#and i hope this answers any future questions people pose to me regarding this son | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

kellyvela · 4 years ago

Note

Has GRRM ever said in any interview or on his blog that he hates Sansa's complete storyline after 4th season? I dont really follow all of his fan/media interactions but from what I can recall he has spoken abt how LF in books wont give sansa to ramsay or how noone had issue when Jeyne was given the Ramsay storyline in books etc. Asking this question to you bcs you rightly point out how ppl misunderstood his interviews/posts ( sansans/targ stans etc) & I cant recall him ever saying he 'hates' sansa's story in the later seasons of the show ( not s5 in particular but even s6 to s8).

Capclave 2013:

A change that has repercussions for season 4 is Marillion’s tongue removal from the first season. Martin said that the change was made (from an anonymous singer being the victim of a de-tonguing) because they wanted Joffrey to maim someone the audience would recognize. He believes this is an issue because of the part the singer plays in Sansa’s storyline, how he affects her interactions with others in the book, and he doesn’t believe another character will be fulfilling that role on Game of Thrones.

—GRRM talks season 4 & beyond - Winter is Coming - October 13, 2013

2014 Fan Reports about Capclave 2013 (*):

In a convention panel this year, George said on the record that he had no idea what they were doing with Sansa or where they’re taking her storyline, which now makes sense perhaps. He was not pleased when he was talking about it, so who knows what’s going to happen with her! Knowing GRRM, that could mean they’re going off the canon reservation, and/or that they’re going to be making a lot of shit up

I have notes I’ll be responding to (thanks!) but enough people commented about Sansa that I thought I’d share that tidbit, since it happened back in September iirc (was the same panel where he criticized the exclusion of Tyrell brothers)

—starkalypse - June 3, 2014

GRRM’s comments at capclave about Sansa (which I was in the third row for, for those asking about legitimacy) were among others during the panel that had a general theme of dissatisfaction with show changes. He was not in good spirits for that con and didn’t really have anything positive to say regarding the show. So take it with a grain of salt; there are deviations away from the books in the episodes he gets writers credit for, so maybe they’re doing something stupid or they really don’t have a gameplan!

—starkalypse - June 4, 2014

(*) These reports were posted in June 2014, during the airing of Game of Thrones Season 4, about Capclave 2013 that happened in October 2013.

Just after the rape episode:

How many children did Scarlett O’Hara have? Three, in the novel. One, in the movie. None, in real life: she was a fictional character, she never existed. The show is the show, the books are the books; two different tellings of the same story.

There have been differences between the novels and the television show since the first episode of season one. And for just as long, I have been talking about the butterfly effect. Small changes lead to larger changes lead to huge changes. HBO is more than forty hours into the impossible and demanding task of adapting my lengthy (extremely) and complex (exceedingly) novels, with their layers of plots and subplots, their twists and contradictions and unreliable narrators, viewpoint shifts and ambiguities, and a cast of characters in the hundreds.

There has seldom been any TV series as faithful to its source material, by and large (if you doubt that, talk to the Harry Dresden fans, or readers of the Sookie Stackhouse novels, or the fans of the original WALKING DEAD comic books)… but the longer the show goes on, the bigger the butterflies become. And now we have reached the point where the beat of butterfly wings is stirring up storms, like the one presently engulfing my email.

Prose and television have different strengths, different weaknesses, different requirements.

David and Dan and Bryan and HBO are trying to make the best television series that they can.

And over here I am trying to write the best novels that I can.

And yes, more and more, they differ. Two roads diverging in the dark of the woods, I suppose… but all of us are still intending that at the end we will arrive at the same place.

In the meantime, we hope that the readers and viewers both enjoy the journey. Or journeys, as the case may be. Sometimes butterflies grow into dragons.

—The Show, the Books - Not A Blog - May 18, 2015

Report about the last Game of Thrones Script that GRRM wrote:

No Wedding for Sansa and Ramsay: Without question, one of the most controversial changes the show made in trying to streamline the books was by slotting Sansa into the role of Ramsay’s wife and rape victim in Season 5. In the books, Ramsay marries and assaults Sansa’s best childhood friend, Jeyne Poole—who is being forced to impersonate Arya—instead. (You can actually see Jeyne briefly sitting next to Sansa in the show’s pilot.)

At the time Martin wrote this script, though, substituting Sansa for Jeyne was not yet the plan. Martin has Roose Bolton tell his bastard son: “We have a much better match in mind for you. A match to help House Bolton hold the north. Arya Stark.” It should be noted, however, that in Martin’s script, Sansa isn’t free from menace either. At his own wedding-day breakfast, Joffrey still threatens to rape the older Stark sister—once he’s “gotten Margaery with child.”)

—Game of Thrones: The Secrets of George R.R. Martin’s Final Script - Vanity Fair - December 7, 2018

A month before the Game of Throne S8 Finale:

Sansa’s story, in particular, has really deviated from the books. Ramsay Bolton — that marriage obviously was with a different character. When they start deviating like that, did you initially have any emotional reaction, even though you worked in Hollywood for many years yourself?

GRRM: Well, yeah — of course you have an emotional reaction. I mean, would I prefer they do it exactly the way I did it? Sure. But I’ve been on the other side of it, too. I’ve adapted work by other people, and I didn’t do it exactly the way they did it, so ….

Some of the deviation, of course, is because I’ve been so slow with these books. I really should’ve finished this thing four years ago — and if I had, maybe it would be telling a different story here. It’s two variations of the same story, or a similar story, and you get that whenever anything is adapted. The analogy I’ve often used is, to ask how many children did Scarlett O’Hara have? Do you know the answer to that?

I know it’s different in the book and the movie …

GRRM: Three children in the book, one by each husband. She had one child in the movie. And in real life, of course, Scarlett O’Hara had no children, because she never existed. Margaret Mitchell made her up. The book is there. You can pick it up and read Mitchell’s version of it, or you can see the movie and see David Selznick’s version of it. I think they’re both true to the spirit of the work, and hopefully that’s also true of Game of Thrones on one hand, and A Song of Ice and Fire on the other hand.

—George R.R. Martin on the Stark Sisters and Ending ‘Game of Thrones’ - RollingStone - April 22, 2019

James Hibberd’s Book:

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: Jeyne Poole was included in the pilot—she’s shown giggling next to Sansa—but she’s never seen or referred to again. I actually wrote Jeyne into “The Pointy End,” my first script, when Arya killed the stableboy. I had some stuff with Jeyne running to Sansa being all hysterical and dialogue in the council chamber with Littlefinger saying, “Give her to me, I’ll make sure she doesn’t cause any trouble.” That was dropped.

DAVID BENIOFF: Sansa is a character we care about almost more than any other. We really wanted Sansa to play a major part in that season. If we were going to stay absolutely faithful to the book, it was going to be very hard to do that. There was a subplot we loved from the books, but it was a character not involved in the show.

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: I was trying to set up Jeyne for her future role as the false Arya. The real Arya has escaped and is presumed dead. But this girl has been in Littlefinger’s control for years, and he’s been training her. She knows Winterfell, has the proper northern accent, and can pose as Arya. Who the hell knows what a little girl you met two years ago looks like? When you’re a lord visiting Winterfell, are you going to pay attention to the little kids running around? So she can pull off the impersonation. Not having Jeyne, they used Sansa for that. Is that better or worse? You can make your decision there. Oddly, I never got pushback for that in the book because nobody cared about Jeyne Poole that much. They care about Sansa.

—Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series by James Hibberd - October 6, 2020

GEORGE R. R. MARTIN: My Littlefinger would have never turned Sansa over to Ramsay. Never. He’s obsessed with her. Half the time he thinks she’s the daughter he never had—that he wishes he had, if he’d married Catelyn. And half the time he thinks she is Catelyn, and he wants her for himself. He’s not going to give her to somebody who would do bad things to her. That’s going to be very different in the books.

—Fire Cannot Kill a Dragon: Game of Thrones and the Official Untold Story of the Epic Series by James Hibberd - October 6, 2020

I hope it helps you.

Thanks for your message.

#sansa stark #grrm

84 notes · View notes

twinkleallnight · 4 years ago

Text

Marshmallow

(Part -15) Denouement

Book: The Royal Romance AU

Word count: 1974

Disclaimer: All characters belong to pixelberry.

Rating: Teen/ PG

Warning: None.

A/N: An AU with Drake’s POV, showcasing his life as a commoner at the royal palace. Catch up here

I meet Hana couple of times after the drunk incident but ignore all signs. We never speak of what happened that night. May be, because I don’t want to acknowledge the obvious feelings blooming between us and she is too embarrassed about her state that night.

*******

Finally, the day arises when the country is full of cheerful sounds and bright colours. The palace is being decorated with expensive flowers and exquisite tapestries. Tapestries that depict the valour and courage of the Rhys dynasty.

I stand with Liam in front of a blank wall in anticipation. A life-size portrait is raised up by the palace staff and I see Liam’s chest swell up with pride as his head is held high looking into the eyes of his ancestor King Fabian in the image.

“Your favourite person.” I look at him knowingly.

“My idol. When I wear the crown today, I want to be just and true to my people like him.”

I clasp his shoulder. “You will be the most compassionate king Cordonia has seen.”

“I hope.” Liam beams. “Would you like to come with me to the study? I plan to brush up my speech and then head for the lunch.”

“You go ahead. I think I will see you at the ball. Call me if you need me around.”

“May I know where are you headed to?”

“I have to be at the boutique for a trial.” I say sheepishly.

Liam’s eyes widen, “You are going to dress up?”

I grin, “It’s my best friend’s coronation ball.”

He cocks his head searching in my eyes. “Or is it Hana?”

“I won’t deny.” I reply bashfully.

Liam nods his head with a smile. “I like the new Drake.”

“It’s the same old me.”

“Well, that we will see in the evening.” Liam chortles. “See you at the ball.” He waves and walks away.

I make a beeline to the boutique and coyly enter in. Hana had assured me that no one will be there around at this hour of the day.

“Hana...”, I call out in a tense voice.

She sways down smiling at me from the back of the room and holds my hand. “I am so glad you agreed. You are going to love this.” She pushes me to the trial rooms in excitement. “Go on. Try it.”

When I walk out dressed in a grey suit, she lets out a gasp and scurries to me. Her arms wrap around my neck making me chuckle. She gives me a quick hug and steps back admiring. “Wait here. I want to show you something.”

She brings out another garment bag. She flips the bag to reveal a silver grey gown. “ I found something matching with your suit to wear.” She giggles. I shake my head smiling in disbelief.

“What? You find it funny?” she pouts, a bit disheartened.

“Absolutely not!” I raise her chin with my curled finger. “Look at me. I was the commoner who never showed interest in any of these pompous affairs. But with you around I feel like a different person. I want to try it all. It’s not funny. It’s just that I am beaming at the new me.”

Her eyes brighten up again. “I am so excited for tonight.”

“ I can see that. Me too.”

“Okay, now you need to leave. I have some more last minute things to finish.”

“You sure don’t need my help anywhere.”

“No. Thank you.”

She pushes me out of the boutique giggling in enthusiasm.

I have a quiet lunch and retire to my quarters till evening.

*************

Later in the evening:

The palace shines in all its glory with strings of lights twinkling around its edges. The nobles arrive in their luxury vehicles one after another draped in choicest of designer wears, waving out to the cameras flashing at the entrance. The media is covering the country’s most important event in decades, alerting their representatives to capture who’s who of the royal court.

I calmly observe the rush, as usual, from my favourite spot, the bar. Liam joins me soon.

“Hana has a great taste.”

“What?” I look at him quizzically.

He raises his eyebrows in praise and waves his hand at me. “The suit looks good on you. She chose well.”

“Chose well? You mean the suit or me?”

He laughs out. “She has improved your sense of humour too. You are no longer the grumpy one.”

“I was never grumpy except in Riley’s dictionary.”

Just then, Max sprints towards Liam, “Hey Li, have you seen the grumpy guy around?”

I turn to him, “Very funny, Beaumont.”

“Oh, is it really you Drakey!” He gropes over and cups my face, his voice, a note higher and melodramatic. “You gave away your denims for a suit? That must be so painful. Are you alright?” He places the back of his hand on my forehead, trying to test my temperature.

“Cut it out Max.” I shrug away his hands as I notice Liam stifling a laugh.

Hana and Riley join the gang and they get busy with the chit chat. I notice Hana stealing glances at me but her eyes have a worried look. Something seems to be amiss that I cannot place my finger upon. After sometime she excuses herself and I find her exiting the main doors. I follow her towards the lawn.

There under the silver of moon, Hana shimmers in her silver gown, standing alone, deep in her thoughts. I step closer to her and wrap my arm around her shoulder.

She turns around to face me and suddenly hugs me tightly. “What’s wrong?” I ask her softly.

