#Oh if horses talk do dogs also talk? I cannot recall if dogs also talk in the MLP Canon...

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

not really an ask but MY SIBLING DREW YOUR FAIRY FANART!!!!!!!!!

we both love her

AAAA IT’S FAIRY!!!!!

[ineffablegame]

i am begging you on my digital knees, knight of the round table aziraphale and princess crowley. "i thought you were the black knight?" "evil must be fermented everywhere, angel. id rather a dress to armour anyday."

omg I’m sorry but this got so long...  (also published on my Ao3)

537 A.D.

The moment Aziraphale lays a hand on the cloaked figure’s shoulder, intent on dragging him off his horse, he knows he’s made a terrible mistake.

A familiar hum of demonic energy shudders through his gauntlet and up his arm.  He recognizes the aura – sun-warmed scales, shelter from the rain.  Aziraphale releases his grip, but too late, and the momentum topples the figure to the ground with a cry.  The horse gallops out of sight, eyes rolling with fear.

Aziraphale pulls on the reins and half-climbs, half-falls off his own horse.  “Terribly sorry, dear boy, I didn’t mean…”

His voice dwindles as the figure – Crowley, of course it’s Crowley, up to his usual mischief – hobbles upright and pulls back the hood of the cloak. Long, red curls tumble over slim shoulders.  Aziraphale stares.  “Oh. Er.  Dear girl, I mean.”

“That’s dear lady to you,” Crowley snaps.  She presses a hand to the small of her back with a wince.  “Did you have to be so rough?”

“I did say I was sorry.” Aziraphale takes in his adversary’s appearance, curiosity piqued.  He hasn’t seen Crowley like this since the crucifixion.  His eyes catch on her wrists as she pushes the hair out of her face, slim and pale and delicately-veined.  “I thought you were the queen.”

“Incredible.  It’s almost as if the diversion was intentional.”

“So, you’ve sided with Mordred,” Aziraphale surmises.  “Typical.”

“Of course,” says Crowley, gathering her hair back.  Her fingers, deft with the ease of long practice, tie it into a single plait.  “And for the record, Arthur’s not nearly as shiny and perfect as your lot pretends he is.  You’d know, Sir Aziraphale of the Table Round.”

The angel drags his eyes from Crowley’s fingers to meet her golden gaze.  It’s no less disconcerting.  “You know I’m not consulted on these things.”

Crowley scoffs and tosses the plait over her shoulder, head tilted back to expose the pale line of her throat.  Aziraphale drops his gaze to her feet.  Much better. “Why—why the change, if I may ask?  You were the black knight not a fortnight ago.”

“Evil may be fomented in any form,” Crowley says.  “Besides, I’d rather a dress than armor any day.  Much less chafing.”

Aziraphale grudgingly nods. The armor really is abominable, heavy and stuffy and rubbing in all the worst places.  “Well, when you put it that way…”

“You should give it a try.” Crowley steps up to Aziraphale’s steed, eyeing the beast warily as her hand moves to the saddle bags.  The horse pins back its ears but otherwise remains still. She digs around in the bags, pulls out a flask with a grin.  Popping out the stopper, she adds, “You’d make a very pretty lady.  All the lads are mad for your coloring.”

Aziraphale feels his face heat.  “Don’t tease. And that’s only water.”

“Not anymore, it isn’t.” Crowley tips back the flask for a drink. “Tell you what.  Let’s stop fomenting and do a little fermenting instead.”

“I—I can’t,” Aziraphale says.  “I have to find Guinevere and return her to Arthur.”

Crowley waves to the darkening sky above.  “She’s long gone now.  Look, you’ve made the effort; Heaven will be very proud of you.”  Aziraphale dithers, and she adds, “Tell them you came across a young woman alone in the woods.  Deeply troubled.  Possibly Fallen.”  Aziraphale shoots her a look and she waggles her eyebrows.  “C’mon, angel.  A little temptation never hurt anybody.”

Aziraphale feels his resolve – never fortified to begin with – crumble under the demon’s logic.  He plucks the flask from her hand and takes a heavy draft, tasting complex spices, a crisp-fresh finish.

“Well,” he sighs, “best make up a fire, then.”

They spend the next few hours drinking and talking, pleasantries giving way to jokes as the wine loosens their tongues.  At some point, Crowley nicks Aziraphale’s visor and puts it on.  She play-acts a great mouth, opening and closing the lid with each word.  They find the whole thing uproariously funny.  The flask they pass back and forth never runs dry.

Later, drunker still, Crowley announces she has grown weary and lies down to sleep.  Aziraphale watches the dying firelight play across her curves and angles, lighting her hair to polished bronze.  Hand pillowed under one cheek, she watches him watching her.

“Well, don’t sit there like a stone,” she says.  “Come sleep beside me.”

“I…”  Aziraphale’s throat is thick, his tongue clumsy.  “I don’t need to sleep.  Neither do you.”

Crowley shrugs, eyelids drooping.  “S’nice. That’s all.”

Her eyes close, and for a long while, she is silent.  Just when Aziraphale thinks she has fallen asleep, she murmurs, quietly, “He threatened to throw her to the dogs, you know.  Let them tear her apart.”

Aziraphale tenses. Were he sober, he would know better than to take the bait, but the heady fug of alcohol has robbed him of his wits. “Who?”

“Arthur.”  She sounds almost too tired to be scornful – tired after the day’s ride, tired after centuries of watching humans throw one another to the dogs.  She yawns, settles.  “Not so shiny and perfect, after all.”

She falls asleep after that, and Aziraphale watches her long into the night.  He has never learned the human trick of slumber – has never seen a need. But perhaps the drink has something to do with it, or perhaps it is the soul-deep contentment of watching Crowley, still and peaceful.  The sharp angles of her body seem to soften, the nervy strain eases.  He tries to recall the last time he saw her so calm. He finds he cannot.

It may be a waking dream or a figment of his muddled imagination, but sometime later, swimming up from a deep darkness, he feels a light touch on his face.  He is still seated, elbows propped on his knees, but his mind floats elsewhere.  A familiar gaze brushes the edges of consciousness.  A sense of security stretches around him like the boughs of a great, ancient tree.

The next thing he knows, Aziraphale is blinking, muzzy but alert, and the night has given way to dawn. The fire has been covered in dirt and a protective ward laid around the clearing, humming with demonic power.  As Aziraphale stands, dazed, the ward vanishes. He is alone and his horse is gone. Taken by a certain Fallen woman, no doubt.

A scrap of parchment sits on the grass where Crowley had lain, soaking up the morning dew. Aziraphale picks it up, shakes off droplets.  The note is scrawled in charcoal, in a hand known only by angels and demons.

Angel,

Nasty battle coming up.  Camlann.  I’m leaving before it gets really out of hand.  You should do the same.  DO NOT give me cause to come back.

-C

“Foul fiend,” Aziraphale mutters.

Sighing, he tucks the note away and rises stiffly to his feet.  The trudge back to Camelot is long and lonely, but he will get there eventually.

[ibtk]

Book Review: Amber and Clay by Laura Amy Schlitz & Julia Iredale (2021)

(Full disclosure: I received a free ARC for review through Edelweiss and Library Thing's Early Reviewers program. Content warning for child abuse, animal abuse, and sexual assault.)

The children I spoke of before were like that. They weren’t alike, but they fit together, like lock and key. The boy, Rhaskos, was a slave boy. Unlucky at first. A Thracian boy—(Thrace is north of Greece) —redheaded, nervy, neglected. A clever boy who was taught he was stupid. A beautiful boy whose mother scarred him with a knife. The girl, Melisto, started life lucky. A rich man’s daughter, and a proper Greek. Owl-eyed Melisto: a born fighter, prone to tantrums, hating the loom. A wild girl, chosen by Artemis, and lucky, as I said before— except for one thing: she died young. This is their story. When it's over, if you like, you can tell me what it means.

"I want to tell you the things I never told anyone, in case this is my last chance. When I was alive, I didn’t talk much. So much of what I felt was a secret. I think that’s what I loved about the bear. Neither of us had any words."

Again we walked and talked. I never talked to anyone like that. No one ever talked like that to me. I talk to you still, Melisto. I’ve been talking to you ever since.

The red-haired boy variously known as Rhaskos, Thrax, and Pyrrhos is many things, though few of his masters care to know. He's Thracian nobility, with the scars to prove it - and also a slave, belonging to the wealthy Alexidemus and his soldier son Menon in Thessaly, and then to a humble potter named Phaistus in Athens. He loves horses and is as adept at handling them as he will one day become at drawing and sculpting them. He is a contemporary and friend of Sokrates, though he is powerless to stop his execution. He is an orphan, with a dolphin for a mother; a mother who loves him so fiercely that she curses a ghost to help set him free. He is like clay: common at first glance, but also not; capable of transmuting into creations lovely, clever, and full of value.

The owl-eyed girl called Melisto is seemingly as lucky as Rhaskos is not: the only child of a wealthy Athenian, Melisto wants for nothing. But she is a wild (read: untamed) girl child in a rigidly gendered society that has already predetermined Melisto's future for her: marriage, motherhood, a life of quiet domesticity. When, at the age of ten, Melisto is chosen to serve the goddess Athena as a Little Bear, her life opens up before her at Brauron; this is who she was meant to be. Like all good things, it cannot last.

Rhaskos and Melisto's destinies collide when Melisto frees a bear cub that is to be sacrificed to Athena. Or maybe their paths met even earlier, when Meda/Thratta was ripped from her toddler son. Perhaps the gods nudged them towards each other from birth. Alternately, the gods have nothing to do with it. Who can say? (Hermes, maybe. He has a lot to say and loves to hear himself talk!)

AMBER AND CLAY is ... not what I expected. Normally I'd steer clear of a contemporary (or any!) book styled after the ancient, epic poems (I positively labored through THE ODYSSEY and THE ILIAD in high school!), but the visual element sucked me in. I was under the (mistaken!) impression that AMBER AND CLAY would be heavier in illustrations than it actually is, almost as though part graphic novel. As it turns out, the illustrations - of archaeological artifacts - are a little sparser than I hoped, but they tie into the narrative quite nicely and add another layer of wonder and surprise to the story. The "exhibits" are really well done and do not disappoint.

Additionally, the synopsis had me thinking that this would be a supernatural romance; and while AMBER AND CLAY is indeed a love story, Rhaskos and Melisto are entirely too young to hook up, even by the time they finally meet near the story's end. (It's hard not to envision them - especially Rhaskos - as older than they are, both because the story seemingly stretching across years, and so much happens to these crazy kids to last several lifetimes.) Instead, this is a different kind of love story: AMBER AND CLAY tells of the love between a mother and her son; a father and his daughter; a teacher and his students; a girl and a bear; a ghost and her tether to the earth.

And despite my reservations about those epic poems, Schlitz both honors the form and breathes new life into it. While Melisto tells her story in prose, Rhaskos speaks in verse; and the gods sometimes address us commoners in turn-counterturn, occasionally using more complicated linguistic techniques like elegian couplets (which I barely recollect from HS English). This all sounds incredibly tricky and complicated (and undoubtedly is), but Schlitz pulls it off without a hitch. AMBER AND CLAY is fun and engaging, with a surprising sense of humor and expert sense of dramatic flair.

“Oh, Phaistus, look at his hair! He’ll be beautiful once he’s healed. We’ll call him Pyrrhos!” As if I were a dog. Pyrrhos means fiery. Half the red-haired slaves in Athens are called Pyrrhos.

It is, dare I say, exceedingly readable.

Honestly, I let out a little groan when I saw the "Cast of Characters" on page one, complete with various households and multiple monikers for the same people; but the story, the characters, their relationships to one another - all are easy enough to follow.

Schlitz's characters, both those based on historical figures and those spun from imagination and whimsy, are so full of life that they practically jump off the page. Rhaskos and Melisto; Meda and Lysandra; Phaistus and Zosima; Menon and Lykos; and, of course, Sokrates. Likewise, her descriptions of Greek life and customs left me hungering to learn more. Naturally, the most fascinating custom - that of the Little Bears of Brauron - is also that which we know the least about.

The scenes featuring Melisto and the bear cub are among my favorite in the book. In a story filled with animal sacrifice, this little slice of compassion and respect is life-affirming; to wit:

It turned in slow circles and collapsed with its rump pressed against her thigh. Melisto put one hand on it. It seemed to her that she had never touched anything more real than the bear cub.

For a moment her mind slipped back into the past. She recalled the bruises she had carried from her mother’s pinches, and the sore patches on her scalp from Lysandra’s hair-pulling. She remembered the loathing in her mother’s face that struck terror into her soul. She had never been afraid of the bear like that.

and

On the nights when she waded into the bay and watched the moon, she was barely conscious of the fact that it was she who saw, and the moon that was being watched. In the same way, she did not measure how much she loved the bear. She was the bear.

Likewise, Rhaskos's interactions with Grau/Phoibe are so wonderfully tender, my heart aches just to think back on them. From the moment he renames her (grau means hag) - a change of name that's much more respectful than those Rhaskos was forced to accept - Rhaskos treats his donkey charge with decency and kindness. The same kindness that he himself longs for.

Animals know when things get better. People might not know, but animals do. That very first day, Grau knew I was going to be good to her and I swear to you, she was glad.

Cue the "what is this salty discharge" gifs.

AMBER AND CLAY is such a beautiful story, and I'm glad I took a chance on it. Iambic pentameter be damned.      

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/3861642614 

[draculalive]

Dr. Seward's Diary.

1 October. -- I am puzzled afresh about Renfield. His moods change so rapidly that I find it difficult to keep touch of them, and as they always mean something more than his own well-being, they form a more than interesting study. This morning, when I went to see him after his repulse of Van Helsing, his manner was that of a man commanding destiny. He was, in fact, commanding destiny -- subjectively. He did not really care for any of the things of mere earth; he was in the clouds and looked down on all the weaknesses and wants of us poor mortals. I thought I would improve the occasion and learn something, so I asked him:---

"What about the flies these times?" He smiled on me in quite a superior sort of way -- such a smile as would have become the face of Malvolio -- as he answered me:---

"The fly, my dear sir, has one striking feature; its wings are typical of the aërial powers of the psychic faculties. The ancients did well when they typified the soul as a butterfly!"

I thought I would push his analogy to its utmost logically, so I said quickly:---

"Oh, it is a soul you are after now, is it?" His madness foiled his reason, and a puzzled look spread over his face as, shaking his head with a decision which I had but seldom seen in him, he said:---

"Oh, no, oh no! I want no souls. Life is all I want." Here he brightened up; "I am pretty indifferent about it at present. Life is all right; I have all I want. You must get a new patient, doctor, if you wish to study zoöphagy!"

This puzzled me a little, so I drew him on:---

"Then you command life; you are a god, I suppose?" He smiled with an ineffably benign superiority.

"Oh no! Far be it from me to arrogate to myself the attributes of the Deity. I am not even concerned in His especially spiritual doings. If I may state my intellectual position I am, so far as concerns things purely terrestrial, somewhat in the position which Enoch occupied spiritually!" This was a poser to me. I could not at the moment recall Enoch's appositeness; so I had to ask a simple question, though I felt that by so doing I was lowering myself in the eyes of the lunatic:---

"And why with Enoch?"

"Because he walked with God." I could not see the analogy, but did not like to admit it; so I harked back to what he had denied:---

"So you don't care about life and you don't want souls. Why not?" I put my question quickly and somewhat sternly, on purpose to disconcert him. The effort succeeded; for an instant he unconsciously relapsed into his old servile manner, bent low before me, and actually fawned upon me as he replied:---

"I don't want any souls, indeed, indeed! I don't. I couldn't use them if I had them; they would be no manner of use to me. I couldn't eat them or -- -- " He suddenly stopped and the old cunning look spread over his face, like a wind-sweep on the surface of the water. "And doctor, as to life, what is it after all? When you've got all you require, and you know that you will never want, that is all. I have friends -- good friends -- like you, Dr. Seward"; this was said with a leer of inexpressible cunning. "I know that I shall never lack the means of life!"

