you are curled up in your favorite cozy spot. I also use them to hold stacks of books and papers when I am at my desk writing and I run out of desk space.

I found the almot exact set we have online, although the colors were less faded, where they were advertised as “vintage Eames era”. If you aren’t familar with the Eames name, Charles and Ray Eames were the noted mid-century designers who, by using their names, you add a gazillion dollars to the price of something.

I really don’t think Charles or Ray Eames had anything to do with these.

Ray and Charles Eames at home, LIFE magazine, 1950.

  Life is too short to stick with a book you aren’t enjoying. This is a recent revelation for me. I always doggedly stuck to books I wasn’t enjoying as if it was somehow a virtue. No more! So many books, so little time. I’m not wasting that time anymore. The only time I can remember abandoning a book previously was in 2001, with German writer W. G. Sebold’s Austerlitz. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award that year. Sebald, who died at age 57 that same year, was considered by many to be a great author and possible future winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature until his unexpected death in a car crash. The novel sounds like it ought to be great, but I found it inscrutable. I was about 5 pages in, and I think it was still the first sentence continuing from the first page, running on and making no sense to me. I threw in the towel, figuring I wasn’t smart enough for Sebald.

  I was recently defeated again. Not because I wasn’t smart enough, I just didn’t care what happened to any of the characters. At all. Any of them. This time it was Eleanor Catton’s The Luminaries, winner of the Man Booker prize in 2013. Maybe I should avoid books that win critics awards? This huge tome (848 pages) was donated to the Little Free Library I steward. I was intrigued. It was free. I needed something to read that would occupy me through a flight to Iceland and back, as well as any down time in between. Never mind that I could barely lift it. We went to Iceland in the summer. It is now very close to January of the next year. I got about 200 pages in. I couldn’t keep track of who was who. I didn’t care.  Finally, common sense (well, actually it was Bob’s common sense) had me send the book back out into the Little Free Library this morning. I want to enjoy my reading time, and if one of the rare chances I get to lose myself in a book is when I am sick, it’s not going to be a book that is torture to read. I saw somewhere that The Luminaries was being made into a limited television series. Yippee.

Now I am free to read a book that sounds right up my alley: The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce. It sounds utterly charming, quirky, and very British. I’m in!

      Color coordinated clothing and clothing that isn’t pajamas are over-rated. I’m wearing might-as-well-be-pajamas clothes right now. Leggings, old stretchy cardigan, pulled-out-of-shape knit skirt. I am neither color-coordinated nor fashionable at this moment either. Am I warm and comfortable? YES! I figure I’ve always been more of a “fashion don’t” than a “fashion do.” Whatever. My sisters both have amazing senses of style and fashion. My mother despaired of my disdain for matching handbags and shoes, for scarves, for all of the little details that pull an outfit together. One of the reasons I hated high school was the judgment being passed based on appearances and wardrobe. I was smart and cute enough. Why wasn’t that enough? Not having the right label of jeans or shoes seemed (still seems) such a stupid basis for popularity and friendship.

What Not to Wear. Unless you’re me!

In a brief moment as I was putting this sick-day outfit on, I thought, “None of the blue tones go together.” And immediately after that I thought, “Tell that to Mother Nature when a field of wild flowers of all different colors and tones is in bloom.” Colors go together. Period. Somebody told me once that the outfit I was wearing looked like a fruit salad. Cool, that’s what I say.

  Take care of yourself. Stay warm. Eat healthy, whole foods. Remember to splurge on a bit of dark chocolate and other things you enjoy now and then. If you do get sick, stay home.  It’s best for you, your co-workers, and anyone you might come into contact with. If you are lucky, like me, it will be that much better when you get back to the job you love. And please, consider getting a pet from your local shelter.

Things I’ve thought way too much about while home sick I hate calling in sick to work. That's a new thing for me, because for the first time in ages I love my job and miss it when I am not there.

[rilenerocks]

 I know that the deepest part of the ocean is the Marianas trench. I learned from a brilliant scientist who taught a class called Emergence of Life that water in the takes up between 50-70% of a human body.

For as long as I can remember, I’ve spent time submerged in the liquidy depths of me. While out in the world, doing the average activities that people do, I know I appear to be just like anyone else. I pass for normal. But I don’t really think I am and I never have. While lots of people seem just fine skimming along on the surface of daily life, I was always digging and probing and pondering. I rarely had a conversation with anyone that I didn’t rerun in my head, dissecting it, trying to figure out what else was there that didn’t show up on the first cursory pass. I always thought there was something else below the surface. Additionally I generally seemed to remember a lot more than other people. For example, I’d remember an incident or a series of them which I’d try to recall with someone. I received a lot of blank looks and comments stating that they had no idea what I was talking about. I realized that while it’s impossible to access all of our memories, some people actually do what I call “papering over” the things they’d prefer to forget.

