#and tamika becoming the new warden

[warningsine]

it's like they were trying to make a point about privilege, racism and injustice

[cecilspeaks]

167 - Echo

Spring reveals nature’s secret That death is reversible. Welcome to Night Vale.

The worst part is not the tall plumes of smoke. Nor the destroyed cars and buildings, nor the armed desert cult marching through the streets. It is the silence. The absence of sirens echoing across the valley. The absence of help. the absence of hope that help will happen. And now the absence even of screams.

The clan of passengers of Delta flight 18713 prowls the streets of our town, seeking those who hide, those who resist. They know there are few of us left who have not been subsumed by their leader’s commands. And those of us who do remain will be captured and eventually killed. They must know I am here, hiding, talking, resisting. They must see our radio antenna, our station sign, hear our broadcasts.

The pilot knows who I am, delights in having inhabited my mind a couple weeks go to speak his foul truth. He holds out some hope that he can re-enter my brain, squeeze it tight with his calm convincing voice. I remain alive because the pilot wants me in my job. Wants me on his side.

I hope for solution. I hope my own voice empowers those who are still free to rise up, to fight back, but so far – nothing. I no longer hope to find Amelia Anna Alfaro who was always the best at everything and who disappeared eight years ago to loo for Delta flight 18713. I no longer hope that Amelia Anna Alfaro will be found or that she will save us because she is found. She will not save us.

Amelia stands at the top step of the Night Vale City Hall. Behind her is the multi-headed, single-bodied entity that is City Council. Amelia and the City Council are both fully under the control of the pilot. Amelia Anna Alfaro found the missing passengers of flight 18713, and then was enjoined by the pilot to join them.

When the pilot makes contact with your brain, he does not speak to you at first. He does not begin with a plea, with a mission, with a request or command. He first forces you to hear the lives of his passengers, innocents who boarded Delta flight 18713 from Detroit to Albany on June 15, 2012. You hear a mother calming her child, you hear giggling teenage boys, you hear middle-aged men telling each other the same stories they have told each other for years on end. You hear about vacations and jobs and families and favorite books and unrealized dreams, you hear it all until you accept the mundane comfort and intimacy of community, until you are lulled into a willingness to hear anything – and then you hear the pilot. And you hear his message. The words of his message are about nature’s beauty. The words express loving respect that all nature is beautiful. But the message is not the words. It’s what’s encoded within them, the message is that all who are not beautiful are an affront to nature.

His power of unspoken oration, of invisible influence, allows his hatred to metastasize, to become an active assault rather than an idle grumble. It is difficult to stop his voice from entering your head. Nearly impossible. I am not able to do it on my own. Carlos sits with me still in my studio. When I talk to Carlos, I do not hear the voice of the pilot nor his passengers. Charles Rainier, the former warden of the Night Vale Asylum, went fishing to keep his mind clear. Tamika Flynn has taken to listening to the audio book of Emily St. John Mandel’s bestselling novel “Station 11”, which is narrated by Night Vale’s own Lee Marvin who, by the way, turns 32 next month. Happy early birthday, Lee, if you can hear me.

I have found that Carlos calms me, centers me, silences the echoes of 100 different people, 100 different thoughts in my head, none of which are my own. If you know what centers you, do that immediately.

The streets are quiet, Night Vale. I hope some of you can hear me. I hope some of you are staying out of sight, out of reach. If you can, come together, find each other. Perhaps we can overpower these invaders of our peace, but the pilot hides from any potential counterattack, and if we can’t stop him, can’t cut out the brain of his insurgency… I believe our hopes are lost. Our end is near.

The last hope I had stands on the top step of City Hall rallying her mindless clan on a ruthless scouring of our city. Amelia Anna Alfaro was always the best at everything, and the pilot knows that. It is why he chose her as his chief strategist, his general, his right hand.

They will push beyond Night Vale soon. To Red Mesa and Pine Cliff, and to the rest of the state, and beyond.