She doesn’t utter a word but pulls out an envelope from her clutch and hands it over to me. I don’t understand the foreign language written in it but definitely know that whatever it is, it has upset her. Her voice is almost a whisper when she says, “It’s over. I have to leave.” Still looking down into the letter.

I hold her at her elbows and tug, “Leave? Why?”

She raises her head and I see her eyes are welled up with tears. “It’s a letter from my parents. They say if I am not Liam’s choice tonight, which they know well, I should be moving back to Shangai tomorrow.”

I feel like someone has sucked out the breath from me, as I stand speechless in front of her.

‘Is this how it ends? No. Is this how I want it to end?’ It’s a split-second decision I make in a trice. I embrace her tightly. I hear her gasp with my unexpected move. Her hands lightly resting on my arms, letter still held in one.

I cup her face and look into my favourite honey almond eyes. “Hana…” I gather some more courage to say things I intend to. “I don’t know what happens tomorrow. But I want you to know that you are the most amazing person I have ever met. You are epitome of perfection yet you ignore the imperfections people around you have. Hell, you turn those short comings into a silver lining. You do things for the people you care. It’s impossible to stay away from you once someone gets to know you. I don’t know if I even deserve to be with you. But I want tell you this, that I… I love you. And I won’t let this end here. It’s not over. Not yet.”

She tries to open her mouth to say something but before that I lower my mouth on hers and capture the warmth of her lips. My fingers, cupping her face, feel the wetness of her tears rolling down her cheeks. I roll my thumb to wipe them away without breaking the kiss.

********

“How do you think it goes from here?” Riley questions in general.

“I don’t have any idea.” I rub my hands over my eyes.

I had requested Liam for an urgent word regarding Hana’s plans, in turn he called Riley and now we are all seated with him in his study.

“Can’t you stay?” Riley asks Hana.

“No.” Hana speaks softly, looking into a hollow.

“Why?”

“This is how it was supposed to be. My parents wanted me to be in Cordonia so that I find a suitable match in some noble house. With the social season coming to an end tonight, they don’t want me to stay any longer without purpose.”

“Damn it!” I curse in frustration.

“So, we really can’t do anything?” Riley looks at Liam for an answer.

“Not immediately. We will have to wait.” Liam says brooding.

“How long?” Riley seems to be more restless.

“Until I take over the office as the king of Cordonia.” He pauses, “And I can’t directly pass the first orders for Lee family at Shanghai when there must be many pressing issues Cordonia is dealing with. So we will have no option but to be patient.”

There is a knock at the door. Bastein peeps in to remind, “I am sorry to interrupt but we are running against time, sir. The king has asked for your presence in the main hall.”

Liam gets up looking at the watch. “I am afraid, we will have to curtail this meeting. Drake, I will see what I can do. I will update you.” He pats my back and then addresses Hana.

“Hana, trust me, we will find out a solution. I am sorry that you have to go through this.”

She gives a forced smile. “Thank you.”

Riley hugs her in reassurance and they both walk out of the study. I keep looking blankly at her retrieving figure. Bastein clears his throat to pull me back from my thoughts. “I… I…”

Bastein walks to me. He places his hand on my back. “Son, you are dealing with the nobles here. Don’t jump into action too soon. Take one step at a time. Things will fall in place if all goes well. Tomorrow, the king will be the one who is your best friend. As much as I know the boy, he will always have your back.” I nod in agreement.

“Have faith and some hope. This too shall pass.”

“Thank you, Bas.” I compose myself and stride down the hall with him.

The coronation ceremony is conducted smoothly. Watching Liam bearing a crown is a moment of pride. Minutes later, the announcement for the queen is made and against all odds he declares his love, lady Riley, as his future queen. They exchange rings and pose to the paparazzi as an officially engaged couple.

My eyes are stuck at the grand clock, each passing second ticking in my ear. My heart is racing against time. I scan through the crowd once again. Hana stands on the other end of the hall with other suitors. Our eyes pierce into each other hers throwing away sadness and mine hoping against hope.

“You know if Liam can get true love, against all odds, you too deserve to be with the one you love.” I snap at the voice that spoke behind me.

“Leo? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Couldn’t have missed my baby brother’s coronation ceremony.” He shrugs. We meet each other with a hug.

“So, you and Hana, huh?” he asks inquisitively.

“Didn’t you just come back to Cordonia? How do you know?”

He looks across my shoulder at someone. “She knows, so I know.” He raises his glass wine in someone’s direction.

I turn around to see whom he is pointing to. My jaw drops when I check the lady walking towards us. She stops besides Leo and he places a soft kiss on her cheek. Their arms wind around each other’s waist.

“You…and…Livy?” I falter, astonished at the sudden turn of events.

Tags: @ao719 @annekebbphotography @anjanettexcordonia @bebepac @charlotteg234 @choicesficwriterscreations @cordonia-gothqueen @drakewalker04 @eadanga @gkittylove99 @glaimtruelovealways @krsnlove @hopefulmoonobject @hopelessromanticmonie @iam-the-kind-and-thoughtful @jessiembruno @jovialyouthmusic @jaxsmutsuo @kat-tia801 @kingliam2019 @khoicesbyk @shewillreadyou @lisha1valecha @lovablegranny @mrswalkers-blog @mom2000aggie @no-one-u-knoww @ntoraplayschoices @princessleac1 @ritachacha @secretaryunpaid @sirbeepsalot @speedyoperarascalparty @shanzay44 @texaskitten30 @txemrn @queenrileyrose @sanchita012 @sfb123 @theroyalheirshadowhunter @aestheticartsx @yourmajesty09

@hopefulmoonobject @hopelessromanticmonie @iam-the-kind-and-thoughtful @jessiembruno @jovialyouthmusic @jaxsmutsuo @kat-tia801 @kingliam2019 @khoicesbyk @shewillreadyou @lisha1valecha @lovablegr @hopefulmoonobject @hopelessromanticmonie @iam-the-kind-and-thoughtful @jessiembruno @jovialyouthmusic @jaxsmutsuo @kat-tia801 @kingliam2019 @khoicesbyk @shewillreadyou @lisha1valecha @lovablegranny @mrswalkers-blog @mom2000aggie @no-one-u-knoww @ntoraplayschoices @princessleac1 @ritachacha @secretaryunpaid @sirbeepsalot @speedyoperarascalparty @shanzay44 @texaskitten30 @txemrn @queenrileyrose @sanchita012 @sfb123 @theroyalheirshadowhunter @aestheticartsx @yourmajesty09 nny @mrswalkers-blog @mom2000aggie @no-one-u-knoww @ntoraplayschoices @princessleac1 @ritachacha @secretaryunpaid @sirbeepsalot @speedyoperarascalparty @shanzay44 @texaskitten30 @txemrn @queenrileyrose @sanchita012 @sfb123 @theroyalheirshadowhunter @aestheticartsx @yourmajesty09

32 notes · View notes

lilacandladybugs · 4 years ago

Note

hey since youre talking about christianity, i was wondering if you could answer a question ive been curious about. if god cares about people and if jesus died for our sins, then why does hell exist? and if god cares about us then why did he let so much bad stuff happened in his name, and even cause it, like with the noah’s arch story?

sorry if any of this is wrong ive never read the bible, but ive had bad experiences with christianity in the past and the way you talk about it seems much nicer than the way i know it

I don’t think I can answer this question in a way that doesn’t come across as pretentious or like I’m asking for an argument or just being straight up unsatisfying. But I just am going to try anyway because i'm hoping that maybe this will be comforting or helpful to someone. I’m sorry if this is offensive I am really trying my best, please take this all in the best possible way and be gracious with me

The thing about this ask is that it’s actually a bunch of different questions, and since each of them individually is really hard to answer so I’m going to narrow it down to just one ( im sorry ;-; ) . The one I’ve thought about the most is “Why does God let bad things happen if he loves us?”

When this question first really occurred to me, I was already a believer. So I was already pretty convinced that God exists logically, from the perspective of history, philosophy, science, and my personal experience. I believed in the /existence/ of the God who is represented in the scriptures. (I doubt anyone wants it but I can give you a list of resources if you want to look into any of that.) The struggle for me was whether or not all that evidence held true in the face of this moral dilemma; the problem of evil in the presence of a loving God.

But I just couldn’t turn my back on the concept of a moral grounding in God. I had a philosophy professor tell me that people are mortal and so we shouldn’t grieve them like they’re immortal, that grief is a choice, and that trauma is a choice. I respected her so much, but I just couldn’t accept that. There’s nothing more unsettling to me than suggesting that cruelty and death and suffering are only wrong because you think they are, and not because they’re violating sacred ancient laws. My friends dying, people hurting me, that isn’t just in my head. It’s /real/. They’re really dead, and it really matters. People really did something wrong when they hurt me, and it isn’t my fault for being hurt. It’s their fault for being cruel. And their cruelty is objectively morally wrong.

I realized that if I became an atheist I would have to accept the fact that there isn’t /objectively/ any difference between right and wrong. There isn’t any theoretical “right way” that the world should be. But to me, there is a right way it should be. There is a right way and it was lost because of sin.

It was I guess comforting that Christianity provided the premises I needed to ask a question like this. Evil exists. And love exists. So how can God exist? What a comforting question, in a way. To get to grieve, to be angry, to wonder what’s going on, to want things to be different. It was validating i guess

Don’t get me wrong i was FURIOUS i was so angry. I was so angry and so conflicted I kind of thought I might just like rip apart at my seams but I just felt caught between a rock and a hard place to be either abandoned by God or to not even be able to think about my experiences in a way that felt coherent.

He showed up though. I remember swearing at him, and laying up at night thinking he wasn’t there, I told him I wouldn’t have to have trauma if he would’ve stepped in, that my friends wouldn’t be dead, that he let it happen to me, that he just /witnessed/ it. And man idk he just showed up. He showed up every time. I almost walked away like five times that summer. And every time he sent someone, there was always someone that showed up and talked to me like out of nowhere. Or music, or scripture, or something someone said in passing.

The night that it was really bad was when I realized that the only person who could save me was God and I cried out to him, and I just idk I’ve never been so desperate. I went to church the next day against my will and the sermon felt like it was written for me specifically. I cried through the whole thing.

If God is goodness, then how can I say he isn’t with me and around me constantly? In the sunrise and sunset, in the stars, in flowers, and in kind words. In sermons. In friends and family. In all the coincidences that stopped me from becoming an atheist, all of the answered prayers and the impossibilities. That’s why my side blog is called @in-the-whisper. Because I felt him there, even though it hurt, he was with me in the quiet and in the silence, in his whisper in a thousand different ways.

I was posed this question by someone who was there for me in one of those moments where I almost walked away from God, “Is sufficiency abundant?” I guess I thought it was. Where was God? In the peace that surpasses understanding. In the knowledge that everything is finished, that he died for us, that he didn’t abandon us. That whatever terrible things happen, he was willing to take all of the consequences for that onto himself in the person of Jesus. That one day he will set things right, even though it isn’t right right now.

It comes down to the Gospel (good news, core story of the Christian faith); humanity actively chose to walk away from God in an act of rebellion. We had free will because God created us tenderly to be in a loving relationship with him, and loving relationships must be based on free will and they must be two way. So he let us walk away from him, and away from the sustainer of life our bodies break, our world crumbles, and we die. In order to bridge that gap, he chose to die in our place, so that we could re enter that free will relationship with him if we so choose. He died on the cross, descended into hell, and then in three days he rose from the grave, defeating death. And one day he will return on a white horse to rescue us and to take the world back as his own. If I believed that to be true, then I believed in the greatest intervention in human history that has ever occurred. The God of the Bible isn’t a distant God, "God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him." 1 John 4:9 He did the unthinkable for us.

Living in light of the gospel helped me to understand the way that God is present in my life, my present, past, and in my future. It gave me peace. When Horatio G. Spafford’s two daughters and wife died in a shipwreck, he wrote this,

“When peace like a river attendeth my way, when sorrows like sea billows roll, whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, it is well, it is well with my soul."

“Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come, let this blest assurance control: that Christ has regarded my helpless estate and has shed His own blood for my soul.

“My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought. My sin, not in part, but the whole, is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

“And Lord, haste the day when my faith shall be sight The clouds be rolled back as a scroll The trump shall resound, and the Lord shall descend Even so, it is well with my soul!

“It is well with my soul, it is well, it is well with my soul.”

I don’t have an answer for your question. What I know is that I am willing to rest in the knowledge of my personal experiences and my research that God exists, that he is loving, and that he is powerful, just, and wise. Even the winds and the seas obey him, the mountains are like pebbles to him, thunder rolls at the sound of his voice. He had thought before time began, he gave all knowledge and all wisdom to us.

