#anyone have a rainjacket they like?

[thoughtsickles]

the problem with getting older is that now any time i make a purchase i first feel like i have to research and go through all the options to make sure i'm getting the best quality and not overpaying and that there isn't a better option out there and it just takes all the fun out of purchases :( i just want to receive package

[cyclicallife]

Over the past few months, various events or things have triggered me.

Some are minuscule, such as a sound or smell that will set off several memories. Others are more significant, a bodily sensation, an ache, cough, or the like that provokes a more powerful emotional/psychological response.

I note these reactions, a tactic I use to help ground myself. From there, I can move forward, understanding more about it (the trigger) and my relationship with it. If I can, witnessing myself is the trick; detecting what is occurring before being consumed.

The milestone of the five-year cancer-free mark is not an exemption from fear and worry. Sometimes they peak at the same level they did while amid treatment -- periodically even more so.

Nights are difficult. Anyone who has experienced a tumultuous and life-altering event can attest that this is when the little dark fears come out of the woodwork.

A few weeks ago, I returned from Samsø, Denmark (see the previous update here or blog post on cyclical.life). A small island with under 4,000 inhabitants, nestled snuggly off the Jutland peninsula. Though it has several adorable little towns, the 40-something square mile island is used primarily for agricultural purposes. To say that it is a walkers' paradise is an understatement.

When I am state-side, I often sit with these "little dark fears" only to a certain point. It wasn't a bold pursuit or some other brave endeavor that granted me the time and pace to do so on Samsø; it happened as if on its own.

One night, awoken by worries and fears, I got dressed, grabbed my raincoat, and went for a walk. It was almost a knee-jerk reaction. As I joked to a few people, the beautiful thing about an island is that you can't get lost; you ramble through fields and upon well-worn tractor paths, and sooner or later, you'll encounter the ocean.

Every evening I filled my rucksack with: a rainjacket, another base layer, extra socks, a flashlight, a field recorder, and bread, butter, and honey, just in case. Then, I'd begin walking if I woke in the night, regardless of the time and conditions, to discover that the fears were present.  

State-side, if my worries and fears become too great, and my audiobook or music doesn't cut through the mix, I'll bust out trusty ol' Netflix. I didn't have such distractions there. Though I purchased a Danish SIM card for emergencies, I didn't carry my phone or bring my pre-downloaded audiobook.

Bringing the field recorder was the best decision. I didn't intend to record myself, but I'd sit on some slight rise or the beach and try to collect my thoughts and gather my ideas while talking aloud - a practice I began while in school as it helped me work out ideas. My words were wandering much in the way I was rambling physically.

I have a project in mind for the recordings. Though what follows are some excerpts and snippets I pulled that I found revealing.

*

I move forward in this place (of recovery)

A beacon pulling / a signal drawing

Being held - here

I have learned to live with the memory of you [cancer], as one does with something that echoed, a thing that came.

The lights of Aarhus could be another world - a gentle glow (western paling sky). Aarhus could be Boston from here - Mass General could be anywhere. I could be anywhere. I am here.

Birds; two, then three, then 4, and 5 (a dance that says 'we are together in this; we heal together.')

[charlotte-sloane-writes]

1 - A Wicked Little Thing

It’s finally here! Chapter 1 of this Zatanna Zatara x John Constantine fic has killed me for nearly a year. If you love it as much as I do, please reblog and comment. If you want to be added to the tags then send me a message, reblog, comment, just let me know! The chapter is under the cut, the taglist at the very end. Much love, Charlie.

“Anna,” Buddy called over to the young woman dressed in yesterday’s work uniform.

“Hm?” Anna turned her head and brushed out the earbud nestled to the side of her head, flicking a few strands of her black hair behind her to size up her boss who decided whatever he was about to say was more important than ‘We Will Rock You’ on its 3rd consecutive play.