More people are brought to City Hall as I speak, and Amelia flanked by Doug Biondi delivers their sentence, their punishment for resistance. Their fate for lacking beauty in the eyes of a truly hateful man. Their sentence is to be tied together and held in the rock garden lining the outer lawn of City Hall. Once every person in Night Vale has been gathered in one place, the pilot will make one last attempt to overtake our minds as a group, to grow his army tenfold. He may succeed with some and the remainder – will be executed.

The pilot believes in his own specific definition of beauty. He believes those who fail to be good enough specimens of nature, of humanity, must be removed from the genetic pool. Every few hours, another group of prisoners crouches before Amelia, and another group receives immediate conviction.

As Amelia stands in judgment before the most recently indicted, she pauses. One of the captured is standing in defiance. In response to this rebellious act, Doug Biondi, still wearing his asylum-issued coveralls, raises a handmade curved blade, but Amelia stops him. The one standing is Yvette Alfaro. It is Amelia’s mother. She begs Amelia to recognize her own family and to have mercy. But Amelia’s eyes show no hint of relenting. Yvette tells Amelia she always loved her, was always proud of her, but that her motherly pride was sometimes a selfish price. “You were a story I wrote for myself to tell my friends,” Yvette says contritely. “I did not let you tell your own story. I should have been proud of you for what you achieved, for yourself. Happy for your happiness. But I saw you as a way to better me. I’m sorry, Amelia,” Yvette tells her only child, and then hands Amelia a note. “Please read this. It’s all I ask that you do for your mother. Read what I wrote,” Yvette says. Without even glancing at the paper, Amelia crumples it into a ball, her face reddens, and her eyes blacken, as she pushes her mother back down to her knees. With a nod of Amelia’s head, the brainwashed and ever growing clan of flight 18713 ties up the new prisoners and pushes them into the rock garden, until every remaining person in town has been drawn together for the pilot. And the last who resist his voice will be destroyed. A rotten harvest to be composted for a more promising crop.

If you can hear my voice, you are one of the last left. We cannot see the pilot, but he can see us, and it is not long until his minions are here with me, or there with you, Night Vale. We are the last to be reaped, the last to be gathered.

They stalk outside my studio now! Climbing the walls, smashing in windows, knocking down doors. I-I can hear them in the hallways behind me. Carlos is barring the door to the studio, but I know it will not hold! Carlos, do as you promised and run! I will stay focused, I will keep my head safe, I will take us all To the weather!

[“The Stolen Century” by Ellen Beizer: http://ellenclairebeizer.com]

I am captured, Night Vale. So is Carlos. I can’t see where they took him, so I keep my eyes closed and imagine Carlos’ face.  I keep talking to this image of Carlos to protect my thoughts from the pilot’s voice. The ragged, empty-minded clan of flight 18713 pushes me into a larger group of captives. I still do not see Carlos, but I see the violent hungry faces of those under the pilot’s control. I see two teenage boys who are secretly mad for each other. I see a middle-aged man who either went to New Orleans or heard about New Orleans so much that he might as well have gone. I see the people who inhabited my mind. Whose voices were used to hypnotize me, to lay the psychological groundwork for the pilot. And I hear them. I hear their voices coming from their mouths, live, in real time. But I hear them in my head too! Separate from their bodies. And I think of Carlos again, trying to stop the echoes, [very quietly] return to silence and clarity.

They lead our group. I with my head down, eyes closed, quietly conversing with an imaginary Carlos, to the steps of City Hall. To the feet of the ruthless Amelia Anna Alfaro. Ohh, [quietly] but she’s not ruthless. She is compromised. I do not know how to convince her of this, if her own mother could not. Even still immediately we are denounced as resistors and tied up with the other uncooperative prisoners, wriggling uselessly in their bindings along the rock garden. The last of those who refused to join the 18713 have been gathered together. Amelia knows she has quickly and thoroughly sorted out entire town into the recruited and the renounced. She was always the best at everything.