Why do bad things happen also brings up the question, why do good things happen? Who do we have to thank when we get up in the morning and can see or hear or move or are alive in general? Why are we so blessed as to have two days and not just one? Where do mornings and complexity and beauty and wonder come from? They come from him. Not because we need it, but because he wants to give it to us. Enjoyment, existence, love, laughter, thought, beauty, heartbreak. The world is just as beautiful as it is terrible, and why should it be beautiful? Because he wants it to be that way.

God is so patient. He is so patient and kind and powerful, and he wants to hear your questions. Some of them, like this one, are in my opinion something that you have to talk to him about directly. He gives us thought and logic and reason and wisdom, and he asks for us to engage him. He will answer.

If any believers are reading this, I want you to know that it is enough to cry out to him in pain. It is enough to want to want to believe in him. He would so much rather hear from you in your anger than never hear from you at all. Seek him out, he will find you. He will chase after you.

I bet that he would chase after me, bet my life on it. I might not know the answer, but I am confident enough in what I do know that I’m willing to bet my existence that God will come true on his promises, that he will deliver me, that everything will be okay, that he is bigger than my trauma, and that he will hold me.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. 9 “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts. 10 As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, 11 so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it. 12 You will go out in joy and be led forth in peace; the mountains and hills will burst into song before you, and all the trees of the field will clap their hands. 13 Instead of the thornbush will grow the juniper, and instead of briers the myrtle will grow. This will be for the Lord’s renown, for an everlasting sign, that will endure forever.” Isaiah 55:8-13

And I’m holding him to that promise.

#christianity #religion #christianity tw #religion tw #god #grief #grief tw #ask to tag #anon #this is definitely insufficient and im sorry #this is all i have to offer right now #its a hard thing to articulate ig #not mcyt

18 notes · View notes

quenchyourthirst · 3 years ago

Text

Learning to learn

I've been teaching people about beer since 1997. Learning is never static to me and is always evolving. The same can be said for Prud'homme Beer Certification - what a change since 2009, when we introduced the world's first multi level beer education program.

Recently, through my son, I re-discovered Seth Godin. This marvelous orator and thought changer offered a series of online lectures regarding the difference between learning and education.

So, I enrolled in his lecture series and while many of Seth's concepts seem like common sense, it just blew me away. The lightbulb got brighter and brighter throughout the 22 modules. I absolutely loved listening to his insights and commentary and it affected me in a profound way. I should also say, that I also received validation that my 4 levels of beer education were on the mark. Most of the lecture series focused on the online platform and Seth reiterated that online learning was the future.

In his lectures, he spoke about creating a community and that is what we have always done. We take a completely different approach than any other program. However, that is not enough.

One of the ways we can create incredible online learning is to have the lecture material online and available for the learner to digest at their own pace. Then, the reinforcement of concepts comes in the form of virtual discussions where questions are posed, answered and bantered about. The biggest take away for me was the concepts on testing for understanding. Multiple choice exams, tests and quizzes do nothing for long term retention and focus on the short term goal of passing or achieving a certificate or diploma.

At Prud'homme, I am proud of the remote learning classes we've held this year. It allows for self-directed study and then in our virtual sessions, we learn about beer styles, how to taste and evaluate beer, and enjoy the deep conversations about this great industry.

In 2022, we will be moving away from multiple choice final exams. Our testing format will move to open book, open note in order to encourage our learners to fully understand and appreciate the concepts in our programs.

To me, it's always been more important to understand the concept instead of robotically paraphrasing. I want nothing more than to have my learners to have a greater appreciation of beer and to be able to help others to gain the same love that I have.

I hope you'll join me as we continue to innovate our programs and engage our audience.

Cheers

#beereducation #beerschool #prudhommebeercertification

0 notes

dfroza · 4 years ago

Text

A wedding invitation

yet not all were open to respond. and not all those who did respond were allowed to stay.

and why? what is the “proper” attire for such an event?

it is the pure clothing of humility and grace, the grace of becoming known as a True daughter or a son of God who is Light and Love itself. and this is only seen clearly in the True illumination of the Son.

the single path (the narrow road) that leads the heart (the eternal spirit) to be “Home”

Today’s reading of the Scriptures is from the book of Matthew with chapter 22:

[Parable of the Wedding Feast]

As was his custom, Jesus continued to teach the people by using allegories. He illustrated the reality of heaven’s kingdom realm by saying, “There once was a king who arranged an extravagant wedding feast for his son. On the day the festivities were set to begin, he sent his servants to summon all the invited guests, but they chose not to come. So the king sent even more servants to inform the invited guests, saying, ‘Come, for the sumptuous feast is now ready! The oxen and fattened cattle have been killed and everything is prepared, so come! Come to the wedding feast for my son and his bride!’

“But the invited guests were not impressed. One was preoccupied with his business; another went off to his farming enterprise. And the rest seized the king’s messengers and shamefully mistreated them, and even killed them. This infuriated the king! So he sent his soldiers to execute those murderers and had their city burned to the ground.

“Then the king said to his servants, ‘The wedding feast is ready, yet those who had been invited to attend didn’t deserve the honor. Now I want you to go into the streets and alleyways and invite anyone and everyone you find to come and enjoy the wedding feast in honor of my son.’

“So the servants went out into the city streets and invited everyone to come to the wedding feast, good and bad alike, until the banquet hall was crammed with people! Now, when the king entered the banquet hall, he looked with glee over all his guests. But then he noticed a guest who was not wearing the wedding robe provided for him. So he said, ‘My friend, how is it that you’re here and you’re not wearing your wedding garment?’ But the man was speechless.

“Then the king turned to his servants and said, ‘Tie him up and throw him into the outer darkness, where there will be great sorrow, with weeping and grinding of teeth.’ For everyone is invited to enter in, but few respond in excellence.”

[The Pharisees Try to Entrap Jesus]

Then the Pharisees came together to make a plan to entrap Jesus with his own words. So they sent some of their disciples together with some staunch supporters of Herod. They said to Jesus, “Teacher, we know that you’re an honest man of integrity and you teach us the truth of God’s ways. We can clearly see that you’re not one who speaks only to win the people’s favor, because you speak the truth without regard to the consequences. So tell us, then, what you think. Is it proper for us Jews to pay taxes to Caesar or not?”

Jesus knew the malice that was hidden behind their cunning ploy and said, “Why are you testing me, you imposters who think you have all the answers? Show me one of the Roman coins.” So they brought him a silver coin used to pay the tax. “Now, tell me, whose head is on this coin and whose inscription is stamped on it?”

“Caesar’s,” they replied.

Jesus said, “Precisely, for the coin bears the image of the emperor Caesar. Well, then, you should pay the emperor what is due to the emperor. But because you bear the image of God, give back to God all that belongs to him.”

The imposters were baffled in the presence of all the people and were unable to trap Jesus with his words. So they left, stunned by Jesus’ words.

[Marriage and the Resurrection]

Some of the Sadducees, a religious group that denied there was a resurrection of the dead, came to ask Jesus this question: “Teacher, the law of Moses teaches that if a man dies before he has children, his brother should marry the widow and raise up children for his brother’s family line. Now, there was a family with seven brothers. The oldest got married but soon died, leaving his widow for his brother. The second brother married and also died, and the third also. This was repeated down to the seventh brother, when finally the woman also died. So here’s our dilemma: Which of the seven brothers will be the woman’s husband when she’s resurrected from the dead, since they all were once married to her?”

Jesus answered them, “You are deluded, because your hearts are not filled with the revelation of the Scriptures or the power of God. For after the resurrection, men and women will not marry, just like the angels of heaven don’t marry. Haven’t you read what God said: ‘I am the Living God, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.”

When the crowds heard this they were dazed, stunned over such wisdom!

[The Greatest Commandment]

When the Pharisees heard that Jesus had silenced the Sadducees, they called a meeting to discuss how to trap Jesus. Then one of them, a religious scholar, posed this question to test him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?”

Jesus answered him, “‘Love the Lord your God with every passion of your heart, with all the energy of your being, and with every thought that is within you.’ This is the great and supreme commandment. And the second is like it in importance: ‘You must love your friend in the same way you love yourself.’ Contained within these commandments to love you will find all the meaning of the Law and the Prophets.”

[Jesus, Son of David—Lord of David]

While all the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus took the opportunity to pose a question of his own: “What do you think about the Anointed One? Whose son is he?”

“The son of David,” they replied.

Then Jesus said to them, “How is it that David, inspired by the Holy Spirit, could call his son the Lord? For didn’t he say:

The Lord Jehovah said to my Lord,

‘Sit near me in the place of authority

until I subdue all your enemies under Your feet’?

“So how could David call his own son ‘the Lord Jehovah’?”

No one could come up with an answer. And from that day on none of the Pharisees had the courage to question Jesus any longer.

The Book of Matthew, Chapter 22 (The Passion Translation)

A set of posts to accompany Today’s reading by John Parsons:

There is no fear in God's compassionate love, and therefore over and over the Spirit of God says, al tira' - "don't be afraid..." When we are afraid, we are believing the lie there is something beyond God's control or reach, and therefore God is "not enough"... In times of testing you must remind yourself of what is real. God formed you in your mother's womb, breathed into you nishmat chayim, the breath of life, and numbers all your days... Every breath you take, every heartbeat in your chest is ordained from heaven, and indeed, there is not a moment of your life apart from God's sovereign and sustaining grace. So what, then, are you afraid of? Dying? Judgment in the world to come? Being left unloved, bereft of home, abandoned, consigned to outer darkness? King David said, "If I make my bed in Hell, behold, you are there" (Psalm 139:8). Look, the LORD God is not only present in your "happy moments," when you feel "put together" and respectable, but he is present in your desperate moments, in your hunger, your thirst, and in your secrets. May we never lose sight of God's love, especially in times of distress and trouble, since we trust that he is always working all things together for our ultimate good (Rom. 8:28).

The Name of the LORD (יהוה) means “Presence” and “Love” (Exod. 3:14; 34:6-7). Yeshua said, “I go to prepare a place for you,” which means that his presence and love are waiting for you in whatever lies ahead (Rom. 8:35-39). To worry is “practicing the absence” of God instead of practicing His Presence... Trust the word of the Holy Spirit: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for healing peace and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope (Jer. 29:11). The Word always speaks hope.

Take comfort that your Heavenly Father sees when the sparrow falls; he arrays the flower in its hidden valley; and he calls each star by name. More importantly, the Lord sees you and knows your struggle with fear. Come to him with your needy heart and trust him to deliver you from the burdens of your soul (Matt. 11:28). Shalom means being free from fear.

This is a word for the exiles of every age: Be not afraid - al-tira' – not of man, nor of war, nor of tribulation, nor even of death itself (Rom. 8:35-39). If God be for us, who can be against us? Indeed, Yeshua came to die to destroy the power of death "and to release all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery" (Heb. 2:14-15). The resurrection of the Messiah is the focal point of history - not the "dust of death." Death does not have the final word. Indeed, because Yeshua is alive, we also shall live (John 14:19). May your chesed, O LORD, be upon us, as we wait for You (Psalm 33:22). [Hebrew for Christians]

7.6.20 • Facebook

As I’ve discussed elsewhere on the site over the years, the climax of the revelation of the Torah at Sinai was not the giving of the Ten Commandments (עשרת הדיברות) to Israel but was instead the vision of the Altar of the sanctuary (מזבח המשכן)... However -- as our Torah portion this week (i.e., Pinchas) makes clear -- the central sacrifice upon this altar was the daily sacrifice (i.e., korban tamid: קרבן תמיד) of a defect-free male lamb with unleavened bread and wine. The LORD calls this "my offering" (קרבני) and "my bread" (לחמי) [Num. 28:1-8]. In other words, the service and ministry of the Mishkan (i.e., Tabernacle) constantly foretold the coming of the great Lamb of God (שה האלהים) who would be offered upon the altar of the cross to secure our eternal redemption (John 1:29; Heb. 9:11-12).