I think that through the cloudiness of his insanity he saw some antagonism in me, for he at once fell back on the last refuge of such as he -- a dogged silence. After a short time I saw that for the present it was useless to speak to him. He was sulky, and so I came away.

Later in the day he sent for me. Ordinarily I would not have come without special reason, but just at present I am so interested in him that I would gladly make an effort. Besides, I am glad to have anything to help to pass the time. Harker is out, following up clues; and so are Lord Godalming and Quincey. Van Helsing sits in my study poring over the record prepared by the Harkers; he seems to think that by accurate knowledge of all details he will light upon some clue. He does not wish to be disturbed in the work, without cause. I would have taken him with me to see the patient, only I thought that after his last repulse he might not care to go again. There was also another reason: Renfield might not speak so freely before a third person as when he and I were alone.

I found him sitting out in the middle of the floor on his stool, a pose which is generally indicative of some mental energy on his part. When I came in, he said at once, as though the question had been waiting on his lips:---

"What about souls?" It was evident then that my surmise had been correct. Unconscious cerebration was doing its work, even with the lunatic. I determined to have the matter out. "What about them yourself?" I asked. He did not reply for a moment but looked all round him, and up and down, as though he expected to find some inspiration for an answer.

"I don't want any souls!" he said in a feeble, apologetic way. The matter seemed preying on his mind, and so I determined to use it -- to "be cruel only to be kind." So I said:---

"You like life, and you want life?"

"Oh yes! but that is all right; you needn't worry about that!"

"But," I asked, "how are we to get the life without getting the soul also?" This seemed to puzzle him, so I followed it up:---

"A nice time you'll have some time when you're flying out there, with the souls of thousands of flies and spiders and birds and cats buzzing and twittering and miauing all round you. You've got their lives, you know, and you must put up with their souls!" Something seemed to affect his imagination, for he put his fingers to his ears and shut his eyes, screwing them up tightly just as a small boy does when his face is being soaped. There was something pathetic in it that touched me; it also gave me a lesson, for it seemed that before me was a child -- only a child, though the features were worn, and the stubble on the jaws was white. It was evident that he was undergoing some process of mental disturbance, and, knowing how his past moods had interpreted things seemingly foreign to himself, I thought I would enter into his mind as well as I could and go with him. The first step was to restore confidence, so I asked him, speaking pretty loud so that he would hear me through his closed ears:---

"Would you like some sugar to get your flies round again?" He seemed to wake up all at once, and shook his head. With a laugh he replied:---

"Not much! flies are poor things, after all!" After a pause he added, "But I don't want their souls buzzing round me, all the same."

"Or spiders?" I went on.

"Blow spiders! What's the use of spiders? There isn't anything in them to eat or" -- he stopped suddenly, as though reminded of a forbidden topic.

"So, so!" I thought to myself, "this is the second time he has suddenly stopped at the word 'drink'; what does it mean?" Renfield seemed himself aware of having made a lapse, for he hurried on, as though to distract my attention from it:---

"I don't take any stock at all in such matters. 'Rats and mice and such small deer,' as Shakespeare has it, 'chicken-feed of the larder' they might be called. I'm past all that sort of nonsense. You might as well ask a man to eat molecules with a pair of chop-sticks, as to try to interest me about the lesser carnivora, when I know of what is before me."

"I see," I said. "You want big things that you can make your teeth meet in? How would you like to breakfast on elephant?"

"What ridiculous nonsense you are talking!" He was getting too wide awake, so I thought I would press him hard. "I wonder," I said reflectively, "what an elephant's soul is like!"

The effect I desired was obtained, for he at once fell from his high-horse and became a child again.

"I don't want an elephant's soul, or any soul at all!" he said. For a few moments he sat despondently. Suddenly he jumped to his feet, with his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement. "To hell with you and your souls!" he shouted. "Why do you plague me about souls? Haven't I got enough to worry, and pain, and distract me already, without thinking of souls!" He looked so hostile that I thought he was in for another homicidal fit, so I blew my whistle. The instant, however, that I did so he became calm, and said apologetically:---

"Forgive me, Doctor; I forgot myself. You do not need any help. I am so worried in my mind that I am apt to be irritable. If you only knew the problem I have to face, and that I am working out, you would pity, and tolerate, and pardon me. Pray do not put me in a strait-waistcoat. I want to think and I cannot think freely when my body is confined. I am sure you will understand!" He had evidently self-control; so when the attendants came I told them not to mind, and they withdrew. Renfield watched them go; when the door was closed he said, with considerable dignity and sweetness:---

"Dr. Seward, you have been very considerate towards me. Believe me that I am very, very grateful to you!" I thought it well to leave him in this mood, and so I came away. There is certainly something to ponder over in this man's state. Several points seem to make what the American interviewer calls "a story," if one could only get them in proper order. Here they are:---

Will not mention "drinking."

Fears the thought of being burdened with the "soul" of anything.

Has no dread of wanting "life" in the future.

Despises the meaner forms of life altogether, though he dreads being haunted by their souls.

Logically all these things point one way! he has assurance of some kind that he will acquire some higher life. He dreads the consequence -- the burden of a soul. Then it is a human life he looks to!

And the assurance -- ?

Merciful God! the Count has been to him, and there is some new scheme of terror afoot!

[tarzaposts]

Leadership & Respect with Animals

I got this brain storm, and though I’d write about it too...

Since I’ve had all kinds of animals all my life..surely I’ve trained them all.

I have had dogs, parrots, parakeets, cats, guinea pigs, fishes, and the main thing with animals are..you need to talk their language, all animals learn by energy and pressure., different motions and ques. You just need to know HOW!

When I was under 20 I moved out to  U.S, I’ve always felt more to be American than Finnish..I felt so at home there than.

I started out as an Au pair..oh, boy..totally not my thing..the family I stayed at had 5 parrots, 1 doberman and 2 kids that were so spoiled brats that .. I could not handle that kind of attitude... money talked..bullshit walked..sorry...

oh..boy..well, surely you can imagine how it turned out..  :)

Yes I found myself spending time, by training the Blue and Yellow Macaw..we fell totally  in love..it came walking to my room in the mornings,  knocked on the door and climbed up to my bed and started to kiss my face..nibble at my ear rings that got all twisted .. he was so funny..and he came everywhere I went, we drove to the pet store by car and got its feed...etc,..he came by the pool when I was outside... it was my buddy, and we totally understood each other..

Well, macaws usually have 1 owner and that’s it, either they like women or men..hardly both..since it’s hard to know what sex they are you need to make an DNA test..but ., they surely choose the owner themselves.

They are like a 4 y kid that wants all your attention and does all kinds of things to get it.. if not they they do a lot of harm, destroy furniture or what ever they can get their beak to,  and it they are depressed..they pull out their feathers..yes, I have seen it too..poor things

People don’t understand the responsibility that comes along with an parrot/ animals, it needs care taking 24/7, My macaw had a room of it’s own    :)

well back to my point...

Well, as.the other parrots were jealous at the attention it got from me and they tried to mingle along, but the macaw saw it differently.. there was a  Aratinga solstitialis, that kept screaming all the time..it has a terrible noisy scream..and it was mean..tried to bite every time it got close to you.., it had this thing going one that it wanted to be close to you, but not petted..so I left it surely alone. Also  Amazona oratrix, don’t recall which amazon it was ..and a Psittacus erithacus ..since its a long time ago don’t remember that clear.

Of course there was this doberman..well guess who was taking it out and trained it as well...it comes naturally  to me , I understand and love animals to the bits..they hear me  and we communicate  with understanding.

All my parrots and parakeets was free in my house, they sat on my shoulder, went outside for a car drive, store etc..if I said them to go to bed, they went to their cage and closed the door behind them..yes..believe they did it ...and more..

I remember 1 time  I had my Baby , the name of the Parakeet with me to a grocery store when I lived in Florida..this customer service lady came to me and sais, “Mam, you have a beautiful parrot, but sorry you cannot have it in here..well surely at that time my Baby, was jumping all over the water melons ha haaa.. and I totally agreed than..oh well one funny story..of many more..

It’s all normal to me, I see an animal..I communicate..

I’ve had a doberman here in Finland as well, but not my breed, I have had Cavalier King Charles spaniels, Chinese crest and now also 2 puppies that I train now....

I am so thrilled that I can help people, with animals

I just had a client that had a Chinese crest with fear issues, it had bit twice the neighbor and  its son, it was on its way to put down, “‘cause of bad behavior.”

I call it misunderstanding..dogs and horses they all need an SAFE but FIRM Leader!

Happy Ending

We’ll I trained that dog, but mainly the whole family, as they are the owners..the dogs needed 2-3 times of my time and coaching the family to be a leader. All problems cleared and they are a happy family with a dog that has an perfect happy personality as a Chinese crests should have..sorry to say, but this breed is very sensitive and have a lot of misbehaving IF NOT understood!!! Easily turns into fear and aggressive attitudes if not safe.

Here are my precious  some of them that I had photos of..since there was NOOO Digital cameras at that time..heres only a few of my darlings..

I used to work with an magician, and there I got my Blue and Yellow macaw.., the other  Macaw  belov is from the U.S times..

Enjoy..this is just a short inside story of many many more...

This is MY beloved LOUKI that I had in the U.s he slept under covers in my bed with me, it was SO SMART..he was stolen when I left back to Finland and attacked this one guy who came to our apartment when I was away... also BABY that was a parokeet like the one sitting with my other balck cavaljier nose to nose :)

[thoughtsandlife23]

When In Paris

@flabbergabst I’m your valentine. You wanted me to surprise you so I hope you like this Gabbs. It got a bit long though and please don’t kill me for the ending.

Also I wanted to thank @dragonydreams for betaing this fic for me, if it wasn’t for her I don’t think this fic would have made actual sense, thank you so much it was such a big help.

Thanks for organising this @freyreh

Crosposted to AO3

Len wouldn’t call himself the giving type (being the mayor you were expected to be cold), but when his sister had told him that the one thing she had always [wished] to do was go to Paris, he knew that he would have to grant it. Especially when she had given him the puppy dog eyes (not that it always worked on him that is, he was just a really good brother, honest). So now here they were, his sister leaning her head against his shoulder while she looked at the sunset as the plane descended to the tarmac of Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris, France.

 He sighed as Lisa excitedly got off the plane while talking about everything she wanted to visit and see as they walked towards baggage claim to get their bags. He nodded along at her excited words, trying to block them out and make sure that the bags they got were theirs when he spotted familiar blonde hair on the other side of the airport.

“Sara,” he thought as he dropped the bag on the floor and ran to catch up to her, he put his hand on the blonde’s shoulder and was disappointed when she turned around only for him to see confused brown eyes instead of the gorgeous blue ones that he used to love staring at.

 “Oh sorry,” he said as he turned to walk back to where his sister was waiting, no doubt with a scowl on her face.

 “Lenny, thank God,” Lisa grumbled as he returned to where she was standing and struggling with lifting the bags from the machine. “Where did you go?”

 “Nowhere,” he said with a blush on his face as he recalled his mistake earlier.

 “Nowhere?” Lisa questioned with a raised eyebrow. “Don’t think I didn’t hear you say Sara’s name. Really, Lenny?”

 “What?” Len asked defensively.

 “It’s been four years, Lenny,” Lisa replied with a sad tone in her voice. “And you’re still not over her.”

 “I am,” he insisted.

 “Really?” Lisa asked softly. “Because what just happened really isn’t good evidence for that.”

“Let’s just, let’s just go,” Len insisted as he walked faster to the terminal exit.

 “Sure, but this conversation isn’t finished,” Lisa insisted as she walked next to him to the terminal exit and raised her hand to hail the cab that was about to speed past them.

The conversation was done, at least for now, and that was enough for him. He sighed and put the bags in the trunk of the cab, got inside, and leaned his head against the window. He was so tired of everything and these feelings that he may still have for his ex.

 He had met Sara Lance during his last year of college and fallen for her six months after meeting her. Their relationship had been a whirlwind that had taken him by surprise. Sara had been a third year majoring in medicine while he had been majoring in international relations (which had been ironic considering he absolutely hated politics and everything that it stood for).

He had met her after accidentally running into her one day after leaving the library. He had been carrying a stack of books in his hands, completely focused on not running into anything or anyone when, just his luck, he accidentally trips and body slams into someone, causing Leonard, the books in his arms, and the person he ran into to fall to the floor.

He had gotten up and was about to apologize to the person but when he turned to her he had been stunned speechless by the laugh that she let out, blue eyes shining with mirth at their predicament and he couldn’t help but join in. They must have looked like crazy people standing there right outside of the library laughing their asses off but, in that moment, they could care less about what anyone thought, they were lost in their own little world.

"I'm so sorry," Len had said with a blush after they had gotten themselves under control and stopped laughing.

“It’s fine,” she had said still with a smile on her face and then held out her hand. “I’m Sara, Sara Lance.”

“I’m Leonard, Leonard Snart but you can call me Len,” he had replied with a laugh.

"Well, there goes my coffee,” she had said as he looked down and saw the spilled latte on the floor. “And your mountain of books, too.”

 As they both leaned down to pick up some of the books, Sara asked, “Hey want to go out for coffee after you’ve finished reading this entire mountain of books?”

“Sure,” Len had replied and coffee had lead to the start of a  beautiful friendship and love story. They had been friends for almost a year when he had asked her out on a date. He would never forget her response of, “Finally! I thought you were never going to ask.”

He had been so happy. When they started going out things were great; they went on a date and she kissed him first (they liked to tell everyone that he kissed her first but no one really believed them), she had even met his sister and he had met her sister and had gotten along great with her.

He and Sara had spent Christmas and New Year's together, kissing under the mistletoe and watching the fireworks together. And he could swear that he would never love anyone the way he loved her. He had told her that when they were lying in bed together and he had expected her to reply with the same thing but all she had done was smile and kiss him.

He should have taken that as a warning, really, because he had learned a long time ago that things never stayed this good. More specifically, every time he was happy and content things went to shit.

 Everything going to shit began after he had graduated and started his new job at one of the most prestigious firms in Central City. He had chosen to stay there because Sara had still been in college and he had wanted to stay near her, so he had gotten an apartment near the university and by then Lisa had been in her first year of university.

 Then things had started getting out of hand. Sara had apparently discovered the joys of partying, spending almost every night in a bar with friends and dancing the night away. It had created arguments between them that were forgotten about, arguments which began to pile up again and again. It had lead to one of their biggest fights yet and she had left. He had waited up for her after their fight planning to cook her a romantic dinner or surprise her with breakfast but when he had gotten home the day after from work, he had noticed all of her things missing and hangers on the floor.

 He had called her phone only to get a message saying, “Your call cannot be connected“. He had tried her sister and even gone to her dorm but all her friends had no idea where she had gone. He had been stunned and unable to process anything. Later, when he had been able to think clearly again, he had called Laurel again only for her to tell him that Sara had quit university and no one knew where she was; not even their parents.

 He had lost it then, had grabbed everything that reminded him of Sara and thrown it against the wall. Picture frames shattered into a thousand pieces and the pictures in them fluttered to the ground in a million pieces. Clothes she left behind had been put in boxes and he had never gotten more drunk in his entire life than the month that she had left him.

It had taken Lisa coming home from college with a resigned and tired look on her face during the second month and throwing away all the bottles that had littered the floor to get him out of his funk and get him to start eating again. She had sat down on his couch after she had cleaned everything out and hugged him, begging him to please get out of this funk because she still needed him and that he was all she had.

He had hugged her back and promised to do better, vowing to himself that he would forget about Sara and move on. He had showered and the next day gone to work; he spent the next four years throwing himself into work. He had tried to go on dates but they had never been successful because they were either not Sara or too much like Sara, he always found flaws for them that resulted in them never going past a first date or a one night stand.

After four years, he had admitted to himself that no one would ever hold a candle to how he felt about Sara. He still loved her and he didn’t know how to feel about that. She had hurt him by leaving and yet he didn’t know what he would do if he ever saw her again, whether he would kiss her or glare, he guessed that particular question would never be answered.

