#anyways back to your regularly scheduled shrimp posts

[shrimp-milf]

i love realizing that I can just log off and suddenly every discourse ever disappears and I can be happy as who i am without a bunch of people being weird about it

[ceasarslegion]

honestly i think if this site finally dies to a ceo meltdown (which might be the only thing that can kill it lmao) i think... it would be for the best to just leave this place and the communities it fostered buried

I won't go to cohost, or bluesky, or anything. Y'all can catch me on my already made social (1) (discord. Im not giving anybody my facebook account with my full name on it after the death threats ive gotten over the years here) if you want, but this site has been going downhill ever since the advent of cringe culture and ace discourse circa 2015. It feels like recent months have been hurtling towards the logical conclusion of the turbo-echo chamber this site exists in. I seriously miss the era where it was just superwholock jokes and the only drama you'd hear about was the occasional bone-stealing witch level shit that everybody would go "lmao what" about and then go back to their regularly-scheduled movie discussions. Maybe i'll go back to pinterest at most and spend the rest of my time in fandom and furry forums and AO3. It would compel me to write and draw a lot more.

And honestly, I think tumblr finally getting the plug pulled on its long-dying life support may be legitimately helpful for a lot of the users who yanked this site's culture away from that and into the echo chamber. They might like, go outside for once. I know "touch grass" is a cliche or whatever but I do think a lot of this echo chamber can be chalked up to sitting on the computer all day and never getting exposed to anybody outside of your self-imposed internet echo chamber. Go outside, get some fresh air.

Also, it won't be the end of the world. If your free time and happiness is really that contingent on any one social media site then it may be for the best to take it away from you. Learn how to entertain yourself without it. There's a whole world out there to explore. Find something else to do. Pick up new hobbies, look into events in your area. Get really into some weird niche hobby and spend all that time doing that instead of just posting on a different website if this one's finally done. Remember that 4chan guy whose life turned around after he got really into raising shrimp instead of discoursing on 4chan all day? Maybe it's time to find your shrimp raising hobby instead of just posting the same things and perpetuating the same cycles on a different site.

I'm not saying to go full amish and abandon the internet altogether but i am saying that if this website has consumed so much of you that the prospect of it imploding is this upsetting to you, maybe you need to start raising shrimp for a while. I think it would be good for you.

Idk man, I'm chilling in my chair here but if it goes, she goes. I'll find something else to do, but this site hasn't been the tumblr I stuck around for for a long time now, so it won't be the end of the world for me if it ends. I'd just grab my favourite mutuals discords and head out to get more into the furry fandom and write more fic instead. I never wanted to be exposed to this much of the everything on this site anyway, I joined for the memes and the fandom content way back in 2010 and then just never really left.

[mileheitcity-blog]

So a Reform Jew goes to Antwerp...

The air smelled faintly of exhaust and concrete as I stepped out of the station, and the sky hung low in a faded shade of brooding grey.  It reminded me a little of Seattle, but somehow far more distant, more detached, the tall trees of the Pacific Northwest only giving way here to tall grey and yellow buildings and row houses. Seattle’s always been a bit of a strange place to build a city: the footprint of the city isn’t very large, it shouldn’t be able to fit very many people, at least not in such close quarters. The giant trees that make up the expansive forests are indeed gorgeous, but create an effect that’s almost closed in, crowded out.  But today nearly the whole Puget Sound region teems with activity and life, the three million or so people who live there make sure of that.  I grabbed my bearings and took another deep breath, this time followed by a long look around.  The bustle subsided into a rolling hum, and the feelings of home had somewhat dissipated.  And yet, there was still something in the air.  I wasn’t anywhere near my home.  I was on the other side of the world, and all the Dutch signs wouldn’t let me forget it.  But somehow, as I walked down Pelikaanstraat towards absolutely nothing in particular, I knew I was walking home. 

