#Sentenced to Life

[dailyworldecho]

[p-vdheev]

Sentenced to Life

Sentenced to life, I sleep face-up as though

Ice-bound, lest I should cough the night away,

And when I walk the mile to town, I show

The right technique for wading through deep clay.

A sad man, sorrier than he can say.

But surely not so guilty he should die

Each day from knowing that his race is run:

My sin was to be faithless. I would lie

As if I could be true to everyone

At once, and all the damage that was done

Was in the name of love, or so I thought.

I might have met my death believing this,

But no, there was a lesson to be taught.

Now, not just old, but ill, with much amiss,

I see things with a whole new emphasis.

My daughter’s garden has a goldfish pool

With six fish, each a little finger long.

I stand and watch them following their rule

Of never touching, never going wrong:

Trajectories as perfect as plain song.

Once, I would not have noticed; nor have known

The name for Japanese anemones,

So pale, so frail. But now I catch the tone

Of leaves. No birds can touch down in the trees

Without my seeing them. I count the bees.

Even my memories are clearly seen:

Whence comes the answer if I’m told I must

Be aching for my homeland. Had I been

Dulled in the brain to match my lungs of dust

There’d be no recollection I could trust.

Yet I, despite my guilt, despite my grief,

Watch the Pacific sunset, heaven sent,

In glowing colours and in sharp relief,

Painting the white clouds when the day is spent,

As if it were my will and testament –

​

As if my first impressions were my last,

And time had only made them more defined,

Now I am weak. The sky is overcast

Here in the English autumn, but my mind

Basks in the light I never left behind.

​

--TLS, May 2, 2014

Clive James

[hallwords]

to you, it's a shitty sentence. to some random bitch 500 miles away, it's a fire line that'll haunt them for the next 17 years.

you don't know how impactful your writing is because it's been in your brain for far too long now. you've stared at it for hours and repeated "this sucks" over and over again to the point that you killed your capacity to feel anything about your work.

but trust me, once you get your shit out there, someone's gonna go over that paragraph you hate and go "jesus fucking christ" and put the book down to have an existential crisis.

[thegodofhellfire]

Pep (c. 1923 – 1930) was a black Labrador Retriever who was falsely accused of murdering a cat. On August 31, 1924, Pep was sent to the Eastern State Penitentiary, where he received inmate number C-2559 and had his mugshot and paw prints taken. His log into the prison ledger indicates life sentence for murder, a tongue-in-cheek gesture that prompted widespread outrage. Pep was given as a gift from Maine governor Percival Baxter, to Pennsylvania governor Gifford Pinchot who was inspired by Baxters use of dogs in Maine. Pep was only brought to prison to boost inmate morale.

Upon Pep's incarceration, international newspapers seized upon the murder reported in Pep's police record and publicly declared him "cat murderer." Governor Pinchot and his wife Cornelia adamantly denied Pep's murder accusation, calling it a "slanderous and unjustified attack on his reputation" and a "wretched tale." The governor received hundreds to thousands of letters from as far as the Philippines protesting Pep's unfair incarceration and demanding Pep's freedom. Governor Pinchot assured the public that Pep was not a prisoner and lived a good life at the penitentiary running the grounds, chasing rats through prison corridors, and fulfilling his life's mission of becoming a friend to all.

He was put on a diet in 1927 because inmates gifted him too much food. When he became old and tired, he moved to the Graterford Prison Farm, where he was allowed to spend the rest of his days at the home of a retired guard who begged for leave to care for him in his old age. Pep died in May or June 1930 and was buried in a flower bed on prison grounds. A wooden marker was placed on the grave but was later swept away in a flash flood.

[strangestcase]

becoming a furry nonhuman otherkin objectum genderweird relationship anarchy freak has made me immune to weird conservative whatifs. "what if people want to identify as animals" let them "what if people want to marry furniture" let them "what if-" is it hurting YOU? personally? or are you just so joyless that you can't conceive a living thinking person that isn't as repressed and deprived of whimsy as you

EDIT: Incest and pedophilia (including simulated pedophilia) don’t count because they do hurt people. I can’t believe I have to say this but things that hurt people aren’t part of the list of things that are weird but don’t hurt people.

[timothy-kang]

Trendy News—Lori Vallow Daybell

Lori Vallow Daybell, who murdered her children sentenced to life in prison.

Lori Vallow Daybell, who murdered her children sentenced to life in prison.