At this moment, the pilot emerges from the front doors of City Hall. Amelia and the rest of the 18713 look on him with awe. And it occurs to me they have never seen him in person. Only heard his voice. The enormity of his legend is evidence in the gaping maw and sparkling dark eyes of Amelia Anna Alfaro. The pilot does not visibly speak, yet I can hear him in my head. Each of us can her a personalized appeal from him in our minds.

[deep creepy voice] “Cecillll,” he says to me. “You have a beautiful voice. Think of how much beauty we can share together. Think of your voice, carried miles through the air like dandelion seeds. Spreading our message of nature’s true beauty to everyone in the desert. To everyone beyonddd the desert. You are chosennn Cecillllll. Beeeeeee. My. Voiccccce.”

I think of Carlos’ face. I say aloud to my imagined Carlos: the first time you called me, I knew you liked me. Even though you avoided my flirting. I thought you were trying to be professional, Carlos, playing ignorant, but you weren’t. you were shy. You didn’t know how to ask. And I knew I loved you.

My mind remains clear as I talk, but I see several of the remainders sturgling to ignore the pilot’s voice permeating their every thought. A few lose the fight and join his clan. He is too far from me, too far from any o the rest of us to reach him, to subdue him, to kill him, to get back my mind, to get back my town, to get back my Carlos.

When the pilot’s final pleas and patience expire, he walks down the paved path and stands next to Amelia Anna Alfaro. Then he says, for the first time using his mouth: ���None of them are beautiful! None of them are nature! None of them can live!” Amelia stares at him like a star struck fan in the presence of a Hollywood celebrity. Doug Biondi, next to her, holds up his crooked blade. The angel of death wears electric blue coveralls, and the 18713 raise their weapons too, glaring at the last of us tied up a the rock garden. I search in vain for Carlos one last time, battling the sick truth that we are born and we will die alone. And Amelia Anna Alfaro raises her hand. Inside her hand is a ball of paper. Seeming confused about how it got there, she unfurls it. Smoothing out the wrinkles with her fingers, she examines the paper. There is a long silence. “Should I do it or what? Amelia?” Doug Biondi asks, anxious to get to the killing part. I now see what Amelia sees. I cannot read what is written on the paper, but I know what is there. They’re words from her mother, written in code. In a puzzle. The one place Amelia’s mind can hide from the voices, from the voice of the pilot, is in puzzles. Amelia says: “It is my responsibility to destroy that which is not beautiful. Give me the blade, Doug.” Doug, reluctantly, does so. Still staring at the paper, she pulls the blade behind her shoulder and says: “You come from nowhere, and that is where you shall return.” She splashes the blade into the pilot’s throat. I see his hands clutch at his neck. I see Doug Biondi lunge for Amelia, to protect his beloved leader, but as his arms crash down onto her shoulders, he relents. Doug’s mind is free now too.

I see the pilot convulse one final time. I see the emancipated Amelia run toward her mother. Other members of the 18713 surrounding us drop their weapons, their eyes vacant and lips white. The rush of mental agency is blinding them, staggering them. One of them cuts the ropes from my hands. I help free the others, one by one, still searching for Carlos and then – I find him. He is in the very back, the last of the last of Night Vale. Those who are free are running or embracing or helping those who are still bound or drunk with confusion, and on the ground where Amelia stood moments before, I find the wrinkled note from mother to daughter. It is a series of numbers, not words. I show it to Carlos. “A cryptogram puzzle,” he says. “I love those.” I ask him if he can solve it. He screws up his face. “We should get out of here first,” he says. “Please,” I say. He looks at it for a couple of minutes, until finally he says: “It’s a basic alphanumeric code. It reads: Amelia, I am proud of you, no. matter. what.”