 On the seventh day of their stay in Paris, Len found himself alone. Lisa had met a man named Cisco Ramon in one of the cafes two days ago and needless to say, she was infatuated, choosing to change her itinerary so she could tour the country with him instead. This had left Len alone to tour the city by himself, something which he was unexpectedly happy about because it gave him the chance to be alone and decide which places he wanted to go to.

Today he had decided he decided to go to the Louvre, one of the most popular museums in Paris. He loved museums, loved seeing the pieces of art by various artists. His first stop was the Denan Wing where he was enticed with the portrait of Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, he loved the painting especially the intricate part of it as well the use of dark colors instead of the usual bright colors of blue, yellow or red.

 He walked around the building for almost four hours just looking at the art pieces and ended up in the Richelieu Wing. He was particularly fascinated with the sculpture of the horses of Marly which were large marble statues that were created in the 18th century. He also loved the Napoleon IIII apartments; he loved the color of them and how much they resembled what the history books said.

He bought coffee and was about to go to another wing when he bumped into someone. He grimaced as hot coffee dripped along his fingers and to the floor. He looked up to apologize and saw the last person that he had expected to see in Paris. It was Sara, she still looked as gorgeous as the day that he had met her, blonde hair in a messy top bun and wearing a brown leather jacket over a white shirt and jeans. Nothing about her had changed.

He felt the wind knocked out of him as she looked up, he saw the look in her eyes change the minute she realized it was him, a sad smile appeared on her face before she quickly wrapped her arms around him. His arms flailed at his sides; he had no idea whether he should wrap his arms around her or just leave them there, seeing no other option that wouldn’t look awkward he decided to reciprocate and wrap his arms around her in return.

He really shouldn’t have because she still smelled the same as she did before, Sara had always preferred a frosted apple scent (which was ironic because it had a sweet smell but Sara, he had decided during his relationship with her, was anything but sweet, no he decided she was deadly and enticing) that engulfed his senses and took him back to their college days and reminded him of days spent lounging in bed with her and doing nothing but kissing and being happy just because they could. It reminds him of times when they used to take drives up the coast to just watch the sunset and all he would do then was stare at her just sitting on the hood of the car staring at the sky with the sunlight hitting her face, looking gorgeous.

 “How are you?” Sara asked hesitantly as she pulled away from him.

“I’m good, I’m here with Lisa actually,” he replied with a strained smile on his face. He wants to get out of there, wants to forget about this meeting and seeing her again, wants to put a stop to the way that his heart sped up when she had smiled and hugged him, wants to shower and scrub away the feeling of her hands on his body and the feelings and memories that they bring up.

"Here," Sara said as she handed him a piece of paper with what he guessed is her number. “I have to go but let’s do coffee sometime; it’d be good to catch up.”

She looks up at him so eagerly and so earnestly that he doesn’t want to disappoint her. That’s always been one of his problems; ever since the day he met her he has found it difficult to resist and disappoint her. So he took the piece of paper that she’s written her number on and tears off a piece, grabs the pen from her and writes his number in it.

“Call me or maybe I’ll call you;” he says as he leaves. He tries to walk normally but even he knows that he performs some kind of sprint as he nears the exit of the museum wing.

 He becomes a mess the minute he returns to his hotel, out of breath and still reeling from his encounter with Sara. It feels like his chest and head were about to explode in pain and an endless amount of questions keep streaming through his mind: Why had she left him, Was it because she didn’t love him enough? Is she going to call? The most important question to him is: “What is he going to do if she calls, is he going to ignore it or answer it?”

 He has so many questions going through his brain that he was starting to get a migraine, he tried to turn his mind off so that he could take some form of a nap but that only lasted for two hours before he decided that the best thing to do was stare at the ceiling. His staring at the ceiling was interrupted by the sound of a phone. He quickly got up and saw Sara’s number on the screen. He scrambled to grab the phone and stared at it for almost a minute frozen in fear before he took a deep breath and hit accept.

 “Hey,” a soft voice said as he answered the phone. “It’s Sara.”

 “I know," he breathed softly into the phone.

 “Right," Sara said as she cleared her throat. “So do you want to meet for coffee or dinner tomorrow maybe?”

 “Yeah, dinner sounds fine. Where?” Len said reluctantly.

 “Um, how about Le Cinq, it’s this really good restaurant; definitely one of my favorites here in Paris. It has some of the best lobsters and truffles ever," Sara said excitedly as she told him of the restaurant.

 After confirming the meeting place and the time, Len hung up and nose dived into the bed feeling nervous and second guessing his decision. Was he making the right decision deciding to accept Sara’s offer to have coffee and lunch because he wasn’t so sure.

 He sighed and closed his eyes because maybe meeting her tomorrow would help him move on from her. He was hoping that she would be able to answer his questions especially the one that had been plaguing his mind since the moment she had left him four years ago. He didn’t know what was going to happen tomorrow or whether he would get all his questions answered but all he could hope for was that everything would go smoothly.

 He enters the restaurant, palms sweating and heart beating as he sees her sitting at one of the tables, carefully looking at the menu, He feels his heart speed up when she raised her head and smiled at him as he walked to her. She stood up and just like yesterday wrapped her arms around him before quickly pulling away. He sat down on the table and looked at the menu.

“So you said the lobster was good?” Len asked with a quirked eyebrow.

 “Yup” Sara replied.

 “Maybe that and some pasta and wine?” Len asked her.

 “Yeah,” she replied with a small smile. “That sounds good.”

 He nodded and turned back to the menu to look at their pasta selection and when he raised his head up after deciding on which pasta he saw Sara opening her mouth to speak again before she was interrupted by the waiter who had arrived to take their order. They had decided to order the lobster and for the pasta he had decided on the spaghetti Bolognese along with some wine.

 “So how have you been?” she asked as the waiter left with a quick smile in their direction and both their menu’s on his hands.

 "I've been fine; I'm the mayor of Central City now," he said proudly.

 "I know," Sara said with a smile and a proud look in her eyes. "Laurel told me when I called her last year, I'm so proud of you; I knew you would get far.”

“Yeah?” Len asked with a smile on his face.

 “Yup,” she replied with a grin on her face.

 They had no more time to talk as after a good 15 minutes the waiter arrived and put their food down in front of them. His eyes went wide when he saw the giant lobster and the plate full of pasta with a plate of salad on the other side. He gulped and heard Sara do the same.

 “That is one big ass lobster," Sara said as she glanced at the lobster with wide eyes.

 “And a lot of food,” Len continued as he stared at everything on the table. “Will we be able to finish this?”

 "Probably not," Sara remarked as she let out a snort. "This is just like the time when we went to that place in Star City, you know the one that served the most humongous steak.”

“Yeah, but that place didn’t have servings this big,” Len countered. He had missed this, when they had been together they bantered about everything from where they were going for the day to what they were going to eat. He had always let her win, helpless to resist the pout that would form on her face.

 “It was good, though," she affirmed.

 “You absolutely hated the sauce with chili, though, I think that was when your hatred for anything spicy or with chili in it started.” Len laughed as Sara’s face turned red.

 “It did not and I don’t hate it.” Sara pouted, face still as red as a tomato.

 “Oh really?” Len asked with a smile. “Is that why every time we went out I was the one who had to eat every serving of spicy food on both our plates, Ms. Lance?”

Sara put her head on her folded arms, he could see that she was smiling and laughing beneath it though. He loved it when she was shy and happy because she was absolutely adorable like this.

 “Shut up,” she replied with a pout.

 "Fine," Len said with a smile on his face. "We should start eating though, otherwise, we'll be here 'til December."

 Sara shook her head at him and laughed at his words before reaching for a knife at the same time as he did. Their hands touched and he felt electricity go through his body before he quickly pulled his hand away and gave her the knife.

 There was silence throughout the rest of the meal but it wasn’t awkward nor did he feel uncomfortable; it felt like something two friends would do if the two friends hadn’t seen each other naked and one of them wasn’t still madly in love with the other, that is. He did notice Sara shooting him looks throughout dinner, though, he didn't know why she did that and not knowing made him uncomfortable.

 After dinner, they decided to walk the streets near the restaurant, the night sky lights up as they near the middle of the Seine River. The river is beautiful but not as gorgeous as Sara, who looks like an angel when the moonlight hits her, her blue eyes shine and sparkle as the moonlight hits her cheeks.

"So how long are you here for?" Sara asked hopefully. (He thought that maybe she was hoping that he'd say that he was there to stay for a month, or a year, but he doesn't know this Sara. He has become so unfamiliar with her mannerisms, yet he sees aspects of her that reminded him of who she was before………everything.)

 “I’m here for five weeks. It was a present to Lisa; she’s been begging to come here since the start of the year. We arrived seven days ago,” Len said.

 “It was inevitable wasn’t it?” Sara asked sadly.

 “Us meeting again?” Len questioned with a raised eyebrow.

 "Yeah," Sara replied with a smile.

 “I guess we're just inventible," Len said with a shrug. "So what did you do after we broke up?”

 “Um, after we broke up I drifted around for a bit; you know took a road trip, took odd jobs here and there," Sara said.

 Len looks at her disbelievingly. She had left him to take a road trip and be a nomad. If that had been all she wanted to do he could have come with her. He would have followed her to the ends of the earth if he'd had to.

 “Is that why you didn’t come back after the fight?” Len asks as he takes a deep breath to ask the question; the question that hadn’t left his mind since the day he had woken up all those years ago. “To take a road trip?”

 “I didn’t come back because you deserved so much better than what I had to offer you, Len. I mean, do you remember me back then? I partied every night and I was never serious about med school; the only reason I even agreed to it was because I was expected to choose a career. I didn’t even know what I wanted to do with my life. I was just cruising through life and you, you knew what you wanted to do, you had everything planned from the minute you graduated,” Sara pointed out.

 “I was willing to let go of those plans for you,” he pointed out to her.

 “I know and that’s why I didn’t come back; I couldn't let you do that for me, Len, you had a sister to take care of and besides this has been your dream since you started school again. I have made many mistakes in my life but not coming back after the fight was not one of them,” Sara says firmly.

 “If you don’t regret it then why are we here?” he asks as he steps forward. He was in her space for the first time in 4 four years and he couldn't breathe, his chest feels like It was going to explode.

 “We’re friends, I just wanted to catch up with you and I really missed you,” she says as she stares deep into his eyes.

 “So how long are you here for?” he asks. He wonders whether she had decided to move here. He remembers that she used to talk about her desire to move somewhere peaceful; he used to joke that she would end up living the two kids and white picket fence lifestyle just like everybody dreamed of but she had shaken her head at him then and told him she was too cool to live that kind of lifestyle.

 She had a desire for adrenaline and adventure and no matter how many times he joked about it, he would never in a million years be able to imagine her living in a house with a white picket fence.

 “I’m here for eight weeks, I arrived four weeks ago but I’m here for a conference for work. I work with different organizations to stop violence against women and I teach martial arts for women and kids as a part time job,” Sara explained. “I moved to Boston after I finished traveling and started taking classes for martial arts and helping out at the women’s shelter. I decided that that was what I wanted to do and started taking a course for counseling and here we are."

“Why choose that career?” Len asked curiously.

He wasn’t really surprised that this was the career she had decided to get into because when they had been dating she had loved to help people. And while he knew that there were many careers that would allow her to do that but there would have been a big problem as Sara didn’t like taking orders from anyone and had a very strong personality which more often than not got her into big trouble as it often lead her to start fights with other people.

 During their relationship he had always found it hard to believe that Sara had decided to take a career in medicine because from what he had known of her personality, her being a free spirit and being very adventurous a career in medicine was too controlled for her and having to work with other doctors who would tell her what to do would have driven her insane. A career helping women and teaching martial arts for kids on the other hand was something that he thought was perfect for Sara.

"No woman should ever suffer at the hands of men," Sara said in a firm voice. The words sounded like a mantra that she had been repeating and one he understood well. He had grown up with an abusive drunk for a father who would target his mother and his sister because he felt like it, he could understand why Sara had that mantra.

Growing up, Len had tried to take the hits for his mother and sister but it was never enough for Lewis, it seemed like he took joy in hitting Lisa and his mother. They had gotten out and his father had been put in jail but his mother, it turned out, had had cancer and had succumbed to her disease when Len had been eight, leaving Len to raise Lisa by himself.

 They had been put into foster home after foster home with the system trying to separate them but it had never succeeded and Len had had to learn how to defend not only himself but his sister as well from other abusive foster parents. When he had turned eighteen the first thing he had done was take custody of Lisa and made sure to raise her correctly.

 "I'm proud of you," Len said with a smile. "I always knew you would go into a career that had to do with helping people.”

 “Yeah?” Sara asked him hopefully.

 “Yeah, I always knew you would make something out of yourself and medical school just wasn’t right for you.” He added firmly.

 “What do you mean?” she asked with a quirk of her eyebrow.

 "I always thought that going into medicine might be a little too constricting for you. You love adventure and thrive on adrenaline; you in a controlled environment with patients and nurses would have driven you nuts," Len answered before letting out a small laugh.

Sara laughed along with him before she put her arm through his and they continued to walk in silence. Before long it was time for him to return to his hotel room.

 “I know this is unlikely. But hear me out first,” Sara began. “Since you and I are both in Paris for the month and we really have no idea which sites to see, do you want to maybe tour the city together?”

“I’ll think about it because I was thinking of going to other cities besides Paris while here. Besides, didn’t you say you were here for work?” Len said.

 “Oh ok. My last conference finished yesterday so I’m free to go wherever I want before going back to Boston,” Sara explained sadly as they separated outside his hotel.

He went inside and spent the rest of the night tossing and turning, unable to stop thinking about her offer. He would be able to see her and at the same time be able to see the city. (He may have had an ulterior motive of wanting to see the city and travel when he had agreed to go to Paris, but Lisa didn't need to know that.)

He would be alone for the rest of the trip since Lisa had told him that she was spending the rest of trip with Cisco, insisting that she would meet Len when they were due to leave the city together and until then Len was free to go wherever he wanted and with whomever he wanted.

  He woke up early the next morning and showered, planning to walk the streets to find a suitable breakfast café to eat at. He had decided to walk back to the Louvre today, wanting to see more of the artwork and the other wings in the museum, but when he gets outside he sees Sara looking gorgeous and leaning against what he assumes is a rental car.

 “What are you doing here?” he asked as he jogged towards her.

 “I know you said that you wanted to travel to other places while here and I asked around,” she began as she took out a map with markings of red pen on it. “These places are some of the best places to go to and if we have time we can go to St.Tropez. What do you say?"

 She looks so hopeful that he can’t say anything but, “Yes”.

They go inside to get him some breakfast and then get into the car and with a whoosh they were off. He takes the map from her and they both decide to go to the Notre Dame De Paris, or as it was more commonly known the Notre Dame Cathedral, first, Neither of them was religious but according to the guide this was one of the most beautiful places to go to, second on the list to the Eiffel Tower, which they had decided to go to on the last day of their time together.

 The Notre Dame Cathedral is beautiful; the moment they step inside they feel a sense of tranquility and calm warm over them. The inside of the cathedral is lined with rows and rows of chairs and the side windows are lined with stained glass windows with the sides of the church being supported by statues which acted as columns supports and water sprouts which consisted of famous gargoyles and chimeras.

 He laughed when Sara ran up to the side of one of the many column supports, kneeled down next to one of the columns and ran her hands over it while going, "It's huge," with wide blue eyes.  

 Both their eyes had lit up when they had seen the famous bell in the cathedral. It was huge and as gorgeous as the people who had seen it had said, but what enticed him wasn’t the bell, it was the rose window on top of the cathedral because it was the perfect example of the Gothic Rayonnant style which was something he had always wanted to see.

 Their first week traveling together also saw them visiting the Musee d O’rsay which was another one of Paris's most famous museums. It stood on the left bank of the Seine and housed French art that was dated all the way back to 1848.

They had more than 2,000 sculptures, paintings, and photographs but also furniture from the 19th-20th century which Len had been fascinated by. It wasn’t every day a person was able to see what kind of things people had used as furniture in the olden days. Len had also been fascinated by Edward Manet’s The Luncheon On The Grass and Gustav Courbet’s The Artist Studio. He loved the color schemes in the painting. French art was truly magnificent.