[lonesome-dreamsss]

his handprint may be burned into your skin but it's still the gentlest touch you've ever received.

[eggings]

happy disability pride month to anyone who has a disability from a condition that “usually isn’t a disability”. happy disability pride month to people with disabilities that aren’t often understood by able-bodied people. happy disability pride month to people who don’t have any official diagnosis yet. happy disability to people whose “labs look completely fine”. wishing you peace this july.

[adhd-merlin]

I enjoy the "sending my gay son to homophobia kingdom" jokes as much as the next person but, to be fair to hunith, I think people forget how unsafe ealdor was implied to be for merlin.

right in the first episode, in her letter, hunith tells gaius that she's afraid of what people in ealdor might do to merlin if he was found out (he is so clearly at odds with people here that, if he were to remain, I fear what would become of him). so afraid, in fact, that she packed merlin off to gaius as soon as she found out that will knew about his magic. it sounds like the two of them didn't even get the chance to say goodbye, so it must've happened very quickly:

[transcript from episode 1x10]

given hunith's fear, there's no reason to believe that people in ealdor were much more tolerant towards magic than people in camelot.

then, in episode 5x03, we see an instance of villagers taking matters into their own hands and attempting to burn an old woman on the pyre for being a witch. while this happened in camelot, it didn't have much to do with the king's laws – on the contrary, the villagers even tried to do it in defiance of arthur's direct orders.

I can imagine this happening in other villages — and ealdor is, as hunith wrote in her letter, a small one. Would it be easier to hide there, or in a city where hundreds live and nobody knows you? better yet, under the protection and tutelage of somebody who could teach you how to control your random outbursts of magic? she had no way of knowing merlin would end up spending most of his time under the prince's nose.

then, of course, there's the fact that merlin was not happy in ealdor. although in episode 1x10 he tells will that he didn't want to leave and that his mother made him, he also tells arthur in an earlier scene that he left because he did not fit in anymore and "wanted to find somewhere that [he] did". (was he lying to will when he said he wanted to stay, to soften the blow of him leaving? perhaps; though it's likely that he actually felt torn about it).

as merlin painfully admits to gaius later, the years before he moved to camelot were the loneliest of his life. and hunith would certainly have noticed her son's deep unhappiness.

so, to get to my point — hunith's choice wasn't as crazy as it sounds. sometimes the only option you're left with is sending your gay son to homophobia kingdom and hope that things turn out all right for him.

[laundrybiscuits]

The officer leans close, jabbing a finger into Steve’s chest. “You’re damn lucky it ain’t ten years ago or one state over,” he growls. “You could be looking at a felony charge, serving 15 to life. We didn’t stand for this kind of thing in Hawkins when I joined the force.”

Steve just folds his arms and gives the officer a bored look. “Okay,” he says. “Good talk. Can I see my boyfriend now?”

The officer sneers, but he steps aside to let Steve through. They’ve got Eddie cuffed to the hospital bed with another gun-toting guard in the corner. 

“Jesus christ,” snaps Steve. “He’s not gonna escape, he can’t even walk right now. Why don’t you clear out and give us a little privacy, huh?”

“Sorry,” says the guard, not sounding all that sorry. “It’s for his own protection.”

Fuck. He’s gonna have to hope Eddie can follow his lead. All that practice pretending to be a wizard or whatever has to be good for something, right?

He perches on the side of Eddie’s bed and takes his hand. He can do this. “Hey, gorgeous. How’re you feeling?” 

“Uh,” says Eddie, eyebrows doing something hilarious. “Steve?”

“It’s okay,” says Steve. He rubs his thumb over Eddie’s knuckles. This is the most they’ve ever touched, he thinks—the most that was just skin, no layers of denim or leather in between. Not even a layer of blood and dirt. 

He swallows and keeps going, willing Eddie to develop freaky mind-reading powers all of a sudden. “I know you didn’t want to tell anyone about us, but I had to, baby. I’m sorry. I had to tell them you were, y’know, with me when…when Jason killed Chrissy.”

“You didn’t have to tell them about us,” says Eddie slowly. He’s giving Steve kind of an intense look. “Honey-pie. I’m sure there’s gotta be another way. One without as many consequences for you that you might not have thought all the way through.”

“There really isn’t,” Steve says. Thank god Eddie’s so quick on the uptake. Sure, he’s being a stubborn dick about it, but at least it doesn’t seem like he’s going to let anything slip. 