The sacrifice of the lamb represents “God’s food,” a pleasing aroma (ריח ניחחי), for it most satisfied the hunger of God's heart (Eph. 5:2). Indeed, Yeshua's offering upon the cross represents God's hunger for our atonement, our healing from the sickness of death, since it restored what was lost to Him through sin, namely, communion with his children. God could never be satisfied until He was able to let truth and love meet (Psalm 85:10). [Hebrew for Christians]

7.6.20 • Facebook

Sometimes we say that we "hunger for God," but it is vital to remember that it is God who first hungers for us. God desires our love and fellowship. He comes to seek fruit among the trees - but does He find any? He walks in the cool of the day, calling out to us, but are we attuned to hear His voice? Do we accept the invitation to be in His Presence? When God “knocks on the door of your heart” to commune with you, what “food” will you be serving? (Rev. 3:20). Every day we are given an opportunity to “feed God” through expressing faith, hope, and love. Ultimately it is our obedience to the truth is what “feeds” Him: “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams” (1 Sam. 15:22). [Hebrew for Christians]

7.6.20 • Facebook

Today’s paired chapter of the Testaments is Deuteronomy 9 where Moses goes over the History lessons of the people wandering about in the wilderness and preparing them to take possession of the land that would be Israel and the sacred ground of Jerusalem:

Moses: Listen to me, Israel! Today you’re going to cross the Jordan and enter the land you’ll take away from nations that are bigger and stronger than you. They live in huge cities that have defense walls as high as the sky. They’re big and tall, giants descended from the Anakim. You know all about them from the 12 spies I sent into the land—you’ve heard the saying, “Who can ever fight with the descendants of Anak?” So I want you to know today that it will be the Eternal your God who will go across the Jordan ahead of you. A blazing fire, He’ll destroy those nations. He’ll subdue them so you can destroy them quickly and take their place, as He has promised you will. When the Eternal your God has driven them out ahead of you, then don’t begin to believe He gave you this land because you’re so good and righteous! It’s just the opposite; He is giving you their land because those other nations are so bad! It’s not because you’ve conducted yourselves so well or because you have such pure hearts that you’re going to take the land; the Eternal your God is driving out those other nations ahead of you because they’re so wicked. He’s keeping His word, the promise He made to your ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. I’ll say it again: the Eternal One your God isn’t giving you this good land because you’re so good. You’re stubborn, obstinate people. Remember—don’t forget—how you kept infuriating Him in the wilderness. From the day you came out of Egypt until the day you arrived here, you’ve been rebelling against Him.

Even at Horeb, you infuriated Him. The Eternal got so angry with you He was ready to destroy you! When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets—the tablets of the covenant He made with you—I stayed on the mountain for 40 days and 40 nights. I didn’t eat or drink anything all that time, preparing myself to receive these holy words. At the end of those 40 days and nights, the Eternal gave me those two stone tablets of the covenant. On them He’d engraved with His own finger everything He told you on the day you gathered at the mountain, when He spoke to you from inside the fire. The Eternal told me, “Get up, and go back down the mountain as fast as you can! While you’ve been up here surrounded by My holiness, the people you led out of Egypt have become corrupt! How quickly they’ve left the path I commanded them to stay on. They’ve melted gold and poured it into a mold and made themselves an idol! I’ve seen how stubborn and obstinate these people are. Don’t try to stop Me—I’m going to destroy them! I’ll wipe out every last trace of them under the sky, and I’ll make a bigger and stronger nation out of just you.”

The mountain was still blazing with fire as I hurried back down it, carrying the two covenant tablets in my hands. I saw with my own eyes how you had sinned against the Eternal, your True God: you’d cast an idol in the shape of a young bull!

Moses: How quickly you left the path the Eternal commanded you to stay on. Right before your eyes I took the two tablets, hurled them onto the ground, and smashed them to pieces. I went back up the mountain, and for another 40 days and nights I prostrated myself before Him, lying face down on the ground in grief and petition, not eating or drinking anything as before. You had sinned so seriously—you did what the Eternal had just told you was wrong, and this made Him furious! I was afraid He was so violently angry with you that He’d destroy you, as He said He would. But one more time, the Eternal One listened to me, and He spared you. I had to pray particularly for Aaron because the Eternal was furious with him for making the idol—He would have killed my brother! I took the calf idol you made, that embodiment of your sin, and I burned it up. Then I crushed what was left, ground it into tiny pieces until it was as fine as dust, and threw the dust into the riverbed that rushes down the mountain.

You and your parents were always making the Eternal furious! At Taberah, you whined and complained; at Massah, you were sure the Lord was going to let you die of thirst; at Kibroth-hattaavah, you said you were sick of the food He provided! At Kadesh-barnea, when you finally reached the promised land, the Eternal sent you in: “Go and take possession of the land—I’ve given it to you!” But you defied this direct order from the Eternal, your True God! You didn’t trust Him, and you didn’t listen to His voice. You’ve been rebelling against Him from the day I met you!

That’s why, at Horeb, I lay face down before the Eternal for 40 days and nights, praying for you: He said He was going to destroy you, and I knew He had every reason to! I prayed to Him, “Eternal Lord, please don’t destroy Your people! They’re Your own possession: You liberated them from another master—You brought them out of Egypt with overwhelming power. Remember Your loyal servants, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; please forget about how stubborn and wicked and sinful these people are. Don’t let their actions spoil Your greater plan. Otherwise, the people back in the land You brought us out of will be saying, “The Eternal couldn’t really bring them into that land He promised them. He actually hated those people, and He brought them out into the desert in order to kill them off.” Remember they are Your people, Your own possession, the ones You brought out of Egypt Yourself with such overwhelming power!

The Book of Deuteronomy, Chapter 9 (The Voice)

my personal reading of the Scriptures for Tuesday, july 7 of 2020 with a paired chapter from each Testament along with Today’s Psalms and Proverbs

0 notes

naoestaobemaver · 5 years ago

Link

How Susan Sontag Taught Me to Think

The critic A.O. Scott reflects on the outsize influence Sontag has had on his life as a critic.

By A.O. SCOTT OCT. 8, 2019

“I spent my adolescence in a terrible hurry to read all the books, see all the movies, listen to all the music, look at everything in all the museums. That pursuit required more effort back then, when nothing was streaming and everything had to be hunted down, bought or borrowed. But those changes aren’t what this essay is about. Culturally ravenous young people have always been insufferable and never unusual, even though they tend to invest a lot in being different — in aspiring (or pretending) to something deeper, higher than the common run. Viewed with the chastened hindsight of adulthood, their seriousness shows its ridiculous side, but the longing that drives it is no joke. It’s a hunger not so much for knowledge as for experience of a particular kind. Two kinds, really: the specific experience of encountering a book or work of art and also the future experience, the state of perfectly cultivated being, that awaits you at the end of the search. Once you’ve read everything, then at last you can begin.

2 Furious consumption is often described as indiscriminate, but the point of it is always discrimination. It was on my parents’ bookshelves, amid other emblems of midcentury, middle-class American literary taste and intellectual curiosity, that I found a book with a title that seemed to offer something I desperately needed, even if (or precisely because) it went completely over my head. “Against Interpretation.” No subtitle, no how-to promise or self-help come-on. A 95-cent Dell paperback with a front-cover photograph of the author, Susan Sontag.

There is no doubt that the picture was part of the book’s allure — the angled, dark-eyed gaze, the knowing smile, the bobbed hair and buttoned-up coat — but the charisma of the title shouldn’t be underestimated. It was a statement of opposition, though I couldn’t say what exactly was being opposed. Whatever “interpretation” turned out to be, I was ready to enlist in the fight against it. I still am, even if interpretation, in one form or another, has been the main way I’ve made my living as an adult. It’s not fair to blame Susan Sontag for that, though I do.

3 “Against Interpretation,” a collection of articles from the 1960s reprinted from various journals and magazines, mainly devoted to of-the-moment texts and artifacts (Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Saint Genet,” Jean-Luc Godard’s “Vivre Sa Vie,’’ Jack Smith’s “Flaming Creatures”), modestly presents itself as “case studies for an aesthetic,” a theory of Sontag’s “own sensibility.” Really, though, it is the episodic chronicle of a mind in passionate struggle with the world and itself.

Sontag’s signature is ambivalence. “Against Interpretation” (the essay), which declares that “to interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world — in order to set up a shadow world of ‘meanings,’ ” is clearly the work of a relentlessly analytical, meaning-driven intelligence. In a little more than 10 pages, she advances an appeal to the ecstasy of surrender rather than the protocols of exegesis, made in unstintingly cerebral terms. Her final, mic-drop declaration — “In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art” — deploys abstraction in the service of carnality.

4 It’s hard for me, after so many years, to account for the impact “Against Interpretation” had on me. It was first published in 1966, the year of my birth, which struck me as terribly portentous. It brought news about books I hadn’t — hadn’t yet! — read and movies I hadn’t heard about and challenged pieties I had only begun to comprehend. It breathed the air of the ’60s, a momentous time I had unforgivably missed.

But I kept reading “Against Interpretation” — following it with “Styles of Radical Will,” “On Photography” and “Under the Sign of Saturn,” books Sontag would later deprecate as “juvenilia” — for something else. For the style, you could say (she wrote an essay called “On Style”). For the voice, I guess, but that’s a tame, trite word. It was because I craved the drama of her ambivalence, the tenacity of her enthusiasm, the sting of her doubt. I read those books because I needed to be with her. Is it too much to say that I was in love with her? Who was she, anyway?

5 Years after I plucked “Against Interpretation” from the living-room shelf, I came across a short story of Sontag’s called “Pilgrimage.” One of the very few overtly autobiographical pieces Sontag ever wrote, this lightly fictionalized memoir, set in Southern California in 1947, recalls an adolescence that I somehow suspect myself of having plagiarized a third of a century later. “I felt I was slumming in my own life,” Sontag writes, gently mocking and also proudly affirming the serious, voracious girl she used to be. The “pilgrimage” in question, undertaken with a friend named Merrill, was to Thomas Mann’s house in Pacific Palisades, where that venerable giant of German Kultur had been incongruously living while in exile from Nazi Germany.

The funniest and truest part of the story is young Susan’s “shame and dread” at the prospect of paying the call. “Oh, Merrill, how could you?” she melodramatically exclaims when she learns he has arranged for a teatime visit to the Mann residence. The second-funniest and truest part of the story is the disappointment Susan tries to fight off in the presence of a literary idol who talks “like a book review.” The encounter makes a charming anecdote with 40 years of hindsight, but it also proves that the youthful instincts were correct. “Why would I want to meet him?” she wondered. “I had his books.”

6 I never met Susan Sontag. Once when I was working late answering phones and manning the fax machine in the offices of The New York Review of Books, I took a message for Robert Silvers, one of the magazine’s editors. “Tell him Susan Sontag called. He’ll know why.” (Because it was his birthday.) Another time I caught a glimpse of her sweeping, swanning, promenading — or maybe just walking — through the galleries of the Frick.

Much later, I was commissioned by this magazine to write a profile of her. She was about to publish “Regarding the Pain of Others,” a sequel and corrective to her 1977 book “On Photography.” The furor she sparked with a few paragraphs written for The New Yorker after the Sept. 11 attacks — words that seemed obnoxiously rational at a time of horror and grief — had not yet died down. I felt I had a lot to say to her, but the one thing I could not bring myself to do was pick up the phone. Mostly I was terrified of disappointment, mine and hers. I didn’t want to fail to impress her; I didn’t want to have to try. The terror of seeking her approval, and the certainty that in spite of my journalistic pose I would be doing just that, were paralyzing. Instead of a profile, I wrote a short text that accompanied a portrait by Chuck Close. I didn’t want to risk knowing her in any way that might undermine or complicate the relationship we already had, which was plenty fraught. I had her books.

7 After Sontag died in 2004, the focus of attention began to drift away from her work and toward her person. Not her life so much as her self, her photographic image, her way of being at home and at parties — anywhere but on the page. Her son, David Rieff, wrote a piercing memoir about his mother’s illness and death. Annie Leibovitz, Sontag’s partner, off and on, from 1989 until her death, released a portfolio of photographs unsparing in their depiction of her cancer-ravaged, 70-year-old body. There were ruminations by Wayne Koestenbaum, Phillip Lopate and Terry Castle about her daunting reputation and the awe, envy and inadequacy she inspired in them. “Sempre Susan,” a short memoir by Sigrid Nunez, who lived with Sontag and Rieff for a while in the 1970s, is the masterpiece of the “I knew Susan” minigenre and a funhouse-mirror companion to Sontag’s own “Pilgrimage.” It’s about what can happen when you really get to know a writer, which is that you lose all sense of what or who it is you really know, including yourself.

8 In 2008, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Sontag’s longtime publisher, issued “Reborn,” the first of two volumes so far culled from nearly 100 notebooks Sontag filled from early adolescence into late middle age. Because of their fragmentary nature, these journal entries aren’t intimidating in the way her more formal nonfiction prose could be, or abstruse in the manner of most of her pre-1990s fiction. They seem to offer an unobstructed window into her mind, documenting her intellectual anxieties, existential worries and emotional upheavals, along with everyday ephemera that proves to be almost as captivating. Lists of books to be read and films to be seen sit alongside quotations, aphorisms, observations and story ideas. Lovers are tantalizingly represented by a single letter (“I.”; “H”; “C.”). You wonder if Sontag hoped, if she knew, that you would be reading this someday — the intimate journal as a literary form is a recurring theme in her essays — and you wonder whether that possibility undermines the guilty intimacy of reading these pages or, on the contrary, accounts for it.