What was a Reform Jew like me doing heading to Antwerp anyway? The Reform movement has always been somewhat of a thorn in the side of more traditional Jewish communities ever since its conception in the late 19th century.  Reform synagogues were the first to institute mixed-gender seating and to publish siddurim (prayer books) in the vernacular. At the founding of the Reform Jewish seminary, Hebrew Union College, the movement’s leader served shrimp cocktail, causing a number of other prominent scholars to get offended and walk out and start their own organization. By the middle of the 20th century, Reform Jews were using musical instruments in their services, and some congregations were even building pipe organs into the sanctuary. In 1972, the Reform seminary ordained its first woman into the clergy, Rabbi Sally Priesand, and mom was less than a decade behind.  Our world is still deeply Jewish, but deeply untraditional, and yet...

The bustle filled the air as I grabbed my bearings.  The ride to the Antwerp had been an pretty uneventful.  I slept a little later than I wanted to, but was still able to snag the last couple crepes from the hotel on my way to the train station. One transfer in Breda, and just like that I was in a new country, a place I had only heard about in whispers.  It was traditional, old school, Europe’s last shtetl. Restaurants were all Kosher, Google said.  Men and women sit in different sections at services. The shops are all closed on Saturday, but active on Sundays when the rest of the city was asleep or in church. This was a community that worked hard to maintain its traditions and it way of life, and that way of life wasn’t going anywhere. 

Both in Hebrew School and in the home, Jewish kids like me are given more than a few lessons on the survival of our people.  We’re taught our traditions and listen to the Torah once a week not for fun, but to ensure our continuation.  We teach each other to read Hebrew and to wrap tefillin because we always have, because it defines us.  We sprinkle in phrases in Ladino or Yiddish because they’re funny or descriptive, yes, but also to make sure the next generation knows it.  By choosing a new path, by ignoring some of the traditions and precepts, by not keeping kosher and shaving our beards and going out on Friday night and sitting with (gasp!) women in services, we could be ensuring the destruction of our own people, or at least the community as we know it. In a Reform synagogue, it’s different, sure, we’re taught to at least know what we’re choosing and why, but the subtext is often quite clear.  Our traditions define us, and our traditions will be what sustain us.  As the saying goes “More than the Jews have kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept Jews”.  Reform Jews, like me, were considered a slap in the face to much of that tradition.  How can you read the liturgy in the vernacular? How can you allow women to sit with men, and even be on the pulpit? Why don’t you keep kosher, wear fringes and kipot, or speak in Yiddish? What do you mean you drive on Shabbat?!?!?! And HOW DARE YOU serve traef at a Jewish function? Don’t you know what the consequences are?

I turned behind me and started walking along the diamond shops.  The jewelry in the window shimmered in the artificial light, that’s what diamonds do.  But that’s not what brought me there.  I turned the corner into the Jewish district, and immediately knew what brought me here.  The gentleman behind the counter looked like he was straight out a painting that hung in my synagogue: a long salt-and-pepper beard adorned his lean and bony face, his eyes enlarged by big round bifocals.  The women behind me each had strollers in tow and rocked some pretty gnarly sheitels.  A tallis rack sat proudly next to the seating area, and a basin sink for hand washing was easily visible and available for anyone who wanted to use it.  The menu featured the seven-branch candelabra, the menorah, on the front page, but no announcement was necessary. I turned to the menu on the wall, and despite it being written in Dutch each dish was more than familiar.  I wonder if the kugel and kishka were as good as Bubbe’s.  Despite being in a foreign land, among foreign Jews, I had never felt a sense of familiarity as I did in that place.  As I told the kind gentleman what I wanted, my soul started to sing. 

Shtetls of Europe are mostly gone now. The towns that weren’t destroyed by Russian Cossacks were abandoned when the Nazis sent us to the gas chambers. After the war, the few Jewish people who remained in Europe did so far outside of the small communities they called home, choosing instead to go to the more cosmopolitan cities. Most of the survivors, though, went to America or Israel, and who could blame them.  America has no shtetls, we’re as assimilated into society as anyone.  I went to public school for godsakes, which was unheard of a century and a half ago. In Israel, we carved out our own home (with the help of the UN, at the expense of people already living there, I know, but I’ve said before I’m not having that debate on this platform), so we didn’t need to set ourselves apart, to build our own towns. No longer were we forced to live in between arbitrary lines on the map on the outskirts of the Empire.  Now, we could live anywhere we wanted to.  Any why would we go back to the shtetl? We were poor, life was rough, and living in close proximity made it easy for the Russians or the Germans to sweep through with torches and ill intent. Keeping your traditions alive can only do so much against an army intent on your destruction.