 The museum also housed Vincent Van Gogh’s self-portrait and his painting The Church at Auvers which Sara had spent almost an hour staring at. It was fascinating watching her get entranced by something as simple as a painting. He had smiled at her reaction fondly. This was like the time that he had taken her to a concert in Coast City, (her first ever concert outside of her home town) and she had spent the entire time thanking him for it on the way home.

 They stayed there for almost the entire day before they decided that they had seen everything that could be seen and trudged toward the exit of the museum.

 “Leonard,” she screamed at him in fury as she chased him around the outside of the Museum after he had accidentally, (maybe not so accidentally,) spilt the entire bottle of water he was holding on her as they left the museum.

“Oh shit.” He turned and realized he was trapped; they had ended up right in front of the Seine River. He saw a dangerous glint in her eyes and gulped before he felt himself being tackled to the ground. She took both of his hands as he flailed about trying to push her off of him.

 “Are you sorry?” Sara asked with a smug smile on her face.

 He nodded frantically before he accidentally nudged her and she fell on top of him, her lips a mere centimeter away from his. He saw her eyes widen before she struggled to get off of him and in an unexpected move her lips landed on his.

 For a moment Len felt Sara press her lips harder against his before she got off of him and they both stood up and dusted themselves off, he felt water hit him and saw Sara holding a bottle with water he assumed was from the river.

“Now we’re even,” she said as she walked off and he followed her with a scowl on his face.

 They visited other museums and churches like the Montmarte which housed the white-domed Basilica Of Sacre-Cour and nightclubs. It was also known for its past as the location of studios of artists like Vincent Van Gogh, Salvador Dali, and Claude Monet.

They had even gone on to see the Arc De Triomphe which was a famous landmark in Paris that stood on the west of Champs Elysees at the center of Place Charles De Gaulle. The memory of her lips against his never left his mind during the entire week and he was eager for a repeat.

 The second and third week consisted of visiting other sites like the Sainte-Chappelle and the Jardin du Luxembourg. The Sainte-Chappelle was a gothic Chappelle with stained glass windows, according to the guide it was the place the king of France had lived in until the 14th century.

 They had spent almost an hour there taking in the view; it was a magnificent Chappell full of color. Everything glittered from the glass which surrounded it and its supporting frame of stone vaulting. Its architect, Pierre De Montreuil, had experimented with it by using glass instead of stone. The Chapelle was a work of art and had every single color covering it. Len had been impressed by it and personally agreed with others who had said that it was one of the most beautiful buildings ever created. They had stayed there well until it was dark finding peace and tranquility in the way the Chappelle's architect used color on the building, Sara had leaned her head against Len’s shoulder and they had just stared at the Chappelle in wonderment.

 The Jardin Du Luxembourg was a park located in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It had a pool and an amazing view of the Pantheon, its garden was a marvel. He had seen one of Sara’s favorite flowers and when no one was looking sneakily picked almost ten of them before giving them to her, her smile was worth almost getting caught.

 There had been free performances there and a carousel that Sara insisted they ride, despite his insistence that the ride was only for kids. Sara had been like a child in the playground insisting that he push her on the swing despite the stares they were getting from the parents and some of the older kids.

 They had toured the entire park and ended up in the Orangerie where they saw displays of art, photography, and sculptures. He had marveled at the figures of French queens and illustrious women like Anne of Austria and Saint Genevieve standing on pedestals that were created by Louis-Phillipe.

 Their next stop had been the Odeon which was a theater that stood next to the garden. They had watched one of the shows and Len had had a hard time understanding what was happening, needing Sara, who spoke French, to translate what was going on for him. Sara had poked fun at him for not being able to understand what was going on and he had given her a scowl in return. It wasn’t his fault he didn’t know how to speak French.

 They had returned to the park and spent the rest of the day there, choosing to have a picnic instead of going to an expensive restaurant to eat. They had laid a blanket on the ground and decided to wait for the sunset so that they could watch it. After they had gazed at the stars and while Sara explained to him which star was which all he had been able to do was stare at her.

 She was perfect, especially while trying to explain something to him. (He really was a sap if he found simple things like her explaining things to him romantic; Lisa would totally tease him for this.) The moonlight glittered against her hair and he reached for one of her hands and tangled it with one of his, stopping her mid-sentence. She had looked at him and smiled a smile so bright that it had taken up her whole face and he couldn’t help but smile back at her before he pulled her on top of him and kissed her on the forehead.

Their last week together came quickly. He knew that they had both been dreading it, especially having to separate again. She had been holding onto his hand the entire week and he couldn’t blame her. He had this feeling that if he let go of her for even one second she would disappear and he didn’t think that he would be able to handle that. He was still so in love with her and he was unable to fathom how he would be able to be without her again. The last week was spent seeing the Latin Quarter, the Pantheon, and their last stop which was the Eiffel Tower.

 The Latin Quarter was basically a mall. He followed her dutifully as she walked around and entered stores. He held bags and helped her choose which trinkets and gifts to buy for her family. He had complained earlier, before they had entered the mall, and all that had ended up happening was Sara using puppy dog eyes (no he was not a sucker for her puppy dog eyes, it was one time and it would never work again) and promising to reward him later for being good, which he scowled at, before quickly agreeing.

 The Pantheon was a building located in Latin Quarter. According to the book he had read during the trip there, it had been a church dedicated to St. Genevieve. It was an amazing and elegant place that housed burials of fallen heroes like Voltaire and Rousseau. Sara was in awe of everything from the columns to the statues of the fallen heroes. One of the guides had said that the model of the building was an example of neoclassicism, Sara, he noticed had spent the entirety of the trip listening to the guide in front of them. Her wonder and awe of the statues astounded him, she was like a child who was getting a new toy and it was adorable, especially the way that her eyes would light up when she learned new facts about the building or when she saw new statues like the statue of Voltaire near his crypt. He trudged after her as she proceeded to explore the building and tangled her hands with his as she raced through the halls of the monument.

Later, after they had left the Pantheon, she had kissed him on the cheek and thanked him for indulging her fascination with the building. After she had pulled away from him, his cheek tingled with the remembrance of her kiss and left him frozen before she had dragged him away to the car and they had driven towards one of the restaurants located in the Latin Quarter. She had told him that because he had indulged her she would let him choose where they were going to eat today. He had shaken his head at her and sighed before and choosing a place that he knew she would love.

 Lisa called him during the week and made sure that he was okay. She had told him excitedly of the places that Cisco had brought her to and her happiness was evident throughout the conversation. He hadn’t had time to see her or talk to his sister during his weeks with Sara, choosing instead to text her messages and updates about where he was. He hadn’t even told her that he was with Sara, knowing that she wouldn’t be happy with him.

Lisa had liked Sara when they were together, but when they had broken up she had developed anger towards the other woman; especially after seeing and being there for Len post break up.  Lisa was very protective of him (which he could understand seeing as he was the only family she had left) so she had been understandably livid to find out that he had been spending the week with Sara going as far as to warn him during the phone call of the dangers of spending time with Sara again.

When he had countered that everything was different this time because, as he had said, he wasn’t expecting anything from Sara, Lisa had told him that him being still in love with Sara was only going to lead to trouble. Especially since both of them had created separate lives and achieved their dreams away from each other. They had ended the phone call with Lisa warning him to be careful and reminding him that he had a life back home and that life wasn’t with Sara.

 He had sighed as he put the phone down. She was right, he and Sara had separate lives. And Even if she was still in love with him how was this even going to work and was this even the right time for them to restart their relationship? He didn't know what to do, but he knew he would have to figure it out.

After that day, a feeling of dread began to spread through him; it was their last day together and as they drove hand in hand to the location of the Eiffel Tower he couldn’t help but feel his chest tighten and for the breath to be knocked of his lungs. It was their last day together, tomorrow he would be meeting his sister so that they could catch a flight back to Central City and go back to their lives.

He knew from the way that she was gripping his hand that Sara was dreading it too. He didn’t know how to bring it up; they had spent the day strolling through the city hoping maybe that they could extend their time together but they both knew it was impossible.

 He loved her and she loved him but the way their lives had gone hadn’t been able to accommodate that. As the Eiffel Tower came into view, his chest began to tighten more and more and he gripped her hand tighter. He smiled as she dragged him to the top of the iconic structure and when they reached the top she dragged him to one of the windows. Paris was beautiful on top of the tower because you could see everything from the people walking home from work to the number of shops that were in Paris; from up here he could the lights and every single building in Paris.

 He banged his head on the window before he felt Sara’s hand grab his and turn him to face her.  

 “I love you,” he said softly as he gave her a sad smile.

 “I love you, too,” she replied with a smile on her face.

 “Come back to Central City with me?” he begged with tears in his eyes.

 As he asked the question all Sara did was smile at him sadly.

 “I can’t, you know I can’t,” she replied.

 “I know, I just had to try,” he replied sadly.

 “Maybe someday when everything in our lives is sorted out,” she said with tears in her eyes.

 “Maybe someday,” he echoed.

 Maybe someday they would see each other again and they would be able to be together without all the complications of jobs and their lives but all they could do for now was wrap their arms around each other and make the few remaining minutes they had in each other’s arms last.

 Early the next day, Len packed his bag to meet his sister at the airport. He couldn’t help but hope that maybe, just maybe, Sara would change her mind and decide to go with him. As soon as he entered the airport he felt someone engulf him in a tight hug and saw his sister’s long brown hair in his arms.

 "I missed you, Lenny," Lisa said with a smile. She looked happier than he had seen her in months; maybe Cisco really had been good for her.

 “Apparently not enough to abandon Cisco and travel with me," Len teased sarcastically with a small pout. His sister laughed and hugged him.

 “You know this doesn't mean you're out of trouble. We’re gonna have to talk about your chosen travel companion. You know that right?” Lisa asked him with a raised eyebrow.

 “Yeah yeah, whatever," Len said with a roll of his eyes, his sister huffed before dragging him through the door for Passport control.

 As he and Lisa lined up, he turned and saw Sara looking at him with a sad smile. Someday, he promised himself as he walked away. Someday.

[itsdisneymydudes]

I just realized we never learn Beast’s name in the movie

Alright, real talk time: I have never seen Beauty and the Beast. Now before you grab your pitchfork and torch, let me qualify that statement. I have never seen Beauty and the Beast--all the way through. I’ve listened to most of the songs and seen enough clips to understand the general plot, but I don’t believe I have seen it all together in one sitting. So that’s what I’m about to do.

And you’re gonna join me!

How, you ask? Via a livestream of my thoughts onto this blog! Wow, the future is now!!!

So without further ado, yip yip-----

K so the intro music is telling me scary shit is about to go down. But the forest setting is telling me someone is about to sing to the woodland creatures.

I know this is a Disney movie, but really? The “Once upon a time, in a far away land��� trope?

So two things now: 1) why does this castle have so many stained glass windows that outline every panel of this story (lol) and 2) I keep expecting to hear Shrek’s voice suddenly butt in and “All Star” to start playing (lolololol)

Also, why does the narration assume the prince needs to earn “her” love? I think it’s high time Disney had their first LGBTQ+ protagonist amiright?

Just hit the “Beauty and the Beast” title card, and I’m already getting weird vibes on the whole bestiality here...

Wow, Belle is really roasting her town (with some pretty learned diction too)

OH MY GOD DID DISNEY JUST SHOW A GOOSE GETTING SHOT WHAT THE HECK

I get that Gaston is supposed to be the epitome of masculinity, but what are up with his yellow gloves--is he gonna scrub a sink later or something?

Kudos to Belle for being able to walk and read a book; I can barely walk and chew gum

Gaston has been on screen for a minute so far, and I already hate him. Good job, Disney

I can definitely tell Disney took a few pages from Ichabod Crane in The Legend of Sleepy Hollow for Belle’s father’s scene in the woods. Spooky.

So the anthropomorphic objects in the castle are cute and all, but I have quite a few questions to ask about their biology. Quite a few things don’t add up...but then again, this is an animated Disney movie.

OK OK OK I WAS NOT READY FOR THAT. WHY IS THE BEAST SO SCARY. I DID NOT KNOW THERE WAS GONNA BE A JUMPSCARE CLOSE-UP OF HIS FACE OH MY GOODNESS.

Dammit, Gaston--NO MEANS NO YOU FUCKBOY.

Wait, how does Felipe know that Belle’s Father ended up at the castle...? If I recall correctly, that horse booked it out of there before Belle’s Father could even move from the cliff...

GODDAMMIT BEAST WHY DO YOU KEEP POPPING OUT LIKE THAT I’M WATCHING THIS MOVIE IN THE DARK JEEZ

What purpose does the Beast have with keeping Belle’s Father prisoner, though? Like that most certainly will not break the spell...like at all...

Alright, I get that these two are supposed to fall in love, but the total tone and animation shift in the Beast is a little much, isn’t it? He just threw an old man into a spider-carriage and now is feeling sheepish and embarrassed about offering a room to Belle?

Also, I JUST realized Belle is made in the likeness (color scheme, face, voice, etc) of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz.

Didn’t Belle want to leave the village anyway? Soooooo, the castle is a step up then? Eh?

Lolololol “What’s in the West Wing?” Well, that’s where the President’s cabinet is (my humor is dumb; get over it)

Gaston, that’s perfectly good beer you just tossed in the fire. Like wut.

After that Gaston song about getting swoll from 4 dozen eggs, I think he should do Old Spice Deodorant commercials.

How is Belle so accepting of the fact that everything is talking to her...?

Awwwwww it’s Beast’s first date. He’s so nervous. Aaaaaaaand he’s back to being a jerk. Great.

Oh is it the “Be Our Guest” song now? Yup. Yup, it is.

I really don’t get Belle. She has just been taken prisoner, has just met a bunch of talking silverware, and is now so excited about “her first time being in an enchanted castle.” She’s just on a roller coaster of emotions, eh?

Lol Lumiere and Cogsworth trying to keep Belle on track with the tour is exactly how it feels to be an Admissions Tour Guide.

Alright, hold on to your butts everyone cuz we’re hitting some deep stuff right now. It just dawned on me how complex of a character Beast is. He’s a guy who is extremely self conscious about himself that fears social ridicule. Beast tries to reach out to Belle to have a meaningful connection with Belle. Belle doesn’t know the scars underneath his jaded exterior but tries to find them, against the Beast’s wishes. Beast really doesn’t want to open up to other people due to his social anxiety. So when Belle catches her first glimpse of the rose, Beast loses it and pushes her away as far as possible, farther than he has ever before. Yet the last shot shows him torn over whether that was the right thing to do. On the one hand, he is terrified of getting close to someone, but on the other hand, he yearns for that kind of meaningful connection. It’s a classic relationship scenario told through the guise of a fairy tale. Disney, you sly dog. Coolio, let’s get back to it.

Hm, interesting dichotomy between the Beast and the wolves.

So Beast did save Belle’s life and all, but now they’re suddenly cool with each other? Technically speaking, she’s still his prisoner...is that a hint of Stockholm Syndrome I spy...?

Lol Beast just showed Belle Perkins Library

Is this seriously a the-two-potential-lovers-build-their-relationship-towards-the-possibility-of-falling-in-love music montage? It is -_-

No no no no no. That canNOT be Beast’s singing voice. That sounds nothing like him!

Aaaaaand this song is about bestiality....

“Human Again” reminds me a lot of the “Sorcerer's Apprentice” scene from Fantasia what with the mops and all.

Alright alright alright there is no way Belle and Beast could be reading Romeo and Juliet and have smiles like that on their faces at the end. That’s just wrong.

“Beauty and the Beast” really is a timeless song. So magical.

Aw, poor Beast. Belle just up and left him like that...

Oh Belle. Why would you show the HUNTING PARTY the Beast in the mirror???

Gaston said a bunch of exaggerations that stirred fear in the general populace. He also antagonized someone who was different with said fear. He also said “wall.” Illuminati confirmed: Gaston=Trump

Aw Beast had his heart broken, and now he’s in the angst-y “nothing matters anymore” phase

Lolololol Wilhelm Scream @ 01:15:50

What the heck! One of the angry mobsters had tea dumped on him while another had a giant wardrobe dropped on him! That hardly seems like an equal attack to me...