9 A new biography by Benjamin Moser — “Sontag: Her Life and Work,” published last month — shrinks Sontag down to life size, even as it also insists on her significance. “What mattered about Susan Sontag was what she symbolized,” he concludes, having studiously documented her love affairs, her petty cruelties and her lapses in personal hygiene.

I must say I find the notion horrifying. A woman whose great accomplishments were writing millions of words and reading who knows how many millions more — no exercise in Sontagiana can fail to mention the 15,000-book library in her Chelsea apartment — has at last been decisively captured by what she called “the image-world,” the counterfeit reality that threatens to destroy our apprehension of the actual world.

You can argue about the philosophical coherence, the political implications or the present-day relevance of this idea (one of the central claims of “On Photography”), but it’s hard to deny that Sontag currently belongs more to images than to words. Maybe it’s inevitable that after Sontag’s death, the literary persona she spent a lifetime constructing — that rigorous, serious, impersonal self — has been peeled away, revealing the person hiding behind the words. The unhappy daughter. The mercurial mother. The variously needy and domineering lover. The loyal, sometimes impossible friend. In the era of prestige TV, we may have lost our appetite for difficult books, but we relish difficult characters, and the biographical Sontag — brave and imperious, insecure and unpredictable — surely fits the bill.

10 “Interpretation,” according to Sontag, “is the revenge of the intellect upon art. Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world.” And biography, by the same measure, is the revenge of research upon the intellect. The life of the mind is turned into “the life,” a coffin full of rattling facts and spectral suppositions, less an invitation to read or reread than a handy, bulky excuse not to.

The point of this essay, which turns out not to be as simple as I thought it would be, is to resist that tendency. I can’t deny the reality of the image or the symbolic cachet of the name. I don’t want to devalue the ways Sontag serves as a talisman and a culture hero. All I really want to say is that Susan Sontag mattered because of what she wrote.

11 Or maybe I should just say that’s why she matters to me. In “Sempre Susan,” Sigrid Nunez describes Sontag as:

... the opposite of Thomas Bernhard’s comic “possessive thinker,” who feeds on the fantasy that every book or painting or piece of music he loves has been created solely for and belongs solely to him, and whose “art selfishness” makes the thought of anyone else enjoying or appreciating the works of genius he reveres intolerable. She wanted her passions to be shared by all, and to respond with equal intensity to any work she loved was to give her one of her biggest pleasures.

I’m the opposite of that. I don’t like to share my passions, even if the job of movie critic forces me to do it. I cling to an immature (and maybe also a typically male), proprietary investment in the work I care about most. My devotion to Sontag has often felt like a secret. She was never assigned in any course I took in college, and if her name ever came up while I was in graduate school, it was with a certain condescension. She wasn’t a theorist or a scholar but an essayist and a popularizer, and as such a bad fit with the desperate careerism that dominated the academy at the time. In the world of cultural journalism, she’s often dismissed as an egghead and a snob. Not really worth talking about, and so I mostly didn’t talk about her.

12 Nonetheless, I kept reading, with an ambivalence that mirrored hers. Perhaps her most famous essay — certainly among the most controversial — is “Notes on ‘Camp,’ ” which scrutinizes a phenomenon defined by “the spirit of extravagance” with scrupulous sobriety. The inquiry proceeds from mixed feelings — “I am strongly drawn to Camp, and almost as strongly offended by it” — that are heightened rather than resolved, and that curl through the 58 numbered sections of the “Notes” like tendrils in an Art Nouveau print. In writing about a mode of expression that is overwrought, artificial, frivolous and theatrical, Sontag adopts a style that is the antithesis of all those things.

If some kinds of camp represent “a seriousness that fails,” then “Notes on ‘Camp’ ” enacts a seriousness that succeeds. The essay is dedicated to Oscar Wilde, whose most tongue-in-cheek utterances gave voice to his deepest thoughts. Sontag reverses that Wildean current, so that her grave pronouncements sparkle with an almost invisible mischief. The essay is delightful because it seems to betray no sense of fun at all, because its jokes are buried so deep that they are, in effect, secrets.

13 In the chapter of “Against Interpretation” called “Camus’ Notebooks” — originally published in The New York Review of Books — Sontag divides great writers into “husbands” and “lovers,” a sly, sexy updating of older dichotomies (e.g., between Apollonian and Dionysian, Classical and Romantic, paleface and redskin). Albert Camus, at the time beginning his posthumous descent from Nobel laureate and existentialist martyr into the high school curriculum (which is where I found him), is named the “ideal husband of contemporary letters.” It isn’t really a compliment:

Some writers supply the solid virtues of a husband: reliability, intelligibility, generosity, decency. There are other writers in whom one prizes the gifts of a lover, gifts of temperament rather than of moral goodness. Notoriously, women tolerate qualities in a lover — moodiness, selfishness, unreliability, brutality — that they would never countenance in a husband, in return for excitement, an infusion of intense feeling. In the same way, readers put up with unintelligibility, obsessiveness, painful truths, lies, bad grammar — if, in compensation, the writer allows them to savor rare emotions and dangerous sensations.

The sexual politics of this formulation are quite something. Reading is female, writing male. The lady reader exists to be seduced or provided for, ravished or served, by a man who is either a scamp or a solid citizen. Camus, in spite of his movie-star good looks (like Sontag, he photographed well), is condemned to husband status. He’s the guy the reader will settle for, who won’t ask too many questions when she returns from her flings with Kafka, Céline or Gide. He’s also the one who, more than any of them, inspires love.

14 After her marriage to the sociologist Philip Rieff ended in 1959, most of Sontag’s serious romantic relationships were with women. The writers whose company she kept on the page were overwhelmingly male (and almost exclusively European). Except for a short piece about Simone Weil and another about Nathalie Sarraute in “Against Interpretation” and an extensive takedown of Leni Riefenstahl in “Under the Sign of Saturn,” Sontag’s major criticism is all about men.

She herself was kind of a husband. Her writing is conscientious, thorough, patient and useful. Authoritative but not scolding. Rigorous, orderly and lucid even when venturing into landscapes of wildness, disruption and revolt. She begins her inquiry into “The Pornographic Imagination” with the warning that “No one should undertake a discussion of pornography before acknowledging the pornographies — there are at least three — and before pledging to take them on one at a time.”

The extravagant, self-subverting seriousness of this sentence makes it a perfect camp gesture. There is also something kinky about the setting of rules and procedures, an implied scenario of transgression and punishment that is unmistakably erotic. Should I be ashamed of myself for thinking that? Of course! Humiliation is one of the most intense and pleasurable effects of Sontag’s masterful prose. She’s the one in charge.

15 But the rules of the game don’t simply dictate silence or obedience on the reader’s part. What sustains the bond — the bondage, if you’ll allow it — is its volatility. The dominant party is always vulnerable, the submissive party always capable of rebellion, resistance or outright refusal.

I often read her work in a spirit of defiance, of disobedience, as if hoping to provoke a reaction. For a while, I thought she was wrong about everything. “Against Interpretation” was a sentimental and self-defeating polemic against criticism, the very thing she had taught me to believe in. “On Photography” was a sentimental defense of a shopworn aesthetic ideology wrapped around a superstitious horror at technology. And who cared about Elias Canetti and Walter Benjamin anyway? Or about E.M. Cioran or Antonin Artaud or any of the other Euro-weirdos in her pantheon?

Not me! And yet. ... Over the years I’ve purchased at least three copies of “Under the Sign of Saturn” — if pressed to choose a favorite Sontag volume, I’d pick that one — and in each the essay on Canetti, “Mind as Passion,” is the most dog-eared. Why? Not so I could recommend it to someone eager to learn about the first native Bulgarian to win the Nobel Prize for Literature, because I’ve never met such a person. “Mind as Passion” is the best thing I’ve ever read about the emotional dynamics of literary admiration, about the way a great writer “teaches us how to breathe,” about how readerly surrender is a form of self-creation.

16 In a very few cases, the people Sontag wrote about were people she knew: Roland Barthes and Paul Goodman, for example, whose deaths inspired brief appreciations reprinted in “Under the Sign of Saturn.” Even in those elegies, the primary intimacy recorded is the one between writer and reader, and the reader — who is also, of course, a writer — is commemorating and pursuing a form of knowledge that lies somewhere between the cerebral and the biblical.

Because the intimacy is extended to Sontag’s reader, the love story becomes an implicit ménage à trois. Each essay enacts the effort — the dialectic of struggle, doubt, ecstasy and letdown — to know another writer, and to make you know him, too. And, more deeply though also more discreetly, to know her.

17 The version of this essay that I least want to write — the one that keeps pushing against my resistance to it — is the one that uses Sontag as a cudgel against the intellectual deficiencies and the deficient intellectuals of the present. It’s almost comically easy to plot a vector of decline from then to now. Why aren’t the kids reading Canetti? Why don’t trade publishers print collections of essays about European writers and avant-garde filmmakers? Sontag herself was not immune to such laments. In 1995, she mourned the death of cinema. In 1996, she worried that “the very idea of the serious (and the honorable) seems quaint, ‘unrealistic’ to most people.”

Worse, there are ideas and assumptions abroad in the digital land that look like debased, parodic versions of positions she staked out half a century ago. The “new sensibility” she heralded in the ’60s, “dedicated both to an excruciating seriousness and to fun and wit and nostalgia,” survives in the form of a frantic, algorithm-fueled eclecticism. The popular meme admonishing critics and other designated haters to shut up and “let people enjoy things” looks like an emoji-friendly update of “Against Interpretation,” with “enjoy things” a safer formulation than Sontag’s “erotics of art.”

That isn’t what she meant, any more than her prickly, nuanced “Notes on ‘Camp’ ” had much to do with the Instagram-ready insouciance of this year’s Met Gala, which borrowed the title for its theme. And speaking of the ’Gram, its ascendance seems to confirm the direst prophecies of “On Photography,” which saw the unchecked spread of visual media as a kind of ecological catastrophe for human consciousness.

18 In other ways, the Sontag of the ’60s and ’70s can strike current sensibilities as problematic or outlandish. She wrote almost exclusively about white men. She believed in fixed hierarchies and absolute standards. She wrote at daunting length with the kind of unapologetic erudition that makes people feel bad. Even at her most polemical, she never trafficked in contrarian hot takes. Her name will never be the answer to the standard, time-killing social-media query “What classic writer would be awesome on Twitter?” The tl;dr of any Sontag essay could only be every word of it.

Sontag was a queer, Jewish woman writer who disdained the rhetoric of identity. She was diffident about disclosing her sexuality. Moser criticizes her for not coming out in the worst years of the AIDS epidemic, when doing so might have been a powerful political statement. The political statements that she did make tended to get her into trouble. In 1966, she wrote that “the white race is the cancer of human history.” In 1982, in a speech at Town Hall in Manhattan, she called communism “fascism with a human face.” After Sept. 11, she cautioned against letting emotion cloud political judgment. “Let’s by all means grieve together, but let’s not be stupid together.”

That doesn’t sound so unreasonable now, but the bulk of Sontag’s writing served no overt or implicit ideological agenda. Her agenda — a list of problems to be tackled rather than a roster of positions to be taken — was stubbornly aesthetic. And that may be the most unfashionable, the most shocking, the most infuriating thing about her.

19 Right now, at what can feel like a time of moral and political emergency, we cling to sentimental bromides about the importance of art. We treat it as an escape, a balm, a vague set of values that exist beyond the ugliness and venality of the market and the state. Or we look to art for affirmation of our pieties and prejudices. It splits the difference between resistance and complicity.

Sontag was also aware of living in emergency conditions, in a world menaced by violence, environmental disaster, political polarization and corruption. But the art she valued most didn’t soothe the anguish of modern life so much as refract and magnify its agonies. She didn’t read — or go to movies, plays, museums or dance performances — to retreat from that world but to bring herself closer to it. What art does, she says again and again, is confront the nature of human consciousness at a time of historical crisis, to unmake and redefine its own terms and procedures. It confers a solemn obligation: “From now to the end of consciousness, we are stuck with the task of defending art.”

20 “Consciousness” is one of her keywords, and she uses it in a way that may have an odd ring to 21st-century ears. It’s sometimes invoked now, in a weak sense, as a synonym for the moral awareness of injustice. Its status as a philosophical problem, meanwhile, has been diminished by the rise of cognitive science, which subordinates the mysteries of the human mind to the chemical and physical operations of the brain.

But consciousness as Sontag understands it has hardly vanished, because it names a phenomenon that belongs — in ways that escape scientific analysis — to both the individual and the species. Consciousness inheres in a single person’s private, incommunicable experience, but it also lives in groups, in cultures and populations and historical epochs. Its closest synonym is thought, which similarly dwells both within the walls of a solitary skull and out in the collective sphere.