Buddy recentered his balance on one hip and tilted his chin up, an unkempt not-quite salt-and-pepper eyebrow raised as he asked, “That thing ever run out of battery?”

“Trust me, Buddy, you’d know if it did.” Anna flashed him a saccharine smile and shoved the earbud back into her brain, moving on to the next room that needed cleaning, her cleaning cart’s loose wheel squeaking for mercy unheard over Anna’s playlist. 

Buddy scoffed behind her back, another attempt to connect with the twenty-something-year-old failed rather spectacularly on his end. He shoved the tickets to the local college’s ‘Battle of the Bands’ show back into his pocket and whistled to make himself feel like the exchange was done in total nonchalance with zero premeditation. Lifting his ‘Lagheur’ watch to his chest, he noticed the ticking needles of the ripoff luxury watch in a slight delay, taking maybe a half time longer than an actual second. Buddy once saw a movie where this happened to show time slowing down. He couldn’t place the actual scene anywhere, but it seemed funny enough to him that the science fiction promises of his childhood were echoed through the cheap realities of his adulthood. 

“Regina,” Buddy threw over his shoulder an aging rainjacket, once clear now yellowing around folds and stitches. Regina at the counter, a recent retiree with all the looks to take to Boca Raton but none of the self-awareness to stop working looked up at her boss from the dusty concierge seat. 

“Boss?”

“I’m out for a smoke, I’ll be back in ten. Anyone calls for me, take a message.”

“Sure, sure, if anyone calls.” Regina looked down at the answering machine behind her counter, fixing her coke-bottle glasses back up on the ridge of her boney nose. It was new twenty years ago when she last checked in at the hotel, sleepy and dazed children in tow, asking where their mother was. She’d never seen the light even flicker on that machine. 

Buddy walked across the populated lounge, tourists, and locals alike crowding the hotel to get out of the rain and have a drink. Some of them might get rooms by the look of it, though none seemed too eager to book one. Unlit cigarette stuck between his teeth, Buddy pulled his cap up over his head and walked out onto the back terrace. On stiller nights, the courtyard was a beautiful display of soft city nature and twinkling lights. Hopefully, he thought to himself, Anna will have remembered to cover up the sound system speakers hidden in some of the bushes. He wasn’t ready to shell out another grand to replace them. 

The lighter Buddy took out from his jacket pocket should’ve been replaced a week and a half ago. Swishing lighter fluid gradually making a crack in the plastic casing just a little wider didn’t bode well for Buddy’s innate flammability. The wrong swipe of a finger while lighting his cigarette opened up his thumb and Buddy- as he took the first draw of his cigarette- watched blood prick up from the fat pad of his digit, little globes of red sprouting along a visceral ley line down to the crux of the first joint. He’ll have to remind himself to throw this lighter out and get a new one when he gets the chance again. 

“You know,” He spoke to himself, more than aware he was alone on the creaky back patio “this place used to be the gem of Palo Alto, before Jobs and Wozniak, Amazon and Google. This place...I sound like my great grandfather. How did that happen?” Buddy scoffed and took a step forward, leaning against a beam at the top of the small stairs giving way to the waterlogged marsh of a luncheon garden. Before he could even take notice, the roaring gutter above his head flipped on itself, bringing forth a cascade of rainwater and grime down onto Buddy’s head. He didn’t even have it in him to curse. He just shook his head, bit the inside of his lip raw and flicked his dead cigarette into the rain.

__________

John Constantine wasn’t often seen in the kitchen for actual food, an old tome tucked under his arm with blue lettering of an ancient language only slightly obscured by the wrinkled sleeve of his dress shirt.

“Woah, careful, Johnny. You need help?” A young and dashing mop of black hair named Behrad Tomaz bounded into the kitchen with open arms.