Holy fucking shit. You have got to be kidding me. Why the FUCK would Disney show one of the goons pulling the feathers off a duster?! Is that supposed to be some sick twisted form of rape?! What the fucking hell, Disney!!!

Are you telling me Gaston really can’t tell the difference between a stone gargoyle and Beast? Damn, he really does need to read more books

Heh. Guess you could say after losing Belle’s affection, Gaston had a really bad FALL from grace.

Ok I understand they’re in love and everything, but does Belle really think that just cuz she’s there with Beast now that the GAPING KNIFE WOUND IN HIS KIDNEY will suddenly magically heal? Oh wait, it does? Wut.

Ok ok ok. I know this is really nerdy, BUT when Beast transforms back into a human, it’s like he’s traveling through time along the evolutionary tree. The transition of his legs specifically show how goat/horse legs relate to ours in the ratio of foot-to-leg length

Hot damn check out Beast’s new weave. Those are some F-L-O-W-I-N-G locks, mate.

Well that’s a very Broadway-esque musical-style ending. I like it.

Good movie. Would recommend. Certified fresh. #Gastonthefuckboy2k17

[puptart-nation]

Hi, I miss MySpace-era styled surveys. Here’s a 167 question one.

Ready? Set...Go!

1. Last beverage: water

2. Last phone call: Hmm, my partner, I suppose.

3. Last song you listened to: “Overprotected - Darkchild Remix” - Britney Spears, Rodney Jerkins

4. Last time you cried: Earlier today, actually.

5. Have you dated someone twice: No. I don’t “believe” in this [for myself].

6. Have you ever been cheated on: Yes.

7. Kissed someone & regretted it: Uh, I’ll go with no.

8. Have you lost someone special: Yes. Both to death and growth.

9. What are your three favorite colors: Gold. Red. Purple. But in reality...I love all of those that I have the ability to see, honestly.

10. Met someone who changed you in the past month: Regularly.

11. Kissed anyone on your friends list: Not on my current accounts. Yet at least.

12. How many kids do you want: Physically, I’d like to have one (1) successful birth in my lifetime. However, I’m open to having more kids than this (e.g. adoption, kids that I “consider my own,” etc.)

13. Do you want any pets: I’d be open to the possibility of more! I would like a snake.

14. Do you want to change your name: Not specifically(?).

15. What did you do for your last birthday: Not to sound all 

16. What time did you wake up today: Oh! I’m not sure at all.

17. Name something you CANNOT wait for: E A S Y. To finally start camming!!! (I have so many ideas but I haven’t gotten to explore Chaturbate or ManyVids “properly” yet) and Animal Crossing: New Horizons!

18. Last time you saw your mother: Pretty recently; thank you, fall/winter holiday season.

19. Most visited webpage: I’ve been all over the place lately. Saying Google feels like cheating...but probably Google.

20. Nicknames: Puptart is my nickname.

21. Relationship status: Partnered but available (shout out ethical non-monogamy/polyamory that started that way and wasn’t an ‘evolution’ or development from a blatant breech of relationship boundaries).

22. Zodiac sign: Scorpio sun,  Aries moon, Aquarius rising.

23. Male or female: Gender and sex are entirely and largely, respectively, social constructs.

24. Height: ~5′5.″

25. Do you have a crush on someone: I have a crush on anyone who shares part(s) of their authentic self with me.

26. Piercings: Ears (one each), navel, and my septum. 

27. Tattoos: None. I’m conceptually interested. 

28. Strong or Weak: In what domains?

FIRSTS

29. First surgery: [upcoming] wisdom teeth.

30. First best friend: [REDACTED]

31. First sport you joined: Gymnastics.

32. First vacation: Canada.

33. First school: [REDACTED]

34. First pair of trainers: So no British English spelling but British English slang...all right. Anyway...I’ve no clue, mate.

WHICH IS BETTER

35. Lips or eyes: My lips and eyes are amongst my favourite features personally. The eyes are more functional though so there’s that(?).

36. Hugs or kisses: From whom? I love context...perhaps too much.

37. Shorter or taller: I would personally got for being taller.

38. Older or younger: OH, this is [looks ahead at upcoming questions]---okay, okay, I get the energy. Anyway, despite my skittish interest in older men, older doesn’t happen too often.

39. Romantic or spontaneous: These aren’t mutually exclusive so...uh... [refrains from further interaction].

40. Sensitive or loud: Loud! 

41. Hook-up or relationship: Depends what is correct for the circumstance.

42. Shy or outgoing: I mean...socially well-adjusted with the ability to read the environment is ideal.

HAVE YOU EVER

43. Kissed a stranger: Yes.

44. Gotten a speeding ticket: Thankfully, no.

45. Lost glasses/contacts: Yes, but not for an extended period of time.

46. Sex on first date: I’m not morally or ethically opposed to this, but I personally haven’t.

47. Broken someone's heart: I mean...I guess.

48. Been arrested: Negative.

49. Have you turned someone down: Yeah.

50. Fallen for a friend: Non-romantically, all of the time. Romantically...more so in youthier youth, but falling in love was very different then. 

51. Moved out of town: Yep.

BELIEVE IN

52. Miracles: I feel like my answer would be lengthy and semantic in nature.

53. Love at first sight: Technically, no. Untechnically, yes.

54. Heaven: Yes, I’ve seen NIN live a few times.

55. Santa Claus: ...[thinking about MySpace bulletins]. But no.

56. Kiss on the first date: I’d hope to hope so. But sometimes the time isn’t right.

57. Angels: I’m literally...right...here.

58. Yourself: More and more. We out here.

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY

59. Had more than 1 girlfriend/boyfriend at a time: Hell yeah (See earlier answer mentioning ethical non-monogamy/polyamory)(Just kidding, don’t go back looking for it, we’ve come so far).

60. Been in love with someone you couldn't be with?: Actually...Not really. Or maybe technically yes? I didn’t want to be with them myself so that started and ended before it started.

61. Ever cheated on somebody: This is actually complicated to answer and involves trauma/blatant sexual assault/group manipulation and peer pressure. 

62. If you could go back in time, how far would you go?: I imagine I would not.

63. Are you afraid of falling in love: Not in the slightest.

64. Was your last relationship a mistake? I don’t believe any relationship is a mistake.

65. Do you miss your last relationship? Not at all. Or...in any way that lasts more than 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes even feels generous. I do maintain fond memories.

66. Who did you last say “I love you” to? My partner, my dog, or my own reflection.

67. Have you ever been depressed? Yes and clinically at that.

68. Are you insecure? I would not describe myself as being an insecure person, but I still have a wealth of insecurities. 

69. How do you want to die? Peacefully. Natural/old age. In my sleep at the same time as my partner after a particularly sweet emphasis about our journey together and we just somehow die just...at functionally the exact same time. -OR- similar to Mufasa but a stampede of happy dogs (whose nails have been trimmed and I am also in protective gear that shields from physical trauma I would not want to experience despite the ultimate expressed desire for death-by-dog-stampede).

70. Do you bite your nails? Not since childhood.

71. When was your last physical fight? A forreal fight? Never.

72. Do you have an attitude? As far as what this means, not usually.

73. Twirl or cut your spaghetti? A mixture of both? I’m just...doing...something.

74. Do you tan a lot? I bronze. Not actively because I care about UV.

75. Ever eaten food in a car while someone or you are driving? Yeah.

76. Ever made out in a bathroom? In a home, yes.

77. Would you take any of your exes back? Absolutely not.

78. Would you go back in time if you were given the chance? For what and what are the risk factors in the hypothetical?

79. What are your plans for this weekend? Wedding!

80. Do you type fast? Define fast.

81. Can you spell well? [non-committal handshake] I don’t have data for what true average is.

82: What are you craving right now? A more comfortable position.

83. Have you ever been on a horse? Not truthfully.

84. Would you live with someone without marrying them? I have.

85. What’s irritating you right now? I’ve had a cough for some weeks now.

86. Have you ever liked someone so much that it hurts? Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. All yes. Not in a (TRUTHFULLY) good while though.

87. Does somebody love you? A lot of somebodies do. I’m incredibly lucky.

88. Have you ever changed clothes in a car? Yes.

89. Milk chocolate or white chocolate? Milk.

90. Do you have trust issues? Only when there is a valid Truth Issue.

91. Longest relationship? With myself.

92: Do you believe your most recent ex thinks about you? I hope not, but I’m aware that they must at times.

93. Have you ever walked outside in your PJs? Yeah.

94. Do you believe everything happens for a reason? In a literal sense, yes. Beyond that...I can’t remove the literal sense from my awareness.

95. Did you have dream last night? I don’t recall it now, but I believe so.

96. Have you ever been out of state? Which state? ... (Yes).

97. Do you play the Wii? Wow, Wii. It’s been a minute.

98. Do you like Chinese food? December 25th Classic.

99. Are you afraid of the dark? Not of the darkness itself.

100. Is cheating ever okay? Events where I would say “yes,” I believe the contract of an equal/balanced relationship has been breached so I don’t think those events count. So outside of those things, no.

101. What year has been your best? This one.

102. Do you believe in true love? I mean...I don’t feel love is something to ‘believe in’ in this sense.

103. Favorite weather? Sunny, but the UV index is chill and breezy.

104. Do you like the snow? Does it like me back?

105. Do you like the outside? Depends on the side out.

106. Is it cute when a boy/girl calls you baby? A literal boy/girl/child would be weird.

107. Have you ever made out for more than a half hour straight? Weird if not.

108. What makes you happy? A wealth of things.

109. Ever been to Alaska? Not at present.

110. Ever been to Hawaii? “”

111. Do you watch the news? Not if I can help it.

112. Do you love MTV? I forgot MTV was a thing on real TV.

113. Do you like Subway? Ambivalent.

114 Would it be hard to kiss the last person you kissed? Not at all.

115. Your best friend of the opposite sex likes you, what do you do? As they should, am I right?

116. Why did you decide to do this quiz? Self-indulgence.

117. Have you ever seen someone you knew and purposely avoided them? Yes, although I usually enjoy the idea of confrontation.

118. Do you have a friend of the opposite sex who you can act your complete self around? “Yes. Why act unlike yourself. You meant the word "friend" as really a friend, right?” --- the person who responded before me because I don’t have the energy to ultimately paraphrase what they said and they said it pretty well.

119. Who was the last person of the opposite sex you talked to? [whines about sex and gender]

120. Who was the last person you had a deep conversation with? A friend.

121. Ever bought condoms? Yes.

122. Ever gotten pregnant? No.

123. Have you ever slipped on ice? I’ve fallen whilst ice skating, if you wish to count that.

124 Have you ever missed the bus? I don’t miss grade school. Yes. ALSO HEY. Just realised I had a nightmare about this some nights ago.

125. Have you left the house without money? I was an infant once, yes.

126. Have you ever smoked cigarettes? Socially. I’ve never purchased my own pack before.

127. Have you ever smoked a cigar? Yes! I enjoyed it a lot actually.

128. Did you ever drink alcohol? Yes.

129. Did you ever watch “The Breakfast Club”? Yes, but not very well.

130. Have you ever been overweight? No

131. Ever been to a wedding? A fair amount, yes.

132. Ever been in a wedding? Several with another upcoming quite soon!

133. Have you ever been on the computer for 5 hours straight? Hard yes.

134. Did you ever watch TV for 5 hours straight? I watch King of the Hill as if I would die without it, yes.

135. Ever kissed in the rain? Yes.

136. Did you ever shower with someone else? Yes.

137. Did you ever fail a driver’s test? No.

138. Ever been outside your home country? Yes.

139. Ever been on a road trip longer than 5 hours? I’ve driven for 11 hours straight before!

140. Ever been to a professional sports game? Yes. A few. Hockey comes to mind the most. Then basketball.

141. Have you ever broken a bone? No(ne known).

142. Did you ever win a trophy in your life? Yes. But...not in a while...

143. Ever get engaged? Yes.

144. Have you ever been on a diet? No.

145. Have you ever been on TV? Not in a meaningful way.

146. Ever ridden in a taxi? Yes.

147. Ever been to prom? Yes.

148. Ever stayed up for 24 hours or more? Yes.

149 Have you ever been to a concert? Most important is Nine Inch Nails.

150. Have you ever had a crush on someone at work? Yes. I’ve had crushes on everyone everywhere.

151. Have you ever been in a car accident? Yes.

152. Ever had braces? Yes. #WorthTheWait lmao

153. Did you ever learn another language? I’ve studied several (3). Fluent in one (1).

154. Do you wear make-up? Infrequently.

155. Did you ever have your wisdom teeth taken out? Soon!

156. Did you ever kiss someone a different race than yourself? lmao yes.

157. Ever dyed your hair? Yes.

158. Did you ever wear someone else’s clothes? Yeah, I was a teenage girl once. Also...what? Haha.

159. Ever ridden in an ambulance? No.

160. Ever ridden in a helicopter? No.

161. Ever caught the stove on fire? I don’t believe so, but the microwave...yes.

162. Ever meet someone famous? Define famous and define meet.

163. Ever been on an airplane? Yes.

164. Ever been on a boat? Yes.

165. Ever broken something expensive? My brain.

166. Did you ever kiss someone before you were 14? Uh...no actually? As far as romantically.

167. Did you ever find something valuable on the ground? Cars and buildings, mostly.

[dreamwritelistenlive]

Q&A

It’s been awhile since one of these has come my way. Tagged by: @jakub-beralski

Rules: Fill in these 92 statements and tag 5-10 people.

Tagging: @sittingtrot​, @radii0-active​, @loveisgrownhere​, @dressagekitten​, @oceanic-veins​

THE LAST: 1. Drink: Water.  2. Phone call: Hugo, on Saturday night.  3. Text message: Goodnight/Good morning message to Hugo.  4. Song you listened to: Show Me by John Splithoff (ft. Madison Ryann Ward) 5. Time you cried: Yesterday morning over something stupid that happened between myself and yet another impatient San Diego driver.  HAVE YOU: 6. Dated someone twice: No. 7. Kissed someone and regretted it: Yeah, but that was mostly because of truth or dare.  8. Been cheated on: Not that I know of. 9. Lost someone special: Does my guinea pig count? 10. Been depressed: Yes, it comes in waves.  11. Gotten drunk and thrown up: Gotten drunk, yes. Thrown up because of it, never.  LIST 3 FAVORITE COLORS: 12. Mint/Turquoise/Teal colors 13. Purple 14. Blue IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU: 15. Made new friends: Absolutely 16. Fallen out of love: No. 17. Laughed until you cried: Yes. Though, I cannot remember the moment exactly.  18. Found out someone was talking about you: Not that I recall.  19. Met someone who changed you: Yeah, Ashley and Morgan.  20. Found out who your friends are: Oh yes, definitely.  21. Kissed someone on your Facebook list: Indeed. Many times, even.

GENERAL: 22. How many of your Facebook friends do you know in real life: About 99% 23. Do you have any pets: Kind of. My family has a pet dog, though I only stay with them on a couple of occasions now. He’s the cutest Silky/Yorkie mix that you ever did see and his name is Lucky.  24. Do you want to change your name: Last name, yes. First name, sometimes...when people perpetually pronounce it incorrectly.  25. What did you do for your last Birthday: It was my 21st but I had to work in the morning but I still went out with friends and family to a Mexican restaurant and then to BJ’s for more drinks and $3 pizookies.  26. What time did you wake up: Around 6:30 but I actually got up around 7. 27. What were you doing at midnight last night: Trying to get to sleep.  28. Name something you can’t wait for: To see and hold my special someone in 4 days. 29. When was the last time you saw your mom: This morning.  30. What is one thing you wish you could change in your life: My ability to afford a horse as well as college tuition.  31. What are you listening right now: An airplane going over my house.  32. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: Yes, he was a boarder at the barn I work/ride at. 33. Something that is getting on your nerves: Living with my family again, but in a week I get to drive back to my own apartment. Or San Diego drivers.   34. Most visited Website: Google or Tumblr, probably. No, actually my school’s online platforms: URSA, Canvas, and Outlook. 