I walked over to the basin sink, filled the mug, said the prayer, and sat down. The gentleman behind the counter appeared a few minutes later with my selection, but the contents of my plate barely mattered.  The pungent note of the gefilte fish stung my nose as I reached for the horseradish.  I closed my eyes and heard a conversation in Yiddish from across the restaurant.  At that moment, I knew.  I was, indeed, home. 

Writer’s note: this post is dedicated to Hoffy’s Restaurant in Antwerp, thanks for making such an outright amazing meal. You really did make my soul sing. I could probably write another blog post or two about this district, but pairing this with the previous post seemed more appropriate. I will, without question, come back to this district someday. 

Up next: Library at the Technical University in Delft, a return to the regularly scheduled school-related posts.

[cyanpeacock]

Realtalk(tm): Or Is It All Fake Silence? (On The Topic of Non-Duality)

so. i’m Headache and Tired .

recently i have been considering non-duality (again) and it is, well, endless. but always has an end. but then it starts again, so, did it ever really end? does it matter if it ended. it does! but also, it doesn’t. and really, if it’s both, isn’t it all kind of “ehhh.” but then, “ehhh” is like, the most important thing sometimes.

but THEN. importance is, relative, subjective, not that important. and subjective can be objective and vice-versa, but not always, but if it’s sometimes, then sometimes it’s always, but always, only sometimes. you get the picture, or you don’t, or you kinda do, and honestly, it’s all the fucking same, because it’s all points on a continuum.

BUT THEN do points even exist on a continuum? they do, if you’re looking for/making them. but they don’t, if you’re only looking at the line, so it isn’t actually all the same. and if you’re facing the other direction, you’re like “what points? what line? they don’t exist, do they?” and yeah, they don’t exist! because you can’t see them! but they might exist, outside your field of perception, so they do exist.

what is seeing, anyway. the information goes through so many transformations from its original form to be registered by a brain. the colours i see are not the colours you see, the colours you see are not the colours a mantis shrimp sees. one camera takes photos that come out all yellow, the other takes them with a bluish tint. 

right and wrong... subject, object. (ok i’m putting a cut in here bc this got, long and kind of emotionally sorta-really-deep-but-neither, under the jump)

but really i’m mad because, i can’t actually stop thinking about this for long? i always come back to this kind of like, consideration of (non-)“binary” concepts. 

like, is the concept of “i” even useful? i mean, yes, because it refers to the body, the mind(s) inhabiting it, and aspects contained within those things. 

but then also, “i” is not useful, because broadly, there is no “i”, “i” does not exist in isolation, “i” is dependent/contingent on every surrounding factor.

but specifically, “i” exists, and if i come back to i, then like, i was in so much pain, i was so angry, i was not supported in the right ways at the right times. but then, other “i”s around me did not have the means to support me, they were angry, they were in pain. 

so like, it’s fucking me up, because i still have this ingrained binary concept of Right and Wrong, Good and Bad, from like, less-than-good-enough parenting. i’m returning to seeing things through other people’s eyes, getting it wrong because i don’t have their life experiences or method of using the pathways they have, my mind is still going to “oh fuck, i’m Bad, i’m Wrong--” and my body is experiencing the physical reaction to that. i’m forgetting that, well, my i exists?

hence why i am here engaging in these clumsy unpracticed mental acrobatics. attempting to remember what my i is, or create one, or something. 

because, well, my i is... uh, i don’t know? how do i define it. flippy. flipping over constantly. i live on earth one minute, but like, as i’m walking along to the shop, i’m suddenly walking along little asteroids on the edge of saturn’s rings, i see it, i feel that space is cold. i’m a robot! but i’m a robot who thinks-feels-eats-breathes and who wants to be a man. and then, i guess that is a man? because what is a man, but a really complicated robot. but i’m made of metal on the inside! sometimes the outside! but only because i see it in my mind, but the mind is real, so whatever the mind creates is real, at least in my non-dual sub/objective opinion/experience? 