John slightly wavered, eyes darting around as his cheeks reddened. He cleared his throat “I’m fine-,”

“-Dude,” Behrad took the wine bottle Constantine had been balancing on a multi-sectioned plate of what looked like saltine crackers, a hard-boiled egg, some fresh smelling garnishes, a small cup of applesauce, a mug of brothy soup with something bobbing in it, and a jar with pieces of fish floating around it. “I’m impressed you got this far with all this stuff.” Behrad looked at the wine label, wanting to discern a year but couldn’t read the letters on the label. He shook it off, blaming his dyslexia for the mess of shapes on the label “You heading to your room with this stuff?”

“Yeah.” John nodded, quieter than usual as he gave Behrad the gefilte fish jar and placed the plastic cup he had taken upside down on to the neck of the wine bottle.

“This stuff looks good.” Behrad looked over at John’s plate as they walked down the austere corridors of the Waverider, immune to the shock of the odd clicks and clangs.

“You don’t have to lie.” John scoffed a laugh, biting his top lip.

“Is it for a spell?” “Not really.”

“Munchies?” John turned to face Behrad, those innocent puppy dog eyes peering over John’s exclusively hard stare. “Thanks for helping me, mate. Cheers.” He managed to balance everything back into his arms and moved into his room, locking the door behind him.

Behrad stood there, perhaps a little too perplexed for his own good “Have a good time!” He called out, making his way back to the kitchen.

Sara Lance wasn’t expecting to have to get into John Constantine’s business again, but the idea of the mage acting shifty didn’t sit very well with The Captain. “What was that?” She asked Behrad, intercepting him before he reached the kitchen.

“What was what?” Behrad shrugged, crossing his arms with a dopey smile “I was just helping John get his food to his room.” “Uh huh.” Sara’s light blue eyes narrowed, nodding along with Behrad “What was he carrying?”

“I don’t know. Some fish, crackers, wine. Had this old book under his arm. You know John, can’t read if it’s not totally silent. He must’ve gotten hungry.”

“Yeah.” Sara nodded, the truth dawning on her with a small, easy smile “Okay, let’s make sure to leave him alone today. He’s clearly got something important to do.”

John took his time lighting every candle he had in his room, turning the lights off and letting the little flickering flames set just the right reverential mood he was feeling. There was stirring between his ribs. He got the feeling every time he took out the Haggadah. Opening the musty book brought back memories, ones he kept reenacting every Pessach. As beautiful as the book was, ancient binding and intricate hand-printed text, it would never replace the one he found when he was twelve in his father’s attic. He remembered climbing up the cobwebbed ladder, his older sister whispering a word of caution behind him. Cheryl never really understood it, why he climbed that ladder. She never understood why he would intentionally lock himself up there for hours among the beetles and dead pigeons. Among that pestilence and dust was a box marked ‘Mary Anne - Beth-Tikvah, LON’ in big block letters. When John’s father, a big burly man whose accent was the only thing thicker than his eyebrows, found him wearing his great uncle’s kippah with the edges clumsily touching his brow while he read his mother’s old ‘Elementary Hebrew’ workbook, tracing the lines of his mother’s juvenile scripture, Thomas left welts on the young boy’s thighs that didn’t abate until the next month. 

Thomas had thought he’d burned everything in that box that very day. He didn’t suspect or know to look for a pocketbook the size of a theater playbook, with flimsy blue binding and doubled text in every page. One side in English, the other in Hebrew. The one thing John managed to keep from that little book was the page-marker. A picture of his mother at her younger brother’s Bar Mitzvah. She looked to be about 16 years-old with boundless ringlets in her hair and a face-splitting grin. John felt it in his throat every time he looked down at that picture. He’d sob repeatedly, from the chest out, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.” He’d bang his fists, palm-upwards, towards his head as he let the remorse of a stolen childhood shudder his lungs with a force only a soul in desperate need of rest could offer. 

“Hi, mum.” John now whispered, taking the bookmark out of his over-compensatory Haggadah, letting it rest against two candlestick pillars. “Thought I’d read to you out loud this time.” His voice felt raw and crackling on his tongue like those lungs on anti-smoking adverts. “Happy Passover.”