If Sontag’s great theme was consciousness, her great achievement was as a thinker. Usually that label is reserved for theorists and system-builders — Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Sigmund Freud — but Sontag doesn’t quite belong in that company. Instead, she wrote in a way that dramatized how thinking happens. The essays are exciting not just because of the ideas they impart but because you feel within them the rhythms and pulsations of a living intelligence; they bring you as close to another person as it is possible to be.

21 “Under the Sign of Saturn” opens in a “tiny room in Paris” where she has been living for the previous year — “small bare quarters” that answer “some need to strip down, to close off for a while, to make a new start with as little as possible to fall back on.” Even though, according to Sigrid Nunez, Sontag preferred to have other people around her when she was working, I tend to picture her in the solitude of that Paris room, which I suppose is a kind of physical manifestation, a symbol, of her solitary consciousness. A consciousness that was animated by the products of other minds, just as mine is activated by hers. If she’s alone in there, I can claim the privilege of being her only company.

Which is a fantasy, of course. She has had better readers, and I have loved other writers. The metaphors of marriage and possession, of pleasure and power, can be carried only so far. There is no real harm in reading casually, promiscuously, abusively or selfishly. The page is a safe space; every word is a safe word. Your lover might be my husband.

It’s only reading. By which I mean: It’s everything.”

#cultureissue2019 #susansontag

1 note · View note

rfhusnik · 7 years ago

Text

Questions, Ironies, and Fashions

Written By: Orlon Braem

Fashion, as a noun you speak to a phenomenon of ever changing trends. And thus, as a person, place, or thing, sometimes you lead mortals to large accumulations. But I’ve never been one who’s immediately levelled a charge of materialism against such accumulators. Even they know that all that’s of the earth passes away, or on to heirs eventually.

But fashion, it’s as a verb you’re more intriguing. And in that sense, I use you here. Yet, not only here today, but also so often every day as I attempt to fashion worthwhile and proper beliefs and actions upon a planet where so many would so easily ill-use the hard-working, the charitable, the caring, and those seeking order.

And if life is really a game, who have its winners and losers been up until this point? And of how much real value are temporal victories and accomplishments? Does their only worth lie in whatever aid they may render toward the conquest eternal? And when he writes a piece such as this one, does the writer ever stray from basic truth and enter a realm of hyperbole?

Of the four questions posed in the previous paragraph, most likely the first three can’t be answered unequivocally by anyone. But the fourth question, that one which asks if basic truth can sometimes be stretched to hyperbole, receives a “yes” answer. So, perhaps to ward off hyperbole early on here, here are five points which everyone should ponder: One – No matter if the “dreamers” are allowed to remain in the U.S. or not, will the U. S. finally crack down on illegal immigration and build a wall along its southern border? Two – Why is only the winning side of the 2016 U. S. presidential election being probed for possible Russian collusion, when there is widespread speculation that the losing side may have been involved in such activity? Three – Although sexual and workplace advancement abuse against women has clearly been, and continues to be a problem, are there a number of influential women who today are attempting to pursue anti-male objectives whenever and wherever they can? Four – How much concern should the U. S. have in regard to the South African government’s threats to confiscate the property of its white citizens? And Five – Is anyone actually taking the future population estimates of the U. S. seriously? Is anything being done to keep America at manageable birth and immigration levels in the years to come?

Recently the leader of the city in which I reside called for a town meeting of all city residents. Obviously not all attended, but as I expected, most who did were either from the wealthier north side of our city, or from the newly developing “north river shore area.” But a number of residents from the poorer south side were there as well. And, it was quite a successful undertaking – I think! And we spoke there of many topics of concern, all the way from regional to international. And after the meeting ended, our leader, Ralph Hawk, asked if I’d write about the four topics I’d especially addressed there that evening. He said I should begin my piece by expanding upon those matters, and then carry on to include all other information which I felt should be disclosed to the public at this time. Thus, the following: I’m going to speak now of four central topics, i.e. populism, illegal immigration, feminism, and gun control/violence.

At this time in their nation’s history, the majority of Americans have no alternative but to embrace populism. And this is because, regardless of their financial status, or political or religious affiliations, they’re being told that they must support all causes which can in any way be aligned with liberalism. And thus, they’re being told to favor both the concept of illegal immigration, as well as such people who, as illegals, are already living inside the U. S. And, they’re also being told to support all feminist concerns, whether societally justifiable or radically left-wing; as well as all such other women’s rights causes which may exist between those. And, in regard to domestic gun violence, while they’re told on one hand to seek the curtailment of gun ownership rights, they’re also simultaneously informed that they must continue to support movie, television, and game violence carried out by all types of conceivable weapons; and also that of course they must feel sorry for, and try to sympathize with the brutal mass murderers of the last few years. – But, people lend your imagination especially to this last request please. Try to imagine (and I’m not inferring that I have any concept of it myself) how the loved ones of people who’ve been killed violently for no apparent reason must feel in the wake of those deaths. And for those who’ve survived the attacks – imagine what impact having even been a part of those vile actions will have upon their lives in the future, and especially if they were wounded or left disabled by them.

But it’s through a basic application of rightness that I fashion my own existence. And I don’t need the media with its fake news, or the entertainment industry with its phony awards show broadcasts to determine my opinions. In fact, I don’t want liberal biases to influence my way of life. I believe in what seems truthful to me, yet, I also know that not everyone can share my apparentness of veracity.

And it’s because I live to further what I’ve just stated, that I understand that most likely the title of this piece could just as easily and rightfully have been “An Irony Of Fashions,” or “Media Fears,” or “Justifications,” or probably a few other phrases which may have fit its pronouncements almost as well as the one which was eventually chosen for it. But irony perhaps belongs in its namesake, for this discussion addresses certain phenomena which instead of being simply disclosed to the public, are instead having their basic facts commented upon, and then often distorted by biased, confused, and/or still-learning informers.

And given what this piece has declared thus far, here I believe are three relevant questions which will aid its continuance. One – “Who decided what the proper procedures for the disclosure of either regional, national, or international news bits should be?” Two – “Who decided what those news bits should be; i.e. should certain occurrences be hidden from the public, while only such developments which might be deemed as being useful to the advancement of one certain political ideology be reported upon?” And three – “Who can look inside the mind of any other human and decide whether what he or she has, or is now recognizing as truthful is indeed verifiable?”

And now, given those questions, lets imagine that it’s but another day in Medialand (formerly The United States Of America), and once again so-called journalists and news reporters, as well as various television and radio political gossip hosts, and of course all other fake news purveyors and loudmouths are again holding forth upon unsuspecting audiences of commoners who are only reading, listening and viewing the outputs of those charlatans in the hope of learning the truth concerning such matters as may be of concern to them. But, of course that’s apparently too much for those commoners to wish for. What they need instead, according to the various members of the biased media and their comrades the “swampers” who live off taxpayer dollars in Washington D.C., is simply more indoctrination. Thus, I guess what follows then on days such as this one are some examples of written, spoken, and performed garbage which might just as easily be received on any certain day by middle class innocents.

For crying out loud, why don’t the working classes in America want to fund our burgeoning “sanctuary cities”? Don’t they know that many living here in Medialand need sanctuary from work? And if those who are outside of America’s “in, but non-working crowd” only knew the fear you’ve known, they wouldn’t tell you all you need to fear is fear itself. And don’t you wish we could take all the people who have a little money with us just once when, figuratively of course, we find ourselves driving illegally late at night down a dark and ghastly highway? And many are the demons that haunt us then – there on that roadway where the pavement is hardly visible, and oncoming traffic is even less so.

And, besides physically trying to keep our vehicle on the pathway that’s been paved for us by convention, we’re struggling mentally with these questions and others: “Why am I here today, driving along life’s highway illegally?” “What would happen to me if I, through my illegal status, caused the death or deaths of other motorists; or even if I was apprehended by the police here tonight in the darkness?” Or, “What if my life somehow ended here tonight out on the highway?” “Would I wish to greet the Son of Man in this fashion?”

But that particular common man, whether legal or illegal, much to the relief of all other commoners, did safely reach his home that night. And as, with stumbling steps he made his way toward his entrance door, he heard a voice call to him through the darkness. “Next time, if you’re out really late again, who would you like to ride with you on the way home?”

“Send me those Sunday morning and late night weekday media talk gossipers” replied the common one. “According to themselves, they have all the answers to all America’s problems. So probably they’d be my best bet for aid on my perilous journeys.”

But as he entered his house, suddenly the commoner noticed that his fear abated somewhat. And it seemed he was then almost capable of clear imaginings. Nonetheless, the following are some of his random thoughts, conceived then by a mind coming down to clarity. Oh, but did he vow to stop displaying middle class arrogance then? Yes, he did, but… And here are some of his thoughts.

Often our brothers and sisters take huge steps to ensure that certain pieces of what continually become past inevitabilities, or in more commonplace parlance, verbally spoken of, mentally thought of, or physically performed mundane tasks of the everyday are relegated to either seen or unseen hiding spots at which they’ll not be discovered should anyone wish to seek them – out. But less often, our mortal siblings will acknowledge central influences, or divulge random observations which in fact may have been observed to a great extent because of those influences.

And here are some steps to climb or follow if you’ve fallen from liberal graces. Imagine those liberal concepts passing through your mind. And then, label them as they seem to you, be they dangerous, pedestrian, non-creative, or whatever. And then raise your nose high into the air and say “I’m glad I’m better than almost all other humans; and I know that what they really want the final outcome of all of this to be, is the elimination of the male sex from the face of the earth.”

And then, on the following day, if you feel graceless still, imagine two lovers of sameness who together are looking at the cover of a book which features a man with a black line across his eyes. “There’s always a way for the pen man to unpen his way out of tight spots” says the male.

“It seems so” replies the female.

And then the man says “I don’t believe people who tell me they can remember their births.” And the woman says “No, I don’t believe them either. But I think they do remember their baptisms. After all, since you and I both sinned in Eden, all people now need to secure their bodies and souls to their Lord, rather than to that damn snake we met there that day.”

“Yeah, and nowadays almost everyone, male and female, needs to work in order to keep society functioning well.”

“That’s right, but I don’t like job performance evaluations and justifications. I only like money procurement.”

“Last night on television I saw that some people called ‘dreamers’ want to stay in America. They want to stay here, but yet they don’t want the natives of America to be able to build a wall to protect themselves.”

“I’m very fearful of those dreamers, but I also fear the blamers. And do you know who those blamers are blaming? They’re blaming people such as you and I – the common working people of America. They’re as much as saying that you and I were actually the people who pulled all the triggers at all the recent massacres.”

“I think you’re right. It would be such a relief for me if only I could free myself from the guilt being thrown upon me because someone else felt he or she needed to kill helpless others whom he or she offered up as sheep to be slaughtered because he or she couldn’t adapt to modern life, or because he or she was bullied, or because he or she was lazy, or slow mentally, or because his or her representatives in government didn’t keep murderous weapons out of his or her hands, or because he or she couldn’t get a break, or – or”

“Or was it really perhaps because he or she had had no decent parents or teachers to inform or educate him or her many years ago when, as a child he or she should have learned the many facets of the concepts of right and wrong?”

“Yeah, that was surely part of it. But what about all the violence that’s being promoted on television, in movies, and in ‘action games’? Doesn’t all that stuff impact still developing minds? Don’t young people who still haven’t got life ‘figured out,’ most likely see all that violence and bloodshed on the screens and then think that it’s probably a normal part of life?”

“I’m thinking that happens in some cases. But only one incident of its occurrence is necessary for it to become a contributing factor in the massacres we’ve seen recently.”

“That’s very true. Yet, media types plod on with their own interpretations of violence. They’d have all of America believe that it was people such as you and I, commoners in a common republic, who were, figuratively the trigger pullers in those slayings. And what did we do that was wrong? We didn’t have enough compassion for America’s haters and lawbreakers.”

0 notes

goldeagleprice · 7 years ago

Text

Viewpoint: Child’s game can teach something

By Richard Francis

I really enjoy spending time with my 11-year-old son, Jonathan. Last weekend, Jonathan and I got up early, ate a big breakfast at Burger King and went to an estate sale. While Jonathan didn’t find anything at the estate sale, I found a piece of glassware and new magnifying glass. It was a fun morning.

After lunch, we assembled a prehistoric display complete with dinosaurs, dinosaur bones, quicksand and erupting volcano. We are already looking forward to next weekend.

Like most children, Jonathan is very inquisitive. He asks a lot of questions. I don’t mind this because asking questions is one of the ways in which we learn. Jonathan’s favorite type of question goes something like this: “Would you rather have: the ability to fly, or the ability to run super fast?”