“Fucking hell,” sighs Eddie. “Don’t suppose we can put that pesky little cat back in the bag. Okay. Darling angel, light of my life, corndog of my soul, who else knows?”

Corndog of my soul, Steve mouths to himself. “Just the cops. And Robin and Nancy, obviously. And—oh, remember Hopper?”

“Do I remember Hopper, he asks. Oh, pudding-pop. The late Chief Hopper and I spent so, so much quality time together over the years; he was practically a father figure to me. And just as with my actual dear old dad, his departure was cause for great rejoicing in Casa Munson.”

“Sorry to break the bad news, then. Hop’s alive, and he—uh, he knows everything.” Steve tries to communicate the scope of everything by kind of tilting his head back and forth. “He’s been…helping.”

“Huh. No shit,” says Eddie. Steve can’t tell whether or not he’s getting it. To be fair, there’s a lot to get. “Okay, gallant knight errant of mine, any news on whether or not I’m getting sprung from this charmingly appointed dungeon?”

“We’re…Hopper’s working on it. That’s why I’m. Y’know. Here. To tell you that they know about us.” 

“Cool, right, understood.” Eddie closes his eyes, leaning back on his pillow. It’s so strange to see him in nothing but a hospital gown against white sheets. He looks like a wrung-out dishtowel. 

There’s a commotion from outside, raised voices saying something like you let him what and haven’t even interrogated the Munson kid yet and not a legal status you fuckin—

“Time’s up, sweetheart,” says Eddie, mouth quirking up into the ghost of a smile. “Anything else you wanna say before they decide to upgrade my security?”

“Uh,” says Steve. He’d mostly been focusing on getting the basics of Eddie’s alibi across in a convincing way, and he can’t remember if there were any other details Eddie should know. 

He hears the door slam open behind him, and panics. “Love you, bye,” he says, and ducks in to brush a quick kiss across Eddie’s chapped lips. The last thing he sees as he’s hauled bodily out of the room by a pissed-off detective is Eddie with his eyes gone enormous and shocked, lifting his uncuffed hand to his mouth, looking and looking at Steve like something is always going to be different from now on, forever.

(ETA: small continuation here!)

[dailyworldecho]

[sincerlyus]

two best friends in a room, they might commit crimes!!

[ditzytwinks]

phil is honestly great representation for smart people who can’t speak

[caffeinewitchcraft]

A regular came in a few evenings ago. A young mom with her daughter who often comes in the morning. She also often treats the baristas badly, but that’s a different story.

She came in at an unusual time with her daughter on her hip. The little girl looked sick to me - puffy eyes and a red nose and a tight, unhappy pinch to her mouth.

The mom ordered her sweets. Sensing something was wrong, I tried to stay upbeat and to engage the little girl but neither mom or daughter were interested. I turned to collect their order.

“See? Daddy made you sad but mommy makes it better, right?”

My mouth soured and my hands paused in making their drinks. The revulsion was physical, a hollowing in my stomach that sounded like a vacuum in my ears. A ghostly hand settled against the back of my neck and stole the heat from my veins.

Im an adult now. The justifications came to mind a microsecond behind the horror and tried to overwhelm it. Mom is tired, mom just wants little girl to feel better, daddy also made mommy sad. Sometimes the big lessons are learned on other days, sometimes it’s okay to make the day better with sweets, sometimes you don’t have the strength to fight the battles you’re supposed to fight—

I handed out the pastry.

She said again, “Daddy made you cry and mommy made it better.”

The little girl looked into her pastry bag and didn’t look up.

No, i wanted to say. No, mommy didnt make it better. Mommy is part of the problem, mommy is saying your feelings are only worth a cake pop and a juice, mommy is siding with daddy who made you cry so hard that you look like a child left in the cold.

“Would you like a sticker?” I asked. She did and she took one and I took too much comfort in the fragile return of her smile before leaving the cafe.

I should have said more. I’m sorry you’re sad. I see that you’re sad. It matters that you’re sad.

Did I become part of this terrible lesson by joining in? Here’s a pastry, here’s a sticker, see? Didn’t we make it all better?

I closed the cafe.

[heymacy]

IAN GALLAGHER + his journey with bipolar disorder

╰┈➤ “At times, being bipolar can be an all-consuming challenge, requiring a lot of stamina and even more courage, so if you’re living with this illness and functioning at all, it’s something to be proud of, not ashamed of." - Carrie Fisher