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[thatwarmtoastyfeeling]

I also got to play “Let’s make Layla a program!” because we’ve entered a bizarre time paradox in regards to Isfet and Layla budding friendship RPs (remember, Isfet is technically Fallout AU Virus).

Pookie only had two demands, which was 1) business skirt, and 2) “the ponytail must be as long as lore-friendly”

Not sure I entirely hit the mark on business-skirt but eehhh close enough. Ponytail though? Does not compute. I don’t think anyone has a ponytail on the grid? The sirens have tight buns, which I could do but doesn’t feel terribly Layla-y... Paige from Uprising gives the impression of having her hair tied up but it’s just a trick of the silhouette (she has styled bangs but is almost buzzed in the back). Everyone else has very geometric cuts - shaved, gelled up, bobbed, sharp bangs, etc. Very antithetical to Layla’s usual messy, voluminous waves.

So I focused more on the front for the first doodles, and Pookie pointed out the one she liked best. The second image is sort of a redraw (while still ignoring the actual ponytail...) and test of a skirt-suit look. Right away I felt the shoulders were too strong for her average clothing, but also really liked how it looked, so I ended up making a little raincoat outfit. The back is partially see-through, inspired by Gem’s rainjacket in the film.

Once I saw that Pookie liked it, I decided to just play dress-up doll with Layla and play with layers. The part I like most about the clothing in Tron Legacy is the use of layers and material, which is absolutely a weak point for me - to show material you need to show how light and shadow interact, which means uhh... coloring and shading. But it’s pretty much required because so much of the clothing is mono-chromatic, and visual interest comes from texture not color.

I actually started at the top and worked down, peeling layers back as I went, rather than starting at the tron-long-johns and building up, which was actually a really fun way to approach design. The only material I really spent any effort on was the tights, because I needed to drive home that they’re semi-sheer like nylons, and because I needed to get that hexagon fabric pattern in there somewhere for my own sake. There’s technically a light pattern overly on her dress too but I may as well have omitted it for all it changes things.

I’d like to draw up the back too, since the third requirement from Pookie is that she have a glowy line on the back of her legs like the seam old-timey hosiery had... but lazy.

Oh yeah, and I almost gave her a bonkers long Widowmaker style ponytail just to spite myself but for now it’s just an asymmetrically chopped thing, mostly just so it didn’t cover the outfit design, so I don’t know if that’s gonna stick.

[citizentruth-blog]