Carlos and I hold each other through the town. Passing two teenage boys dressed in scraps of airplane upholstery, gripping tightly each other’s faces. We help a lost toddler find his parents. We clear broken glass from streets. We walk home.

We shade our eyes from the setting sunset, which kindles through a hilltop cliff. We talk nonstop about today, about tomorrow, about yesterday, about every possible moment, just talking and talking, because we almost lost our talk forever. We do not hear the returning echo of sirens across the valley. We do not hear anything but ourselves.

Stay tuned. Next. For a silence that is all your own.

Good night, Night Vale … Good night.  

Today’s proverb: Did you know the Germans have 31 different words for beer? Well they don’t, that’s wrong, you’re wrong

[rachelannc]

ORANGE IS THE NEW BLACK: The Final Season. Netflix. (Credit: Screenrant)

My oh my. What a journey these past seven years have been with Orange Is The New Black. And if you’re anything like me, you’ve been watching this show for the past seven years, and looking back at everything you’ve seen this show do, it just overwhelms you with all kinds of feelings.

I don’t tend to watch a lot of TV as committing to shows and the time and getting hooked onto something isn’t really in me, but Orange was the first show I ever watched on Netflix before Netflix really became what it was (as one of the first-ever Netflix original series made during a time people didn’t really know what Netflix was, giving roles to women, showcasing women’s stories and providing an intriguing setting at a women’s prison released during my slow college summer days, yeah, OITNB really stuck).

If you’ve managed to finish watching the final season, read on ahead if you don’t care for any potential spoilers.

OITNB was truly revolutionary. When it introduced us to Piper Chapman in its first season — an upper-middle-class white blonde entering prison — little did we know that she was just a “Trojan horse” to tell the stories of women who rarely get told: women of color, immigrant women, queer women, poverty-stricken women, women with addictions, mental illnesses, disabilities, etc. OITNB was a true pioneer in the way it told these very important, very under shadowed stories, and left us with some of its best episodes to date in its final season.

The main thing that has been OITNB‘s driving force is its ability to humanize characters

… characters we may have grown to hate or dislike simply because of their behaviors and actions with the characters we loved in the prison world. The flashbacks helped give us context as to why people are the way they are (it made early characters like Pornstache seem even lovable), which is something that is important and something we all should realize.

These women are women just like us. They have become a product of the system we are all placed into, and perhaps they lost their way. They found themselves at the wrong place at the wrong time, or got caught up in something seedy just for the sake of trying to survive.

In season seven, Tamika (Susan Hayward), an old friend of Taystee’s (Danielle Brooks) who became a prison guard at the same prison Taystee was incarcerated at, loses her job as warden at Litchfield — a job she got to become a “scapegoat” for black women and diversity for the uppers in the system, but a job she ended up proving to be terrific at, as she implemented programs to try and help make the prison a better place for the women. Taystee even started tutoring other inmates to pass their GED test.

When Tamika gets fired, she says she’s relieved, because no matter what good she or others may continue to do, “The system will always be what it is, and there’s not a damn thing I can do.” (That is one hell of a line.)

OITNB did a great job of highlighting and revealing the problems in our system — and how undeniably unfair they can be.

No matter what you do or how good you can try to be, the system always feels against you, and you feel helpless. In the case of Taystee, the systems of oppression became too much and almost impossible to fight or dismantle (even Mr. Caputo and the villainous Fig have tried their best to bring justice to the prison). A life sentence in prison for Taystee can make you question why you should even continue to try or fight, as you reason that ending your life is the only way out.

One of the most heartbreaking moments came in the form of Pennsatucky. She’s been there since season one and become one of the most lovable rednecks the shows ever had. She’s got a good heart, is widely misunderstood, and only wants the best for others and for herself. Her learning disability may hit home to so many people, and the fact that she did pass her GED, all thanks to Taystee, only to find that out after Pennsatucky lost her life… That was an immediate tearjerker. And a real loss that doesn’t sugarcoat anything. (Ugh.)