At this time, I would like to do as Jonathan does and pose a “would you rather” question of my own to Numismatic News readers. Would you rather have a Professional Coin Grading Service MS-67 MAC (Modern Approved Coin) 2010 Lincoln Shield Cent or a PCGS MS-66 Red 2010 Lincoln Shield cent plus an additional $2,979.50 to spend on other coins? Or to put it another way, are modern condition rarities really worth the money?

While reviewing recent eBay sold items (Note: all “sold item” prices referred to in this article are from recent eBay sales), I found that a PCGS MS-67 MAC (Modern Approved Coin) 2010 Lincoln Shield cent recently sold for $2,995 In comparison, a PCGS MS-66 Red 2010 Lincoln Shield cent recently sold for $15.50. Is the MS-67 coin really worth the additional $2,979.50? My personal opinion is no.

While I do understand condition rarities, it must be pointed out that the difference between MS-66 and MS-67 is so slight that in many cases I daresay it is not even noticeable, even to the most skilled graders. I will take this point a bit further.

Any seasoned numismatist is familiar with the “crack-out game,” the act of resubmitting a coin to a professional grading service in hopes that the coin will return with a higher grade. In cases where, for example, there is a significant price difference between, say, an MS-64 and MS-65, it might be financially worth the risk to submit a coin several times for recertification. While it may take several attempts, if the coin eventually makes it to MS-65, the gamble has paid off.

Also, as we get higher up the grading scale, it stands to reason that the difference between grades is even harder to identify. Regardless, the grade a coin receives is simply the opinion of the one grading the coin. Bob’s MS-66 may be Larry’s MS-67. If all graders were the same, and all grades absolute, the “crack-out game” would not exist. Clearly, that is not the case. Again, I must ask, when there is such a significant price difference, is it really worth it to purchase an MS-67 coin over a nearly identical coin that has an MS-66 grade? As stated, I say no.

The minimal difference in condition is not the only reservation I have with regard to paying significant premiums for modern condition rarities. I feel that high mintages may make it difficult for modern condition rarities to retain their value. Let me explain.

Revisiting the 2010 Lincoln Shield cent noted above, it is likely that other MS-67, or higher grade, coins exist, especially when you consider it had a mintage of 1,963,630,000. Furthermore, there is usually a high rate of saving the first year of a new coin design. With mintage figures that high and the likelihood of significant saving, the primary reason we have not seen many other MS-67 2010 Lincoln Shield cents is probably because most people would not spend the money to certify one due to the financial risk. If the coin came back less than than MS-67, they would certainly lose money.

As previously noted, a PCGS MS-66 Red 2010 Lincoln Shield cent recently sold for $15.50. Also, a PCGS MS-65 Red 2010 Lincoln Shield cent recently sold for $11.01. Whoever paid to certify those coins clearly lost money.

As other MS-67, or higher grade, 2010 Lincoln Shield cents likely exist, one must ask what would happen to the value of the 2010 Lincoln Shield cent that sold for $2,995 if others came to market? The answer is quite obvious. As moderns typically have high mintages, this is a very real risk.

One may think that the sale of the $2,995 2010 Lincoln Shield cent is an exception to the rule, but that is not the case. It seems that there is quite a demand for modern condition rarities.

A PCGS MS-67 Red 1982 Bronze Lincoln Cent, small date, sold for $2,111.40, while a PCGS MS-66 Red example sold for $69. Many other examples can be found by reviewing recent eBay sold items. Again, I feel those who pay large premiums for modern condition rarities are treading on dangerous ground.

It should be noted that those who purchase condition rarity bullion moderns could also be treading on dangerous ground. Let’s look at silver Eagles. As there are large supplies that have as yet not been certified, today’s condition rarity may be tomorrow’s common item. As many people purchase monster boxes, boxes containing 500 same date silver Eagles, it is likely that more MS-70 Gems will come to market at some point in the future.

It is not unusual for some dealers to submit full monster boxes for certification. That being said, paying an extremely high premium for an MS-70 silver Eagle, when an MS-69 is nearly identical and drastically cheaper, may not be wise.

Reviewing recent eBay sold items, I found a PCGS MS-70 1996 silver Eagle, with a QA (quality assurance) sticker, that sold for $9,450. There were two from Numismatic Guaranty Corporation. One sold for $2,810, while the other sold for $3,070. It should be noted that the NGC pieces did not have QA stickers. In comparison, two PCGS MS-69 examples recently sold. One sold for $69 and the other for $95. Neither of these had QA stickers, either.

There were several recent sales of NGC MS-69 examples, none of which had QA stickers. The prices range from a low of $46.89 to a high of $142.49. As a side note, I would like to mention that the $142.49 example was in a green holder labeled “From U.S. Mint sealed box.” As this was the most expensive MS-69 example, one has to ask if the increase in cost was related to the label. If so, why? Buy the coin, not the holder.

Again, when dealing with moderns, many sealed boxes and rolls exist. That being said, where significant numbers of a certain coin, or bullion modern, exist, the possibility of future submissions cannot be ignored. The value of today’s condition rarity could certainly be affected in a negative way.

While not a modern, the 1903-O Morgan dollar is a perfect example of this scenario. It was a very rare coin until 1963, when significant numbers from government vaults came to market. The coin went from rare to common almost overnight, and the price fell dramatically.

In my opinion, the only time it is safe to purchase condition rarities is when there is little chance that other like coins could surface. A perfect example would be the 1853-O Seated Liberty half dollar, without arrows and rays, of which only four are known. Of those, the highest grade is VF-35. If someone were to find one today that was AU or Uncirculated, that would be a true condition rarity. There would be little chance that others would come to market and lower the value of said coin. Anyone who purchased such a coin could do so with confidence.

The points made above beg the question, why do people pay significant premiums for MS-70 coins when almost identical MS-69 coins can be purchased for hundreds or thousands of dollars less? I feel those who make such purchases are doing so in order to build registry sets. Upgrading a coin from MS-69 to MS-70 can dramatically increase the overall grade of a set. In other words, the thrill of competition and the satisfaction of being able to say “I have the best”. Numismatics is so much more than that.

Another reason people may make the aforementioned type of purchase could be simply for investment. If that is the case, I am afraid that when the time comes for them to sell they may be highly disappointed.

To clarify, I am not saying to avoid the purchase of moderns. I am saying that purchasing a MS-69 over an MS-70 can provide more bang for your buck and better protect your assets. Using the purchase price of the PCGS MS-70 1996 silver Eagle (with QA sticker), $9,450, let me ask you the following:

Would you rather have of the following option one, two, three or four?

Option 1: PCGS MS-70 1996 silver Eagle (with QA sticker)

Option 2: 94 PCGS MS-69 1996 silver Eagles (using an average purchase price of $100 each) (with $50 left over)

Option 3: One PCGS MS-69 1996 silver Eagle (using an average purchase price of $100) PCGS AU-50 1877 Indian Head cent, $3,095 PCGS MS-65 1912-S Liberty nickel, $745 PCGS MS-63 1909-S VDB Lincoln cent, $1,399 PCGS VF-35 1921-D Walking Liberty half, $1,231 PCGS MS-64 1913-S Type 2 Buffalo nickel, $1,495 PCGS XF-40 1895-S Morgan dollar $1,100 PCGS VF-25 1914-D Lincoln Wheat cent $278 Total: $9,443.00 (with $7 left over)

Option 4: PCGS MS-64 1895-S Morgan Dollar (CAC Stickered) $9,450

For the investor, ask yourself, if you were to place the above options in order of which would best retain its value and be the easiest to liquidate, where would the PCGS MS-70 1996 silver Eagle (with QA sticker) fall?

For the registry set competitor, ask yourself, if there was no registry set competition, would you pay a significant premium for an MS-70 coin when an MS-69 is almost identical in appearance and costs much less?

Let me take a moment to go a little off point and make a couple observations. It should be noted that while some coins may qualify for a high grade, they are not always pleasing to the eye. In many cases, a lower grade of mint state may look better than its next higher grade counterpart. Just sayin’. Also, if you can purchase an MS-65 coin for a small premium over what an MS-64 would cost, that may be the best way to go.

In conclusion, we should purchase what makes us happy. However, I feel those who purchase for competition only, or for investment only, are missing the true enjoyment the field of numismatics has to offer.

By the way, for those who are wondering how I answered Jonathan’s question, if given the option between super speed or flight, I would rather be able to fly.

This “Viewpoint” was written by Richard Francis.Viewpoint is a forum for the expression of opinion on a variety of numismatic subjects. To have your opinion considered for Viewpoint, write to David C. Harper, Editor, Numismatic News, 700 E. State St., Iola, WI 54990. Send email to [email protected].

This article was originally printed in Numismatic News. >> Subscribe today.

More Collecting Resources

• Subscribe to our monthly Coins magazine – a great resource for any collector!

• The Standard Catalog of World Coins, 1901-2000 is your guide to images, prices and information on coinage of the 1900s.

The post Viewpoint: Child’s game can teach something appeared first on Numismatic News.

#Precious Metals

0 notes

notesfromthepen · 7 years ago

Text

Sleepwalking

In prison you either live in the past or the future. Anywhere but the present. Its either that, or you accept this place as home. We watch TV, we read books, we tell stories. All to escape. We occupy our minds with hopes of a life that has yet to begin. Or with the thoughts of a life, long since past. We believe that life is happening anywhere but here. As if it has been frozen behind these walls, only to resume when we finally walk out of these doors.

We deserve the luxury of this perspective..We have earned the right to entertain these thoughts. It is so much more comforting, so much 'easier'. And to think any other way would be absurd... Right?

After all, who wants to live in a place with 'zero' privacy? Where every phone call you make is eavesdropped on and recorded. Every piece of mail, torn open and read.

A place where you're told when to eat, when to sleep, when to shower, when you can use the bathroom. A bathroom that you share with 160 other people.

A place where you're forced to work for pennies a day. That punishes you for refusing to do the work of maintaining the prison that holds you captive.

A place that throws you into solitary confinement for six months if you defend yourself in a fight.

A place with routine shakedowns. Where the little property that you are allowed is tossed around without regard. Everything you own dumped on the floor. Your clean folded clothes scattered around your cell. Dirty bootprints left on the sheets and pillow of your bed, where you've tried for years to get meaningful sleep to no avail.

A place that feeds you just enough to survive but not much more.

A place without family. No Mothers, Fathers, Brothers, Sisters, Sons or Daughters.

A place with nothing but men. Testosterone in every voice, every movement, every odor, every motivation. Where touch is limited to acts of violence.

A place without women. Without the other half. Without that indescribable, and all too often, under appreciated feminine energy. A place without balance.

A place of concrete, steel, and razor wire.

Make no mistake, this is a 'place', in which we reside, not a ‘home'.

And although the qualities in life that we search for may not be found in abundance here in prison. And though the imagined comforts and ease of the free world seem to be a perfect place to fix our minds. Or when the safety of the past beckons our attention. We must be careful. For when the distant past or the uncertain future, that we build with hopes and desires, begin to feel more real than the present moment, we are in danger of becoming lost.

If I've learned anything in life, its that: rarely is the 'easy' thing to do also the 'right' thing to do.

I've heard this question posed numerous times since I've been in prison: "If you could sleep through your entire sentence and wake up on the day of your release, would you?" It's been asked by different people, in different places, at different times. A question that fascinates me. A question that I have began asking of other inmates.

Ive found that roughly nineteen out of twenty people say "yes". Many of them without even thinking. But every once in a while someone will answer "no". To which someone will inevitably ask, in a tone of utter disbelief: "why?". As if this answer was made in haste and the question wasn't fully understood. As if only an idiot would choose to be awake through such an experience. But I've come to find that it's often quite the opposite. The person who answers 'no' has always understood the question to a deep degree. Much more so than the majority, who so quickly answer "yes".

The answer to this question speaks volumes of a person. Those who answer "no" are always the standouts, and not just in the way they answer but in the way they live their lives and carry themselves here in prison. They are introspective. Concerned with growth. They are the layered. The moving. The redefining. The interested and excited. The ones who have yet to admit defeat. They are the strong of heart and mind.

What a waste it would be to sleep through this experience! Yes it would be easier. Easier, but completely fruitless. A complete sacrifice of the all too limited and infinitely important years of your life.

We've become so conditioned to run from struggle and difficulty that we do it at all costs. Is the point of life to make it through unscathed, having learned nothing meaningful? There are certain lessons that can only be learned and appreciated in the highest degree, through the overcoming of struggle and adversity. If the point is avoidance, then why not just sleep through it all?! Fuck it, maybe we can find away to avoid life all together.