Covering The Mirror

The henna tinted haircut had become oily and matted. Clothes, twice worn, and I’d missed the shower in the a.m. It was nigh on 5:37, and the service was to begin at 6. I looked a sight. Yet, the temple being a scant four minutes from the house, my heart told me that missing their open invitation would be the greater regret. Dabbing some under eye concealer, a bit of pink powder and a neutral lipstick, I fluffed what remained of the haircut, grabbed the short raincoat, and headed for State Street. Turning left at the top of Cherry Street, my Pontiac soon joined a steady trough of traffic. Parking at the temple’s Jefferson Society lot was limited, and street options could extend north all the way down the hill if we didn’t get all the greens heading east. I wondered how many from as far away as Fairview had also accepted the invitation? West of the stadium, cars were already lining the curb. But, two school buses were also present, next to the academy. The stream of drivers was intended for their evening football game. My thymus relaxed, a little. Reaching the temple, I was relieved to see a spot up from the Jefferson entrance. People were still walking from lot to front, and I joined them, hugging the mustard yellow rainjacket around my jeans to cut the wet chill. Sure enough, ladies were in mid-calf skirts, men in dark dress, and then Jack, looking pensive, the news cam man who’d taken my one and only career black and white decades earlier. I resumed my customary cringe. Find a seat in the very back, slide in swiftly, say nothing. Stepping past the security guard and the packing, body armored special agent, I entered the foyer. There was Charles, standing at the door. We greeted, me offering the self-deprecating reference to shabby attire and he quick with the witty retort, something about God not caring and me hoping so, he with his hearty, reassuring laugh. My seat awaited, one of four in the far right rear row, two fellow Gentiles on either end. I sat beside Maria, who looked as Bavarian as if she’d just arrived from northern Minnesota. The room was filling, rapidly. I recognized several, from various stages of my own history in our ageless community. The men, in their yarmulkes. A respected surgeon, in his, plus blue scrubs. An extremely tall gent, in his, ball of the hand curved over a carved walking stick. The current Erie County Executive. A former Mayor of Erie. At least two Mizrachi, with stronger noses in profile than hardly anyone saw anymore, likely never in a fashion rag. And, me, feeling every percentage of the Persian/Turk in my Ancestry.com DNA reveal. I missed, quietly, Rabbi Len and Faith Lifshen. This had been their temple, prior to the move south and his subsequent death. Turning to Maria I made mention of them and pointed out the Ark of the Covenant glass encasement in the center of the altar. After my lengthy paragraph, she mentioned the Torah scrolls, me realizing that, yet again, I’d presumed the role of teacher rather than learner. One of the last to enter was a short young woman, who chose the remaining seat beside me. She was the only female in a yarmulke within my sight line, and I hadn’t remembered ever seeing a woman wear one. Just as she became settled, removing her coat, around the aisle came a slender man who extended his open palm to the Gentile on the left end. He took the hand of each one of us in the back row, introducing himself and asking our names. He was the new Rabbi, up from Pittsburgh where he lived to conduct the Shabbat Kaddish at Temple Brith Sholom. This was my second Jewish service. At Yom Kippur, several musical colleagues and I had been invited to the other temple, across town, by another of us who, being a Jew, was slated to play the Kol Nidre on her flute. The rabbi that night was a woman, a guest from New York, and the remaining four vocal musicians and their pianist were all Gentiles but one. The music at this Shabbat was all vocal. It was produced by the Rabbi and his seasoned congregation. After an earnest and warm welcome from, surprise! Doris, a retired teacher with whom I had worked nearly thirty years earlier, the rabbi explained in detail what we as the guests could expect from the service. He encouraged us to select a prayer book from the racks attached to the chairs in front of us. The prayer book pages were turned briskly, from rear to front, as the rabbi chanted in fluent Hebrew and the congregation sang along. I was reminded that, let alone a language strange to my tongue, unless I could see the notation my ability to retain a new melody was woeful. We sat, and stood; remained standing, and sat. Stood. Turned; bowed; sat, again. At each rise and return, a room filled with slightly damp athletic shoes squeaked, in chorus. The Kaddish, Rabbi explained, was the congregational prayer, uttered in unison aloud. Some Shabbats were mourning Kaddish; this one would have two aspects, the first for private mourners and the second for the victims of the tragedy at Tree Of Life. Just before the time had come to offer up the Kaddish, the Rabbi spoke in short sermon. He described the innumerable traditions which were the foundation of conservative Judaism. One point, in particular, spoke to me, as an aspect of mourning. He said that Jews, by their nature and by their tradition, are open. They encourage emotional expression. Crying during mourning is a given. But, he also insisted, mourning was to be embodied. There would be no preparation of fine adornment; instead, Jews were to begin by eliminating bathing. They were to immerse themselves, entirely, in grief. And, to render this practice intently selfless, they were to cover all the mirrors in the house. My eyes opened, wide. I looked at the Rabbi. For that moment, and in the moments later, I stood in solidarity with God’s chosen people against both the recent horror and an entire epoch of vile hatred which had wrenched their global family. Soiled, unkempt; unclean, I was right there. Out of body, present in spirit, I no longer saw myself. Only Adonai. Read the full article