While I was growing up I learned that my constant analyzing and revisiting certain topics was not popular with my family and friends. I heard “let it go,” plenty of times. But I didn’t want to and really couldn’t, until I’d exhausted every single possible interpretation of the smallest event to the largest, I couldn’t be satisfied. I think most people just wanted me to shut my mouth. That’s still true today. When I was young and sensed that I’d pushed the limits of patience with people, I’d back away from what I really wanted to do with them. It felt like dancing without a partner. I made people impatient. Always talking too much, digging too much and not leaving well enough alone. I got it then and I get it now. I don’t know if I was born this way or if I developed this trait to try protecting myself from all the uncertainties and fearful events in my childhood. At this point it doesn’t matter. I wish people were more understanding and patient with me.

From my standpoint I think patience is an underrated quality. For the most part, I don’t think people are patient enough. And as our culture becomes more of a pressure cooker, I don’t expect that to improve. Long ago, to help myself survive the rejection of my individual style. I’d turn inward. Withdrawal. I could seem present in a moment but I was actually away, submerged in myself.  I don’t think I’ll ever get to the bottom of me. I can swim around my interior for long periods of time, trying to get to some point in my self-discovery that feels complete. I have an anecdote about that. I was mentioning a story to my son the other day and he said, “I know, I know, I’ve heard this a thousand times.” That might be right. But the story was a seminal moment for me, the moment when I found Michael, my best friend and the only person I knew who was willing to go with me deep under, even when it drove him crazy and when he wished I could just be, instead of working everything to the bone. It was the morning after we first met at a wedding and had spent the entire night before, hanging out together and feeling what for me is still hard to describe, an electrifying fitting together that was outside my previous experience. There was nothing cerebral about it. This was a strange sensory phenomenon that we both recognized and were eager to keep. I was leaving for Chicago the next day and we went to the home of my ride where a number of mutual friends were gathered. There were people struggling emotionally with their relationships, including Michael’s girlfriend who wasn’t thrilled by his lack of attention to her the evening before. Always a helper, I plunged into all the dynamics around me, trying to smooth things over and make some sort of peace that jangly morning. Michael sat silent, stonily staring straight ahead and after awhile, I realized I was getting nowhere with anyone. So I announced my apparent failure and said, “now I’m going to withdraw.” That drew Michael’s only response, one word – “don’t.”

That was a stunner that changed my life. When I returned from my trip home, I found Michael and asked him to come to my house so that we could continue to build whatever this thing was between us. After some months of deepening our friendship, I realized that I’d found my spot, my safe place, my best friend, my life partner. And luckily for me, he felt the same way. I was twenty years old. During our forty five years together, we had our issues like everyone else. But in the worst of times, our powerful friendship and the way we fit together carried us through everything. When he died, I knew that kind of steady backup and trust through anything was over for me. A part of me has been deeply immersed in myself with the years of our bond still helping me navigate my new daily life. But I’ve recognized that his steady  presence in my life lent me the ability to be patient and understanding out there in the big world. After all the juggling of my younger days, trying to negotiate the relationships of people around me, I no longer have the impetus to absorb the parts of others that don’t satisfy who I am and how I feel. I am a different version of myself.

I am more than ever likely to withdraw now to my go-to place, internal pool that existed before Michael, that was still in me when he was here, and that is now where I feel my only true fit. He was always sensitive to my departures whereas others had no clue that I was actually totally detached and absent from whatever was happening in front of me. Much of my external behavior is performance. I am lurking below the surface because I truly don’t believe that most people want to be a part of me in the ways that work best for me. They like my parts that work best for them. Some think that having family and good friends is enough to breach the gap I created to process hard times long ago. My experience tells me otherwise. So I’m trying to find ways to survive this life with myself as my only anchor. I still have the strength of what existed in that magical way between Michael and me. I have skills. I’m strong. But I’m tired too. And holding on to what was isn’t an easy thing to do every day. I’m thinking about what I’ve taught myself to try to stay balanced while struggling.

I remember the day of my dad’s funeral. A September morning 30 years ago,  cool and sunny. I was driving by Mt. Hope cemetery to the bakery to pick up cakes and pastries that family and friends would share at my mom’s place after a graveside service. As I drove along, feeling surreal, I found myself thinking what I’d thought so many times before and so many times since. Out there in the world, while I’m engulfed in grief or whatever other feelings of the moment, people are running. They’re playing sports or going for walks. They’re sleeping, making love, birthing babies, dying, crying, working, hiding and virtually any other verb you may want to insert here. Living their lives, dying their deaths, feeling their feels. You have no idea what those outside appearances are concealing. Sometimes they don’t know either. All over the world, life and death go on, and no matter how important your own particular event feels, there is always someone else’s that’s worse. That’s one of my most successful go-to strategies for coping with life, realistic thinking. Sometimes I can make a small event feel like it may have long-range positive consequences to help myself cope with staying balanced.