Those who would answer yes to this question are at best confused and at worst a coward. You have little understanding of this life if you think that the unpleasant is to be avoided at such a heavy cost as your time here. You are the blind, the timid, the frail of spirit, the soft of heart. You are 'already' asleep. What an insult to your existence is your cowardly flee from the opportunity of struggle.

Make no mistake, this question isn't merely hypothetical. How many of us 'sleep' through our lives, waiting for something better in the future? The most self destructive sleep is one of the heart and mind. Yet it is the most common.

As you draw yourself into a self imposed slumber, especially in prison, you lose everything and gain nothing. You lose the appreciation for the things in life that you once took for granted. A true appreciation for food, affection, freedom, women and Love. An appreciation that only absence can instill. An appreciation that will never fail you. Never leave you.

In your sleep you lose the chance to see that the human spirit, your spirit, can survive through anything. Not just survive but thrive. You miss out on the rare and special bonds made in a shared struggle. The friendships of a lifetime. You miss out on the deepest laughs of your life, found in the freedom of gallows humor. You miss out on seeing with clarity, those rare gems in your life that love and support you in a time when they can have no self-serving motives to do so. You miss out on the chance to know who's truley in your corner. To know who will be there when the chips are down.

You miss out on acquiring and honing self reliance. You miss out on the chance to listen, to learn, to see what you're made of. You miss out on the chance to rise from the ashes, indestructible and new.

You miss out on everything and you gain nothing.

Its easy to fall back asleep in a place like this. To start living in an imagined future while life passes you by. You start to assume that life doesn't happen behind fences this high, between walls this thick, and surrounded by razor wire this sharp. But your wrong. Life doesn't just happen in the brief moments of pleasure, ease, or comfort. On the contrary. Most of the shit that counts happens in between the moments of ease.. The whole point of this beautifully terrifying rollercoaster ride called Life, is the sudden drops and the stomach turning rolls. For those are the only things you talk about after the ride.

So don't close your eyes. Don't look away. And whatever you do, don't go to sleep.

0 notes

empty-church · 8 years ago

Text

What then shall we say? - As Seen On Sunday

#VOTW

"What then shall we say to these things? " -- Romans 8:31

Sermon Recap

Last week we had a really honest talk about suffering in life, how things work out for the good of those who love God and I think that this next passage is actually very important to encouraging us in hard and dark times. Paul raises the question:

31 What then shall we say to these things?

He answers the question immediately after:

If God is for us, who can be against us? 32 He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?

I think that these statements are meant for us to take hope in despite a situation which might cause us to think otherwise. I often tell my mom things and she always poses this question “ does that line up with scripture.” I usually give her a quote that is slightly out of context as an example of why I am right but she gets her point across. “ Am I listening to what God truly says about a situation?”

A great example of this in the Old Testament is when David is being hunted by Saul when he has been told that he would be king. If there was ever a time someone could have felt that someone was against them, David fits this description, yet we read how David let everything up to God. There are several times when David could have taken Saul’s life and thus the kingdom that was going to be his and yet he constantly says “touch not God’s anointed.” Each time he makes a point to basically say to Saul “look I honour you as king why do you want to kill me?” He eventually ascends to the throne and prospers because of God. Perhaps one of the coolest things is that his family eventually leads to Jesus. In Protestant circles, we don't put a whole lot of stock in Jesus’ family as being special, but it has to be a great honour for God to promise that the throne will never leave the house of David and the way He does it is by God incarnate being born into the family.

Secondly, since today is Pentecost Sunday, I figured I would pick the day of Pentecost as a New Testament example. This day is a very important moment for the disciples and the followers of Jesus. Jesus promised them persecution. Said people would reject them but they would be really rejecting Him. And here we are. First, it felt as if everyone was against them when Jesus died, but then He came back. But now Jesus left again leaving them with instructions to wait. Verse 32 has a whole new light if you consider the sending of the Holy Spirit after Jesus ascended. If 32 could be used for anything in this life as we talked about during our podcast, I would say it would apply to the Holy Spirit rather than material things.

Verse 33 directs this idea of who can be against us a little further, “Who shall bring any charge against God’s elect?” The assumed answer is no one because it is God who justifies. If we remember from earlier in our series, there is now no condemnation in Christ Jesus. The accuser of the brethren cannot bring any charge against us. If anyone would bring charges it would be God himself who justifies so he is the only one who could bring judgement against us. It is the cliche “only God can judge me.” Well, it's true that at the end God will judge everyone, but that's not what people mean when they say that.

Paul then poses the question “who is to condemn” and then follows it up with Jesus being our intercessor; Christ Jesus is the one who died—more than that, who was raised—who is at the right hand of God, who indeed is interceding for us. We are given this image of Jesus sitting at the right hand of God speaking on our behalf. Jesus is the judge and the one to condemn yet He is interceding for us.

Jesus said that he had to go and ask the Father to send the Holy Spirit as our helper.

And He stayed there, not having left us as orphans since we have the Spirit but also interceding for us.

And finally verses 35 and 36 I want to read again:

35 Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or danger, or sword? 36 As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all the day long; we are regarded as sheep to be slaughtered.”

Literally, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. I don't think that this is a commentary on the ability to lose salvation, I think is it the assurance that for believers who have been saved by grace through faith, cannot be taken away from Christ’s love by anything. The rejection of Christ’s love is a topic for another time, but as it were, nothing can separate us from the love of Christ. Paul’s quote of Psalm 44:22 emphasises the type of persecution that still does not separate us from Jesus, and in fact reminds us that these present suffering are nothing to be compared to the future Glory in Christ Jesus.

About the Author | Sean Kready Twitter – Facebook – Instagram – Snapchat An imperfect Christian, who sins on the daily, but tries to share his journey so that we all might know God better. This is our offering. An act of worship. Please remember our Rules For Discussion when commenting.

As Seen On Sunday We provide a recap of the Sunday sermon to encourage you in the faith each week but it's not the same thing as being here.

→ Check out Empty Church As Seen On Sunday here.

0 notes

swfindingfreedom · 8 years ago

Photo

A Star Wars Fanfiction

Finding Freedom

Chapter 21

Xalaina woke as Puru's ship fell out of light speed. She had not been slain in her sleep and this gave Xalaina hope that Puru was who she said she was.

"Are we there?" Xalaina asked sitting up straight to look out at the planet they were descending toward.

"So I've been told," Puru replied.

"I hope your informant is a trustworthy one or we could be walking into a trap." Xalaina pursed her lips, squinting out the window looking for a sign that they were in dangerous territory - there was none.

"Probably more trustworthy than the ones you could have gotten opening your big mouth." Puru chided.

Xalaina shrugged and sat back in her seat. Hitting the atmosphere was rocky at first but smooth after a moment. Below them was a thriving, lush jungle filled terrain. As they got closer the ship's intercom flickered to life.

"We have eyes on you, state your name and the reason for arrival."

Whoever was on the com didn't bother introducing themselves. "I'm Puru Odessa, myself and another have come to see General Leia Organa."

There was silence that caused both women to hold their breaths.

"Fly South, you'll see a landing strip there. I'm glad you made it Puru." Puru smiled proudly, her informant clearly had sent word ahead.

XxX

They landed with ease and so far everything seemed legit, but Xalaina wouldn't let her guard down, not even when she finally got to meet the General. After all, technically she was in enemy territory simply by association. For all the Resistance knew, she was a spy.

Of course, most, if anyone here shouldn't even know who she was, but the truth had a way of coming out eventually and Xalaina always felt being truthful to begin with gave them fewer reasons to doubt you in the future.

When they departed the ship, they were greeted by a dark haired man. "Nice ship," he nodded behind them before stopping to give Xalaina a curious look.

Xalaina recognized the man as the one Ren had captured on Jakku. The one who had shot at Ren after he'd killed Lor San Tekka. When Xalaina had allowed herself to be captured she had been transported on the same ship as this pilot.

"You, you made it out alive. I wondered," his grin widened. "We didn't get to properly meet. I'm Poe, Poe Dameron." He extended his hand and Xalaina took it.

"Xalaina," she replied giving his hand a firm shake before letting go.

"I'm glad you made it out. Everything happened so fast, I didn't get the chance...," his apology was unnecessary and wasting her time.

"No need for that. You did the right thing." She replied waving off his words. "I have information for General Leia Organa." Xalaina pushed. She was bursting to get this over with.

"I'd also like a chance to meet the General." Puru piped up.

"Of course, follow me." Poe seemed more than eager to rally the newcomers. Xalaina was annoyed with Puru on her heels, but she'd bite her tongue for now.

Through a set of doors, they entered what seemed to be a mostly underground base. Probably hidden below the landscape to avoid obvious detection, despite the landing strip. However, it was possible that anyone not looking carefully might miss it.

Poe led them across the inner base to the back where three steps up led them to a door. He knocked and waited. A female voice ushered him in. "General, I have the newcomers and they'd like to speak with you."

When Poe opened the door fully both girls moved in. Xalaina eyed the former Princess and she was exactly as Xalaina imagined. Chin held high, posture straight and screaming with authority. Her face soft yet stern. Her years certainly painted her face, but not her spirit.

Leia looked them both over, but when she looked at Xalaina she did so with a look of familiarity. "Puru Odessa, I'm glad you made it. I was informed by Zeno of your impending arrival. My condolences. I knew your father, he was good man."

Puru gave a somber half smile and a polite nod. "Thank you. I want to offer my services to the Resistance. My father believed in you and your cause. In his honor, I'd like to help you come out on top."

"We can always use more help. Poe can take you to my fellow leaders and they can assess what best you can help us with." Leia smiled and waited until they had both left the room before her eyes came back to Xalaina.

For a moment there was a stare down before the General broke the silence. "I know who you are Xalaina," she said her tone cool and even. It held neither acceptance nor suspicion. It was hard to read just how she knew her or if she even really did know. Perhaps, she'd heard only word of the 'pregnant' woman.

"Then who am I?" Xalaina asked slightly fascinated by the game.

Instead of a straight reply, General Leia turned to her desk and pushed a button on an older model dashboard. Up popped an image of her father and his voice followed the image. "This message was sent out over many channels. There was no attempt to encrypt it."

Xalaina listened patiently to her father giving the command to have her killed. To not engage her and also to him admitting his parentage. She now knew how Bounty Hunters knew about her so fast. This must have been made shortly after her escape.

When the message ended and the image disappeared Leia sat down. "I assume you lied on Ecu'dar when you announced you were pregnant with my son's child."

"I did. I didn't know that my father had put out such a public message. I thought faking pregnancy within your family would get me to you before he managed to send anyone of note after me." Xalaina shrugged.

"But you do know my son," is wasn't a question. On the outside, Xalaina could tell that the General was attempting to stay calm, but she suspected that any information about her precious Ben was welcome news.

"My prior relationship with your son was what ended up in me having to flee for my life." This certainly perked up Leia as she straightened in her seat. "I'd rather not discuss the details, but I'm sure you'd like to know that Ren, or rather Ben helped me to escape."

She watched as Leia exhaled, she'd been holding her breath. Xalaina wondered what it might be like to be loved so unconditionally that every sliver of information on a wayward loved one was eagerly accepted.

"I'm not here about Ben, I'm here because I have more information about the First Order than your Resistance could ever dream of. Places, names, numbers, procedures. I can be the biggest asset your side needs." To Xalaina it seemed things were going decent, but she noted the small shift in the Generals posture once more.

"Those things are certainly welcome but, I have to express concern over your arrival. The all too public message made by your father and then your own public display in an attempt to find us. How do I know this isn't all a setup? That you are not a spy?" Xalaina sighed before rubbing her temple in irritation.

"You don't." She replied. "Everyone keeps posing the same question to me and yet how can I possibly answer it. There is no true way to prove myself to you. I give you a location you assume it's one I was given ahead of time to make myself look trustworthy. I name names and because some of them might have been people you knew you assume I'm trying to turn you against each other. It's a catch 22."

Her annoyance was showing, she knew, but this was the situation she most dreaded. If General Leia decided she didn't want to take a chance then her information will be worth very little and she would have done all this for nothing.

Xalaina hated wasting her time.

Leia seemed to be weighing what she'd said and perhaps thinking of her options. She was quiet for quite some time and Xalaina patiently waited, breathing down her irritation.

"You're right," Leia admitted with a sigh of her own. "If I were in your place and my intentions were genuine, I would also feel very frustrated. You placed yourself in a very dangerous spot coming here." She paused again. "I cannot completely give you my trust, but I can give you my ear."

It was an invitation to start talking and without hesitation, Xalaina began to talk about things she knew regarding her father's precious Order. After all, the Resistance were not as deceitful as The First Order. It's not like giving up her information will lead to an early death or lifetime imprisonment.

Next Chapter ---->

Back to Chapter 1

#kylo ren #kylo ren fanfic #star wars #star wars fanfiction #Kylaina

0 notes