LOST QUESTIONS. I JUST PUT IN RANDOM INFO ABOUT ME 35. Mole/s: No. 36. Mark/s: I have a birthmark on the backside of my upper right thigh, a large permanent scar from when I fell off of a horse into a brick wall, and a scar on my right index finger from when I got a pocket knife stuck in it when I was 8. 37. Childhood dream: To own a barn.  38. Hair color: Strawberry blonde, more blonde though.  39. Long or short hair: It’s definitely on the longer side now.  40. Do you have a crush on someone: Not really, except my significant other. 

41. What do you like about yourself: My ability and interest in learning a variety of new things (particularly those related to human experiences), my eyes, my dreams, and my work ethic.  42. Piercings: Ears right now, I’d kind of like a navel piercing but that probably won’t happen.  43. Blood type: I probably should know, but I don’t… 44. Nickname: G, GiGi, someone used to call me Bob.  45. Relationship status: Happily taken. 46. Zodiac: Cancer.  47. Pronouns: She/hers/herself.   48. Favourite TV Show: Oh goodness...I’ve watched so much this summer but Grey’s Anatomy and Criminal Minds are my all time favorite. 49. Tattoos: None right now but I want to get a pair of horseshoes on my back somewhere. But that also likely won’t happen.  50. Right or left hand: Right.  51. Surgery: N/A 52. Hair dyed in different colour: Nope. 53. Sport: Riding horses - hunters, mainly (though I have yet to find a barn in Colorado), I used to play soccer, and I enjoy watching baseball and hockey too. 55. Vacation: When the opportunity arises. I get to go maybe once a year.  56. Pair of trainers: Um...not sure what to put here?  MORE GENERAL: 57. Eating: Tacos.  58. Drinking:  Water, Margaritas, Dirty Shirley’s, water, hot chocolate, my boyfriend’s grandmother’s hot tea, water, anything that isn’t Fireball or diet soda. 59. I’m about to: Go to work.  61. Waiting for: Hugo to come home.  62. Want: To not be in debt and own a small barn.  63. Get married: One day. 64. Career: Future sociologist, human service worker, and academic 65. Hugs or kisses: Both. 66. Lips or eyes: Both, but eyes a little more 67. Shorter or taller: A little taller, preferably.  68. Older or younger: Hah. I used to say I’d never date someone a day younger than me, that didn’t happen.  70. Nice arms or nice stomach: Both. Strong arms, comfy stomach (for use as a pillow) 71. Sensitive or loud: Sensitive. 72. Hook up or relationship: Relationship. 73. Troublemaker or hesitant: Somewhere in between.

HAVE YOU EVER: 74. Kissed a stranger: Yep. 75. Drank hard liquor: Yep. 76. Lost glasses/contact lenses: No, but my puppy chewed a pair of my glasses up.  77. Turned someone down: Oh yes, several times.  78. Sex in the first date: Probably not. 79. Broken someone’s heart: Maybe one, two, or three times, though I can’t be sure.  80. Had your heart broken: No. 81. Been arrested: Almost, but not quite.  82. Cried when someone died: A dog.  83. Fallen for a friend: Yes. DO YOU BELIEVE IN: 84. Yourself: Sometimes. 85. Miracles: Kind of. 86. Love at first sight: I don’t think so, but I think there can be a spark in that first moment.  87. Santa Claus: No, but if I did I’d want to steal one of his reindeer.  88. Kiss on the first date: If things are going well.  89. Angels: Yes.

OTHER: 90. Current best friends’ names: Hugo, Chrystal, Ashley, Morgan, and Megan. 91. Eye colour: Blue 92. Favourite movies: I don’t know if I have one but I really like Leap Year and I watch The Christmas Card every year. 

[gothicangeluk]

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New Post has been published on http://www.blog.gothicangelclothing.co.uk/2017/05/02/goths-inappropriate-sense-humour/

Do most Goths have an inappropriate sense of humour?

My father and to a somewhat lesser extent, me, have a seriously inappropriate sense of humour. I mean I’m not going to mince words-my father can be both hilariously funny and a total dickhead too,often at the same time. For instance, he let me know that my childhood dog had died (I knew she was pretty ill) by replying to my text inquiring after her condition with “Hovis cannot come to the phone at the moment, on account of the fact that she is dead.”

See what I mean? Anyway, I think the combination of being raised by wolves (or you know, the man responsible for that little gem) as well as my past careers in the type of industries that tend to generate a lot of black humour have really honed my inappropriate sense of the inappropriate to the Nth degree. I also wonder if a lot of the reason why myself and my Gothy mates get on so well is because we think on the same wavelength about such things.

My family history is half Russian Jewish circus (seriously, circus-I still have third and some cousins in the Moscow State circus today) on my father’s side, and Romany traveler (mother’s side) and I think these things have helped somewhat too-my collective gene pool has fairly Seen Some Shit In It’s Time.

GRANDAD!

With this in mind, my crew and me sat down the other night to talk about the mostridiculous/inappropriate shit ourselves and our families have come out with, and as I suspected, my da took the dubious winning crown. He is a compulsive liar too for its comedic effect, and he will tell you anything if it makes him giggle.

This means that oftentimes when I go and visit the ‘rents, I have at least one conversation with my mother that goes along the lines of “you know when I was seven and da was in the hospital and he told me it was because his ass fell out, was that true?” The answer is always “no, your father is a compulsive liar, you know this.”

Anyhow, I’m going to share a few of his little gems/biggest lies with you below-the man is an absolute legend, and not necessarily in the good way. Also I warn you, when I say inappropriate, I mean really, THE MAN CAN BE AN ASSHOLE so take that under advisement before you read on.

Story one: How to ruin your child’s reputation while they’re still tiny

During the early 80’s, I was in infants school. You may also remember the early to mid 80’s as the era when the AIDS epidemic really came to the public attention, and was still at the “we have no idea what is going on but loads of people are dying and you can catch the fuck out of this shit” stage. Anyway, my grandmother (paternal) was-not that nice of a woman? And to say that her and my father (her son) had a complicated relationship would be something of an understatement

Anyway, at one stage when I was maybe five, he decided it would be funny to tell me that “granny has AIDS” when I was too young to know what that meant, and so I told everyone in my class, including my teacher. Bear in mind that this was enough to get your parents called into the school and cause something of an overblown public health panic in our sleepy middle England village, that resulted in my ma being called in with no warning to explain that my father is a massive liar, and that my grandmother did not in fact have AIDS.

He slept on the sofa that night, if I recall…

Story two: during the war…

It amazes me how often I fall for my father’s nonsense, even as a grown-ass woman. Anyhow,Christmas before last, we were sitting round watching some Hallmark Special about evacuee kids during WW2 being sent off to the countryside. My father, apropos of nothing, piped up with “I didn’t like being an evacuee.” I paused here, because I had never realized that my father was an evacuee kid, but being as his childhood was spent in the two tactically important cities of Bristol and Birmingham respectively, it was plausible.

I asked him where he was evacuated to (Devon) if my uncle (his older brother) went with him (yes) how long he was there for, the names of his evacuee family, etc etc., all stepping rather carefully because this could of course be a sensitive topic, and I didn’t know if this was a wholesome, happy time for him, or things were about to get all Goodnight Mr. Tom in short order.

We had this whole conversation for a good half hour, me with this picture in my head of him feeding lambs on some Devon farm, bla bla bla.

About three weeks later, something started niggling at me-my now-deceased uncle’s birthday was always relatively easy to remember because he was born on VE day. You know, my father’s OLDER brother. So, if he wasn’t born until the day the war ended, my father was no motherfucking evacuee five years earlier… As soon as I called him and said “HANG ON A BLOODY MINUTE” he started sniggering like a kid, because he had actually got me AGAIN at the grand old age of 37 or so.

NOT MY FATHER.

Story three: the mental great aunt

When I was a very small child (sometime around the time of my grandmother’s “AIDS scare,” if I recall) I remember my father taking me along to what he told me was a mental institution to meet his maternal aunt, who had come over with my grandparents from Russia.

My father told me that said great aunt was in a mental institution because she “went crazy” (considering both my own and my father’s often precarious mental health, you might expect a little more sensitivity, but nope) and ran down the road stealing bananas and raw chickens from the street market they were in, before stuffing them into her underwear and running off.

Said elderly lady was perfectly pleasant and normal when I met her, and upon reflection, the “mental hospital” could easily have been a care home. Ergo, as soon as I got to the age at which I began to realize that my father was the world’s biggest bullshitter, I wrote this tale off as the horse shit it clearly was, and accepted the fact that he had lied his ass off about this poor old babushka living out her twilight years in a British old folks’ home.

I never even bothered to ask my mother about this one, as it was so clearly a lie-until about a week ago, when we caught him in yet another (totally unrelated) lie, and the topic came up.

I outlined what he had told me and said in passing that I never even bothered to ask her about this one because it was so obviously bollocks, and she said “oh no actually, that one was true!”

Said great aunt was unlucky enough to get trapped in the Siege of Leningrad-which, if you are not familiar with it, was when the Nazis hemmed in the whole city of Leningrad in a years-long siege, during which most of the populace starved to death and/or ate their neighbors.

Ergo, when she finally got to the UK after the war after living through something so truly horrific it is beyond the realms of imagination for most of us and found herself in a country where you could just fucking buy food and people weren’t hungry, she lost her shit somewhat and decided to start stockpiling-in her drawers.

The moral of these stories!? Don’t play two two truths and a lie with my da, I guess… Also, don’t be a massive liar, because karma will get you. That whole prior “grandma has AIDS” thing? Well, a few years later, my father caught hepatitis of a then-unknown strain (Hep C today) from still-unknown causes, and was treated largely like the sexually deviant leper that people with HIV/AIDS were at that time by members of the medical community and a lot of the public at large.

He also spent near-on six months in hospital in intensive care showing an attractive hue of yellow skin, and as I now know (although my mother did well at keeping it from me to a degree at the time) was not expected to live.

You’d think this might have made him a bit more speculative about pissing off karma, but just the other week he was telling my little cousin all about when he and the rest of his SAS squadron stormed the Iranian embassy in 1980, and how much he misses Andy McNab and his old crew…

Anyway, if you have a mad story (parent-related or otherwise) I would love to hear it-if you’re the person that never gets the bus because you’re the numpty magnet, that kind of thing-please share!

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[icedteaandoldlace]

I was tagged by @firewolfi

Rules: Answer the questions and tag 20 amazing followers you’d like to get to know better!

Name: Allison

Nicknames: Allie, Al, Aloicious, Cat/Bunny Whisperer, George, Thin Mint

Zodiac Sign: Pisces

Height: 5'8"

Orientation: Asexual (heteroromantic).

Ethnicity: Southern American (not to be confused with South American).

Favorite Fruit: Probably watermelon, but I love all sorts of fruits.

Favorite Season: Fall

Favorite Book: Clockwork Princess (book 3 of The Infernal Devices) by Cassandra Clare.

Favorite Flower: Most flowers, tbh, but lately I’ve been really into hyacinths.

Favorite Scent: Black raspberry and vanilla, coffee grounds, rose petals, line dried laundry, bluebonnets, violets, jasmine, fresh hay, peaches, strawberry, honeysuckle, petrichor, icy mist, cinnamon, cloves, new leather, cut grass, lemon zest–I thought this one would be tough, but once you get me started, there are a lot of scents I love.

Favorite animals: Cats and horses.

Coffee, Tea, or Hot Cocoa: Tea, but I love them all.

Cat or Dog Person: Cat person (dogs are good too, but I just click better with cats).

Favorite Fictional Character: I have about a million that I all love equally, but for the sake of answering and keeping it short, I’m just going to say Eric van der Woodsen and Lilith Sternin.

Dream Trip: Venice, Italy. I just wanna ride in a freaking gondola, dang it.

Blog Created: Sometime in early 2012.

Number of Followers: 820 (WHAAAAAAT?)

What I Post About: Fandom stuff, memes, and feminist/social justice type stuff.

Do I get asks on a regular basis: No.

Aesthetic: I’m on mobile, so I can’t attach a picture, so here: http://icedteaandoldlace.tumblr.com/tagged/aesthetic

Hogwarts House: Gryffindor

LAST ___:

Drink: Tea


Phone Call: My sister.


Text message: My other sister, in the squad’s group message.


Song you listened to: The World Is Ugly by My Chemical Romance


Time you cried: I came pretty close last night, watching a video about a couple adopting disabled cats.

HAVE YOU EVER ____:

Dated someone twice: Never even dated someone once.

Been cheated on: Nope.

Kissed someone and then regretted it: Negative.


Lost someone special: Yes.


Been depressed: Who hasn’t?


Gotten drunk and thrown up: I’ve gotten tipsy, but never enough to throw up.

LIST THREE FAVORITE COLORS: Purple, pink, blue.


IN THE LAST YEAR HAVE YOU _____:


Made new friends: Yeah. Not, like, anyone I hang out or go places with, but yeah.


Fallen out of love: No.

Laughed until you cried: Oh god yes.

Found out someone was talking about you: Yeah, but not in like a dramatic way.


Met someone who changed you: I don’t think so…


Found out who your true friends are: Nah, I’ve known that for a few years now.

Kissed someone on your Facebook list: No.

GENERAL:


How many Facebook friends do you know in real life: All but three. One I added accidentally but kept anyway, one’s a Dr. Doofenshmirtz roleplayer who I don’t even know why they added me, and the other’s the star of a direct-to-video movie I grew up watching, who somehow met my dad.

Do you have any pets: 10 cats.


Do you want to change your name: No, I like my name just fine.


What did you do for your last birthday: I had dinner with my family at a Japanese restaurant, and my mom made a coconut and Mandarin orange cake and took me shopping.


What time did you wake up: Today? 12-something or 1, idk.


What were you doing at midnight last night: I think I was having dinner. Or maybe taking a bath. Last night was a work night, and it went pretty late.

Name something you cannot wait for: All I’m really waiting for at the moment is my new debit card. My old one got skimmed, and being without one makes me nervous. But luckily my phone bill’s been paid and my car has enough gas to last till the new card comes in.


When was the last time you saw your mother: A couple hours ago.


What is something you wish you could change about your life: I would really like to be able to keep myself focused on literally anything, and to have more energy and less anxiety.


What are you listening to right now: The Kids Aren’t Alright by Fall Out Boy.


Have you ever talked to a person named tom: Yes.


Something that is getting on your nerves: My trash email app that NEVER gives me notifications and takes 9,000,000 years to refresh. Also, the fact that the stupid app store won’t let me download FREE apps until I’ve updated my billing information, which I can’t do until I get my new debit card.


Most visited website: Tumblr.


Elementary: Homeschooled.


High school: Homeschooled.


College: One semester of community college completed.


Hair color: Kind of a golden brown.


Long or short hair: Short. Usually in a stacked bob, but right now I have a pixie cut.


Do you have a crush on someone: I have a couple of cute coworkers, but I’m not like smitten or anything.


What do you like about yourself: I like a lot of things about myself. But my favorite thing about myself at the moment is the way I’m changing. I’ve been growing more confident and more responsible, and adulthood is suddenly a little less intimidating.

Piercings: Just your standard one in each earlobe situation. I’ve been considering getting them double pierced, though.


Blood type: I have no idea.



Relationship status: Single


Pronouns: Traditional feminine pronouns.

Favorite TV show: Criminal Minds, Boy Meets World, Gossip Girl, Frasier, Gilligan’s Island, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Madam Secretary, and lately I’ve been watching a lot of Home Improvement and Last Man Standing.


Tattoos: NOPE. They’re neat and all, but they’re not for me.


Right or left hand: Right.

FIRST ____:


Surgery: I had two teeth surgically removed, if that counts.


Piercing: The right ear, if I recall correctly. But that was 14 years ago, and both ears were pierced within moments of each other, so…


Best friend: My cousin, Lexy.

Sport: I’m pretty much limited to kickball.

Vacation: Eureka Springs and Silver Dollar City.


Pair of trainers: I’ve been through too many in my life to have any idea.

RIGHT NOW ___:


Eating: Nothing, but I had some chocolate chip cookies a little while ago.