but yeah. only i know what condition i was in during certain events, and i know how actions of other people kicked me while i was down. and other individuals that tell me i’m wrong, i don’t need help, when i’m telling them something is wrong, i need help, like... that’s their prerogative? they can and will do that, i have no control over that? but god FUCK this individual acutely feels wounded over it, and i gotta respect that, because those other individuals can’t feel what i’m feeling. 

but then, frustratingly, i’m also well aware that while there are alternative pathways that could have happened, there was no alternative pathway because of the way the cards fell/are falling, so the one that did happen, the painful one, happened! 

it’s all such a huge ball of Fuck. real is imaginary and imaginary is real and both mean everything and nothing but everything is more or less the same as nothing etc etc. 

and it’s all a matter of scale and perspective. 

so i guess, i’m having to identify my perspective, and the scale i’m functioning on? and, uh, figure out how to return to that at the right times, in order to attend to Body Needs and Mind Needs and Environment Needs, which are all more or less the same thing, but not.

which is, well, shit, i can feel my body again. the body, a body, this physical organism that is sitting here typing this. and this body remembers being yanked and hit and shouted at and made to feel small and stupid and inconvenient and troublesome. this body remembers being routinely insulted and jeered at and mocked and not defended or taught how to defend itself. 

which, well, sure, i suppose a long duration filled with being perceived and reacted to like that, is why the mind that is-and-is-within this body has developed such a... well. one-and-many system. selves, non-selves, worlds, non-worlds, presences and absences. living inside the mind, most of the time, is a LOT less painful than living inside the body. 

i have... autonomy? i have bodily autonomy? i don’t have to follow an order or be punished? i don’t have to perform certain acts to receive love and affection from myself? i can choose where to go, what to do, what to say, i can choose when and how i go about things, i can validate my own “whys”? i can tell the self-non-selves that yell at me and slice my body in negative emotional reactions, actually, this is not helpful? etc etc?

this... i’m still getting used to this. marginally past “sounds fake but okay.” i’m still reacting in the present to past feelings of, well, yeah. being made to feel so small and stupid and incompetent that the pain i felt in that moment was intolerable, and i wanted my existence to end permanently right there, and that i made active efforts to try and achieve that. but, i am reliving those emotions less, which i suppose is... well, that’s emotional processing, babey!

so, well, uh.

right now! i am and am not suicidal. i’m not, you know, out here with a noose right now suicidal, but i am suicidal, in a really, like, long, slow, drawn-out, masochistic kind of way, because frankly i’m aware that even breathing the air in here is killing me. i have to be suicidal to like, live? at least for now, i gotta be, you know, pretty damn enthusiastic about the idea of my own death and its randomness and my part in bringing it on, in order to enjoy the whole, living thing? i dig it, death is sexy, he’s my other boyfriend. i mean, sometimes i don’t, but then i do again, so, yeah, fuck, you get the picture, or don’t, and so on so forth.

man like I have received shit in the past for like... “overcomplicating” things. but dude... this is literally how complicated it is, for me. i can’t switch this off until it’s Good and focking Ready to be switched off, i.e., i’ve made some or several point(s) to-with my self-selves. argh, english language is so clumsy for discussing this, language is so clumsy, it is a tool, it will suffice.

BUT YES my braincalm feeling is making itself known so, i suppose this is, The End. until, you know, i make another post, tomorrow night, about something the-same-but-different. it is all so uglybeautiful shallowdeep and like a f!cking wheel with infinite-finite points always-never turning. basard. the non-duality... it never STOPS, until you stop thinking about non-duality, in which case, it’s still a side within non-duality... f!cking paradoxical-non-paradoxical. Loops. Loops Everywhere. The Strings. Oh God. The Strings

OK jesus if i don’t make the judgement call and just say Yeah Ok Stop. this will never end. Back To Your Regularly Scheduled Obscurity And Reblogged Content