One of the storylines I really loved this season was the relationship Nicky (Natasha Lyonne) found with Shani Abboud (Marie Lou Nahhas) in the immigration detention center. For such a brief character in the whole of the series, Shani’s story was so telling, riveting and important. Her story of deportation, but also of female genital mutilation within the Muslim culture, was so revealing. I’m glad shows like OITNB exist to shine a light on these issues and cultural differences that do in fact exist, but never see the light of day. Her presence was refreshing, and we got to see so many layers come to light of Nicky as well, for how broken she is but how much of a heart she has for everyone around her. (And I have to add, I’ve got such a girl crush on Shani, as straight as I am, ha!)

There are so many layers to this series, but as Piper has always been the one that tied the whole series together, we can’t help but feel and relate to her. (After all, most of this shows viewers might relate to the white liberal that is Piper?) As she gets released from Litchfield and transitions into everyday life, the struggles of that life out of prison become so real. Paying rent, finding a job, keeping up with your probation, and trying to stay out of trouble? Taystee made that very clear (and so did many of the other inmates) as they found their way back into prison, after being released, and it all just becomes one huge circle and cycle that repeats itself (for Aleida, “I’ve got people in there, and I’ve got nobody out here,” is so telling).

Piper’s moment with Larry when he laid it all out on her — for who he thinks she is, and read her and her actions like a book (as someone who has had her whole life laid out in front of her, this perfect, beautiful life, but one day maybe meant nothing to her, as she craved something different, which she found through Alex, and that drama continues to fuel her, even when she’s got this perfect woman in the form of Zelda in front of her) — was just so incredibly telling. (I fearfully might be able to relate to Piper in this case, quite frankly…)

We begin to know ourselves and our relationships better through these characters, and as these characters get tested, we see what drives characters to do what they do, which makes this series so damn compelling. It’s a series that has always been about everyone else but Piper, and we can all relate to it.

This series has opened up so many conversations over the years, and when it started in 2013, it began to highlight pressing topics during its run. The Black Lives Matter movement was at an all-time high when we saw the death of Poussey (Samira Wiley), due to an untrained guard trying to stop a fight he thought she was engaging in, only to accidentally suffocate her to her death. Then came the prison riots and the unjust f**ked up system that goes into saving the upperhands’ lives and and reputations at the sake of the inmates.

Although season seven as a whole seemed to be its most focused yet, with each episode and every scene serving up some hell of moments, powerful scenes, damn funny moments and the humor you find in these women who find happiness while even in the sh*ttiest of circumstances… I think that’s what this show’s all about.

Life will always throw you curveballs and tough moments, and it’ll never get any easier, as the system will always work against you and out of your favor, but, you can find happiness. You can find joy in the little everyday moments and find your life’s purpose and make someone’s day that much better.

All of the exits in this show were so beautifully raw, painful, unfair and real. The deportation of poor Maritza (Diane Guerrero), who had grown up in the U.S. her entire life, just felt so unfair! And while I had wished to see more of the other inmates’ stories whom we had fallen in love with over the years, such as Soso, Big Boo, Yoga Jones, and all the others in the Columbus, OH prison, this show seemed to do its part (I’d hope someday they’ll continue these stories of the other women). The last 20 minutes of the last episode felt a little rushed to get all the cameos of the other women in, but, understandably so, it was still a lovely send-off.

There’s not much else I can say at the moment, but I think for anyone who’s watched this show knows the great impact its had. Thank you, Orange, for what you’ve done and given us, and all the conversations you’ve sparked and platforms given for so many viewers and women over the years.

Orange, forever. 🧡

Have you watched the final season? Do you watch OITNB? If so, I’d love to know your thoughts on the season or series as a whole!

My Thoughts After 7 Years of ‘Orange is the New Black’ My oh my. What a journey these past seven years have been with Orange Is The New Black…