I was working out in my garden in late August. School was back in session and my house is on a pathway home for lots of kids who come rushing by at the end of their day. Two middle school-aged boys were riding their bikes down the street when the smaller one of the two screeched on his brakes and careened over to the sidewalk in front of my house yelling, “dude, you have to see this giant flower!” He’d spied one of my massive hydrangeas and was knocked out by it. I smiled and said, “pretty cool, right? I think you guys are very special for paying attention to nature. Lots of kids wouldn’t have noticed.” They smiled and rode away. I saw them in a different place about two weeks later and recognized them. I said, “hey, aren’t you those smart guys who stopped to look at my garden?” They looked surprised but pleased. Yesterday, I was out again and they were going by the house, dressed in pajamas for what I surmised was a special day at school. I hadn’t noticed them but the small one said hi and waved as he went by. I hope what I said to them and my presence during their time going up and back to school will stick with them, both in regard to the nature stuff and in the fact that an old lady can be someone worth engaging. I draw energy from stuff like that.

As my dive goes further, I find I’m trying to work things out in my dreams. I don’t know a lot about how the subconscious functions but in recent days I’ve dreamed that Michael was just outside, mowing the lawn. Then I dreamed that though I knew he was dead, I also knew part of him was alive and living with another family. So I went to retrieve him. As I approached where he lived, he appeared, looking wonderful and accompanied by our beloved collie Flash who looked like he did at six months old. That dream woke me from the sheer joy of it. I also dreamed of my dear friend Julie who’s in hospice now. I had driven back to her home for a second visit and she answered the door looking healthy, feeling stronger, and again I felt relief and delight. My sleeping mind is swimming with with these images which are wishes and small comforts compared to reality. I don’t pretend to get it but the days following these nighttime interludes start better than the ones that have no evening respite from reality. And then there are my daydreams usually brought on my music or activities that remind me of old times or a surprise photo that can elicit powerful surges of desire and ache.

While preparing a sizable family meal which I’d done so often in the past, my day was infused with essence of Michael, to the point when I stopped to write him this letter: Dear Michael,

I’ve spent the day chopping and mixing and cooking all the food that goes along with preparing for company and a festive holiday meal. So that means you are huge in both your absence and your presence. I wish I could talk to you about what this feels like and have you answer me in real time. Maybe you are. The other day I realized that I hadn’t seen monarchs in a few days so I made a note for my records that they’d departed for the year. When I peeked out into the back yard this morning, the white butterfly bush was alive with them in addition to the painted ladies and the sulphurs that are still hanging around. That bush is smack in the middle of what was your tomato garden and I’m not kidding, that shrub is massive and still producing new blooms that I’ve coaxed along by diligent deadheading. But the ground is full of your sweat and love and I don’t give a flying fuck about how mystical and bizarre it all seems – I know you’re in there. One day we both will be because when I finally become ash and am rejoined with yours I want the kids to dump at least part of us there. Part amongst my flowers too and the rest? Apparently we’ll become some piece of glass art, showing up as silvery streaks in the middle of our colors which you know will be red and black. Maybe a little green for depth but definitely our political colors. In any case, when the monarchs were there this morning, was I wrong to feel you’d sent a few back my way? But no more. Those guys need to get out of Dodge because it’s getting chilly. Thanks, though. So back to the kitchen. It’s about a thousand degrees in there and I’m at the sink, cleaning carrots and you come in and I say, “man, I’m really hot,” and you say, “you’re telling me.” That same old line which I pretend I don’t like but of course I love it. Then you come up behind me and grab some random body part and move suggestively and I say, “go on, you perverse old man, get out of here so I can finish up.” I smirk and make some wisecrack but I adore the familiar intimacy. And then you stick your finger into a bowl for a taste and I tell you it’s unsanitary and you laugh and drift into the living room. You have the day off when I’m cooking because you do so much of it in daily life. But you don’t get a pass on the cleanup. I shimmer through these daydreams like an apparition with you and they cloak me in a happiness that’s so transient and ephemeral. I’d love to catch up with a wavelength in time where we are solid and physical instead of the myth we’ve become. My precious boy.

So there that is. I am away for large swaths of time in this watery internal cave because I don’t like a lot of what’s going on in reality. As I slide through my days in real time, I remembered when I read The English Patient back in the early ‘90’s. It was one of those rare films that wasn’t a disappointment to me as so many films based on books can be. Sweeping, beautiful, romantic, passionate and ultimately sad.

  I’ve been taking a class on Persia and Greece and there has been mention of Herodotus and his histories. In the movie, a tragic plane crash in the Egyptian desert leaves the wounded heroine in need of medical attention. Her lover carries into a cave where the walls are filled with petroglyphs that include swimmers. As he leaves her with food and water, he also gives her his copy of Herodotus, a “good read” as she awaits his return with aid. That’s how I feel now, swimming in a my interior cave with a good read for company hidden away from the rest of the world. Wondering when I’ll come to the surface.

    Withdrawn in the Depths  I know that the deepest part of the ocean is the Marianas trench. I learned from a brilliant scientist who taught a class called Emergence of Life that water in the takes up between 50-70% of a human body.