Drinking: Water.


About to: Put on chapstick and work on one of my stories.


Listening to: The Call by Backstreet Boys


Waiting for: Still just the debit card.


Want: Some tapioca or rice pudding would be nice.

Get married: Someday, hopefully.




Career: Novelist.

WHICH IS BETTER ____:




Hugs or kisses: Hugs. I think. I’m not really sure.


Lips or eyes: Eyes.


Shorter or taller: I really don’t care.


Older or younger: I’m more likely to be interested in a guy who’s older than me than a guy who’s younger, but I would prefer someone as close to my own age as possible.




Nice arms or nice stomach: Arms.


Sensitive or loud: Sensitive, I think. But I do enjoy loud, chatty people, as long as they’re not rude or overbearing.


Hook up or relationship: Relationship.


Troublemaker or hesitant: If by hesitant you mean someone who thinks before they act, then that.

HAVE YOU EVER ____:

Kissed a stranger: No way.


Drank hard liquor: I’ve sipped a few different hard drinks. Hated every one of them.


Lost glasses/contact lenses: No.
 Forgotten to put on, yes, but lost, no.

Turned someone down: Only in the rejecting attempts at flirtation sense. I’ve never been asked out, so I’ve never really had anything to turn down.

Sex on first date: Never been on a date. And sex really isn’t my thing.

Broken someone’s heart: With all these people I’ve never dated and never been asked out by, I don’t see how I could.


Had your own heart broken: Once.


Been arrested: No.


Cried when someone died: Yes.


Fallen for a friend: More like fell for, then befriended, then fell even harder for.

DO YOU BELIEVE IN ____:


Yourself: In most aspects, yes. But not always.


Miracles: Yes.


Love at first sight: In most cases, no, but in the “is it possible/has it ever happened” sense, yes.


Santa Claus: No.




Kiss on the first date: I mean, it’s not something I would ever do, but I don’t have any kind of moral opposition to it.

Angels: Yeah, I think so.

OTHER ____:


Current best friend’s name: Sarah


Eye color: Blue


Movie: Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events

And idk who to tag, but if anyone wants to fill this out, you can say I tagged you and I'll read it. 😉

[moodboardinthecloud]

Joy Williams, the Art of Fiction in the Paris Review

Joy Williams couldn’t find her glasses before a lecture some years ago and used prescription sunglasses instead. During Williams’s walk to the podium, an audience member was heard asking if the writer had gone blind; another remarked how inspiring it was for Williams to recall the lecture from memory. She had been asked to discuss craft. She did not discuss craft. She discussed Kraft cheese and the “twiddling” nature of art pursued “within a parameter of hours in prisons, nursing homes, and kindergartens,” and then she opened a valve. What would be the point, she said,

to discuss the craft of Jean Rhys, Janet Frame, Christina Stead, Malcolm Lowry, all of whose works can teach us little about technique, and whose way of touching us is simply by exploding on the lintel of our minds. It is not technique that guided them. Their craft consisted of desire.

She went on:

We are American writers, absorbing the American experience. We must absorb its heat, the recklessness and ruthlessness, the grotesqueries and cruelties. We must reflect the sprawl and smallness of America, its greedy optimism and dangerous sentimentality. And we must write with a pen—in Mark Twain’s phrase—warmed up in hell. We might have something then, worthy, necessary; a real literature instead of the Botox escapist lit told in the shiny prolix comedic style that has come to define us.

She smiled, thanked the audience, and sat. There were no questions. A student at the reception wondered aloud if tonight’s craft talk could have possibly destroyed future craft talks. “I hope so,” her friend said.

The Paris Review had already run several of the earliest, weirdest Joy Williams stories before George Plimpton agreed to publish State of Grace under the magazine’s book imprint in 1973. The novel, her first, would be nominated for the National Book Award when its author was thirty. (She lost to Gravity’s Rainbow.) She went on to write three more eerie, eccentric novels of life on the American margins as well as four renowned collections of stories, upon which her reputation solidly rests. Many have attained cult status beyond the normal anthologies—“Traveling to Pridesup,” “The Blue Men,” “Rot,” “Marabou,” “Brass”—and are frequently passed around M.F.A. departments with something like subversive glee. They are, as Williams probably hoped, unteachable as craft. The New York Times admitted more than it meant to, perhaps, when a reviewer claimed her work was “probably not for everyone.” Over the decades, wildly different stylists—Donald Barthelme, Don DeLillo, Raymond Carver, William Gass, Karen Russell, Bret Easton Ellis, James Salter, Ann Beattie, Tao Lin—have all expressed unqualified admiration.

Williams was married to Rust Hills, fiction editor of Esquire, for thirty-four years, until his death in 2008. Now she divides the seasons between Arizona, Florida, and New England, crisscrossing the country in an old Ford Bronco with two sable-black German shepherds, writing in motels or as the occasional guest of a college. She uses a flip phone. She types postcards in lieu of e-mail. She has never owned a computer. She continues to wear the same prescription sunglasses, indoors or out, night or day.

She was a writer-in-residence at the University of Wyoming when this interview was arranged. It was October; snow whipped between the ranges like a sandstorm, while several big rigs had jackknifed on black ice coming into Laramie. I phoned from a coffee shop, and she gave me directions: thirty miles north to a ranch where the Bureau of Land Management had relocated herds of wild mustangs. Williams was staying in a red-roofed log cabin with a porch swing and fire pit. The sun broke through like something from Doctor Zhivago. Everything about the wintry scene felt germane to this particular artist: the scope and grandeur of the natural world, the monkish quiet, two dogs with lively personalities, and—roaming everywhere—hundreds of wild horses, nervous and arrogant. Huddled in a hoodie, Williams made coffee with almond milk before sitting across from me at a pine table. She got up several times to retrieve objects or fuss with the dogs. When the talk was over, she drove us into town for a martini and we returned after dark. There was a fat moon. She cut the truck’s headlights and moved, very slowly, through the herds as they sniffed and stepped aside, hides glowing with moonlight.

“Forget the interview,” she said. “Write about this.”

Paul Winner

INTERVIEWER

What do you teach, when you’re visiting a college? Is there a philosophy you try to impart?

WILLIAMS

James Salter once taught a whole course of novels that were written when the authors were the same age as his students. Isn’t that clever? Well, it could also be intimidating. Mostly you just need to support them until they get older and sort themselves out a bit.

INTERVIEWER

What kind of child were you?

WILLIAMS

An only child, growing up in Maine. My father was a Congregational minister. He had a church in Portland. It was a big city church, a beautiful, very formal place. His father was a Welsh Baptist minister who, as a young man, won the eisteddfod in Wales. His prize was a large, ornately carved chair, the bard’s chair, which I wanted very badly as a child. The chair made it to this country but was given to my father’s older brother, who gave it to a historical society in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, from which it was washed away in a flood. Preachers and coal miners, my genealogy.

INTERVIEWER

You said you still own your father’s Bible.

WILLIAMS

Oh, yes. He had lots of Bibles. I kept them all. I’ve got my father’s notebooks, his sermons. One of these days I’ll get them organized. My mother always said she was going to throw them out. They’re not meant to be read, they’re meant to be heard, she said. But I’ve still got them.

INTERVIEWER

Were you a good student? An avid reader?

WILLIAMS

When I was a child I thought the answers to tests had to be transmitted to a person through some kind of food. Perhaps I read it in a book. In any case, it seems I was always preparing myself for tests, or thought I was. I was uneasy with my presence in life. Who was I, anyway? What was I supposed to do? Even with my obsession with preparing for the tests of the day, I was an indifferent student before I went to college. I had my heart set on Colby, in Maine, this tiny liberal-arts college, but I didn’t get in. Marietta, in Ohio, is where my father went, so I went there. I loved it. I was Phi Beta Kappa.

INTERVIEWER

Do you have your key?

WILLIAMS

I do. Do you want to see it? The first was stolen, so my husband tracked down the Phi Beta Kappa people and got me another one. They don’t give it to just anybody, apparently. As I said, I loved college. I had the guidance of an elderly, morose, chain-smoking English professor—Dr. Harold Dean. I never spoke well or argued well in class. But filling up blue books with the gleanings and gleamings of thought, which somehow became a new thought—that was very fulfilling to me. I read Donne, Dickinson, transcendentalism, Eliot, Camus, surrealism. I drank it all up. I was obsessed with Dickinson. The professor gave me her collected poems, three volumes in a box set. A lovely thing. It fared very badly in Florida, all those years, eaten by insects.

INTERVIEWER

Is it true that when you left home, your family gave you multiple copies of the same book?

WILLIAMS

Miss MacIntosh, My Darling. When I was going off to college, I got two copies of this thing, this impossibly neurotic, very strange book by this woman who’d been working on it her whole life, Marguerite Young. What were they thinking? I got Berryman’s collected poems at some point for a birthday, but back then I guess my parents read a review somewhere and thought, You know, well, Joy thinks she’s going to be a writer.

INTERVIEWER

Had you already started writing? You were published quite young.

WILLIAMS

Not so young.

INTERVIEWER

Twenty-two.

WILLIAMS

A lot of those stories aren’t collected. “The Roomer,” my first published story—it was in The Carolina Quarterly and won an O. Henry—that’s never been collected. I didn’t want to. I thought it was sinister and immature. George Plimpton introduced me once at a reading in that voice of his and said that he’d discovered me, that he’d done the first published story of mine. I had to speak up, from the audience, “Uh . . . ” He laughed, charmingly.

INTERVIEWER

From college, you went to Iowa?

WILLIAMS

On graduating, I wanted to join the Peace Corps. It was the early sixties, after all. But the cadaverous Dr. Dean—really, his looks were remarkable—he convinced me otherwise. He wanted me to become a writer. He wanted me to go to the writing program at the University of Iowa and become a writer. So another two years in the Midwest, far from my heart’s home in Maine. The workshop at Iowa met in Quonset huts on the river, then—freezing.

INTERVIEWER

You mentioned that Iowa was, for you, two years of social awkwardness. A shy, Eastern daughter of a minister surrounded by all these big alpha-male writers, Andre Dubus, Raymond Carver—

WILLIAMS

Ray Carver was in the poetry classes. He was always a poet. I knew his wife Maryann better. We were waitresses together, but I was always getting fired. In the workshops I studied with R.V. Cassill and Vance Bourjaily. A more imperfect match there cannot be imagined. Richard Yates came in at some point, I think. Eleven Kinds of Loneliness had just come out in paperback. He seemed a little remote and anxious to me, though not particularly lonely. Revolutionary Road was hugely impressive, but the stories touched me not at all. They seemed old-fashioned, resolving themselves on small matters.

INTERVIEWER

Had you begun your first novel, State of Grace?

WILLIAMS

I graduated, got married, and moved to Florida, where my husband worked at the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. We had a dog, a beach, a Jaguar XK150, black, which to this day I wish I still possessed. Then the husband was trans- ferred to Tallahassee. I didn’t want to live in the big city, I wanted to live in the country. We rented a trailer in the middle of tangled woods on the St. Marks River. Didn’t know a soul, husband away all day. I wrote State of Grace there. Excellent, practically morbid conditions for the writing of a first novel. We returned to Siesta Key, and I got a job working for the Navy at the Mote Marine Laboratory, researching shark attacks.

INTERVIEWER

Shark—

WILLIAMS

The only job I’ve ever had, other than teaching. Well, there was the waitressing. But I was writing, I was getting published in The Paris Review. Really, I had no idea what I was doing.

INTERVIEWER

Did you feel alone with the work? Utterly adrift?

WILLIAMS

I had no connections, no writing circle. I typed everything single-spaced so it would look as though it were already published. Looking at those manuscripts now, I’m amazed at how fluid everything was. No hesitation, no correction, no revising. What a gift! What or who had given me this gift? I mean, the stories weren’t brilliant. They might not have even been particularly good. But I wrote stories, I began and ended them. I didn’t have much experience with anything, but I had my thoughts. I believed stories should have a purity and not be about what was going on—and there was a lot going on, of course, in my life. My husband and I acquired a toucan, then we had a baby. No one knew I was going to have a baby. I was skinny, no one seemed to remark. You know, I didn’t even tell my parents, my dear, dear, supportive, loving parents. When my husband called them on April 6, the day Caitlin was born, they didn’t believe him. Why did I do that? I don’t know. It was so cruel. I suppose I was a little odd, a little secretive. I still have secrets.

INTERVIEWER

Is that what stories are to you? Secrets?

WILLIAMS

I recently received a letter from an Iowa Workshop grad—typical—seeking my participation in a “collaborative” interview. The question was, Why do short stories matter and why should we value them? What a retro question. It sounded like something out of the 1940s. I was too weary for a reply, but I think they probably don’t matter all that much. A herd of wild elephants matters more. And which stories are we talking about? There are so many of them.

INTERVIEWER

Can you define a story, if not its usefulness?

WILLIAMS

What a story is, is devious. It pretends transparency, forthrightness. It engages with ordinary people, ordinary matters, recognizable stuff. But this is all a masquerade. What good stories deal with is the horror and incomprehensi- bility of time, the dark encroachment of old catastrophes—which is Wallace Stevens, I think. As a form, the short story is hardly divine, though all excel- lent art has its mystery, its spiritual rhythm. I think one should be able to do a lot in less than twenty pages. I read a story recently about a woman who’d been on the lam and her husband dies and she ends up getting in her pickup and driving away at the end, and it was all about fracking, damage, dust to the communities, people selling out for fifty thousand dollars. It was so boring.

INTERVIEWER

You tend to mistrust the literal. How do you conceive stories? Do you start with metaphor?

WILLIAMS

I honestly don’t know how I approach such things. That’s the frustration. You want to have your writing do more, and speak more, and yet ... Do you want more coffee?

INTERVIEWER

So back to Florida, early 1970s, holed up in a rented trailer.

WILLIAMS

This may be boring or irrelevant, but I go away to Yaddo, in the winter. I write a story called “Taking Care.” I show the story to a writer there, a sophisticated feminist from New York. She suggests I cut the final line, “Together they enter the shining rooms.” I am dismayed. I become suspicious of readers. Of course I will not cut the line. It carries the story into the celestial, where it longs to go.

INTERVIEWER

In your mind, you’ve finally written your first good story.

WILLIAMS

I send the story to The New Yorker. I receive a nice letter in return. Rather, it begins nicely and admiringly but ends on a somewhat accusatory note. The story is insincere, inorganic, labored. Only once in my career will I appear in The New Yorker. And as Ann Beattie said, the only thing worse than never appearing in The New Yorker is being accepted only once by The New Yorker. I send it to a new magazine called Audience, a hardcover, oversize, heavily illustrated magazine. Its fiction editor is Rust Hills. He loves the story. He is utterly moved by the story. In a few months I return to Yaddo—winter again—and he, quite by coincidence, is there, too.

INTERVIEWER

When was this?

WILLIAMS

I met Rust in 1972. We were both married to other people and I had a two-year-old. By 1974, we were married to each other and Rust had formally adopted Caitlin and given her his name. He had a house in Stonington, Connecticut, and I had a cypress house on a lagoon close by the beach, on Siesta Key. The only writer around was John D. MacDonald. We got to know artists through two of our dear friends, the abstract expressionist Syd Solomon and his wife, Annie. We met Philip Guston, Marca-Relli, Chamberlain, Rivers.

INTERVIEWER

The early seventies were charged with feminist consciousness—Toni Morrison, Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch. You didn’t feel a part of that? You mentioned once that you sensed female writers of that time were everywhere and were expected to be engaged and angry but ended up being terribly conformist.

WILLIAMS

God, yes. Back then you had to be a certain type of writer. You had to be one of these women writing the sort of thing that other people could, you know, find a book on.

INTERVIEWER

Speaking of feminism, I found an article from a Sarasota paper reporting on a literary festival sometime in the 1970s, attended by various luminaries. You were unknown. I believe you are described in the article as being the “tanned, leggy companion” of editor Rust Hills.

WILLIAMS

The word you seek is “sinewy.” Rust organized a writers conference at New College, in Sarasota. It was 1977, I believe. Astonishingly, he got William Gaddis and William Gass to come and actually confer with students. The conference was never repeated, and, though a modest success, I think the students were somewhat baffled. Gaddis and Gass—who were Gaddis and Gass? They sounded like a struggling law firm. Rust wasn’t at Esquire when we met, as I said. Gordon Lish was there and published several of my stories. I was not his big success. Ray Carver was his big success. Lish cut one of my stories, “The Lover,” in half and made it a very good story. He didn’t talk a lot about your stories, he didn’t explain what or why, he just cut and cut.

INTERVIEWER

Your second novel, The Changeling, came out the next year. A review in the Times used your book as a springboard to complain about the vague aims and language of the literary avant-garde. Did you think you were avant-garde?

WILLIAMS

Well, The Changeling, as you might know, is about a drunk. I was smitten with all things Lowry at the time, even though Ken Kesey told me quite firmly that Under the Volcano was “junior high.” But avant-garde? Dickinson’s avant-garde. Ashbery. Loplop. I think Don DeLillo’s avant-garde. No one’s caught up with what he’s doing yet. After reading that review, William Gaddis called and said, Oh, Joy, I’m so sorry. I can still hear his voice saying that. I hadn’t even read it yet. It was nasty, and it did succeed in shutting me up for a while. A few years ago that novel was reissued by a tiny press. I like the cover very much, with Goya’s Dog.

Now, wait. Let me ask—what do you think of the state of criticism in this country? Isn’t that a relevant question? There’s James Wood, of course, who deals only with the giants, whom he quietly, sonorously corrects. Other critics seem, I don’t know, to lurch from writer to writer, wanting to crown someone.

INTERVIEWER

I think of the Internet, the sheer volume. Cynthia Ozick wrote recently about the influence of this environment, all those Amazon customer reviews.

WILLIAMS

Who writes those?

INTERVIEWER

Anyone. People who may, in an earlier age, have written letters to the editor.

WILLIAMS

It’s one thing when it’s a restaurant. I mean, they can destroy a restaurant overnight. To do that with books?

INTERVIEWER

Your characters seem to struggle to interpret the world’s detritus, trying to make sense of ominous signs. A window opens for a moment, but then the window is shut. Is that a fair description of the writer’s consciousness as well?

WILLIAMS

I think the writer has to be responsible to signs and dreams. Receptive and responsible. If you don’t do anything with it, you lose it. You stop getting these omens. I love this little church group I go to. The other day we were talking about how God appears or doesn’t appear and how we’re nervous about seeing God, and it was all very interesting, but then somebody piped up, Well, I think God appears often during the day! We just don’t recognize it! For example, I was trying to find my name tag before the ten-thirty service. There I was with all the name tags, I just couldn’t find it, and then I looked down and it had fallen on the floor! I thought, There’s God! Telling me where it was!

You know what I told her? I said that it was really a large name tag. It was. It was huge. How could she misplace it in the first place?

INTERVIEWER

To speak of signs or interpretation suggests, at the very least, that there’s something unknowable at the heart of what you do. I asked you, before we started taping, whether you remember anything of how some of your most famous stories—“Train,” “Escapes,” “Honored Guest”—came to be written, and you looked panicked. You honestly can’t recall?

WILLIAMS

I find it so difficult to talk about what I do. There are those who are unnervingly articulate about what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, which, I suppose, is what this interview is all about. I am not particularly articulate, unnervingly or otherwise. I do believe there is, in fact, a mystery to the whole enterprise that one dares to investigate at peril. The story knows itself better than the writer does at some point, knows what’s being said before the writer figures out how to say it. There’s a word in German, Sehnsucht. No English equivalent, which is often the case. It means the longing for some- thing that cannot be expressed, or inconsolable longing. There’s a word in Welsh, hwyl, for which we also have no match. Again, it is longing, a longing of the spirit. I just think many of my figures seek something that cannot be found.

INTERVIEWER

And the writer? Are you trying to resolve that longing?

WILLIAMS

There’s a story about Jung. He had a dream that puzzled him, but when he tried to go back to sleep a voice said, “You must understand the dream, and must do so at once!” When he still couldn’t comprehend its meaning, the same voice said, “If you do not understand the dream, you must shoot your- self!” Rather violently stated, certainly, but this is how Jung recollected it. He did not resort to the loaded handgun he kept in a drawer of his bedside table—and it is somewhat of a shock to think of Jung armed—but he deciphered the dream to the voice within’s satisfaction, discovering the divine irrationality of the unconscious and his life’s work in the process. The message is work, seek, understand, or you will immolate the true self. The false self doesn’t care. It feels it works quite hard enough just getting us through the day.

INTERVIEWER

Your voice in the early work is lyrical, dense. After your first few books you began to write journalism, and your fictional voice seemed to transform along with it. It became looser, blunter, more comic. Using that voice, you wrote things like “The Killing Game” and “Save the Whales, Screw the Shrimp” for magazines with large, vocal readerships.

WILLIAMS

Those magazine essays did not require any stealth of execution. Unlike with the stories, where my real interest lay in illuminating something beneath or beyond the story itself, I could be forthright, headlong. I could write about real-estate developers, hunting, infertility treatments resulting in zillions of babies. It freed me so much, those nonfiction pieces. After “The Killing Game,” the NRA had everybody write to Esquire. They had a closet full of irate letters about that piece. The next editor was dealing with it years after it appeared. For one of the magazines, I wanted to write about the Unabomber, but I couldn’t get an interview, so I wrote about his cabin, from the cabin’s point of view.

INTERVIEWER

The Unabomber’s cabin, the pink Wagoneer in 99 Stories of God, the wayward fifty-dollar bill in Breaking and Entering.

WILLIAMS

The fifty-dollar bill. Plimpton hated that. I remembered being so pleased with myself, thinking, Boy, I’m really working here, it’s all coming together! He sort of frowned and said, You’re showing off.

INTERVIEWER

Around this time, you became an authority on the Florida Keys.

WILLIAMS

Random House was doing this series—Virginia, the Hamptons, the Keys. The Keys were still kind of strange and unspoiled in the eighties. I went around the state and wrote things down, but nobody talked to me. Nobody! I’d limp into these bed-and-breakfasts and people would snarl at me and not want to talk. I mean, honestly, it was terrible and I had no idea what I was doing. And it wasn’t edited, nobody edited it. Have you seen the afterword, the final edition, when I didn’t want to update it anymore? Here I am, worn out and saying how shitty everything in the Keys has become, and Random House just went ahead and put the afterword in there. Isn’t that amazing? That’s the only book I’ve ever made money from.

INTERVIEWER

Writing this nonfiction, you’d expanded your voice?

WILLIAMS

With the essays, I wanted to say, there was a lot of freedom bestowed. I felt I could address fecklessness, evil, even grief in a much more honest and emotional way than I could in stories. Which is somewhat contrary to my belief that what the short story, as a form, excels in is the depiction of solitude and isolation. Perhaps writing essays made my fictional characters more garrulous, desperate even, desperate to convey. So my stories became tighter and more restrained in style at the same time my characters became talkier, if that’s possible. Maybe it’s not possible. Maybe it’s not even true.

INTERVIEWER

Writers are desperate to convey their obsessions. They populate the subconscious. Jung and his inexplicable dream, for example.

WILLIAMS

I wonder if understanding the dream is really what must be done. Can we incorporate and treasure and be nourished by that which we do not understand? Of course. Understanding something, especially in these tech times, seems to involve ruthless appropriation and dismantlement and diminishment. I think of something I clipped from the paper and can’t lay my hands on. This peculiar aquatic creature who lives deep within the sea—it looked like a very long eel—came up to the surface, where it was immediately killed and displayed by a dozen or so grinning people on a California beach. Didn’t have a chance to evolve, that one. Curiosity by the nonhuman is not honored in this life. For many people, when confronted with the mysterious, the other, the instinct is to kill it. Then it can be examined.

INTERVIEWER

This might be a good transition into your focus on the natural world, its degradations, the lives of animals. You’ve often quoted Coetzee’s character Elizabeth Costello, who explained that her vegetarianism came out of “a desire to save my soul.” How did this part of your life begin?

WILLIAMS

I’ve been trying to think of this subject, my environmental, moral education. The philosopher Peter Singer’s book on animal rights in 1975 transformed the thinking of many people. Not enough. Now a person with a gluten allergy is honored more than a vegetarian. And these days we continue to suppress, ignore the horror, the cruelty, the evil of the slaughterhouse. Such a simple thing, to not take part in such evil, yet the carnage continues and we find it quite acceptable. We are complicit, materially preoccupied, spiritually impoverished, and technologically possessed. Look what we did to the Earth when it was green and provident. We’ll suck it to the bone with limitation’s necessities. Well, there’s always space. It’s depicted on the endpapers of our U.S. passports.

INTERVIEWER

Do you feel complicit? Do you write out of a sense of guilt?

WILLIAMS

Forgive me for the things I have done and for the things I have left undone. I may very well write out of a sense of guilt. I’ve spent my entire life doing this. Why am I not better at it?

INTERVIEWER

What can writers do, politically?

WILLIAMS

Possibly not much. An environmental writer, Derrick Jensen, says salmon don’t need more books written about them. They need clean, fast water and the dams to be busted up. Anyway, environmentalism has become thoroughly co-opted. Join the big groves and you’ll be gifted with a tote bag to carry and conceal all your good intentions. I wish Earth First! would rise again, but they were branded anarchists and terrorists and harassed by the FBI.

INTERVIEWER

Perhaps only Alice, in The Quick and the Dead, explicitly voices any of your political concerns.

WILLIAMS

Yes, but she’s a crazy girl with a missing front tooth.

INTERVIEWER

How did that novel begin? It stands out from the others. The canvas is bigger, first of all.

WILLIAMS

I wanted to write about someone who cared, and who cared very much about the nonhuman world. Then it seemed right that she should be young, mouthy, and uncharismatic. Of course no one pays her any mind whatsoever, and she’s ultimately outdone by an even younger girl, Emily Bliss Pickless, whose abhorrence of the system allows her to succeed in it, in a peculiar way. I remember looking up something in the dictionary and seeing this word, Corvus, that means raven. It’s also a small constellation. A perfect name. I suppose I did have high-minded objectives. There were lots and lots of characters, living and dead, totem animals, dismemberment, senility, regret, grief, love, all set in the battered, demystified, American desert. It became a rather funny book, finding hidey-holes from complete despair, I guess. It was a journey toward a novel I still hope to write.

INTERVIEWER

How would you describe that novel?

WILLIAMS

To return to the idea of the avant-garde, real avant-garde writing today would frame and reflect our misuse of the world, our destruction of its beauties and wonders. Nobody seems to be taking this on in the literary covens. We are all just messing with ourselves, cherishing ourselves. Andrew Solomon wrote a mega-successful nonfiction book titled Far from the Tree in which he ticks off every emotional, physical, mental, social disability you could possibly imagine and yokes them to true tales of actual practitioners or victims—though Solomon would never employ such a word—which he then bathes in a golden humanist light. We are all so special, particularly the very special, whose needs must be met. We are all so different and some of us are even more different, and this difference must be cherished and celebrated. The critics were ecstatic. What a hymn to diversity! No one spoke of how claustrophobic Far from the Tree was, the tree being utterly metaphorical, how narrowly and pridefully focused, how dismissive of a world outside the human. Cultural diversity can never replace biodiversity, though we’re being prompted to think it can. We live and spawn and want—always there is this ghastly wanting—and we have done irredeemable harm to so much. Perhaps the novel will die and even the short story because we’ll become so damn sick of talking about ourselves.

INTERVIEWER

You often seek the remotest solitude to live and work. What are your typical working conditions? Notebooks? Do you pack a typewriter?

WILLIAMS

I currently own seven Smith Corona portables, if that’s at all interesting, which it probably isn’t. My favorite typewriter is a palomino-colored Sterling that Noy Holland gifted me with in Amherst, Massachusetts. At home in Arizona, I don’t have a TV or Internet or air-conditioning. I’ve never even seen how 99 Stories of God appears to others, as Byliner produced them. They are as vapor to me. My old black Bronco has almost three hundred thou- sand miles on it. It’s traversed the country dozens of times. A great vehicle! My other ride is of a much more recent vintage—a 2004 Toyota Tundra with which I have yet to truly bond. I like old things. I almost never buy anything new.

INTERVIEWER

How does writing get done on the road?

WILLIAMS

Here in Wyoming, I sit and work and walk the dogs. I watch the thrilling ravings of Max Keiser on the RT channel. This TV has cable or a satellite, one or the other. I finally saw The Tree of Life through to its end on the Sundance Channel. Have you seen the ending? I did like everyone meeting up on the beach, although the last shot, of the field packed with sunflowers, seemed a little quiet. All I could think when I saw the field was genetically modified. I missed the glory, totally.

INTERVIEWER

What about the act of writing itself? Do you ever enjoy writing?

WILLIAMS

That nice Canadian writer who recently won the Nobel—beloved, admired, prolific. Who would deny it? She said she had a “hellish good time” writing. This could be a subject for many, many panels. Get a herd of writers together and ask them, Do you have a hellish good time writing? Mostly, I believe, the answer would be no. But their going on about it could take some time.

INTERVIEWER

You’re funny. You must know this.

WILLIAMS

Occasionally I can have a little fun or am pleased with an effect. The conversations between Ginger and Carter, for example, in The Quick and the Dead, or the Lord’s interactions with the animals in 99 Stories of God. But then I hear Plimpton again—You’re showing off.

INTERVIEWER

Who are some living writers you admire?

WILLIAMS

DeLillo is first among them. A writer of tremendous integrity and presence. Mao II is an American classic. So, too, is White Noise, though it’s been taught to splinters. His later works are fierce, demanding. His work can be a little cold perhaps. And what’s wrong with that? The cold can teach us many things. Coetzee I admire very much. On a lighter note, the Russians. Vladimir Sorokin and his crazy Ice trilogy. The short-story writer Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.

INTERVIEWER

Jane Bowles seems like a precedent for your voice.

WILLIAMS

Oh, I hope not. Two Serious Ladies is a confounding book. A ridiculous situation, or situations, unbelievable characters. The plot proceeds in the manner of crutches needing tips. She certainly doesn’t write in any “accepted style” of either then or now. Yet it’s a fascinating book, forever gathering up new and enthusiastic readers. It’s an unnerving book. Do we fear for this writer? The exoticism and tragedy of her life? Paul Bowles, Morocco, her unfortunate love interests, her stroke. She seems to know nothing about human nature, which may quite signify she knows a great deal. I find her refreshing, in the way that drinking vinegar is refreshing.

INTERVIEWER

You reviewed a recent Flannery O’Connor biography and noted her habit of reading theology to embolden her work. What’s the connection for you between religious thought and the writing life?

WILLIAMS

The Bible is constantly making use of image beyond words. A parable pro- vides the imagery by means of words. The meaning, however, does not lie in the words but in the imagery. What is conjured, as it were, transcends words completely and speaks in another language. This is how Kafka wrote, why we are so fascinated by him, why he speaks so universally. On the other hand, there’s Blake, who spoke of the holiness of minute particulars. That is the way as well, to give voice to those particulars. Seek and praise, fear and seek. Don’t be vapid.

INTERVIEWER

Your philosophy, your method, is to seek and praise, fear and seek, and don’t be vapid?

WILLIAMS

You think that’s too vague? Methods limit you as soon as you recognize them. Then you have to find another form to free yourself.

INTERVIEWER

Freedom—you’ve mentioned it several times. Is freedom why you spend so much of your life out in the middle of nowhere?

WILLIAMS

Yes, yes. Freedom is most desirable. Of course none of us are free. Our flaws enslave us, the things we love. And through technology we’re becoming more known to everyone but ourselves. What’s that phrase about certain writers being what the culture needs? Most writers just write about what the culture recognizes.

INTERVIEWER

Your last book, 99 Stories of God, takes the form of parables—koans, vignettes, almost poems, with forays into philosophy and theology. The Lord shows up on Earth a few times to mingle awkwardly. Was this subject or style freeing to you?

WILLIAMS

I’m going to do one more story about God. He’s really going to confide in me. Then I’m done.

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